1/1 - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

More documents

Recommendations

Info

een. How so? We wanted to know. His an- swer arrived a few days later in a campus mail envelope: here exists in North America—and nowhere else, to my knowledge—what I call the Genteel Archipelago. This wide-scattered and variable formation consists of tiny, small and less small communities (some call themselves cities but often as not that's a bit of a brag) in which a college or university, or both, exist. In some of these places, town and gown are in uneasy balance; in the more fortunate, the two aid and abet each other. In the most fortunate, they foster and improve each other—indeed, require each other—in a sort of cultural symbiosis. The one would find itself soon enough turned brackish were it not for the other's sweetwater: the town would become another hidebound, unimaginative, unremarkable and less viable burg, while the academy, without influx from the outside world, would swirl ever more swiftly in its predilective eddies of smugness, detachment and things ethereal. Ithaca, it seems to me—and I speak with the authority of someone who lived there all of four months— sits most decidedly in the Blessed Isle category. You have to love a place where you can spend a morning at something called the Synchrotron Facility and lunch dissecting the Buffalo Bills over a pesto omelet at Andy's Third Street Cafe; where you can catch Lethal Weapon 2 at the Pyramid Mall multiplex matinee and Godard's Histoires Du Cinema at Willard Straight the same evening, or, vice versa, catch Orlando downtown at the Cinemapolis and Cliffhanger at the Uris midnight show on campus. You can get your car's muffler replaced, then hop over to see your polarity therapist; you can weep with frustration caught in traffic at The Octopus or along Meadow Street and dry your tears with a stroll through the Cornell Plantations' herb garden. You can catch John Hsu on the viola da gamba and Catherine Liddell on the theorbo at the A.D. White House, then head across town for the first set of Steve Southworth and the Rockabilly Rays at Kuma's. Or, you can experience a bit of bad luck, as I did shortly after arriving, and have your car break down one sweltering, hectic September mid-day. I climbed into the tow truck cab and, between sobs at the ensuing financial debacle, asked to look at the driver's Ithaca Journal to see how the Braves fared. I don't remember if they won or lost. Trying to lift myself from de- spair, I mumbled something innocuous about the vagaries of baseball. The driver launched in on a lengthy monologue concerning not only the strengths of various teams, but the essentially binary nature of sport: you win or you lose. Period. His life had hit a rough patch, he said, and he had concluded that sport's hold on him had to do with its "delicious" lack of ambiguity: "It's not real life, and that's why we need it. Sport, unlike life, contains a satisfying sense of closure," he concluded. "Sense of closure, huh?" I asked. "Yeah, a guy from Cornell—he cracked a block on West State—used the phrase." What I'm getting at, folks, is that this sort of encounter just does not occur in Anytown, USA. Before you begin to think me incapable of criticism, think this some naive booster's paean, think I believe Ithaca without flaw, that instead of existing on the earth it hovers somewhere above it... With the possible exceptions of Boston and Bangkok, I have never lived in a town with more vexed traffic or less capable and less civil drivers. The streets are divided into narrow, narrower and Oh My God!; they are bumpier than the skin of a hives victim, twistier than a large intestine. At some intersections, streets meet at angles not found in nature. I'm reminded of the poet Richard Hugo, who described a town (not Ithaca) in which the "streets are laid out by the insane." People here love their car horns; they save their turn signals for emergencies; if they followed other cars more closely, they'd be ahead of them; pedestrians are beneath contempt; stop signs are treated as advisory bulletins. Watch yer back! Further, it remains a job of work to find a decent cup of coffee in town or on campus. Γm talking continental here—espresso, latte, cappucino—which, you may as well know, is readily available these days at even the most nominal convenience store in one-horse towns throughout much of the country. The water tastes chalky; the sidewalks are too narrow by half; you can't get The New York Times delivered to your door. Trash collection is out of control— severe penalties are likely if you dare mix your Smucker's jam jar with a dead soldier of gin. (I speak from experience. I have tried my best. But my best is never good enough. I have been deemed unworthy and been made bleak.) Two more beefs: it is difficult to respect fully any university with such a fine agricultural school that requires its football team to play on artificial turf, and it is just as difficult to respect any town which includes in its everyday vocabulary such an infelicitous phrase as "dish to pass." Okay. Residents of Ithaca—both temporary and perma- VI v
m nent, both recently and long-ago arrived—seem united in a meteorological siege mentality. It's a town where residents languish in summer and huddle in winter. It's a town in which the weather suits no one's clothes. Summer in Ithaca—even on the best days—is like living under a thick wool coat. "Wait for autumn," people say. I do. Autumn is brief. Well, what's winter like? Like summer, only 70 degrees colder. Like living under a thick wet wool coat? Well, yes. But when Ithacans complain about the weather, they do so with a sort of spry stalwartness, a pride of place and an alarming optimism. "Wait until spring." Beat. "Late spring." e love our town" they seem to be saying, "despite itself." There exists here, as well, a pride of geography. Have you gone to Taughannock Falls? A fellow at a downtown diner asks me upon hearing I'm new to town. Cascadilla Gorge? Fall Creek? South Hill? The Plantations? Boated on Cayuga? Taken a wine tour? "Ithaca is gorges." It matters little whether I think it is or not—I live in Montana and am possessed of a somewhat elevated definition of grandeur. Ithaca seems to me more appropriately described as "pleasant" and "comely." It is a handsome town, a tidy town, if a bit threadbare here and there. A real town—it hasn't been condemned to "death Clueless In Ithaca? Get A Clue: The "Real" Guide to Cornell and Ithaca, 1993-1994, edited by Trevor B. Connor '94 and designed by art director Adam A. Moore '93 has been published by Clue Publications, a division of Student Agencies. The guide, which costs $5.95 and is available through Student Agencies at 409 College Avenue, as well as at bookstores and Tops and Wegmans Supermarkets, is bursting with information, maps, ideas and advice on everything from where to pay bills (you can pay your phone bill at Convenient Mart on Hanshaw Road, at all three P&C Supermarkets around town, at Tops on South Meadow Street, as well as at the New York Telephone office in Albany) to how and when and where to visit any of the 38 wineries in the Finger Lakes region ("Keuka Spring is a small winery with a 5,000 gallon per year yield," the guide informs us, while the Taylor Wine Company is actually "a combination of three wineries" with "a yield of 29,000,000 gallons per year"). In the Recreation section of Get A Clue, there are subsections that include Get Cold (Cross-Country Skiing, Downhill Skiing and Ice Skating), Get In line (Amusement Parks and Attractions, Games for Big Kids and Spectator Sports) and Get Outdoors (Camping, Rock Climbing, Hiking, Horseback Riding, Hunting and Riflery/Archery). You can learn where to rent videos, buy posters, buy new books or old books, old clothes and new clothes, where to call to stay at the Elmshade Guest House or how to find out about social services in town, how to catch a bus, take a course, fish for brown or rainbow trout. Get A Clue tells you what to watch out for when renting an apartment: "Do the smoke alarms work? Is there enough lighting? Where can you park your car? Do you have to pay for it? Are there enough locks, and do they work?" And it gives readers the skinny on Collegetown bars: Rulloff s, it reports, is "probably the most loved and hated bar in Collegetown. It's the home of upperclassmen, and Greek brothers and sisters who care about dressing well and saying the right thing." Johnny's Big Red Grill "is for jocks." Despite exhaustive lists of just about everything in and around Cornell, Ithaca, Tompkins County and beyond, Get A Clue does make at least two glaring omissions: there is no mention of two venerable Collegetown eating and drinking establishments—The Chariot or The Nines. But they do tell you where to buy a stuffed animal (at Animal Attractions on Dryden Road), how many miles and hours Montreal is by car (6.5 hours, 310 miles) or to Washington, D.C. (7 hours, 350 miles), where to rent a canoe (at Cornell Outdoor Education Outfitting Center or at East Shore Sailing), and following a strenuous day of paddling, where to get a massage for those aching muscles (at Healing Hands of Ithaca or Ithaca Massage Therapy). —Paul Cody, MFA '87
Page 1 and 2: T 2 O < Φ C rt H H < 0) 1 y 0 00 1
Page 3 and 4: JUNE 1994 Departments CORNELL 22 Fo
Page 5 and 6: NAHA RHODES KUCHNG ATHENS DURBAN LO
Page 7 and 8: Acting on a tip from two Cornell st
Page 9 and 10: SANTORIN1 NOSY BE HONNINGSVAAG ADEN
Page 11 and 12: June 1994 V A C A T I O N The Grand
Page 13 and 14: FAST AFOOT Editor: When the Alumni
Page 15 and 16: from their patients, and that accor
Page 17 and 18: At Last—Something On Which the Wf
Page 19 and 20: 'Way Too Many of Us Abstract: Time
Page 21 and 22: R owers The Technology Crew call th
Page 23 and 24: threaten their importance in the sc
Page 25 and 26: FIGHT! Scientists say bioengineered
Page 27 and 28: f believe that all the media attent
Page 29 and 30: chymosin, made through a recombinan
Page 31: MYSTERIES 1 ITHACA One man's view o
Page 35 and 36: The Cottages of The Colonnades. The
Page 38 and 39: 'HISTORIANS ARE, IN ESSENCE, OUR IN
Page 40 and 41: ΊT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT SO MAN
Page 42 and 43: I /*** I Karl Linnas, deported shak
Page 44 and 45: DIVISION OF RARE AND MANUSCRIPT COL
Page 46 and 47: doesn't have a 90 in it; she was me
Page 48 and 49: 445 Valley Forge Rd., Devon, PA 193
Page 50 and 51: mission's awarding Con way, MA a gr
Page 52 and 53: The most recent census record of li
Page 54 and 55: summer that I went to Maine for a m
Page 56 and 57: took the Delta Queen down the Missi
Page 58 and 59: CLASS NOTES ington, DC, which is ma
Page 60 and 61: mins) '56 for Council-Trustee Weeke
Page 62 and 63: ore than ten years ago, Dr. Terry B
Page 64 and 65: guide to hotels am restaurants Corn
Page 66 and 67: urer of Berkshire School, a co-ed p
Page 68 and 69: tide to busim and services made Pro
Page 70 and 71: Randee Berman wrote that she was fo
Page 72 and 73: Dave and Wendi—let us know if tha
Page 74 and 75: College of Virginia in Richmond; Le
Page 76 and 77: were married in New York City in Se
Page 78 and 79: technic U. of Puerto Rico during th
Page 80 and 81: Would you be interested in a 5.5 to
Page 82 and 83:
The 5,637 new undergraduate and gra
Page 84 and 85:
Joseph P. Baressi Jr. '65 Laura Joy
Page 86 and 87:
Air Apparent Vermont's famous brisk
Page 88 and 89:
ARIZONA—RESIDENTIAL SALES & RELOC
Page 90 and 91:
^"φMSξkS^Ά^Mβ. I 'f^'pφ^ψ^^¥
Page 92:
Parlez¥ous Binaiy Code? The Engine
show all

1/1 - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?