1/1 - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

It looks over a deep and lovely lake that is long enough to
touch the horizon. Ithaca has cataracts. It has drama.
by cute"; it is not a concept joint. Nor has it been mailed
to death.
There is a self-confidence here, a lack of self-consciousness:
it is a professor who won't abandon his
worn-at-the-elbows jacket; a businessman who spends
weekends in his fox-heeled, the-wife-hates-them tennis
shoes. I am comfortable in this garb, it is saying. I
don't care what people think.
This maturity stems, in part, from Ithaca's setting,
perched as it is on a lumpy porridge of ancient, beveled
hills. It looks over a deep and lanky lake that is long
enough to touch the horizon. Ithaca has cataracts. It
has drama. Compared to its many municipal neighbors,
it is capacious, brawny and wide-shouldered (as are the
campuses of Cornell and Ithaca College, in miniature).
Only the luckiest towns provide vantages from which
one can gaze upon them, and Ithaca is lucky. Its combination
of snugness and vista lends itself at once to a
healthy self-awareness on the part of its residents: there
is, indeed, more to the world than Home but there's no
place . . .
The interface of gown and town, however, is hardly
seamless, especially when that university is one of the
world's great ones and the town is small and relatively
isolated and takes pride in its cultural egalitarianism. I
think that Cornell's location, and its proximity to Cayuga
Heights (easily the most economically advantaged
village of greater Ithaca) is unfortunate—not so much
physically as symbolically. The campus looms like a
prince's castle, and some of those (especially the youngest)
who live within its walls have a shameful inclination
to be rigidly class conscious and haughty—"You
found that at the mall? My God, how tacky." There
exists, as well, within non-Cornell Ithaca, a reverse
snobbery, a resentment of students, who many worka-day
citizens see, both understandably and misguidedly,
as children of privilege and excessive leisure. And
see the faculty as overpaid and distant.
There is a further sort of resentment in town because,
in many instances, non-Cornellians realize that
their continued livelihood is in no small part based on
the very existence of that perceived privileged and leisured
class. If there is a magic-kingdom key in Ithaca—
where you need a DNA match to cash a check—it is a
Cornell I.D. card. (This pass-to-the-head-of-the-line
business was brought home to me almost immediately
upon my arrival here. I had tried to get a phone hooked
up, and was told that the wait for service would be a
long one. I tried again, and explained that my wife was
associated as faculty with Cornell. The phone was ringing
its head off two days later.)
This is not fair. This is not right. It is downright un-
American. But, without sounding flippant, this is the
way most of the world works most of the time. Always
has. Probably always will. If this double standard is a
forced and harsh-tasting dose of reality, it is, unfortunately,
medicine.
In the end, though, it is non-Cornell that often holds
the strong cards. I've spoken with a lot of students,
Nosey Parker that I am (by nature and vocation), and
find many of them wistful, wishing they could be more
a part of what they see as a natural, normal, exemplary,
idyllic real-world: Ithaca-beyond-the-gates. They apologize
for being from New Jersey or Long Island or Manhattan
or Ohio or some other whipping-boy location.
One student told me where he was from, then stopped
and said, "You know, here is better. I wish it were my
home." What I like to think he meant by "here" was a
place with both feet on the ground, a place of energy
and charity, a place of personality, a place without pretense.
A place that is all of the above and, to boot, a
place where no one thinks you're putting on airs when
you use the subjunctive tense correctly.
Students sometimes shoot themselves in the foot
by clustering too much. I see them as more or less
normal humans: overworked, nervous about the future,
insecure. They put their pants on one leg at a time,
even if those pants are a sight to behold.
But most of them move on, back to the city, back
to their home country. Some of them even back to Ohio.
But not all of them. Some settle in Ithaca, and strengthen
the bonds, keep the estuaries of the Blessed Isle of the
Genteel Archipelago fresh. The molecules mix. Ithaca
becomes international: look at the surnames in the phone
book; put on the feedbag for Korean, Thai, Vietnamese,
Italian, Greek—in many American towns, "ethnic food"
means the frozen pizza aisle at the supermarket.
y the time you read this, I'll have returned
to my hometown, Missoula, Montana. Like
Ithaca, it is a working town with a university
and a couple of major industries and
serves as a regional trade and cultural center.
As in Ithaca, all sorts of people rub shoulders and
rub off on each other. I like to think of Missoula and
Ithaca as a pair of terrific, much-in-demand finish carpenters.
Who do the best job in town. At ethical cost.
Who read Rousseau or Milton on their lunch break. Who
root for the Bills on Sunday. Who are craftsmen, not
tradesmen. Who are happy with their place in the world,
and understand exactly what that place is.
I don't know what in the world goes on in the Synchrotron
Facility. Nor do I have any real idea how they
make those pesto/mozzarella/tomato omelets at Andy's
so damn satisfying. Both secrets will remain secrets.
But I don't mind: it is somehow enough to know they
are there, right in my backyard. a