December 20, 2017

F R E E D e c e m b er 2 0 , 2 0 1 7 / V o l u m e X X X V I I I , N u m b e r 1 7 / O u r 4 6 t h Y e a r

Online @ ITH ACA .COM

The Climate Change in Ithaca PAGE 8

Tucson To

Official

Reinventing

Universal

One Family’s Strange Trip To Ithaca

As Media Evolves, Should Government Reconsider Adverts?

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Tompkins

Newspaper?

Recess

An

A New Grant Will Help Change Playtime

Mind

T’Burg Artist Fernando Lllosa’s Cosmic Breakthrough

Ordinary Man

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A Mundane Memoir Of A Life Well-Lived

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Newsline

VOL.X X XVIII / NO. 17 / December 20, 2017 Serving 47,125 readers week ly

Ithaca Is Changing...................... 8

Tompkins County

How changing climate will change your life..

Legislature To Appeal NYS ‘Pay To Stay’ Directive

Universal mind........................... 15

lose to one month after an Ithaca Times/FLCN repor t revea led t hat New York State was forcing Tompkins County’s homeless to pay to stay in the local shelter, members of the Tompkins County Legislature are speaking out.

On Monday nig ht, t he Tompkins County Health and Human Ser vices Committee introduced a resolution speaking out against the practice, which it intends to submit to policymakers at the state level.

Stage ..................................................... 17 Stage ..................................................... 18 Books..................................................... 19 Dining.................................................... 20 Film ....................................................... 21 TimesTable .................................... 22-24 Classifieds..................................... 25-28

Fernando Llosa breaks into another plane.

NE W S & OPINION

Newsline . ......................................... 3-13 Sports ................................................... 14

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“Repeal of this requirement would allow homeless Tompkins County residents to accumulate sufficient income to better prepare for obtaining and maintaining more permanent housing.”

–Tompkins County Draft Resolution 7514

Since June, Tompkins County’s Department of Social Services have recently begun enforcing a 1994 New York State regulation it had long been ignoring that mandates charging homeless shelter residents a small fee based on their gross income, whether it comes from Social Securit y income or through t heir employ ment. In a fair hearing held earlier this year, DSS attempted to challenge the directive but have had no luck.

T he sp e c i f ic d i re c t ive – 16-ADM-11 – provides Social Service districts with regulations that the Tompkins County Department of Social Services of Tompkins County is required to abide by, which can continued on page 4

ART S & E NTE RTAINME NT

Cover Design: Marshall Hopkins:

Tompkins County

A Strange Trip To Tompkins County

M

arko Hansen just couldn’t take the heat anymore.

October 27, 2016: another broiling fall day in the sprawling Sonoran city of Tucson, Arizona, Hansen had just dropped his 89-year-old father into hospice care, less than a month after his mother. He was exhausted, the heat having drained him of all energy and desire as he baked in the constant stop-start of red lights on the city’s broad boulevards and construction that never seemed to cease. He’d been accustomed to freedom, hav-

ing lived in a number of places in his life – Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; even upstate New York – but Tucson had become a place he couldn’t seem to get away from. He was intellectually deprived, politically out-of-place in a red state and spiritually, exhausted.

He drove to a local bar and ordered a double Hornitos Margarita – one of the worst drinks he’d ever had – and drove himself home, feeling bad. He made another Margarita – this one much better than the first – and sat under the air conditioning, deep in thought.

“It w a s ro c k-b ot tom, a l l across,” he said. “I was depressed with Tucson, depressed with both my parents in hospice… you can’t just live in a place because you like Wildcat sports.”

It was that day, he said, when he decided it was time for him

T a k e ▶ Always want to be a juror, but never had the chance? Cornell Law School is looking for people willing to play the role of a ‘witness’ for an Intensive (week-long) Trial Advocacy course that will be taught from January 14th to January 21st, 2018. Witnesses are needed on the following dates: • Tuesday, Jan. 16th, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. (pays $20) • Friday, Jan 19th, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. (pays $20) and 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. (pays $20) • Saturday, Jan 20th, 8 a.m. – 11 a.m. (pays $20) • Sunday, Jan 21st, 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. (pays $30 and breakfast and lunch are provided)

Marko Hansen and his wife, Yihua.

ON THE W E B

to go.

“My wife and I, knowing that my folk’s time was on the planet wa s enter i ng t hei r t w i l ig ht months, began reassessing our future,” Hansen said. “Tucson and the 350 days of hot sun and eleven-month summers were clearly not part of our plans.

There is a reason that Tucson consistently ranks in the top 3 in suicides per capita.”

Feeling sentimental, he went on the real estate site, Zillow, and began looking at real estate in Brockport – a place where he’d spent one of three summers selling books door-to-door in the early ‘80s. And that’s when he saw it: a dirt-cheap fixer-upper home in Alpine Junction, just south of Newfield. It had it all, he

Visit our website at www.ithaca.com for more news, arts, sports and photos. Call us at 607-277-7000 N i c k R e y n o l d s , M a n a g i n g E d i t o r , x 224

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continued on page 11

F r eel a n ce r s : Barbara Adams, Rick Blaisell, Steve Burke, Deirdre Cunningham, Christie Citranglo, Jane Dieckmann, Amber Donofrio, Karen Gadiel, Charley Githler, Warren Greenwood, Isabella Grullon, Vaughn Golden, Warren Greenwood, Ross Haarstad, Rich Heffron, Peggy Haine, Steve Lawrence, Amanda Livingston, Marjorie Olds, Cassandra Palmyra, Lori Sonken, Henry Stark, Jason Warshof, Elizabeth Williams and Bryan VanCampen.

N o t e

All sessions will be held at the Law School at Myron Taylor Hall and require that you familiarize yourself with a witness role (all information is provided to you ahead of time) and respond to questions by the student attorneys as a witness. Email sjt29@cornell.edu to find out how to get involved. ▶ Need some familyfriendly activities to do over holiday break? Check out what’s happening at the Museum of the Earth from Dec. 26 through Dec. 30. These include activities like “No Place Like Space” Storytime every day at 10:30 a.m., daily geology related activities from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. as

well as daily exhibits, including...

Dec 26th: “Playing the field with Geologic time” – Discover the immense timescale that is Geologic time by comparing it to a football field.

Dec 27th--“Mapping the solar system” -Try your hand at laying out the planets of the solar system to scale using our special exhibit gallery.

Dec 28th--“Astrobiology-Is there life out there?”- discuss the possibilities of finding life in space.

Dec 29th --“Rock Cycle of Life”What can rocks tell us about what has happened on other planets?

Th e

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All rights reserved. Events are listed free of charge in TimesTable. All copy must be received by Friday at noon. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $69 one year. Include check or money order and mail to the Ithaca Times, PO Box 27, Ithaca, NY 14851. ADVERTISING: Deadlines are Monday 5 p.m. for display, Tuesday at noon for classified. Advertisers should check their ad on publication. The Ithaca Times will not be liable for failure to publish an ad, for typographical error, or errors in publication except to the extent of the cost of the space in which the actual error appeared in the first insertion. The publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising for any reason and to alter advertising copy or graphics deemed unacceptable for publication. The Ithaca Times is published weekly Wednesday mornings. Offices are located at 109 N. Cayuga Street, Ithaca, NY 607-277-7000, FAX 607-277-1012, MAILING ADDRESS is PO Box 27, Ithaca, NY 14851. The Ithaca Times was preceded by the Ithaca New Times (1972-1978) and The Good Times Gazette (1973-1978), combined in 1978. F o u n d e r G o o d T i me s G a z e t t e : Tom Newton

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N e w s l i n e

INQUIRING

Homeless

contin u ed from page 3

PHOTOGRAPHER

By C a se y Mar tin

What is your go-to holiday JAM to get you into the spirit?

Local Media

Lawmakers Question Official Newspaper Designation, Again “Mariah Carey’s All I want For Christmas is You!” ­—Mara Engelmann and Kailey Calvarese

“Silent Night. It’s a beautiful classic!” ­— Charlotte

“ August Burns Red Presents: Sleddin’ Hill – The whole album. ” ­— Cold Odell

I

t’s become a mundane, routine occurrence for municipal leaders for decades. But, as the Tompkins County Legislature meets for the final time this week, some are questioning whether or not change is in order for a vote that, otherwise, passes without question every year: the designation of the county’s newspaper of record.

The vote, which designates where the county will place its state-required legal advertisements, has always gone to the only daily newspaper in Tompkins County that meets the minimum publishing requirements to host legal advertising: The Ithaca Journal. But, following years of layoffs and a shrinking presence at county meetings, legislators several weeks ago began to question whether or not the paper was serving its traditional function as the county’s official paper, and whether the county – given changes in New York ’s media landscape over the past decade – should even continue the practice of advertising with the paper at all.

“The absurdity of what we’re doing is our local newspaper has already, essentially, disap-

peared,” Legislator Will Burbank said at the legislature’s Government Operations Committee two weeks ago. “We’re a big part of their income at this point.”

Tompkins County

injection facilities, these facilities – a minor component of the plan’s more broad-ranging policy recommendations – has drawn a significant amount of public attention among locals and the national media alike.

On Monday, a number of local stakeholders, including Southern Tier AIDS Program Executive Director John Barry, attended the County Legislature’s Health And Human Services Committee to present their perspectives on the issue and to argue for the rationale behind these supervised injection facilities, which they say have significant life-saving potential.

“It seems to be in the mainstream now,” said Anna Kelles, a county legislator and chair of the

Conversations On Ithaca’s Safe Injection Facilities

“Run DMC – Christmas In Hollis.” ­—Randy Zahradnik

C “ Any of the Mariah Holiday stuff, or Bing Crosby’s White Christmas.” ­—Amanda Addes & Mark Decker

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ounty officials on Monday continued discussions on a proposal to open facilities for heroin users to safely shoot up included in Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick’s ambitious, harm reduction-based drug policy proposals, more commonly known as The Ithaca Plan.

Formally referred to as safe

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Eligible papers

The definition of a “newspaper” in the traditional sense is rather limiting.

To qualify as an official newspaper, a publication must be, at minimum, paid-for and published no less than once a week to qualify. If a community lacks one of these, legal precedent allows for a free, weekly publication like, say, The Ithaca Times or Tompkins Weekly, to qualify as an official newspaper. (Several of The Ithaca Times’ sister papers, which are paid and available on a subscription basis, qualify for legal advertising but now, are designated primarily in small communities without local dailies like Interlaken and Ovid. “ T he situat ion described here is taking place all over the country, mostly at the hands of corporations like Gannett and Advance,” Michelle Rea, Executive Director of the New York Press Association, said in

an interview. “The situation in Ithaca actually mirrors one that has taken place in Syracuse as the Advance-owned paper there has gone to a three day a week entity, so when there are public notices that need to be published multiple times, there’s a crisis because they don’t publish daily.”

There is legal precedent for free weeklies to obtain a requester permit, which reflects that half of a paper’s circulation – plus one subscriber – requests the paper be delivered to their home every week. This in itself is an arduous, often unwieldy process.

Do Legal Ads Matter?

As a measure of transparency for local governments required under New York Public Notice Law, municipalities are required to post more than 800 statutes, which include everything from the announcements of public hearings to the formation of companies, in the local newspaper within a timely fashion.

These notices, in their intended capacity, serve a number of continued on page 11

committee. “We figured it was time to educate ourselves.”

Monday’s talk, the second such talk on the topic in two months, was intended to serve as an informational session for legislators as they continue to contemplate the county’s role in the implementation of Myrick’s policies. In Barry’s capacity, he argued trying out new, controversial concepts for harm reduction could prove to reap significant dividends, as well as something even bigger: to lobby for STAP’s facilities on State Street – which already is staffed with individuals knowledgeable in harm-reduction techniques – to serve as the site for a pilot facility to test out continued on page 13

require that when a person has available income, DSS must incorporate this income into a standard Temporary Housing Assistance budgeting formula in accordance with a previous directive. According to the resolution, in Tompkins County this can mean a homeless person w it h earned or unearned income may have to contribute up to $70.54 per night for sheltering costs, the equivalent of paying $2,100 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. (Previous reporting by Ithaca Times show the average shelter stay is around three weeks.)

This is significant, the resolution notes, as it can prevent individuals from building up t he sav ings to secure more permanent housing on their own.

W hile t here was a quest ion of whet her or not t he rule would be enforced under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s cold weather directives, which mandate all homeless individuals are brought into the shelter when the temperature dips below freezing, that concer n appea rs to have been assuaged: accord i ng to a source at the Rescue Mission, on cold weather nights this year, no homeless individuals have been required to pay for a place to stay in the evening though, because of demand, many have been booked into hotels in order to comply with the directive.

According to the resolution text, once approved by the legislature, copies of this resolution be sent to New York State Assemblywoman Lifton, New York State Senators O’Mara, Seward, and Helming, Governor Cuomo, New York State Assembly Spea ker Heastie, Ne w York St ate A s s embly Minority Leader Kolb, New York State Senate Majorit y Leader Flanagan, New York State Senate Democratic Conference Leader Stewart-Cousins, and New York State Senate Independent Democratic Conference Leader Klein.

L e g i s l ator A n n a Ke l le s said the request will also be submitted to officials at the New York State Association of Counties at its upcoming conference in order to ask for the repeal of the directive.

–Nick Reynolds

N e w s l i n e

Ups&Downs

Tompkins County

Gaps Persist For The County’s Hungriest

T

raditiona lly a time for fe a st i ng , t he hol id ay s all too often ser ve as a reminder that many of us here in Tompkins County go hungry each and every day of the year.

From mobile food pantries hosted by organizations like the Food Bank of the Southern Tier to each of Tompkins County’s 15 food pantries, hundreds of families will be turning to means other than their own wallets to fill their cupboards this winter: part of a persistent problem with food security that has penetrated all of American society over the past several decades. “ It ’s c r a z y t o t h i n k , w e started back in the 1970s as an emergency response program,” said Randi Quackenbush, Advocacy & Education Manager for the Food Bank of the Southern Tier at a recent packing event at Greenstar. “Now, this is how I make my living.”

Last Friday, The Space @ Greenstar was alive with activit y a s a mu lt it ud e of lo c a l leaders – from Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick and members of the Tompkins County Legislature to civil servants from the Health Department to the City Attorney’s Office – wove t hei r way t hroug h a l i ne of crates, filling packages full of food. These packages were to

go to local schools throughout Tompkins County as part of the Food Bank’s BackPack Program, which provides students receiving free or reduced lunch every week with additional food to ensure they don’t go hungry over the weekends.

A significant part of the Food Bank’s slate of programming, last week’s event also presented an opportunity to bring together local stakeholders around one single issue; to stoke a conversation as to why the group’s efforts that day were even necessary in the first place.

“It’s not a radical issue for food pantries to say ‘we are not a solution, we are a band-aid,’” said Quackenbush. “We need to be asking the bigger questions and focusing more on our advocacy efforts and really trying to hold our elected officials more accountable. It’s not just about a photo-op.”

Stok i ng t he s e c onver s ations among local leaders is an important first step because the problem of food security, Quackenbush said, has many elements.

Education

through learning experiences and innovating techniques in and out of the classroom for doing that which at times seems impossible: getting kids to pay attention.

Officials from the recipient schools sounded excited to provide a new way for kids to learn, particularly with the “generous” money from IPEI in hand.

“The gist of the program is to give kids materials and space to create and move and collaborate and play during recess in some more innovative ways,” Northeast Elementary School principal Lily Talcott said. “We’re allowing kids to get creative and inspired.”

The model, based on newer educationa l research, uses a “loose parts” approach, favoring simple toys, like a wheel or a block, that can be found in everyday settings. As research conducted by Penn State says, “The child is the direction.” The program will be instituted over the coming months, a gradual change as students return from

ICSD Is Trying To Reimagine Recess

A

new recess model is being introduced at Northeast Elementary School and Fall Creek Elementary school in the near future.

The program’s funding will be going to “infrastructure and development” in the form of training for teachers and materials for the kids to use during recess, a harkening back to the days before wires and screens dominated our youth’s activities.

It will be paid for with one of a pair of $10,000 grants awarded last week by the Ithaca Public Education Initiative, the other going for a Spanish language program at South Hill Elementary School.

The grants are part of IPEI’s Connecting Classrooms program, used to connect schools

The Probl em

Food insecurity in Tompkins County is a prevailing problem.

According to CCE’s Healthy Food For All Program, as of

▶ IHS Basketball Player Jordanny Cuevas Marte for scoring his 1,000th career point in an absolute shellacking of Corning High on the hardwood earlier this week Congrats young man! Looking forward to how the rest of the squad does this season as well. ▶ Consumer Culture giftgiving is nice and all, but with stagnating wages for Millenials and the working class as a whole, here’s to hoping you forgo the exchange of pricy stuff you don’t need for relaxing activities, a well-cooked meal, and maybe some songs around the Yule log. If your apartment doesn’t allow flames, just use your phone instead.

Ithaca mayor Svante Myrick, Tompkins County Legislator Anna Kelles and Food Bank President & CEO Natasha R. Thompson form an assembly line to pack BackPacks for kids at The Space at Greenstar on Dec. 13. (Photo: Maria Strinni)

2011, approximately 10 percent of households identified access to adequate food as a critical problem and, in the schools, 30 percent of all children received free or reduced price lunch.

The issue of food security – and access to healthy foods – has several components: lack of local supply, stagnant wages at the lower end of the economy and a lack of transportation, which is of particular concern in rural areas.

First is the issue of affordability, in part brought on in the fallout from the Great Recession: According to a 2013 analysis by the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, it was revealed that, over a four-year span , food stamp recipients

increased by more than 3,000 individuals countywide between 2007 and 2011. Significant on its own, this number only reflects what could have been a pushing over the edge for an already vulnerable population: according to a 2004 survey of more than 200 clients at Tompkins County’s food pantries, 20 percent of all individuals surveyed said they made too much money to qualify for food stamps.

The second issue is that of access, both in where healthy, affordable food is available and how easily individuals can get to those places.

Accord i ng to t he Un ited States Department of Agricul-

If you care to respond to something in this column, or publish your own grievances or plaudits, write upsanddowns@ithacatimes.com, with a subject head “U&D.”

Heard&Seen ▶ A coworking space called The Printing Press located at 416 E. State St. had its soft opening on Tuesday afternoon. Looks nice. Someone check it out and report back to us. (We were stuck in production and regrettably, could not attend.)

continued on page 12

▶ Top Stories On Ithaca. com this week are...

1) Trumansburg teacher under investigation 2) Group delivers petition to reject Hamilton Square 3) Want to build an affordable house? Good luck 4) Concerns surround Smith Woods Fence 5) Commute by bus from Ithaca to Watkins Glen? Now you can

holiday breaks. at its disposal are sports-based, Training for teachers, Fall balls and bats and the like which Creek Elementar y Principa l encourage physical activity, simCaitlin Bram said, incorporates a ilar to most schools throughout more open-minded approach to the country. One advantage the recess in general. While keeping grant can provide is opening up children safe is the most impor- the playground a bit more to stutant aspect in all of this, allow- dents who might not like or want ing students to define to participate in those their own educational activities.

“Instead bou nda r ies du r i ng “The nature of the of finding stuff draws a more recreation could be beneficial, and if the ways to say direct connection to students think they’re no and put ideas of engineering, just playing the whole s c ienc e , a r t ,” s a id time, Bram said, then boundaries Bram. “It’s creativity all the better. in an outdoor, playaround “The training of play, it’s a based, open-ended t he adu lts involves setting [...] For kids way to let who aren’t interested supporting them in them be saying ‘yes’ to ideas in the normal recess kids generate,” Bram creative.” activities, it’s somesaid. “Created, childthing new.” directed play is the T he schools a re goal.” still fine-tuning the specifics of The actual body of recess does how to assess the impact of this not seem like it will be that dif- new mentality around recess, but ferent beyond the kids’ options will attempt to gauge some of the for play and the training of the changes in the students through staff. Much of the recess mate- the use of things like observarial the schools currently have

question OF THE WEEK

2017: Mostly good? Or mostly bad?

Please respond at the Ithaca Times Web site www.ithacatimes.com.

L ast Week ’s Q uestion : A re you okay that E zra’s Tunnel is being closed?

57.1 percent of respondents answered “Yes” and 42.9 percent answered “No.”

continued on page 13

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Community Connections

Ithaca Notes

Along With The Land T

(Good) St. Nick

By M a rjor i e O l d s

his has been an over the top year for our History Center – celebrating the 200th anniversary of Tompkins County (1817) and 100th year celebration of the establishment of women’s right to vote in New York State (1917). Rod Howe, the Center’s director, has fostered such engaging and lively programming that more new visitors than ever have savored the treasures shared inside.

As we enter the Center (currently located for one more year in the Gateway Building), the magic of our own local history surrounds us— in the display shelves attractively displayed in the Center’s Collection—handmade crocks from the 1800s, early 20th century typewriters, a model steamship from the 1850s, and historic maps exhibited along the walls. Carefully stored in boxes one is permitted to sort through, one can find photographs and old postcards of loved buildings (many now razed).

Books filled with photos and stories about local homes and buildings are sold at modest prices.

A very light, bright and attractive reading room beckons, where interested civilian detectives can review archives of their home, their ancestors, and a huge range of topics.

In preparation for our county’s 200th birthday celebration one local family was selected for the History Center’s “Our Community” exhibit, mounted on the wall as one enters the Center: Peter and Phyllis Webb and their brave descendants. Peter, born into slavery was sold to John Speed in Virginia for $90 – one dollar a pound of flesh. As a child Peter was transported, along with other slaves, to Level Green

By St e ph e n P. Bu r k e

Road in Caroline, New York, where the Speed Homestead was built. John Speed and relatives trafficked in slaves in Virginia and continued this trade after moving to Tompkins County.

While working for his slave owners, Webb – torn from his family as a child and uprooted to our county – had the drive and initiative to perform additional labor at the old (long demolished) Ithaca Hotel in order to purchase his freedom. In 1818, Peter Webb tendered $350.00 plus interest ($35.00), extracted from John Speed. Marrying another slave, Phyllis, the Webbs lived long lives, surrounded by their children and extended family on their own farm, close to the Speed “Big House”.

Over the years Peter Webb became a mover and shaker in the creation of St. James A.M.E. Zion Church on Wheat Street (now Cleveland Avenue), close to what became the beloved Southside Community Center in downtown Ithaca. Although a Baptist by affiliation, perhaps Peter Webb was moved by the yearning of African Americans, to build their own house of worship, where they would feel welcome and empowered. This historic church hosted freedom fighters, abolitionists and women’s rights advocates from its creation in 1836. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are noted as speakers in the church’s History of the St. James A.M.E. Zion Church – Ithaca, N.Y. While little is known of Peter Webb’s daily contin u ed on page 7

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n behalf of the Ithaca Times, or at least on behalf of myself as a writer here, I wish to express some parochial pride this Yuletide by noting that the popular imagery of this holiday as we know it was formed in large part by three historic New York writers and periodicals: Clark Clement Moore, in the Troy Sentinel; Thomas Nast, in Harper’s Weekly; and Francis P. Church, in the New York Sun. Moore wrote “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” a.k.a. “The Night Before Christmas,” in 1823. At the time, Christmas was not a particularly hallowed day in America. Early settlers barely noted it. It was celebrated mainly by newer immigrants, for whom it was a day of boisterous revelry, much like New Year’s Eve today.

Moore was a major landowner in Manhattan and had problems with these new citizens all around and about, living where they would (many as squatters, in makeshift housing), gathering where they could, encroaching on his property.

(When the city first proposed extending its street grid north of Houston Street, where Moore’s estate lay (it was called “Chelsea,” still the name of the area today), he fought it desperately.

Unsuccessfully, of course. They ran

Ninth Avenue right through it.)

Moore w rote a poem depic t i ng Christmas as a quiet family holiday. It was a new idea.

Chances are he did it to get the drunks off his lawn: or, let us say, to help foster a calmer climate for the holiday. He didn’t do it for money or renown, having submitted the poem to an upstate newspaper anonymously.

The artist Thomas Nast put a face on Moore’s new American Santa Claus with his drawings for Harper’s Weekly, a New York magazine.

Nast was born in Germany and raised in New York City. His work for Harper’s made him famous. He created the symbol of an elephant for the Republican party, and popularized the image of Uncle Sam. In 1863 he submitted a rendering of Santa Claus for a holiday feature in Harper’s. He took some images of St. Nicholas from his European heritage, but his main inspiration was Moore’s poem: the fur suit, bundle of toys, red cheeks and nose, “round little belly,” beard “white as snow.”

Before Nast, a sketch in Harper’s showed Santa Claus beardless, with his sleigh pulled by a turkey. Nast’s creation

YourLetters

and slave/ From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave/ And the starspangled banner in triumph doth wave/ O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Would Jewish people be expected to stand reverently for an anthem written by Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels or the rest in that Nazi crew?

Should anyone be expected to endure the humiliation of honoring an anthem, authored by someone who felt they were less than human? Not in any just environment. Which also begs the question, exactly where are we?

Ridicule, anger, suspicion, and confrontation are what people face, should they choose not to demonstrate visible deference to this disingenuous (at best) piece of sheet music. To expect black people to stand and honor this anthem is troubling on so many levels that it boggles the mind. It’s a shameful thing to stand for an anthem, which represents, in my opinion, a tacit acceptance of a clear insult or the pure ignorance - willful or otherwise - of its author, its history and tone.

I don’t want to get into the psychological ramifications of showing respect to a personal insult, hurtful but at least a contained experience. Truthfully, I look at white people who stand for the

Standing Up To The National Anthem

T

his Nation’s anthem was composed by Francis Scott Key, a racist, white supremacist, anti-abolitionist lawyer. He felt that black people, free or slave, were genetically inferior to white people. That perception was the foundation of his legal pursuits.

When he was the District Attorney for the City of Washington, he defended slavery and prosecuted those in the abolitionist movement. He argued in court that the institution of slavery should be continued, continued ad infinitum, I suppose, as there is no known cure for “genetic inferiority” that I am aware of. Actually, I never heard anyone but my white brothers use that particular terminology.

But back to Francis, this anthem that he wrote, and this very demeaning obsession this nation has, that I, a black man, should stand respectfully and honor his musical creation. I suggest that anyone who takes umbrage at my statement, read the lyrics of the song, the whole song. Then dare ask a black person to stand for this anthem.

“No refuge could save the hireling

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appeared in new illustrations annually in the magazine for over twenty years, solidifying an image.

In 1897, the New York Sun ran an editorial called “Is There A Santa Claus?,” an actual question from an actual letter sent to the paper by Virginia O’Hanlon, an eight-year-old girl from Manhattan.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” began the second paragraph of the reply, written by Francis P. Church.

Church was born in Rochester and came to Manhattan to attend Columbia University. He abandoned plans for a law career for journalism.

Church worked for the Sun, a tabloid paper that sold for a penny when others were six cents. The paper aimed for mass readership with its low price, and with human interest stories written in a plain, personal style.

The paper hit a height with Church’s editorial, both familiar and philosophical, sentimental and profound, encompassing and direct. It is cited as the most quoted and reprinted newspaper piece in history.

These New York figures and institutions shaped (even helped create) a holiday season. It’s an example of how

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national anthem at a sporting event and wonder what’s on their minds. Are they following the crowd’s inertia, thinking only to finally get on with the game?

Are they thinking military thoughts, nationalistic thoughts? I don’t know.

But to see black people standing and honoring this anthem sadly brings back familiar feelings, feelings I had while reading “The Invisible Man,” a book written by Ralph Ellison. He wrote about the dynamics between the slave and the enslaver, in a fairly self-explanatory phenomenon called the “Plantation Mentality.” Egregious or otherwise, the slave did what was pleasing to the master. If you need elaboration, read the book. It makes me sad and disappointed to see that this repugnant form of oppression is alive, slightly camouflaged and insidiously thriving.

–James Ricks Dryden, NY

Re: Stable Soils Wanted

I

n Matt Butler’s excellent article on the threat to the future of the Ithaca Community Gardens stemming Cayuga Medical Center’s $10 million purchase of Carpenter Park, I found the remarks of Mayor Myrick and 2nd Ward rep Seph Murtagh very enlightening. In spite

media not only report on the world, but sometimes reframe it.

Meanwhile, today, everyone knows that discussions of Christmas can be fraught, even rife, with contention.

Certainly in liberal Ithaca many of us despair of a holiday burdened with commercialism, and alienation of nonChristians.

Is there room for rapprochement?

Maybe.

Just a few years ago, the majority of Americans who reported celebrating Christmas said they did it as a religious holiday. Today, the majority say they celebrate it secularly.

Is it too much to do it humorously?

I wish we could. You know, whatever one’s stance on religion or commerce, the record seems to show that Santa Claus never mentions religious affiliation in his vocation, nor accepts payment beyond milk and cookies.

Best wishes to you for a nice holiday season, and a great new year.

Stephen P. Burke is a columnist for The Ithaca Times. His column, Ithaca Notes, appears biweekly.

of serious logistical, legislative and drainage problems with a suggested Cass Park relocation, Murtagh states flatly that if the community gardens are “unwilling to move, that’s going to be a big complicating factor in this whole thing.” The Mayor’s remarks, while not as grudging as Murtagh’s, show a similar lack of support for this valuable community asset.

Why can’t a city that prides itself on its national reputation as a progressive municipality see the importance of a community garden that has helped people for over 40 years? These gardens feed people with restricted incomes and allow immigrants and refugees to grow food from their homelands. They provide exercise and gardening know how to developmentally challenged and youth groups.

They annually donate nearly half a ton of organic produce to a local food bank. In all ways, the Ithaca Community Gardens create one of the city’s most diverse communities.

Unless the City acknowledges the importance of its community gardens by a more active show of support, its claims of progressivism ring hollow, as unceasing development careens ahead and what is now the Ithaca Community Gardens is turned into a parking lot.

–Ashley Miller Ithaca, NY

Next week’s issue is our Reader’s Writes issue: We will resume regular publication on the first Wednesday of the New Year. Happy Holidays!

Communityconnections contin u ed from page 6

News Quick Hits

life, we do know that the historic church he helped create was central to this area’s Underground Railroad, making the dangerous and arduous journey from slavery to freedom possible for some of the enslaved. Donna Eschenbrenner of the History Center ref lects that people like Peter Webb played a crucial role in the eventual end of slavery in America.

Now almost 200 years after the creation of the Speed home and Peter Webb’s purchase of his freedom (1818) the slave owning Speed family no longer live in the Speed Homestead. Built with slave labor, descendants of former slave Peter Webb live in the slave owners’ home: Frederick Webb, one of Peter and Phyllis’ children bought the Speed home in 1870. The Webbs’ great-great-great grandson Charles Bailor and his beautiful and talented wife Chauquita live in the lovingly restored homestead, set in the green countryside, and now known as the Bailor Homestead. Some of the original details of the slave owners’ home remain unchanged, and the Bailors’ private collection of photographs are a local treasure they have generously shared.

Donna Eschenbrenner wanted to use one long established family to honor the county’s Bicentennial, and she thought the Webbs would be the right choice to do this. “Peter and Phyllis Webb and their descendants exemplify the strength, character, and dedication to family and community that highlights the best of Tompkins County.” As the History Center staff has researched the Webb’s lives, they have generously shared the triumph of Peter Webb who envisioned and worked to create equality for slaves. He and Phyllis toiled on their Caroline land and supported a large extended family. Later descendants carried on the family tradition as trail blazers and as community advocates. While Peter Webb worked to achieve the founding of an African American church in Ithaca, Mabel Webb Van Dyke, one of Phyllis and Peter Webb’s granddaughters, was revered for her service to families in Caroline; and for her musical talents fostered by the Ithaca Conservatory of Music (the forerunner of Ithaca College), and the artistic collection of 150 quilts she made and passed along to local family and friends. Clearly the Webbs have made enduring contributions to the best of this county’s history. Donna Eschenbrenner’s longtime efforts to share the Webbs’ inspirational story personifies her devotion to share local history with all of us. Moving from Long Island, New York 27 years ago, Donna and husband Michael chose Ithaca as a good place to raise their kids.

Donna became the Center’s Archivist in 2001, where she has managed a noteworthy collection to share with all of us: “My greatest focus at The History Center is to make the collections as accessible as possible. That’s why I am grateful for our interesting exhibits and popular public programs, as well as our great website, because they help to foster interest in local history and the material culture that we preserve. At the end of the day though, while exhibits and programs are wonderful, it’s the collection that is the most enduring part of what we provide you and all the people of Tompkins County. Archival collections, photographs, three-dimensional objects, maps – these are the “stuff” of our history and it’s our job to make sure they are here for everyone who will come after us.”

Tompkins County recommends next administrator After several months of searching, Tompkins County has extended a job offer to fill a County Administrator post vacated by Joe Mareane last month.

According to a news release Monday afternoon, Batavia, New York City Manager Jason Molino has accepted Tompkins County’s offer of employment to become the County’s next County Administrator.

According to the release, Molino, a veteran of the United States Coast Guard, has served as the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Fiscal Officer of the City of Batavia (Genesee County) since 2006, leading a city workforce of 130 individuals and administering an annual operating budget of $25 million.

Protestors Occupy Tom Reed’s Office Several protestors railing against a tax bill championed by GOP members of the U.S. Congress occupied Congressman Tom Reed’s office last Tuesday in protest of his support of the bill.

The protestors arrived at the Congressman’s office early in the afternoon with their own take on the classic stage play, A Christmas Carol, where “Scrooge” introduced the tax bill and the Ghost of Christmas Past was depicted as the “ghost of trickle-down economics.” According to a news release sent by activists, Christmas present was the massive gap between the rich and the poor and Christmas future, the grim reaper “carrying the death of health care, the environment, education and more.”.

Tompkins wins big in REDC Awards The annual Regional Economic Development Council Awards were announced last week, with 11 submissions from Tompkins County receiving holiday tidings in the form of tens of thousands of dollars. The largest allotment will be going to Cornell University, which was awarded a $1.5 million Empire State Development grant for a new start-up incubator.

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Warming Up To

ClimateChange F

rom his lofty office overlooking the valley around Cayuga Lake, Mark Wysocki, a Cornell University Climatologist, works with data sets well over the heads of the general public.

An expert in air pollution, forecasting and weather analysis, Wysocki, tucked into an overflowing office furnished with plants, stacks of files and several monitors occupied by various charts and graphs, works to educate both private industry and the public on the way the world works.

And lately, that world has been changing.

Wildfires rage up and down the west coast. Catastrophic storms batter cities on the Gulf of Mexico. Glaciers disappear.

Drought and violent rains alternate with little warning. And it’s all because of human activity.

Looking at modern data and trends, climatologists like Wysocki have determined that while, in earth’s history, we have had ice ages and rising temperatures before, we are currently in a period of warming that – while some natural inputs, like have contributed – can be directly attributed to human activity.

“We take a look at this up and down pattern and realize, suddenly, we’re not coming down,” Wysocki said. “Supposedly, we should be going into an ice age

if you take a look at the cycle we’ve been experiencing in the past. But we’re stuck at a plateau, and that plateau seems to be going up a bit. So the question is now, what is different with the planet than what was there 100,000 years ago? And the answer is people.”

Though not an exact, linear science, climatologists have noticed a clear change on the planet. Every decade, Wysocki said, the scientific community updates their statistical models to define what the climate can be defined as within a 30-year period.

(For reference, our current climate standard is based on figures from 1981-2010; in two years, we will have moved onto a model based on figures from 1991-2020.)

To define climate change, climatologists like Wysocki examine the previous 30-year period to our current standard in order to examine what has changed.

In the most recent comparisons, he said, scientists have observed that previous standards for what once qualified as “extreme events,” (events that generally occur less than 5 percent of the time) have become much more normalized day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year than under previous climate standards. This shifting of statistical standards over an extended period can be referred to as an early, numbers-based observation of a change in our climate.

And this trendline we’ve found ourthe New York Times, =Arizona, Colorado, selves on, many experts have warned, is Utah and New Mexico saw more than 350 likely to be an irreversible one, as a United million pinyon pines over 4,600 square Nations panel of scientists warned in 2014. miles die in just one year. And, in a tragiWhile efforts are being taken to do our cally ironic twist, The Los Angeles Times, part in slowing the influx of carbon in the in June 2016, noted that more than 26 milair, residents in the Finger Lakes should lion trees had died in the Sierra Nevadas begin preparing for the realities of a much since that previous October, leaving the different climate than the one we’ve grown region susceptible to forest fires. used to. Here are just a few ways experts “And why are they dead?” Wysocki say this momentous, global asks. “Because they’ve had “What is shift will impact your way mild winters.” different with of life right here in the FinBut is it only the climate the planet ger Lakes. that’s to blame? Not comthan what was pletely, but partly: it’s the there 100,000 Change 1: Your bugs. years ago? And Favorite Trees Given a longer time to the answer is Will Die breed and feed, invasive people.” species such as the Asian Over the past decade, wildLonghorned Beetle, the fires in Colorado, WashEmerald Ash Borer and Hemlock Wooly ington State and most recently, California, Adelgid have gained a pronounced preshave grabbed the attention of the public ence from coast-to-coast including right writ large. here in New York State, impacting even What hasn’t grabbed many eyes, howmore trees. ever, is the alarming reality that climate, “Warmer temperatures will definitely for a number of reasons, has led to masallow the population to grow and spread,” sive die-offs of trees in the west. In 2009, a said Mark Whitmore, a Cornell entomolojoint study by researchers at Oregon State gist who studies the Adelgid. “If it gets and Washington State University showed up in the Adirondacks and starts killing data detailing a doubling of tree mortalHemlocks, as far as fires go that will be a ity in the Pacific Northwest over the course problem.” of just 17 years. According to an article in The debris from the trees will litter the

Five Ways A Changing Climate Will Change Life In The Finger Lakes.

By Nick Reynolds 8

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ground and, given the right conditions, be more susceptible to dry out and burn. In the Southern Catskills, where there have been significant die-offs have occurred in recent years, there already seems to be some conditions that make scientists nervous. That’s not to say New York State will become the next nexus of wildfires in the United States: “That’s one of the beauties of New York State, is we still have precipitation,” Whitmore said. “But things can always change. We don’t really know what’s going to happen.

That’s not to say all the trees will fall victim to the bugs: others might end up falling victim to the climate.

“You like spruce trees?” Wysocki asked.

“Say goodbye.”

Depending on which model you look at, changes in the atmosphere projected by groups like Cornell’s Northeast Regional Climate Center, it is predicted all the region’s spruce trees – as well as several other species – will die out by the end of the century, likely to be replaced instead by warmer-climate trees like oak and hickory. The reason, Wysocki said, will mostly come down to subtle changes in both precipitation and temperature, as spruce trees typically perform best in cooler climates with well-drained soils.

“This is part of the problem: When you look at the number of species, per plant, affected by changes in temperature and moisture… the future forecast across the Northeastern United States is a warming trend,” Wysocki said. “And that warming trend impacts precipitation. And that forecast equals less snow, which is something we’ve been seeing since the 1970s. Under our previous 30-year climate standard, average annual snowfall was above 70 inches per year. In our current 30-year standard, it’s 68.7 inches. We’ve gone down. It doesn’t look like much, but when you take that 10 year change, and apply it to the next century… you’re looking at no more snow cover except in parts of Maine and the Adirondacks.”

Beyond devastation to the local ski industry (for which no economic data seems to exist for but anecdotally, have all been undergoing changes), this shift in weather patterns brings us to another significant change...

Change 2: Say Goodbye To Maple Syrup

Beyond the disappearance of maple trees, which are also prone to death by warm weather, their sugary, delicious byproduct, maple syrup, will also disappear.

Maple sap, to reach the right level of sugar content, requires an extended period of cold days in order to be palatable for maple syrup production. In colder years, lightcolored syrups, deemed “fancy grade,” are often the norm but, with the winters warming up, syrup batches have become quite unpredictable. The trend has become so concerning that a number of scientists at Montana State University, earlier this year, began to study the impact of weather

lack of snow cover, which insulates soils in the winter and allows for continued microbial activity, will be reduced, meaning generally less-fertile ground in which to plant. Industries with sensitive timelines – like the Apple industry – have been dealing with more frequent years of spring frost damage as late winter temperature variability often “fools” the plants into blooming much too early.

“This is the first generation of farmers

said, will be through much more sophisticated monitoring of their environment, utilizing technology from field sensors to remote sensing using data from satellites or drones. More progressive farmers, he said, will be aided further through better record keeping and through the use of software – through resources like Cornell’s Climate Smart Farming website – to analyze trends on the various fields and crops on the farm to make decisions regarding varieties and crops they might grow in the future as well as optimum approaches to growing those crops, such as installing cover crops to stabilize their soils or revolutionize how they irrigate their fields to mitigate the impact of water deficits.

“Over the coming decades we will undoubtedly see shifts in the agricultural landscape, but it is hard to predict exactly what that landscape will look like,” wrote Wolfe. “Farmers will be adapting, and will also have available to them new decision tools, new crop varieties to choose from. A warmer climate will open the door to explore longer growing season varieties, and crops that in the past did not do well in the region.”

There could be some benefits to the Finger Lakes premium wine industry, Wolfe wrote, partly due to the opportunities the warmer temperatures present for the region’s grapegrowers: The grapes ideal to make Vitis vinifera (European) wine varieties can be damaged by extremely low mid-winter temperatures (e.g, below -12 F) but, with warmer weather, this is expected to occur less frequently. Add in warmer, longer summers, and some of the grapes ideal for reds like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel, would see some benefit as well.

Mark Wysocki, in his office on Cornell University’s campus. (Photo: Nick Reynolds)

variability on maple syrup production in order to not only document recent changes to maple syrup production, but to learn how sugar bushes expect to handle various social, economic and environmental changes affecting their operations.

But, considering states like Vermont, New York and Maine rank as the nation’s top producers of maple syrup, the future looks bleak for the regional delicacy.

“You better start getting used to the artificial stuff,” Wysocki said.

This is a significant development for New York State’s economy in particular, however climate change may present some unique opportunities for New York agriculture...

Change 3: Farming Will change drastically

According to Michael Hoffman, Executive Director of the Cornell Institute for Climate Solutions, New York farmers are now experiencing 10 more frost-free days than they did in recent years, which make for some potential opportunities for New York State to take on a position as one of the nation’s agricultural leaders.

Increased risk of heavy rains can thwart earlier planting or later harvest by hindering farmers’ ability to get in the fields. The

who cannot rely on the historical weather records to them when to plant, what to plant, or how to grow it,” wrote David Walter Wolfe, a Professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell in an email. “Given the increased unpredictability of the weather, many farmers are ‘hedging their bets’ by diversifying the crops and varieties they grow, and also using multiple planting dates. In this way, if one crop or one planting date is hit by some unexpected weather extreme, they Change 4: The will have other crops or “We have 22 Dairy Industry planting dates that are able percent of Will See Some to tolerate or avoid those the nation’s Problems extremes.” population However, New York Another consequence of right here in the State does have one advanNortheast, and higher temperatures? Some tage: sustained precipitasomeone is going added complications to one tion, something that can’t of New York’s largest industo have to feed be said for more landlocked tries: The dairy industry. them.” agricultural states in the Here’s how: Midwest.

With higher ambient “Some think this may be an opportutemperatures, cows need to stay cool somenity,” Hoffman said. “We have 22 percent how, and they begin to pant and sweat. If of the nation’s population right here in the the weather becomes too hot or too humid Northeast, and someone is going to have to for the cows to handle, rectal temperatures feed them. Is this in fact an opportunity to – another critical metric for milk producintensify and diversify what we grow here tion – rise above critical thresholds related to supply the cities in the Northeast?” to decreased dry matter intake, leading A key to farming in the future, Wolfe to reduced efficiency of milk yield. And it Th e

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doesn’t take sustained high temperatures to do this: “Just one or two days of higher temperatures than normal can actually affect milk production over a long duration for the animal,” said Michael Hoffman, Executive Director of the Cornell Institute for Climate Smart Solutions. “It’s not just one bad day or multiple bad days – the heat can change a cow’s digestive and metabolic processes like it does to us. They’re just simply too hot.”

And though there are several solutions to this – be it breeding cows based on heat tolerance or improving the air condition-

ing in a farmer’s barn – the costs of such solutions could be lofty, both for farmer’s pocketbooks and the environment.

This is of particular interest for New York. According to figures from Cornell Cooperative Extension, more than 625,000 cows – nearly 15 percent of all cows in the United States – roam its fields. (Tompkins County accounts for about 9,300 cows, according the New York State Department Of Agriculture.) This amounts to 3.2 million total sales of assorted milk products in 2016, which translates to billions of dollars in revenues and a 45 percent share of all agricultural revenues statewide.

While there has been an overabundance of milk entering the market, which has presented problems of its own, climate change has the potential to impact entire herds of dairy cows in more ways than just their metabolic functions. In the wake of the 2016 drought experienced across the Northeast, huge yield losses among the crop of rainfed field corn, hay and alfalfa – significant sources for animal feedstock for the dairy industry – led some farmers to sell off some of their herds, Wolfe wrote, because they could not afford a year of buying food for the animals.

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For more information, call or visit us online: Cayuga Wellness Center 310 Taughannock Blvd Suite 3A Ithaca, New York 14850 (607) 252-3555 cayugamed.org

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Change 5: Expect More Strains On Water supply

Some of us might remember the great drought of 2016 for its brown water, spurred by the sudden rush of water from Bolton Point into the city’s parched and gunked-up water mains. But the summer – one of the first indicators of another new normal for Tompkins County residents – exposed what might be a further reality of life in Tompkins County.

Cornell’s water system relies on the flows of Fall Creek. The City of Ithaca draws its water from Six Mile Creek. When there’s no snow, there is no gradual melting into the creeks to promote a sustained flow of water into the creeks. Without rains in a reasonable frequency, creeks can’t recharge, putting the city’s water supply into question and leaving both the university and the city to draw from the lake. Though not the end of the world, responsible stewardship of the watershed will likely continue to be a policy issue for local leaders in the coming decades should the city water supply again come into question. *** Though it helps to think of climate change in the paradigm of the change that is coming to our own backyard, the world won’t shut itself out of our bubble in Tompkins County: toxins from one nation can still infect our air, despite our own stewardship. If New York City floods, its refugees will need to live elsewhere. In looking toward the future, Wysocki hinted in the case of recent natural disasters in the Gulf Coast, it pays not to simply think of how things will change, but to be mindful of our impacts on our actions at home on others and equally as important, our own resilience: “New Orleans, when it flooded after Katrina, I made a bold statement at a talk that I gave to the general public where I was asked, ‘what would I do?’” Wysocki said. “I said, ‘close the town down.’ And I heard a groan from the audience.”

“I don’t live in New Orleans,” he added.

“I don’t have an attachment to New Orleans. So I can say that. But I guarantee you if I was born and raised there, I wouldn’t have said that statement. But then, by that logic, I should kick everyone out of Oklahoma; tornado capital of the world.

I should kick everyone out of California; earthquake capital of the world. If we live with nature, we need to ask whether we’ll attempt to impose our will on nature, or if we intend to live with it.”

Strange trip contin u ed from page 3

had it all, he said, from quick access to everything he’d been looking for: a vibrant retail scene in Ithaca to open a boutique with his wife, a tech-forward gym to peddle his invention, the CycleClimber (think an elliptical with pedals for your hands) and a place known for a population sharing in his brand of liberal politics, far-removed from Pima County: one of the blue spots in the otherwise Trump-favoring sea of red across Arizona.

Without even looking at the house, Hansen – who’d married his wife of nine years just seven days after meeting her for the first time – placed an offer. After his parents were laid to rest last April, the couple bought a pair of plane tickets and f lew out to New York, where they were to see the place where they would start their new life.

What they found when they got there was hardly the foundation they expected for their otherwise idealistic dream: the place, they found, was an absolute money pit, and needed thousands of dollars of work in order to become livable.

“Despite the threads of destiny that were seemingly being woven together, our friends and family in Tucson thought we lost our mind, moving to a place where we know nary a soul,” Hansen said. “To ward off the invidious negativity from well-meaning friends and family, I simply recited my favorite Wayne Dyer quote from some audio tapes I heard in 1979, from my bookselling days.”

“People who operate from outer signals will never understand those people who operate from inner signals.”

legal s

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serve a number of important functions in communicating policy with the public in an accessible way: These notices often mandate the release of vital information on a municipality’s compliance with state laws, and can help the public keep their governments accountable on environmental issues and New York State Open Meetings Law as well as leave a permanent record of government proceedings.

However, the extent of Public Notice Law has inspired some fatigue among public officers from a practical standpoint: not only can the reporting of even the smallest legal actions be tedious, but extensive reporting of lengthy laws in the legal sections of the newspaper – especially when the laws are available in their entirety online – can only lead to unnecessarily high expenditures from taxpayer funds going to newspapers. In recent years, counties have even gotten the go-ahead to print abridged versions of lengthy laws in newsprint, as long as the intent of the law is clearly communicated. (This in itself is an issue, as whether the law is clearly communicated or not is a purely subjective matter, with few mechanisms in place to hold governments accountable.)

Beyond concerns for government transparency, there’s the revenue side of things to consider: Because the state standardized rate for legal advertising has not increased since 1990, larger newspapers may not rely on the income from legal advertisements to balance its budget. However, at smaller papers, the income from legal notices can make up a noticeable chunk of a publication’s

Needing cash and looking to leave nothing behind, they began looking for buyers for their properties in Tucson and loaded up their vehicles for the 2,400 mile journey.

They left on a Friday night (Travelling in separate vehicles, Hansen had to break his 1992 New Year’s resolution to own a cell phone to keep the two from getting lost on the road).

Hansen drove their old Cadillac Escalade, a 25 pound, three-legged cat in the back seat and five others in the back while his wife took their 2006 Prius, an 11-year-old dog in the front seat and three feral cats in the back.

In tow: a the 25-foot travel trailer the couple bought for $1,700, which they intended to live in once they reached Alpine.

“Everything seemed to fall into place from there,” he said. “We spoke to a guy named Mike (who owns Pete’s Cayuga Bar on Cayuga Street) and we wrote him a check for $875 deposit and he gave us a three-year lease on this 8-foot by 60-foot space on Cayuga Street to look over. It looked great!”

But the trailer was leaky and the houses weren’t selling. And then, the day before they were to sign the lease, their dog had eaten some grass and fallen sick, requiring $3,000 in veterinary expenses from a specialist in Fairport. With the house still needing work and the weather turning cold, they found themselves looking for alternative arrangements, and booked themselves in a room at the nearby Redwood Motel, about one mile down the road from the house.

Over the years, the couple who owned it – in their seventies and now ready to retire – had tried selling the property. Hansen, seeing an opportunity, made an offer on what otherwise was a near-impossible opportunity: a turnkey motel on three acres, for $205,000. He began to frantically make

calls, expecting to close on the motel in November and helped by a small loan from his wife Yihua’s family in China, Hansen frantically began making calls, looking to bet their house in Tucson on a secured home loan. Just days before the deal was to close and with no money to pay, Hansen was handed a gift.

“Think about this, for two weeks I’m calling every cash for your house person in Tucson,” Hansen said. “I’m showing them the house, I’m doing everything. And this guy from Meridian Trust, in eight minutes we get a contract via email with the perfect closing date, the perfect amount, the perfect everything. Too weird.”

Today, the couple is living in a room in the motel while the cats occupy both of the bedrooms in their new house. Yihua’s boutique, Pretty Sister, is expected to open in that Cayuga Street storefront between the bar and Lot 10 some time in the coming months. And Marco is setting to work fixing up the motel into the “Green Sartori Inn,” a bed and breakfast based partly on a sitcom pilot he wrote several years ago about a newspaper copy editor who loses everything and makes a drastic life change.

“I’d like to make this a place for city slickers to rusticate,” he said, sitting on his bed in the motel on a recent afternoon. “When I was living in Tucson, I was becoming a real asshole. Everyday, sweat pouring down my face, 110 degrees, red light, construction, construction, red light… once I hit 56, Tucson’s heat just got to me and I didn’t like who I was becoming.”

Instead, he became just another dreamer making his own way in Upstate New York.

revenue: According to a year 2000 estimate by the National Newspaper Association (the most recent available), it was determined public notices accounted for 5 to 10 percent of all community newspaper revenue. Keep in mind, this was back when newspaper revenues were healthy, bolstered by classified and other print advertising revenues.

Though public notices are inexpensive by design, if one were to look at legal notices as a taxpayer subsidy for newspapers, the City of Ithaca and Tompkins County alone will spend approximately $31,000 combined on legal advertising this coming year, according to their 2018 budgets. For reference, this amounts to more than the annual salary of any news reporter in Tompkins County, who typically make between $26,000 and $30,000 per year.

Stephen Acquario, Executive Director of the New York State Association of Counties. “[...]

With the expansion of media, we need to look at how we’re communicating with the citizenry. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was quite clear how that was being done. But today, as we approach 2020, we need to define how that is done today. Newsprint is a very safe way of informing our citizens and I think that should remain the same and always be part of the discussion, but I think as technology evolves it might be ineffective to preclude other means of informing the public.”

But a shift away from print raises other questions, such as whether or not ISPs can restrict individual’s access to the internet and therefore, restrict one’s ability to interact with their government.

“I think that’s largely why the statute has been unchanged for decades,” Acquario said.

“It’s the security in knowing that print itself is there and it’s a tried and true venue for the public.”

But public notices, if anything, are one of the most effective pro-transparency tools any community member can have; one of the few things requiring that governments not hide important changes in their communities.

“The legislation comes up all the time” said Rea. “We fight it, because we think the public’s right to know is very important and while we would like to pick and choose which notices we’re allowed to keep if we could, we’re afraid to open that Pandora’s Box, because we’re afraid to lose all of them… it has warts, there’s no doubt about it, but even with warts, it’s better than not existing.”

Should Legal s Simply Go Away?

As the internet continues to replace newsprint as the primary way people get their information, local governments may start considering how to evolve public notice law to the modern era, whether it is by expanding the definition of what can be defined as an official newspaper to doing away with the practice altogether, using their municipal websites as the primary means of communicating with the public. As BKLYNer’s editor Liena Zagare and BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review this spring: “There is probably no better place to hide a shady deal than the inside pages of a fading community newspaper.”

“I think it’s worthy of a review,” said

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Hunger

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ture, “food deserts” are defined as an urban environment where the nearest fullservice grocery store is further than a half mile away or, in a rural environment, more than 10 miles away. Locally, the potential population who would rely on public transportation for their food supply, while so far untracked, could be high: according to the USDA’s Atlas of Food Deserts, of the 15 percent of the county’s low-income households who live greater than one mile from a grocery store, 3.2 percent do not own a car.

“Everybody’s always talking about access and transportation, and there’s no real silver bullet,” Quackenbush said. “What nonprofits are tasked with doing is filling gaps that are created by broader public policies, but also advocating for those policies to make sure those gaps aren’t as big.”

cer, Trumansburg and Dryden as well as the Lansing Market.

For many grocers looking to serve a small market, the cooperative route is the only choice they have. When Andrew Sciarabba, one of the founding directors of the grocer, was looking to open the Lansing Market at the start of the decade, he spent two years trying to attract a chain to come in and fill the property he was building, but had no luck: their demographic just didn’t fit the size of the community. Larger chains also required a larger facility than Sciarabba could offer: At 12,000 square feet, the Lansing Market facility was much too small to carry the inventory necessary to lure in a larger chain.

“It’s a volume-driven business, first and foremost,” Sciarabba said.

The grocery business is also a volatile one: many grocery chains – such as A&P – have gone belly-up over the years and, when you pull in the razor thin profit margins of 2 to 3 percent that are inherent with the grocery business, chains find themselves quite cautious when considering expansion.

The basic costs of opening and operating a grocery store can prove prohibitive as well, even in healthy markets. Lansing Market’s budget line includes $40,000 a year just for worker’s compensation insurance and facing an increase to the minimum wage, which Sciarabba said is only added cost to his 30-person workforce; 26 of whom, he says, are part-time.

With few other solutions to the problem, Quackenbush hinted real, serious change could come from more radical shifts in policy.

She even recalled a talk she had with an employee of Foodlink – Rochester’s answer to the Food Bank – on the idea that food should

no longer be treated as a commodity, and that each community should have a state-run food dispensary to ensure individuals had equal access to the food they needed. There is some merit to this: though farmer’s markets – which provide flexibility in rural communities – have begun to accept benefits in recent years, their supplies are often limited in the off-season, leaving market-dictated grocers as the only option for a number of families.

In the meantime, the Food Bank is working on improving its current level of service.

Lacking metrics to actually track who is accessing local pantries or their mobile facilities, this coming year the Food Bank will be rolling out a client data tracking program at all of its food pantries to tie every client to a unique identification number. This will allow the organization to map out who is using their services, how far they are travelling and what services they may be entitled to receive, as well as allowing the group to track trends, such as whether or not they see a spike in one-time visitors around the holidays when finances are tight, or whether there are demonstrable demographic disparities or instances of people driving 20 miles to access a pantry.

But this, a sort of adaptation to a “new normal” in the Southern Tier, is no solution.

“Food banks will not solve hunger,” said Quackenbush. “It’s not sustainable to deliver 13 million pounds of food every year with this crazy network of pantries and trucks. Yeah, we might meet the need, but that just isn’t a sustainable system.”

Enfield

With Bankruptcy, Black Oak Officially Dead

T

he years-long saga surrounding the construction of the Black Oak Wind Farm in Enfield has finally come to a definitive close, after the company sent a letter last week to Enfield Town Board members announcing its dissolution.

While the project’s vocal opposition may be glad to see them go, it appears Enfield may still be left holding the bag for the failed alternative energy proposal to the tune of over $8,000. In the letter, Black Oak said they are not capable of covering the last of the expenses, as well as offering one parting shot at the residents who disrupted the $40M project.

Why Can’t We Fix It? “I regret to inform you that we will be unable to pay our bill with the town for the overdrawn According to a 2007 digest by the Rural escrow account amount of $8073.41,” said the Sociological Society, the creation of food letter, signed by Project Manager and Vice Presideserts stem from the loss of a population dent Marguerite Wells. “We have spent our last able to support smaller grocery stores, leavdollars filing our final tax returns, and the wind ing only profit-driven corporate entities to opponents drained everything else. We are closfill the gap. Oftentimes, these larger grocers ing the company in the coming weeks.”

– like Wal-Mart or Aldi – will be very selecWells said in an interview that the corporative in their demographic, and will locate tion is bankrupt, but would not speak to wheththeir facilities based on traffic volume and er or not Black Oak would be officially declaring earning potential, rather than community bankruptcy. The project, she said, “couldn’t need. In the region, Tompkins County and, survive” the year-long moratorium that the to some degree, Tioga County, has had suc–Nick Reynolds Town Board had approved over the summer on cess supporting independent grocery stores, alternative energy projects. most of which are cooperative-supported by “They can’t have it,” she said of the $8,000 wholesalers like the Olean Market, which owed to the town. “They killed the project, they supplies Shur Save-branded grocers in Spencan’t get paid. We owe millions of dollars to other people too. Everybody’s not getting paid.

Estate-grown, craft-distilled, [...] I can’t give you an exact figure, but a whole award-winning spirits produced lot, hundreds of thousands of dollars. All of which would have been paid if the project had in the heart of the Finger Lakes been allowed to go forward, but they killed it.

Everybody’s in the red.”

TASTINGS Wells blamed the failure of the project on fear ◆◆◆◆ and the anger of a minority of Enfield residents.

COCKTAILS She called the situation a “profound loss,” and ◆◆◆◆ said she did not know whether to expect legal action from the town to retrieve its money, but RETAIL SALES said the corporation will soon be dissolved and, in essence, the town cannot draw blood from a OPEN DAILY stone. Town Board member and incomingB Town TWOBEDROOM BEDROOM APARTMENTS TW O B E D TWO APARTMENTS T W O Supervisor Beth McGee lamented that after so • Spacious • floor plans • Energy S Efficient p Appliances • a Patio or balcony c availablei o u s f l o o r11AM p l a n s • E n e AT • Spacious• floor plans Energy Efficient •C or balcony available • S p c ih o u s f lw o o r p le a n much time and effort, the project would endr in o Clubhouse with•great room •Smart • CardAppliances Laundry Center • Patio Fitnessa Center l u b o u s e i t h g r a t s CLOSED CHRISTMAS DAY, • Computer Lab • •Smart 24 Hour Emergency Maintenance • o m pi u e r g L a • Clubhouse with great room Card • Laundry Center • Fitness Center l u b h o C u C s e tt h r e suchw thoroughly disappointing fashion.

THANKSGIVING DAY, AND • Controlled building • access • Close toC shopping, schools o & medical n facilities t r o l l e d b u i l d i n g a c c e s s • Computer Lab • 24 Hour Emergency Maintenance C o p u “My understanding ism they are obligated, NEW YEARS DAY • • Controlled building access • Close to shopping, schools o & medical facilities • C n t ro l l e d b u i have n g underi thel law,d that if they assets they have a to payL their liabilities before they can disburse 6 CALL (607) 288-4165 CAL ( any remaining monies,” McGeeT said. “We have TODAY TO SCHEDULE A TOUR! TODA Y O wasted a lot of energy, and a lot of time, and a lot • Spacious floor plans • Energy Efficient Appliances • Patio or balcony available edrooms $754 - $836 2 B e of money our taxpayers won’t seed back focusingr • Clubhouse with great2 Broom •Smart Card Laundry Center • Fitness Center ◆ 607 532 4800 D myerfarmdistillers.com TODAY TO SCHEDULE A TOUR! TO A on this issue. I really would have likedY to see a 7350 State Route 89 ◆ Ovid, NY • Computer Lab • 24 Hour Emergency Maintenance resolution that worked for everyone, but it didn’t seem to be in the cards.”

• Controlled building 2access schools & medical facilities B e d r o•oClose m s $to7 5shopping, 2 B e 4 - $836 While the project was hobbled from years of 4 T.S. ELIOT DRIVE, DRYDEN, NY 13053 4 T.S. ELIOT discussion, negotiation and opposition, there (across from Dryden High School) (across was still at least a chance that the project would [E] poetslanding@coniferllc.com [ E ] p o e t s l move forward if another investor stepped up [TTY] (800) 662-1220 [ T T after of the financing f led t due to the w w w. p o e t s l a n d i n g a p a r t m e n t s . c o m w w w . pmuch o e s l public backlash against the wind farm.

But this 4 T.S. ELIOT DRIVE, DRYDEN, NY 13053 4 T.S. EL announcement marks the nail (ac in the coffin, (across from Dryden High School) said outgoing Town Supervisor Ann Rider, an avowed supporter of the project.

[E] poetslanding@coniferllc.com [ E ] p o “The project was in the works, but the proj(800) 2 B e d r[TTY] oom s $662-1220 754 - $836 ect needed a. new investor,” Rider said.

“They w w w. p o e t s l a n d i n g a p a r t m e n t s . c o m w w w p o couldn’t get the final investor, because of how mention this ad for the board acted.”

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Recess

contin u ed from page 5

tional checklists and surveys for staff to use. There will also be some focus on the lasting effects of the recess changes, via examining how it affects the students’ behavior in the classroom during the hours of lessons after recreation time.

Reaction from parents so far has been positive, both principals said. They have been work ing with the Parent-Teacher Association presidents from both schools

Injection Sites contin u ed from page 4

the concept of a safe injection facility.

Over the past year, STAP has been in communication with numerous foundations interested in financing such a facility right here in Ithaca, at no cost to the taxpayer and in a facility with an already proven track record here in the Southern Tier.

In the days before its needle exchange program was implemented, STAP – whose original purpose was preventing the spread of diseases like hepatitis, AIDS and HIV – found their focus on harm reduction was tied directly with the opioid epidemic: particularly with its direct correlation to intravenous drug use. According to a 2014 report by New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute, in 1992, 52 percent of new HIV infections derived from injection drug use. In 2012, after needle exchanges had been operational for more than two decades, those cases accounted for only 3 percent of new diagnoses.

One of the concerns cited by a number of members of the community is that such facilities will only go to attract drug addicts to the community, however, Barry argues that research does not support such a thesis: according to a 2005 study published in the American Journal Of Preventive Medicine, safe injection facilities – much like STAP’s needle exchange program – were most often used by chronic drug users already located in their communities. And the benefits, Barry said, are plentiful: not only do safe injection facilities improve access to treatment as well as provide social support and social reintegration, Barry argued, but they also solve the problem of open-air drug use and the other drug-related refuse that can accompany the practice, including the lofty public

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Northeast Elementary School Students, hard at work.

throughout the grant application process to ensure there would be no backlash if they were awarded the funding and looked to implement the changes. Talcott said she’s seen nothing but enthusiasm from parents of her school’s children.

As for their best-case scenario at the end of this, the two have the same conclusion: “Happier, more creative kids.”

–Matt Butler

health costs that can accompany an overdose.

(Approximately $4,000 per visit, Barry said, with overdoses estimated to account for two to three admissions at the local hospital daily.)

The idea has gained a lot of traction among medical professionals locally: In a presentation last month at the Health and Human Services committee meeting, Dr. William Klepack, a Dryden physician and Medical Director for the Tompkins County Health Department who has endorsed the use of supervised injection facilities in the past, provided extensive information on the health and public health impacts of SIFs to several members of the County Legislature. Writing In an op-ed published Monday in The Ithaca Voice, Kelles wrote that 97 such supervised injection facilities exist in 11 different countries and that, in the past 37 years of use, more than 10 million supervised injections have occurred without a single overdose death.

In a number of policy meetings over the past several months, questions from local officials are many, from lack of public resources to the concerns of the greater community, Klepack noted. But one of the biggest questions, Klepack said, was the lack of localized study on the topic. In a clinical report he presented to legislators Monday night, Klepack described in broad strokes the findings from his research on various policy stances – from abstinence to supervised injection facilities – and their impact internationally. But, he said, more thought needs to be given to the topic locally. And any decision, he said, requires hard data to back it up. l“We may be well at a point where we should try and get those numbers,” Klepack said.

–Nick Reynolds

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sports

The Daily Grind

By Ste ve L aw re nc e

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

–Samuel Goldwyn

J

im Mullins has seen a few milestones as the head coach of the Ithaca College men’s basketball team. Twenty seasons, three Empire 8 titles, three Empire 8 Coach of the Year awards, five trips to the NCAA tournament, one appearance in the NCAA’s Round of 16 and, just a few days ago, win #300.

Despite all those lofty numbers and prestigious accomplishments, while many people are scaling back their workload as we approach the holidays, Mullins and his staff will be grinding it out on the recruiting trail.

They will be doing whatever they can to sell the Bomber Experience to the right players at the right time, and keep that pipeline flowing.

Some years are easier than others to make that enthusiastic pitch, and this year, Mullins has some quality goods to display heading into the season’s second half. The Bombers lost their opener in November, but came back to win six in a row, including two big victories over two very strong programs.

“It’s true, we’re off to a good start,” Mullins told me, “but how you start honestly doesn’t mean a lot compared to how you

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finish.” He added, “We got a couple of very quality wins – against (#15) Rochester and Cortland – and I’ll tell you that getting off to a strong start can have a flip side in that players can think they don’t have any work to do when things are going well.” The coach added, “I assure you, we have work to do.”

I congratulated Jim on the big 300-win achievement, and he said “Reaching that milestone is indicative of several things – I have had a long career and I have surrounded myself with some very good coaches and players.” He said, “It’s hard to believe that my coaching career began 25 years ago, and it seems like just yesterday I left Plattsburgh State to come to Ithaca College.”

Of course, no one player is totally responsible for the Bombers’ early success, but a key addition seems to have as much to do with luck as it does with recruiting skill. Junior forward Miles Herman – a 2013 Ithaca High School grad – showed up on South Hill, and his story is similar to that of Jeff Foote, who came out of seemingly nowhere to help lead the Cornell Big Red to the next level from 2007-2010 (reaching the NCAA’s Sweet Sixteen). Mullins offered, “We didn’t really know about Miles. His family was living in Japan – and they planned to stay there – but circumstances brought them back to the

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U.S. Miles went to the University of Buffalo, where he played some club basketball, and then he went to TC3. He decided to come here, and I’ll tell you, it’s a pleasant surprise.”

“We laugh about how hard we work to recruit,” Jim stated, “and then we get this gift. Before the season, one of our captains had been playing some pick-up ball with Miles, and he said ‘Coach, this guy can really help us.’ He was right. Miles is 6’8”, he’s very athletic. He is an impact player and a game changer.”

The Bombers will be heading to Daytona Beach two days after Christmas to play in a tournament down that way, and will then return to start their inaugural season in the Liberty League. “This will be a new thing for the players,” Mullins said, “but not for me.

Miles Herman

Teams tend to cycle in and out of leagues, and years ago we played in the old I.C.A.C. with a lot of the same teams that are in the Liberty League. There was a time when the Empire 8 was a stronger conference than the Liberty League, but I believe that the Liberty League is now stronger, top to bottom.”

2017 is indeed ending on a high note for Mullins – the Bombers are riding a nice win streak, they have two signature wins - and such momentum is helpful on the recruiting trail. “It’s nice to be able to recruit on a high note,” Jim said. “We definitely had a nice first semester, but the remaining sixteen Liberty League games will tell the real story.”

T’burg Artist Fernando Llosa Is Onto Something

There’s no way to convey how extraordinary these works are. The Ever Perspicacious Reader must see them for him or herself.

I think what I find so marvelous about the work is that it seems so new. The ink paintings

Arts&Entertainment

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B y Wa r r e n G r e e n w o o d

Beyond Ourselves « Now On Display At The CAP ArtSpace

F

irst off, I should confess how inadequate I feel writing this. How unworthy. (I suppose it comes from having had bad parents.) And now, with that over with, let’s get on with it.

Yo, Perspicacious Reader.

May I suggest you visit the Community Art Partnership ArtSpace on the Ithaca Commons and take a look at Beyond Ourselves, an exhibit

by Trumansburg artist Fernando Llosa?

This exhibit is too extraordinary to ignore.

I saw the exhibit at the December Gallery Night in Ithaca. I haven’t been writing for the Ithaca Times for a while, but I jotted down in my notebook the phrase “too extraordinary to ignore”.

There was a startling newness to the work, as if Llosa had invented a new genre in art. And I thought it important to encourage as many people as possible here in the Greater Ithaca

Area to see the exhibit.

Fernando Llosa is an artist based in Trumansburg, N.Y. I have written of him before.

He has several distinct styles of art – each remarkably diverse, and quite unlike each other.

These include his Stone Poems, cartoon-like sculptures composed out of the emblematic shale stone of Upstate New York; His nature photography, which captures the wu wei, or the flow of the universe; his oil paintings, which seem to be a glimpse of other universes; and dream-like monochromatic Sumi ink drawings that are quite indescribable.

This show at the CAP ArtSpace includes a few

of the large other universe paintings, a couple of the Stone Poems, a series of large monochromatic ink paintings, and a large, remarkable wall installation composed of a hundred-plus smaller ink paintings. There is also a limited-edition art book containing both some beautiful prints of the ink paintings, four brief essays, and an original ink painting on the cover of each book.

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are simultaneously abstract expressionist, realistic, and surrealistic all at once. They don’t seem to confine themselves to any known category.

What they remind me of most are glimpses I’ve had in my dreams of what seem to be other universes.

One of the pleasures of writing about art for the Ithaca Times has been coining names for what I saw as new genres in art.

I called Ithaca artist Margaret Reed’s art New Medievalism, and the Ithaca watercolor artist Bill Mowson’s work Romantic Realism. I would like to christen Fernando Llosa’s work Other Universism.

The big other universe paintings always make me think of Star Trek, evoking visions of starships traveling through cosmic wormholes. Perhaps they’re more evoking of astronaut Dave Bowman going through the Star Gate in the spectacular conclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Llosa’s big oil paintings also remind me of when I discovered the work of the comic book artist Steve Ditko in the mid 1960s, around the time Ditko created the character Doctor Strange. Dr. Strange was active in “other dimensions”. (Ditko rather brilliantly introduced both Surrealism and Cubism to the comics.) This was a new, mind-expanding concept to me at the time: the multiverse.

But what occurs to me is that I have no idea how Fernando Llosa is achieving his effects. My background is that I am a comic book artist and animation guy, and drawing in ink is my forte. But Llosa’s work in Sumi and acrylic ink is totally mysterious to me. I have no idea how he

is achieving his luminous, mind-boggling effects.

It seems Llosa’s intent here is to not so much glimpse other universes but to see our own – who we truly are –without all the cultural/religious/tribal intellectual chains we are bound by. (More on this coming up.) It seems to me that we are present at something new in world art.

Without overstatement, I believe that Llosa has evolved into an important world artist.

(I’m not kidding. It has occurred to me that the way artists get into the art history books is totally arbitrary.) * * * And now I think it is important to note that my perception of “Other Universe” art has pretty much nothing to do with what Fernando Llosa is up to…

Here is a brief statement from the Dec. 1st, 2017 Gallery Night brochure that nicely sums up his intentions: “The intent is to give a general impression of the wholeness of life and the mysterious human presence in this deeper reality that is almost completely obscured by our tribal and personal identification with the mental and material things that separate us from one another and alienate the whole species from the ground of our being.”

Whew.

It reminds me of my favorite philosopher, the late Alan Watts. In a lecture he once condensed his life work into two ideas: the universe is all one thing, and you are It. Fernando Llosa is covering the same

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ground. At the gallery, there is a two-page pamphlet he has written called Beyond Ourselves: An Introduction in which he explains this basic idea. He writes that the theme of the show is “life as the common ground of our existence”.

He writes: “What blocks our perception of the stream of life is that it flows undivided, and therefore almost entirely beyond the reach of the human intellect, fragmented and conditioned as it is by the predetermined, contradictory, and ever insufficient forms of representation (ideologies) with which every cultural group and every separate individual identifies.”

He continues: “We have been quite forcefully taught to be isolated and weighted down [sic] by the limitations and absurd obligations that come with the claim to a unique identity and a separate existence based on different and exclusive forms of secular and religious knowledge.

The truth is, however, none of us has ever been, or will ever be, anything other than organismic manifestations of a vital and undecipherable mystery that is our only common ground – our innermost essence and natural place for the most intimate and beautiful encounter there is.”

As for the reason behind the show he writes: “If we do not find the way to somehow see life as our common ground, the ideabased division and conflict that has already tormented the human species for millennia will just continue to wreak havoc in “our” lives. What is worse, in our own time, the destructive power of the prevailing ideological distance between us – fruit of

our common alienation from the wholeness of life – has gone from being a source of ongoing affliction to a credible political, demographic, ecological, and nuclear threat to the very survival of the species.”

Llosa acknowledges that that is a lot of baggage for an art show, writing: “the communication intent of this particular art exhibit is ambitious to the point of folly.”

For a full journalistic disclosure, I must reveal that I know Fernando Llosa as a friend…and, in talking to him on the telephone about the show, he fretted that many gallery visitors weren’t getting the philosophical point of the show.

I told him not to worry, that perhaps the art itself (devoid of context) would bring the people in, that his introductory pamphlet and limited edition book would convey the philosophical intent. The basic concept that the universe is all one thing is hard to grasp…as we are conditioned from birth to view the universe as a collection of separate things.

I can’t recommend this show highly enough. A chance to see a new development in world art and glimpse the fundamental underpinning of reality? What could be better than that?

Fernando Llosa’s exhibition Beyond Ourselves will be at the CAP Art Space, Center Ithaca, adjacent to the Visitor Center, on the Ithaca Commons through Dec. 29.

stage

An Impactful Life, Adapted To The Stage

By Ros s Ha ars ta d

A

well-thumbed copy of Genetics for Pratt finds McClintock’s struggles very Dummies has sat on Judith Pratt’s relevant today: “Over the past few years, bookshelf for years now. It has been people have begun to realize that women her companion through several drafts of in the sciences, in the STEM professions, Maize, her play based on the life and work have a difficult time. The bias that McClinof Cornell alumna and Nobel Prize winner tock encountered is still around.”

Barbara McClintock.

Beyond learning the actual science, In just over two months (after many Pratt had to synthesize the two biogradrafts and readings) Maize will come phies—which disagree with each other. to fruition on the Risley Theatre stage. She tackled reel-to-reel tapes of interviews Meanwhile Pratt has been assembling with McClintock in the Kroch Library cast, production team, and has launched at Cornell “but their reel-to-reel tape a Kickstarter fundraising drive to pay recorder doesn’t work very well!” everyone.

Her first draft “all about the history.

An actor, direcAnd it was bortor, w r iter a nd ing. No antagoteacher, Pratt has nist, no conflict, an immense but lots of science.… very dry wit. She Now t h e p l a y is an old-school t a k e s a l o t of feminist and just l ib er t ie s w it h a bit eccent ric, the actual hiswhich drew her tory—because to McClintock.

I needed to get “She was a i nto Ba rba ra’s plant geneticist head, her soul. I who worked on hope that people maize. Maize is coming to see it ‘Indian corn,’ the will understand st u f f you ha ng that.” up at Halloween.

T he play a s McClintock irrait ha s e volved diated her corn in now asks “What various ways, so turns a brilliant that she could see young scientist McClintock, hard at work. how the genetic into an eccentric material mutated, recluse? Faced and thus understand how it worked. with a threat to her work and her future, “She began undergrad work at Cornell Barbara struggles against her past. A in 1919, one year after women got the drama about how we can sabotage ourvote. She finished her PhD there in 1927. selves, and about the difficulty of being a The time of her grad work was called ‘the feminist icon.” golden age of corn genetics.’ Four men, Carolyn Cadigan will return to Ithaca and Barbara, made important discoveries to take on the role of Barbara (Cadigan about how genetic material worked.” appeared in Dotty for the Homecoming When McClintock moved on to do Players.) Local actors in the cast are Sherteaching and research at the University of ron Brown, Kate Klein, David Romm and Missouri, women weren’t allowed into the A.J. Sage. Amina Omari directs (Ithaca faculty lounge. On the weekends she was Shakespeare, Homecoming, Actors Worklocked out of her lab, so she would climb shop). Norm Johnson is doing the set and in through a window—“shocking the pro- Liz Woods the costumes. vost” notes Pratt.

As a final pitch, Pratt declares “Yes, The latter half of McClintock’s career McClintock is the subject of two biograwas spent at Cold Spring Laboratories on phies and several books for children. She’s Long Island’s north shore. “She discov- on a stamp issued in 2005, and has been ered transposons, or ‘jumping genes.’ At proposed for the US $10 bill. A lab at Cold the time, geneticists thought of genes as Spring Harbor and a tool shed at Cornell beads on a string. McClintock discovered University are named for her, as well as a that under some conditions, a bead could street in Berlin. But she’s not a household slice itself out of the necklace and move to word—yet. MAIZE will help that happen!” another spot. One colleague said ‘it was like being told your kitchen could jump into your attic.’” McClintock is also the For more about the show, and to cononly woman to receive the Nobel prize tribute to the Kickstarter campaign, visit in her area alone, rather than with col- facebook.com/MaizeMcClintock. leagues.

Vital for Life

by Betsy Schermerhorn Director, Marketing and Admissions

WORKING SOLUTIONS While many men are more than happy to retire, they may miss the opportunities that work introduces to help them bond with one another. When this source of male bonding recedes, older men may want to find other ways to connect with people. Good ways to begin this search for new social circles includes joining groups with pre-established structures such as walking groups, golf or bowling leagues, a card or chess club, or a class at an adult community center. These groups help older men recreate a work-like environment in which they can feel comfortable. Otherwise, men with similar interests can band together to launch a workplace-like project that provides each with a sense of purpose and feeling of belonging.

Each resident at Kendal at Ithaca brings a personal interest, culture, and preference to their community. Ithaca has received national recognition as being an exceptional place to live. Such distinctions as America’s Most Enlightened City and being named fourth in the list of 500 in Life in America’s Small Cities have made Ithaca a well-known destination. Call the marketing team at (607) 266-5300 to schedule a tour to see our facilities and learn more about lifecare at Kendal at Ithaca. Find us on the web at http://kai.kendal.org/ P.S. When people work together, they tend to share personal thoughts and feelings.

2230 N. Triphammer Road Ithaca, NY 14850-6513 Website: www.kai.kendal.org Email: admissions@kai.kendal.org

(607) 266-5300 Ext. 201 Toll Free: (800) 253-6325

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stage

Review: The Cherry’s Snow Queen Snow Queen makes for rich new holiday tradition

By Barbara Ad am s

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or hundreds of years, Western tradition has abounded in winter theatricals – something about the bitter onset of winter makes us want to huddle together, reflect, and reaffirm the kinder side of our humanity.

Accordingly, this month Ithaca provides several musical offerings and seasonal plays.

The Dickensian traditional, A Christmas Carol, is staged at the Hangar Theatre in Aoise Stratford’s entertaining adaptation, and at the Kitchen, Karl Gregory as a Macy’s elf mischievously regaled theater supporters in David Sedaris’ satirical The Santaland Diaries.

And the Cherry Artspace –nicely snug despite bordering the windy inlet – presents artistic director Sam Buggeln’s own adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. This reprises last year’s show produced at the Kitchen; it’s been expanded with many more songs, so a musical quality predominates. Paul Leschen wrote the lovely music, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon the lyrics; musical direction is by Nancy Saultz Radloff.

The story is one of youthful innocence – a warm childhood friendship between Greta and Kai – distressingly interrupted when Kai is lured by the Snow Queen and kidnapped to her northernmost realm. There he sits, near frozen, trying to puzzle out the word “eternity” in snow crystals, his eye and heart having been icily immobilized with shards of a malevolent mirror.

Much of the action is Greta’s endless travels to find and rescue Kai – barefoot and persistent, across northern countries, through distractions like a blooming garden of endless summer and perils like capture by a robber gang. All unfolds over seven episodes via eight actors and a medley of theatrical devices: actual and shadow puppetry

by Rachel Terwilliger and others (advised by Scott Hitz) and Alice-in-Wonderlandesque cardboard court costumes (Norm Johnson) and swirling snowflakes, coolly lit by E.D. Intemann. A life-size rolling cart becomes a sleigh; a miniature sled is drawn by golden horses; puppet ravens and woodcocks and a huge reindeer guide Greta on her journey.

Everyone is clad in white against frosty white screen backdrops, the towering Snow Queen in her flowing gown and icy crown offering the most dazzling whiteness of all.

But all other costumes (by Lisa Boquist, Emily Howes, and Liz Woods) provide human warmth. And half the cast dons glistening green sleeves and brightly colored gloves to become the flowers, especially the roses, that so entrance Greta.

Through a mash-up of playful suggestions, a rich scenario is evoked. Performances are committed and the actors’ singing is strong, though an emphasis on women’s voices leaves many of the lyrics so high as to be unclear. Extensive lyrics, without refrain, now carry more of the narrative –– yet can’t always be deciphered. And the inclusion of so many songs somehow gives the production a more conventional, less impromptu and magical quality than the original version.

As Greta and Kai, Lucia Vecchio and Josh Wilde are animated and compelling, from youngsters to young adults; Vecchio, who has a fine voice, moves the rapid action well.

Five actors take turn narrating, including Josh Altenburg (also a concerned Prince and Ba, the helpful Reindeer) and Jeffrey Guyton (irresistible as always as the solicitous Raven and the sputtering Majordomo). Megan Schmidt represents a Sage and several others, while Erica Steinhagen reprises both the mysterious Woman with a Garden and her sister, the Snow Queen. (As the latter, one wishes Steinhagen had been directed to let her natural beauty shine: evil queens are femme fatales, and this one needs ruby-red lipstick and more seductiveness, less menacing and grimacing –– so we can understand the human, hurt side of evil.)

Like most fairy tales, The Snow Queen conveys darkness before one reaches the light.

In this holiday season, this story thoughtfully reminds adults that vigilance is ever necessary to resist the hardening heart.

The Snow Queen, adapted and directed by Samuel Buggeln. At The Cherry Artspace, 201 Cherry St., Friday and Saturday Dec 23.

Order tickets at http://www.thecherry.org/

books

Just An Ordinary Man

By Mat t Butl e r

A

llan Robbins is just a normal guy who wrote a book. He’s older than most people who do it. He did it differently.

But in the end, that’s his point: he went over his life, and had some stories to tell. Anybody could do it, but he actually did.

Robbins wrote An Ordinary Man: A Memoir over a two year period, starting when he was 95 years old, finishing months ago. One theme that continually appears while talking to Robbins is his strong belief that anyone can do what he did with this book. Reliving his life as a series of small, episodic stories was entertaining for him, even the low points in his life, and he feels it’s an experience that could be universalized.

“The title of the book is how I feel about myself, nothing special,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t really think it would be worthwhile [...]

Basically, I enjoyed doing it, because overall I’ve had a very good life.”

He’s right, in a good way.

His son, Peter, had suggested he write the book over 20 years ago, and though he started to at that time, the deaths of his wife and eldest daughter Helen stalled his progress until two years ago. Robbins has lived in central New York for nearly 25 years, making a home for himself in Enfield with Peter. He mowed the lawn and tended to things around the house even up until last year, he notes proudly.

The book itself is quite unlike anything I’ve ever read. Even in his age, Robbins is a natural story-teller who doesn’t appear to struggle with details even with decades-old tales, with an uncanny ability of delivering an unexpected punchline. Robbins is open and honest, and writes in a stream-ofconsciousness way that, somehow, makes far more sense when one knows the book was transcribed from two years of his handwritten manuscripts. It moves quickly, using small, punchy stories, often not more than a few sentences, to tell the story of Robbins life growing up in New York City, of serving in the armed forces, The book’s honesty is bracing, in ways that alternatively make the reader uncomfortable and giggle. Early on, Robbins reveals he was sexually abused by a male babysitter from his neighborhood, followed immediately by a deadpan joke about his father sending him away to summer camp to relieve a stressinduced ulcer. In another, he tells the tale of his short-handed high school football team’s magical Cinderella run to the New York City title, only to jump subsequently to the Great Depression’s devastating impact on his family. Both of these instances are within the first 19 pages.

The book doesn’t necessarily focus on any one portion of Robbins’ life, though the bulk of the pages are dedicated to his time in the

army and afterwards, as he adjusted to married life with his wife Marci, a firecracker who worked at the executive level at Nikon, picking up the moniker the “Fairy Godmother of Nikon” in the process.

Fresh off a heartbreak, Robbins had sought refuge in an odd place: the military.

In June 1942, Robbins enlisted ahead of his draft order and, from what it sounds like, defied the evaluating doctor’s suggestion that he not join due to his being a “borderline case.” Despite the doctor giving him the chance at a legitimate excuse to avoid service, Robbins joined anyway.

Perhaps the highlight of this section of the book is an anecdote about Robbins time in a very secretive training regiment, during which one of his fellow soldiers took an off-day trip into a bookstore in town. During said trip, he stumbled across a two-year old copy of Popular Mechanics which discussed the very tech nolog y t he m i l it a r y was trying so desperately to shield from the public and the nation’s enemies. The soldier, after reporting it to his superiors, was told to shut up.

He still lost several friends in the war though, including those who appear in the book during what seems to be Robbins’ happiest eras, a span of time he calls “the most wonderful five years of my life.” Robbins struggled socially in high school, smaller, smarter and far younger than the other kids in his class after skipping several grades. But he finally found a place to fit in with a group of poor teenage boys, who were also Jewish, making up the Carlton Club at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

The rest of the book deals mostly with stories from a professional life as a jeweler after his discharge from the army (which includes a damn entertaining and complicated minirobbery mystery), living and loving with Marci up until her surprising death and raising his three children. Peter, a writer and researcher of UFOs, Helen, who has passed away but was an award winning songwriter, and Anne, a nurse practitioner who helps run the Elizabeth Anne Clune Montessori School of Ithaca.

Robbins remembers these stories with an incredible amount of detail, sometimes down to certain times of day or the weather when a specific event occurred. The details not only drive the stories, painting an intricate picture of nearly every scene, but they fuel every emotion the book contains especially since as covered above, the actual content of the stories themselves isn’t exactly mesmerizingly profound. But how can you not feel sorry for a guy getting dumped, or happy for him on his wedding day, when you feel like you’re in the room alongside him for every twist and turn?

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dining

Bravo: A Feast In Freeville

By Peg g y Haine

O

w n e d b y t h e p r o p r i e t o r s o f small-town friendliness, it’s the closest Dryden’s beloved and now-closed we have to the dining car on the Orient A-1 Pizzeria, Bravo, whose offer- Express. Drink it in. ings center on the Mediterranean’s inland The menu is huge and so are the porcuisine, brings a varied menu to those who tions. Warm, freshly baked bread comes to inhabit the Village of Freeville (population the table along with a dish of olive oil and 520, according to the 2010 census), and oregano to dip it into. We suggest you go to those adventurous enough to venture easy on it. east-northeast along Fall Creek to where An appetizer of baked feta with oregathe creek crosses Route 38. Coming from no and olive oil ($9.95) had at least a halfIthaca along Route 366, turn right at the pound of cheese, cooked, sliced tomatoes, Freeville stop sign and you’ll see it on your red peppers, onion, and spices, and was left. creamy and tasty. That and a small salad The premises, in its previous life known have constituted a full meal for 2017asXmas Eve ad for Ithacawould Tiimes Toad’s, is a community meeting place most. We took half of it home, and, nuked and coffee klatch base, and its wall of win- the next day, it made a substantial breakdows captures whatever little sun there fast along with an English muffin. is this time of year. Setting aside its cozy, The country salad, iceberg lettuce, bits

of tomato, grated mozzarella and romano, (Photo: Casey Martin) pitted kalamata olives, your choice of of subs, sandwiches, burgers, pastas and First Unitarian Society of Ithaca dressing (Italian for me), the “small” a dozen homemade pasta sauces, from ($8.95) was more than I could eat. The the complex basilikos (homemade pesto, Christmas Eve $5.95 “personal” is probably more appro- sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, fresh parpriate as a side, and I can hardly imagine mesan, mozzarella, feta, and fresh basil) what kind of cauldron the “large” comes to the simple house marinara. Specialty Sunday, December 24 in, reminding me of cartoonist and cat entrees include their popular chicken riglover Bernard Kliban’s admonition not to gies (chicken and rigatoni in a spicy vodka TWO services 5:15 and 8:00 pm eat anything bigger than your head. As cream sauce), chicken cacciatore, and seaSage Chapel, Cornell could be expected, the lettuce was crisp, food lasagna Alfredo with shrimp, scalthere was plenty of cheese scattered about, lops, and crabmeat. Many of these can be story. music. song. candlelight and the jewel tones and saltiness of the made gluten free. Or choose from a comThe Rev. Margaret Weis; trombone quartet, olives and the tomatoes’ acidity livened prehensive list of pizzas, calzones, strombflutes and organ at 5:15 pm; trumpet, flute, it up. olis, and panzaratis choir, and guest musicians at 8:00 pm “Experience a different level of care” A “small” order -- small, deep-fried of dolmades (stuffed WWW.SYNERGYTBURG.COM ca lzones. There www.uuithaca.org or 273-7521 g r ape leaves) are daily specials, 607-213-3300 appeared on a bed of including prime rib Christmas-colored dinners on Fridays baby lettuces, and and Saturdays, for was a winner. The dining in, carrying dolmades seemed to out, and delivery. be homemade, their To appear in color for the 12/20/2017 Houses of Worship Bravo a lso of fers young grape leaves edition, with cost quoted as $137, per Peter. a large catering w rapped loosely menu. a r o u n d a l i g ht l y Desserts, which Our billing address is: St. Anthony St. Anthony spiced rice stuffing, Immaculate Conception St. Catherine immaCulate Immaculate Conception we were too full to 312 Locke Rd., Groton First Unitarian Society ofN.Ithaca 312 Locke Rd., Groton w itN. h Geneva a handfSt., u l Ithaca of 113 Geneva St., Ithaca of Siena ConCeption 113 try, include manywww.holycrossdryden.org/sa.html PO Box 6 www.holycrossdryden.org/sa.html feta crumbles and www.immconch.org 309 Siena Drive, Ithaca 113 N. Geneva St., Ithaca www.immconch.org layered , honeyed thaca, NY 14851 lemon slices strewn www.stcathofsiena.org www.immconch.org ba k l av a , c he e s e Christmas Eve: 4pm Mass Christmas Eve: 4pm Mass Christmas eve:Eve Christmas eve over.Christmas Eve Christmas cake, peanut butter 3:30pm Children's Christmas Pageant 3:30pm Children's Christmas Pageant 4:00pmw/ Family Mass Pageant 4pm Mass w/ Children’s Pageant Thew/Greek burgerPageant 4pm Mass Children's 4pm Mass Children's pie, apple caramel Christmas Day: 10:30am Mass Christmas Day: 10:30am Mass 7:30pm Mass 10pm midnight mass was a hand-formed 11pm Midnight Mass 11pm Midnight Mass pie, and the invenMidnight Mass Carols with 9:30 pm Christmas Carols m10:30pm o u n d Christmas o f b e e fCarols with11:00pm 10:30pm Christmas with tion of some gifted alchemist, the lusChristmas Day ChristmasHoly Day Cross Holy topped with melted Christmas Day Christmas Day feta, swiss cheese, iceboozyCross and creamy zabaglione. We 10:30am Mass 10:30am Mass 375 George Rd., Freeville berg, tomato slices, and microtome-sliced ciously 375 George Rd., Freeville 8:30am Mass and 10:30am Mass 8:30am Mass and 10:30am Mass were pleased to read in the U.K.’s Daily Caroling begins 1/2 hour before Masses www.holycrossdryden.org/hc.html raw red onions.

I ordered it medium rare, www.holycrossdryden.org/hc.html Mail that the key to losing weight could holy CroSS and that’s how it was served to me, on a be to eat dessert first: “Researchers from St. of Siena St.Catherine anthony 375 George Rd., Freeville Catherinebun. of Siena Christmas Eve: 4pm Mass St.brioche-style Christmas College Eve: 4pmLondon Mass believe that It was deeply satisfy- Imperial 312 Locke Rd., Groton www.holycrossdryden.org/hc.html 302 St. Catherine Circle, Ithaca 302 ing, St. Catherine Circle, Ithaca a carnivore’s delight. www.holycrossdryden.org/sa.html Christmas eve: 2pm Mass feasting on sugar-rich foods at the start of www.stcathofsiena.org www.stcathofsiena.org All Saints My dining companion was less happy a mealAll Christmas eve: 4pm Mass Saints could help keep people’s appetites 347 Ridge Rd., Lansing with her gyro pita (8.95 for the small).

The 3:30pm Children’s Christmas Pageant all SaintS 347 Ridge Rd.,wrote.

Lansing in check,” they We’ll try that really Christmas Eve: Christmas Eve: Christmas Day: 10:30am Mass gyro meat was a bit leathery, though it www.holycrossdryden.org/as.html 347 Ridge Rd., Lansing www.holycrossdryden.org/as.html soon.

4:00pm Family Mass 4:00pm www.holycrossdryden.org/as.html tasted fineFamily to me,Mass and the other ingredients 7:30pm Mass 7:30pm Mass tzatziki) were flavorful. Christmas Eve: 5pm Mass Christmas Eve: 5pm Mass (tomatoes, Christmas eve: 6pm Mass onions, 11:00pm Midnight Mass CarolingCaroling begins @ 5:30pm begins @ 4:30pm 11:00pm She tookMidnight it home Mass to have another stab at Bravo Caroling begins @ 4:30pm is open seven days a week for lunch Christmas Day 10:30am Mass Christmas Day 10:30am Mass it. and dinner.

The restaurant does not seem Caroling begins 1/2 hour before Masses Caroling begins 1/2 hour before Masses Bravo’s menu includes a large offering to be handicap-accessible.

Traditional Candlelight Services

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Catholic Masses Catholic Masses for Catholic Masses for for Christmas 2016 Ithaca Area Christmas 2016 in Ithaca Area Christmas 2017 in in Ithaca Area

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film

The Force Thickens

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi, written and directed by Rian Johnson, playing at Ithaca Stadium 14.

I

actually have two recommendations this week, so I’ll start with the one that you weren’t expecting.

Get your hands on Brian Posehn’s most recent album 25 X 2 – a double reference to the Adele album and the fact that Posehn is now fifty years old. I’ve been a fan going back to “Mr. Show”, and as a self-professed nerd, Posehn has had a lot to say about the Star Wars franchise on his last several albums. Here, he admits that he loves Star Wars again after taking the prequels as an act of betrayal.

I was particularly taken by his recounting of seeing Return of the Jedi and hating the Ewoks – just like me! – and admits that the Ewoks should have prepared him for, well, Jar Jar Binks. Posehn recaps the best bits from the past and then talks about how The Force Awakens made him love the first thing he ever loved, and it’s a sweet culmination to a lot of material that he’s developed over the years. (The rest of the album is pretty funny, too, especially a bit about working at a metal roast for two of the guys in Slipknot.)

I pretty much line up with Posehn here; the first SW trilogy took me from age 15 to my early twenties, when I began to see some cracks circa Jedi. I have no use for the prequels, nor did I care for last year’s Rogue One. But The Force Awakens also awakened what I love about the series.

The Last Jedi literally picks up where we left Rey (Daisy Ridley) at the end of The Force Awakens, confronting Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) with his own lightsaber, seeking his wisdom and guidance,

Daisy Ridley, as Rey.

just as Luke once sought instruction in the ways of the Force from a little guy named Yoda. Rey has since developed a psychic link with Kylo Ren, leading to a confrontation with Ren’s new mentor, as Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Sierkis). Meanwhile, the Empire, under the guidance of General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), have developed a tracking device that can trace the rebels through hyperspace, thus bringing on a new mission for Oscar Isaac, John Boyega and new cast member Kelly Marie Tran.

For the first time, new characters played by the likes of Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro are as interesting as cherished cast members like Hamill and the late Carrie Fisher, whose final performance here feels doubly poignant.

Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper) writes and directs with bold, confident strokes, showing a special talent not just for the SW house style, but for the epic films from Japan that inspired George Lucas back in the 70’s. Johnson has worked in distinctly different styles and genres, and shows a real gift for this kind of pulpy, well-paced adventure stuff. As much as the film hews to its own traditions, I can also say that it feels like the first film in the series that breaks out of its own clichés.

I remember back in the day, reading the Rolling Stone interview with Lucas, where he talked about his plans to bring in new filmmakers to bring their gifts to the franchise. I remember thinking, Wow, I’d love to see a Steven Spielberg Star Wars movie! With the demands of a new film every year, filmmakers like Johnson and J.J. Abrams are getting to do just that.

Maybe, just maybe, the best is yet to come.

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Music bars/clubs/cafés

12/20 Wednesday

Djug Django | 6:00 PM-9:00 PM, 12/20 Wednesday | Lot 10 Lounge, 106 S Cayuga St, Ithaca | (Hot Club Jazz, Blues, Swing) Sacred Chanting with Damodar Das and Friends | 7:00 PM-9:00 PM, 12/20 Wednesday | Varying Locations, , | Refer to Damodar Das Kirtan on Facebook for location schedule.

Folk ‘n’ Kava | 7:30 PM-10:30 PM, 12/20 Wednesday | Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar, 139 W State St, Ithaca | (Nate Marshall and Friends play Traditional and Original Folk, Jazz and Gospel Music) Wednesday Live Music | 8:00 PM-, 12/20 Wednesday | Rulloff’s, 411 College Ave, Ithaca | (Local bands, Soloists) Reggae Night with The Crucial Reggae Social Club | 9:00 PM-, 12/20 Wednesday | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | (Reggae)

12/21 Thursday

Dino Losito, Brian Murphy, Terry Light | 6:00 PM-7:30 PM, 12/21 Thursday | Collegetown Bagels, East Hill Plaza, Ithaca | (Jazz) Mike Titlebaum Quintet | 8:00 PM-10:00 PM, 12/21 Thursday | Madeline’s Restaurant, 215 E State St, Ithaca | (Jazz, Swing)

12/22 Friday

Dead Night at The Dock | 9:00 PM-, 12/22 Friday | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | (Grateful Dead covers)

12/24 Sunday

Ithaca Jazz and Blues Jam | 4:00

PM-7:00 PM, 12/24 Sunday | Mix Kitchen and Bar, 205 Elmira Road, Ithaca | All jazz and blues instrumentalists and vocalists welcome. Hosted

by Dennis Winge Trio.

12/26 Tuesday

Tuesday Bluesday with Dan Paolangeli & Friends | 6:00 PM-, 12/26 Tuesday | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | (Blues, Rock, Every Tuesday) Professor Tuesday’s Jazz Quartet | 8:00 PM-10:00 PM, 12/26 Tuesday | Madeline’s Restaurant, 215 E State St, Ithaca | (Jazz) I-Town Jazz Jam | 9:00 PM-11:59 PM, 12/26 Tuesday | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | (Local jazz

I thaca Time s

Friday, 12/15 to Thursday, 12/21. Contact Cinemapolis for Showtimes and for Fantastik Film Screening times Darkest Hour | During the early days of World War II, the fate of Western Europe hangs on the newly-appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Hitler, or fight on against incredible odds. | 125 mins PG-13 Downsizing | A social satire in which a guy realizes he would have a better life if he were to shrink himself. | 135

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri | A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter’s murder when they fail to catch the culprit. | 115 mins R Lady Bird | The adventures of a young woman living in Northern California for a year. | 93 mins R Regal Ithaca

Wednesday, 12/13 , to Tuesday, 12/19. Contact Regal Ithaca for Showtimes Ferdinand | A wise cracking goat and three hedgehogs try to help a giant but gentle bull escape from his captors. | 108 mins PG

The Disaster Artist | When Greg Sestero, an aspiring film actor, meets the weird and mysterious Tommy Wiseau in an acting class, they form a unique friendship and travel to Hollywood to make their dreams come true.| 104 mins R Star Wars: The Last Jedi | Having taken her first steps into the Jedi world, Rey joins Luke Skywalker on an adventure with Leia, Finn and Poe that unlocks mysteries of the Force and secrets of the past. | 143 mins PG-13 Just Getting Started | A two-hander action comedy in the vein of Midnight Run (1988), about an ex-F.B.I. Agent (Tommy Lee Jones) and an ex-mob lawyer in the Witness Protection Program (Morgan Freeman) having to put aside their petty rivalry on the golf course to fend off a mob hit.| 91 mins PG-13

Thor Ragnarok | Imprisoned, the mighty Thor finds himself in a lethal gladiatorial contest against the Hulk, his former ally. Thor must fight for survival and race against time to prevent the all-powerful Hela from destroying his home and the Asgardian civilization.| 130 mins PG-13

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle | Four teens find adventure as adults inside a video game that transports them to the jungle. | 119 mins PG-13

Coco | Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family’s ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to work out the mystery. | 109 mins PG

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jams, improv)

The Shape of Water | An otherworldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa’s life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment. | 123 mins R

The Greatest Showman | Inspired by the imagination of P.T. Barnum, The Greatest Showman is an original musical that celebrates the birth of show business and tells of a visionary who rose from nothing to create a spectacle that became a worldwide sensation. | 105 mins PG

Wonder | Based on the New York Times bestseller, WONDER tells the incredibly inspiring and heartwarming story of August Pullman, a boy with facial differences who enters fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time. |

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Murder on the Orient Express | A lavish train ride unfolds into a stylish & suspenseful mystery. From the novel

by Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express tells of thirteen stranded strangers & one man’s race to solve the puzzle before the murderer strikes again. | 114 mins PG-13 Justice League | Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. | 121 mins PG-13

Stage 12/20 Wednesday

The Little Prince | 7:00 PM-, 12/20 Wednesday | , Cooperstown High School, 39 Linden Ave | The Glimmerglass Festival will present Rachel Portman’s opera, The Little Prince. Based on Antoine de Saint-Exupry’s classic illustrated storybook, The Little Prince follows the journey of a pair of unlikely friends: a Pilot whose plane has gone down in the Sahara Desert and a magical young prince who, until now, has made his home on a nearby planet.

12/21 Thursday

A Christmas Carol | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/21 Thursday | fd7ceea5-deb657d1-916f-76391d547cf3, Hangar Theatre, 801 Taughannock Blvd | The Hangar Theatre worked with many local artists, actors and even brought in Cornell Professor, Aoise Stratford, to adapt Charles Dickens’ classic story.

ComedyFLOPs Presents: D*ck The Halls Holiday Improv Show | 7:00 PM-9:00 PM, 12/21 Thursday | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd | Comedy FLOPs’ presents our 2nd annual, “D*ck The Halls” holiday improv show! The FLOPs are partnering with The Dock to make Thursday the night for comedy in Ithaca. 75% of our suggested $5 donation go to area charitable organizations.

Comedy Night | 7:00 PM-, 12/21 Thursday | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd | (Improv, Stand up. Hosted by Comedy FLOPs) Drag Show with The House of Merlot | 9:00 PM-, 12/21 Thursday | The Range, 119 E State St | The bi-weekly drag show with The House of Merlot.

12/22 Friday

The Snow Queen | 7:00 PM-, 12/22 Friday | , The Cherry Artspace, 102 Cherry St | Adapted from

the Hans Christian Andersen classic, The Snow Queen tells the story of Greta, a brave young girl on a mission to rescue her best friend Kai from the clutches of the evil Queen, encountering along the way a friendly reindeer, a chatty raven, a feisty robber girl and a host of other curious characters.

12/23 Saturday

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/23 Saturday | Hangar Theatre, 801 Taughannock Blvd | Join the Hangar Theatre for Charles Dickens’ timeless tale of hope and redemption. Over a hundred years later, the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge’s transformation after visitation from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future remains more important and relevant than ever.

Notices 12/20 Wednesday

Foodnet Meals on Wheels and Subaru Share the Love Event | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/20 Wednesday | , , | Foodnet Meals on Wheels is proud to announce that it will be participating in the tenth annual Subaru Share the Love Event as a member of Meals on Wheels America“ one of four national Share

Overeaters Anonymous 12-Step meeting | 7:00 AM-8:00 AM, 12/21 Thursday | , First Unitarian Church (yellow house), 306 N. Aurora St. | Open “Big Book” 12-Step meeting. Contact Judy 319-0573 for info and accessibility. No matter what your problem with food--compulsive overeating, under-eating, food addiction, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, or overexercising: we have a solution. No dues, fees, weigh-ins.

12/23 Saturday

I need a future that’s big, a bank that keeps up.

113 mins PG

12/21 Thursday

the Love charitable partners supported through the promotion.

From now to January 2, 2018, Subaru of America will donate $250 for every new Subaru vehicle sold or leased to the customer’s choice of participating charity.

Participating Meals on Wheels America members, like Foodnet, will receive a share of the donation raised by Subaru in their state.

Men’s Group | 6:00 PM-, 12/20 Wednesday | , The LGBTQ Center, 73 Main Street | Men’s Group is a group for gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and straight ally men to get together to support one another. This group meets the third Wednesday of every month at 6 p.m.

Wednesday Night Ithaca Women’s Basketball Association | 7:00 PM-9:00 PM, 12/20 Wednesday | Lehman Alternative Community School, 111 Chestnut St | The league is non-competitive and fun and involves pick-up style playing. Check out the league’s website for more information: https://ithacawomensbasketball. wordpress.com/Â Salsa Night at Agava | 10:00 PM-1:00 AM, 12/20 Wednesday | , Agava, 381 Pine Tree Road | Join an awesome dance crowd at Ithaca’s signature Latin dance party. Arrive early, 10pm, for introductory Salsa dance lesson and

Beginner Bird Walks | 8:30 AM-, 12/23 Saturday | Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd | Guided bird walks every Saturday and Sunday morning, starting at 8:30 a.m., sponsored by the Cayuga Bird Club. Targeted toward beginners, but appropriate for all. Binoculars available for loan. Meet at the front of the building. http://www.cayugabirdclub. org/calendarÂ

12/25 Monday

Overeaters Anonymous 12-Step meeting | 7:00 PM-8:00 PM, 12/25 Monday | Just Be Cause Center, 1013 W State St | Open “Big Book” OA 12-Step meeting. Contact Leigh 379-4858.

No matter what your problem with food--compulsive overeating, undereating, food addiction, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, or overexercising — we have a solution. No dues, fees, weigh-ins.

Special Events

inspiring rendition of Charles Dicken classic story.

The evening will begin with passed hors d’oeuvres before guests are seated for a three-course dinner inspired by the Dickins tale as the show begins. The first course will feature Potato Leek Soup, followed by sliced New York Strip Steak served with haricot verts, Yorkshire pudding, and whipped potatoes. The children’s meal will feature Cheeseburger Sliders with French fries, and all guests will enjoy a selection of holiday-inspired confections.

The cost is $65 per person, aged 12 and older; $35 for children aged 5 to 11; and children aged 4 and under are complimentary. For more information and to make a reservation, please visit www.mirbeau.com or call 877-MIRBEAU.

12/26 Tuesday

Blast Off with Geology! Holiday Break Programs at the Museum | 10:30 AM-3:00 PM, 12/26 Tuesday | Museum of the Earth, 1259 Trumansburg Road | Blast Off with Geology!

Holiday Break Programs at the Museum of the Earth December 26-30, 2017 Museum of the Earth, 1259 Trumansburg Road, Ithaca, NY Are you looking for an adventure for your family over the holiday school break? Blast off with Geology! at the Museum of the Earth. These daily activities are in celebration of our “Mapping the Planets in Silk and Sound” special exhibit. They run Tuesday, December 26, through Saturday, December 30, 2017, and are included with Museum admission (free

12/20 Wednesday

Online Calendar

Dinner with Dickens & Friends at Mirbeau Inn & Spa | 6:00 PM-8:00 PM, 12/20 Wednesday | Mirbeau Inn & Spa, 851 W Genesee Street Rd | Mirbeau presents Dinner with Dickens & Friends from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. as part of the 22nd Annual Dickens Christmas in Skaneateles. Join the cast of A Christmas Carol for one of the inn’s most cherished holiday events.

Throughout the evening, performers from Scarlett Rat Entertainment will delight guests with an

so much more over at ithaca.com/ calendar. Never miss an event again.

‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’

The Cherry Artspace Through Dec. 23

The Hangar Theater Through Dec. 23

Back for its second year, The Snow Queen returns with brand new songs and numbers. Formerly at the Kitchen Theatre, this year The Cherry Artspace debuts the refined production at the new artspace. This play is an adaptation of a Hans Christistian Andersen tale, telling the story of a young girl on a quest to save her best friend from the evil snow queen.

(Photo provided)

In what hopes to be an annual winter tradition, the cast of the Hangar Theater guide you through the trials and tribulations of Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge as he looks to find meaning in this Dickensian classic.

(Photo provided)

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‘The Snow Queen’

Check out all of these events and

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Heads Up

ceremony Friday, December 1, 5-8pm.

Leanora Mims | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/22 Friday | New Roots Charter School, 116 N Cayuga St | Leanora Mims’ pieces depict African-American history and the black experience in the present day.

Holiday Event Roundup

by Matt Buttler

12/25 Monday

Winter Solstice Celebration - Let’s hope you picked up the paper early. Wednesday marks the day before the Winter Solstice, and ring in the shortest day of the year with the First Unitarian Society for a “participatory, non-traditional and creative celebration to mark the turn of the year and the beginning of a new one.”

Date: Dec. 20th at 7 p.m. at the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca on North Aurora Street Press Bay Alley December Holiday Market We all know what’s about to happen. Every store in town will be stuffed to the doors with lastminute shoppers, convincing themselves they’ve cracked a cheat code for discounts by waiting weeks when in reality they were just lazy. You’ve been lazy too, but you’ve got an out- Thursday night at Press Bay Alley, with local foods and gifts aplenty for any last minute shopping or just a fun few hours downtown after work.

gang of characters along the way to keep things interesting. Last year’s run sold out, so don’t miss the last chance to catch this show before next holiday season.

Date: Dec. 22nd and 23rd at 7 p.m. at the new Cherry Artspace on Cherry Street Free photos with Santa Claus - It’s a bit of a hike to either Binghamton or Elmira, but a free photo with Santa is worth at least a tank of gas or a bus trip. Maybe there’s some last-minute MetroPCS shopping to be done as well. As for why Santa won’t be coming to Ithaca’s MetroPCS store, let me just say: my investigation is

Date: Dec. 21st at 4:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. at Press Bay Alley on Green Street The Snow Queen at The Cherry - Now in its second year, the Snow Queen is about a girl named Greta’s quest to save her best friend, meeting a

for members--including YNAP).

No Place Like Space” Storytime Every day at 10 :30 am. Blast off this winter from The Museum of the Earth!

Gather around as we listen, look, sing and explore with picture books. Join us every day at 10:30 with your toddlers and preschoolers for an outer space experience including stories, activities, songs, and crafts.

Take off with Geology activities Every day from 1-3 pm. Celebrating our special exhibit “Mapping the Planets in Silk and Sound”, the Museum is

Online Calendar See this calendar and more events online at http://www.ithaca.com/

Health 12/23 Saturday

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous Weekly Meeting | 8:00 AM-9:30 AM, 12/23 Saturday | , Just Be Cause Center, 1013 W. State Street | Twelve-step recovery program for those who can’t control their eating.

No dues, fees,

ThisWeek

calendar/.

exploring the solar system every day between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with new activities every day.

Tuesday, Dec 26th Playing the field with Geologic time Since it is Football season we decided to discover the immense timescale that is Geologic time by comparing it to a football field. Make a first down by laying out Earth’s history on the Geologic Football Field. How many millions of years are that?

24

The

underway.

Date: Whenever, wherever

Date: Dec. 22 at 4 p.m.-6 p.m. at MetroPCS store in Binghamton and Elmira

A Christmas Carol - Catch the last two showings of A Christmas Carol at the Hangar Theatre, the first year in what could be a recurring tradition at the Taughannock Boulevard venue. There’s not much better than Charles Dickens’ classic tale to get even the Scrooge-est of anyone into the holiday spirit, especially when adapted by local playwright Aoise Stratford, whose had her work produced worldwide.

Ongoing - The only good Christmas song, “All I Want for Christmas is You” by the inimitable Mariah Carey, is a mere radio dial away during this time of year, usually appearing every 15-25 minutes and instantly washing away all the bad holiday songs in its wake. Be gone “Last Christmas” and “Christmas Shoes” and other slow and/or bad holiday songs. I need something that makes me spill my egg-nog and jaggedly cut the the gift wrap.

or weigh-ins. Long-term help for overeaters, undereaters and bulimics.

12/24 Sunday

Sacred Sunday Community at Yoga Farm | 9:00 AM-11:15 AM, 12/24 Sunday | Yoga Farm, 404 Conlon Rd | Sacred Sundays Community at Yoga Farm. All are Welcome.Discover Your Self & Awaken Your Kindest HumanityPray. Move. Sit. Connect.

Open Meditation | 10:30 AM-12:00 PM, 12/24 Sunday | , Foundation of Light, 391 Turkey Hill Road | All are welcome to meditate according to their own practice. It begins with 20 minutes of silent meditation, after which we read and discuss related texts. It ends with 15 or 20 minutes of silent or guided meditation. Beginners are welcome and instruction in basic meditation will be provided. There are chairs and cushions in our meditation room, but you are welcome to bring your own. Sessions are an hour and a

Illustrations By Marika Chew Lot 10 Lounge

Marika Chew will be showing her illustrations through December 31 (Image provided)

Date: Dec. 23rd at 7 p.m., Dec. 24th at 2 p.m. at the Hangar Theatre

half from 10:30 to noon.

Art 12/21 Thursday

It’s Mysterious Life, an appreciation of beetles by Carla DeMello | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/21 Thursday | 7397af8e-89c6-5e65-b1b70d3e5fe27f85, Buffalo Street Books, 215 N Cayuga St | Â Carla DeMello is an Ithaca artist. All her life, she’s worked and played with any material that catches her eye colorful, sticky, natural, malleable, goopy or beautiful. These paper sculptures pay tribute to the natural jewels of earth, beetles.

Something to hold on to | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/25 Monday | Community School Of Music And Arts, 330 E State St | Featuring submitted work from local artists.

The Many Names of Fall Creek | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/25 Monday | History Center, 401 E State St | The exhibit traces the path of Fall Creek from Groton City to Cayuga Lake, pausing at its small towns and tucked-away places to explore more than 200 years of Tompkins County history through photographs and maps. Each place name tells a story of the people who have shaped and been shaped by Fall Creek. Local historians will discuss place names in the hamlet of Forest Home and follow the romantic names on the earliest tourist trail along Ithaca Gorge.

12/26 Tuesday

Marika Chew | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/26 Tuesday | Lot 10 Lounge, 106 S Cayuga St | Marika Chew will be showing her illustrations through December 31. For more info visit http:// www.ARTeFLX.com.

12/22 Friday

The World Bewitch: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/22 Friday | , Hirshland Exhibition Gallery, Kroch Library, Cornell University | The exhibition features rare and unique books and documents —from 15th-century witch hunting manuals to 20th-century movie posters — and it examines themes such as gendered stereotypes, belief in night flying, shapeshifting, demonic pacts, and the witch epidemics that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands.

Seventh December Juried Show | 12:00 AM-11:59 PM, 12/22 Friday | State Of The Art, 120 W State St Ste 2 | More than 60 artists from the area will display paintings, drawings, mosaic, prints, sculpture and digital work.

Show dates: November 29-December 30, 2017, with a reception and awards

Got Submissions?

Send your events items – band gigs, benefits, meet-ups, whatever – to arts@ithacatimes.com.

Winter Solstice Celebration

First Illustration Society of Ithaca Dec 20th at 7 p.m.

Celebrate the shortest day of the year with the warm comfort of friends.

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ince 1981, the Ithaca Times has closed every year with the “Reader’s Writes” issue, featuring submissions from the most diverse writing staff at our disposal: you. Stories, poems, drawings and photographs are all welcome and complete artistic freedom is in your hands. It’s a platform for you to be heard beyond the letter’s page.me. It’s a chance for you to have a voice in the paper other than the letters page.

R e a de R s ’

This year’s theme is “Justice”

W Rites

As tradition dictates, any interpretation of what this word means to you is fair and, of course, a wide range of submissions will be accepted–just as long as you stay under 1,500 words. Send your submissions to Attn: Readers’ Writes, the Ithaca Times, PO Box 27, Ithaca, New York 14850 or email them in with a subject line of “Reader’s Writes” to editor@ithacatimes.com.

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BackPage

For rates and information contact Cyndi Brong at

PEACEFUL SPIRIT TAI CHI

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of the Finger Lakes

Holiday GreetinGs from

ithaca com

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