Far Above Cayuga’s Waters

During their first semester at Cornell, all the engineers are enrolled in a class that everyone just calls 1050 (ten fifty). It groups people together who have indicated an interest in similar engineering majors and tries to pair them with a professor and/or peer advisors (sophomore through senior volunteers) in that major. The class meets once a week and usually features such fascinating presentations as “Reduce Stress: Eat and Sleep” and “Plagiarism is Bad.” (Actually, the engineering ethics presentation is pretty interesting. But seriously – I’m tired because I didn’t sleep? I had no idea. Tell me more.)

One of the fun 1050 sessions we had was a tour of the clock tower. A chimesmaster showed us the practice room, the chimes museum, and finally, after climbing 161 steps (the number behind the 161 Things), the chimes themselves. At the end, after enjoying the view from the top of the clock tower, a few of us who had remained behind were allowed to play the hour bells. It was unhypothetically exciting.

Before this summer, I’d been back up to the chimes once or twice (for sure at least once to a morning concert back before I started doing problem sets at 1 in the morning). This summer, my roommates and I have been to a couple of the special Saturday night concerts. The first one featured music by pop divas (their words, not mine) and the second Disney songs. The concerts are supposed to be around sunset, and both times we’ve gotten some sunset colors, but nothing spectacular because of clouds.

Still, you get views in every direction from the clock tower: the arts quad to the north, Cayuga Lake to the northwest, West campus and Ithaca to the west, and to the south, Collegetown, and, last but not least, Olin Hall.

Aerial view of Olin.

The first concert was well-attended, but not crowded. The second concert, on the other hand, was packed. I suspect someone told the summer college students, because there were whole groups of them recording things on their iDevices and taking selfies everywhere. Kids these days. I’m hoping to go back for another morning concert, because those start at 7:45 am and it’s pretty likely you’ll get a private concert. If I time it right, I might be able to see sunrise from the clock tower. If only I can crawl out of bed on time . . .

Sunset-ish colors over Cayuga Lake