Free is my Favorite Price

Before the end of July and the conclusion of Cornell’s summer series events, I attended three more events: two Tuesday night performances at Schwartz and one Friday night arts quad concert.

The first performance at Schwartz was a violinist and a pianist. The first half of their concert featured Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. After a brief intermission, they played a half dozen shorter pieces that were more “fun.” They each performed a solo piece, then played a series of pieces with names like “Jane Shakes her Hair” and “Jim Jives” (I’m not kidding . . . this time). At the low end, a ticket to a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert costs over thirty dollars. This was free. Granted, the BSO is slightly more involved than two musicians, but this was a good substitute for the moment.

The second Schwartz performance was also an instrumental group, but of a slightly different style. They played klezmer music. Klezmer is a Jewish music genre from eastern Europe, originally played mainly at weddings and other celebrations. In terms of instrumentation, a klezmer group feels a little like the rejects from jazz band. Klez Project, the group that performed, featured a clarinet*, violin, tuba, drums, accordion, piano, and lute.

*There are jazz clarinetists, but typically featured as soloists, and many clarinets switch to saxophone for jazz band.

The surprise of the night came after the group finished their first couple of songs and the clarinetist was introducing the band members. I had thought one of the members looked vaguely familiar, but I think a lot of people look vaguely familiar. Then when he was introduced, I wasn’t listening very carefully, but I thought the clarinetist might have said a name I recognized, so I looked in the program, which I apparently hadn’t read very thoroughly. The percussionist was one of my p-chem professors.

That aside, the concert was fun, and the music was lively. The friends I went with and I were considerably younger than most of the audience, but that just means everyone my age missed out. Going to the bar takes money; running total for my night activities = $0.00.

As for the Friday night concert, Mutron Warriors held the distinction of being the only non folk band to perform this summer. Like at the Rockwood Ferry concert, my roommate and I went armed with a Frisbee and staked out a spot to throw the Frisbee around and listen to music. Another fun night in Ithaca for the grand total of zero dollars and zero cents. I can live with that.

Moral of the story: if it’s free and I’m free, I can probably be persuaded to go to it, whatever it is.

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

Here be Dinosaurs (and Trilobites)

Since the sun only chooses to exist in Ithaca during the summer, we’ve been trying to do a lot of outdoor activities on the weekends. However, some weeks ago it rained all day on a Saturday, so my roommate and I decided to pay a visit to the Museum of the Earth. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, besides something to do with rocks and the Earth, but it turned out to be fossils. Lots and lots of fossils.

Their website isn’t great about what to expect when you get there, but once you do show up, the exhibits are very well designed and organized. The main attraction is titled A Journey Through Time and as long as you enter from the correct end, it takes you chronologically through the geological eras. Each era/time period has an introductory sign giving an overview of dominant species, temperature, sea level, and major events. Then there are lots of fossils, and most of the time periods also have a short video.

A fun part of the museum is in one of the back corners. Besides coloring sheets, they have buckets of rocks. If you take the time to go through these rocks and happen to find a fossil, you will be allowed to take the fossil home with you. So I now have a bivalve fossil on my desk.

Near to the end, they have some dinosaur models (including a stegosaurus that’s in the process of being reassembled after being cut up to be moved to the museum) and a mastodon skeleton. The last section of the museum has you walk into an ice tunnel with descriptions of research being done now (some of it by Cornell scientists) about glaciers and global warming. As you walk out of the hallway, you find yourself back where you started.

For a few hours of entertainment and education, the price was reasonable, plus we got a student discount. It was just the right size for a half day excursion. We pretty much saw everything at a relaxed pace. There were also a good number of people in the museum. Not so many that it was crowded and we were constantly bumping into people or waiting to see things, but not so few that it felt like we were wandering through an abandoned building. It was just right, and it made for another successful adventure out to experience Ithaca.

Rockwood Ferry

Another series of events the School for Continuing Education puts on is Friday night concerts on the arts quad. Being Ithaca, the five groups performing this year – Rockwood Ferry, Not From Wisconsin, Joe Crookston, Mutron Warriors, and the Ruddy Well Band – are described as progressive chamber folk, chamber folk, folk, Afro-funk, and Americana/folk. Good thing I like folk music.

I made it to the first performance of the summer by Rockwood Ferry, and it wasn’t bad. It was free, so I really didn’t have anything to lose except some time and inner ear hair cell functionality. But my time is worth about minimum wage (you can make more money working in the dining hall than being a TA) and the sound was kept to a very reasonable level, so I came out ahead on both counts.

Friday after work, my roommate and I packed dinner and a Frisbee and headed over to the arts quad. When we arrived, a decent sized crowd had gathered to enjoy Rockwood Ferry’s progressive chamber folk songs. There were plenty of families who live in Ithaca, and children running around. We found a spot near the back of the crowd to sit down, enjoy the music, and eat dinner, which in my case consisted of the highly nutritious combination of a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a Boston kreme donut. A Dunkin Donuts just opened up in Collegetown, and as a New Englander, it was my duty to go get a donut. They’re not the best donuts I’ve ever had – that honor would have to go to freshly made apple cider donuts from a cider mill in Vermont – but . . . it’s a donut. I like donuts.

(Stage is behind the tree)

After dinner, we listened to a bit more music then broke out the Frisbee. We found a mostly clear patch where we played for awhile, but we were between two trees and on opposite sides of a sidewalk. We moved to a spot farther away but with much more clear space. The night’s festivities featured throws under the leg, t-rex Frisbee, stand-in-one-place Frisbee, left-handed Frisbee, one-handed Frisbee, and heave-the-Frisbee-as-far-as-possible Frisbee.

When the concert ended, it was getting a little dark to see the Frisbee, so we called it a night and went to do a bit of sunset chasing:

All around, it was a great end to the week and start to what would turn out to be a very busy weekend.

Over the Gorges and Through the Woods

In an effort to do all the summer things while 1) I have time and 2) the sun temporarily gets lost in Ithaca on its way to the Caribbean or Hawaii, my roommates and I spent a couple weekends in June hiking at Buttermilk Falls and Taughannock Falls. I’ve been to both multiple times, but I’ve never been one to pass up the opportunity to slog through mud, get bug bites, risk poison ivy, and sweat from places other than my palms and soles, all at the same time. During the summer, TCAT (the bus service) runs a route (the 22) that goes to some of the parks and state parks in and around Ithaca. This puts you at the mercy of the bus schedule, but I would rather have infrequent buses than no buses at all.

That said, for both trips we opted to catch the 22 at the Commons instead of taking a bus from Collegetown and transferring, partly because the weather’s too nice to not walk, and partly because last time I used Trip Planner to figure out a trip, they gave me one whole minute to transfer. Needless to say, the first bus was fifteen minutes late and the second bus was long gone by the time we finally made it to the transfer stop. So we took the bus and arrived unscathed at the state parks – and an extra perk: you don’t have to pay the vehicle entrance fee if the vehicle you’re entering the park on is the TCAT.

Buttermilk was pretty crowded, but worth it, unless you were looking for peace and quiet in nature, in which case, don’t go to a state park in the Finger Lakes region. Anywhere that’s hard to get to by car is a better choice. We had a rainy June (7.85 inches of rain; average is 5.06 inches), so the waterfalls actually had water falling down them, and the gorge was . . . gorges. After reaching the end of the Gorge Trail, we continued on the Bear Trail, had a snack, and went to see Lake Treman before heading back. We ended up being able to get a ride back to Collegetown, so we hung around the playground to play Frisbee (and try out some of the playground equipment . . . it wasn’t that crowded, we did not terrorize any children, and I am the size of an average 12 year old).

Overall, it was a nice (relatively) easy hike, even including the initial incline. Note that you are talking to the person who voluntarily takes seven flights of stairs at once to get to the top floor of Olin Library and walks to Wegmans for fun. I would still consider it a hike due to the elevation change and the dirt and stone path.

What I would not consider a hike is the Gorge Trail at Taughannock. If any random person can unload a stroller from the back of their SUV and casually roll their child down the path, I refuse to call that hiking. Because we were looking for something a little longer than the Gorge Trail, we took the Rim Trail at Taughannock. Besides being an actual hike, it’s also a lot less crowded than the Gorge Trail. You get some nice views you wouldn’t otherwise get, though one viewpoint is at a parking lot (but it’s scientifically proven that the view is 300% better if you walk there yourself).

We were doing a bit of a speedrun at Taughannock because we needed to get back into Ithaca by early afternoon so some of our group could go watch Inside Out, so after reaching the top of the trail, we looped around the other side of the gorge and returned to our starting point with fifteen minutes to spare before the bus. We went to see the lower falls, waited around a bit, and then the TCAT arrived to whisk us away back to the Commons. Operation Hike Ithaca, parts 1 and 2: success.