Twice a year, an old warehouse on Esty Street in Ithaca is home to one of the country’s largest used book sales, put on by the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library (http://www.booksale.org). Each sale takes place over three weekends and includes more than 250,000 books, CDs, DVDs, records, and puzzles. There is also a collector’s room for rare or signed books. Every day of the sale the prices get lower, until on the final day it’s $1 a bagful.

I attended my first sale this fall, during its second weekend. Over the past year, stories from faculty and fellow English majors of the sale’s enormity made it something of a legend in my mind. One woman, a professor told me, bought a first edition of a rare Vladimir Nabokov book for less than a dollar (it was worth several hundred). Driving to the sale, I saw people carrying boxes of books for a five-block radius; my excitement increased.

But when I arrived, the legend that I had built up in my mind began to fade. The building looked run down, and it seemed smaller than I had expected. I waited in line for my chance to enter, trying not to feel disappointed.

But when I got inside, the ceilings were high and the building extended back farther than I’d assumed it would. I was handed a bag and a map with seventy subject areas. I could smell the old pages of thousands of books. All I had been told was true. I made my way to the far left corner—literature and short stories—and picked my way slowly through the titles. An hour and a dozen books later, I found myself in the collector’s room; the shelves were a little bare. I searched, not seeing much that interested me, until I found the title: Pnin, by Nabokov. It was a first edition, for $24. I had read it for a class I took as a junior—a book that Nabokov wrote while teaching at Cornell.

— Justin Reed ’09

I mumbled “good morning” to my housemate at six a.m. as we crossed paths on the way to the bathroom. She was getting up; I was going to bed. After more than three years of college, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am genetically predisposed to procrastination. Cornell alums have told me that these four years are when you learn about yourself; I now know that it is pointless for me to attempt a paper more than twelve hours before the deadline.

My procrastination is not only applicable to writing essays. I have yet to apply to graduate school. However, as I wrote “grad application” in my planner for the tenth consecutive day, I realized that maybe I’m not procrastinating so much as denying the fact that I’m leaving Cornell.

Sure I’ll miss the classes and the people, but what scares me most is that I will no longer come home to eight other girls. After graduation I will have only one-ninth of the clothes I now have. If my printer breaks, I can no longer e-mail my paper to a friend twenty feet away—and if my heart breaks, my bed will no longer become a pile of girls and chocolate.

After three years of living in the same crumbling estate on the corner of Eddy and State streets, we have accumulated a lot of—for need of a printable word—stuff. Our fridge is covered in postcards sent to each other last summer, and the kitchen counter is lined with nine jars of peanut butter. I don’t know what it’s like to come home without stepping over a mountain of sneakers in the doorway.

In an article about sorority house mothers, the Daily Sun investigated whether there is evidence to support the rumor that ten ladies living under one roof constitutes a brothel under New York State law. (Read it at http://cornellsun.com/node/29771.) The Sun confirmed this to be an urban legend. Still, while two-thirds of us maintain steady distance relationships—and we spend each weekend traveling with the track team rather than prowling Collegetown—the idea of nine girls under one roof still raises some eyebrows.

I am not a sentimentalist who will be crying at graduation because I’m no longer a student. To be honest, I’m tired of hearing the word “prelim,” let alone studying for them. While I appreciate the opportunity of studying at such an esteemed university, I have to admit that my single greatest fear of leaving campus is the prospect of living alone.

                                                                                                                 — Aeriel Emig ’09

When alumni descended on Cornell from around the world for Homecoming, Bill Maher ’78 was among them, as the weekend’s headline act. While the host of HBO’s “Real Time” didn’t pack Barton Hall, a few thousand people did show up to see him.

As the show began—thirty minutes late—the lights went out and the screens darkened. The audience, now glowing red from the stage lights, began to cheer. But they soon stopped as a trailer played for Maher’s upcoming movie, Religulous. A few boos erupted from the crowd, who presumably were more in the mood for stand-up comedy (at $15 to $25 per ticket) than for a promotion and another delay. When Maher finally took the stage, he was met with loud applause, but there were still moments when the crowd seemed put off.

The predominantly young and left-wing crowd appreciated Maher’s hilarious, often vulgar, always liberal commentary on the state of America. (Check out his interview with the Daily Sun.) His main topics, sex and politics, melded together in a critique of Republican and Democratic infidelity. Inevitably he attacked John McCain and Sarah Palin, with jokes on topics ranging from adult diapers to moose hunting.

Until he asked if there were any McCain supporters at the show. There were a few subdued cheers, which Maher met with ridicule. After lukewarm response to a series of jokes about (of all things) corn lobbyists, he attacked the crowd as a whole, saying, “You are easily the most lethargic audience I’ve ever played.” Finally, referring to the trailer at the show’s opening, Maher went on an extended rant against organized religion. It was often funny and filled with clever comments, but at times took on a harsh and unwarranted pedagogical tone.

Except for these few moments, the show was an undeniable success. Maher mixed humor with political concern, the key to getting the younger generation aware of and involved in national issues. His opinions may have been controversial, but they were well-informed, well-thought-out, and aimed toward the goal of improving the country. Unfortunately, a few alienating comments stripped away some of the impact his insights could have had.

With graduation fast approaching, I’ve realized that by the time I graduate, I (or more accurately, my parents) will have spent more than $120,000 on tuition. And this hefty price tag does not even include the cost of housing or food, or the ten cents I’m charged for every page I print and every copy I make at the library.

However I believe that, for the most part, I do get my money’s worth at Cornell—because I take advantage of free stuff around campus.

First, I’ve developed a knack for finding free food. The best time to stop by the cafés to scavenge is at the end of the weekend. I once got a couple of (mostly) fresh croissants from Libe Café around 11:30 p.m. on a Sunday. Free food is also offered at university-sponsored events. Lectures are usually followed by a reception, often with treats from Collegetown Bagels and sometimes even drinks. Events promoted by the career advising offices tempt students to fill out surveys with the reward of free Cornell Dairy ice cream.

After food, the other thing a college student needs is school supplies. And while I haven’t yet found a way around printing and copying expenses, I have discovered a great supply of free pens—at Gannett Health Center. I grab only one pen each time on my occasional visits, but I make sure to hold onto it all semester.

But the most interesting way Cornell students get free stuff is through the Collegetown street economy. My roommate has found countless perfectly good items that people have discarded on the street, including our grill, which provided us with countless summer evenings of S’mores and grilled corn. Recently, I contributed to the street economy by placing a somewhat broken but still usable chair outside my house, with a “free” sign. The chair was gone in less than a half hour.

At first I was embarrassed about taking pens from Gannett or food from Libe. But then I embraced the stereotype of the poor college student and realized that I can only use this excuse for so long—eight more months, to be exact. I’m going to take advantage while I can.

View Larger Ma One of my favorite things to do to people who are new to Ithaca is drive them down
View Larger Map">
View Larger Map">Cascadilla Park Road and watch them freak out. There’s no reason to take the side-street unless you live on it. But it’s such a weird experience that I’d recommend all Ithacans try it at least once.

Starting just off Stewart Avenue, the road switch-backs down the north side of the Cascadilla Creek Gorge to University Avenue near Linn Street. It’s a public road, owned and maintained by the City of Ithaca , and it’s absolutely terrifying to drive.

First, there’s the creepiness factor. The only way to get to Cascadilla Park Road is through the Ithaca City Cemetery on Dewitt Place. It’s beautiful as cemeteries go, but still full of dead people.

Second, as Dewitt Place abruptly ends, it confronts drivers with an unnecessary stop sign, as the only direction in which pavement continues is right and down. Short of attempting an eleven-point turn, there’s no way to escape the narrow passage. You have to ride it out. This is the point at which—realizing that they have no control over their situation—most passengers start to sweat.

Third, there’s the potential for totalling your car and yourself. Cascadilla Park Road is a two-way street, but in most places there is barely enough room for one car to get through, let alone two. The road doubles back on itself several times. So unless you want to end up in someone’s living room, your top speed has to stay around 15 mph. I think perhaps this is a safety precaution the road’s designers built in. Instead of making the road wider in hope of preventing collisions, they seem to have accepted that crashes would happen, and then worked to ensure that none of them would happen at speeds faster than that of a riding lawnmower.

Still, it’s thoroughly frightening to come around one of the narrow corners and see your own car reflected in the windows of a house built too close to the road. By the time I get to University Avenue and the end of the road, my passengers have usually embraced the road’s rollercoaster appeal. They say, “Let’s go again.”

— Ian Holliday

People generally hate Mondays. But the problem on campus isn’t Monday—it’s the day before.

The weekend starts on Thursday, because after the previous four full days who goes to class on Friday? It’s also a misdemeanor to study on Friday and Saturday; even the libraries seem supportive of this law, closing their doors early and encouraging the children of Cornell to go out and play. Consequently students often begin Sunday mornings realizing they have an eigh-page paper due the next day or 300 pages of biochem to plow through, all while brainstorming innovative ways to cleanse the vodka flowing through their system.

On a recent Sunday, I and the other members of the Cornell men’s and women’s cross country teams were up at 7:30 a.m. (without hangovers but also without much sleep) to volunteer at the Ithaca 5 & 10, an annual road race sponsored by the Finger Lakes Runners Club. We all grumbled on the drive to Ithaca High School while clutching our coffee cups. But once we pulled into the parking lot and saw the balloons arching over the finish line and the smiles from the local runners, I realized maybe Sunday mornings aren’t so bad after all.

Every year members of the cross country teams serve as crossing guards, cheering on those in Tompkins County crazy enough to also love running. We positioned an athlete at each intersection along the course, covering the roads from Stewart Park to the Commons. Some drivers were confused, and others annoyed, that a twenty-one-year-old would ask them to detour to avoid hitting the runners. But overall we felt welcomed. The runners waved and thanked us for helping out. Residents walking their dogs stopped to ask what was going on. One kind lady even invited me into her house to use her bathroom—without me even asking.

Our annual participation not only helps bridge the gap between the Cornell and Ithaca communities. It also forces us students to realize that life exists outside the university fortress. Although I did spend the rest of the day reading enough about Melville to sink the Pequod, I discovered that perhaps an antidote to Sunday downers is simply to leave campus.

Book readings generally start the same way: there’s a welcome, an introduction, and then the author reads from his or her work. But from the beginning, I could tell the first event of the Creative Writing Program’s 2008 Fall Reading Series would be different.

“There are some places in the world, where if you put a pen to paper, they put a gun to your head,” said Professor Emeritus of English Lamar Herrin. He was introducing Irakli Kakabadze (left), a writer in residence of Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA), an organization that brings threatened authors to the area for two years and provides them and their families with housing and other support. Cornell employs these authors part-time, and Kakabadze is a visiting professor in the government department. In his native Georgia, he had been jailed five times and beaten for his pacifist beliefs and political novels, plays, and poetry. (Click here for a podcast interview with Kakabadze.) If a person with this background was not enough to electrify the room, Herrin’s introduction did.

Amidst applause, Kakabadze took the stage of Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall. He is tall and thin, and that afternoon he wore a neat pinstripe suit that looked about a size too big. He removed his jacket, and nervously tried to adjust the microphone to the right height, finally asking for help. Kakabadze’s jitters vanished once he began to read.

He pumped his fist and pointed his finger; his voice boomed and softened with the ebb of his satirical story of love in Georgia. Although his work had been translated into English specifically for this reading, and although his thick accent sometimes got in the way of his words, his passion and biting sense of humor conveyed his meaning. To his left a violinist and a percussionist accented Kakabadze’s wit and drama and further bridged the language gap. After reading from a story, he half-sang, half-chanted a poem, first in his native language, then in English. The poem had been set to music; the recording played in the background and its lyrics echoed Kakabadze’s words.

At the end, the audience was his. After going to the reading, I am certain ICOA has chosen to protect and foster a deserving writer.

For a short time in the Seventies, the lofts and galleries in the downtown Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo were the center of an incredible burst of avant garde creative activity. The scene got its start when the iconoclastic jazz musician and composer Ornette Coleman moved into an abandoned factory on Prince Street, which he named Artist House. Soon, dozens of other musicians, painters, dancers, poets, and designers had gathered in SoHo to do work that would startle and inspire audiences and their fellow artists for years to come.

On September 23–24, Cornell hosted a unique reunion that brought many of the SoHo artists back together. Conceived by the painter Frederick Brown, whose daughter recently graduated from Cornell, the event comprised three panel discussions and an evening jam session (with President David Skorton on flute). The participants included the bassist Charlie Haden (above), a longtime Ornette Coleman collaborator, as well as musicians Sam Rivers, Henry Threadgill, Jerome Cooper, Malcolm Mooney, and James Jordan; visual artists Gregoire Muller and Anthony Ramos; photographer Anthony Barboza; dancer/choreographers Blondell Cummings and Megan Bowman Brown; poet Felipe Luciano; designer Jean Claude Samuel; and critic Stanley Crouch. The panel discussions, moderated by Cornell music professor Steve Pond and Brent Edwards of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia, covered both the history of the SoHo scene—which, as Frederick Brown noted, is largely undocumented—and its lasting influence on the arts.

Local coverage included articles in the Ithaca Journal and Cornell Daily Sun, and the events were filmed. In addition, University Archivist Elaine Engst says that the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections hopes to gather materials that document the Soho scene; discussions with the artists are under way.