ithacation

Last week as I headed back to collegetown from class on North campus, I decided to take a bit (read: 1.5 hours worth) of a detour. Instead of taking the direct route down East Avenue to the engineering quad, I wove my way around Beebe Lake and through some hidden parts of central campus (even central campus has its secrets, I’ve recently discovered). Armed with my camera, my goal was to document the autumnal scenery along my route, since this is sadly my last fall at Cornell. The pictures that follow document the trek. All photos are linked to their individual flickr pages.

Last weekend was Cornell’s annual trustee weekend, during which the board of trustees and lots of VIP alumni return to campus to learn about what’s going on and to make decisions about the University’s future. One of those trustees was trustee emeritus H. Fisk Johnson, current chairman and CEO of S.C. Johnson (”a family company”), and notably one of two people in Cornell’s history to receive five degrees from the University. That’s some serious loyalty to your alma mater.

While Fisk was in town, he gave a talk on global consumption trends and screened a film produced by his family and his company about ten years ago. While I wanted to attend both events, a class got in the way of his consumption talk, so I made it a point to attend the film screening. The movie, Carnaúba: A Son’s Memoir dealt with Fisk’s father, Samuel C. Johnson, who decided in the 1990s to retrace his father’s footsteps; Herbert F. Johnson, Sam’s father and Fisk’s grandfather, had taken a trip to Brazil in 1935 in search of a sustainable source of Carnaúba wax, which was the main ingredient in the company’s wax products. The Carnaúba Palm was found in the northern parts of Brazil, and during his trip down there, Herbert Johnson set up research and production facilities along with schools for local populations in Recife.

I was immediately drawn to the film after reading the two-line description in a Daily Sun ad earlier in the week; here was a movie that dealt with so many of my interests: aviation, travel, Brazil, agriculture, Cornell, and the list went on. Entering Bailey Hall, I noticed that very few (maybe five at most) students had shown up for this screening. I was surrounded by Cornell administrators, trustees, and VIP alumni, and I was expecting something along the lines of a glorified, lengthened advertisement for S.C. Johnson. Sure, it definitely painted the company in a positive light, but the underlying theme of the importance of connections between parents and their children, paralleled by beautiful cinematography and an incredible story of adventure, all combined to produce a surprisingly striking production that left many in the audience teary-eyed by the time the lights came back on.

I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Fisk following the screening and I took the opportunity to explain how I could connect with the film on so many different levels; my experiences and observations in the Amazonian state of Pará played a significant role in my decision to study International Agriculture & Rural Development at Cornell. Fisk gave me a copy of the DVD to share with my friends and family, and I plan on doing just that; my rave reviews have generated some interest among those I know, and not just those who are fascinated by things like reconstructing a Sikorsky floatplane from the 1930s and flying it to Brazil.

If you ever come across the film or have the opportunity to view it, I highly recommend it. It’s a great story of family, adventure, discovery, and legacy.

For fall break last week, I headed north of the border with a fellow Sun editor to visit a friend from home who goes to school in Montréal. While I had visited her a couple of times before, I’ve always visited at the beginning of January when her spring semester is just starting and the mercury refuses to budge above 15F. Visiting during a more comfortable time of the year allowed us to explore the city for once, not to mention experience the autumn scenery on the six hour drive. And, since I was definitely not alone in my choice of fall break destination, I met up with three other Cornellians at a pub in Montréal, continuing the trend of the world being full of Cornellians wherever I happen to be (Shanghai, the Caribbean, JFK airport, etc.).

Fall break always seems to come at the point when your sleep schedule has been squeezed into the strangest hours, when exhaustion from piles of prelims and papers makes every day pass increasingly slowly, and when the idea of a change of scene is very welcome. While it was strange not heading home to Connecticut for fall break, the two extra days off were still exactly what I needed: a relaxing distraction. On Monday (Columbus Day in the US and Canadian Thanksgiving up north), I accomplished absolutely nothing besides procuring some Montréal bagels for my apartment; accomplishing nothing after weeks of tackling a seemingly infinite to-do list is a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

Upon my return to Ithaca, I was, of course, met with the consequences of my inactivity: a wall of work (some that I knew about, some that seemed to appear from nowhere) that made the short week seem painfully long. Also adding to that stress was the fact that it snowed on Wednesday. Not cool. Now I’m back into the swing of things, trying to tear down the post-it notes on the wall behind my computer as quickly as I put them up. At least it’s not snowing anymore.

As I pulled myself out of bed at the all-too-early hour of 9:30 yesterday morning (c’mon…it WAS a Monday…and my roommates and I were inexplicably glued to the TV for a late-night showing of Titanic on Sunday night…), parts of my arms and back were unusually sore. What could I have possibly done yesterday? I was at the Sun most of Sunday night, but putting out a newspaper doesn’t exactly qualify as strenuous physical activity. After my short term memory stopped failing me, I remembered: Phi-Tug.

Phi-Tug is a philanthropic event put on every year by Phi Kappa Tau fraternity that puts all-male, all-female, and co-ed teams against each other with the ultimate goal of determining a campus tug-of-war champion in each of the three divisions, all while raising money for Hole in the Wall Camps. As a freshman, I had seen the event happening, but this year was my first as an active participant. A bunch of friends from around campus came together to form a team we called “The Humble Tuggers”.

We took on such formidable foes as the choir, a sorority that decided to make a co-ed team, and other random groups from around campus. The all-male and all-female divisions consisted mostly of teams from fraternities and sororities, respectively. One major exception was the hilarious yet intimidating team fielded by the varsity wrestling team, which, not surprisingly, took the trophy in the all-male division. At one point, the six wrestlers even beat a team of twelve guys. I’m glad they weren’t in our division, because we ended up taking the trophy home in the co-ed division. By the end of the competition, the quad was a bit muddier than when we had arrived, but Cornell had determined its 2009-2010 tug-of-war champions. (Our strategy? On the count of three, all pulling together in an attempt to destabilize the opponent; it worked almost every time.)

And so began and ended my career of garnering ‘athletic’ accolades at a Division I school.

I was wearing shorts last week, if I recall correctly. Ithaca was still basking in the seemingly endless sunshine that, in a normal year, would have ceased to exist after orientation week (or so it always seems…).

Then came this week. The mercury plummeted and the skies turned grey; we won’t be making it out of the 40s today, and the wind chill is in the mid 30s. Maybe not so coincidentally, this week marked the unofficial start of prelim season. Every professor on campus feels the need to get at least one major test or assignment in during the couple of weeks leading up to our long Columbus Day weekend. Seats will become harder to come by in the library, partially because nobody wants to play frisbee on the arts quad when it’s 37 and drizzling. Soon enough, though, we’ll have a long weekend to recharge. Judging from what I’ve heard from my fellow Daily Sun editors, I wouldn’t be surprised to run into friends on the streets of Montréal in a couple of weekends.

Ask any Cornell student their favorite, secluded spot on campus and they’ll take no longer than a couple of seconds coming up with an answer. When I arrived on campus, I was confronted with the unexpected yet pleasant reality that I would run into people I knew nearly everywhere I went. This was great for social life, but sitting down in Olin Library’s Libe Café to get some work done has never yielded more than two minutes of concentration. It’s guaranteed that at least two fellow Daily Sun staffers or editors (Sunnies) will be seated nearby; in the blink of an eye, all of us will be talking and none of us will be working. This can be a problem, and that’s where the niche comes in.

My sophomore year, I discovered the perfect spot. Located in the basement of Warren Hall, conveniently two doors down from my advisor’s office, the Alfalfa Room was one of the few cafés on campus where there was always an available seat — a far cry from the hustle and bustle of Libe Cafe. I could escape to this consistently overheated corner of campus to eat, drink, and be merry studious. The staff there was always friendly and the room, while modernized to a degree, still had an old poster in the wall showing the Ag Quad from above — about 50 years ago.

Returning to my niche once classes started up again this semester, I was shocked to encounter locked doors, and through those doors was not a vibrant cafe but a new storage area for excess office furniture. While I’m sure the Alfalfa Room’s closing has to do with university-wide budget cuts and upcoming plans to renovate Warren Hall, I felt lost. I’m still feeling out new spots on campus, but the one that felt like home is now relegated to the history books — if there are history books about obscure Cornell Dining facilities, that is.

H1N1 has been a hot topic on campus since last April, but with the tragic death of junior Warren Schor last Friday, the nation’s eyes were turned on our campus as a prime example of how the flu is affecting colleges across the country. Freshmen who only recently discovered where their classes are held are being confronted with yet another stressful element to add to the already taxing transition to college life: a pandemic.

The response can be seen everywhere. Gallons of hand sanitizer are strategically positioned at every conceivable nook and cranny on campus. Cornell is branding small bottles of hand sanitizer with the University’s logo and distributing them to students living in on-campus housing. Today’s career fair in Barton Hall was a handshake-free event (see inset photo). Cornell’s infamous, massive sleepover for season hockey tickets has been called off. The list goes on.

While the fear of becoming seriously ill is definitely present in everyone’s mind, the real concern among most students seems to be fear of missing so much class. How will I ever catch up after being bed-ridden for a week? Those in-class quizzes, essays, readings, discussions are sure to add up. There are plenty of students circulating themselves on campus for that reason; they’re probably better off in bed, but they can’t stand to get so far behind. My professors have been somewhat understanding of students’ illness, but the reality is that most of the class is still showing up and there’s material that needs to be covered. It’s sometimes difficult to strike a balance, but in the interests of your fellow students, I ask that the swined-out zombies hacking up a lung on campus take a while to recover at home.

At the offices of the Daily Sun, staffers and editors are under strict orders to keep away if they show even the first signs of swine flu. If the entire editorial board were to become sick all at once, putting out a daily paper would be quite a herculean task. That’s why the top drawer of the photo department’s desk is now home to some heavy duty antibacterial wipes.

Here’s to hoping it doesn’t get much worse.

[Photo: Mark H. Anbinder]

Returning to the US last December after a semester in South America, I felt comfortable with my ability to converse in Spanish. I listened to podcasts and read the news in Spanish to retain as much as possible as I went through a semester and summer with little practice and no Spanish classes.

Now, for the 2009 fall semester, enter Portuguese.

I’d been to Brazil for ten days in high school and had found that if I added a funky accent to my Spanish vocabulary, I could get by well enough such that people could kind of understand what I was trying to say. Reading was no problem, but when it came to comprehending the words coming out of a native speaker’s mouth (and actually correctly pronouncing the language), I was lost.

Come the first class of PORT 2090 two Thursdays ago, I had minimally prepared myself by a) occasionally listening to the weekly BBC Brasil news podcast in Portuguese and b) having remembered to bring my Lonely Planet Brazilian Portuguese phrase book up to Ithaca. Our first several 75 minute classes have been devoted entirely to the pronunciation of vowels, diphthongs, and some consonants. Easy enough, I assumed, as someone who’s developed a decent Spanish accent.

But no. The sounds that letters and combinations thereof can make is mind-boggling. Our class of 18 has about half native English speakers and half native Spanish speakers, yet both parties seem to encounter some issues when trying to correctly distinguish between an a, an â, an ã, and an á. Add to that the fact that a simple change in accent mark on one letter can change the entire meaning of a word, and you have a recipe for confusion. That’s why we’ve spent four classes so far covering the basics, without even touching on the most basic of vocabulary. For example, the whole concept of nasalization (or, in Portuguese, nasalização) is new to all of us and requires the use of parts of the nose, mouth, and throat that English and Spanish have never dared to make sounds with.

My goal for the end of the year in this (year-long) course is to be able to return to Brazil one day and encounter many fewer furrowed brows.

On Monday, I returned to resume life on the hill after a summer that included a heartbreaking lacrosse defeat, an engaging internship, a kayak crossing of Long Island Sound, and a cross-country road trip, among other things. Despite all of that excitement, I was ready to return to campus for my senior year. At this point, very little of me wants college to come to an end, but I expect to come to terms with the looming sense of finality as the semester and academic year progress.

Upon my return, I found my apartment and set foot in it for the first time; my two roommates had found it, toured it, and signed the lease while I was abroad in Chile last fall. They, in turn, had studied abroad in Europe this past spring, so their arrival in Ithaca was the first time I had seen either one of them since May 2008 — that’s a long time.

After some much-needed trips to Target and Wegmans (along with the rest of Cornell), we were able to settle into our apartment and get back into the swing of things. Classes started on Thursday, so here’s a quick rundown of my lineup for the semester:

• PORT 2090: Portuguese for Spanish Speakers
• NS 4450: Food Policy for Developing Nations
• PHYS 1201: Why the Sky is Blue: Aspects of the Physical World
• PAM 2100: Introduction to Statistics
• IARD 4020: Agriculture in Developing Nations
• PE 1400: Body-Mind

Both Portuguese and Agriculture in Developing Nations continue through the spring semester; the latter will take me on a two-week tour of southern India over winter break — can’t wait! All of my college-specific requirements will be taken care of by the end of the semester, which will allow me to have a slightly less stressful senior spring.

Before the work piles up, I’ve had the chance to enjoy the beautiful weather we’ve been having recently. Sunday morning Farmers Market brunches can’t be beat.

That’s probably the best word to describe how any Cornell sports fan is feeling right now.

After a quick stop at a Rhode Island train station to pick up Tina, a fellow Daily Sun photographer, I returned to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts again today. The men’s lacrosse national title was on the line. Syracuse University was heavily favored heading into the contest, but Cornell came out with an early lead and preserved it (or at least a tie) for basically the whole game.

The 40,000+ people in attendance were witnesses to the kind of sporting event that will be shown on ESPN Classic for years and years to come. With Cornell up by three goals in the fourth quarter, I started to think, “oh wow, so this might just actually happen; Cornell could be national champions in just a few short minutes”.

Syracuse had other plans. One goal. Two goals. The third goal to tie the game came four seconds away from the end of regulation play. FOUR SECONDS. Backed by a vocal, orange-clad fan section, Syracuse scored first in sudden-death overtime, ending Cornell’s hopes for its first national championship title in men’s lacrosse since 1977.

Having watched from home in 2007 as, in the final seconds, Cornell lost at the hands of Duke in the NCAA men’s lacrosse semifinals, I couldn’t believe that this was happening again. I clearly remember standing up in my living room and screaming at my TV until I had practically lost my voice; I had never been an ardent lacrosse fan before. Cornellians across the globe had similar experiences today. The outcome appeared surprisingly good, only for Cornell’s chances of victory to be stripped by the now 10/11-time (depending on who’s counting) national title winners. Pillows were thrown at TVs, couch cushions were punched, and heads were hung low. The adrenaline didn’t subside for hours.

What was different this year? I witnessed it with my own eyes (see a slideshow of the day’s action here). Armed with cameras and surrounded by the familiar crew of professional photographers from Saturday’s game, I had a front row seat (is it still considered a seat if I was kneeling on the FieldTurf?) to what many Cornellians are calling the most devastating loss they’ve witnessed in the world of sports. Great. Now it’s etched into my brain, for better or for worse.

Lamenting aside, it’s important to recognize the incredible amount of talent and effort displayed by Cornell’s men’s lacrosse team this weekend and all season long. They came into the NCAA tournament as an underdog and performed beyond nearly everyone’s expectations as they took on the toughest competitors in the country.

Good season, guys. We’ll be back at Schoellkopf next spring to cheer you on to victory once again.