Archive: Around Town

Lansing is the happening place on summer Thursdays and Fridays.  Music fans fill Myers Park for Thursday night Concerts In The Park.  On Fridays they come to the smaller venue at Ludlowville Park.  Park Superintendent Steve Colt says this year's lineups for both venues are outstanding.  They boasts strong lineups of new and returning bands, and Colt says he is hoping the weather cooperates so folks can enjoy all of them.

"If you get a nice night down there it's special," he says.  "What I enjoy the most is observing everybody enjoying the night.  They hear the music, but it also becomes a social event.  That's great.  Sometimes you get wrapped up in your life and don't get a chance to see people and talk to them.  An awful lot of that does go on down there and that's great."

The average age of American farmers is teetering towards 60, while the percentage of farmers under the age of 40 has been in decline for decades.  And yet amidst this concern about an aging farm population and fears of rural exodus, a new generation of aspiring farmers is cropping up in the Finger Lakes.  Finding suitable farmland, however, is a daunting task—for beginners and established farmers alike.

In a 2011 national survey conducted by the National Young Farmers Coalition, nearly 70% of respondents identified land access as the biggest barrier to farming.  This is why in 2009, Monika Roth—the Agricultural Program Leader at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Tompkins County—decided to survey local landowners who were interested in leasing, selling, or sharing their land for agriculture.  If there was enough interest from the local community, Roth hoped to develop a LandLink database through which current or prospective farmers could be connected with appropriate landowners in the region to support land arrangements for successful farm businesses.

The Standing-Room-Only crowd wasn't there for the latest Hollywood blockbuster.  Instead they jammed the Lansing Town courtroom Tuesday to learn about converting to solar energy.  Until now installing solar power has been a vague, mysterious, pricey future notion for most people. Solar Tompkins is changing that perception, as the 80 people who packed the Town Hall can attest.  The largely volunteer organization is employing a winning strategy to get as many Tompkins County homeowners as possible off the grid by making it affordable and easy to install a solar power system.

"Our number one goal is increasing the rate of solar deployment," said Program Director Melissa Kemp.  "We have a particular goal this year of doubling the existing solar installed capacity in the whole county.  Right now we have about 300-plus residential solar systems in Tompkins County.  In the next 12 months we hope to double that."

Levi is a lovely 8 year old boy, who came to us through an unfortunate hoarding situation. When he came to our shelter, our med staff found that Levi is blind. However, he is one of the best adapted blind dogs we've seen so far. He can navigate his world using his other senses just fine! Because he cannot see, he can be a bit nervous in new situations and we believe he would prefer a quiet home without young children or rambunctious dogs. Once Levi gets to know you, he is quite sweet, and we have no doubt that his new family will love him. Come meet this sweet dog today and give him a second chance at a great life!

Visit the SPCA Web Page

v10i21

If you have been to Salt Point recently you have seen ongoing improvements that are turning the property into a family-friendly nature park.  Just this week donated picnic tables were installed near the lake, and wooden benches are planned.  Starting this year development of the park is being  funded by donations and grants, administered by the Friends of Salt Point (FOSP), a volunteer committee that is planning and executing improvements.  In tandem with developments on the point itself, FOSP launched a Web site in May to help vacationers and local residents plan visits.

"We want to give people a context for their visit so they understand the history, they understand what they're seeing, the extensive nature they are going to experience there," says webmaster Robert Rieger.  "The site is divided into introducing the location, helping people plan their visit, giving them some historical context, introducing them to the plants and animals, and updating them on new activities that are happening on the point."

Lansing High School hosted its second annual honor roll recognition evening Wednesday, May 28th.  Students on the LHS honor roll were invited to attend the event, which included a presentation by local entrepreneur Charlie Mulligan and an ice cream social.

Mulligan, founder and CEO of GiveGab, a website that helps individuals find opportunities to volunteer in activities that interest them, spoke on the importance of hard work, cooperation, and determination in achieving success.  Attending students were energized by Mulligan’s talk.

Cornell Plantations recently acquired a biologically significant 10-acre parcel at the headwaters of Cascadilla Creek, which is now part of its Ringwood Ponds Natural Area.  The purchase was made possible through a bargain sale and gift from John Semmler, and with financial support from the Town of Dryden.  With this acquisition, Plantations extended its protection to an area that has been long recognized for supporting locally and regionally important natural resources.

The Ringwood Ponds Natural Area is noted for its complex, rolling glacial topography, with steep slopes, kames, eskers, kettle hole ponds, and forested wetlands. The landscape is dominated by maple-beech forest, with smaller areas of oak-hickory, hemlock, and red maple swamp forest.  A large part of the forests have not been logged for over 130 years, and are considered near old-growth.

An unprecedented 15,000 dogs and cats found homes this past weekend at the nation’s largest free pet adoption event, Maddie’s® Pet Adoption Days, sponsored by Maddie’s Fund®.  The SPCA of Tompkins County participated in this annual two-day event by finding forever homes for 99 local dogs and cat and raising and estimated $75,000 for the SPCA of Tompkins County.

Now in its fifth year, Maddie’s® Pet Adoption Days spanned 591 cities in nine states across the country, including Ithaca for the first time.   Communities were buzzing with adoption events, and many locations had people lined up hours before their doors opened.

Get ready, Northeast Elementary School—Caren Arnold's second-grade "environmental ambassadors" are out to change your habits.

"Everyone needs to recycle and compost if we're going to make the world a better place," says Finley Schindler, summing up his teacher's half-year effort to turn her class into advocates who can make a difference.

"We all produce waste—about four pounds a day—and we get to choose what we do with it," Arnold says: recycle it, compost it or send it to the landfill.

The Ithaca Board of REALTORS® reminds the public to beware of scam artists, particularly on Craigslist. Scam artists are aggressively searching through public records to better disguise themselves as property owners or rental agents. This is not unique to Ithaca; these scams take place all over the country.

Criminals steal pictures of properties from legitimate real estate websites and then list them 'For Rent'. Then when a consumer calls about the listing, he or she is asked for personal information such as social security numbers and credit card information.

It's September, 1966, and 14-year-old Sunny is excited about the start of the school year. She has plans to get her friend Kaleb to teach her how to dance the Gouster Bop, and after that, she is going to get the attention of Steven Blake, a guitar-playing loner on whom she has a major crush. Things are looking sunny for Sunny, but she wonders how things will work out when her all African-American junior high hires its first white teacher, Mrs. Hedges.

The three teenagers have obstacles to overcome as they take their first steps as young adults, and Mrs. Hedges is eager to work with her new students but must find a way to escape her haunting past. Told with humor and humanity, SLASHES OF LIGHT is a unique look at coming-of-age and coming-to-grips with life's unexpected challenges and discoveries.

This spring ICSD students are getting fit.

By the end of May, more than 470 Ithaca City School District (ICSD) students across all elementary grade levels will have run a full marathon.

With the help of three separate Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) grants, students at Northeast, Fall Creek and Cayuga Heights Elementary Schools have been running and logging their distance each day, with the goal of running 26.2 miles—a full marathon—by the end of this month. Their training will culminate when students from all three schools run in the Ithaca Festival Mile race on May 29.