January 11, 2017

F R E E J a n u a r y 11 , 2 0 1 7 / V o l u m e X X X V I I , N u m b e r 2 0 / O u r 4 5 t h Y e a r

Online @ ITH ACA .COM

Lib erty City Mayor Myri sanctuary to ck pledges the huddled masses

A warm place Amici house To sleep

arriving

Kurt

A violent

Elling

Davina &

Infinity

The vagabonds

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A local church stepped up to house the homeless

Filling a gap in Ithaca’s housing equation

Talking life and all that jazz with a legend

Exploring the depths of Unit Carruyo’s newest work

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Timeless energy in a feelgood format

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Newsline City of Ithaca

A Vision For Our Parklands

VOL.X X XVIIII / NO. 20 / January 11, 2017 Serving 47,125 readers week ly

A Winter Refuge For Ithaca’s Homeless Population

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Kurt Elling.............................. 11-16

Readying for the jazz performance of the year

NE W S & OPINION

Newsline . ........................................... 3-7 Sports ................................................... 10

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a st we ek, t he Cit y of Ithaca hosted “Party in the Parks!” at Greater Ithaca Activities Center and Cass Park ice rink. These public “parties” were two opportunities for kids and adults to express what they like best about the parks and what they would like to see more of in the city’s parks.

A s p a r t o f Ph a s e I I o f Ithaca’s comprehensive plan, Plan Ithaca: A Vision For Our Future (adopted September 2015) Indianapolis firm Pros Consulting was hired by the City to produce a Parks & Recreation Master Plan by summer 2017. This parks and recreation master plan is defined as a “5 – 10 year strategic planning document that looks at Ithaca’s park land, trails, recreation facilities, and recreation programs in order to meet the community’s changing needs.”

The master planning process—facilitated by Jeff Bransford and Austin Hochstetler from Pros Consulting—was initiated in November 2016.

They met with staff from the pa rk s de pa r t ment , It hac a Yout h B u re au , Tompk i n s County Convention and Visitors Bureau, community sports groups, and Friends of Stewart Park to discuss maintenance and management issues coupled with site visits.

Last week’s two-day “party” was “...the first of two public forums to listen and gather information in a variety of ways,” said senior project manager Hochstetler, “Youth are invited to imagine and draw pictures of what they want in the parks as a way of capturing their creativity in an informal “open house” format. This allows for a good cross section of adults [parents, caregivers] to attend and fill out comment cards, a survey and participate in a ‘dot exer-

Sanctuary In Numbers............... 8

Sizing up the mayor’s vow of defiance.

ART S & E NTE RTAINME NT

Film ....................................................... 12 Books .................................................... 13 Art.......................................................... 14 Music . ................................................... 16 Books .................................................... 17 TimesTable ..................................... 18-21 Classifieds..................................... 22-24 Cover Design: Marshall Hopkins

ON THE W E B

Visit our website at www.ithaca.com for more news, arts, sports and photos. Call us at 607-277-7000

Pastor John McNeill, of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, shows off the space where Ithaca’s homeless sleep on cold nights. (Photo: Nick Reynolds)

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n cold nights this winter, there’s been a new bedtime routine for the city’s homeless.

They start coming in from the cold starting around 10 p.m. each night, signing in at the Rescue Mission for their spot. By 11 p.m., they pile into a van with two members of the Rescue Mission staff and they’re off, six or seven people bound for St. Paul’s United Methodist Church and the confines of a wide open basement space, their bedding a couple woven blankets and a number of gymnastics mats to sleep on.

In years past, those seeking respite from the cold would simply have stayed at the mission or, in extreme circumstances, gone to sleep at a local motel. But over the past year, the equation has changed in a major way for the Rescue Mission and the rules it plays by have only complicated the matter.

W hen R icha rd B en ne t t came on as director of the Rescue Mission in June 2015, his first priority was to examine the needs of their clients and how best to serve them. With a large homeless population needing food, he expanded the

T a k e ▶ A Dramatic Protest On Thursday, January 19 at 5:30pm, members of the Ithaca Theater Community will be participating in a nationwide action with fellow mebers of the theater community - from Broadway to regional theaters to high schools and colleges and community theaters - to launch The Ghostlight Project. Inspired by the tradition of leaving a

hours of the food pantry and, with a large proportion of them needing a place to stay in the cold, he expanded the hours of the Friendship Center – the de facto “living room” of the mission – to the weekends, allowing them to set up cots on the floor for seven to eight people each night, keeping two staff members on hand to maintain the peace. In theory, they had found an effective system to address the needs of the community and do it efficiently.

However, it was around July last year where Bennett had begun to examine the reach of its roughly $800,000 budget and realized, changes had to be made. He cut $150,000 from continued on page 11

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“ghost light” on in a darkened theater, artists and communities will make or renew a pledge to stand for and protect the values of inclusion, participation, and compassion for everyone.

Participants will gather outside Kitchen Theatre Company at 417 West MLK/State Street at 5:15pm. ▶ GIAC’s Annual MLK Day Breakfast is happening on January 14th at 9 a.m. at

Beverly J. Martin Elementary School. This year’s theme will be This year’s theme will be “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ▶ Temple Beth El the Annual Evening of Jewish Storytelling, Poetry and Music on Saturday, January 28th at 7:30 PM. There is a donation of $4 or $8 per family.

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N i c k R e y n o l d s , M a n a g i n g E d i t o r , x 224

E d i t o r @ I t h a c aTi m e s . c o m K e l l y Wa t e r s , F i n g e r L a k e s M a n a g i n g E d i t o r , x 223

Edito r@Flcn.o rg J a i m e C o n e , W e b E d i t o r , x 232

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p h o t o g r a p h e r @I t h a c a T i m e s . c o m C h r i s H a r r i n g t o n , E d i t o r i a l a s s i s t a n t , x 217

a r t s @I t h a c a T i m e s . c o m C a s s a n d r a N e g l e y, S p o r t s E d i t o r , x 227

sports@Flcn.org St e v e L aw r e n c e, Sp o rt s Co lu m n ist,

St e v e s p o r t s d u d e @ g m a i l .co m M a r s h a l l H o p k i n s , P r o d u c t i o n D i r ec t o r / D e s i g n e r , x 226

P r o d u c t i o n @I t h a c a T i m e s . c o m G e o r g i a C o l i c c h i o, A cc o u n t R e p r e s e n t a t i v e , x 220

G e o r g i a @ I t h a c aTi m e s . c o m A l e x i s C o l t o n , A cc o u n t R e p r e s e n t a t i v e , x 221

A l e x i s @ I t h a c aTi m e s . c o m L i s a B i n g a m a n , A cc o u n t R e p r e s e n t a t i v e , x 218

l i s a @ I t h a c aTi m e s . c o m S h a r o n D a v i s , Cy n d i B r o n g , x 211 A d m i n i s t r a t i o n Chris Eaton, Distribution J i m B i l i n s k i , P u b l i s h e r , x 210

j b i l i n s k i @ I t h a c aTi m e s . c o m F r eel a n ce r s : Barbara Adams, Rick Blaisell, Nicholas BogelBurroughs, Steve Burke, Deirdre Cunningham, Jane Dieckmann, Amber Donofrio, Karen Gadiel, Charley Githler, Vaughn Golden, Warren Greenwood, Ross Haarstad, Rich Heffron, Peggy Haine, Les Jinks, Cassandra Palmyra, Lori Sonken, Elizabeth Williams and Bryan VanCampen.

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All rights reserved. Events are listed free of charge in TimesTable. All copy must be received by Friday at noon. SUBSCRIPTIONS: $69 one year. Include check or money order and mail to the Ithaca Times, PO Box 27, Ithaca, NY 14851. ADVERTISING: Deadlines are Monday 5 p.m. for display, Tuesday at noon for classified. Advertisers should check their ad on publication. The Ithaca Times will not be liable for failure to publish an ad, for typographical error, or errors in publication except to the extent of the cost of the space in which the actual error appeared in the first insertion. The publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising for any reason and to alter advertising copy or graphics deemed unacceptable for publication. The Ithaca Times is published weekly Wednesday mornings. Offices are located at 109 N. Cayuga Street, Ithaca, NY 607-277-7000, FAX 607-277-1012, MAILING ADDRESS is PO Box 27, Ithaca, NY 14851. The Ithaca Times was preceded by the Ithaca New Times (1972-1978) and The Good Times Gazette (1973-1978), combined in 1978. F o u n d e r G o o d T i me s G a z e t t e : Tom Newton

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INQUIRING PHOTOGRAPHER

By C a se y Mar tin

What’s your favorite cold-weather dish to make?

“Lentel soup ” ­—Lynne Jackier

“Beefy chili. It’s the ONLY way to go.” ­—Mike O’neill

“Potato Leak Soup.” ­—Pete Zach

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Officials Discuss Limits On Discussions

he Government Operations Committee of the Tompkins County Legislature is moving forward with a proposal to limit the amount of time legislators can speak during privilege of the floor to three minutes, the same amount of time permitted to members of the public who choose to speak during Public Privilege of the Floor at Legislature meetings.

L eg islator Da niel K lei n (D-Danby), chair of the Government Operations Committee, told the Ithaca Times that at its meeting December 7 the committee rejected most of the ideas included in the original, more lenient resolution, which was drafted by Legislator Rich John (D-Ithaca) and merely suggested limitations on speaking time, rather than requiring them.

The main change to John’s resolution was the removal of a clause stating that a legislator could continue speaking if four board members voted to allow it.

L eg islator C a rol Chock (D-Ithaca), vice-chair of the Government Operations Committee, said that she worried the votes would turn Privilege of the Floor into a popularity contest wherein those who had the most friends on the board would be allowed to do the most talking.

John said that his intention when submitting the original resolution was to provide a “buffet” of different suggestion for making the meetings shorter and more efficient.

“We ta lked about diver-

sity on the legislature as being important, and I believe that if we want working people or people with young children to serve, that’s very difficult if your meetings are over four hours long,” John said. “...We tend to cover things at the beginning of meeting in great detail and maybe not as much at the dregs of the meetings.”

Chock disagrees. “It is our jobs as paid representatives to spend time exploring viewpoints, and national and state news and viewpoints, not only those germane to those specific resolutions coming to us on the floor,” she said.

Privilege of the Floor, which takes place at at the beginning of every Legislature meeting, gives the legislators the opportunity to speak on the topic(s) of their choosing. At the December 6 Legislature meeting, seven of the 14 legislators took the opportunity to speak during privilege of the floor. Two, Anna Kelles (D-Ithaca) and Carol Chock (D-Ithaca) spoke for more than three minutes, but they both kept their comments under five minutes.

The original proposed resolution would have made changes to seven of the legislature’s rules for its conduct, which are based on Roberts Rules of Order.

The resolution includes a list of additional proposed changes, including but not limited to the suggestion that the chair of the Legislature have the authority to limit comments on an issue to a certain length of time per legislator, subject to a vote to remove the limit by a vote of

four or more legislators.

The resolution also paints a

Rich John & Carol Chock (Photo: Jaime Cone)

very different picture of legislative debate wherein legislators would begin their comments by stating whether they support or oppose the proposal on the floor. Those for and against it would alternate speaking. Legislators would not be permitted to reiterate points already made by legislators who share their same point of view, and if they have nothing original to say they would be limited to saying only that they are for or against the issue.

–Jaime Cone

Opening Arguments Heard In CMC Hearing

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“Minestrone Soup.” ­— Gary Adams

“Portuguese Kale Soup.” ­— Christopher Wirth and Daria Bakina

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or the second time in 365 days, Cay uga Medica l Center is once again playing defendant in a suit from the National Labor Relations Board, facing allegations of pressuring nursing employees involved in union activities.

The complaint by the NLRB, filed on behalf of CMC nurses Anne Marshall and Lauren Lamb, alleges the two were unjustly fired after breaking a hospital policy involving blood transfusions, a violation which neither denied but argued was in line with “common practice” at the hospital and, though prevalent accord-

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ing to one witness, was rarely punished or even known to be against hospital policy, which NLRB field attorney Jessica Noto outlined as the focus of her case in her opening argument on Monday.

C M C ’s r e p r e s e nt a t i v e , Raymond Pascucci, used his opening arguments to say that whether it was ambiguously defined as “common practice” or not, breaking policy under any circumstances quantified immediate dismissal and, in effect, falsifying medical records, if the policy – which is to perform multiple checks with a patient at the bedside

while performing blood transfusion – were to be broken.

In his argument, he named several news accounts of fatal incidents involving giving a patient the wrong blood in a hospital setting.

Marshall and Lamb were dismissed after a patient, who Pascucci said had 23 blood transfusions at the hospital and “knew the drill,” spoke up when they deviated from the protocol. Full coverage of this story will be online at Ithaca. com and in next week’s issue.

–Nick Reynolds

Parks

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cise’ or what we jokingly call a ‘dotmocracy’ where they can identify four priorities among competing facilities interests.”

Competing facilities interests include: sports/athletic fields, lawn games, playgrounds, outdoor natural swimming areas, indoor swimming pool, indoor sports fields, mountain bike park, community gardens, outdoor basketball courts, skate parks, golf courses, off-leash dog pa rk, wa l k i ng / bi k i ng trails, indoor fitness/exercise facilities, community meeting space and “other” suggestions.

P rog r a m opp or t u n it ie s include: youth learn to swim, preschool, before and after school, youth summer camp, teens, fitness and wellness, water fitness, adult continuing education, birthday parties, people with disabilities, 50 years and older, art, dance and performing arts, tennis and golf lessons and league, adult sports, special events: concerts, movies, etc., nature/environmental education, travel, farmers market, youth mentoring, youth sports and “other” suggestions.

According to Plan Ithaca — with its mandate to preserve and enhance the city’s existing natural resources while increasing accessibility for all ages and abilities — the City manages a total of 370 acres of parkland and now, with the subsequent completion of Cayuga Waterfront Trail, maintains more than 5.5 miles of publically accessible waterfront. Public green spaces range in size from t he largest regiona lly used parks being Stewart and Cass parks to smaller neighborhood parks such as Washington and Thompson. There are more than 900 acres of designated natural areas within or adjacent to the city with 25 miles of trails wending through woodlands, stream corridors and along waterways.

The parks and recreation master plan’s second public forum will be held sometime in the spring. Pros Consulting will share the first public forum’s survey trends, stakeholder demographics, and site assessment of operations and maintenance with participating focus groups that can offer direction to the question, “Did we get it right?”

–Deirdre Cunningham

N e w s l i n e

A New Housing Complex Fills A Needed Gap

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A side view of the Amici House, a complex proposed for Spenver Road. ithout any easy solution on the horizon, affordable supportProspective tenants only able housing in places conveive housing, a scarce resource throughout Tompkins County, must be homeless young adults nient enough that they are still promises to dominate the local to qualif y for the housing, appealing to their intended though Director Lee Dillon of audience, who may lack their conversation again in 2017.

Though constructing this TCA said she expects a certain own transportation. Dillon type of housing has been a slow amount of the residents to be said they tried to use their own, already existing campus to their process, it appears ground will recovering drug users.

“It’s not just housing, it’s a advantage, while tucking the soon be broken for Tompkins Community Action’s Amici program,” Dillon said. “Magno- actual housing part towards the House, one of the most expan- lia and Chartwell are different back end of the property in an sive projects of its kind in the than this, those were focused attempt to quell any fears from on people in recovery, this is a neighbors. area.

“We knew that sometimes Amici House is a 23-unit sober living environment but there’s some pushback with the focus is 18-25 year olds, Supportive Housing Program homeless housing, sometimes specifically designed to cater looking to move ahead.”

The apartment facility will people don’t want 23 homeless to the homeless population, including men or women with also include a ground f loor kids living next to them,” Dillon said. a child, and w ill Though there was one include a separate ch i ldc a re center “Everybody here is trying to objecting voice from the that will house five change themselves and make audience at a Commons HeadSta r t class- a go of it, change their lives,” Council meeting regarding rooms, able to host the man said. “…Nothing to be Amici House’s ability to handle its volume of resi40-45 children at a dents, Dillon said she had time. Children who scared of.” not heard from any other live in the Amici members of the Spencer building with their parent are placed at the top of with TCA offices and assistive Road community who were the list for acceptance into the services that may entail GED apprehensive about the project. educational programs, but the classes, offices for the Alcohol An Ithaca Times email to the center is open to the general & Drug Council and mental Spencer Road Landlord Associhealth resources, among other ation also yielded no thoughts, public as well. positive or negative, regarding Unlike TCA’s Char t well possibilities.

“You’re ta l k i ng about a the proposal.

House and Magnolia House, For any rumored trouble Amici will not serve as solely a young population that if you living space for those seeking bring it to them, they’ll take it may or may not cause, the to recover from drug addic- advantage of things, as opposed benefits of another sober livtion. Danielle Harrington, the to you just give them a list of ing environment in town may Housing Services Director, said things to do, then they’re less outweigh the risks. Angela SulTCA chose to reduce the focus likely to be successful,” TCA’s livan, Executive Director of the on rehabilitation in accordance Supportive Services Director Alcohol & Drug Council and a supporter of the construcwith the needs of the com- Donna Veninsky said.

It’s also a population, how- tion project, said the existence munity and the goals of the Department of Housing and ever, that is not always welcome of a home environment free Urban Development nation- in the surrounding neighbor- of drugs and alcohol can be a ally, which is concentrating on hoods of their housing facili- basic component of long-term, permanent housing instead of ties. This factor plays into the sustained sobriety.

“Increasing safe, affordable struggle of establishing affordtransitional.

housing options for people in general in Ithaca is something we support, and the establishment of a sober living environment or a place where people in recovery can be safe and provided a place to be is something that would greatly impact the community,” Sullivan said.

If someone who is attempting to recover from addiction returns home from treatment into the same type of environment that drove them to drugs in the first place, a relapse is far more likely to occur than any type of healing. Sullivan said the aim of recovery should be to avoid and disengage from the factors that led to addiction, and so sober living environments can be the safest spot for someone who is struggling on the road back from drug abuse.

Residents and businesses around the current TCA properties, Magnolia House and Chartwell House, on the 300 block of North Meadow Street had minimal complaints. Most were unaware there was even sober transition housing in the neighborhood, while those who knew said the buildings are primarily quiet and its inhabitants well-behaved. Aside from one mentioned instance of a bit of unabashed sunbathing, the properties seemed to blend in with its environment as much as any other apartment building.

A Chartwell resident who has lived there for more than a year said the building is mostly quiet, without much disturbance or ruckus as a result of fairly close supervision by TCA employees. He said as far as he knew, there’s at least one member of the TCA staff in the building at almost all times, ensuring adherence to the strict sobriety rules as well as the facility’s other guidelines.

He said during his time at Chartwell, he has never seen the police respond to anything at the building, and Veninsky confirmed that to her recollection, the police have never been called by staff members to control a resident.

“Everybody here is trying to change themselves and make a go of it, change their lives,” the man said. “They’re always making sure things are going okay […] Nothing to be scared of.”

Ups&Downs ▶ High School Basketball While not exactly Ithaca teams, last week’s matchup between 15th-ranked Groton and top-ranked Moravia was one of the most epic matchups we’ve seen recently.

Though the night was heavy and full of passion in support of Moravia’s Dustin Mondics, who was seriously injured in a car accident Dec. 28, the game itself represented the finest in sportsmanship and the spirit of competition. ▶ 722 University Avenue According to the Ithaca Voice’s Brian Crandall, who wrote about its demolition, a long-vacant fraternity house on University Avenue, according to Cornell University, was “prohibitively expensive” to renovate and, instead of becoming much-needed student housing (however little), will be graded and seeded.

Unless there are some plans for the site in the works, there’s nothing you can say beyond “this just sounds bad.” it’s too easy a punchline to write when you pave over much-needed housing in favor of more lawn space.

If you care to respond to something in this column, or publish your own grievances or plaudits, write upsanddowns@ithacatimes. com, with a subject head “U&D.”

Heard&Seen ▶ About 25 local activists went to Albany on Monday to lobby Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to reject Trump Cabinet Nominees Tillerson, Pruitt, Perry, and Zinke. In going directly to their Senators on this matter, they said, “our residents are joining other Central New Yorkers in Syracuse and thousands more across the country in today’s nation-wide “Day Against Denial” effort.”

question OF THE WEEK

Have you volunteered for a charitable cause in the past year?

Please respond at the Ithaca Times Web site www.ithacatimes.com.

L ast Week ’s Q uestion : What ’s keeping you from spending more time on the W est E nd?

60 percent of respondents answered “Nothing to do” and 40 percent answered “Hard to get to.”

–Matt Butler

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Guest Opinion

Surrounded By Reality

Where Is Ithaca Headed?

Resolutions, Day 10

How we interpret the numbers impacts progress

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recent article in the Times brought up the question of the accuracy of vacancy rate statistics, but did not address the primary question of their use in determining municipal policies. I suggest there is some confusion about these statistics and their application. The cost of purchasing a home in Ithaca is in fact comparatively low, but high taxes and low salaries make home ownership financially quite challenging. If taxes were significantly lower or salaries substantially higher, a new equilibrium home value would be established but homes would still possibly be just as “costly” to own. The high cost of living in Ithaca is not due to a lack of stock, so building more units will not in itself lower taxes, lower rents or create residential neighborhoods, but the vacancy rate is a metric being used to justify the current building frenzy.

Vacancy rates represent the natural churn rate or turnover of available housing in a city, but there are a few risks associated with the statistic in our city. A one percent vacancy rate in NYC could signal to many developers it is time to build – and they would hope that the rate remains low until their property

hits the market to avoid a glut. Absorption is a concern, since Ithaca does not enjoy significantly growing employment opportunities and increasing housing demand, and Cornell will not consider enrolling more students just because of available housing in College Town.

So overbuilding is a critical concern, and can happen even with a low vacancy rate.

For a vacancy rate to be a useful planning tool, one needs to have: • • •

A year-round market A sample population of adequate size A non-specialized market (homogeneous or interchangable stock)

The colleges, which provide a large number of transient residents as well as many of our neighbors, create an uneven demand as lease periods generally correspond to a school year schedule. The tight window between leases creates something similar to a “Chinese fire drill”, where people essentially instantaneously move in and out of apartments, shrinking the days between leases to practically zero. Despite the difficulty created by this contin u ed on page 7

By Ch arl e y Githl e r 1. Get off facebook (ridiculous timesuck) 2. De-clutter house (too embarrassed to have a house guest in eleven years) 3. Stop procrastinating (hence the condition of the house) 4. No more sarcasm (might a lso explain the lack of house guests) 5. Pay off credit card (79% interest rate seems high) 6. Learn Russian (seems appropriate all of a sudden) 7. Drink alcohol only on weekends (long overdue)

Resolution log Sunday, 1/1/17 Off to a great start.

Downloaded Rosetta Stone for Russian. Most definitely the last credit card charge until it’s zeroed out. Very excited about getting on top of being a new, more organized and sincere person. Should have done these years ago and these resolutions are all eminently doable.

Monday, 1/2/17 Went to Maxie’s for drinks. New Year’s Day celebrated by the U.S. Postal Service today, so falls within the definition of “weekend” for alcohol purposes. I’m going to need to

Letters A Warm Thanks To The Community It is with so much gratitude that we’d like to thank everyone who helped make our 2nd annual Ithaca Chill Challenge a wild and crazy success on New Year’s Day. We raised over $27,000 which will all go directly to maintaining and improving 518 West Seneca Street as a place where anyone dealing with addiction of any type can come for support and fellowship.

Thank you to all our participants and all our donors; you can still find them on our website at ithacachillchallenge.org.

Thank you to the fabulous Ithaca Yacht Club for providing the perfect venue, and to all these wonderful local businesses who supported us: 15 Steps, August Moon Spa, Agava, Heights Café, Just a Taste, The Good Truck, Gimme!, Cinemapolis, The 6

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wean myself off facebook, so I’m restricting it to only times when I am driving. Wouldn’t be fair to people who would wonder where I went. Quick reset on not being sarcastic. That’s going to take some concentration. Tomorrow’s the real start of the new year.

Wednesday. 1/4/17 Definitely a day of setbacks. I was sending a well-timed message of a turd emoji to a colleague when my mini-van went through the window of the Chipotle on Meadow Street. Lost my focus on not being sarcastic, too. I guess resolution #1, as modified, is illegal or something. Not a great idea to call a deputy sheriff “Sherlock”, though.

Fresh start tomorrow. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Thursday, 1/5/17 Had to abort the Facebook resolution. Turns out it’s the best way to stay in touch with my attorney. She’s great. Even let me put her retainer on MasterCard! Weekend drinking regimen starts next week for sure. Ready to take down the Christmas tree this weekend – 13 months is long enough, though it’s sort of like getting rid of an old friend. Have to be strong! contin u ed on page 7

Antlers, The Shop, Cat’s Pajamas, Beck Equipment, CSP Management, Press Café, Ithaca Bakery, Wegmans, NYS Police Dive Team, Bangs Ambulance, The Drain Brain, remarc solutions, B&W Supply, and Shortstop Deli.

We feel blessed to live in this community where businesses come through when we ask for their support. Let’s support them back.

Judy Epstein & Carol Miller, Co-Chairs for the Ithaca Chill Challenge

Send Letters to the Editor to editor@ ithacatimes.com. Letters must be signed and include an address and phone number. We do not publish unsigned letters.

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More of a Spring Cleaning thing anyway. Posted updated resolutions status Saturday, 1/7/17 Took a look at on a popular social networking webthe Russian language stuff. They don’t site based in Menlo Park, California. even use the same alphabet. Seems Got over 60 ‘likes’ and some hilarious unlikely that the president-elect is comments.

Tu e s d ay, going to appoint me 1/10/17 Met with ambassador. Putin’s Took a look at the my suppor t neta j e r k , a n y w a y.

Russian language work at the southPlu s , a ren’t t here west corner of the stuff. They don’t are phone apps that bar at Ma xie’s to translate languages? even use the same assess resolution I was caught up in a alphabet. Seems situation. Consenmoment. Besides, it unlikely that the sus was that two out would send a mesof seven were still president-elect is sage that I approve of possible – credit meddling with our going to appoint me elections, so pretty ambassador. Putin’s card and procrastination. That means clearly it’s my patria jerk, anyway.

I’m batting .285, otic duty to abandon which, happens to resolution #6.

Sunday, 1/8/17 The producers be hall-of-famer Carl Yastrzemski’s from Hoarding: Buried Alive called lifetime batting average, so not too again. I told them about my de-clut- shabby after all. Charged a round tering resolution. They might ben- of drinks to celebrate. I’m definitely efit from an anti-sarcasm resolution going to own 2017 - it’s just a matter of discipline, people. themselves.

Monday, 1/9/17 Had to cancel the sarcasm resolution. As if that was ever going to happen with a Trump presi- Charley Githler is a columnist for the dency looming. Yeah, really thought Ithaca Times. His column, Surrounded that one through! House organization By Reality, appears biweekly. and Christmas tree deferred for now.

Letters Anti-Normalization Like many in this community, I was disheartened and angry over the November election. But now there is a way to put those frustrations into positive action through the Refuse Fascism movement. (refusefascism. org). I encourage everyone to get involved. There are events in major cities all over America, planned student walk-out on January 12-13, and most importantly an “Occupy Washington” protest next week from MLK day through inauguration and ideally preventing an illegitimate fascist regime from being installed.

Recent studies indicate that it is the people who did not vote that caused this outcome. So if you voted for Obama, but didn’t turn out this election, or were a Bernie backer who refused to vote, then a special moral imperative is on you to take action now.

If your lifestyle responsibilities prevent you from such committed activism, there is also the resist movement (resistsymbol.com) seeking community organization for resistance and wearing of the resist symbol on January 19. You can get free stickers to wear via their site.

I urge everyone to stand up and unite against this incoming fascist regime. And if it all possible, get to Washington next week and stand up for freedom, liberty and democracy!

Kurt Bain, Ithaca

The Talk at

A One-Star Review An Ithaca Times reader gave the newspaper a one-star review on Facebook following our recent Year In Review issue’s blurb on the Black Oak Windfarm. We present her case here: The IT has written one of the most biased articles ever about the Black Oak Wind Farm which they then reprised in their Jan. 4, 2017 wrap-up of the year. By carefully choosing only parts of the Enfield Wind Farm Advisory Committee Report that supported that bias, they completely mischaracterize the report’s conclusions overall.

They apparently only spoke with prowind sources and never spoke with a single member of the Advisory Committee. They repeated Black Oak’s lies about the landowners “breaking their contracts” when what really happened is that Black Oak wrote poor contracts that don’t accomplish what they now need. And when I wrote to try to set the record straight, they refused to publish my comments (other than to choose a short blurb which sidestepped all the fact checking).

ers from the general population. Additionally, because so little housing stock is sitting idle, contin u ed from page 6 the low vacancy rate close to campus also supsmall window and contrary to what some ports sustainability – very little unoccupied people might think, this is actually a very property. efficient market and creates very low vacancy In large cities with an almost continurates because the supply and demand are ous demand, the key issue is when the extra closely matched. In an ideal setting, with a housing stock gets absorbed, and involves the community not experiencing huge or uncon- question of short vs long-term profits or losses trolled growth, one shouldn’t have much for the developer. An example of this right more housing than is needed, and certainly now is the glut created in the current boom we should not allow or create an unnatural Brooklyn market. Planning departments vacancy rate. Ithaca – and College Town in can help avoid such problems and Ithaca, particular – is not like a large city where the which certainly cannot anticipate open-ended vacancy rate is the reflection of a more normal growth, should not, in my opinion, allow any ebb and flow (turnover time) created when developer to build whatever they want just people move out and others move in through- because money is “cheap” and “vacancy rates out the year. Increasing the housing stock are low”. Construction with such dramatic would eventually create vacancies that would impacts on our community should not be not promote competition or create housing based on political considerations or the selfavailability in the greater Ithaca area, and interest of developers. housing stock unrented by the start of the fall Bottom Line: Building in College Town semester would likely remain vacant for the may seem like it will bring in new tax revenue, school year. The specialized housing and the and draw all students away from other resischool year schedule is less critical the farther dential neighborhoods to return the homes you go from the influence of the colleges, but to their rightful state – owner occupied – but there aren’t too many Ithaca neighborhoods not every Ithaca resident wants to live in a not impacted by the school year. A “normal” homogeneous neighborhood. Many students vacancy rate emerges only when you reach can’t afford it and don’t want it. Second, there are a lot of landlords who There is little advantage in trying to need that extra apartment force a high vacancy rate in a market like in their home or garage to make ends meet. Ithaca is this, and the likelihood of non-student an expensive city, and not residents in the greater Ithaca area for everyone.

It is an important time wanting – or being able – to pay for this for us to remember what housing in the event of mid-year vacancies it is we love about this city is small.

– and make sure it is not being sacrificed in the purareas where consistent year-round supply and suit of development objectives of highly quesdemand normalize. tionable efficacy.

There is little advantage in trying to force a high vacancy rate in a market like this, and Jeffrey Lallas is a retired manager in capital the likelihood of non-student residents in the design and construction for the State Univergreater Ithaca area wanting – or being able sity of New York and a Lansing resident. He – to pay for this housing in the event of mid- holds an MPS from Cornell University. year vacancies is small. Vacancies close to campus are not likely to be absorbed by rentGuest Opinion

A Quick Summary Of The State Of The City Address on January 4, 2017 Last week at the year’s first common council meeting, Mayor Svante Myrick outlined his administration’s accomplishments for 2016 and his plans for the city moving into 2017. While his statements were long (2,300 words or so) we’ve chosen several points we found intriguing: 1. Conquering The Financial Crisis: Sales tax collections have increased, the tax rate is the lowest it’s been since 2003 and new development has only worked to increase city revenues. Down the road, the mayor said that increased development that comes as a result of the city’s rezoning efforts will only serve to increase that

further.

2. Conquering Trump: Myrick – along with city attorney Ari Lavine – are aiming to try something called “new federalism” where they will buck the more oppressive proposals the Donald Trump administration may bring, including the deportation of undocumented immigrants.

3. Milking Cornell: The mayor highlighted several things he’s gotten Cornell to pay for but said in the future, he will continue his efforts to increase contributions coming by way of the tax-exempt, land-grant university.

Jude Lemke, Enfield Th e

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Sanctuary In

NUMBERS

Joined By A Large Coalition of American Mayors, Svante Myrick Plans A Plot Of Harsh Resistance Against Anti-Immigration Efforts

By M att Bu tler

M

M ay o r S va n t e My r i c k ( P h o t o : Yo u t u b e .c o m)

ayor Svante Myrick regarding Trump’s campaign pledge sits on a couch in his to cut federal funding to all cities that office, coffee in hand, willingly protect illegal immigrants, a quiet air of determicurrently known as “Sanctuary Cities.” naSa nctua r y cit y is a tion around him “They will have term that has become as he looks up at the to carry me out popular in recent years, cei ling, considerof this office in t hou g h it s A mer ic a n ing the question. handcuffs before I or i g i n s d at e b a c k t o “They will have to cooperate with their Los Angeles in the late carry me out of this of- unconstitutional and 1970s. There is no spefice in handcuffs be- immoral attempts to cific legal definition atfore I cooperate with remove these people tached to t he term, their unconstitutional from our homes.” t hus it can var y from –Svante Myrick and immoral attempts city to city. It is generto remove these peoally accepted to mean ple from our homes.” t hat a cit y, cou nt y or state gover nDespite the colorful imagery, this is ment declines to utilize funding to apmuch the same tone Myrick has taken to prehend i l lega l immigrants who are the incoming Donald Trump adminisotherwise innocent, or that refuse to cotration in general, particularly so while operate with efforts of the Immigration 8

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have claimed t he status, to go a long w it h an unclear number of counties and two states, Oregon and Maine. Of the country’s 10 largest cities by population, six are reputed sanctuary cities.

Some places also have statewide laws, such as in Oregon, prohibiting their law enforcement agencies from pursuing people they suspect of illegally immigrating to the US if that is their only suspected crime.

Trump revealed his disdain on sanctuary cities in his rhetoric one month after declaring his candidacy for president in July 2015, though it was most forcefully articulated at a Phoenix campaign speech focusing on immigration this past August.

“Block funding for sanctuary cities, we block the funding, no more funding,” he said. “Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars and we will work with Congress to pass legislation to protect those jurisdictions that do assist federal authorities.”

What this means is hard to decipher: Currently, the language the Trump campaign has adopted toward sanctuary cities is pointed t hou g h va g ue. (H is campaign website lists a 10 Point Plan regarding i m m ig rat ion, of wh ich number four is “End sanctuary cities.”) There are no further details given, and attempts by this repor ter to contac t t he Trump campaign for comment were unsuccessful.

D o n a l d Tru m p, 4 3 r d P r e s i d e n t o f t h e U n i t e d S tat e s ( P h o t o : A P) Mayors across t he country have cast doubt and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. on the viability of Trump’s Its murky definition and implementa- ple d ge , i nc lud i ng Bi l l de Bl a sio of tion means it is difficult to track which New York City and Rahm Emmanuel cities have and have not officially de- of Chicago. Myrick said his legal reclared themselves sanctuary cities, how- search team’s work had also revealed ever it is reported that over 200 cities reasons for skepticism, finding that cut-

ting funding to an entire city over an im- pabi lities of our SWAT tea m, to t he eral government in some form, primar- approach that focuses enforcement remigration issue has no legal precedent. recruitment of police officers, to en- ily grants from different government sources on convicted criminals and inMyrick did say that despite the ques- h a n c i n g o u r K- 9 t e a m , a n d o t h e r departments. The total received funding dividuals who threaten public safety tions over Trump’s ability to end sanctuary miscellaneous types of patrol and admin- listed there is about $34.4 million dollars. and national security while also takCornell Universit y’s $306 million ing into account impor tant commucities, he certainly foresees the president- istrative functions within the departelect making a concerted effort to do so. ment,” Williamson said. “We pursue was excluded from the aforementioned nity policing needs,” the statement said.

“I do, I think he’s going to do ev- local, state and federal grant money so tally, though they too have recently enMyrick is confident, then, that these er y thing he can to punish ot her federa l ly-a ssisted people who want to help refugroups wou ld be g uarded from reproach over the gees,” he said. “But no, that’s city’s protection of imminot going to affect our decigrants and refugees. Should sion […] I am still committed, the presidential adminisbut I want to be prepared.”

Upstate New York has become a major hub for resettling populations of people who may either be undocumented and tration still attempt to cut Catholic Charities of Ithaca plans on bringing 52 refu- looking for work, or refugees looking for safety they could not find in their homeland. As far as refugees go, upstate has f unding from t hem, t he gees from several countries taken on 4,680 in the year 2016 and, as for the undocumented immigrant population, parts of the state not called New mayor said that would be venturing into unchartto the region in 2017, startYork City have 360,000 or so who live and work here.

(Source: Bureau of Refugee & Immigration Assistance) ed leg islat ive ter r itor y. ing this month. The mayor “It wou ld b e , i n ou r said t he cit y’s lega l team’s Refugees in New York State (By County) mind and according to our work shows that in theor y, research, an extralegal apthe only Ithacan entity Trump proach,” he said. “That is would be able to affect would to say, an illegal approach.” be the actual city agencies in A contributing factor to charge of enforcing immigraMyrick’s confidence in the tion restrictions; namely, the face of possible financial It haca Pol ice Depa r t ment. penalization is power in He said the situation mirrors numbers. Over 100 maythat of when the federal govors from across the counernment wanted states to fall in tr y have joined together line with upping the drinking under the name Cities for age to 21 so they threatened to Action, essentially a coltrim federal highway funding lective dedicated to using to any non-compliant states their powers as mayors to by 10 percent, arguing that initiate immigration and the new regulations would cut refugee policy reform that down drunk-driving incidents. would grant more rights O f f ic er Ja m ie Wi l l ia mson would not speculate on potential we can offset the costs of what we do.” tered the immigration discussion after and protections than currently availMyrick said even if the police were declaring themselves a sanctuary cam- able. The group is prepared for mass funding cuts, but said that in the past IPD had received local, state and fed- to lose their funding, “that’s not a big pus in the footsteps of UCLA and Yale. petitioning or even legal action should eral grants to assist with costs in a vari- enough stick” to make the city submit. The Ithaca Housing Authority, the Ithaca t he pre sident- elec t c ros s too ma ny ety of aspects of the police department. In other words, it would not be a fatal City School District, Ithaca College and boundaries concerning immigration.

For example, Governor Andrew Cuo- blow for the department, as Ithaca’s gov- the city government itself lead the way in “We just want to let the incoming admo awarded IPD $10,000 in 2015 to up- ernment is usually able to pick up the terms of total dollars received, the IHA ministration know that if they want a date their fingerprinting technolog y. operating costs of the police force with- garnering the most with $9.1 million. fight on this, they’ll have it,” the mayor Khaalid Walls, spokesman for the ICE said. “It’s two-fold. We are going to do In 2014, the Ithaca police were award- out much necessity for outside funding.

In 2016, the police department account- in Buffalo, said he could not comment spe- what we believe to be the right thing, ed a $100,000 grant for improvements to their SWAT team and acquiring a ed for $11.7 million of the city budget, cifically on the relationship between his that’s what we were elected to do. If they a slight increase from the agency and the IPD, or on Ithaca’s sanc- want to penalize us, they can try but we previous years. The mayor’s tuary designation. He did provide a state- aren’t going to take that lying down.”

As he says these words, Myrick sounds “We just want to let the incoming approved budget for 2017 ment that said some more law enforcement indicates another slight inlike a man who has not felt pressured eiagencies are back to cooperating with ICE administration know that if they crease in allocation for IPD, ther by the public or the people in his after the enactment of the Priority Enwant a fight on this, they’ll have it.” though not very substantial. forcement Program (PEP) in 2015. The administration to cede his stance on the –Svante Myrick This would all also mean PEP states that law enforcement notify sanctuary issue, which he says he has the tens of millions of fed- ICE when they have detained an undocu- not. Regardless, he doesn’t seem inclined era l government dol la rs mented immigrant for a separate crime. to entertain the notion even if he was. remote robot. That robot was utilized that f low into Ithaca outside of the po“I want to make this very clear, on the “Department of Homeland Security just weeks ago, inser ted into a mur- lice department would be safe. Accord- continues to make significant strides issue of both Syrian refugees and undocuder suspect’s Dryden Road home as a ing to a federal database, somewhere in building partnerships with local law mented immigrants […] We will exhaust means to convince him to surrender. between 15-20 entities within the city enforcement and community leaders every possible avenue to resist this agen“Enhancing and supporting the ca- of Ithaca receive funding from the fed- through PEP to ensure a common sense da, to kick these people out of our city.”

Resettlement In Upstate NY

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The Little Red Show Serious Promise

By Ste ve L aw re nc e

I had not yet been to an Ithaca High boy’s basketball game this season, but I went to the game on Friday, and I saw an exciting and well-played contest.

The Tigers of Union-Endicott came to town, and despite the frigid temps, the Little Red drew a large and enthusiastic crowd. I sat across the gym from the team’s bench, and I will tell you that I had a real wave of nostalgia sweep over me when I saw Brian Stone tell the referee in no uncertain terms that he disagreed with a call.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I sat in the same gym and watched John Stone – Brian’s dad – convey his opinion in a similar manner, but it was indeed a few years ago. Brian played for the Little Red back then (in the 1980’s) and things were different.

For one thing, the players’ shorts were a lot shorter, and while they were an athletic bunch back then, I don’t recall seeing a lot of dunks. Perhaps it is just a function of age, but it also seems that the game is played at a much faster pace, and it seemed that the hosts came out at full speed and never

slowed down.

The Little Red jumped out in front early, and the Tigers never seemed able

Homelessness

“It was such a frustrating experience for us,” he continued. “No part of us was like ‘people are less homeless on Saturday and Sunday, so let’s cut the Friendship Center.’

It was with a heavy heart we had to cut those but at the same time, you have to be honest with yourself about your capacity and your vision for where you’re going.”

Enter Pastor John McNeill and St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, where Bennett is a member of the congregation.

The church, despite its denominational differences with the national organization, had been giving money to the local mission since it opened its doors in 2014, holding parties in support of it and even packing lunches for the mission’s clients every so often. It was when Bennett recently informed McNeill of the situation at the shelter and the regulations they had to adhere to that the pastor began to look into what the church could do to help.

Looking toward a program in Rochester–the Rochester Interfaith Housing Network–and its compliance with the

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from the budget, closing the Friendship Center on the weekends and letting go of the supervising staff, cutting the shelter’s nightly capacity on cold nights by eight people, even though they had ample space for them to rest. (A second 12 foot by 30 foot space on one of the upper floors offers more space but, because of fire code, can only be used as a ‘warming room,’ meaning the homeless can come into the room to get warm but aren’t allowed to sleep.)

“We made t he s e move s w it h t he assumption the funding was just going to be there,” Bennett said. “As we really took a look from donations and revenues from contracts and grants and compared them to what we were spending, it didn’t really add up. And just like when you’re running a household, you can’t keep spending more than you make. So we had to make some tough cuts.”

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to shift into the next gear and catch up.

At one point, the gym was reverberating with noise as Ithaca ran their lead up to

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24 points, and Stone, like any sensible coach that knows his younger players need f loor time, rotated several non-starters into the game. U-E made a comeback of sorts, drawing to within about a dozen points, but Stone’s adjustments and the host’s procession of fresh legs soon made the game a blowout once again. It would end at 74-57, and Ithaca would run its record to 8-1. The next day, the Little Red went north to Syracuse where they would play against Syracuse Academy, a charter school featuring two very skilled players. After falling behind 16-2 to open the game, Ithaca would fight back to win in double overtime, leaving the home crowd in a state of disbelief.

At the Friday game, I sat with a guy named Richard, and he later told me, “My grandson is on the team and I have been

watching these kids for several years.

They have come up through AAU and Modified, and coaches like Ricky Milton, state code, McNeill realized – unlike at the Rescue Mission – no permission or code compliance was actually needed: they could just go ahead and house people. As McNeill said, “we’re a church, and this is a church function: to help the poor. We just did it.”

“They really just decided it was part of their church mission to serve the homeless and those in need… there’s no way we could have done this without a church or some other organization stepping up and getting excited about it,” Bennett said. “ But St. Paul’s really did.”

The place had to be staffed, of course, and the two positions that were eliminated from the Rescue Mission’s budget were reinstated by the Department of Social Services. The St. Paul’s solution has several other benefits as well: Prior to this, the shelter placed people in hotels which not only proved to be a substantial cost, but presented logistics issues, such as keeping track of who was staying in what hotel.

Unfortunately, this is not the answer to

Dan Miller and John McNally have done a great job.” Grandpa Richard added, “They play really well together, and they’re a group of unselfish athletes. The bench is very deep, and they can wear out their opponents with their substitutions.”

I was impressed with their teamwork as well, and their upperclassmen leadership has clearly paid off. Senior Jordan Ayers lit up the gym with a pair of breakaway slams, and Jordanny Cuevas-Marte, while only a junior, looked really solid both offensively and defensively. The Little Red has lost but a single game – a 3 point squeaker to Binghamton – and their wins over the Syracuse and Rochester teams are showing them that they have a shot to make a deep playoff run.

I wrote a few weeks ago that the Ithaca High girl’s swimming and diving team returned to the top of the mountain, reclaiming the top spot in the conference after seeing Horseheads take the title for several years. The Little Red boys have every intention of following suit, and they ran (or swam) their record to 4-0 with a dominating 117-68 win at Vestal.

Ithaca won ten of twelve events, includ ing Ja mie Lovette’s shattering of a 30-year pool record in the 500 Free.

Lovette had a stellar meet, as he also teamed up with Rob Mangan, Cyrus Browning and Owen Kelly to w in t he 400 Free Relay and also won the 200 Free. Mangan took first in the 50 and 100 Free Sprints, Browning won the 100 Fly and the 100 Breast, and Tim hector took the 100 backstroke. Mike Blakely-Armitage coaches both the boy’s and girl’s programs, and given he is also a family man and a full-time Youth Bureau guy, I tip my hat to him for wearing so many hats effectively. everything, McNeill said.

“It’s a good use of our resources, but the real problem is we don’t have supportive housing for people,” McNeill said. “This is not a solution, this is keeping people from dying in the cold… the governor is saying we need to get people off the street when it’s under 32 degrees. That’s fine, but where are the resources? This stop-gap stuff doesn’t really solve the problem: the solution to homelessness is to house people.”

There’s a fund that’s come together recently from local religious leaders to refund the Friendship Center, which Bennett said may have to be funded privately.

Basic donations are still needed, things like hats, gloves, socks, etc. Cash is good too, of course, but even the basics, like coffee, creamer, sugar, foam cups and sporks, represents approximately $10,000 of the budget. To give, visit rescuemissionalliance.org –Nick Reynolds

Kurt Elling joins Branford Marsalis at the State

By Christopher J. Harrington

Branford Marsalis Quartet with Special Guest Kurt Elling, Thursday, January 19, 7:30 p.m., State Theatre

J

azz moves to the form of the universe.

Tingling and spiraling behind the clear and automatic, it’s an expression conjoining the human to the infinite: a chance to dig deeper into a sort of refined communication, an arena where the invisible serves as the visual: a fluxing declaration.

In no other musical configuration does instrumentation figure so deeply into story telling, as jazz. Moods, textures, and hues, symbolize words, poetry and action, where each song is a tale, unique and moving. The inclusion of a vocalist into this deepening form can add an immense new dimension. Kurt Elling, the Grammy award winning jazz vocalist, composer, and lyricist from Chicago, opens a particular dimensional portal infinitely wide, with a style and touch unlike any other: worldly and beyond. A force.

“I’m never able to keep up with all the

music that’s going on, you know,” Elling explained recently. “What I do is listen to a website online that collects radio stations from all over the world. I like to find out what the world is listening to. There’s some really disparate and obscure locations on the site, and it’s beautiful stuff man.”

Elling is coming to Ithaca with jazz titans the Branford Marsalis Quartet next Thursday, in what’s sure to be an exploration in density and ascension. The unlikely pairing has proved dynamic, with the group recording the forceful and intricate record Upward Spiral last June.

A powerhouse like the Branford Marsalis Quartet, a group that swings and torches in a physical and immediate way, is a difficult fit for a vocalist, but Elling is the right man for the job: a singer with an inner spirit and corporeal drive that is commanding and omnipresent.

“Playing with Branford’s quartet has been nothing but good times,” Elling said. “It’s been a thrill and a joy, and also a very real challenge.

They have a remarkable intensity and strength in their music. They play straight up, hard

Kurt Elling in the colors (Photo: Anna Webber)

hitting jazz, I mean compared to whatever I’ve been doing all these years [laughs], so you know, it’s been a good test as a human being and as an artist. As a jazz vocalist I’m trying to do the same thing as a jazz instrumentalist: trying to convey emotion and bring as much as I can of it to the forefront.”

Elling grew up in Chicago, the son of a Lutheran Church choir director. Elling sang and played various instruments in his early years and was eventually exposed to jazz while in college at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. He studied philosophy and religion as a graduate student at the University of Chicago Divinity School, leaving a credit short of a master’s degree to follow his dreams and become a jazz singer. It was in these continued on page 16

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film

The Inner Workings

Two documentaries offer intimate portraits

By Br yan VanC ampe n For the Love of Spock (2016), directed by Adam Nimoy; I Am Your Father, written and directed by Marcos Cabotá , both available on Netflix.

mmm… Netflix is offering two documentaries about two enduring sci-fi franchises – one just

H

celebrated 50 years, and the other 40 years this year – all about fathers and sons, the harsh realities of show business and the simple fact that drives all good docs: everyone has a story.

As a certain green-blooded Vulcan would undoubtedly say, “Fascinating.”

Adam Nimoy’s For the Love of Spock is

(Above) Darth Vader unmasked (Below right) Leonard Nimoy as Spock (photos provided)

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far from the first Star Trek documentary; William Shatner has produced several, including a series called The Captains.

Originally intended as a Spock-centric doc to celebrate the series’ 50th anniversary, Nimoy’s passing in 2015 allowed the film to take in his life and career beyond Spock.

I had read Leonard Nimoy’s biography, and several books on the subject, and watched all the DVDs with commentary, and so I thought I knew all about Nimoy and his iconic alien alter ego.

But I hadn’t heard his story from the perspective of his family, who barely saw him during the ‘60s when he was working 15-hour days on Star Trek and then Mission: Impossible. Then there’s the perspective of the child of the actor, having to share your parent with the rest of the world, and the fear that on some level you’re competing for all that love.

The film frames itself around a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, where Adam Nimoy interviewed Sheldon for the documentary, and the film is peppered with clips from that show and the recent Zachary Quinto reboot, proving that 50 years on, Spock’s influence on pop culture seems to be enduring. And while most of us know the story of the father, few of us know Adam Nimoy’s own journey, and it’s just as interesting and surprising and heartbreaking as the best Star Trek storylines.

As I said, everyone has a story. *** It never really occurred to me until seeing the new documentary I Am Your Father (guess what that’s about) that I was a hip enough kid back in 1977 to know both of the actors playing the role of Darth Vader. I had heard James Earl Jones’ voice in Claudine, a terrific 1974 romantic comedy with Diahann Carroll and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs. I knew David Prowse, the actor playing the physical Vader, because this former bodybuilder had played various

monsters and creatures in Hammer horror films, often opposite his Star Wars co-star, Peter Cushing. (I had also probably seen him in illicit HBO viewings of A Clockwork Orange).

You might not know that because of his tendency to talk too much to the press.

Lucas personally blackballed him from the series. To this day, Prowse has never been invited to any official SW conventions.

Um, spoiler alert: Marcos Cabotá’s film pivots on the fact that when Darth Vader’s helmet is removed in Return of the Jedi, it’s not Prowse, but actor Sebastian Shaw. Not only did Prowse not know he was dubbed

by Jones until he saw the first film, by the time Jedi was filming, the director wasn’t even speaking to him, and the crew kept him out of the loop regarding the scene with Shaw. The hook of Cabotá’s film is his offer to film the Prowse version of Anakin Skywalker’s “reveal”.

Prowse regrets his actions, and it’s clearly an upsetting matter for him. Perhaps now that Lucasfilm is in the hands of others, they might do the right thing and welcome the former Green Cross Man (you’ll have to see the doc) back into the fold. •

books

The World of Fantasy Local writer pens first novel

By Nick Re y nol d s Michael Deyhim, Adventures of a Scribe, Dec. 2016., 269 pg.

not just anecdotes, but hit points and experience points to gauge their progress.

The other is what Deyhim chooses to focus on: As an adventure playing out hough he graduated from Ithaca in real time, Deyhim sees his vision High School in 2006, strategy game more as capturing a certain moment aficionado Michael Deyhim said for in time. He’s concerned more for the years, he’s always wanted to write a book. background player—the anonymous player He’d been writing for a long time, he said, on the stage—rather than some vague and had tried on several occasions to make it happen but, for some reason over the past personification of good battling some manifestation of evil in the foreground. few years, things never seemed to happen.

In writing the story, he admits his Deyhim, a fantasy writer, isn’t an method could have involved writing lots author of traditional fiction. His worlds of notes ahead of time, creating a world are created in a gamer’s pretense in a genre around which he could known as the literary create some sort of literary role playing game, epic. But his style was to something similar to write, taking notes as he watching a video game went along to fill in the playthrough online. gaps later and avoid getting Instead of intently bogged down in the editing focusing on someone process. playing through the “The challenge is not trials and tribulations getting too bogged down in of a video game, you’re the details while still being reading the drama that believable,” Deyhim said. would play out while “If you miss something, watching someone play the reader would probably a role-playing game think you covered your through the lens of the Author Michael Deyhim bases in the past. But you imagined story itself.

(Photo: Nick Reynolds) don’t want to be too deep It’s not a choose your into the details—you want own adventure: there to get to the action, the is a definitive timeline, adventure. You don’t want it to read like a similar to World of Warcraft, where there is textbook.” definitely a destination to the storyline, but All told, the process took two months, things to hinder you along the way. It’s a the first successful attempt at making a growing genre, once more or less relegated book in a long time. “You don’t see the to the world of fan fiction websites, but forest because of the trees,” he said. “That’s has garnered a fair amount of attention in when I knew I just had to write. A map recent years. or anything doesn’t get you there… if you “By putting aside simple narrative want to write, you have to physically do it. storytelling and replacing it with detailed You have to practice.” description, the RPG offers the total Though he finished it relatively quickly, immersion in an imaginary world so writing something like this is a challenge: valued by geek readers,” sci-fi author while there are many game elements in the Damien Walter wrote in a 2015 article for storyline, he said, you don’t want to get too The Guardian. “The elaboration of leading into the technical aspects of the game itself. characters, political factions and major Set in a medieval fantasy world, historical events is sometimes a very dry Deyhim describes his book as containing exercise in world building, but done with enough skill it can spark a deeply satisfying something missing from the traditional fantasy novel: gritty and brutal, Adventures response.” of a Scribe takes place somewhere where For Deyhim, his perfect storyline was you know the rules: things make sense, a coming of age story based around the there are no holes in the story and the fat adventures of Edward Monteger, a young has been trimmed. man who grew up in a family of scribes “I just like stories that make sense, who learned about the outside world Deyhim said. “I love Harry Potter, but as through books in his family’s shop. Not you get further on, there are just so many wanting to live his life without seeing the world for himself, he sets off into the world, plot holes that end up distracting you. That all the while struggling against the likes of just aggravates me… sure you can have monsters and the forces of necromancy. some magic in a story, but it just has to It’s not an epic along the lines of, say, make sense. You could write a lighthearted Lord of the Rings, for two key reasons. adventure and ignore all that but that One is the character development involves would just drive me nuts.” •

T

THE FAB5

Entrepreneur • Business Leader • Volunteer • Rookie of the Year • Not-For-Profit Leader Nominations are due January` 6th.

The FAB5 winners will be annouced on February 20th, 2017, at the FAB5 Awards Ceremony and Dinner at Coltivare.

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art

Aquatic Notions

Uniit Carruyo at CAP ArtSpace

By C hr i s tophe r J. Har r ing ton Uniit Carruyo, Harmonic Landscapes, CAP ArtSpace, through January 30

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here are elements of strong discernment in Ithaca-based artist and educator Uniit Carruyo’s new exhibit Harmonic Seascapes, currently showing at CAP ArtSpace downtown.

There are also components wholly unrealized and an overall technique that is still adapting and struggling with a new form.

With a background in music and education, Carruyo brings a strong presence of transformation to her work. Her new showing contains several differently sized mixed-media paintings that rely heavily on color to push her point: the world is complex, but we can find depth and love through exploration (so let’s look underwater for it). The interpretation of her philosophy finds some resonance in her work, only not enough to completely transcend.

Seascape Series II combines acrylic, paper fiber, retroflective glass, molding paste and asphalt (as do all her paintings), and almost makes it through towards a resolution. It is the overabundance of materials that ultimately muddies up the

Handsome Eggnog was brought to the shelter by a good citizen who found the cat traipsing around the city of Ithaca, undoubtedly seeking a warm and friendly new home. Eggnog is not the biggest fan of being held, but since we have no idea of his previous home it’s quite possible - if not likely - that he will adapt to the presence of his adopter/family and learn to appreciate being held and stroked and loved. He lived with his finder for two days and was alert and friendly, with nary a sign of aggression or distress. The first task of Eggnog’s adopter will be to put a little flesh on him, since he came to us looking pretty thin, although he has a great appetite! After that it should be all downhill for handsome Eggnog!

Eggnog SPONSORED BY

YOUR PET SUPPLY HEADQUARTERS 2309 N Triphammer Road 213 S. Fulton St. Ithaca (607) 272-1848 14

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painting, her vision stunted by its over use of density. Three yellowish orbs circle the infinite, yet can’t escape their confinements. The painting’s childish demeanor is playful, but sticks rigidly to simplicity as its axiom: and thus, suffers its desire for ultimate interaction.

Seascape Series I is a stronger work.

Though smaller, it feels more natural and accomplished. A Freudian notion floats oddly in pink and red mist, centered and progressive. Childlike as well, the painting searches for deeper meaning within its vortex. SSI flexes a bit more of the artist’s pressing concerns and also introduces a psychological element. Shape and form reign meaningful in this work.

Seascape Series VIII is a sea of violet infinity. There is action in this painting, and the larger the canvas, seems to suit Carruyo better. The minimalism of this painting is its true strength, an acceptance of space and a desire to relay emotion and harmony.

You can feel the artist in this piece, its puffed cloud marks, soft and personal, dotted around a central complex that is almost heart-like. The work is honest, though not fully realized. There seems to be a dimension missing.

Seascape Series V is alien, underwater,

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(Above) “Seascape VII” (Left) Uniit Carruyo (Photos provided) and also psychological. Three white shapes float like specific minds, their relationships very particular. falters with lack of space.

The trio of blobs may represent Seascape Series VII is Carruyo’s finest the id, ego, and super ego; and furtherwork here. The struggle of every paintmore, could magically have been done ing is championed and made represensubconsciously, indicating the presence tational in this painting. With a quality of Carruyo’s desire for submission of that echoes Claude Monet’s Water Lily her suppressed ideas. Here, the artist’s philosophy is coming closer to her artistic paintings, SSVII is a dream of pink resonance. You gaze into the horizon skill. In representation, the forms are like of an eternal beach, an impression of ghosts, and the scattered markings over the subconscious, a place you want to the painting show anger and wonder. reach, yet never can. There’s hope in this Underwater is where harmony happens paining, and ultimately transcendence: for Carruyo, at least in dreams. the mark of growth. Carruyo attempts to Seascape Series VI has a Joan Miroblend the purposeful with the analytical, like playfulness to it. Amoebas and barand achieves it most effectively in this nacles dance in the deep abyss, futuristic painting. and technical, interacting as companions Overall the show is unbalanced, but in the midst of darkness and danger. The painting itself is plain, almost to the point there’s stuff in Harmonic Seascapes that works well. Seascape Series VII is worth of comical, but the action is real, and the price of admission alone (it’s a free thus, the painting has a sense of accomshow). This is a piece that’ll achieve plishment. Seascape Series IV is bogged substance in any studio apartment or down by its overcast and choice of color personal library. • scheme. Kitsch and grasping for air, it

I HAVE A DREAM

Delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, in the March on Washington D.C. for Civil Rights

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on their promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead.

We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials

and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood., I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning My country, ‘tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing: Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From every mountain-side Let freedom ring.

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvacious peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

These are the words that moved a nation. We believe they are the best way to remember Martin Luther King, Jr., on Monday, January 18th.

PHONE: 607-272-2602 guitarworks.com

DeWitt Mall 215 North Cayuga St. Ithaca, New York

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The composition of the band is certainly a funky mix of unique and incredible talents. Each one of them has their own history with music and has traveled a different path to get to where they are now.

Sowers has the fast fingers and a love of piano riffs. Conner McRae brings a punk rock aspect to the drums. The bass player, Matt Blake, is influenced by Van Halen and the bluesy undertones of the forgotten south. The brass ensemble is headed up by two musicians, Steve Rogness and Zak Lozier, with big band chops and a love of the dramatic. The depth and scope of the band’s scores is almost incomparable to anything else on the scene these days.

While there have been a few changes in band members over the years—“Not everyone is made for the road,” Sower explains— the current configuration has been making beautiful tunes and helping people to dance away the blues together for many years.

The face of the Vagabonds, both on stage and on the road, is Davina Sowers.

She’s not quite sure that her dream growing up was to travel around in a 15 passenger van with four guys, but she sure is committed to doing it. “We play over 200 dates a year,” Sowers shares, “and we’ve been doing it for over 10 years.” Still, it’s not just old hat.

Each tour brings it’s own mix of logistics, planning woes and last minute stressors.”

Once they get on the road though, there’s a sense of freedom and adventure.

The band makes a point to visit any sites

along the way that have musical significance—places where bands got their start or where famous musicians are buried.

And, they love to find and eat whatever “the thing” is in the towns in which they play. Sowers’ mantra on the road is to make sure no one is “hungry, angry, lonely or tired.”

This is tough for her right now, she shares, as she’s on a sugar-free and carbfree diet. She jokes that she’ll be watching the guys eat speidies and fried chicken and deep dish pizza during this tour.

The running joke is that the band should be called Davina and The Committals because it’s really Sowers that is the true vagabond. A self-described “adventurous soul,” she left home at 15 and backpacked the US. Somewhere during her back and forth between Key West and California, she met some touring musicians from Minnesota who took her under their wing. “I was the wild card,” she says. “They would bring me up to do a song or two at a show, usually something bluesy or a song that lended itself to big vocals.” And, at some point, it just stuck. She moved to Minneapolis and started the Vagabonds in 2006.

One of Sowers’ many defining characteristics is her dominance as a songstress. Her voice is throaty but bellows out in a cushioned way. She’s been likened to Adele, Etta James, and Aretha Franklin, but she’s got a style all her own. “I use my musicianship,” she notes, “to create something that is retro and familiar but has ageless appeal.”

A vintage clothes lover since she was a teenager, Sowers brings her unique style to the stages. “I’m the 1920s pin curl wearing or 1940s turban touting female lead,” Sowers muses. “I’ve always been a ham, a performer, and I definitely dress to impress.”

The guys wear suits, making it easier for them to pack (and leaving more room for her over 400 vintage dresses on the road).

rigidness that philosophy and religion often are. There’s a place in between the two planes of thought that he’s mastered: an artistic expression as swift and strong as the wind.

“There’s nothing as heavy-handed as a philosophical lecture in my performances,” Elling notes. “People come to the concerts to have a beautiful time. To have an experience that is uplifting. Music is very visual for me. I pay close attention to the colors of different chords and modes, and visual beauty certainly influences my approach. I believe an artist is like a flagpole high above, feeling the winds of change before any one else. In many ways, it’s the role of the artist to bring that information to the people down below.”

Versatility is perhaps the most enduring quality to Elling’s style. He’s as powerful singing Brahms, as he is Nat King Cole. He ranges from wild vocalese solos to intimate ballads, to classical immediacy and swinging beat-generation totality. Elling’s choice of material is wide-ranging, and on Upward Spiral it’s no different: there’s a plethora of variance and nuanced compositions across the

board. Songs by Gershwin, Lester Lee, Sonny Rollins, Sinatra, Fred Hersch, and Antonio Jobim are just some of the songs honored.

Elling has always put as much time into selecting his material, as he has creating and honoring it.

“Well for me I need to have an emotional connection to a composition’’, Elling mused.

“Whether it’s a matter of straight connection to the lyrics or the rhythm, if I’m going to be performing the song 200 nights a year, I have to have an idea Branford Marsalis and Kurt Elling (Photo: Palma Kolansky) that the piece belongs to me in some way. I have to know that I River. NYC is the spot to be for one of can deliver it for all those 200 nights, you jazz’s truest and most unique practitioners, know.” a place Elling fits with style and grace.

Elling and his family moved from “You got to have your Johnny-get-itChicago to New York City in 2008. The going on here,” Elling laughs. “There are capital of jazz drips a particular energy so many beautiful sonic events going on like no other city. You can hear Coltrane every night. So drink a lot of coffee and in the winds that drift through the Village, don’t stay home, you got to get out there the ivory roll of Bud Powell’s harmonies and check everything out man. I mean along each echoing walk on Broadway, and why else are you paying all this rent to live the eternity of Sonny Rollins’ saxophone here.” • impressions every time you cross the East

music

A Timeless Energy

Davina and the Vagabonds heat up The Dock

By Eliz abe th William s Davina and the Vagabonds, Thursday, January 19, 8:00 p.m., The Dock

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ust the snow off your dancing shoes; Davina and the Vagabonds are coming to the Dock on Thursday January 19th. The band, powered by the dynamic and soulful twang of Davina Sowers, promises to warm up even the coldest of toes with infectious beats and rousing energy.

“My goal for this tour,” Sowers says, “is for people to forget the cold, their worries and the world, for them to be whisked away by music and dance their cares away.” If anyone needed proof of this, the Vagabonds are playing sold out shows in their home base of Minneapolis, where the temperature is currently negative four degrees and falling.

Davina and Vagabonds are not just an upbeat and danceable quintet, their music also truly transports you to a different time and place. Although the genre they occupy is indiscernible, attending a live show can be described best as stepping into a Gatsbyesque piano ball to find a New Orleans brass band playing soulful jazzy tunes.

The band pulls from 100 years of Americana music and their own catchy creative originals.

“People are often surprised that we don’t have a guitar player,” Sowers says, “but we bring so much more to the stage with the sounds and styles of each of us.”

“Elling”

contin u ed from page 11

formative years in Chicago that Elling blossomed as a creative force, gaining invaluable experience and confidence.

“Very early on I was into the style of jazz and the players on the recordings I listened to, but it wasn’t until I started hanging out with the musicians in Chicago that I really delved deep into the music. I would play gigs in those days and the guys kept pulling me in, wanting me to come back, and that really made me proud.”

Elling’s background in philosophy and religion can be heard and felt in every facet of his method and output. He’s a renaissance man with deep connections to his surroundings. A lively and honest energy permeates his being, his performances both intricate and curious.

He’s sort of like a cross between Frank Sinatra, Mike Patton, Kahil Gibran and Johnny Hartman, dazzling with a vast appreciation for sound from all over the globe. He’s intense, but open; his music approachable and not guided by the 16

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Davina Sowers (Photo Garret Born)

When the Vagabonds play the Dock on January 19, fans are likely to hear songs from their 2014 album, Sunshine, which rose to number 13 on the Billboard Blues charts. The catchy lyrics and funky tempo of songs like “Red Shoes” and “Muddy Waters” are impossible not to dance to. Even the haunting heartbreak that lingers in the lyrics of “Away from Me” is made upbeat somehow with Sowers at the helm. The band has a reputation for being some of the hardest working musicians on the scene.

So, shake off the snow and let Davina and the Vagabonds whisk you away to an ageless, timeless and worry-free place. This is one dance party you don’t want to miss. •

books

Searching for the Truth

A tale of a son, a father, and the distant past

By Barbara Ad am s Lamar Herrin, Father Figure. Fomite: Burlington, Vt., Oct. 2016. 264 pg.

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others and fathers loom large in our personal mythology, partly because we can never fully know who these people were before we entered their picture. Searching for a deeper parental understanding is the driving force of Lamar Herrin’s recently published seventh novel, Father Figure.

The story, set largely in the red-clay South (most likely Kentucky), unfolds from the viewpoint of Jay Langley, whose father has died five months earlier. In their small town, Bob Langley had been a local legend, as a youth a four-letter man who’d captained every team he was on, but mostly a dazzling center fielder destined for the majors. Tall and handsome, affable with an irresistible smile (which “in towns like my father’s went a long way”), Bob Langley was Russellville’s hero, its golden boy. He married an equally charming girl, Fran, the couple seemingly twinned in their perfection.

But with the Second World War pulling men from their families, Bob shamefully realized that his job in a munitions factory was in fact a privileged deferment. Against his wife’s wishes, he enlisted, and returned, after the Battle of the Bulge, having lost a leg. The postwar Bob was tight-lipped and harsh, becoming a calculating and wealthy developer, thus somehow taking revenge for his loss on the entire town that had lionized him.

Father Figure describes Jay’s obsessive quest to reconcile these contrasting images of his father, one idolized, one feared. A history major in college, Jay had avoided the family business, drifted from job to job, married and divorced; other than his fascination with the dying family line, he’s a bland character, his most interesting feature being his narration. Or his speculation: since Jay’s repeated questioning of his sister Judy and townspeople yields little new insight, he invents possible life scripts out of a few sure details.

These imagined scenes are unquestionably compelling—his parents’ elopement; his own conception (two versions, two possible fathers); the final days his father struggled through the Belgian winter. But there are also known memories: just three times when his father seemed to take interest in him; more frequent recollections of the man’s ferocity, stamping away on his crutch; an impromptu and unexplained family car trip to follow a river north.

Herrin surrounds Jay with relatives more engaging than he—besides his parents, his sister, ex-wife, elderly Aunt Louise, and older cousin Hugh. Their fond-

ness for Jay doesn’t seem grounded in any reason beyond “family”; but perhaps this is one way we recall our pasts—through the presence of others, ourselves a cipher at the center.

Bob Langley’s youthful “legend” and “natural” superiority may seem distasteful to those not sports- or hero-obsessed; Jay’s pursuit of his father’s secrets—and mere recognition, let alone love—necessarily futile. Jay’s focus on the past deprives him of his present, where he’s emotionally stingy and simply lost. But the wealth of his world, not him personally, is what we’re absorbed in.

And beyond the storyline itself, Herrin gives us two fertile landscapes to wander in.

One is the physical setting, richly evoked in every scene. There’s the now-declining town, from the “stately homes, with their ample verandas” in the shade of pecan trees to the “weather-grayed shacks, with sand and no grass for a front yard.” And the land itself: flat fields, eroded and sandy; pervasive “withered kudzu”; a “sour stench” from the lumber mills. Other odors, too, by a

remote mountain lake –– the “distinct delight” of the “smell of the seasons.”

In Jay’s journey, water figures often, whether a small pool sparkling at night or the sluggish Mississippi. Herrin’s prose style continually envelops and seduces: “Real rivers mixed darkness and light, raised winds and cut continents with their onrushing flow, and the world could be divided into two camps of people, those who had crossed them and those who hadn’t.”

This brings us t­o the second captivating “landscape”—the interior one, the perceptions that come from Herrin through and beyond the narrator. The emotions go from distinct (the “outraged sister,” the “long-suffering mother”) to understated (a phone call to former wife, Karen, “as though to register a claim”). Ironically, Jay’s conjectures to seek meaning parallel his father’s attempt to make sense of a senseless war by imagining he’s in a personal standoff with one German. But then that too is Jay’s fancy.

Jay approaches understanding by analogy—to sports, hunting, business—as another way of knowing, possibly feeling. But beyond his single consciousness, however imaginative, Herrin opens us to a magnificent, wider scope, that of generations, familial relationships, inevitable change and decay. There’s no nostalgia here,

The author Lamar Herrin (photo provided)

but surely a recognition that any past glows more brightly than the present. • Barbara Adams, a regional arts journalist, teaches writing at Ithaca College.

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Auburn’s Downtown

Performing Arts Center

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JAN 21 / 8PM

feat. a reworking of Pink Floyd’s DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

MIKE POWELL SU Lacrosse Legend / Inspired Musician

JAN 28 / 8PM Opener / Tim Burns of ‘Two Hour Delay’

“The real thing, people.” Billboard

MARTIN SEXTON

FEB 18 / 8PM

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Wine / Beer / Coffee / Soft Drinks Get tickets at auburnpublictheater.org

315.253.6669

ithaca.zagpad.com Th e

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form a musical synergy that is hard to describe, all with great fun and humor. Bring the whole family and your neighbors, too. There will be plenty of opportunity to sing along on the chorus.

Film cinemapolis

Music bars/clubs/cafés Djug Django | 6:00 PM-9:00 PM | Lot 10 Lounge, 106 S Cayuga St, Ithaca | Hot Club Jazz, Blues, Swing.

Marty Flynn Good Time Band | 6:00 PM-9:00 PM | Flynn’s Roadhouse, East Shore Drive, Lansing | Featuring Marty Flynn,Bob Young,Neal Massa and Dave Salce.

Sacred Chanting with Damodar Das and Friends | 7:00 PM-9:00 PM | Ahimsa Yoga Studio, 215 N Cayuga St., Ithaca | An easy, fun, uplifting spiritual practice open to all faiths. No prior experience necessary. More at www.

DamodarDas.com.

Nick Schnebelen from Trampled Under Foot | 8:00 PM-9:00 PM | Funk ‘n Waffles, 727 S Crouse Ave Ste 8, Syracuse | Blues, Rock.

Wednesday Live Music | 8:00 PM | Rulloff’s, 411 College Ave, Ithaca | Featuring local bands, soloists, and other musical groups.

Reggae Night with The Crucial Reggae Allstars | 9:00 PM | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | Reggae, Dub, Roots Rock.

1/12 Thursday

CTB Jazz Thursdays with Who Let the Cats Out | 6:00 PM-7:30 PM | Collegetown Bagels, East Hill Plaza, Ithaca | Jazz.

Brian Vollmer and Claire Byrne | 7:00 PM | Ransom Steele Tavern, 552 Main St., Apalachin | Vintage Country, Bluegrass, Old-Time, Roots.

1/13 Friday

Rachel Beverly | 5:00 PM-7:00 PM |

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Ithaca Bakery, 400 N Meadow St, Ithaca | Pop, Indie, Folk.

Bob & Dee | 6:00 PM-8:00 PM | Americana Vineyards, 4367 E Covert Rd, Interlaken | Americana, Folk.

City Limits | 6:00 PM-8:00 PM | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | Rock, Pop. Stratcat Willie and the Strays | 7:00 PM | Grist Iron Brewing, 4880 State Route 414, Hector | Blues, Rock.

The Tarps | 9:00 PM | Silver Line Tap Room, 19 W Main St, Trumansburg | Classic Rock.

Project Z | 9:00 PM | Ransom Steele Tavern, 552 Main St., Apalachin | Modern Rock, Blues, Modern Country.

Beach Party with the Surf Renegades and the Grey Wolf Band | 9:00 PM | The Range, Ithaca Commons, 119 E State St, Ithaca | Surf, Rock, Early Rock and Roll, Country, R&B. Phantom Chemistry, Inclusive Or, Backyard Wrestling | 9:30 PM | Funk ‘n Waffles, 727 S Crouse Ave Ste 8, Syracuse | Indie Rock, Electronic, Rock.

Thru Spectrums | 10:00 PM | Lot 10 Lounge, 106 S Cayuga St, Ithaca | Funk, Rock, Fusion.

1/14 Saturday

Dapper Dan | 6:00 PM-8:00 PM | Americana Vineyards, 4367 E Covert Rd, Interlaken | Funk, Rock, Reggae.

Julia Felice and the Whiskey Crisis | 7:00 PM | Grist Iron Brewing, 4880 State Route 414, Hector | Soul, Rock, Blues.

CC Ryder | 7:00 PM-10:00 PM | Heavily Brewing Co., 2471 Hayes Rd, Montour Falls | Acoustic, Folk, Singer Songwriter.

Fordham Road, Slack Tide, Astro Collective | 8:00 PM | Funk ‘n Waffles, 727 S Crouse Ave Ste 8, Syracuse | Progressive Rock, R&B, Indie Rock,

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Fusion, Reggae, Psychedelic.

Barroom Philosophers, Infrared Radiation Orchestra | 9:00 PM | Lot 10 Lounge, 106 S Cayuga St, Ithaca | Reggae Rock, Progressive Rock, Classic Rock, Blues, Psychedelic, Punk.

Chestnut Grove | 9:00 PM | Ransom Steele Tavern, 552 Main St., Apalachin | Rock.

Purple Valley | 9:00 PM | The Range, Ithaca Commons, 119 E State St, Ithaca | Rock and Roll, Country, Folk, Soul, Blues.

Dead Night with Planet Jr. | 10:00 PM | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | Grateful Dead Tribute. Rock, Progressive Rock, Blues, Psychedelic.

Leah & the Upheaval, High Bushy Tails | 10:00 PM | The Nines, 311 College Ave, Ithaca | Blues, Rock, Soul.

1/17 Tuesday

1/15 Sunday

1/14 Saturday

Blue Skies | 4:00 PM-6:00 PM | Americana Vineyards, 4367 E Covert Rd, Interlaken | Vintage Jazz, Blues Standards.

Tyler Smilo | 4:00 PM | Grist Iron Brewing, 4880 State Route 414, Hector | Americana, Folk, Rock.

Al Hartland Trio | 6:00 PM-10:00 PM | Maxie’s Supper Club & Oyster Bar, 635 W State St, Ithaca | Jazz.

Vocal Jazz Jam with Diana Leigh and Jesse Collins | 8:00 PM-11:00 PM | The Range, Ithaca Commons, 119 E State St, Ithaca | Jazz.

1/16 Monday

Dead Night with Pearly Baker’s Best | 9:00 PM | Funk ‘n Waffles, 727 S Crouse Ave Ste 8, Syracuse | Grateful Dead Tribute band featuring Tim Bergen, Brian Welch, Brian Lauri, Eric Brown, Eric Wise and Charley Orlando with special guest Bess Greensberg.

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2017

Jorge T. Cuevas & the Caribe Jazz All-Stars | 6:00 PM-10:00 PM | Maxie’s Supper Club & Oyster Bar, 635 W State St, Ithaca | Jazz, Latin, World.

Tuesday Bluesday with Dan Paolangeli & Friends | 6:00 PM | The Dock, 415 Taughannock Blvd, Ithaca | Blues, Rock, Every Tuesday.

Professor Tuesday’s Jazz Quartet | 8:00 PM-10:00 PM | Madeline’s Restaurant, 215 E State St, Ithaca | Jazz.

Irish Music Session | 8:00 PM-11:00 PM | Rulloff’s, 411 College Ave, Ithaca | Hosted by members of Traonach. te St, Ithaca | Jazz.

Friday, 1/13 to Thursday, 1/19.

Contact Cinemapolis for Showtimes Lion | A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home.

He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family | 118 mins PG-13 | The Eagle Huntress | The Eagle Huntress follows Aisholpan, a

husband’s historic legacy. | 100 mins R | Manchester by the Sea | An uncle is forced to take care of his teenage nephew after the boy’s father dies. | 137 mins R | La La Land | A jazz pianist falls for an aspiring actress in Los Angeles. | 128 mins PG-13 | Elle | A successful businesswoman gets caught up in a game of cat and mouse as she tracks down the unknown man who raped her. | 130 mins R |

Moonlight | A timeless story of human connection and self-discovery, Moonlight chronicles the life of a young black man from childhood to adulthood as he struggles to find his place in the world. | 111 mins R | Regal Cinemas

Wednesday, 1/11 to Tuesday, 1/17.

Contact Regal Ithaca for Showtimes

concerts

The Ithaca Community Chorus and Chamber Singers together with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra | 7:30 PM | St. Pauls United Methodist Church, 402 N Aurora St, Ithaca | Directed by Gerald Wolfe, will give a performance of the Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi and the Te Deum by Antonin Rejcha. Soloists will be Tamara Acosta, soprano, Ivy Walz, mezzo-soprano, Andrew Hudson-Sabens, tenor, and David Neal, bass.

The fifth installment in the “Underworld” franchise and the sequel to “Underworld: Awakening”, “Underworld: Blood Wars” sees the electrifying and bold Kate Beckinsale reprise her role as Selene, the sleek and amazing vampire superstar. Selene finds herself being hunted by a plethora of vampires in this film, including the vampires seeking justice for the deaths of Viktor and Marcus. The film is showing at Regal Cinemas all week long. (Photo provided)

1/15 Sunday

Martin Luther King Weekend Concert: American Roots Music that Matters | 2:00 PM | UM Church, 144 Cedar St., Corning | Featuring Matt Watroba and the Rev. Featuring music that reflects history, social change, migration, hopes and dreams.

The music is rich, diverse, direct and powerful. As talented as they are individually, Matt and Robert together

13-year-old girl, as she trains to become the first female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to become an eagle hunter. | 87 mins G | Jackie | Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy fights through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children, and define her

Why Him? | A holiday gathering threatens to go off the rails when Ned Fleming realizes that his daughter’s Silicon Valley billionaire boyfriend is about to pop the question. | 111 mins R | Sing | A koala named Buster Moon has one final chance to restore his theater to its former glory by producing the

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world’s greatest singing competition. | 108 mins PG | Assassin’s Creed | When Callum Lynch explores the memories of his ancestor Aguilar and gains the skills of a Master Assassin, he discovers he is a descendant of the secret Assassins society. | 115 mins PG-13 | Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them | The adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York’s secret community of witches and wizards seventy years before Harry Potter reads his book in school. | 133 mins PG-13 | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | The Rebellion makes a risky move to steal the plans for the Death Star, setting up the epic saga to follow. The first stand alone Star Wars film promises to be a whirlwind. | 133 mins PG-13 | Passengers | A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in its sleep chambers. As a result, two passengers are awakened 90 years early. | 116 mins PG-13 | Moana | In Ancient Polynesia, when a terrible curse incurred by Maui reaches an impetuous Chieftain’s daughter’s island, she answers the Ocean’s call to seek out the demigod to set things right. | 107 mins PG | Hidden Figures | Based on a true story. A team of African-American

women provide NASA with important mathematical data needed to launch the program’s first successful space missions. | 127 mins PG | Underworld: Blood Wars | Vampire death dealer, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) fights to end the eternal war between the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her. | 91 mins R | A Monster Calls | A boy seeks the help of a tree monster to cope with his single mum’s terminal illness. | 108 mins PG-13 | Collateral Beauty | Retreating from life after a tragedy, a man questions the universe by writing to Love, Time and Death. Receiving unexpected answers, he begins to see how these things interlock and how even loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty. | 97 mins PG-13 | Fences | A working-class AfricanAmerican father tries to raise his family in the 1950s, while coming to terms with the events of his life. | 139 mins PG-13 |

Notices Local Auditions: Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival / Merry-Go-Round Playhouse | Local auditions to be held Jan. 27-29 for the playhouse’s upcoming 2017 season.

Shows include: Guys and Dolls, Parade, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Ghost The Musical, and Always…

Patsy Cline. Auditions will be held by appointment only. All roles are available. Equity and Non-Equity.

Paid positions. Internships and Observerships also available. For more information and to request an audition appointment, please visit: FingerLakesMTF.com/auditions.

American Red Cross Blood Drives | 1/11 Ithaca Moose Lodge 1:30pm to 6:30pm, 1/12 Cornell Business Park 12pm to 5pm, 1/12 First Unitarian Society 1pm to 6pm, 1/12 Tabernacle Baptist Church 11am to 5pm, 1/13 Danby Federated Church 10am to 2pm, 1/13 Trumansburg High School 9am to 2pm, 1/14 Enfield Fire Department.

Auditions for H.M.S. Pinafore in Concert | First Presbyterian Church, 112 South St, Auburn | Two audtions on Saturday, January 21st from 2-5 pm and Sunday, January 22nd from 3-6 pm. Performances will run March 3 and March 5th at the Auburn High School Auditorium. For more information AuburnPlayers.org Ithaca Sociable Singles Dinner | 6:00 PM, 1/11 Wednesday | New Delhi Diamond Indian Restaurant, 106 W Green St, Ithaca | RSVP elkdale@nep. net Buffalo St. Books Presents Trampoline Thursdays | 7:00

PM-9:00 PM, 1/12 Thursday | Lot 10 Lounge, 106 S Cayuga St, Ithaca | A night of competitive storytelling where the public is invited to share their tall tales. Each contestant will be given 3 minutes to share their story and enter for a chance to be crowned the first ever Trampoline Story Champ.

GIAC’s Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast | 9:00 AM-11:30 AM, 1/14 Saturday | GIAC, 301 N Albany St, Ithaca | This year’s theme will be Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) The keynote speaker for this event will be Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, Director of Programs & Outreach at Ithaca College.

Performances will be provided by GIAC youth and community members. For more information, please contact GIAC at (607) 272-3622.

Newfield Lioness Chicken and Biscuit Dinner | 5:00 PM-7:00 PM, 1/14 Saturday | Newfield Fire Hall, 77 Main St. , Newfield | Serving: Chicken & gravy, biscuits, mashed potatoes, veggies, drinks & home made desserts.

Mecklenburg Vol. Fire Dept.

Country Style Breakfast | 7:30 AM-11:00 AM, 1/15 Sunday | Mecklenburg Fire Station, 4495 County Route 6, Mecklenburg | Pancakes, French Toast, Eggs, Sausage, Bacon, Homefries, Toast, Prizes, and more.

Open Meditation | 10:30 AM-12:00 PM, 1/15 Sunday | Foundation of Light, 391 Turkey Hill Rd, Ithaca | All are welcome to meditate according to their own practice. Class begins with 20 minutes of silent meditation, after which everyone reads and discuss related texts. Class ends with 15 or 20 minutes of silent or guided meditation.

Beginners are welcome and instruction in basic meditation will be provided.

For more information, email Lynne at ltaetzsch@gmail.com or call her at 607-273-1364.

Finger Lakes Finns Annual Quiz Show | 1:00 PM, 1/15 Sunday | Newfield Fire Hall, 77 Main St. , Newfield | It’s time to test your knowledge of Finnish culture and history. Join the fun with the Finger Lakes Finns for a terrific pass-a-dish luncheon and brief meeting, followed by the Annual Quiz Show.

T’ai Chi Classes at Lansing Library | 11:30 AM-12:30 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | Lansing Community Library, 27 Auburn Rd, Lansing | John Burger: Instructor.

Groton Public Library Free Community Meal | 6:00 PM-8:00 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | Groton Public Library, 112 E Cortland St, Groton | What can we do together to create a community where everyone has access to nutritious food and no one goes hungry? Please RSVP by calling 898-5055 or director@ grotonpubliclibrary.org. Snow date is January 24.

(CHEW) Circle for Healthy Eating and Wellness | 6:00 PM-7:30 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | Just Be Cause Center, 1013 W State St, Ithaca | CHEW is a peer support group for people in recovery from eating disorders. 1st and 3rd Tuesdays at Just Be Cause, 6 - 7:30 p.m. Contact Amy or Sabrina at CHEWIthaca@gmail.com.

Geeks Who Drink | 7:30 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | The Haunt, 702 Willow Ave, Ithaca | Pub Quiz.

Learning The Unexpected Leader: Being The First with Gwen Webber-McLeod | 9:00 AM-12:00 PM, 1/12 Thursday | BorgWarner Room, 101 E Green St, Ithaca | Workshop for everyone interested in leadership and inclusion.

In cooperation with the Diversity Consortium of Tompkins County. Visit www.hsctc.org/workshops for details.

Natural Strategies to Reduce Anxiety and Stress with Andrea Rennie | 7:00 PM-8:15 PM, 1/12

Thursday | GreenStar Cooperative Market, 700 W Buffalo St, Ithaca | Andrea Rennie is a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach.

Natural Strategies to Reduce Anxiety and Stress | 7:00 PM-8:15 PM, 1/12 Thursday | GreenStar Cooperative Market, 700 W Buffalo St, Ithaca | Andrea Rennie, certified health coach, will share simple nutritional strategies and breathing exercises to help activate your natural relaxation response. Registration is required sign up online at greenstar.coop, at GreenStar’s Customer Service Desk, or call 273-9392.

Acting and Improvisation Workshops (Creating A Character): Elmira Little Theatre | 6:00 PM-8:30 PM, 1/13 Friday | Park Church, 208 W Gray St, Elmira | Join Meghan O’Toole Tuazon for this high energy, informative, fun and challenging Acting/Improvisation Workshop. This session will explore many avenues, tricks and tools to creating truthful characters on stage. Suitable for the beginner to the advanced actor, come ready to use your body, voice, mind and emotional instincts. A positive, safe, collaborative environment will be created by and for all participants.You can sign up for one, two, or all three sessions when you register. Please email Events.ELT@gmail.com with your name, age. Walk-ins are welcome, but registration is encouraged.

Wildlife Tracking with Linda Spielman | 9:30 AM, 1/14 Saturday | Roy H. Park Preserve, , Ithaca | With over 20 years of experience in environmental education, tracker and naturalist Linda Spielman will lead a trip to discover what’s been visiting this preserve. More info and directions at www.fllt.org/events Entrepreneurs: Then and Now | 2:00 PM-3:30 PM, 1/14 Saturday | History Center, 401 E State St, Ithaca | There is a long history of innovation and entrepreneurship in Ithaca and Tompkins County, some of which is captured in this current exhibit. This program will highlight the entrepreneurial spirit that has been evident in our community with a focus on the past few decades and into the present.

There will be a panel presentation followed by Q&A. Raj Yoga Meditation Class with Amita Shukla | 10:00 AM-11:00 AM, 1/17 Tuesday | Foundation of Light, 391 Turkey Hill Rd, Ithaca | Raj Yoga meditation is a form of meditation that is accessible to people of all

Surf Renegades, Grey Wolf Jam,

Young Writers NIght,

The Range, Friday, January 13, 9:00 p.m.

Sacred Root Kava Lounge, Friday, January 13, 5:00 p.m.

The dark skies got you down? A little to cold for you this week? Forget about it Friday night and head to The Range to let the sunshine over take you. Bob Keefe and the Surf Renegades (pictured) headline a show with fellow throwbacks The Grey Wolf Jam, culling the warmth from above and the boldness of the past. Grey Wolf Jam combine a gritty mix of Blues, Rock, and Country from the ‘50s and ‘60s, while The Surf Renegades play the classic style introduced by bands like The Ventures, Dick Dale, and The Surfmen.

The air is crisp right now and very particular for minds to create poetry and prose. New Roots Charter School’s Third Annual Young Writers Night is the place to be Friday night to hear the future. Any and all young people out there, are welcomed and encouraged to come out and share their vision, their hope, and their dreams. The night will start with an open mic, followed by a poetry slam with prizes. If you do plan on coming, try and have two pieces ready for action. The event is completely run by the students at New Roots.

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backgrounds. It is a meditation without rituals or mantras and can be practiced anywhere at any time. Raja Yoga meditation is practiced with ‘open eyes’, which makes this method of meditation versatile, simple and easy to practice. Meditation is a state of being in that place just beyond every day consciousness, which is where spiritual empowerment begins.

Forgiveness Workshop: A Way to Regain Well-Being | 1:00 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | BorgWarner Room, 101 E Green St, Ithaca | A workshop by filmmaker Mara Alper.

Homebuyer U (Homebuyer education class) | 6:30 PM-8:30 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | Ithaca NHS, 115 W Clinton St, Ithaca | Buying a home is a huge investment and is one of the best ways to build wealth. If you are interested in buying a home but don’t know where to start, the Homebuyer Class at Ithaca NHS can help. By the end of class you will know how much money you need to buy a home, your credit score and how it affects you, how much house you can afford, how to work with a Realtor, how to get a mortgage, how to pick the right home, inspections(!), and how to protect your investment once you are a homeowner.

For more information email hbe@ ithacanhs.org or visit www.ithacanhs. org

Kids Baby Storytime | 10:30 AM, 1/13 Friday | Tompkins County Public Library, 101 E Green St, Ithaca | During these fun-filled 30-minute sessions, Library staff will share books, songs, rhymes, baby signs and early literacy tips. Baby Storytime programs are followed by hour-long Baby and Toddler Playtimes, which encourage socialization and learning through unstructured play. For more information, contact the Library’s Youth Services Department at (607) 272-4557 extension 275.

Teen Movie Night: Ghostbusters | 5:30 PM, 1/13 Friday | BorgWarner Room, 101 E Green St, Ithaca | Following a ghost invasion of Manhattan, paranormal enthusiasts Erin Gilbert and Abby Yaters, nuclear engineer Jillian Holtzmann, and subway worker Patty Tolan band

Online Calendar

Ongoing

Perkiomenville, PA Americana rockers Chestnut Grove have a breezy and flexible depth to them. They surround dense songwriting with artful and extended excellence. Aspects of Modest Mouse, Wilco and tasteful Southern Rock, swift and sway through jazzy and folk extensions. It is the personal and intimate songwriting that carries the band beyond though. With multiple songwriters across the board, this is band destined for a bright future. They play the Ransom Steele Tavern this Saturday, Jan. 14, at 9:00 p.m. Don’t miss out! (Photo facebook) together to stop the otherworldy threat. Popcorn, pizza, and drinks will be provided. Registration is not required but is helpful for food ordering purposes. To register, visit www. libraryinsight.com/EventSignUp.asp.

For more information, contact Teen Services Librarian Regina DeMauro at rdemauro@tcpl.org.

Electrostatics | 1:00 PM-2:00 PM, 1/14 Saturday | BorgWarner Room, 101 E Green St, Ithaca | Families will explore the phenomena and properties of slow-moving or stationary charges.

They will be able to see a Van de Graaf generator in action, as well as make a static flyer and an electrophorus. More information about Families Learning Science Together workshops can be found at: ccmr.prod.academicsweb. com/education/community-programs/ families-learning-science-together/ Rhythm of Courage: MLK Day Program for Families | 1:00 PM, 1/16 Monday | Tompkins County Public Library, 101 E Green St, Ithaca | A program featuring African drumming and stories about King’s life and work

ThisWeek

See it at ithaca.com.

Justice For All: A Writers Resist Reading | 2:00 PM-3:00 PM, 1/15 Sunday | First Unitarian Church Ithaca, 306 N Aurora St, Ithaca | Ten local authors will come together at the First Unitarian Church in Ithaca to share Justice for All: A Writers Resist Reading, a curated selection of contemporary and historical works that celebrate and promote the ideals of freedom and democracy.

Fire & Ice Day | 9:00 AM-3:30 AM, 1/16 Monday | 4-H Acres, 418 Lower Creek Rd., Ithaca | Grab your snow pants and get ready to cure that cabin fever with a day of non-stop outdoor winter fun! Make own tracks, play games, build shelters and warm up by the fire with homemade tea and more.

Info, visit primitivepursuits.com, or call 607-272-2292 ext. 195.

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led by community advocate Aloja Airewele. For families of children ages 5 and up. For more information, contact the Library’s Youth Services Department at (607) 272-4557 extension 275.

Meetings Tompkins County Legislature | 5:30 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | County Of Tompkins - The Daniel D. Tompkins Building, 121 E. Court St., Ithaca | Public is welcome.

Town of Ithaca Planning Board | 7:00 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | Ithaca Town Hall, 215 North Tioga Street, Ithaca | May include hearings, during which the public may speak.

Special Events 11th Annual Celebrity Chef Pasta Nights | 5:00 PM-8:30 PM, 1/12 Thursday | Glenora Wine Cellars Inc, 5435 State Route 14, Dundee | Pasta Night returns for its 11th year! Join Glenora Wine Cellars for their favorite

winter tradition and enjoy fresh pasta dishes prepared by local celebrity chefs every Thursday at Veraisons.

Reservations Strongly Suggested.

Reserve a table online or call 800.243.5513 Community Fire Ceremony | 6:30 PM-9:00 PM, 1/13 Friday | Foundation of Light, 391 Turkey Hill Rd, Ithaca | Come sing, drum, and celebrate the full moon moon as individuals continue to honor the Elements of Nature.

Something special happens by the fire when people come together in the community. Info: Susan Norton: 607 229-5161 or www.connecting2spirit. com Black Sheep Handspinners’ Roc Day Celebration | 10:00 AM-4:00 PM, 1/14 Saturday | All Saints Church, 347 Ridge Rd. (34B), Lansing | Includes spinning demonstrations, vendors, competitions and spinning circle. Free and open to the public with lots of free parking. Come enjoy fellowship, food and fun with other handspinners and fiber artists. For more information visit: BlackSheepHanspinnersGuild.org

Ithaca Community Chorus and Chamber singers with the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra , St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, Saturday, January 14, 7:30 p.m.

The fabulous Ithaca Community Chorus and Chamber Singers will join with the equally fantastic Cayuga Chamber Orchestra and director Gerald Wolfe, to give a stunning rendition of “Gloria” by Antonio Vivaldi and the “Te Deum” by Antonin Rejcha. Performing the solos will be Tamara Acosta, Ivy Waltz, Andrew Hudson-Sabens, and David Neal.

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Yoga Mind and Body Meditation Series | 5:00 PM-6:00 PM, 1/11 Wednesday | WSH Art Gallery, 136 Ho Plaza, Ithaca | In this class we will explore yoga through movement, breath work, and meditation. We will awaken and invigorate the body & mind through breathing techniques and a sequence of gentle active postures and soothing stretches. Then we will move towards more passive postures and meditation to relax and rejuvenate the body and mind. This class is open to all levels and all bodies.

Open Hearts Dinner | 5:00 PM-6:30 PM, 1/11 Wednesday | McKendree UMC, 224 Owego St., Candor | Come and join in the fun. Whether you are looking for fellowship or a free meal this one’s for you. Contact: Denice Peckins denicepeckins@hotmail.com Wednesday Night Ithaca Women’s Basketball Association: Open to girls & women ages 16 & up | 7:00 PM-9:00 PM, 1/11 Wednesday | Lehman Alternative Community School, 111 Chestnut St, Ithaca | The league is non-competitive and fun and involves pick-up style playing. Check out the league’s website for more information: https://ithacawomensbasketball. wordpress.com/ Beginner Bird Walks | Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd, Ithaca | Guided bird walks every Saturday and Sunday morning, sponsored by the Cayuga Bird Club.

Targeted toward beginners, but appropriate for all. Binoculars available for loan. Meet at the Cornell Lab of Ornitholgy on Sapsucker Woods Rd.

by the front of the building. For the meeting time and more information, go to the club’s website, www.cayugabirdclub.org/calendar The Cayuga Trails Club Tuesday Hikes | The Cayuga Trails Club will lead 4-5 mile hikes every Tuesday evening.

Hike locations vary every week. For current information, call 607-339-5131 or visit www.cayugatrailsclub.org Pickleball at the Ithaca YMCA | 9:30 AM-2:00 PM, 1/17 Tuesday | Ymca, Graham Rd W, Ithaca | Tuesdays & Thursdays from 9:30 am – 2:00 pm

Books New Roots Spoken Word Club: Young Writers Night | 5:00 PM-07:00:00 PM, 1/13 Friday | Sacred Root Kava Lounge & Tea Bar, 139 W State St, Ithaca | Welcome to any and all for a night of poetry, prose, and stories written by young folks from Ithaca and the surrounding area.

Young Writers Night starts with an open mic and ends with a slam. The age range for performers is 13-25, and sign up is at the door. If you’re going to participate in the slam, plan on bringing two pieces.

The New Jim Crow Community Read: MLK Day: Felons Need Not Apply | 5:30 PM, 1/16 Monday | GIAC, 301 N Albany St, Ithaca | Hosted by the Re-entry Welcome Center.

Art Call for Entries: Recycled Runway 2017 | The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes’ signature fundraising event, Recycled Runway will be held Saturday, June 3, 2017 at The Corning Museum of Glass.

They are looking for designers of all ages to participate in this fundraising fashion show featuring one-of-a-kind creations, using recycled or repurposed materials. Materials used by designers in the past include plastic bags, feathers, warming blankets from a marathon, CDs and DVDs, and more.

Proposals are due Friday, February 3, 2017. For more infor contact Connie Sullivan-Blum at 607-962-1332 x204 or director@eARTS.org ongoing Benjamin Peters | 120 on The Commons, Ithaca | “30 Year Calling”.

A collaborative show put on by Gary Bercow and his past students,

Barroom Philosophers, Infrared Radiation Orchestra Lot 10, Saturday, January 14, 9:00 p.m.

The five-piece Syracuse reggae-rock-funk fusion band Barroom Philosophers forge mellowness with slick musicality, achieving a varied sound that has won audiences over all through the Central NY region and beyond. Opening up the night will be the intergalactic psychedelic warriors the Infrared Radiation Orchestra. Led by guitar virtuoso Kim Draheim (pictured) the band beams away in the vibrancy of acid rock.

commemorating 30 years of teaching middle and high school art in both Spencer-Van Etten and the Lehman Alternative Community School.

Buffalo Street Books | 215 N Cayuga St, Ithaca | Emily Koester: Ignes fatui. This display represents the development of a novel artistic medium that combines color and light projection. The collection includes original templates and constructions, photographs of projection, and art prints.

CAP Art Space | 171 The Commons, Ithaca | Uniit Carruyo: A series of mixed media paintings ranging in size from 2’x3’ to 4’x5’ featuring acrylic, ink, fiber, light and glass. The style is abstract landscapes under water.

Corners Gallery | 903 Hanshaw Road, Ithaca | FORM/ FUNCTION : an exploration of aesthetics in ceramics, furniture, and work on paper. This exhibit features the work of Julie Crosby, Miles & May furniture works, and Kathleen Sherin The show is on view through Jan. 28. www.cornersgallery.com CSMA | 330 E State St, Ithaca | Annual Open Show | Curated by acclaimed painter Joyce Stillman-Myers, CSMA’s Open Show presents work in a variety media by more than 50 local artists.

Representing traditional to contemporary styles, this much-anticipated show celebrates the vibrant and diverse visual arts interests of our community.

Elevator Music and Art Gallery | at New Roots Charter School, 116 N. Cayuga St., Ithaca | Jude Meyers Thomas: Continuation with Single Reclining Spoon: Jude Meyers Thomas explores color and form as separate but related vocabularies and is most creative in the fulsome space between pure representation and pure color.

Vivid hues, daring shapes and a deft exploration of possibility bring solace as we all wait for the Solstice. www. newrootsschool.org Gimme! Coffee | 506 West State Street, Ithaca | Sarah Clapp: WIld. Clapp is a photographer with a photo journalistic approach to her work.

Hilton Garden Inn | 130 Seneca St., Ithaca | McKayla Macomber: Beatitude: Focusing on little intricacies and the things in life that bring happiness and inspiration, McKayla Macomber gives her art the ability to develop on its own.

The History Center | 401 E. State St, Ithaca | Made in Tompkins County: “A Timeline of Local Enterprise”. Through

HeadsUp Your weekend miracle ticket

by Christopher J. Harrington Planet Jr., Saturday, January 14, 10:00 p.m., The Dock

A

s the temps drop and the sky hangs grey, the mind invariably collapses inward, tightening, in need of a stretch, both physically and mentally.

The psychedelic masters and sunshine gulpers, the Grateful Dead, have always proved a particularly magical band in the winter months. Pulling your mind into shape with warm elasticity and lush visions. Elmira/Corning based rockers Planet Jr. is your miracle ticket to Dead escapism and more this week. The local band combines a pulsing and honest take on the famous San Francisco beat nicks, while blasting original songs and other covers as well: soaring through setlists filled with progressive nuance and acid rock boldness.

Planet Jr. sets up for a much needed strange trip this Saturday at The Dock, brining with them a collective that is deadicated, talented and unique. The band goes off in their own special way, but always stay true to the Dead’s ultimate vision: creativity is key, and moments are eternal. Guitarist Jeff Sharp caught up with the Ithaca Times recently in anticipation of the gig. Here’s the lowdown.

Ithaca Times: How’d the band form and what’s the general history.

Jeff Sharp: This group was more of something that accumulated, than formed. The other guitar player, Mark Paterson, and I have been friends for over 20 years and had been playing music together for all of that time. We had both been in electric bands when we were younger

February 18th, 2017. “Early American Decorative Arts”. Through September 24th, 2017. The Central New York chapter of the Historical Society of Early American Decoration is proud to display original pieces of tin, glass and wood alongside reproductions done by our members. | www. historicithaca.org or www.thehistorycenter.net.

The Ink Shop | 330 E.State / MLK Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 | Through January 20. 19th Mini-Print International: This show invites artists from around the world to submit prints no larger than 4”x 4”. A juried

and decided to try that again. We started out in 2012 with a bass player and a drummer who are no longer playing with us. They were replaced by Ryan Hunt on bass and Colin Carpenter on drums. We were also lucky enough to acquire Maura Willock as a singer. (She didn’t even audition. The first time she sang with us was at a gig in a rather scary bar). We added Margaret Matteson, the only real musician, on keys. Mike Nickerson finally rounded out the current lineup as a second drummer.

He was playing in another Grateful Dead band called Sunshine Daydream with Ryan Hunt and started playing with us when they disbanded. We also have Bob Cassano who runs the sound equipment.

None of us do this professionally. We all have “day jobs” but really enjoy playing together. Mark, Ryan and I are pretty big Deadheads so it just sort of moved in that direction.

IT: Does the band have a favorite era of the Grateful Dead, and any particular songs you really like to play?

JS: Most of us got into the band in the 1980s so I think the sound tends reflect that era, though it’s hard for me to judge. Our sound is a little rawer and less “digital” than the Dead sounded towards the end of their career. As for particular songs, I imagine each of us have ones we like or don’t like. Songs come and go from the lineup. I was lucky enough to get them to take on “Help on the Way/ Slipknot” composition. It is a technically difficult piece and I feel like we manage it ok. Margaret deserves all of the credit though. She really nails the keyboard part that is quite difficult to play. I’m sure all of the others have their preferences. Ryan even got us to play “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk, which was surprisingly popular. I will earn his everlasting adoration or ire; I’m not sure which, if you put that in the article.

IT: I assume the band’s full of Dead Heads, or at least have an affinity for the Dead. What was your first GD show, and what was the experience like?

JS: Mark, Ryan, Mike and I are really more into the Dead that the others.

selection of the submitted prints for the 19th Mini Print International will be exhibited at The Ink Shop in 2016. Our recent Mini Print shows have attracted artists from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand as well as many artists from the United States. www.ink-shop.org Lifelong |119 W Court St, Ithaca | Ron Krieg: Captured Moments: Ron Krieg, a native of Queens, has made Ithaca his home since 1989. His photography is influenced by his experiences as a NYC taxi driver, foster care caseworker, postal clerk, and his love of history,

Margaret has really come to like it, but she likes all kinds of music and is such a positive force. Maura was not particularly into the Dead. She plays a lot of her own stuff and is very talented. She does sing lead on a number of the Dead songs though, which brings a new flavor to it that I really like. She really shines. I had been listening to the Dead for some time, but didn’t see a show until I was in College in 1988.

I went to Madison Square Garden with a ticket was that given to me by a friend. I had no idea what to make of it because the live show was so radically different from their commercially available recorded music. I was definitely hooked.

I was able to see them quite a bit over the years. I was in the merchant marine at the time and would get off the boat and hit the road with the Dead for a couple of weeks, and then go back to work. My last show was also Jerry’s last at Soldier Field in July of 1995. The other guys have also seen quite a lot of shows over the years.

IT: Being a Dead tribute/cover band do you think there’s a difference between being a cover band and being a tribute band, and what would you consider Planet Jr.?

JS: I think a “tribute” band really tries to duplicate the experience of the group they are emulating. I’m not sure we really do that. The Grateful Dead is a tough act to duplicate. They would have recurring musical themes throughout any given show or even a run of shows. I imagine a tribute band (like Dark Star Orchestra) might attempt that kind of thing, but we don’t. The magic of the Grateful Dead was

political science, cinema and literature.

Ron’s photographs will be exhibited at Lifelong through the end of February.

State of the Art | 120 W State St Ste 2, Ithaca | Gallery Artists: Tompkins County Bicentennial Gallery artists open the new year with art that represents Ithaca’s past and present.

State of the Art will celebrate Tompkins County Bicentennial with half of our artists showing their work in January and the other half in February. The January show runs from January 4-29. soagithaca.org and 607-277-1626. www.soagithaca.org Sunny Days of Ithaca | 123 S Cayuga

(Top) Planet Jr. rocking out (Above) The Grateful Dead in their element (Photos provided) that it was a musical conversation between the band and the audience. It had its own recognizable language. I don’t believe any band before them, or since, has achieved what they did. Good luck duplicating that! I suppose a cover band would stick more to the song structure of the recorded music. I have seen a number of bands do that with the Dead. I like to think that we bring the improvisational element at the expense of some of the structure that is something the Dead did.

I suppose Planet Jr. lies somewhere in the no-mans-land between cover and tribute band. We also like to play other groups songs as well as some original songs, so we are not strictly a Grateful Dead band. • Read the whole interview at ithaca.com

St, Ithaca | David Geer: Seasons: Sunny Days of Ithaca, 123 S Cayuga St, Ithaca | David M. Geer is an award-winning artist from Endicott, NY. He began drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil, and started selling his pictures to classmates for a quarter a piece in grade school. He began formal instruction in oil painting at the age of twelve. Frequently David incorporates his love of travel into his work.

TCPL | 101 E Green St, Ithaca | On Being Human: A complimentary, multi-media exhibit, to TCPL’s Exploring Human Origins: What Does It Mean To Be Human, traveling exhibit of

the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the American Library Association. “On Being Human” is curated by Terry Plater and features the work of ten local artists, including Plater, Ben Altman, William Benson, Jane Dennis, and Gurdon Brewster.

Got Submissions?

Send your events items – band gigs, benefits, meet-ups, whatever – to arts@ithacatimes.com.

Americana Vineyards, Sunday, January 15, 4:00 p.m.

First Unitarian Church of Ithaca , Sunday, January 15, 2:00 p.m.

If vintage jazz and stellar blues standards are where you want to escape to this weekend, you’re in luck. Ithaca’s old-time behemoths Blue Skies fill the soundscape with hot club jazz, NYC cabaret, Dixieland blues, and old-fashioned sting madness. Take a trip back in time with this masterful trio who’ve individually, explored a diverse spectrum of music. Blues, bluegrass, Celtic, Country, Jazz, Rock and Roll and more are the backbone and painterly aspects of this dynamic group. Sit back, have a drink, and transcend!

Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in a spectacular way, ten local authors will merge together this Sunday in Ithaca to share in a selection of contemporary and historical literary works that celebrate, honor, and promote the ideals of freedom, mindfulness, and expression. The event is hosted

by Jamie Warburton and will feature the likes of Dubian Ade, Michelle Courtney Berry, Sorayya Khan, and many more !

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140/Cars Donate your car to Wheels For Wishes, benefiting Make-A-Wish. We offer free towing and your donation is 100% tax deductible. Call:315-400-0797 Today!

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Snow Blower Cab + Futon Mattress

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Be your own boss. Flexible hours.

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Horse for Lease

410/Business Opportunity

10 year old gelding, Hanoverian x TB, 16.2hh Very athletic, good mover, Hunter/Jumper or basic Dressage Intermediate/Advanced riders only please.

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Daniel Berrigan Writings, 1970 rock mass and Berrigan Festival reminisences

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Start Here - Get trained as FAA Certified Aviation Technician. Financial aid for qualified students. Job placement assistance. Call AIM for free information 866-296-7093. (NYSCAN)

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PIANOS

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Snow cab for Troy-Bilt Snow Blower $25.00 8” Queen Futon mattress REAL good condition $50.00/obo 387-9327

245/Garage Sales 706 Linn Street - Ithaca Friday January 13th 11am-4pm, Saturday January 14h 9am-3pm. Everything must go! beds; dressers; bedding rocking chairs; chairs; tables; dishes; pressed glass (clear and colored); kitchen utensils; pots and pans; china cabinet; cupboard; couch, love seat; desks; vinyl records; and more

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community

WOOD

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Free Ads: Lost and Found and free items run at no charge for up to 3 weeks.

Merchandise for Sale, private party only. Price must be under $100 and stated in ad

Fax and Mail orders only

16x18 inches. 5+ full cords, Paid $1,000, will take $450.00. U-haul. 607-564-7770

CASH BUYER, Old Comic Books 10c to 35c covers, also Guns, Gold Coins.

I travel to you and Buy EVERYTHING You have! Call Brian 1-800-617-3551 (NYSCAN)

Headlines: 9-point headlines (use up to 16 characters) $2.00 per line. If bold type, centered or unusually spaced type, borders in ad, or logos in ads are requested, the ad will be charged at the display classified advertising rate. Call 277-7000 for rate information.

MERCHANDISE $100 - $500

$

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Employment / Real Estate / Adoption: $59.00 first 15 words (minimum), 30 cents each additional word.

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Line Ads: $18.50 for first 12 words (minimum), 30 cents each additional word.

Internet: www.ithaca.com Mail: Ithaca Times Classified Dept

PO Box 27 Ithaca NY 14850 In Person: Mon.-Fri. 9am-5pm

109 North Cayuga Street

Phone: Mon.-Fri. 9am-5pm Fax: 277-1012 (24 Hrs Daily)

Special Rates:

Ithaca Times Town & Country Classified Ad Rates

begin here - Get started by training as FAA certified Aviation Technician.

Financial aid for qualified students. Job placement assistance. Call Aviation Institute of Maintenance 800-725-1563 (AAN CAN)

New, Used, Vintage Stringed Instruments, Amps & Accessories.

Trade Ins • Layaway • Repairs

Coaches

Southern Cayuga Central School seeks a Junior Varsity Baseball Coach and a Modified Baseball Coach for spring 1027 season. Print application from website: southerncayuga.org and send with resume, cover letter and applicable documents to Cathy Haight, AD, by January 23; SCCS, 2384 State Route 34B, Aurora NY 13026; SCCS EOE

• Rebuilt • Reconditioned • Bought• Sold • Moved • Tuned • Rented

Complete rebuilding services.

No job too big or too small.

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Ithaca Piano Rebuilders DeWitt Mall 215 N. Cayuga St

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South Hill Business Campus, Ithaca, NY

Ithaca WebsIte DesIgn

Do you have a business? are you starting a business?

Let Us help You!

We have been in business since 1980 specializing in streaming audio and video. Our team of experts can build you a website with features such as search engine optimization, tracking web site visitors, listing on Facebook. Check us out on www.ithacawebsitedesign.com Call us at 607-272-9175 we are open Monday to Friday 9am. to answer your questions.

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employment Food Service Helpers

Southern Cayuga School seeks TWO food service helpers, 5 days per week; one at 4 hours per day, one at 4.5 hours per day; starting rate $10.41 per hour.

Also seeking substitute food service helpers $10.00 per hour. Apply online with the Support Staff Application; go to southerncayuga.org/644, click on the application in the right column Southern Cayuga Central School, 2384 Route 34B, Aurora NY 13026. SCCS EOE

| 59,200 Readers

Internet: www.ithaca.com Mail: Ithaca Times Classified Dept

PO Box 27 Ithaca NY 14850 In Person: Mon.-Fri. 9am-5pm

109 North Cayuga Street

Phone: Mon.-Fri. 9am-5pm Fax: 277-1012 (24 Hrs Daily)

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adoptions

Supervising School Nurse (RN) 11-Month

F/T, 11-Month Supervising School Nurse (RN) NEW leadership position available in the Health office at T-S-T BOCES. Detailed job posting with requirements listed on the BOES website: www.tstboces. org Apply by 01/27/17 online at: www. tompkinscountyny.gov/personnel TST BOCES, 555 Warren Rd., Ithaca, N.Y. 184850, Phone (607)257-1551, Fax: (607)697-8273, Email: hr@tstboces.org

Wanted:

Commercial Driver with Class A License. Full tme log truck driver. Call 607-898-5065 for additional information, or submit your resume to travis@ treemastersny.com

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Call Mark “The Hammer” Gugino 144 Bald Hill Road Ithaca 607-319-0766 Debt Relief Agency Attorney Advertising CONVENTIONAL & BANK RATE FINANCING Fix’n Flips, Hard-Bridge Loans, No Documents-Stated Income Programs, 100k-$100 Million, Purchase-Refinance, SFH-1-4, Multi-family, Mixed Use, Commercial, 888-565-9477 (NYSCAN) Four Seasons Landscaping Inc. 607.272.1504 Lawn maintenance, spring + fall clean up + gutter cleaning, patios, retaining walls, + walkways, landscape design + installation. Drainage.

Snow Removal. Dumpster rentals. Find us on Facebook!

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gardener/all-around home supporter available. 2 biweekly 4-hour slots open.

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* Car Donation Foundation d/b/a Wheels For Wishes. To learn more about our programs or financial information, visit www.wheelsforwishes.org.

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at

Janitorial Service * Floor/Carpet

277-7000 p h o n e 277-1012 f a x

High Dusting * Windows/Awnings

“CLEAR IT OUT”

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Basements, Barns, Garages & etc.

24/7 CLEANING Services 607-697-3294

LOOKING TO DRIVE

Richard F. Vogt

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patios, retaining walls, + walkways

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drainage

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Put some Class in Your Kitchen

snow removal

607-227-4624

dumpster rentals

Love dogs?

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FOREVER YOUNG

Check out Cayuga Dog Rescue!

Botox * Dysport * Restylane * Radiesse

Adopt! Foster! Volunteer! Donate for vet care!

Juvederm * Microdermabrasion

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Microneedling * Chemical Peel

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Tuesdays 7:30-8:30 pm

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607-272-0114 Protect Your Home with a Camera Surveillance System Latest Technology. Affordable

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Real Life Ceremonies

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with ceremonies like no other.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Men’s and Women’s Alterations

30 Days of UNLIMITED Yoga for $30!

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Same Day Service Available

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John’s Tailor Shop

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* BUYING RECORDS *

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www.greenstar.coop We define local as products or services that are produced or owned within 100 miles of GreenStar.

I thaca Time s

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*Yoga Philosophy * Ayurveda *Cooking & Tea Classes *Gentle Vinyasa

like organic grape juice from Glendale Farm

The

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Not Just Any Guitar Lesson

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Classical Yang style long form

Be Smart. Be informed

Custom Cooking Classes

landscape design + installation

Sunrise Yoga

Anthony Fazio, LAc.,C.A,

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607-272-1504

spring + fall clean up + gutter cleaning

Peaceful Spirit TAI CHI classes

cbrong @ ithactimes.com

4 Seasons

lawn maintenance

Independence Cleaners Corp

Januar y

11– 17,

2017

LOCATED

18.9 miles

from GREENSTAR