Cornell Reunion 2007

This past Saturday, a group of Cornellians volunteered to help cleanup Untermeyer Gardens .   I was there, along with my wife and son.  In part, it was for my son who needed community service hours for high school, but it was also a great outdoor experience. At the garden, a fence was built to keep deer out, but what of the deer already inside?  Here we are mapping out a "deer shooing."   We formed a line, and moving slowly through the bushes, herded the deer to a gate exit.   The photo above shows the team on the "easy" trail.  The bolder volunteers went through some tough and sloping terrain that included bushes, nettles, and dense branches. There was an estimated 12-18 deer in the garden and we counted 7 departures.  Not bad, but another round of deer shooing will be needed. We also got a tour and some history from master gardener Tim. Finally, we spent a couple of hours clearing an area of some brush, fall...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ... it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair ... With apologies to Charles Dickens, I am writing about two sun dials on Cornell's campus.  One is outside Goldwin Smith Hall in the Arts Quad. As A Shadow Such Is Life The other is in the Engineering Quad. Designed And Erected In Memory Of His (Joseph N. Pew, Jr.) Loyalty To Engineering At Cornell As an undergrad, I didn't pay much attention to either of these works of art.  Apparently, neither do current students as they hurried past me while I was taking pictures.  But these two sun dials merit contemplation.  One is from the past, and with the gravitas that a layer of patina brings, provokes thoughts of time and mortality. The other looks outward, and with modern, shiny arms, seeks to embrace a future where the sky's the limit. When family and friends talk about college, ...