Late post: I set out on a gorgeous morning for the gorges…where else? They have always been my favorite landscape feature here. After a short drive down around the lake past downtown Ithaca, I was at the grand daddy of falls, high-falling Taughanock. It was an easy 20 minute there and 20 minutes back walk on the wide dirt path through the woods lining the flat rocks of the gorge, lined by high canyon walls. Lots of water crashing down on them there falls. I noticed that the beautiful old Taughanock Farms Inn, which I used to go to for a splurge dinner with my parents as a kid, is now the Inn at Taughanock. Still there, as is the Glenwood Pines, an old roadhouse along Route 89. Last time we went there about 20 years ago, the restaurant review I did of the Pines in 1980 was still tacked up on the knotty pine wall.
Nut ridge road (to the cottage @ the lake❤️)
As forewarned, the Ithaca Commons is rapidly being dwarfed by modern high-rise apartments which I gather are designed for wealthy foreign students and remote-location tech workers. Not good. There are still some old brick buildings along what was once a street, some with good little shops, including an excellent craft gallery with some very good local ceramics. Just south of the commons, I chanced upon an amazing shop that sells “not quite perfect” (NQP) Eileen Fisher clothing for a fraction of the original cost. We are talking dresses and jackets for $29, shirts and pants for $19. I cleaned up!
Myra at their cottage!
I did a quick drive through Collegetown, at the foot of the Cornell campus and saw that our old house at the bottom of steep Williams street is still standing, still beating the odds (and gravity). The suspension bridge over the gorge was closed (boo) so went onto the little hidden hamlet of Forest Home north of North Campus and sat on a flat rock, dipping my feet in the surprisingly warm water and watched somewhat wistfully the young kids riding the gently rushing water over the slippery flat rocks. Those days are over for me. Don’t need a third broken arm. I stopped briefly for a late light lunch (chicken soup) at the new general store in an old building in King Ferry and then drove a little further past lovely old white farmhouses and dairy farms high above Cayuga’s waters to check out Aurora, a sweet little town with some well-maintained old buildings (thanks to a philanthropist who went to Wells College there). Some businesses have closed sadly but still a pretty place. Didn’t make it to Mackenzie Child’s, the pricey home goods company based a mile north of Aurora.
Blue green algae is the scare de jour on Cayuga Lake but no one has been able to adequately explain what the health risks are. And I have thoroughly enjoyed my late afternoons swimming in the lake which is warmer than the gorge pools but still very refreshing. Tonight myra and I went to a wine tasting at a new winery, Bright Leaf, just up the road. We listened to live music, sipped wine, nibbled on crostini and couscous,and admired the sunset over the lake, an orange fireball slowing dropping into the pale blue water.
A day later…still in DC. Turns out the pop-up storm on Wednesday eve while I was at National Airport screwed up flights and now I am flying to…Chicago. (I was going to Chicago on Saturday morning. Post-storm on Wednesday, I couldn’t get another flight to Des Moines until Friday p.m. so I decided to fly early to Chicago Thursday and went back to the DC hotel Wednesday night, where D was staying one more night. Of course later I found out I could have gotten to DSM very late Wednesday because my connecting flight from St. Louis was delayed in departing…earlier in the night it was first delayed and then back on time just as I was planning to leave DC, meaning I would have missed my connection. Mine was one of many sob stories. Lots of airport confusion.)
We ended up walking through a long underground tunnel to the Dunkin’ Donuts in the bowels of the Madison Building. Quite the contrast with the above ground library. Felt like I was in the guts of the place.
We arrived in nyc the Sunday afternoon post-thanksgiving with just enough time to hustle up to 129th street and broadway to see an art exhibit I really wanted to see (but is closed Monday and Tuesday.) For maybe 40 years, a poster of Manet’s “Olympia” has hung on my bedroom wall. I loved the audacious look of the nude reclining woman receiving flowers from a lover. Or so I believed that to be the story.
There is a lot more to it, as I learned from this show “Posing Modernity: The Black model from Manet and Matisse to Today,” which starts with a focus on the black maid who delivers the flowers to the white Olympia ( who I learned is a prostitute.) apparently the portrayal of the black maid is a milestone in the representation of black women, a more respectful and noble depiction than the past and one that paved the way for others like it to come. 
Matisse apparently also had a few favorite black models who he portrayed respectfully (or relatively). One of the major portraits displayed looked very familiar. Turns out it is a painting from the Des Moines Art Center. Thugs the second time something like this has happened this year (the first was at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark where I spotted a Dsm art center painting in a retrospective show of work by Gabrielle Munter.)
This exhibit also had some interesting modern Day pieces including several takes on Olympia. My favorite was a portrait of a black Olympia receiving flowers from a white maid.
Plunged right into the thick of things here, soon after arriving in DC, by joining a gathering next to the impenetrable-looking White House to protest the current occupant’s harsh treatment of asylum seekers and migrants at the southern border, including the separation of children from their families and their placement in detention camps. The lights for Liberty rally wasn’t the Women’s March but a decent turnout and some good signs and impassioned speeches. Will it have any impact?
Maybe it’s because I am old enough to aspire to be a birder or maybe it’s that I never realized what a cool place an ornithology lab can be, but I was pleasantly surprised by my visit yesterday to The Cornell Ornithology lab at Sapsucker Woods. I arrived as a free lab tour was starting and it was great, about 18 visitors from all over (including a guy from Wales who mentioned living for a few years in Ottumwa, Iowa and loving it) and a very engaging guide who led us into the areas normally off bounds for visitors. We saw some very interesting stuffed birds, bird feet and bird wings in the specimens lab (or some such) and learned all kinds of interesting tidbits about the life and study of birds. (See Notes below) I also walked on one of the sawdust paths in the woods around the attractive modern lab building with a borrowed pair of binoculars (which an 8 year old girl tried to show me how to use) to try to find some noteworthy birds. Next trip I’d like to go on one of their early morning free guided bird walks on Saturday or Sunday.
On the way back to the lake, I stopped at the Ithaca Bakery outpost in the odd Triphammer mall for bread for dinner. Nice to have. And I drove through the hidden hamlet of Ludlowville to see if anything was going on and was pleased to see that nothing was.
I am so thrilled to be back in my favorite place in the world, certainly my sentimental favorite. Ithaca is so full of memories that go back to my childhood when my parents– who met in Ithaca in college and loved this place — took my siblings and me here as kids to Cornell alumni university for a week each summer during the 1970s.
TakeBetsywithyou 