The Green Resource Hub of the Finger Lakes now offers a calendar of all events sustainable for a wide region. As their tagline states, “Expanding the Regional Marketplace for Sustainable Living,” they now have program listings of great events in the greater Ithaca region. They cater to four focus areas: Energy efficiency, Renewable energy, Green building, and Green purchasing.

Other programs run by the Green Resource Hub volunteers include in-home gatherings to show energy efficiency in the home with power monitoring devices, and workshops on consumer education of what green goods are worth buying, and which can be made easily at home such as cleaning products.

I’m looking forward to seeing this calendar fill up with events. There are already many in Ithaca, and many more in the surrounding areas. The GRH also accepts suggestions of other events not listed, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this calendar grows fast. Non-profit organizations such as this one are going to be increasingly popular as prices for consumer good increase while demand for alternative options soars also. There are so many programs, products, and people touting all things green, but without any guidance it is difficult for the general public to know which are simply scams and which are truly looking at a more sustainable future. I’m glad to see a resource hub which can help consumers find the answers they need towards living better.

The website for the Green Resource Hub is: http://www.greenresourcehub.org and a link to their calendar is available from there.

I got an email a few weeks ago now about a new tradition in Ithaca. The concept was borrowed from the Cyclovia in the country of Columbia, where streets are blocked off for use by pedestrians, bicyclists, and any other non-motorized transportation. Cars can use other roads during these times, but this gives bikers and pedestrians much more access to safe roads that they can use without worrying about cars flying past.

So Ithaca’s Cyclovia is a much smaller scale version of this. Each Saturday at 10:00am, bikers meet at DeWitt park downtown and as a group, they bike to the farmer’s market. This week I joined in among the small crowd for an easy going bike ride to the market. While it was a lot slower than my general pace (there were small children biking with us so we went slow), it was fun to take over one small piece of Ithaca and ride safely. I really hope that this group grows every week, and reaches a mass large enough that cars have to just drive slowly behind the bikers.

The problem with cars and bikes coexisting, is that in most places, there are not adequate bike paths. A real bike path needs to allow for bikers to move swiftly along a road, while not interfering with traffic, but still able to turn onto other roads when they need to. Ithaca doesn’t have bike paths that allow that though. This causes a problem because most people bike much slower than cars want to go. In the city, it is really pointless for a car to scoot past a bike, because it usually results in waiting at the next red light or stop sign anyway - but that is how it happens.

But lately with the price of gas rising, people are talking about other ways of getting around, and riding bicycles as a group to also support the farmer’s market will help push Ithaca towards a more sustainable lifestyle. So, please, join the group and bike to the farmer’s market next week!

On Tuesday, Ithaca Carshare started accepting membership to their program, which should be running in June. Members can borrow Ithaca Carshare vehicles by logging into the website www.ithacacarshare.org and see the availability and placement of the vehicles. For getting around when a car is needed, this looks to be a great alternative to owning a car and paying for all of the associated costs. Considering the cost of ownership with repairs, maintenance, gasoline and insurance, this service might be a well needed relief to those who own cars currently but don’t drive them often enough to make the costs economical.
Ithaca Carshare is starting with two plans: “It’s my car” is $20 per month and $4.95 per hour of usage, and “Just in case” is $50 a year plus $7.95 per hour. Both plans charge 20 cents per mile driven also. I did the math, and if you plan on using this service for more than 63 hours in a year, than the “It’s my car” plan becomes cheaper. The application fee is regularly $30, but there is a reduced price of $15 if you sign up before May 5th.
According to the website, every shared car is equivalent to taking 15 personal vehicles off the road. With the economy in a bit of a slump and gasoline prices increasing, it becomes more viable to not own cars – or get rid of the second car at least – when a service like this can help support your travel needs. Of course walking and biking still use less resources and energy, but for those times when a car is needed, Ithaca Carshare is a great option.

Credit to Krisy Gashler in the Ithaca Journal:

ITHACA — The winds are changing in Tompkins County.

After some notable recent setbacks, wind energy proponents in the county have several projects to look forward to again.

Ithaca College recently received approval to set up a meteorological tower on part of its South Hill property to measure wind and see whether conditions are appropriate for building a wind turbine.

The Enfield wind farm proposal, after being killed by a questionable law late last year, has new life with a new town board.And the Town of Ithaca is nearing approval of a Small Wind Energy Facility law to make it easier for residents to install their own residential-scale windmills.

“Obviously we all want to transition to more sustainable energy sources and wind is certainly one of them,” said Edward Marx, Tompkins County commissioner of Planning and Public Works. “If it can be appropriately sited in ways that benefit overall the community and minimize negative impacts, it hopefully can be part of our energy future in the county.”

Ithaca College

The college’s recent approvals from the Town of Ithaca Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals are not for a turbine, but for the tower to measure whether a turbine could go up at 144 E. King Road.The college “certainly” hopes that someday a wind turbine could be placed at the site, said spokesman Dave Maley.

“It’s appropriate especially that we’re talking about this during Earth Week,” Maley said. “This is one more way that the college is looking to potentially reduce its carbon footprint.”

Marx said he had hoped the town would require Ithaca College to do more investigation of the potential impacts of an actual wind turbine, not just the meteorological tower.

An industrial-scale wind turbine could have “visual impact and potentially other impacts to properties in the surrounding area and also potentially impacts to our county public safety communication system, which uses a tower on South Hill not that far from this site and has communication links in the direction of this tower to other towers in the county,” Marx said.

Marx likened the situation to Cornell’s failed 2005 proposal to build up to eight industrial-scale wind turbines in the Mount Pleasant area of Dryden.

Outcry from neighbors who did not want the turbines and concern by county planning about whether the turbines would interfere with the airport’s landing zone resulted in Cornell abandoning the idea.

“There was a lot of discussion, a lot of work done only to find out that you probably couldn’t build a tower there because of the airport landing zone,” Marx said.

Jonathan Kanter, director of planning for the town, responded that Ithaca College’s tower is just a tower, not a wind turbine.

“At this point it’s not even known whether a full wind tower would even be feasible,” he said. “The whole purpose of the meteorological tower installation is to collect data — strictly to collect data — to determine what the climatic conditions are on the South Hill.”

If the college finds conditions are favorable and wants to put in a turbine, they would “absolutely” have to come back to the town for approval, Kanter said.

Enfield

Enfield’s town board last month repealed a law that would have eliminated developer John Rancich’s proposal for a 10- to 12-turbine, roughly $160 million wind farm on Connecticut Hill.The board is working on a new law and is currently awaiting a recommendation by the town planning board, said Supervisor Frank Podufalski.

Last October, the planning board gave up on providing a recommendation because of interruption by unruly audience members opposed to the wind farm.

“We took it back to a point in time last October where (the Planning Board) handed it over to the (Town Board),” Podufalski said. “We want to do it the right way and make sure that when we’re done, it’s good for everybody concerned — the citizens, the developers, everybody.”

Some immediate neighbors on Connecticut Hill oppose the farm primarily because of concern about noise, safety and negative impact on their property value.

The spot proposed for the farm is also near the municipal line for the Town of Newfield, and two Newfield residents have approached their town board asking that they enact a law regulating wind turbines, said Newfield Town Clerk Katherine Crance.

Rancich said he wants to “work with the town” to make his proposal safe and profitable. Rancich is offering to make a yearly payment to the Town of Enfield of $35,000 or 10 percent of the profits from the wind farm, whichever is more.

Residential windmills

Likely in the next two or three months, the Town of Ithaca will consider a law to make it easier for individuals to put up small-scale windmills in their own backyards, said Supervisor Herb Engman.“We wanted to make sure that homeowners had the ability to set up a reasonably sized wind energy system safely and in consideration of the neighbors,” Engman said.

The town has been working on the law for about a year; it is being considered by the town’s Planning and Conservation boards, he said.

As it stands, the law would allow windmills of up to 145 feet that produce noise no more than 10 decibels above the ambient sound level, as measured at a neighboring property line.

The law would require a special permit for windmills within 500 feet of certain natural areas to minimize impact on birds and bats and would require a “fall zone” setback “at least equal to the facility’s height plus ten feet,” according to a memo from Kanter to the Town Board.

Engman said the Town has considered and continues to seek information about things like potential conflicts with wildlife, flickering, safety and interference with the county’s new emergency communication system.

“Even if the possibility is small, we don’t want to interfere with a $20 million project,” he said.

Before enacting the law, the town will hold a public hearing, Engman said.

Marx said he plans this year to take a comprehensive look at the county to determine which areas are best suited for wind development, based on wind patterns, population density, scenic value and other land use.

“Wind energy probably doesn’t fit everywhere,” he said. “That’s what we’re hoping to investigate this year and see where might it be most suitable in Tompkins County.”

Credit to Aaron Munzer in the Ithaca Journal:

ITHACA — Cornell University President David Skorton spoke Tuesday night to an audience of almost 70 community members about how the university he heads is trying to be a good neighbor — and a good steward of the planet.

In an Earth Day speech in Ithaca High School’s Kulp Auditorium to members of local service-based organizations such as the Kiwanis Club and Lions Club, Skorton outlined some of the university’s efforts to become a more sustainable and open institution.

“I want … to look at some of the broader challenges we face as a university and the impact they may have on the community,” he said. “The focus of our education is dependent on a bilateral partnership with the community.”

The event was coordinated by the Ithaca Rotary Club, a service-based organization of which Skorton is an honorary member.

Foremost in his speech was the creation of the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future, which will focus research and education on energy use, environmental problems, and economic development issues such as poverty alleviation. The school has allocated $10 million in seed money for the project.

Skorton said Cornell Dining supports local agriculture by purchasing 33 percent of its produce from local and regional sources, and the campus is working to achieve its goal of carbon neutrality with a 10-year plan to reduce campus energy use by 20 percent from its 2000 levels.

“Local food is very relevant to Earth Day to reduce transportation needs and by contributing to the Upstate economy,” he said.

In his address, he mentioned the university’s master plan that will promote sustainable campus development in areas such as transportation and construction, and spoke about the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s recent establishment of a program with five full-time positions dedicated to environmental education.

Cornell’s employment of almost 2,000 faculty members is also a boon to the local economy, Skorton said.

“Faculty members and their campus colleagues contribute significantly to the community,” he said. “They and their families buy houses and rent apartments … and their research can lead to the development of new businesses within our community.”

When the controversial Lake Source Cooling project came up, Skorton said Cornell was working with the community to alleviate concerns about a project that saves the university from significant extra energy costs and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

“We all recognize that Cayuga Lake is an essential asset to our community and region,” he said, noting that Cornell faculty members are working to develop a better system for monitoring the project’s effect on the lake.

Though he acknowledged that Cornell’s campus is energy intensive, in part because of the creation of a number of new science research labs, he characterized new building projects as an investment in the future and discussed the ways the school is seeking to limit usage and save energy.

“Energy conservation and achieving climate neutrality are also high priorities at Cornell,” Skorton said.

He said the short term energy costs to new research labs and an expanding campus will pay off in the future.

“We’re educating people who will develop technologies that will lead to greater energy efficiency,” he said. “We want to have a leadership in sustainability education.”

Skorton, called himself a “cheerleader” for the university.

During a question and answer session at the end of his talk, the president offered his business card to those whose questions he could not answer, and promised to make sure their requests were heard, offering to sit down and have coffee with one audience member.

Dale Flinn, president of the Ithaca Rotary Club, said Skorton’s willingness to be open to ideas is essential for the community to be able to work with the university.

“Finding the right person to talk to is the hardest part of working with Cornell,” Flinn said. “Finding those connections is key.”

Credit to Aaron Munzer in the Ithaca Journal:

CAROLINE — Foot soldiers in the fight for an energy independent community talked up bright ideas about saving energy and handed out reusable cloth bags stuffed with an efficient compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) to each of Caroline’s 1,400 households Saturday.

Approximately 90 volunteers from Cornell University, Ithaca College and the surrounding communities walked, biked, drove and even rode horses around Caroline, distributing the bulbs with a friendly message: help make the town a model for other rural communities seeking to control their energy costs.

“We’re trying to take energy independence into our own hands,” said Dominic Frongillo, a council member in the Town of Caroline, deputy supervisor, and a member of Energy Independent Caroline, the group behind the distribution. “This is our future.”

The project was funded by a $5,000 grant written with money from the Cornell Community Partnership Board, the Cornell Cooperative Extension, and an anonymous local donor. The colorful cloth bags were made by Sew Green, an Ithaca-based sustainable sewing group.

Frongillo said he and the other residents are taking sustainability into their own hands because the federal government isn’t.

“Things are going so slow to address climate change,” Frongillo said. “I came back from the (United Nations) Climate Change Conference in Bali and realized it’s up to us. We’re the leaders we’re looking for.”

Collectively, Frongillo said the project could save residents $70,000 in energy bills and reduce carbon emissions by more than 800,000 pounds over the bulbs’ lifetimes. The town has already made strides to decrease its energy impact. In 2005 it became the second municipality in the state to purchase wind power for 100 percent of its electricity use.

The volunteers who handled the distribution Saturday set out with smiles as they went door-to-door to greet their neighbors, some who were tanning or working on a new front walk.

Megan O’Rourke, a Caroline resident and Cornell graduate student, said she remembered the neighborhood route from Halloween trick-or-treating, and enjoyed the chance to introduce herself to other residents

“I like to meet the neighbors, and share information about energy conservation with them,” she said.

Another volunteer, Anne Stork, a lecturer of biology at Ithaca College, said she thought the project was more about energy efficiency education than free light bulbs.

“Today’s really about awareness,” she said.

Although some residents had already installed CFLs, like Edward Prouty of Buffalo Road, most received the free bulb with surprise and interest, especially when they found out the CFLs use only about 25 percent of the electricity that normal incandescent bulbs suck up.

Prouty, a 73-year-old who hasn’t retired yet, said the spiral-shaped bulbs he’s installed have saved him money, even though they initially cost more to buy.

“They last a lot longer, so how are they more expensive?” he said. “I tell everyone. The only thing wrong with these things is we get infested with lady bugs, and these catch a lot of them.”

For some volunteers, the day was also a chance to show how to conserve energy in other ways. Her saddlebags filled with light bulbs, Caroline resident JoAnne Guarino and her daughter Cassie rode their two Palo Fino horses from house to house in an unusual statement about alternative transportation.

“Horses are energy efficient, they don’t use gas, and I think people need to start thinking about different ways to save energy and different modes of transportation, whether it’s taking your horse, your bike, or walking,” she said. Her steed whinnied appreciatively.

Ithaca College student Serena Weckel said she volunteered because she wants to change the notion that rural communities are backward.

“Sometimes I feel like they get left out,” she said. “They’re employing their own sustainable ways, and people just don’t know it.”

Credit to Michelle Sun in the Cornell Daily Sun:

As the earth warms up, the human race must also speed up its alternative energy technologies to increase its efficiency, at least according to Nobel Laureate Steven Chu.

“The fact that the earth is warming up is not a matter of debate,” Chu told a crowd last night at the 2008 Hans Bethe lecture. The debate, according to Chu, is about whether or not the climate change is due to humans, which he believes research strongly suggests is true. Either way, temperature fluctuations are much more rapid than predicted and have far-reaching consequences.

Improved calculations show that in the first half of the century, California will lose about 26 percent of the snow packed in the Sierra.

“If you’re down by 25 percent for two or three years in a row, it’s a disaster. This is forever,”emphasized Chu.

Similar environmental scenarios are reflected around the world, which he believes merit increased public knowledge and attention.

A professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California-Berkeley and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Chu holds “an astonishing corpus of work” of “extraordinary breadth,” according to Peter Lepage, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who introduced the Nobel laureate. Chu is very important in advising the nation and government on energy issues.

Chu described himself as a bureaucrat, which is “going pretty low,” he lamented, but he felt that if he could “encourage intellectual horsepower to work on energy, that would be a good thing.”

While advances in sustainable energy will require technological developments, it will take much more that just that to implement energy conservation practices, according to Chu.

“[Change] will require international cooperation. Free market forces aren’t going to do this,” Chu said. “What you really need is a combination of fiscal policies and regulations [which] has to be international and above all you need to put a price on carbon without any loopholes … It has to be a meaningful cost.”

Chu also outlined several energy conserving technologies that LBNL as well as other members of the scientific community are developing. One relatively simple solution LBNL is working on with United Technologies involves generating a “smart building” with amenities such as automatic shading to conserve and reuse energy in a coherent manner, similar to the way hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius work.

In order to make such buildings a reality, however, Chu emphasized the need for policies such as documents that tell homebuyers how energy-efficient a home is. Otherwise, he explained, landlords, homeowners and businesses will have little incentive to adopt these monetarily costly developments. Such regulations, however, are difficult to implement.

“Berkeley is very, very progressive, but even the mayor there is afraid there will be a riot [if such a policy is adopted],” said Chu.

Wind power, however, has been extremely successful and costs have decreased by an order of magnitude. Other renewable energy sources, including solar power, hydropower, geothermal and bio-mass, are another realm that has yet to be fully exploited.

“Currently renewable energy is about seven percent of our energy usage. It’s only a small sliver,” said Chu.

Other possible energy conserving technologies Chu mentioned included storing energy by compressing air into a cave, using polyethylene oxide and polystyrene in lithium-ion laptop batteries to decrease their decay and growing plants that can be converted into transportation fuel.

Feedstock grasses and switchgrass, which are easily grown, can potentially be converted into fuel, but efficiency is the key that is still lacking, since the lignin and cellulose of plants are designed to resist degradation, according to Chu. By sequencing the DNA of microbes within termites that break down cellulose, LBNL scientists hope to discover how to synthetically create an efficient process to produce fuel.

“I really appreciated the specific things about the research at LBNL, but I thought the lecture was broad, maybe too broad, not controversial enough, but … I listen to hundreds of lectures on this topic,” said Shawn Reeves, ’97.

The range of information covered during the lecture reflects Chu’s own breadth of knowledge.

“The lecture was very good. He packed a lot into it,” said Prof. Henry Tye, physics and chairperson of the Bethe Lecture Committee. “Choosing him was a no-brainer.”

Undergraduate and graduate Cornell students, professors and members of the community crowded the Schwartz Auditorium in Rockefeller Hall to hear Chu speak.

“I wanted to know what new developments there are for 2008. We’ve come a long way and I’m very impressed to see them,” said Sarah Iams grad.

While development is continual, Chu ended his talk by stressing that “the world can and will prevail over these challenges” and that aside from this world, “there is nowhere else to go.”

Credit to Rebecca James in the Syracuse Post-Standard:

You can build a better light bulb - one that uses less electricity and saves money - but how do you get people to use it?

Environmentalists from Cornell University, Ithaca and the nearby town of Caroline are betting that if you deliver a free compact fluorescent bulb to each person’s door, tucked into a reusable fabric bag, people will see the light.

On April 19, a team of more than 100 volunteers on bikes, on foot and in cars plan to deliver the bulbs to all 1,400 households in the town of Caroline, a sprawling, rural community in Tompkins County.

<!– if (parseFloat(navigator.appVersion) == 0) { document.write(”); } –>”We’re trying to show how a small, rural town can take matters into our own hands and say: This is up to us. Our international leaders and national leaders are not moving fast enough to protect our future,” said Dominic Frongillo, a Caroline town board member.

A Cornell junior from Pompey, Shawn Lindabury, wrote a grant that helped fund the project, which is aimed at increasing awareness about how people can live greener lives.

“A lot of people aren’t aware of the benefits of these bulbs,” Lindabury said. “We’re saying, hey, you can save $55 over the course of the lifetime of the light bulb and help reduce energy use in Caroline.”

The town of Caroline has about 55 people per square mile - the city of Syracuse has 10 times more per mile - but it has plenty of people interested in conservation. They started Energy Independent Caroline, an advisory group to the town that raised money so the town government could pay extra to buy electricity generated by wind power. It also has the lofty goal of getting the town to produce its own energy rather than buy it from utility companies.

“We have at least eight households that have renewable energy and at least a couple live completely off the grid,” said Frongillo, a member of Energy Independent Caroline who was also a youth delegate to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December.

Teaming up on this environmental experiment is SewGreen, a group based in Ithaca that promotes sewing as a part of sustainability. It is recruiting people to make the 1,400 bags needed for the project.

At first, the bags were an afterthought - a way to deliver bulbs without using disposable plastic bags, but making the bags has turned into a community activity with a life of its own.

“People are putting so much effort into it,” said Wendy Skinner, coordinator of SewGreen. “The bags are beautiful and they’re all different. People chose fun fabrics with plaids, stripes and colors.”

About 600 bags have been made so far. A two-day sew-in held in mid-March attracted 20 people who turned out 180 bags. Another sew-in is scheduled for Saturday.

“It was like a big party,” Skinner said. “Several people said how unusual it was to sew in a group since sewing is thought to be a contemplative, individual activity.”

Credit to Seth Shapiro in the Cornell Daily Sun:

“Cornell is very progressive in its commitment to sustainability,” said Whitney Larsen ’10, the outreach coordinator for the student-run Sustainability Hub.

While the Sustainability Hub and other student groups work to make the Cornell campus as sustainable as possible, the administration is trying to widen the scope on Cornell’s impact on sustainability.

With the creation of the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future, the administration is trying to bring together Cornell professors and faculty to enact change far beyond the Cornell campus.

“[This is a great] opportunity for this University to be a model for others to follow,” said Dean of University Faculty Charles Walcott Ph.D ’59.

One way the CCSF and Cornell has shown their determination to the nationwide sustainability effort is by bringing in esteemed professors to teach at Cornell and to take on leadership roles in the CCSF.

One of these professors is Jefferson Tester Ph.D ’67, the current H.P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who will be the first Croll Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems at Cornell. Tester will be returning to his alma mater where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1966 and a master’s of science in 1967.

While Frank DiSalvo, director of the CCSF, did not have a direct role in the appointment of Tester, he was in constant communication with Tester throughout the process, telling him of the opportunities at Cornell to create real sustainability reforms.

DiSalvo said he believes Tester will be a great asset to the Cornell faculty. With Tester, he brings years of knowledge and experience, not only as a professor, but as a researcher as well.

“He is very passionate about the whole issue,” DiSalvo said. “He is very passionate about teaching.”

While the faculty involved in the CCSF is extremely excited to be working with someone of Tester’s expertise and enthusiasm, Tester is just as enthusiastic about the opportunities that lay ahead.

“I could hardly imagine a place that was better suited to take this on,” Tester said.

On March 27, Tester came to Cornell and gave a presentation about geothermal energy. He discussed some of the advantages of this particular type of energy and explained some of the new technologies that have been developed in order to harness the geothermal energy most effectively.

While some of his work at Cornell will revolve around studies and research, Tester stressed that Cornell is so compatible to the type of change he foresees coming from the CCSF. Even though the CCSF will instigate new research and studies, its compatibility for change stretches beyond those capabilities.

“[We] need to look beyond whether or not we can just do it technically,” Tester said.

The issues confronting the world today in terms of energy and sustainability stretch far beyond the realms of adequate technology, according to Tester. He explained that in order for serious change to be enacted, people from government, environmental groups and economic groups all need to come together to work out ways to fix the problem at hand.

“This is very multi-disciplinary,” he said.

According to Tester, Cornell is a tremendous location to work on this problem is because of the wide variety of academic disciplines at Cornell and the prestige and capabilities of the faculty in each one. Working with faculty from the University’s various colleges, the CCSF can work with people from the wide array of disciplines to create change.

This was a statement reiterated by DiSalvo: “What’s different about Cornell is our breadth and the depth to that breadth.”

While Tester is eager to work with his fellow faculty members, he did not discount the importance of the students in the sustainability movement. It is the responsibility of professors, he said, to “help students become better at this than we are.”

Credit to Tyson Buerkle on the Cornell Daily Sun Blog:

This weekend kicks off what is probably the most exciting few months in the year for local foods in Ithaca – at 9 a.m. on Saturday the Ithaca Farmers Market opens its stalls for the 2008 season! The Ithaca Farmers Market started up in 1973 and has grown to 165 vendors selling a variety of products from produce to crafts. And this is the really cool part - every vendor comes from within a 30-mile radius! This stuff basically comes from your back yard. It’s local food in Tompkins County at its best!

The Ithaca Farmers Market is located on Steamboat Landing on 3rd Street, right off Route 13. You can get there by car, by foot, by boat, by bus, by bike, or by any other method you choose (helicopters excluded). With this in mind, parking on Saturdays tends to get a little cramped and congested, so it is best to carpool or use the TCAT (a combination of routes 30 and 13 or 16 should get you there from Cornell).

Saturday the market will open up with the Maple Festival – a very pertinent celebration for the beginning of spring. Stop by for a couple of hours to eat some good food, buy some cool things, talk to some awesome vendors (they really know their stuff!), listen to good music, and chill in a nice setting. Hope to see you there!