mind body planet

Cornell madness

So this week has been a lot of fun and I wish you all could have been here with me in the wonderful Ithaca, New York, but unfortunately we can’t all be in paradise or it would be quite crowded. I finished off my final day today with a very interesting trip on to the campus where my friend Mckenzie will be getting her masters degree. This was an invitational so different departments were set up around campus handing out promotional items and pamphlets about their programs. The Cornell campus is amazing. It is probably the most beautiful college campus I have ever seen. The whole campus is built around a lake and the gorges that have rivers carving through them. The main path is a big loop around the whole thing and it is mostly shaded and surrounded by rivers and beautiful plants that are native as well as planted. There is one section of campus just devoted to gardens and each one has a theme. Each one displays plants of the various seasons. Of course the spring garden did not look so well since it is quite hot right now, but the rest looked really beautiful. May favorite was the one called the plantation which was devoted strictly to those plants one would find on a Caribbean or South American plantation style farm. That was the first time I had ever seen a banana tree or a coffee bush, and when I saw them I was sort of struck by the influence these sort of invisible plants have had on my own life. As we walked around the campus we came upon her building where she will have her office and take most of her classes. Right behind the building is a huge construction site and I was a little curious so I asked about it.

The building that is going up on the campus is what is called a Leed certified building. Basically this building was designed to fit the criterion of the LEED certification of energy efficiency. The United States Green Building Council has laid out a strict set of guidelines that are meant to constraint the building design to make it as clean and efficient as possible. The certification goes on a scale from just certification all the way up to a platinum status for the best designs. The rating goes on credits given for things like Sustainable sites, Water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design. All of these things are weighed together to see what kind of impact this building has during its construction as well as what kind of impact it will have as it stands. I think that this is amazing for Cornell and I hope to see more buildings doing this in the future. For now though this is the first one that I have seen.

I just wanted to leave that trip for you all with a nice pleasant note for the future of Ithaca. It will just keep getting better up there are hopefully here as well.

Ithaca Farmer’s Market

Good evening all. I am back at the computer tonight after a long and wonderful day here in Ithaca. If you didn’t read form yesterday, I got here two nights ago to an intentional community that my friends are a part of. I’m staying here until the 23^rd so I may have lots of different things to tell you about. Expect plenty of inspired entries since I am surrounded by a very amazing community of people. Today our itinerary was basically just one item. I wanted more than anything to see the famous Ithaca farmer’s market.

This morning there were some chores to get done before we could do anything else. I was more than happy to help out with some tasks since I want to eventually live in a community like this and because I am staying here for free. My task for the morning was to collect up the eggs that had been laid in the hours before we got up. So around seven I went out in to the yard between the garden and the woods where there is some flat grass and I collected about thirty eggs. These chickens are grass fed and totally free range so their eggs are significantly larger and of better quality than normal eggs that you would find in any supermarket. There were no duck eggs but we had plenty of eggs for my friend Jamie to make her amazing eggs Ranchero. She made them with onions, green peppers, and garlic from the garden as well as salsa that another housemate made this morning.

After breakfast we all pilled in to the car which is another topic which I might need to discuss at length. My friends Jamie and McKenzie who used to live here in town before they graduated, bought a new car about a year ago. The car they found on Craigslist and it was like a dream come true. It was a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta that had been converted to run on vegetable oil. Every week they used to pick up oil from shops around town and then just filter it at night in their back yard. Then they simply pour the oil in their car and go. They go through a tank of gas about once every month or so when they have been driving a lot. This summer though they have only put in one tank of gas and just a lot of vegetable oil. The van that the others took is also powered by vegetable oil and they actually converted it here themselves at the house when they all moved here. The process I hear is not hard if you have a mechanic on hand and so I think that this is where we should be moving if we want to really becoming independent of oil consumption.

I just realized I have made a bit of a mistake and took too much time going off on my little veggie oil tangent and I have run out of time for the day. I will continue this story tomorrow and maybe I will have some new things to talk about as well and keep me from the topic even longer.