TompkinsWeekly for the week of August 31st

Download the newspaper in Acrobat Format Here Food Recycling Effort Grows Food scraps recycling is proving popular in Tompkins County, with the Solid Waste Division recently reaching the 2,500 mark in the number of recycling tool kits distributed to residents. Full Story »   ‘Savor’ Event Shares Local Bounty The Finger Lakes region is blessed with more than 100 independent breweries, wineries, cideries and distilleries, plus a vibrant variety of farms, artisanal food producers and restaurants. Yet not everyone can afford to take advantage of our region’s bounty, a situation that the Healthy Foods For All (HFFA) program hopes to remedy. Full Story »   IC gets grant for STEM student program page 2 A $600,000 grant from the New York State Department of Education will aid Ithaca College in its efforts to increase the number of students who have been traditionally underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and health-related fields. Full Story »   Museum’s Dino Lab adds new attraction page 3 Steggy, a life-sized stegosaurus presiding over the Museum of the Earth’s new Dino Lab, is not just a life-sized representation of a dinosaur that lived over 144 million years ago, he’s also a piece of history. Constructed from papier-mâché for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Steggy spent the next 107 years at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Full Story »   Local currency issues new notes page 5 The development of Ithacash as an alternative currency took another step forward as they unveiled the design of the $5 Ithaca Dollar (i$5) note at an Aug. 20 ceremony at Rev: Ithaca Startup Works on the Commons. Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick, Jennifer Tavares of the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, Gary Ferguson of the Downtown Ithaca Alliance and numerous community members showed up to show their support. Full Story »   Yiddish Festival planned in Ithaca page 8 Yiddish theater grabs you by the kishkes (guts) and doesn’t let go. Now the tradition that inspired Broadway is coming to Ithaca, with all the humor, pathos and meaning of its long history. Full Story »   On the Road with David Foster Wallace page 9 What if someone filmed a seriousminded bromance? Which is just what James Ponsoldt’s “The End of the Tour” is, though not without abundant humor. Full Story »   Sustainable land use, past and present page 10 Understanding and using historical ecological knowledge to properly manage the landscape is one of the great tasks of landowners in our time. Over the past 50 to 100 years, forests around the region have been coming back, due largely to the widespread abandonment of farm fields. The inevitable restorative nature of the forest is a blessing to our generation, but one we must not take for granted. With rising fuel costs and an increasingly extractive culture, we have a danger of repeating the mistakes of the past, of turning an emerging legacy into devastation. Full Story »