Dear Desiring,

All Spring transfer applicants to ILR are reviewed for admission at one meeting which is held the first week in December.  While they technically have rolling admissions, it applies more to fall applicants than to Spring because of the larger number of applicants, the admissions people tell me.  In the Fall, the Admissions Selection Committee meets several times and rolls out decisions as they are made. Spring transfer students may call the Director of Admissions for decisions after December 4th.  Good luck!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Student,

Please look at the CAPS web site:  http://www.gannett.cornell.edu/CAPS/, where you may get some questions answered. Counseling at Gannett is provided by psychologists and social workers; psychiatrists prescribe medications for students who are seeing a counselor at Gannett and who need them.  The vast majority of students who are seen at CAPS don't have a "medical reason" for being there.

All appointments are $10 which can be paid by cash, check, credit card, or bursar charge, so their are plenty of options.

The demand for services does far exceed the availability of counselors at this time of year.  If it's an emergency, a person can get in for a same day appointment.  If not, there is a wait right now, so it would be good to call and get your name on the list for the end of the semester or the beginning of the spring semester. They can also refer to therapists in the community, some of whom have a sliding scale.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Letting go,

Breaking the bond of affection that has grown between two people is a very painful process.  It really does hurt, and it is natural to want to stop the pain by reconnecting.  However, the best thing to do is to go through the pain knowing that it will get better on the other side.  This is one of those "no pain, no gain" situations. 

It is a bit of a tease to stay in close contact with an ex-lover because you are keeping a few cords intact, and positive feelings flow through those cords.  You have to be strong to keep firm boundaries with your more romantic feelings. You want to be warm and feel the electricity, but you have to be cool and feel a little stiff.  It's not a way you are used to being with him, so as you say, it takes adjustment.  The transition phase doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel good. During this phase, you have to remind yourself of the rules you have made for the new relationship (friendship) and you have to be disciplined in keeping them.  You must, in turn, be a little hard and cold with yourself.  Not fun in the short run, but you have decided in the long run it will be better.  Remind yourself of this goal.

In order to have this difficult situation take back burner to the rest of your life, you must counterbalance its effect with new activities, interests and interactions.  Join an exercise or craft class (have you seen the international folk dancing Sunday nights?) or browse the book store for a new interest.   Invite a casual friend to dinner or a movie and see if you can get a new friendship going.  This time of year, there are many opportunities to reach out to others in need.  This can help us put our own troubles in perspective.

Doing inner work is helpful to get a grip on your feelings and find your inner strength again.  Journaling can be very helpful in this process.  Some people write poetry or music, and some use art to express that something inside that is just on the verge of coming out.  Getting to know yourself and loving yourself can help you move on and approach your next relationship with renewed emotional clarity.

"You are a child of the Universe,
No less than the trees and the stars;
You have a right to be here
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt that the universe is unfolding as it should"
               - From Desiderata by Max Ehrman

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Old Friend,

I hope your relationship is still working out for you. One part magic and one part chemistry.  A similar unknown factor controls sexual orientation. It is likely to have a significant genetic or biological quality for most sexual-minority individuals. "However, if genetic, no one knows about its generational occurrence (e.g., whether skips generations). Is there a chance their kids will be gay? Sure, as it is for everyone. Are their chances increased? Likely, but no one knows for sure," according to Professor Ritch Savin-Willaims, who teaches a highly regarded course here called "Sexual Minorities" and has compiled an anthology of coming out stories, entitled "...And then I became Gay: Young men's stories."  With Ken Cohen he edited "The Lives of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals: Children to Adults."

Many people who don't "act gay" are gay -- you can't depend on external behavior. Hopefully you have the kind of relationship with your boyfriend where honesty reigns. Try opening up with your worries and share some of your more intimate concerns with him.  The more you understand one another, the more serious you can allow yourselves to become. I hope your relationship can mature to include all of each of you. 
       

Uncle Ezra   

Dear New Tree Mommy,

Congratulations on your parenthood with all rights and responsibilities thereof!  Dr. Tom Whitlow in the Horticulture Department explains that "vascular plants, those with a specialized, water-conducting tissue type called xylem can be split into two types: annuals and perennials. Annuals die after one growing season while perennials live more than one year. Your avocado seed, and all vascular plants, for that matter, contained an embryo which differentiated into what's called the primary plant body. Growth associated with formation of the primary plant body is called, appropriately, primary growth, which is not woody. First year seedlings of trees like your avocado resemble any dicot seedling (a tomato, for example) at this stage. Perennial plants (not things like tomatoes) have what's called a vascular cambium, living tissue that lasts from season to season to enable development of the secondary plant body. The vascular cambium is located just under the bark and during the dormant season, when it's a layer only one cell thick. The cells in the vascular cambium divide to form new xylem cells each season (and other cell types, too, but we'll ignore them for simplicity's sake), resulting in secondary thickening of the stem. Most of what's in stems with secondary thickening is xylem cells. Xylem cells live only a short while and when they die, they form hollow tubes through which water can flow. Millions of dead xylem elements fused together make wood. No perenniating vascular cambium, no wood. "

Now I understand my clematis better!  Thanks, Tom! 

Uncle Ezra   

Dear concerned nephew,

"Cornell" treats me quite liberally.  I can't say "as long as no one gets hurt" because with so many readers, someone is bound to disagree with something I put out there.  Sometimes I even disagree with myself!  I can't poll everyone here for each controversial issue, but I count on loyal readers such as yourself to speak up when you feel strongly about something I've printed. Clearly, when an answer is from a tenured professor, "I" have tenure. When my resource is from an office with a more conservative image, the response is bound to be more "Cornellized."   Would I lose my job if I were too critical?  If I were so critical, would I want the job?  I must say truthfully, Cornell is a wonderful place, I love it dearly,
from the chimes to the snow to the late buses and distant parking lot, the food selections and Wellness programs and stimulating lectures and concerts and activities, the lively sports and the Big Red Bear.  I'd love to hug him but I wouldn't want to get him too mad!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Breakdancer,

I'm glad your found something that worked for you and that your back is better so you can have fun. Even there, you have choices!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Refund,

The money is rolled over to next semester (spring) both for BRB and laundry.  It is a use or lose it at the end of the school year.  Just like Employee Select Benefits. The policy is explained in all materials sent out at the beginning of the year.  The Housing Contracts Manager assures me that he has "not found anyone with significant amounts on their laundry accounts.  Most students only have a balance of $5.00 or so at any given time since they can add on line.  Also we do a check at the beginning of the year for laundry money to see if anyone added a large amount say $100 or more and we contact them suggesting they start smaller and add as needed," he said.

"In regards to the BRB, the meal plans are not required and we do state in the rules that there are no refunds past the change period in the fall.  Again most students use this money up.  Out of 9800 plus meal plan participants about 200 end the year with balances exceeding $100."

I hope this information helps you to manage your money to your satisfaction. The rule is start small, add what you need, and underestimate in this case.  Or wash your bed linens more often.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Neece,

You would be safest taking the cover to a dry cleaner and explaining that you don't want shrinkage at all.  If the cover is protected with stain repellant then you should be able to wipe it with an upholstery cleaner and keep it looking fresh. You can buy stain repellant to spray on after you get it cleaned. 

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Parents,

Those courts, in an enviable setting,  are used exclusively by faculty and staff members, to destress from the hard work their students give them.  There are some nice outdoor student courts north of Robert Purcell Community Center just before A lot.  Currently, all Varsity tennis matches are played at the beautiful all-weather Reis Tennis Center, just past East Hill Plaza.  Drop by next time you're in town!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear real country,

And the walk there is good exercise too! 

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Lord Stanley,

Thanks for the tip.  See you there!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Niece,

I will pass your suggestions on.  Gannett does have one lamp people can try out, and the Mental Health Association downtown has one people can try. It wasn't sunny, but it was warm last weekend!  I hope you got out.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Music-lover,

Annette Richards is the University Organist and an Associate Professor in  Music.  She doesn't have set practice times at Sage, though at the moment she is preparing for a recital on Tuesday, December 3rd, and will be in there playing a good deal, especially in the mornings. "You are welcome to listen," she says, "though I prefer it if people sit in the main part of the chapel to listen, rather than in the choir loft (which can be a little distracting)." She would be happy to answer any other questions you may have, email ar34.

The organ, built by the Aeolioan-Skinner company in 1940, is also regularly played by her students, as well as a couple of other local organists who have permission to play in Sage. Recitals are scheduled regularly throughout the school year, so check the music department concert calendar for details of those. You can also hear organ music in Anabel Taylor chapel, where students practice and have lessons.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Itzhak,

Thank you for your kind words.  We all have so much to offer one another in this community!  We enjoy sharing our knowledge, wisdom and resources. Music is a fine gift to give to others. It gives you so much, too.  The Community School of Music and Arts (272-1472) maintains a list of private teachers for many instruments. Visit their webpage at http://www.csma-ithaca.org/ to meet their teachers, although there are only three violin teachers listed.  Other local teachers fill up their schedules and refill them by waitlist and word-of-mouth.  Ithaca Talent Education (272-6006) http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/fonder/MusicedITE.html offers Suzuki training. You could try a call to the Music Department at Ithaca College or Cornell.  There are some very talented students who may also teach. 

"If music be the food of love, play on..." (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night)

Uncle Ezra   

Dear concerned student and citizen,

Cornell Dining does purchase milk from the Cornell Dairy Store and they say that to the best of their knowledge, it does not contain BST.  My Food Safety guru is about to retire, but offers this as one of her final missals:

From all your reading on this topic, you may know some of the following facts, but for the benefit of Uncle Ezra readers who are unfamiliar with the background of this issue, I will give a longer answer than what your question requires.

No milk is BST free and milk from cows treated with rBST does not have any more BST in it than milk from untreated cows. Trace amounts of BST circulate in the blood stream of all cows and tiny amounts end up in the milk produced by the udder.  BST is formed in the pituitary gland of the brain and acts with other compounds in the liver to cause the cow's mammary tissue to produce milk.

Some milk on campus does come from cows that may have been treated with rBST. Cows are treated with rBST by injecting the hormone into muscles in the cow's rump.  The compound helps a well-fed and managed cow to produce more milk.  If a dairy is poorly managed and the cows do not receive good nutrition, the BST will not help the cow make more milk.  Many dairies co-mingle milk from many cows and different dairy farms, so it would be difficult to say that "X brand of milk" does or does not come from cows treated with rBST.  One would have to contact the individual farms to ask if they use rBST treatment.

Hormones are like physiological FAX machines in the body; they are made in one location and often go to another location or "send a message to that location or tissue" and tell a tissue to do a certain activity.  Hormones are either steroid compounds or protein compounds and the two kinds are quite different from each other.

Most scientists who work in this area strongly agree that there is no threat to humans from  consuming milk that comes from cows treated with rBST.
Scientifically, in fact, it is a non-issue as far as food safety.  This is because BST (that occurs in tiny amounts in all milk) is a PROTEIN hormone (as opposed to a steroid hormone, such as estrogen or testosterone). Proteins, no matter where they come from, are readily digested in our stomachs and small intestines and broken down to their constituent amino acids and absorbed into the blood stream as such.  So at that level it does not matter what protein those amino acids came from, the protein no longer exists.  You could drink a bucket of BST and it would not harm you; to your body it would be just another protein to be digested by your GI tract.

In addition, growth hormones for various animals are SPECIES SPECIFIC. They only have physiological activity in the animal they come from genetically. Even if you injected BST (Bovine or cow Somatotropin) into your muscle (to bypass the digestive system of your body and keep the protein hormone intact), it would do nothing to your body because the only growth hormone that works on humans is Human Growth Hormone or Human Somatotropin (HST).  Injected BST would eventually be absorbed and sent to the kidneys by the blood stream and would have no effect on the body.  From the kidneys it would be excreted in the urine.

Hormones have a "bad name" in the popular press because news media people who are generally not scientists may confuse the very real and complex effects of STEROID hormones with hormones like BST, that are proteins.  Steroids are often smaller chemical compounds that pass through the stomach wall or through the GI tract undigested, are not so species specific, and do have physiological effects on humans and other animals, regardless of which animal they come from.  One needs to be very careful about ingestion of steroid hormones.  But as I said above, BST and other protein hormones are not the same as these and they do not act the same as steroids.

Milk that might come from cows treated with rBST is not labeled as such because scientists who work in this area and those at US FDA do not feel that there is any scientific reason to assume that such milk is any different from milk from cows not treated with rBST.  At this time, the FDA maintains that "the processes" by which foods are produced do not warrant separate labeling on food products.  FDA has some guidelines for companies who want to voluntarily label their food with regard to these issues of genetic engineering.

I hope this helps. Thanks for everything and best of luck, Donna Scott!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Wayne,

Physics professor Jim Alexander says "the answer to the first question seems fairly straightforward.  It is true that the local air pressure in the atmosphere decreases as one goes upward (and Bernoulli's equation does describe this for small differences of altitude such as the base and top of a skyscraper) but of course the same thing will be occuring in the air inside the building as outside the building, and thus there won't be any pressure difference between inside and outside at the same altitude. Therefore you can safely open the window without being blown out. Note that the situation in an airplane is different because the airplane is deliberately pressurized, to about 2/3 sea level atmospheric pressure, and the outside air pressure at, say, 30,000 feet, is approximately 1/3 of sea level pressure. In this case the 5 psi pressure difference between inside and outside can have catastrophic effects.  If an opening suddenly appears in the fuselage of an airplane, large enough for a person to pass through, the force on that person will be roughly

F = PA = 5psi * (cross sectional area of a person)

"The pressure factor is 5 pounds per square inch, and the cross sectional area of a person is about 2/3 m^2 which is about 1000 square inches.  Thus the person has to fight back against a force of about 5000 pounds, which is clearly impossible.  This is why the flight attendant on the Alaskan Airlines flight was blown out of the plane when the fuselage peeled off in that weird accident about ten years ago.

"Buildings however are not pressurized because the pressure at, say 110 stories high is 96% of the pressure at ground level.  This isn't enough to bother any one, and the challenges and expense of pressurizing a building wouldn't be worth it. (Though during the anthrax scare last year it was pointed out that even modestly pressurized buildings would be safe havens in the event of widespread bio or gas attack... at least for a while.)   Of course, thanks to a funny accident of evolution, our ears are sensitive pressure gauges and so we are quite aware of even this small pressure difference in a skyscraper when we ride the elevator.  Of course the same is true when one descends the 700 vertical feet from Cornell to downtown Ithaca in a car."

Now, about your fish tank, I'll get back to you when the votes are in.  Meanwhile, stay safe.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear future-grad,

If you fulfill all of the requirements for graduation set forth by your college and the university in December 2003, then your degree date would officially be January 2004. Your diploma would be mailed to you sometime after that date. Cornell hosts a small recognition event for January graduates each December. However, if you want to go through the full procession, cap-and-gown and campus-wide ceremonies,  you may participate in  Commencement exercises the following May. Of course you will already have your diploma at this point, but Commencement is a special time on campus that you may want to keep in your memory the rest of your life.

Some students get confused by the December/January date since they occur in different "years." After graduation, you may choose to affiliate with the class of your choice through the office of Alumni Affairs. So if you graduate in January 2004, but you truly consider yourself part of the class of 2003, you can choose to attend those class reunions instead.

Students who will be graduating in January 2003 are invited to a recognition event and reception on the afternoon of Friday, December 20, 2002. For more information on Cornell Commencement, visit http://commencment.cornell.edu.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Rider,

TCAT tried to be punctual, but the more riders they ahve to let on and off, the longer they may take.  They also must move with the traffic flow, which may be heavier on some routes due to construction,
especially if they come from East Hill Plaza where Judd Falls Road has been closed. When the weather gets less comfortable and there are more riders, they may add additional buses to accomodate needs.  I hope you have not had to wait recently. You can always send your feedback directly to TCAT@cornell.edu or through their webpage http://www.tcatbus.com/.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear muddle,

Many of us with large hearts and seeking spirits are looking for ways to give of the abundance we receive. What we can do each day is be the kind, compassionate humans we are in each dealing we have, from greeting the bus driver to asking nicely for Tech support to giving an older relative a call or card to cheer them up.  If you finely tune your antennae, you will pick up on needs in your daily encounters, from a stressed colleague who might enjoy a coffee break with you to a child who wants to be read to.  Or a spouse who wants a kind touch. 

Have you ever visited the Durland Alternatives Library in Anabel Taylor Hall, just outside of the cafe?  Their diverse collection of magazines, books, videos and tapes will give you plenty of food for thought about how to make a difference.  A good conversation with a chaplain (Janet Shortall comes to mind) or Anke Wessels in the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy might help you to think through volunteer/service options while exploring your feelings. The Public Service Center also has volunteer opportunities.  And Bill Alberta (wna1) is the Elf Organizer for the program which connects needy local children with office groups for secret gifting.

Just this month, there was a very moving article in Oprah magazine about an American woman who reached out to a woman in South Africa whose husband had been killed.... truly a lovely testament to how much our small labors do matter.  The American woman had little money but has maintained a connection with the South African woman. Personal connections can offer the fulfillment of a balanced relationship where the receiver can also give back to you, thus being empowered by the process. We all need to be able to give.  It is indeed graceful to be a gracious receiver.

Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hahn writes about giving: "Instead of stealing, exploiting, or oppressing, we practice generosity. In Buddhism, we say there are three kinds of gifts. The first is the gift of material resources. The second is to help people rely on themselves, to offer them the technology and know-how to stand on their own feet. Helping people with the Dharma so they can transform their fear, anger, and depression belongs to the second kind of gift. The third is the gift of non-fear. We are afraid of many things. We feel insecure, afraid of being alone, afraid of sickness and dying. To help people not be destroyed by their fears, we practice the third kind of gift-giving." In another of his writings, Hahn suggest giving scholarships to help those from struggling countries learn ways to help their people.

I hope that you will continue to ask and find fellow-seekers with whom you can join to practice generosity in all its forms.  May your fears also be transformed.

Uncle Ezra