Dear Big Question Mark,

Mainly, “Big Red” refers to the athletic endeavors of Cornell University.  Our football team is the Big Red, for instance, and they are propelled to victory by tunes and antics of the Big Red Marching Band. (Ithaca High School’s teams are called the Little Red, which must give those hulking teen athletes something to aspire to.)  But if you want to start the Big Red Tiddlywinks Team, probably no one will object.

Our mascot, the Big Red Bear, is modeled after a brown bear (the predominant bear species hereabouts) and the red business comes from the school color, a shade of red called carnelian. The first documented use of Big Red dates to a 1905 football fight song, specifically “the big, red team.”  Without punctuation and with capital letters, we’re now proud to be the Big Red.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Fly-Fisher,

Dear Fly-fisher,

Cornell's gorges are at the same time wonderful natural resources and inherently dangerous. We are heartened to hear you first read the Gorge Safety Brochure, which is intended to be a resource for promoting safe, responsible use of Fall Creek and Cascadilla Gorges.  For user’s safety, the brochure and regulation signs posted in the gorge state that users need to stay on marked trails.  As fishing in Fall Creek Gorge would require you to walk off-trail, fishing would be unsafe and therefore would be prohibited.  And while there may be places in Cascadilla Gorge where you could reach the water with a fly line from the narrow, winding trail, it would not be appropriate. Additionally, half of the Cascadilla Gorge Trail remains closed for a major reconstruction project at this time.

However, I would point you to a safer and potentially more productive location – Plantations Monkey Run Natural Area just a few miles east of campus.  Not too many people are aware that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Division of Fisheries stocks trout annually in Fall Creek here, within Monkey Run just upstream of the Rt. 13 bridge.  There is parking access on a small gravel pull-off right at the bridge, and several nice riffle/pool sections in that section of the creek.  Fishing is permitted and information on this natural area and a map can be found at http://www.cornellplantations.org/our-gardens/natural-areas/monkey-run.  Good luck!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Dormer,

Each year approximately 6,500 undergraduate students live in on-campus housing, which includes residence halls, Program Houses (themed residence halls), the West Campus House System, and Cornell’s cooperative housing. Nearly 800 graduate/professional students, and some of their partners or families, live in Cornell’s graduate and professional student housing. For more information, visit housing.cornell.edu.

Uncle Ezra   

Hi Niece, Thanks for your questions about Big Red Bucks pricing for meals at our All You Care to Eat (AYCTE) dining rooms. Each year the Cornell Dining Management Team analyzes costs to determine meal pricing. In most cases the prices increase from year to year.

For the 2011-12 academic year, the BRB prices are as follows:

Breakfast: $6.76

Lunch: $9.66

Dinner: $11.61

Please note that prices are slightly different at 104West! Cornell’s OU-Certified dining room. Thanks again for your question and for more information about meal plans, visit dining.cornell.edu.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Nosy,

Yes, the big red bear is cleaned two or three times a year through a local dry cleaner. Daily cleaning occurs to try and reduce the odor as much as possible. so you can get right up close and give that bear a great big "bear" hug!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Mom’s Best,

The web camera-server for the Ho Plaza area—mounted way up in Barnes Hall and sometimes called the Hi Mom Cam because it provided the video part of phoning home to parents, long before Skype —died of exhaustion in late July. All that waving and jumping around must have been too much to process.

According to Amy Bond in the Web Communications office — which is responsible for the www.cornell.edu homepage—attempts to find parts for the camera-server (a Canon brand, if you must know) were stymied by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.   Web Comm will have a replacement in place as soon as possible, Amy says.

In the meantime, you are encouraged to call home from any other web cam listed at www.cornell.edu. Try the Engineering Quad, Statler, Milstein Hall, or Your Uncle’s sentimental favorite: the Department of Horticulture Greenhouse.  With nothing much happening but plant growth, that greenhouse cam gets awfully lonely.   

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Coffee Drinker,

Coffee filters are not available at Cornell Dining’s convenience stores: Bear Necessities, Jansen’s Market, North Star Express. I’m not certain about the Cornell Store though?  You might try the shops in Collegetown or how about a trip to the Ithaca Mall (Target) or Wegmans Grocery Store.  the TCAT bus system will take you to either place and it might be fun to venture off campus for a bit.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Freezing,

Yes, the overall temperature in your building is centrally controlled by Campus Life Facilities. However, you may adjust the thermostat in your room to control the temperature between 67 and 72 degrees. If you believe your thermostat might not be working, you can submit a maintenance request by going to housing.cornell.edu and clicking on “Place a Maintenance Request.”

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Alum,

Congrats on getting into Med School!

Sorry that you have been inundated by emails from Cornell.

Assuming it's a Cornell-hosted mailing list, you can leave the list by emailing listname-request@cornell.edu (replacing listname with the name of the mailing list, including the -l) with a message with a blank subject that simply has the word leave as the entire body of the message.  So if you were on a mailing list spam-l, you would email spam-l-request@cornell.edu a message that has no subject and the word "leave" in the body. Instructions (with pictures!) for doing this can be found at http://www2.cit.cornell.edu/computer/elist/lyris/leave.html.

Alternatively, if you're a bit more technically inclined, there is a link in the header of every message you receive from a Cornell mailing list that is marked "List-Unsubscribe" - click this link and click send and you're done.

Hope that this helps and leaves you spamless.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Early Riser,

Sunrise on East Hill, eh? This is an interesting proposition—because you’re waking up on the hill other Ithacans look to for those glorious first rays over the Cornell University campus.  Atop South Hill, for instance, Ithaca College students gaze and wonder, “What is that bright and shining place across the way?” Campus workers commuting down West Hill ponder their day ahead. Rowers in early morning crew workout squint into the sun — across the water and up East Hill —and vow to play rugby next year.

And you want more than sunrise through the bent slat in the window blinds?  You want the whole, widescreen, HD, wrap-your–hands-around-a-steaming-mug-of-something-warm sunrise?

Actually, those hills around Appel Commons aren’t so bad, if you don’t mind the  “Sunrise Over the Golf Course and Roofs of Student-family Housing” effect. Did they tell you that white-domed building on one hill is the Fuertes Observatory (open for public telescope viewing on Friday nights) named for an 1800s prof who taught students to read the stars and maintain the official university clock, in Lincoln Hall where civil engineering began?  

Or that the North Campus hills are a great place to start an exercise run or walk — perhaps down a bunch of wooden steps and around Beebe Lake to another historic place to view a sunrise?  That lake would still be a swamp if Your Uncle Himself hadn’t built a dam (smaller than the one there now) to impound Fall Creek water for industrial mills. Sunrise through the mist where Fall Creek tumbling over the dam can be a pleasure— sometimes a damp one without an umbrella. 

Look to the east from Kite Hill—behind Schoellkopf Stadium— and imagine 80 anxious students in the newly formed (1909) Cornell Aero Club, constructing bi-plane gliders (of their own design) and swooping off the hill (two years before the faculty taught aerial engineering here) then flying in intercollegiate competition with student aviators from Harvard, Tufts and Dartmouth. Turn about face and see the newly installed solar clock on Rhodes Hall; engineering students have a role in that clock’s accuracy, too.

Enough sunrise tour for one morning?  Then head back to North Star Dining, and be first in line for breakfast. Mark those sunrise spots, thought.  They’re handy for viewing moonrise.  

Uncle Ezra