Nature Nearby: My Ithaca public access TV series continues on Wednesdays, 7:00 p.m., exclusively on Ithaca cable channel 13 through April. On March 4 and 11 will air the encore episode, "Remembering Redbud Woods" from the fall of 2007. (For those unable to see this, click the link to an excerpt below.)
For several years until 2006, Cornell community members, city residents, and the City of Ithaca struggled with the Cornell administration to try to keep them from destroying one of the few remaining green spaces in the city to put up a parking lot. The area along University Avenue once owned by the Treman family was known as Redbud Woods for the abundance of these small trees that bloom with beautiful lavender flowers each spring. Generations of students and people in the neighborhood had come to love the walk through the woods on the way to class or work. After a long campaign that included Cornell suing the city, sit-ins, civil disobedience, and arrests, Cornell crews razed Redbud Woods and paved the area. A group of people involved in the effort to save Redbud Woods vowed that the struggle should not be forgotten and worked hard to get city approval to place a boulder next to the site with a plaque commemorating the woods and the people who tried to save them. Cornell's attempts to block the memorial was an education in institutional arrogance in its own right, and shameful for a university supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the truth and claiming to be dedicated to environmental sustainability. This clearly was a piece of local history the Cornell adminstration was not proud of. This episode covers the dedication of the plaque with several articulate speakers, including discussion of the history of Cornell student activism over the years. They begin with the late Ben Nichols in one of his last public appearances. Local musician/singer/songwriter Will Fudeman performs the song that he was inspired to write about saving Redbud Woods. Though I'm sure many people who drive by the Redbud Woods parking lot have no inkling of what was lost and what took place there, the memorial plaque is there to be read by those who walk by. In the spirit of that memorial, here is the story again. Ithaca cable channel 13 Wednesday, March 4, 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, March 11, 7:00 p.m. For those unable to see this program, I posted an excerpt with Ben Nichols's comments at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpUgYfjco1M Tony Ingraham Ithaca, NY Owl Gorge Productions www.owlgorge.com my blog: http://owlgorge.wordpress.com/ See some of my videos at www.owlgorge.blip.tv Friends of Robert H. Treman State Park: http://friendsoftreman.wordpress.com/ _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins Questions about the list? ask [email protected] free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
