Archive: Around Town

Organizers expect 5,000 teachers and family members to attend Ithaca’s Winter Recess festival, which opens Friday for its fourth year.

The annual event celebrates pre K-12 teachers, school employees, retirees and their families with a calendar of 100 events and an assortment of educator specials at more than 185 locations around Ithaca. A record 163 local businesses are participating with deals on dining, lodging, spas, winery tours and activities throughout the area.

It’s a boy! Catchmakers is celebrating the upcoming birth of the first baby to be born to a couple that met through its service. Catchmakers is an Ithaca, NY-based online dating service that serves residents of the central New York and Finger Lakes regions exclusively.

According to Catchmakers Inc. co-owners Carole Schiffman and Meredith MacLeod, the couple, who asked not to be identified, met through Catchmakers in August 2008, and began building their relationship and life together shortly afterward. He’s from the Binghamton area and she’s from Ithaca. The baby boy is the first child for both of them, and is due right around Valentine’s Day.

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Foodies may have been disappointed when Hope's Way closed its doors last month.  They will be happy to know that the popular restaurant and catering company isn't entirely going away.  It was purchased at the end of January by Brous & Mehaffey, which owns the Ithaca Bakery and Collegetown Bagles.  The new owners plan to move their current Triphammer Mall store into the Hope's Way space and to incorporate favorite foods from the restaurant into their menu.

"We're very excited about it," says Ramsey Brous.  "We purchased the recipes, the customer lists and such.  We are certainly very interested in wanting to please the people who patronized Hope's Way.  Part of what that means is taking a look at what specific things we can incorporate into our repertoire that are important to her customers."

On Wednesday, January 27, 2010 SPCA Humane Investigators removed 100 animals from a residence in Brooktondale, NY.  Following up on complaints received from concerned individuals, investigators found the animals in unsanitary conditions in the overcrowded one bedroom home. 

The individual in the home self identified as an animal rescuer. 100 animals including dogs, cats, rats, guinea pigs and chinchillas were taken into custody by the SPCA, including several animals found deceased on the property.

We had a busy time a few weeks ago protesting shale drilling with friends in Albany. It was an extremely wet day with hard rain and a wind that blew several umbrellas inside out, but the importance of the cause led many busloads of people to the Capitol to lobby on both sides.

Hey there my name is Joe. I am a 7-month-old domestic shorthair/mix. I'm a handsome fellow who is looking for a loving home. So please come and visit me at the SPCA to see if I'm the right cat for you!

Visit the SPCA Web Page

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It may not have been NASCAR, but the track in Lansing was packed Saturday -- Pack 48, to be exact.  Of course the Lansing Elementary School Cafeteria was the scene of Pack 48's annual Pinewood Derby.  The race features cars made from blocks of pine by cub scouts racing on the Lansing pack's special track.  The excitement rivaled that at any NASCAR race.

The Lansing pack also hosted Pack 55 from Ithaca and the Lansing 4H group at the end of January for the second year in a row.

Tompkins Community Action (TCAction) participated this fall in a project that pairs affordable housing and renewable energy for the first time in Ithaca.   The project offers a successful, positive example of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds.

The Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency, acting on behalf of the City, allocated the City’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to Community Housing of Ithaca for the construction of a new duplex, including the renewable and energy efficiency portion completed by TCAction.  “This project is a result of a successful partnership between CHI, TCAction, and the City, combining federal Recovery Act funds, local talent and technical expertise to advance the goal of affordable housing and a more sustainable community,” says Sue Kittel of the Ithaca Urban Renewal Agency.

Crossroads RestaurantThe corner of Triphammer and Peruville Roads has always been a Lansing focus of sorts.  It was a crossroads for passenger railroads at one time, and more recently a Crossroads for food and drink.  Four years ago the Crossroads restaurant closed its doors, and the building was occasionally used for private parties.  Last December it reopened under new ownership.  Owner Jay Dietershagen has plans to make it the place to go in Lansing for a long time to come.

"I want it to be the east side of the lake version of the Glenwood Pines," he says.  "I want it to be the restaurant where everybody can come whether they're in jeans and a tee-shirt or just getting out of work.  They can just come and relax.  We'll get bands going, and the patio open.  We'll get the horse shoes and volleyball leagues going.  We'll start clammin' and jammin' again, We'll keep doing fish fries.  I just want this place to be busy.  I want to make people happy."

If you are interested in government cable television is a God-send.  But even with the wealth of political programming there is nothing like actually being there.  That's why the League of Women Voters sends high school students to Albany each year, not only to hear lectures on how the State government works, but to actually shadow their own legislators as they go about formulating and passing the laws that will likely impact our lives for years to come.

"It is a nice mixture of practice and theory," says the Tompkins County League of Women Voters' Susan Henninger.  "A lot of times kids will get the academic part, but no hands-on experience.  In this case it helps them put everything together.  They're getting lectures, but they're also following their legislators."

When local author Diane Pellicciotti Kone published her first romance novel five years ago she had no intention of writing a sequel.  In that book a mother of a child with a congenital heart defect must deal with her dying child, and faces many challenges that help her grow ready to love again.  Spoiler Alert!  In an unusual twist, the woman dies in a car accident at the end of the book.  In 'Revenge Seeker ' it turns out that the accident wasn't an accident.

"In this book her daughter receives a phone call from the police department that they analyzed the car and found out that it had been tampered with," Kone  says.  "When she left that night to go to the juvenile rehabilitation residential center the call that she got did not actually come from there.  They are putting all these pieces together, trying to figure out how this loving young mother from beautiful central New York became involved with a grisly set of murders that are taking place in Spanish Harlem.  Consequently it all has to do with the residential center she is working in."