• New Member Proposal
  The Ithaca Rotary Club Board of Directors will be considering membership application(s) from the person(s) listed below. Any concerns about these membership proposals should be made in writing to the Secretary of the Club by September 8, 2003.
  
  Name: Barbara Eckstrom
  Sponsor: Jeffrey True
  Classification: County Government Management
  Employer: Tompkins County Solid Waste
  Title: Manager
  
  Name: Brenda J. Dalmida
  Sponsor: David Flaccus
  Classification: Education Administration
  Employer: Ithaca City Schools
  Title: Associate Principal
  
  Name: Richard Gallagher
  Sponsor: Casey Stevens
  Classification: Sales/Coaching Consulting
  Employer: Acuity Learning Group
  Title: President
  

• Rotary at Stewart Park
  The August 27 meeting at Stewart Park was a great success and much fun was had by all. More details follow in the Program Notes section, but a few people need to be recognized for their efforts at the event. Our thanks to former Rotarian Barny Cole for providing the sound equipment; Beverly Baker for coordinating the event with the catering service and helping Scott at the sign-in table; and Heidi Goldstein and her Red Badge Ice Cream Crew for arranging for and serving the ice cream! Thanks also to Jack Burns and John Bailey for the song for the day and Tony Pesco and Ross Lynch as the leaders of the Rotary Chorus. For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed a true highlight, our own Peggy Haine leading the crowd in a torrid rendition of "Summertime." She's still got it, folks, but don't expect any big comebacks!

• UN Day in New York City
  Our district is planning a group trip to United Nations Day in New York City on October 3 and 4. This will be an overnight trip and interested Rotarians should visit the district web site as soon as possible for details (www.district7170.org). Last year our district was honored at this event for our participation in the Wheelchair Project and we are looking for good attendance from our district for this year's event as well. Rotary's Polio Eradication Project works with and through the United Nations and is also an integral part of this day of celebration. Check it out!

• A Special Message from Brian Wilbur
  You may have heard already about the District 7170 Paul Harris Foundation Celebration Banquet, which is coming up on Friday, October 10, 2003, at the Owego Treadway Inn. The banquet is an opportunity to celebrate both the work of the Rotary Foundation, and of District 7170 Rotarians contributing to that work. The keynote speaker this year is Rotary Foundation Trustee Theodore Griley II. I will talk briefly about his background at next week's Rotary meeting. This is a significant event in the Rotary world and it would be a really good thing if many (if not all) of the Ithaca Rotary Club Board of Directors could attend. In past years, we have enjoyed the company of Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholars, exchange students, and even some of our newest members! It is a great opportunity to get a taste of the larger world of Rotary.
  
  Other details:
  Open Cocktail Reception at 6:00 pm, Dinner Banquet at 7:00 pm. The menu is soup, salad, your choice of chicken, prime rib, or salmon, roasted potatoes, a vegetable medley, and a chef's special dessert. Business attire is appropriate, and the cost is $35 per person. To facilitate, I am tabulating reservations for our club, and will collect payment - checks can be made payable either to me, or to Rotary District # 7170. Depending on numbers, we will attempt to carpool or make other arrangements for transportation.
  
  The RSVP deadline is September 19, 2003. There will be a signup list at club meetings for at least the next two weeks, so you can use that to let me know - or contact me otherwise. Come join us as we get to know the family of Rotary!
  
  Contact:
  Brian H. Wilbur
  1335 Ellis Hollow Road
  Ithaca, N.Y. 14850-9601
  607-277-2404
  bwilbur1@twcny.rr.com

• New Member Nomination
  John Butler placed the name of Catherine Halpert in nomination for membership. After a second, the members present approved the nomination and we look forward to having Catherine join us soon.

• Special Report - Russ on the Road
  This special report comes to us from one of our former members, Russ Sprague who, along with his wife Kelly, have sold their house in Ithaca and taken to the road in a motorhome for a year or two. Russ and Kelly will be writing in occasionally with their experiences and we will gladly share them with you here. In just a few short months, they have already covered a tremendous amount of territory. Kelly summed it all up pretty well: "We closed our house on May 9th and the next day hopped on a plane and headed to Florida for days of R&R with friends. Upon our return we began our journey.
  
  During this time we:
  - visited 5 of our 6 children
  - enjoyed playing with 5 of our 6 grandchildren and 1 grand dog
  - traveled 6,260 miles through 18 states visiting friends in FL, IL, NC, NJ, NH, MA, CT, NY
  - drove along the banks of the Mississippi, Ohio, Connecticut, Niagara rivers
  - walked the beaches of the Atlantic ocean
  - drove along the shores of 4 of the 5 Great Lakes; Ontario, Michigan, Huron, Superior
  - stopped in Ithaca to have our bodies and the motorhome checked out
  - strolled through the beautiful Duke Gardens in North Carolina and Norfolk Botanical Gardens in Virginia
  - explored the eastern shore towns of Chesapeake Bay
  - went to the Big Apple Circus, General MacArthur Museum, a modern dance performance, a photography exhibit, two art exhibits and a model ship exhibit at Annapolis
  - had wonderful bicycling experiences on the National Seashore at Assateague Island, VA and along the Niagara River to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
  
  Thoughts and observations:
  - Go see the movie Seabiscuit - it will make you feel good!
  - When it comes to body maintenance, health insurance covers more costs than car/RV insurance.
  - The Province of Ontario is huge.
  - Bears are great swimmers.
  - Camping is very popular.
  
  We received a book called Roadfood. It describes the local fare of many spots in the country. We have eaten at a few of them and it has been fun. We had fried green tomatoes, fried okra, BBQ ribs, and hush puppies at Mama Dips in Chapel Hill, NC. We had ice cream at Doumar's in Norfolk, VA. The grandfather of it's owners invented the ice cream cone 100 years ago. He wanted to give people at the St. Louis Exposition of 1903 the ability to walk and eat ice cream at the same time. We had corned beef sandwiches at Chick and Ruth's Deli in Annapolis and Crab Imperial at The Crab Claw in St. Michaels, MD.
  
  We hope this letter finds you healthy and having fun. Let's look forward to a beautiful fall. Tomorrow we head into Manitoba Canada. We will move west into Saskatchewan and then re-enter the US in Montana just east of Glacier National Park in mid September. We plan to spend the fall in Washington and Oregon."

• Ambassadors
  8/26: Barbara Caldwell (Ithaca-Cayuga)

• Visiting Rotarians
  Barry Downing (Endwell, NY)
  Kevin Gross (Cortland Noon)
  Charlie Evans (Saddlebrooke, AZ)

• Exchange Students
  Esteban (Steve) Campos-Hernandez (Costa Rica)
  Michal (Mike) Sykora (Slovakia)

• Dale Flinn (host) one for all of the joys of motorcycling again after several years without a working bike - he know where all the dead things are!

• Barbara Thuesen one to announce a birthday party to celebrate Ruth Kane's 93rd at the Ithaca Yacht Club. For more info, contact Barb. One for son Mike who successfully underwent an operation on his foot, and one for grandson Andy who will be playing football this fall at Lansing again.

• Tony Pesco one for having many family members in town to help celebrate his mother's 91st birthday - today!

• Jagat Sharma one for getting safely to the annual family reunion on the west coast, one for grandchildren, nieces, and nephews who are all a lot of fun, especially when you don't have to take them home with you, one for getting home from the reunion safely, and one for his family surviving August and his three birthdays.

• Matthew Dearing one for his first real vacation with his wife since they married (to PEI, Canada) - the first time they didn't travel to see family, and one for his new position this semester as an adjunct professor of mathematics at TC3.

• Bettsie Park, Simonetta Antenucci, and Mary Binetti, Rotary Aunties, six altogether for our latest Youth Exchange students Esteban and Michal - Welcome!

• PPJ McPheeters one for Organic Style Magazine naming Ithaca the healthiest city in the northeast and one of the top 20 in the U.S. - nice to know that organic can have style.

• John Barradas one for Dale to make sure he keeps up his organ donor card while enjoying his somewhat dangerous new freedom.

"Elmira, Death Camp of the North"

Michael Horigan

Our guest speaker this week was Michael Horigan, a retired history teacher from Elmira, who shared with us the story of a Confederate Prisoner-of-War camp which was built in Elmira. Barracks 3 was opened up to Confederate prisoners in July of 1864 and out of some 12,123 prisoners who were brought into the camp, 2,950 died before the camp was closed. While the government claimed that the various problems and conditions that led to this horror could not have been helped - a large pond that collected all sorts of waste and spread disease to the drinking water, inadequate living quarters during much of a harsh winter, inadequate clothing supplies and almost no food for the prisoners - Michael's thesis in a recently published book suggests otherwise.

While most Union prison camps were fairly well run and reported relatively low death rates, Elmira was created not long after the horrors of the Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, N.C. were discovered and the similarities between the two camps, apart from geography, are quite disturbing. His thesis suggests that Elmira was possibly Union retribution for Andersonville - an eye for an eye almost exactly. While there is not enough room here to share all of his evidence, Michael gave a pretty convincing list of decisions and orders from the Union leadership to support his thesis. One would have to read the book to see all of the evidence in proper form.

Our thanks to Michael for his time and for his interesting presentation. If you would like to obtain a copy of the book or contact Michael for more information, please see PJ.

Program Notes from Rotary at Stewart Park on August 27, 2003:

Our guest speaker was Terry Harbin who works at the Tompkins County Public Library. Terry is also known to some as the Unofficial Wharton Studios Historian. He has spent many years putting together the pieces of the movie industry that once flourished in Ithaca and was centered around the Wharton Brothers. Many famous names and well-known films of the early part of the 20th century were actually made here in Ithaca, as well as the Little Rascals and some Keystone Kops films. Along with his research, Terry has managed to debunk several myths about film-making in Ithaca, one of the largest ones having to do with the demise of many of the Wharton Brothers' films. Legend has it that a local fire chief dumped the highly flammable films into the lake to prevent them from being a fire hazard. The truth is that most of them were kept in storage in a building at the top of the hill on East Shore Drive (once the Greystone Inn) until they did actually catch fire (the nitrocellulose they were printed on was highly flammable) and most of them were destroyed. Fortunately not all of them. Terry has also put together a 20-minute video about film-making in Ithaca and he was kind enough to share it with us. Our thanks to Terry for his very informative talk and for taking the time to share his knowledge of an important part of our local heritage.

Club members are entertained by the Old Ithaca Movies! John Bailey leads the Rotary song at Stewart Park

• Please view the calendar posted on the main page of this website for the most up-to-date information. [View Rotary Calendar]

Program Chair: Doug McDonald
Kettle Watch: Bob Young
Greeter: John Vineyard
Thought: John Hays
Introductions: Barbara Caldwell
Happy Dollars: Dale Flinn
Music: Bill Cowdery and Siu-ling Chaloemtiarana
Photography: John Ziegler
Setup: John Hays
Editor: Dale Flinn
Website: Matthew Dearing

• Please address all correspondence to the club to:
  Ithaca Rotary Club P.O. Box 306
  Ithaca, N.Y. 14851
  Attn.: Scott Russell, Secretary
  
  
• For eNewsletter comments, questions or corrections, and subscription requests please contact the Editor at bigd@starflinn.com.