Hogmany

My sleeping schedule is getting nice and out of whack.  I am going to bed later and later, which of course means I'm waking up later and later.  The dogs have actually bought on to the new schedule and are letting me sleep.  Unbelievable.  I wake up at 7am during the term and we are consistently past 9am these days.  Sometimes, I will even take them out and go back to bed. I ended up finally getting my sorry self moving around 11 today! Now, to be fair, I've been staying up quite late...1,2..3am sometimes.  I need to make an effort to get back on track asap. So, I will go to bed at 1am and get up at 9am tomorrow and not go back to sleep. Then tomorrow night, I need to be in bed by midnight and up by 830am.  It IS still my break, so I do not see any need to stress myself by getting up at 7am between now and the new term, but I will start going to bed at a decent hour.

Hogmany, or New Year's Eve, is a ginormous celebration here.  Of which, I took no part.  I was in South Beach FL last year for the big party and had zero chance of topping that wonderful experience, so I decided to stay in.  They did fireworks, of course, but I had no idea they would basically be in my front yard.  They did some at the castle and apparently more down at my park, The Meadows. I heard them going off and looked out my flat to see amazing stuff.  I took a picture to show how close they were.  If I had thought more of it, I would have turned my lights off, as there is a glare...but, you get the idea.

The streets were full of people that night.  There was also a big celebration in city centre.  They do a procession of torches the night before, which looks incredible.

And, here is what it looks like from above:

Finally, a picture of the fireworks at the castle:

2011 it is.  Officially.  Hoping this year brings us all good health and happiness.

I have now officially hit the wall and am calling it a night. Tomorrow is Monday and my goal is to finish up all of my projects for school that are due this month and need the finishing touches put on them.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Over-N-Out

Going to Cornell in 1930

By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University
Posted January 2, 2011


This historical blog is in recognition of the 150th anniversary 
of the American Veterinary Medical Association (1863-2013).



Joe Merenda went to Cornell before there were dormitories, residence advisors, financial aid consultants and cafeterias.Born in 1912, Dr. Merenda grew up on a Long Island estate where his parents were employed as laborers.  As he was finishing high school, a Cornell graduate named Jack Sloan noticed the teenager had an affinity for animals. “Go to veterinary college”, he told him. “You go for one year. If you like it, you continue. If you don’t like it, you quit, but you will have had a year of college.”

Joseph Merenda, DVM and friend Ms. Rae Lazare, 2007
Photo by the author

Arriving at the train station in Ithaca with throngs of other students in the fall of 1930, Joe experienced independent living for the first time. “Now that was an experience! You are met up there by a Cornell student and he has a laundry bag—a big khaki laundry bag with a big red C—and you’re not going to be able to go through college unless you’ve got one of those big C laundry bags. So they sell you a laundry bag for 50 cents.

“Then another fellow says, ‘You got a room?’ and I said, ‘No.’ So he says, ‘Wait here’. And they’d get two or three other fellows who didn’t have a room. They took us up by car to a little office in Collegetown. And you’d sit there and they’d say, ‘What kind of room do you want? You want a room on your own, or with one or two people?’

“I didn’t know what I wanted so I took the first house that I saw. There were three of us in that house, sharing two rooms.”

Veterinary classes were also a new experience. The faculty warned the new students to look at the guy to their left and the one to their right because by the end of the term, one of them wouldn’t be there.

“It wasn’t going to be easy. You didn’t know whether you were going or coming; you were overwhelmed. You’re a kid away from home, you’re up there, you’re living in a house, you take your meals when you feel like it. You go to class, and nobody seems to give a darn about what you’re doing. It was just a whole new way of life.”

Joe was one of the 40 students (of 60) to receive his DVM degree on schedule in 1934. He accepted a position with Dr. C.P. Zepp, an accomplished small animal veterinarian with a clinic on West 53rd Street in New York City. It was an exciting time for dog and cat veterinarians. Dr. Merenda and his small animal colleagues were pioneers in every sense of the word, developing procedures that were in some cases more innovative than those used by their former instructors at Cornell.

Current site of the veterinary practice on West 53rd Street,
just east of the Sheraton Hotel.

As he had during his college days, Dr. Merenda continued to live modestly during the Depression, saving much of his weekly $25 salary so he could get married. He was called into military service in 1941, then returned to his small animal practice for an additional 30 years.

Dr. Merenda remained an active alumnus all his life, returning to Cornell yearly for reunions, even as late as 2009 at age 97. Not bad for a kid who had never been away from home!

You can read (and hear) my complete 2007 interview with Dr. Merenda at http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/12877/1/Merenda,%20Joseph%20J.%20'34%20BioInt.pdf

Dr. Smith invites comments at dfs6@cornell.edu.