in-sourcingIf you've been driving past the main entrance to the Cornell Plantations lately, you may have noticed a strange cluster of bamboo huts that appears to have gone up overnight. Depending on the time of day, you might have spotted the odd cooking fire,
attended by a group of sem-nude women busily peeling vegetables and stirring large black cauldrons balanced on a bed of glowing hot coals. You may even have spotted goats and chickens grazing nearby; children busily gathering firewood or re-arranging the stream beds as they search for the flattest rocks which they then haul back to the campfire.
What the fuck, you'd be tempted to say - as Ez was recently. Is this some kind of primitive pursuit day camp for jaded Ithaca housewives? Rule that out! Putting it as politically correct as possible, these happy campers do not appear to be indigenous to the area based on their complexions and linquistic orientation not would they be likely to show up at a school board meeting. The few words that Ez overheard on his second or third driveby of the encampment sounded distinctly alien to Ithaca ears. Ez is not a polygot himself, having learned only enough Spanish, French and German to pass finals and receive the requisite C minus needed to obtain credit for having shown up for the semester. The last traces of those agonizingly acquired languages disappeared from Ez's cerebral cortex within 17 days of the final exam.
Other people besides Ez were stopping their cars that day and checking out this odd tableau. Folks carrying digital cameras with Pennsylvania plates on their haul ass SUV's - quilts of travel stickers and honorary policemen decals plastered to the rear door panels. They probably figured that they had stumbled into some kind of ethno-themepark cooked up by Cornell anthropolgists. Wait til the pictures are developed and the folks back home in Hershey see this!
Hey, Ez wasn't even going to stop, being the anti-tourist that he is. He's never owned a camera in his life, never taken a picture of a local attraction anywhere he's been, hates tourists, loathes the idea of tourism itself, apologizes to people for visiting their town or country and, in that vein, refuses to ask for directions
so that folks won't mistake him for a tourist. Well, to be honest, Ez did buy a postcard once in Germany - a view of the exterior of Karl Marx's birthplace in Trier. But that's only because Ez spent two weeks of his three week vacation trying to find Marx's birthplace. And, let's face it, the guy rocks.
The reason Ez stopped at this bizarre (for Ithaca) encampment was to check out if Lauren Signer, Ithaca's police chief, happened to be around. Signer is a staunch defender of toplessness as a form of public expression. Last time women went topless in Dewitt Park, Signer was all over the local papers supporting the cause. Toplessness has still not caught on in Ithaca for some reason or other. But that's another story. Anyway these women gathered around the cooking fires were topless and Ez was hoping that Signer would be around, demonstrating solidarity. Ez might even be tempted to take a snapshot of a topless police chief. He desperately needs to change his opinion of law enforcement.
Well, to make a long story short, Ez waded out among the toursts who were oogling and snapping pictures, and made contact with several of these non-indigenous people.
Besides being topless, non white and not able to speak much English, they were all wearing Cornell University picture id's , somehow affixed to their minimalist wardrobes. Ezra is not making this up! Go out to the Plantations and check it for yourselves! These beautiful, very natural and friendly people - all so seemingly out of place in this cold, increasingly unnatural, ever-unfriendly Yankee peddlars' village of Ithaca, New York - were all employees of Cornell University.
It took a few more days to piece together the whole story. Believe Ez when he says that it's not a pretty story.
We're all afraid these days of losing our jobs to Folks in India or Vietnam. Every time a telemarketer calls to sell you a subscription to the Ithaca Journal, you listen carefully for traces of a Calcutta accent. Ez's boss, Satan, is at this very moment negotiating with a company in Singapore to ship Ez's job off to Asia. Elsewhere in the world scientists are connecting monkeys to robotic arms. No kidding. A monkey may take over your job one day. Rolling up to the McDonald's drive-in window one day, you might find a chimpanzee in uniform taking your order. Talk about working for peanuts - try bananas.
Hey, let's get with it. Globalization isn't something that started yesterday. The early Phonecians were going global thousands of years ago. Outsourcing high tech jobs to developing countries might be a fairly new development but, before outsourcing, there was - you guessed it! slavery. Millions of Africans were stolen from their homes to help to fuel the world economy within years of white Europeans having made first contact with the coast of Africa. America was built on the backs of foreign workers. When the slaves were freed, immigrants from Europe and Asia were suckered into building America's industrial infrastructure -we're talking now about the railroads, the tunnels, our manufacturing base.
That's right - in-sourcing. And that's exactly what Cornell has done! What Ez found out is that Cornell transplanted the entire Iyo tribe of Southern Brazil to Ithaca, New York - head chief, village gods, culture and all to staff the University's livestock management operation. The Iyo, legendary herdsmen of the Amazon basin,occasional cannibals, are now working in barns and stables all around Cornell's sprawling campus. You can see them over at McConnell barn wrangling mares,or milking cows to produce yummy lates for the campus Dairy Bar. That's right,at Cornell, otherwise known as Moo University (Jane Smiley), there's a Dairy Bar - lest we forget our humble orgins as a land grant college built to crank out
brainy farmers.
Imagine if you were a displaced barn worker. Most likely, you had worked on a farm as a kid, seen your family lose the business and had, after working at Ithaca Gun for 15 years until that plant closed, drifted into work that was at least familiar if not well paying - pitching hay for Cornell. Now, you'd be a little sore if you saw some 4'5" dude wearing practically nothing at all, a small piece of wood stuck through his nose, cooing gently to a 400 lb heifer named Junie Moon to coax her out of the stable when that used to be your job.
Not a bad deal for Cornell, do you think? During the day, the Iyo work in the barns and stables of Cornell's vast ag science operation. They get bused around in Big Red vans every morning and back to their camp at day's end. You might spot the van stopped at a traffic light and, invariably find the Iyo peering excitedly out the windows and pointing at the neon rooster over the Chanticleer. At night hordes of grad students and wannabe social anthropologists, clad in Birkenstocks and Levi jeans, descend on the Iyo camp to peek in their cooking pots and try to catch them mating.
Holy shit! Just when you thought you'd seen everything.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:57 AM
