The Ithaca Journal from Ithaca, New York • 24

12B The Ithaca Journal Saturday, September 5, 1992 Ranchers profiting from export of elk antlers to Asia By LISA FAYE KAPLAN Gannett News Service U.S. elk antlers are worth big bucks to Asian healers who believe the fast-growing racks contain rejuvenating ingredients that can perk up a sluggish sex life, lower blood pressure and relieve stress, neurosis and insomnia. Minced or powdered antler, mixed with other herbs, combat "old age and old sex in either the male or female," says Jay Lee, president of Pacific Agritrade a Seattle company that annually processes between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds of elk antler harvested on U.S. farms and ranches. The antler is sold mostly to Korea, 90 percent of the market that also includes Nationalist China and Taiwan.

U.S. practitioners of traditional Asian medicine also the product. Although the elk industry is well established in New Zealand, Russia and Antlers are dried and cut. The shavings are mixed with herbs, such as ginseng or licorice root, and either formed into a tea, an elixir or tablet. Canada, the United States jumped into the commercial market only within the past 10 years.

Today, about 1,000 U.S. ranchers devote all or part of their spread to raising elk either for their antlers (which sold in 1991 for $84 a pound), or as breeding stock. The A walk throegh ICs past ftf." t-r. 0 S3 R'- I I Li Jul if i cally every state in the nation. They are ranched on giant spreads in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, where they roam and graze on thousands of acres of range land.

Elk also are farmed throughout the Midwest and East, where they are fed a special diet and nursed like any prized livestock. A mature elk bull, which is generally larger than a deer buck, may stand 5-feet high at the shoulder and weigh between 700 and 1,100 pounds. Elk antlers can weigh 30 pounds and spread 5 feet. Virtually all domestic elk in the United States are raised for either their antlers or as breeding stock. "There is such a demand for the brood stock we can't afford to butcher them for meat," says Withiam.

Elk bulls shed calcified antlers every spring and can grow a new, larger rack in about 100 days. Stephanie Byrd The drag world unromanticized in 'False Move' "One False Movie" directed by Carl Franklin and starring Bill Paxton and Cynda Williams is probably one of the most gruesomely violent films playing in our local theaters. But for once the violence is not gratuitous and the background of cocaine, money and murder is revealed in a realistic way. Other films dealing with drugs have shown us intelligent and slick-looking bad guys who get their comeuppance. But the result is still alluring.

In "One False Move," the 'pathology of the psychopaths who live this lifestyle is not dressed up or glamorized. For this reason alone, the film merits our consideration. Cynda Williams is interesting as the beautiful young woman along for the ride as Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Beach commit a multiple homicide during a drug heist. The threesome head away from Los Angeles, the scene of their crime, bound for Star City, Ark. Along the way, there's more murder.

The police in Los Angeles get a line on their destination and head out to Star City to meet these gangsters. This is a simple cops and robbers tale. However it is complicated by three characters who are original residents of Star City. Dale "Hurricane" Dixon is the chief of police in Star City and dreams of the big time in law enforcement. Played by Bill Paxton, Hurricane knows the location of Ray Malcom's uncle where Ray Malcom (Billy Bob Thornton, who also wrote the screeplay), Fantasia a.k.a.

Lila (Cynda Williams) and Pluto (Michael Beach) are heading. Hurricane and Fantasia and Ray are addictive personalities who seem on a collision course. Fantasia is a heavy coke user and is rap1 idly losing her sense of what is fantasy and what is reality. She is addicted to the fast lane and seems unwilling to accept the consequences of traveling that road. Her flux from fantasy to reality is best demonstrated in a murderous shootout sequence! Five minutes later, she wonders if it is was all a dream.

In comparison, Ray is addicted to Fantasia as well as cocaine. He is paranoid and keeps reminding Pluto that this "job" is really a great move for his relationship with Fantasia. Hurricane has watched too much TV as is pointed oUJ by his wife and is heading for a painful brush with the reality of "big time" crime. In the midst of these three characters' delusions, only Pluto is stable, but his intelligence is warped by a murderous streak. Thornton and Franklin have attempted to downplay the romance of crime in favor of the complexity of the personalities who are either criminals or members of this country's law enforcement.

The choice of Arkansas as the setting for the film lends itself to the viewers' ruminations on violent crime and the drug culture which promotes such deeds. "One False Move" is an exciting and revealing film. It is one of this year's best and should not be missed by film-goers anywhere. rag A local tour traces the steps of Ithaca College's early downtown roots Carol Kammen 'HEN Ithaca College left down town to move up South Hill a number of alumni attending events found themselves bewil dered by the changes they encountered. Not only had the college been moved out of downtown, but downtown itself had undergone changes so vast that former hang-outs were hard to find and dormitories had been reverted to other uses.

Lillian Vail, long-time custodian of IC's past and John Harcourt, professor and author of 'The Ithaca College instituted a series of walking tours for returning alumni for a sort of "reorientation." The Ithaca College Conservatory of Music began in four rented rooms on East Seneca Street in the fall of 1892. For some years, the heart of the college was on State Street, the present site of McCurdy's and Center Ithaca. In 1911, the college moved to the DeWitt Park area, and there it remained unil the 1960s, when the South Hill campus was created. Professor Harcourt begins his tour at Mayers Smoke Shop, as opposed to the original building on East Hill, so he can point out where the Ithaca Hotel once stood (the site of McCurdy's) then the most dominant builing in downtown Ithaca. Harcourt says the hotel was an ugly, massive building which came right out to the sidewalk no sense of landscape or setting in evidence.

The hotel had a large, formal dining room on the Aurora Street side in which all sorts of college festivities took place. Harcourt notes that although IC was not a financially well-endowed school and it was not rich in buildings of its own, in its early years it was a community of people who celebrated with some formality all sorts of occasions: Honor society initiations, fraternity and sorority parties and dinners for college visitors and guests. Students and faculty spent many hours in the old Dutch Kitchen, located on the Aurora Street side of the hotel. It was one of the most famous and frequented spots in all of Tompkins County. The Dutch Kitchen was room that was part pub, bar and restaurant all in one," Harcourt says.

Harcourt recalls that when the college had enough money it also rented the top three floors of the Wilgus Opera House, located where Center Ithaca now sits. For many years, there was a sign on the upper floors of the opera house announcing it as tu it 4) 2 if I IT 7 young industry sells about $5 million worth of antlers each year, according to the North American Elk Breeders Association, based in Kansas City, Mo. "We've got one guy who farms (elk) on. the side of a volcano in Hawaii," says association president Sam Withiam, who also raises 135 elk in Cushing, Okla. "Most of our members are cattlemen, dairymen, wheat farmers who are looking for alternative activities to supplement the sagging agricultural economy," Withiam continues.

"We have a lot of people who get a taste of it, and the next thing you know, they've committed their entire operation to it." Although wild elk once were found throughout the nation, 'they now roam west of the Rocky Mountains, primarily in Montana and Washington state. Domesticated elk, which are registered and bred like cattle, are raised in practi IA After that, the Methodist Church. But walking through the park in academic regalia was always nice." Harcourt says that students danced in the park, sang and played music in the park and courted in the park. The minister of the Presbyterian Church noted that he could always tell which couples would be coming in next to plan a wedding. Though the park was central to the college, it belonged to the Presbyterian Church.

The first building owned by IC was the Boardman House, which faces Buffalo Street. The dean's office was on one floor and music could be heard throughout. "Wherever you went, you heard music," Harcourt says. "The band was housed in a building behind the Boardman House. We gave our concerts sometimes in the DeWitt Park area itself." The best way to understand the buildings around the park is to know about the devel- See PAST, 11B adulterers fit for public office? Should gays serve in the military? These questions arise from a self-righteous but distasteful defense of what the etiquette business calls nosiness.

It is not from pure prissiness that Miss Manners argues against private life being made public. She does it because she sees what surely ought to be an obvious correlation between disclosure and disapproval: If you open your personal life to debate, you cannot then become indignant because not everyone agrees with the way you conduct it. This society went through a period of falsely declaring itself to be "non-judgmental." Judging the proclivities of others is inevitable; respecting others only requires that one make the essential distinction between holding an opinion and expressing it. That is not to say that people should not announce their marriages or other stable partnerships. Society has a legitimate claim to know whether an individual lives as part of a couple, because social life is based on these social units.

I i AfS Hi Photo by ANDREJ OZOLINS TOUR GUIDES: Lillian Vail and John Harcourt in front of the historic Boardman House in DeWitt Park. The house was once the home of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. Harourt and Vail have created a walking tour of IC's past to 'reorientate' returning alums. Then and Now Plasticflex A fashion disaster DeWitt historical Society UG-LY: circa 1940 Plasticflex pocketbook in the foreground. In September and April fashionable la-! dies change their accessories for the fall or spring season.

In 1940 though, Rubin Appel, owner of Ithaca's Pocketbook fac-; tory on South Hill, proclaimed a new fash- ion season the plastic season. It began after he patented a design for a "button" purse under the name Plasticflex, a new technology of rigid white squares ed by cords woven through four holes in each square. Appel was so confident of the success 'of the new "miracle bag" that he opened a second factory at the corner of Buffalo and Meadow and boosted payroll to 200. Appel claimed that the bag was an improvement over leather. "It is worn by the most fashionable women of New York and seen frequently on Fifth Avenue and admired as well by the housewife who demands a practical attractive handbag." Workers mostly women were not 'fas excited about the new product.

Some the methods for threading the squares with cords on a board caused Vthem to get blisters or poke themselves J'with the long weaving needles. The factory closed in 1960 and many questions remain. A History DayCopy Clinic at the DeWitt Historical Society on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 1-3 p.m. will gather details about the factory's workers and their 1 union with on-the-spot copying of photos, clippings, letters, and employee paperwork.

Music Get an earful of Ice Water Mansion at Max's along with guest East Wall tonight at 9:30. $5 cover. Sunday: Martin Jessica Simpson perform on Bound for Glory live at The Commons Coffeehouse, 8-11 p.m. Free. 9 Acting Features Editor Franklin Crawford 274-9221 Judge on public performance, not private proclivity the site of the Ithaca Conservatory of Music.

Harcourt says that when the college couldn't pay rent at the opera house, it moved across the street, above the stores on the north side of East State Street. He noted that in those days, IC was "kind of a moveable operation." "I don't think we ever camped out in the open," he says. "But we did frequently move from place to place because the income had dropped off and somebody decided that we could get a better rent in another location." The Wilgus Opera House remained the college's principal home until the college moved from the State Street area, to the buildings around DeWitt Park in 1911. From that time until the 1960s, DeWitt Park was the heart of the campus. "We got a lot of mileage out of DeWitt Park," Harcourt says.

"It was just lovely for academic processions. After we outgrew the Strand Theater, we had commencements in the Prebyterian Church. Judith Martin might be hidden. And now look what has happened. We are having a variety of unseemly public debates in which fitness for one's professional life the very opposite of private life, requiring quite different abilities and attractions is measured in terms of one's sexual conduct or sexual orientation.

What does the personality of someone's spouse say about his or her character? Are 1 Didn't Miss Manners admonish you not to go around broadcasting the details of your private life? And isn't "private life" a quaint term for the first thing everybody tells everybody else these days? Nobody listened to Miss Manners' old-fashioned plea for personal reticence. Drunk with the concept of openness, people can't imagine a reason other than false shame or silly squeamishness to prevent the national flow of intimate information. Those few who wish to be conventionally circumspect are prodded and exposed, and even blackmailed with the argument that not confessing is tantamount to admitting that one has something dreadful to hide. The telling of private emotions to strangers is put forward as evidence of fine feeling. Surely Miss Manners is not the only person who considers that, for example, love of one's own child is a minimum requirement for humanity, not something to brag about.

The blabby bathos of expecting to be admired for harboring normal human emotions, or for confessing to human weakness, is what makes her wonder what And yes, the result will be that many people will form judgments about the taste or lack of it demonstrated by anyone's choice of a particular person. Contrary to the belief that all the world loves a lover, all the world thinks the lover could have made a better choice. There is hardly anyone who does not disagree with anybody else's taste in partners. By no means does this disapproval have to be limited to your partner's gender or marital status: Any individual can and will inspire disapproval. Your choice is too young for you or too old for you, only after your money or only after your body, too flighty or too stodgy, too flashy or too mousy, obviously unreliable or obviously boring.

If you want to know which, just ask people. Miss Manners' point is that you shouldn't. They'll tell you. Putting private life on the public agenda legitimates discrimination. Yet it is difficult to defend the victims who bring their private lives into places of employment and See PROFESSIONAL, 11B.