Bon voyage to birds

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology hosts its 13th annual Migration Celebration Sept. 14, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca.

Free activities for all ages will bid bon voyage to birds that spend the spring and summer months here, as they face the journey to their winter homes. The event takes place rain or shine.

“It’s a chance to learn about bird migration and what we can all do to help birds,” said Lisa Kopp, the Lab’s visitor experience manager. “Visitors can see live hawks and owls from the Cornell Raptor Program, learn how to be a citizen scientist, try the migration obstacle course and much more.”

In addition to guided bird walks on Sapsucker Woods trails, visitors can watch live wild birds being banded and attend workshops on filmmaking, sound analysis and building a nest box. Free workshop tickets will be available at the Migration Celebration welcome table; space is limited. Ice cream and food will be available from Cayuga Lake Creamery and The Good Truck at the event.

The celebration is part of International Migratory Bird Day, observed around the world at thousands of events.

For more information, visit birds.cornell.edu/birddayor call 607-254-2473 or 800-843-BIRD.

Examining Medicaid policy

Assistant professor of government Jamila Michener will discuss how the disparity in benefits and access to Medicaid affects Americans’ experience of democratic citizenship, in a Chats in the Stacks book talk, Sept. 17, 4:30-5:30 p.m. in 107 Olin Library. The talk is free and open to the public.

In her book “Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics” (2018), Michener clarifies the stakes of policy choices at the local, state and national levels regarding the nation’s largest public health insurer. While the federal government administers Medicaid, the ways individual states implement the program can differ greatly, from open-handed and generous to tight-fisted and punitive. She also exposes the political and social consequences for impoverished and marginalized Americans who are most in need of vital resources from the federal government.

“Fragmented Democracy” was selected as a finalist for a 2019 PROSE Award by the Association of American Publishers.

The book talk is sponsored by Olin Library; light refreshments will be available.

Building legacies

Cornell Cinema screens two revelatory documentaries on major architects this week in Willard Straight Theatre: “The Sun Island,” an essay centered on colleagues and rivals Martin Elsaesser and Leberecht Migge in pre-World War II Germany; and “The Proposal,” an experimental film by alumna Jill Magid about famed Mexican architect Luis Barragán (1902-1988).

“The Sun Island,” Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. with filmmaker Thomas Elsaesser, follows the life and career of his grandfather, Martin Elsaesser, told mostly through 8mm home movies, photographs, letters and contemporary interviews.

The chief city planner in Weimar-era Frankfurt, Martin Elsaesser designed public housing, churches and markets including the Frankfurt Central Market (1928). The market was a collection point for deported Jews in the early 1940s; the city transferred it in 2005 to the European Central Bank for its headquarters.

Migge, a landscape architect and radical reformer, leased Berlin’s Sun Island, the other key location of the film, in 1931 as an experimental research site where he pioneered sustainable agriculture. Elsaesser’s wife, Liesel, had an affair with Migge and continued his work on the island after his death in 1935.

“The Proposal,” screening Sept. 19 at 7 p.m., is the debut film by conceptual artist Jill Magid ’95, documenting her efforts since 2013 to photograph the work of Barragán.

Known as “the artist among architects,” Barragán won the Pritzker Prize in 1980; his home in Mexico City, the Luis Barragán House and Studio, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Most of his archives, owned by a private corporation, have been locked away in Switzerland since his death. Magid’s film has been called “a high-wire act of negotiation that explores how far an artist will go to democratize access to art.”

Jenny Xie reading

Acclaimed Chinese-American poet Jenny Xie will read from her work Sept. 19 at 4:30 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, 132 Goldwin Smith Hall.

The first event in the Fall 2019 Barbara & David Zalaznick Creative Writing Reading Series, the event is free and open to the public. A free catered reception and book signing will follow in the English Lounge, 258 Goldwin Smith Hall.

Xie’s debut collection, “Eye Level,” was a National Book Award finalist, and won the 2017 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, Princeton University’s Holmes National Poetry Prize and a PEN Open Book Award. Her chapbook “Nowhere to Arrive” won the Drinking Gourd Prize from Northwestern University Press.

Xie has taught creative writing at Princeton University and New York University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New York Times Magazine and Tin House, among other publications. She lives in New York.

American Sign Language interpretation will be provided at the reading; books will be available for purchase courtesy of Buffalo Street Books.

Community cat clinic

Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at Cornell is offering university employees and students free spaying/neutering and vaccination for their outdoor or free-roaming cats, at monthly CornellVet CARES Community Cat Clinics this semester.

The next clinic is Sept. 20, at the new Small Animal Community Practice building on the corner of Caldwell Road and Campus Road. Register online with a Cornell NetID. Drop your cat off at 8 a.m., pick up at 5 p.m.

Exams and surgeries will be performed by Cornell veterinarians and veterinary students under direct supervision. For October and November clinics, registration opens two weeks prior to each clinic date.