My friend and neighbor, Jim Sollisch wrote this article last year about the cost of college text books - the cost to students and to forests: Save trees; put college textbooks on the Web.

Just meant to inspire us togreater things

Plea to all

The Plain Dealer reports today that Cleveland's new poverty rate is 29.5 percent, ranking second worst among large cities. That rate is up from 27% the previous year. Among our peers:

Yesterday after I posted the bit on permeable alley paving, I sent the link off to Terry Schwarz, senior planner at the CUDC.

Here's our correspondence.

Susan: "Are we doing this in NEO? paving what we need to pave - sustainably Please offer examples.  Terry – good to read the beet farming idea out there in some press recently."

Last Sunday, at St. Ann's Catholic Church, in Cleveland Heights, I saw the first McCain bumper sticker I can recall. Perhaps I've simply overlooked the tiny, militaristic, white-on-black branding on all those massive suburban Suburbans and Hummers. But this one star general caught my eye. Seeing this brought me understanding... so this is where the McCain community lives... although I didn't see any other McCain stickers in the lot, which mostly contained simple, spartan, sensible, socially conscious vehicles. I thought, "at least one bible-thumping Republican practices the preach". Then The General left the service long before it was over... before anyone else left the church... and I realized The General had been in church not for a shared community experience but drive-through religious self-service. Probably escaped right before the offerings basket was passed.

I saw this sadly honest bumper-sticker in Cleveland Heights the other day - the same day an article in the New York Times pointed out a horrific circumstance of our attacks on the Middle East - 100,000s of concussions among our forces alone... imagine how many of the people of the countries we have brought to war are suffering the same injuries - far more than our soldiers, who are suffering as follows:

Huge props to the many artists, MCs, DJs, bboys-and-girls, organizers and 100s of real NEOans who turned out for the 7th annual City Xpressions Street Art Festival, August 23, 2008, at West 25th and Lorain, Cleveland. A perfect summer day - great happy crowd - creative vibe and entertainment - and some spectacular urban art. While there weren't as many artists as the last year I attended, what showed was diverse and often pure genius.

Are we doing this in NEO? If we aren't, why not? I have written before about permeable asphalt, but this is permeable alley paving - in Chicago, where else? Hi Sadhu. We sure miss you here in NEO.

Midtown Brews with Meet The Bloggers

Following up...

Is anyone as sick of weaseling Democrats as I am? That’s the category I put Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher for their cave-in on the sick day ballot issue. A pair of ingrate weasels.

Organized Labor – not exactly vigorous – has been pushing a measure that would legislate seven days for sick leave for employees in businesses as large as 25 employees or more.

Brooklyn Centre gets sloppy national coverage on public radio's Weekend America for participating in Cleveland's Corner Store project. 

Have the news media dropped the “Cone of Silence” story too quickly? Was candidate John McCain cheating?

Does Cleveland and northeast Ohio have a policy of deferred maintenance?  It would seem that the strategy is to let everything fall apart until we qualify for state and federal funding.

My father, bless his soul, played and replayed the soundtracks to Fiddler on the Roof and Man of La Macha, over and over, until the lyrics became a mantra.  Tradition!  Try to establish just one simple family tradition and you will have children with the gift of memory.

Yet another reason to push for 'more green' - it can lead to 'more clean' air. Something that both urban areas and their schools need to address. (Not that suburbia is immune to pollution. Dirty air is everywhere)

Take a moment to explore and participate in a new collaborative online space, Economic Gardening Economies, just formed over last weekend during a curriculum retreat at the beautiful 2,600 acre Edward Lowe Foundation Property, Big Rock Valley, in Michigan.

Economic Gardening is a process begun almost 20 years ago by Chris Gibbons in the City of Littleton, Colorado to identify and connect knowledge, local assets and companies to strengthen prosperity. Read CI for Small Business: The City of Littleton's Economic Gardening Program.

Here is more information taken from the side bar of the Economic Gardening Economies Web space:

This web site provides background on where the strategy of Economic Gardening is taking hold. 

You can become a member of this site here. Members of the site can freely contribute content and help us build an even more vibrant economic gardening network. 

Two white papers on Open Source Economic Development definitely worth downloading to your desktop and reading, studying.

Harry Bell is a powerful urban artist, well appreciated in Cleveland and beyond. His most famous work I know is the Wall of Sorrows, recently dismantled, under controversy, and now in storage... scheduled for future re-installation. You may know his current work from cruising through Cedar and E.55th, where he is commissioned by a gas station and car dealership to create urban art on their walls, now including the work-in-progress shown above... a memorial tribute to "Houghs Angel", Fannie Lewis, rest in peace.

Did Fannie really whisper in their ears? Did she say, Stephanie Howse?

I find it hard to believe.

It took until the 34th paragraph in Sunday’s Plain Dealer expose of the deal for land where the new juvenile justice center is being constructed to get to Mayor Michael White and Sam Miller. The center is located away from all other court/jail facilities of the County at Quincy and E. 93rd where a broken-down brewery once stood.

Boy, the “Cleveland – a Dying City” rating by Forbes Magazine really cranked up the city’s cheerleaders last Sunday, as seen in the editorial page of the Plain Dealer (which years ago for some reason dropped the name Cleveland from its name).

What was most amusing was that it was written by a trio – two of them – Joe Roman of Greater Cleveland Partnership and Dennis Roche, president of Positively Cleveland – draw salaries totaling $703,627 a year (2006 IRS figures). Roman gets $426,271 and Roche gets $303,627, both including benefits. The salary of the third, Thomas Waltermire, CEO of TeamNEO, wasn’t available.

Thanks to Sudhir, I had the opportunity to check out the Flobots at Peabody's, Sunday night. If I'd browsed the Cleveland Scene Magazine concert preview, beforehand, I probably wouldn't have bothered going. The 100s of fans who enjoyed the show agreed that would have been a mistake.

Lawrence Lessig, Founder, Creative Commons Founder, Stanford Center for Internet and Society Professor,  at the Stanford Law School talks with Timothy O'Brien, from O'Reilly News, at this year's Personal Democracy Forum in New York City.