Friday night I attended a reception and lecture at SPACES Gallery for select Cleveland organizations with interest in urban planning and sustainability. The current exhibition at Spaces, Shrinking Cities, explores strategies for post-industrial urban areas and should be of great interest to anyone interested in urban planning and sustainability. Terry Schwarz, Senior Planner at the Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, was to give a tour of the exhibition. My affiliation? I am an energy ambassador at Case. I am also an art historian, and although there are some witty, beautiful and innovative works represented in the exhibition the theme and the messages of the show truly over power the aesthetics. One could easily forget they are in an art exhibition.

The beautifully engineered Fulton Road bridge was scheduled to be demolished today...like so many other beautiful and neglected structures it was "condemned" for being built too well.  It is fitting that it will not come down without a fight.  Built too well...an epitaph that could be applied to so many abandonned and condemned properties in Cleveland.  But politicians and contractors need to make money, so everyone (main stream media especially) shyed away from this story--a story that includes human and environmental elements--families that filed a lawsuit to try and prevent the taking of their property and the destruction of an historic WPA-era stone wall and graceful elm trees.  Can anyone name a recent civic structure built to compare to the solid grace and beauty of the Fulton Rd. bridge?  See Hunter Morrison's thoughts on bridges.

$millions spent - outside advertising firm brought in - focus groups of kneeling cheerleaders and deer in headlights conducted - press conference in airplane - check, check, check and check. "NEO" leadership did it again. Another Case of mistaken identities, being those who hired those using outdated formulas to decide how to market our city to us and the world. Every identity mistaken, as plusers ask us to believe in them, and Case re-begets CWRU.

Today is a dreary day and it helps to remember brighter days do come around.  I know I feel discouraged by gun violence, decay and the creeping ugliness around me.  I cling to some hope when I remember others have persevered.  One person at a time.  Restore Cleveland's Hope.

Wednesday night's lecture at the Cleveland Clinic with Peter B. Lewis and Frank Gehry was everything I had expected and more. I doubt an audience member left without a new appreciation for the  positive,  transformative power of architecture, friendship and collaboration. It was inspiring just to be in the same room with two people who had made such great contributions to architecture. It was also inspiring to see two people, two friends, who worked so well together as client and architect. A testament to Gehry's fame, the lecture had very few visuals – only a few slides of his most famous buildings such as the Disney Concert Hall in LA, The Experience Museum Project in Seattle, the Guggenheim Bilboa and the unbuilt Peter B. Lewis residence were shown.  Peter Lewis and Frank Gehry each spent 15 minutes discussing some of the highlights of their lives and careers and then they took questions from the audience.

Interesting perspectives on economic and community development from Coral's Peter Rubin, from the Villager Newspaper Online. I think Rubin makes some good points, and the reality is that we are overbuilding the Cleveland housing market, and other amenities, and that will make Cleveland a more powerful residential draw. As more of Cleveland becomes more "livable", more people will chose to live here. Add good schools and free city wide wifi and watch out. Clevelaqnd first will draw people from other parts of the region - empty nesters from the xburbs, students and young professionals from the inner heights - it will be cool and good to live in Cleveland again. That will attract people from other regions and parts of the world, and they will grow the economy - you need a critical mass of urban housing and culture to be a player and we aren't even near that yet - time to keep building and innovating in Cleveland housing! Now for the chair half there, with Rubin:

****(....this is part of a series of articles, and the author is just finishing up the building of his workshop)****

This Associated Press report describes the new manufacturing plants in the United States which will be producing wind turbine blades and other components. 

Meanwhile, the Cuyahoga County Energy "task force", Bill Mason, and the Cleveland Foundation are funding a feasibility study with about $800,000 of taxpayers' money to investigate building - six or more years in the future - "about 10 turbines 3 miles out in Lake Eire off of Cleveland".

What about manufacturing jobs now in NEO?  Why is Cuyahoga "planning" six years out, while other states are so much better organized that they are getting the wind turbine manufacturing jobs NOW? 

NEO is way behind the curve and has its sight set on the wrong goal - the Lake Wind Iconic Dream.  Cuyahoga "study" of lake wind is so retro, I wonder if the Ohio Coal Lobby – coal produces 85% of the electricity in Ohio - is subliminally funding Sustainable Cleveland.  

Buzzing Hong Kong is better known for keeping lights on all night and the air conditioner running full blast, not saving energy. But engineers in the city have introduced an innovative wind energy technology than can help both rural and city residents protect the environment and cut down on energy costs - without having to spend a fortune on an expensive device. Claudia Blume reports.

From: http://www.treehugger.com/page2.php, comes this interesting story...

Strangely, we don’t appear to have covered ‘walking buses’ yet. No, they are not Fred Flintstone-style mass transit, but a neat, safe way for kids to get to school. They originate in the UK and, according to walkingbus.com they are “the nearest activity to perfect exercise.” Essentially, each walking bus has an adult 'driver' at the front and and an adult 'conductor' at the back. The ‘bus’ runs along a specific route picking up 'passengers' at specific 'bus-stops' along the way. The bus runs “rain or shine and everyone wears a reflective jacket. Along the way children can chat to their friends, learn valuable road safety skills and gain some independence.” Seems to us like the perfect way to beat childhood obesity, increase road safety awareness, reduce oil dependence, combat climate change, and create friendlier, healthier, safer communities. We love it! Apparently, after a walking bus was introduced at one UK school, the rate of kids walking to school shot up from 48% to 75%. Hopefully these kids will retain their enthusiasm for self-propelled transport long after they outgrow the 'bus'.

I studied Latin in High School.   Mr. Feser was our teacher.  I remember Gallia Est Omnis Divisa in Partes Tres, but I remember even better Mr. Feser’s warnings about TV. 

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This is a piece about the modern consumer-grade digital camera.  What it can do. Amazing piece of equipment.  A Panasonic DMC – FZ50 for less than $500. Records to postage stamp size 4 gig SD media card.    I have used large format film and 35 mm film cameras all  through my years.  Today film cameras have nothing on digital.  Film cameras are relics.   I bought my first Sony Mavica digital in 2001.  2.2 megapixel maximum file size recorded to pocket CDs in the camera.  That camera cost $1,000 and worked great – even after I dropped it out of a tree.  But now, 6 years later, digital cameras with file capture 5x’s larger (10 megapixel) are available for half the cost of the 2001 camera.  That is a success story from the mass production economy.   And Moore’s Law is borne out again.

I hate to say this but AM radio WTAM reaches more northeast Ohio residents than any blog or the PD.  Ask my 65 year old neighbor.  At least they put out some important community alerts along with the latest American Idol results:

If you thought you needed to have solar panels in extremely sunny places to make it worth while, then think again!  Germany is leading the world in energy produced by the sun. This fact does not surprise me.  The Germans have been energy savvy for a long time.  I remember a trip to Münich in 1990, when I was amazed at the advanced system they had in place for commuters on bicycles.  Not only did they have separate bicycle lanes in the busy roads, but they even had traffic lights specifically for cyclists.

    If Germany can produce 1,000 Kilowatt hours per square meter per year, from solar power alone, imagine what places with extremely sunny climates can do.  However, the point is, it does not matter how little sun there is, anything is better than nothing.

   Got Solar Power?

Don Imus and Jackie Robinson – looked at through the lens of our  economy.

 While the US is spending trillions on killing and being killed while we disassemble Iraq on a lie about WMD from our government – while we heckle Iran and North Korea with “homeland security” as our rationale – while we lock up and persecute “dirty bombers” for years without trial, while we lock up “high value” suspects on a Caribbean Island which it is illegal for US citizens to visit – WE REMAIN SELF-DELUSIONAL ABOUT THE REAL KILLER IN OUR LAPS.   

Norm, your GIMP photos make me tune into RealNEO everyday (and, of course, the interactive flow of ideas and the heady vanity rush that comes with the self-publishing of those ideas). 

So, what makes a site a portal that draws in viewers?  SEE http://www.passportproject.org/ ">Passport Project

From Jack Ricchiuto today.... 

....thanks Jack, this was a good day for a "do to yourselfer" like me to be reminded of that :-)

One possibility at a time

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 12:05am

Claes and I were picking up Evelyn at the University Circle Arabica Sunday around 5 and I heard one of my favorite sounds flowing over from my favorite area spot - the Barking Spider - roots jazz. I knew who I would find there... the finest roots jazz musician I know in town, George Foley... so we headed right over. George plays and sings, solo and with many area musicians, in every imaginable combo, all over town, and it is always a fun, uplifting and inspiring experience.

This is the title of a children’s book that spent some time in our house.  I believe the afflicted robin of the title died of pesticide poisoning.  I thought of him the other night when my friend Susan mentioned she had seen three dead robins in the past week.  That comment made me recall that I had watched a robin feebly hopping in a busy intersection and not at all removing himself from danger.  As we stood on the corner, in the snow, another person waiting to cross Lee entered our conversation; she too had seen dead robins – two – recently.  Now perhaps we all saw the same three robins….but  it is still weird, something is up.  Sleuth Susan went home and discovered that many robins have been stretched to the breaking point by the recent high/low extreme weather we’ve been having. Read more

Just what is "TED" you ask???

Here is a little "About TED", from their website at:

http://www.ted.com/