Over the years I've valued RealNEO as a place to share diverse writings ranging from simple sustainability strategies we can inculcate into our regular lives to grandiose and futuristic visions of entire new worlds crafted within our own. I take pride in being with this team and community since inception and contributing our website's taxonomy and providing engaging content.  I've even found the opportunity to express myself more artistically through poetry. At much risk, and at times, with controversial unabashed candor I've shared personal hardships and anguish - and I can now say doing so has only enriched my personal development on physical, emotional and spiritual planes. 

It cracks me up to see kids come in to the library to sing!  They plug in the headphones and start grooving to a tune on line and the next thing you know I have to go into shhhh! mode.
Is there a way to tap this energy?  So,  who is mining this? 

On Friday January 11, 2008 Cleveland, Ohio Mayor Frank Jackson announced that the City was filing suit against 21 banks/financial firms.  The suit alleges that the defendants created a public nuisance in Cleveland.  The alleged  nuisance was created through issuances of thousands of “sub-prime” loans which are alleged by the City to have caused the abandonment, vacancy, and subsequent demolition of thousands of Cleveland residential buildings.

Sense 8 is another beautiful film by Katrina McPherson and Simon Fildes.

If you are interested in Contact Improvisation, send me an email via realneo, and I will help you contact (excuse the pun) the folks in Northeast Ohio who do this every Sunday in University Circle.

We all need neighbors.  They help us out in times of need.  They also drive us crazy.  What to do?  Tomorrow is another day.  Let's hope it heals the unnecessary rifts that divide.

If one knows where to look, there are amazing people and experiences to be found in Cleveland - like some hard-core union trades-folk cutting loose with great music and times in a gathering-place known as Club 75, not to be found around E75 and St. Clair, late the NEO-warming January night of the 10th, 2008. These back-street socialites, led here by Crazy Marvin on blues harp and Bobby Fox on fiddle, meet regularly for Urban-Iron Chef cookoffs that Lola and Lolitta would love... making NEO real.

I just received fantastic news from Annie Stahlheber with the Cardiovascular Task Force and Cuyahoga County Board of Health.  East Cleveland won one of only three $25,000 grants awarded nationally by Kaboom! as Playful City, USA.  This awards video reviews all the winners, from honorable mentions to grand prize grants.  East Cleveland's award is presented at the conclusion of the video and includes a nice bit featuring Mayor Eric Brewer and a select group of East Cleveland's young players. 

Ted--I just want to let you know that I called and I suspect many others called after Dick Feagler's Sunday column to cancel their subscription to the PD.  Here is Dick Feagler's logic in a nutshell:  if you see a black person, run away.  He calls it realism.  I call it racism.

See this face.  Is it hard to believe that this woman took on the establishment in New York and forced planners to consider the human element in the design of cities? 

Any agency in Cleveland contemplating radical change to the streetscape should ask themselves.  What would Jane think of your idea?

I spoke with the auto wrecker which is just under the bridge from the free wall today.  He isn't happy with the graffiti workers because when the graffiti is on the junk yard fence, the city inspectors make the junk yard paint over the graffiti. 

So, please, put the graffiti on the bridge abuttments, not on the private junk yard fence!

"WIKINOMICS" How mass collaboration Changes Everything
Don Tapscott to speak at the University of Akron January 10th – Free admission

Don Tapscott, internationally renowned expert on the strategic value and impact of information technology, and author of “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” will speak at E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall at The University of Akron on Thursday, Jan. 10.

I know what your thinking....what the heck does Bizooki on Ideablob all mean? Cool stuff I assure you. It is a call for help from a great local entrepreneur - Andy Tabar. Andy recently launched a cool tech company called Bizooki (www.bizooki.com) and was looking for a fun way to raise some coin for his new venture. Ideablob (www.ideablob.com) is a listing of cool ideas and tries to connect the idea to good advice.