The bi/tricycle of the future, an enclosed recumbent known as a velomobile, has arrived in the USA in form of a space-age looking pod with trunk space as well as hybrid-electric technology that provides electric assist for steep hills and charges from your pedaling motion. The velomobile pictured is the GO-One . Velomobiles enables year round cycling, though it would seem smooth surfaces are preferred.  While  there are certainly advantages  to  a traditional  upright bicycle, there are  also numerous disadvantages.  However,  lets bask in this revolutionary transportation technology and we can discuss the downsides later....

While the Cleveland Clinic goes for a 5,000 car parking monstrosity, and Detroit goes intentionally bankrupt to dump its auto unions and its pensions and move offshore, and ODOT spends a Billion on a new "signature" interstate bridge, and our NEO rail service goes further into the ditch,  Europe is on top of high speed train technology.  Look at the NYTimes’ story re: French TGV.

This is particularly ironic because the USA has the wide open spaces which are most compatible with high speed rail.  Yet the USA does inefficient, polluting cars, very fuel inefficient aircraft, but not rail.  Think the industry lobby are the reason?!  Of course,  our federal government does what it is told, and inefficient travel is a money maker for the highway construction lobby and the gas lobby and the auto lobby.  Citizens, get in the back seat.  No, actually, get in the trunk and close the lid.  You aren't relevant. And neither is the atmosphere.

One important benefit of the cold, grey, dismal NEO Winters is that they are followed by Spring, when the many flowering trees across the region explode with beauty and color - like this spectacular work of art found on MLK Boulevard at the Ukranian Cultural Garden.

I recall seeing this idea on RealNEO a while back.  Check the following links for means by which we could potentially utilize our existing highway infrastructure to generate electricity.

  Harvesting energy from any body of mass in motion: 

InfoWorld, the 29 year-old information technology bible has printed its 1,384th and last issue. "We're folding our print publication and focusing solely on the Web" states the 04/02/07 printed issue that arrived in the mail this morning.

How did we miss this important event when we live right next to a huge body of fresh water? There is nothing I can find in the local media, no proclamations from our water department, no speeches from our local leaders…

I was struck by Sam Miller's comment in today's Plain Dealer editorial Come Together:

"If you people out in Gates Mills and Pepper Pike and Beachwood and Westlake and Bay Village want to turn your back on this problem, then figure out how you are going to maintain good school systems and get a good price for your house. You are not. You will get caught in the same decline that is overtaking Cleveland now."

- Sam Miller

This is what’s wrong with how Cleveland and the County run their “business”. 

Read here about a novel newspaper concept.  Called BOSTON NOW, it will be a free paper which gets its content from local bloggers.  Circulation will start at 150,000.  Bloggers will not be paid to start – but will get their material out to a larger audience than just their blog might hit. Eventually – in six months or so – the publisher intends to begin to pay blog contributors in some manner.   The paper will carry full stories or snips of the blogs, with the idea being that if a particular blog topic grabs you, you can later go on line and read the entire article.

Before the spring flowers come out (in fact, even in the coldest weather), the variations in the bark of trees in Ohio offer a spirited visual treat (though I grant you that you have to look a lot harder for color outdoors in the winter).  All the above trees grow in NEO – and it’s a rush observing the differentiations in their skins.   If  you were blind, could you ID these trees?  A lot easier than elevator buttons.  The interior wood of different trees has distinctly different smells – are there different smells to different trees' bark?   Clearly the imaginative wraps fashioned by those in Haut Couture have nothing on Mother Nature’s bark coats.  So go take a Hike – check out the Metroparks and feel these trees!  Their DNA is much like yours…

Claude Monet. Poplars, Pink Effect, 1891
36 7/8 x 29 1/8, Private Collection

Wednesday night I attended a lecture at the Cleveland Museum of Art, part of the Monet Lecture Series that accompanies the exhibition Monet in Normandy. So far I have attend all but the first in this eight lecture series. I found the previous lectures all to be very entertaining and enlightening. I feel I know a lot about Monet now -- I read the exhibition catalog and gallery labels and I have listened to the audio tour, but I am finding that Claude Monet is a truly fascinating figure and it seems there is always something more to learn about him. Paul Tucker is a  professor at the University of Massachusetts and a renowned scholar on Monet and Impressionist painting. His lecture was titled "Monet, Modernism, Normandy, and La France" -- a title I believe was meant to cover all the bases. What I found most interesting about Professor Tucker's hour long lecture was his insights on some of Monet's late works that become narrow and vertically oriented (such as Poplars, Pink Effect 1891) and the role of religion in Monet's life and work. 

I need to raise an important point of federal budget minutia and ask that you email the Governor to protect riding and pedestrian infrastructure in NE Ohio.

The President wants to save some money so he has rescinded (or canceled) spending for transportation enhancement programs.  Because federal transportation money was already distributed to the states years ago, he can't cancel it directly, so he tells the Governors to decide where to cut.  Transportation Enhancement money is important to NE Ohio. In fact, of all states receiving transportation enhancement money, Ohio trails only California, Texas and Florida. But if Ohio receives a lot of money, we are also being asked to generate a lot of the rescission money – nearly $139 million.

Johnny Mango World Cafe and Bar is a love at first and each sight, bite and margarita restaurant for me - creatively well decorated, eclectic environment, friendly staff, and always a great crowd... whether just a few tables of regulars or packed with anyone or everyone in town (generally on weekends... especially when the weather is great and sidewalk patio is open). The reason is a fresh juice bar, meaning some of the best drinks and smoothies possible, along with a great selection of Tequila... along with Momocho (which is next door), they have the best margaritas in town... along with a "world-cafe" menu of fun, unusual foods, cooked fresh, with fresh ingredients, in the open kitchen... and location, location, location in beautiful, vibrant Ohio City.

Read a summary of Martha Schwartz’s lecture-Landscapes of Awareness- at the Harvard School of Design http://archinect.com/features/article.php?id=54068_0_23_0_M.

Our city is not expanding, but if we let ODOT have its way, well-preserved old structures that tell our history and provide character will be swept aside for more rivers of concrete. What are we doing? Check out Carol A Poh’s letter (with author’s permission) to ODOT’s Section 106 committee. (NRHP = National Registry of Historic Places) Both the Broadway Mills building and the Marathon Station next to it have been recommended eligible, which is why they are not discussed in Carol’s letter, but that does not mean they will be saved.  Instead, as was suggested in the PD, Clevelanders may be reminded of their former presence by a plaque or some other fitting???? marker.

We are heading for bland at highway speed!

Following is Carol’s letter:

There are not many opportunities to see African art in Cleveland -- especially while the Cleveland Museum of Art is under renovation. Fortunately, there are some generous collectors with outstanding African collections in Cleveland. Art: Trilogy, Anonymity, and Eclecticism, 100 pieces of African Art and African American Art is an exhibition going on now through May 15th 2007 at the Cleveland Public Library, Main Library Building, 2nd Floor Exhibit Corridor, which taps into the collectors' and creators' spirits.

The Church at Varengeville, Morning Effect is the most powerful work Monet created while on a painting campaign in Varengeville in 1882. The church of Saint-Valery is a Romanesque medieval church, built in the 12th-century, perched dramatically near the edge of  a towering cliff. It has long been a mariners' church and many generations of local fisherman are buried in the cemetery.

 The “print screen”image above shows a clip of the tracking details for the “nuts and bolts” wind turbine post which was put up on Realneo several month’s ago.  Notice the Google searches which came in from .cz, .no, and .ca

At about 5:30 p.m. this evening I walked south bound on the Coventry Road sidewalk in front of City Buddha and two young teenage boys walked by me headed north. The shorter of the two stopped and pulled what looked like a pistol handle from his pocket and said, "wana see my 45?" The taller boy laughed.

Some much anticipated R&R in beautiful Cincinnati has helped my culture, cultivate, and cognitively create a theoretical evolution.  One of several growth mechanisms proposed as a key infrastructure component for Grow Coil Theory (GCT) is microperforation - penetrating piping with microsized miniature holes that allow high value growths 'root access'- this would apply beautifully as a stopgap or interim step in the channeling of human or animal waste to food streams (ethanol, compost, vermicompost).  Imagine, for example, each length of pipe or even coiled spiral being approximated by formula CL  = (2*Pi*radius*length) = acreage grown. IF the acreage grown refers to the inner surface area of any cylinder (or tube) - coiled or otherwise we could surmise that it would be slightly greater than equally possible to grow on the outer surface of any cylinder (or pipe), or coiled pipe for that matter.  So we refer to the 'Chia Pet' variation as a growth infrastructure and in this case it would apply beautifully to grow green growths on the OUTER surface of any cylinder.  In other words, we can grow on the inner surface of the cylinder and approximate THIS area as CL as well!  My previously posted concept, to channel human feces (resolving the fecal matter) to foodstuff (ethanol, compost, etc) takes on a more interesting connotation to consider - we can grow green growths on the OUTER surface by penetrating pipes with perforations just large enough to allow plant 'root access' and in the process, keep a flowing food source for shrubbery and shrooms alike.   again, this allows for oxygenation of sewage systems and helps us get to the ultimate goal of using sewage spaces more effectively and creating value in the process.

Neil Nisbet is masterful with this camera and getting the video up on the site for all to see. What a great service he does for dance company's in the UK and Europe! Thanks Neil!

The latest installment is Verve. (not Verb)

It has always bothered me to see full page ads in the Cleveland Plain Dealer for the traveling "Collectibles Buyers" who come into town for a few days to prey upon the most desperate citizens of our region, setting up shop in some seedy motel to buy jewelry, coins, watches, etc... the family treasures... from anyone they can scam. Recently, a local TV investigator did a segment on this sad practice, showing that the brokers offer their victims low values only the most pathetic fools would accept.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to tie together many of the theoretical pieces that I've developed and evolved over the years which just might comprise a holistic collection of synergistic sustainability submittals that comprise a body of work that could be considered contributive to the collective Whole.   They all fit together in a seamless way, without wayward explanation needed.  Ultimately these could be taken to begin to build a roadmap toward the ultimate vision - significant progress beyond the impending activation of the Genesis project, and the core change mechanisms and revenue driving efforts to drive it.  To put it simply, I hope the world's change leaders take these and implement them as they see fit for their particular sphere of influence.  If we take care to integrate structure, process and function meaningfully it should result in sustainable positive change.  Recent dialogues with AI/change leaders from Nepal and Zambia bode well for implementation potential.