Have you seen this kind of amile in Cleveland lately?

Must be the water.

Cutting glass is an exercise in preparation. 

First you need a flat table surface which has rug, resilient rubber, or other soft surface on it.

Second, the glass surface needs to be  clean.  Very clean.  Especially if you are attempting to cut old glass - make sure that the surface has no paint, grit, etc. on it.   Dirty glass and your cut will likely fail.

Above is a driver's view of MOCA from the intersection at the corner of Mayfield and Euclid on a sunny January afternoon. 

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204409004577156603296740624.html

The Wall Street Journal link has an editorial by Steven Malanga which runs through the "economic development" boondoggles to which Buffalo NY has subscribed.  

The funding ideas sound much like those which have done nothing but harm in Cleveland, right down to the ubran light rail line which sounds just like our goofy "lakefront" rail line.

You didn't subscribe to this post, so please disregard.   You can't see us.

Anyway, the only way we in Bonaire are able to produce pottery and export it to Venezuela is because there are no government regulation in Venezuala and no taxes on the 1% there. 

So, of course, there are lots of jobs in Venezuela and those jobs actually move offshore to the Dutch West Indies.

Crazy, isn't it, how trickle up works?  

As I have been looking back through a hard drive for images for a story, it dawned on me that perhaps there could be a popular appetite for taking a virtual vacation - not to carouse, but to get educated and to gain a bit of vitamin D from exposure to something other than neo. 

Less than a decade ago we refered to "home telephone", "work telephone", "public telephone' - these descriptions are pretty much history. 

Instead of a phone being in a "place" where you go to use it, our bodies are now the "place" for phones.

Image March 13, 2008 Cuyahoga County Building elevator.

A recent study, linked here, demonstrates that  heart attacks dramatically increase with grief.  Besides grief- for example caused by the death of a loved one- other emotions like anger, depression, and anxiety also dramatically increase the risk of heart attack.

What happened to all the civic energy which we had in the 2004 to 2007 era?   I reported (image above) on March 12, 2007 about George Nemeth and Gloria Ferris conducting a Meet the Bloggers discussion.

And what you hear on the news is that Iran is a danger because the Iranians have produced yellow cake!

Who needs a nuke or an ICBM when you are able to sell a country located half way around the world across an ocean from your country "fresh" garlic?

Another job Americans won't do:  grow garlic.

Nothing wrong with that!

In Cleveland, Ohio, there are blocks of apartments (like the one in the image above) which don't have any lights on inside at 8:00pm.   I wonder what the 2010 census could tell us....

Are the tenants just all behind in their Cleveland Illuminating bills? or are these apartment blocks just empty?

Possitively Cleveland!

I was staying with friends when I heard about this tragedy, and I immediately got a splitting migrane.   

I couldn't imagine the intensity of grief the parents and family were enduring. 

At at time like this you would want to crawl into a hole and drown in your depression...

So the Jewish culture over centuries has developed an antidote - about as good as it can be - sitting Shiva.

i

I had never heard about this industrial re-use project until a relative gave me a heads up and gave me a slide show (image above credit CEB)

The rail road right of way is on a viaduct - built decades ago - above street level and in numerous places went through the commercial warehouses and industrial buildings which the rail line served.  

Recently I lent a hand at removing some dead limbs from a white ash tree.   The trunk on the tree is in the 48 inch diameter range - and when I counted growth rings in the 20 inch diameter limb which was removed - the limb had been up in the sky defying gravity for 125+ years!   

Pretty amazing. 

Ever felt like this?  Just too much going on?   

Sam, the cat, is 15 and rarely takes a break - but I caught him on camera at a slow moment between meetings!

 All around Cleveland - in the local golf course, in the corner of the field - screened and painted green, there are sprouting gas wells.  Fracked wells.

And those fracked wells, full of all types of crazy chems - those chems will not migrate into the local water table.  

No. 

No migration. 

I believe that. 

We all can tell that something has gone off the rails in American - and in our entire western culture.  

Capitalism has a flaw.  Or 2.

So last Saturday, when I was listening to some on-the-fly progressive radio station - I heard a podcast lecture given by Richard Grossman.  A lecture describing why corporations were causing havoc - and why corporations under the US Constitution were not "people".  

Take a look at your local chain grocer or your local big box store - you will find pallets stacked with bags of firewood from Eastern Europe.  

Is collecting firewood work Americans will not do?

Bizarre.

This sack (volume 1.36 cubic feet) of white birch sells for $13.99.

 Sanitation, extension cords, fire hazards is what all the Mayor's intone. 

But those "reasons" don't ring true.

While in many cultures conflict means killing, with Occupy we have peaceful protest, and yet the "authorities" can't resist shutting that peaceful protest off. 

What a huge mistake. 

Occupy Boston faces sanitation tonight at midnight.   (dark, few onlookers, OT for the Force) 

That's American Sanitation!

Jon Corzine's a smart guy - been a United States senator, been the head of Goldman Sachs, been the Govn'er of New Jersey.....

But now Jon  doesn't know where 1.2 billion dollars is - money that was involved in "betting" on European government debt - could be "operational errors" at MF Global,  the hedge fund Jon piloted,  Jon notes.   

It turns out that this tire was included in the Firestone Tire safety recall implemented in 2001 -  however, the tire failed because of a different manufacturing defect than the steel belt separation defects cited in the recall.

The image shows the pattern made by an insect which chewed out tunnels between two sheets of rigid blue styrofoam insulation. 

The insulation was stacked faces together and left under an oak tree for a few years and when I moved one sheet off the other I noticed that there were several different types of tunneling geometry visible on the surfaces of the foam.   (I will upload other patterns soon)