Mike Roberts peels back the cover on Port Authority mire.

Sunk

November 18-24, 2009 by Michael D. Roberts

Glad to see PD editorial on Issue 2. Ohio Issue 2 would provide mega-cover for mega-farms -- Thomas Suddes

Here's what is not included.

This came via email today. I urge citizens to read through the Dredged Materials Management Plan, or if you are already convinced that a new 200 acre port at E55th is not the solution, send the comments below. Add your voice to a rising chorus that does not see the efficacy of this ill concieved plan. Ed Hauser can no loger add his voice, we must speak.

In the NY Times, Nicholas Ouroussoff writes about the burst of the arts and cultural district bubble.

Since I haven't had time to listen to Diane Rehm lately, I was pleased to have a friend send me a link to this show with Darrin Nordahl author of Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture.

The government agency that oversees the Dike 14 Nature Preserve passed on a chance to pick up a $1 million grant to create trails, remove invasive plants and prepare the 88-acre site for public access.

In a letter explaining the decision, a lawyer for the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority called it premature to pursue a Clean Ohio grant separately from the city's sweeping lakefront redevelopment plans and the proposed $500 million port relocation project.

Put on your chin strap to read this (your jaw will dop from incredulity).

Sometimes it is hard for me to catch up. 40+ hours per week digging, pulling, plucking and gathering, cutting and washing vegetables on the farm leave little time for me to catch up on what's new in Cleveland. So today I went digging for the recent stuff (hoopla) about the "new" Gordon Square Arts District. I watched videos and heard the yuppie mantras repeated (like they have a script that includes name dropping - SoHo, Dupont Circle, the numbers of businesses and economic development and jobs projection numbers).

This Saturday I actually left the compound. My roommate and I visited the Shaker Square Farmer's Market. I had to get Honey Crisp apples cause they're in season. And then we went to the Ohio City Bike Co-Op so that she could investigate a bicycle and then onto the Westside Market.

Wow! What a cornucopia NEO farmer's are pulling out of the ground!

Michael Pollan makes the connection between big insurance and big agriculture. He's good at it - drawing us the picture that is. Here's his roadmap to healthcare reform in the US:

Big Food vs. Big Insurance

Yesterday I spent the better part of the day in the kitchen cooking. I had an abundance of harvest both from my garden and the farm's "family holdback" produce I had carried home over the past two weeks. I had to take all that fresh produce and prepare it for eating over the next few weeks and months.

Last weekend - summer squash blanched and prepared for freezing - summer onions chopped and packaged for the freezer, mizuna pesto prepared for stuffing tomatoes and for sandwich spread for the weekend trip to Detroit, first modest corn harvested - steamed and eaten with no added anything - delicious! Who knew you could grow any corn on 6 hours of sun a day?

Back in December, when this farm odyssey began, our first task was trimming, sorting and bagging onions for market. There were sacks and sacks full of them all cured and ready for their final presentation to the market shopper/eater.

So I went to see Food, Inc. at the Cedar Lee with a full house of foodies on Monday night. I recommend the film. It features Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser and Joel Salatin and other well known (to foodies) folks. I had received an email invite from Brad Masi and I went with my farm collegues. After the show there was a panel. Brad was on it and some guy (who's name I cannot recall from Whole Foods) and Warren Taylor of Snowville Creamery in Pomeroy, Ohio. Warren was awesome.

On Friday, the harvest took almost the entire day with seven of us working diligently. Toward day's end we were able to get the rest of the tomato stakes pounded into the ground next to their waiting plants, but that was in the last 20 minutes before quittin' time.

In addition to the various greens (mustard, kale, chard, lettuce), basil, fennel, nasturtiums and flowers made into bouquets, we added some new roots to our harvest activities. Beef and eggs do not require the efforts of "down the hill" farmhands.

Long Red Florence Onions (ready for market above and as they were gathered below) were ready to pluck from their beds.

This seemed to be a great weekend for orange. Green, too. They are opposites on the color wheel. First, baby carrots just plucked from the soil.

I recently took a day to visit with my friend Gloria Ferris. We spent a sunny Saturday afternoon in Tremont, first sitting outside at a coffee shop and then driving around in the neighborhood. (Gloria is recovering from a heart mishap and so walking that far was not advisable.)

We think of a carrot as a sort of straight orange root vegetable, but that's just one such carrot.

As of July 2009, European farmers will be able to market wonky carrots in the European marketplace.

I know that there were lots of people at Parade the Circle today and I saw many folks with cameras, too. I caught these snaps before my batteries gave up.

There was a lot of DayGlo in the Parade this year.

DayGlo pinwheel...

Today's harvest available at North Union Farmer's Market, Shaker Square and Sunday at Crocker Park.

pickers in the peas

peas before they were snatched (they're a little hard to locate... three passes usually find the ones that are ready to be eaten)

Merce Cunningham is brilliant even as he transitions his company to its end.

Before we spend too much time talking about another "opportunity corridor", let's get the first one working. What say you?

It could be grown right here in Northeast Ohio.

Garlic planted last year will be ready to harvest in July.

Rossa di Milano onions grow in the rows next door. Low growing clover in the paths in between keeps weeds down and adds nitrogen to the soil. Aren't they beautiful?

Michael Moore says goodbye to the old General Motors and offers some really good advice to President Obama.

He offers nine really good suggestions for the GM makeover (that'd be our taxpayer makeover of GM). The first one sets the stage well.

Lo and behold, Frank Jackson's office has held this "close to the vest":

"The Apalachee will be part of the exhibits at the restored Coast Guard station on Whiskey Island. The station is a national historic landmark. It will be a maritime and Coast Guard museum and interpretive center." - USCGC Apalachee Maritime Museum

Tony Brown and Steve Litt take a turn in front of a camera to discuss the impending sale of the Cleveland Playhouse to the Cleveland Clinic. The video is so poor that Brown comments asking for our forebearance. I really couldn't hear much at all, but IMHO Philip Johnson's design is worth saving not for design, but for the horrible waste of embodied energy.

With so much trendwise, associated content, spying, spamming, paranoia, writing of the sort that is so hastily posted as to be unintelligible (punctuation and sentence structure is there for a reason), and because Max posted Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff video again to RealNEO, I thought I would share this series of documentaries from BBCTwo:

Amazing discussion for all my friends especially for those who say they don't "understand" dance.