ODOT wants us to live with this for 20-50 more years - Afterwards replace it for over $1 Billion.  Why isn't anyone questioning this nonsense?

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The ODOT Cleveland Innerbelt Project's- Project Development Process (PDP) & Public Involvement Process (PIP) seem to be in limbo since the last public meeting on November 17, 2005.  ODOT's and City of Cleveland's PDP & PIP Schedule has not been followed and appears to be five (5) months behind schedule.  The "Alternatives Report" and the "Economic Impact Analysis" were scheduled to be completed in December 2005, for public review and comment.  THE REPORT AND ANALYSIS - DO NOT EXIST AT THIS TIME.  Even though the general public has been effectively removed from the public processes, a lot of activity has been going on since November 2005.  Below is a brief update on some of those activities.  Please visit www.neobridge.net to participate in this community discussion and to get the latest updates on OUR Cleveland Innerbelt Project.

One of the quiet treasures of northeast Ohio is taking place once again, administered by The Cleveland Foundation. The event's fact sheet summarizes its purpose in the following way:

• Established in 1935, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize outstanding
  books that contribute to our understanding of racism or appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures.
     
• The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards is the only American literary competition devoted to recognizing books that have made an important contribution to society’s understanding of racism and the diversity of cultures.  Traditionally, an academic work and a work of fiction, poetry or memoir are selected each year. 

If you attend you will have a chance to meet the authors, hear them read their works, and buy their books. For more information (including the present winners and a list of past winners), visit www.anisfield-wolf.org. Although registration has not opened as of this writing, register well in advance of the event. In recent years they have had a capacity crowd.

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Join a distinguished list of artists exhbiting at this downtown gallery space dedicated to showcasing Ohio Artists.

Judged by Andrew Boroweic
(http://www.mocp.org/collections/mpp/borowiec_andrew.php)

Curated by Herb Ascherman
(http://www.freetimes.com/print.php?sid=3264&POSTNUKESID=24aa2fceed74b
ef7dde959c055a6603a)

Gallery 324
1301 East Ninth Street
Cleveland, OH 44114

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, May 19th, 2006     5 - 8 PM
Light refreshments provided.
Exhibition continues through June 30, 2006
Gallery Hours:  Monday - Friday 10 - 6, Saturday 10 - 2, and by
appointment

More information:
216.780.1522
marcus [at] designerglass [dot] com" target="_blank">marcus [at] designerglass [dot] com 

About the Show:
Andrew Boroweic is well-known for his extraordinary eye. If you´re
bored with the ordinary photograph, this is the photography show to
come see.

Boroweic says that the challenge of finding art in photography is
similar to the challenge of finding poetry in language. The art
inheres in how the ordinary is made extraordinary - not because it´s
so different but because it´s often only a little different: just
different enough. Come see what he means in this show.

About the Gallery:
Founded in 2005, the mission of Gallery 324 is to showcase primarily
Ohio artists. Located in the Galleria at Erieview on the first floor,
near the Food Court, Gallery 324 is operated by Marcus Bales, a
Cleveland glass artist, in conjunction with Gary Roberts, a Cleveland
furniture designer. 

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At this meeting, Bob Coppedge will be talking about making movies. We'll be discussing hardware, both on the camera and the PC, as well as demonstrating some of the editing software available to you George Lucas wannabes.

What kind of camera? Tape? Disc? What's the best brand? What about audio? And then once it's recorded, what do you do with it? We will take a look at some of the software available, like Microsoft Movie and others. Are there any websites that help with reviews and/or help?

Then are there any sites you can use to share your masterpiece? Like Google Video, iTunes, Download.Com?

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Bread & Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand-puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions were rents, rats, police and other problems of that neighborhood. More complex theater pieces, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners, followed. The puppets grew bigger and bigger. Annual presentations for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day often included children and adults from the community as participants. Many performances were done in the street. During the Vietnam War, Bread & Puppet staged block-long precessions involving hundreds of people. In 1970 Bread & Puppet moved to Vermont as theater-in-residence at Goddard College, combining puppetry with gardening and bread baking in a serious way, learning to live in the countryside and letting itself be influenced by the experience. In 1974 the Theater moved to a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The 140-year-old hay barn was transformed into a museum for veteran puppets. Our Domestic Resurrection Circus, a two-day outdoor festival of puppetry shows, was presented annually through 1998. The company makes its income from touring new and old productions on the American continent and abroad and from the sales of Bread & Puppet Press’s posters and publications. The traveling puppet shows range from tightly composed theater pieces presented by members of the company, to extensive outdoor pageants, which require the participation of many volunteers. Bread & Puppet is one of the oldest, nonprofit, self-supporting theatrical companies in this country.

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These are pictures taken on a Spring evening at Shaker Square. Thanks to George Nemeth for the information and inspiration to do some photoblogging. For the rest of the images, visit my Flickr page. <!-- Start of Flickr Badge -->

www.flickr.com 36743492 [at] N00 [dot] jpg

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I received a postcard of the upcoming exhibition and reception for Cleveland Institute of Art students completing their B.F.A. thesis exhibitions. I always enjoy touring the facility and looking at the work of the talented students and professors there.

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I received a postcard for the gallery opening of this exhibit. I've summarized the basics below. Please visit the website for more details.

SPACES mounts the first exhibition in Ohio to explore the idea of Afrofuturism, the subculture that deals with the interplay between time, technology, race and culture in the USA. Seventeen artists, from both historical and future viewpoints, tackle the impact of technology on the physical, social and spiritual lives of black people.

From science fiction to film and cultural exploration, the artists create work in painting, video and video games, sound installation, spoken word, sculpture, cinema and drawings. Conceived by The Soap Factory and Obsidian Arts in Minneapolis, the exhibition Afrofuturism was originally curated by Minneapolis-based artist Ernest Bryant and Suzanne Roberts of Obsidian Arts. SPACES introduced six northeast-Ohio artists into the exhibition.

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Blog technology provider Pluck is about to offer content from 600 bloggers to newspaper publishers across the country in a syndicated service called BlogBurst . A number of articles are reporting the details. CNET, and the provocatively titled article "Bloggers Unite to Infiltrate Newspapers" are good starting points to learn more.

If you want to sign up to have your content distrubuted through their service, visit BlogBurst. 

Click here for more information on the graphic.

RUBY DEE TO APPEAR AT THE CLEVELAND PLAY HOUSE Staged Reading of Saint Lucy's Eyes to Benefit Play House, Karamu

Celebrated stage and screen actress Ruby Dee will join actors from Karamu House on the Drury stage at The Cleveland Play House for a fundraiser benefiting both theatres, each currently celebrating their 90th Anniversary Season.

The two theatres have been collaborating for some time on ways to have Dee, a Cleveland native, return to the city. Their efforts result in a staged reading of Bridgette Wimberly’s Saint Lucy’s Eyes at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May 8, 2006. A special reception will follow in The Cleveland Play House Club.

Wimberly, another Cleveland native, now lives in New York City. She began writing Saint Lucy's Eyes in a workshop while a fellow in Lincoln Center Theater's Directors Lab. She became a 1999 Mentor Project Fellow at the Cherry Lane Alternative when Wendy Wasserstein chose to mentor Wimberly’s play, culminating in a workshop production at the Kauffman Theater. Saint Lucy's Eyes went on to a sold-out production at the Women's Project and Productions starring Dee and moved to The Cherry Lane Theatre.

The event is a fitting addition to the FusionFest line-up. FusionFest, The Play House’s upcoming first-annual multidisciplinary performing arts festival will run May 2 – 21, 2006. Tickets for the reading are $50.00.

Tickets to both the reading and the reception are $100. For $250, up to six individuals may attend the reading, the reception and join Dee and Wimberly for lunch at 11:30 a.m. Monday, May 8 in The Play House Club. The roster of luncheon guests also includes Play House Artistic Director Michael Bloom, Managing Director Dean Gladden, Karamu House Artistic Director Terrence Spivey, and Karamu House Executive Director Gerry McClamy.

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Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, was raised in Ghana and educated at Clare College, Cambridge. His many books include two monographs in the philosophy of language as well as the widely acclaimed In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture, which received both the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction and the Herskovitz Prize of the African Studies Association.

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Beethoven: Triple Concerto & Symphony #7

2/22/06   7:30 p.m. free admission 

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I was listening to the tape of the Dalai Lama presentation on compassion. Initially the organizers wanted him to do the presentation about emptiness, which is one of the central concepts in Buddhism, but then they decided that it would be a very complicated topic. I spent some time thinking, why it is important to reach emptiness.

Zsolt Bognar was at once extraordinary and authentic in his performance Wednesday night of Tchaikovsky's 2nd Piano Concerto at Kulas Hall, on the Cleveland  Institute of Music campus.  Bognar, a student of Sergei Babayan, was passionate in his interpretation of the rarely heard concerto in G Major.  His keyboard fingering provided an awesome display of his growing physical and mental virtuosity. 

There was an article posted on the Channel 3 website proclaiming "Graffiti becoming a big problem in Midtown".