I was pleased to read in the Plain Dealer that Cottage Living has declared my neighborhood, Ohio City, one of their 10 best communities in America, for "charming cottages, a sense of community, and an eye on the future." No doubt they made a great choice with Ohio City, as my family well knows and celebrates each day we live here. Tonight we dined a few blocks from our house, among historic victorians and mature trees and gardens on the patio at Momocho (still as great as when I reviewed it last year)... the best NEOMEX restaurant in the world. Within a few other blocks of there are over a dozen more of the region's best restaurants and hot spots - core, local establishments - not to mention the "best in the world" West Side Market... With the W. 25th RTA and many bus lines criss crossing this area, it is a public transit dream, and is probably the most bike and walk friendly place in Ohio.

This Thursday, June 14th at the Forest Hills park, community volunteers will be working with the KaBOOM! organization to build the children of East Cleveland their first playground!!  KaBOOM! is a national organization dedicated to creating a place to play within walking distance for every child in America.  They collaborate with The Home Depot, and are working with the Community Development and Parks and Recreation departments in East Cleveland on this playground. 

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With this June 15, 2007, Inner Circle Open House, it is safe to say the NEO Excellence Roundtables are back, as this week we will feature a very unique discussion and performance by Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson, who is in the middle of a sophisticated recording project at George Lucas' Skywalker Sound, in Marin, California. Eliesha will discuss with us how she decided to get into the "recording business" and how the community can help her project succeed - and the purpose of this roundtable is to help Eliesha's project succeed.

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It is great to see more progress in the growth of the art scene in the mid-town and St. Clair arts district area, with the opening of Level Three Gallery this weekend... another sign of vibrant life. I like the work of the artists I know from this group so am glad to see them situated again - some showed together at Buzz, on W. 25th, which I liked very much. I look forward to seeing this new space and their new work. So, this Friday, June 1, art and culture lovers should start with a tour through the Hough bakeries, at the Inner Circle, for Happy Hour, then head over to CIA for their opening of Design Values 2, and then to Level Three for their opening, described below. By the end of the evening, you will not have driven far, will have done lots of great, authentic Cleveland things, and had plenty of opportunites for good company, art, food and cheer.

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Last Wednesday, we opened up The Inner Circle Restaurant and historic Hough Bakeries complex for a public tour, planning discussion, and great Hot Sauce Williams BBQ buffet, and that was a great success - there's a write-up here. Your next chance to join The Inner Circle, explore The Hough, participate in planning this neighborhood and enjoy some great BBQ is this Friday, June 1, 2007. More on the Open House and pictures are found at http://realneo.org/Next-Chance-to-Join-The-Inner-Circle. More on the Hough Bakeries complex at http://realneo.org/hough-bakery-becoming-the-star.

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Located in the heart of the historic Hough Bakeries Complex is the Inner Circle, a weekend club and reception facility operated for the past 7 years by the Hot Sauce Williams family. Starting shortly, operation of the Inner Circle will expand to extended hours every day, featuring a cybercafe, meeting space, computer terminals, free wifi, independent film, the Linux Cafe, art, culture, and great food, coffee, and even wine tastings, via a broader partnership of friends. This pan is from the deck and patio area, and features Guyanese chef and reggae performer and DJ Edwin, who will help operate the Inner Circle, shown with Hot Sauce Williams founder LeMaud Williams, as well.

I recently received an email from ClevelandSGS giving props to realneo, with a link to the ClevelandSGS space on Flickr. I hadn't heard of ClevelandSGS so I checked it out and was awed - it is an amazing assemblage of scanned historic documents and current photos of signage and scenes in Cleveland - a significant community asset in those respects - and a powerful gallery of "Mash-ups" not to be missed. But I still don't know what is ClevelandSGS. Do you? It is the Art of the Day, so read on

As a contrast to yesterday's Header of the Day, of Beechwood Place Mall, here's a new pan from a shoot at new Cleveland Big Box Mall Steelyard Commons, still in development, on April 20, 2007.

I had the annoyance of going to Beechwod Place Mall today for a meeting. What an astounding celebration of sweatshop labor and wasted resources. This pan is the first floor corner by some silly place called Nordstom, where not only does the coffee shop not provide wifi but the barista doesn't know what wifi means.

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Bill Callahan and I are pleased to offer a last moment opportunity to join an important conversation just beginning on making NEO a global leader in the use of Free Open Source Software, with the man who wrote the Open Source Definition, Bruce Perens. Bruce is Vice President of Developer Relations and Policy for FOSS-related SourceLabs, of Seattle. NEO is fortunate to have a local connection with Bruce, as the Director of Marketing for SourceLabs, Athena Diamantis, lives in this region. Digital Vision Director Bill Callahan and East Cleveland CIO Abu Alli met with Bruce and Athena last week to discuss how to make NEO a world FOSS leader, and we decided that is a topic deserving much broader and more open attention. So tomorrow we continue growing the dialog.

Join us, if you may... 8 AM breakfast tomorrow at the Juniper Grill.

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Whiskey Island – RiverDay Event – Saturday, May 19 from 2 - 4pm:

Sponsored by the Friends of Whiskey Island and the Northeast Ohio Sierra Club

2:00 - 3:00 PM: Take a self-guided walking tour of Wendy Park to the River Boardwalk. Come and celebrate the beginning of Cleveland's waterfront renaissance! This year the county commissioners and the mayor confirmed that Whiskey Island will remain open to the public for recreational, cultural and boating purposes. There is no longer a threat of port authority development on the county's public property. Explore and experience where our American Heritage River greets our Great Lake. Bring picnics, kayaks, volleyballs, cameras, binoculars and feel free to stay for the sunset.

3:00 – 4:00 PM:Gather at the River Boardwalk to hear Paul Alsenas, Director of the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission, and other speakers. Discussion topics include the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, the restoration of the Whiskey Island parkland and beach, the future of the historic Coast Guard Station and Hulett Ore Unloaders, and extending the 110-mile Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail to Whiskey Island…

Meet at Wendy Park- West Shoreway (Rt. 2) to the Edgewater Park/Whiskey Island exit, take a right turn at the first road and follow signs.

Contact Ed Hauser at ejhauser [at] ameritech [dot] net or (216) 651-3476. Visitwww.citizensvision.organd www.ohio.sierraclub.org/northeast

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To sweet Old Time tunes an interesting cross section of the Northeast Ohio alternative farming and energy communities will be represented at the 75th Anniversary of Coit Road Farmer’s Market on Saturday, May 19th 8am – 4pm. Also, a community garden on property owned by the market across Coit Rd. will be inaugurated.

It is good to see just released the latest research report from Policy Bridge, which explores: "How Anti-Education Messages in Media, at Home, & on the Street Hold Back African-American Youth". They contend "that institutional policy changes cannot succeed without addressing lifestyle factors that derail far too many black youth – boys in particular – from the surest path toward economic well-being: education." Policy Bridge is a think tank directed by Timothy Goler, who I got to know when he was acting economic development director in East Cleveland. This report is found at their website, here. It seems to do a good job of surfacing many issues and proposing solutions not now part of our dialog. There are other similar issues that make education more complex than it seems.

These photos were shot flying above the town of Barrow Alaska by my friend Katrina as she reach the end of an extraordinary cyber-educational adventure. Over the last 11 days she literally went that extra mile to make distance learning for NEO grade school students exciting and meaningful.

    Rhythm Culture Shakes Up Fair Trade at the World Fair
    Trade Day Festival on Saturday, May 12, 11am-3pm, at
    Tri-C Metro (Campus Center).  Move to the music of

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One of the writers at CoolCleveland contacted me about using some of my photos of the Breuer for an article they just posted here - another interesting proposal for the property, broadening awareness of the issues with the current plan and alternatives... read more

Two sisters who recently returned from Portland, Oregon and Brooklyn, New York, have begun an asphalt garden in a lot on Stanard, one block south of St. Clair Avenue behind the Goodrich Gannet Center. Map Here’s their plan:

Martin Varsavsky, founder of FON, and author of his "Blog of an Entrepreneur", posted there an interesting letter he sent to all his employees: "FON is Dropping Microsoft, Adopting Ubuntu". I had seen, on some of his earlier blog entries, that Martin had a major Windows crash and lost his whole hard drive (been there) and so after 20 years with Microsoft he switched to Ubuntu (done that) and also Apple - after a month he settled on Ubuntu. It has been fascinating reading Martin's celebration of discovering FOSS - I remember having the same awakening. It is very exciting to now see Martin move his company FOSS, and to highlight how he is doing this and why - read his personal account here... and think about how this could be happening all over NEO...

Greetings from Blue Pike Farm.

There is much to do in the St. Clair / Superior neighborhood on Saturday
May 5th.

First, there is the Blue Pike Farm Open House. We are holding our Spring

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While Cleveland's history of embracing progress and opportunity inspires visionaries of the present day, the recent establishment has stifled the advancement of independent thought that challenges the status quo.

 
The women of Ohio, U.S.A., call upon the women of the world, from day- old babies to our most senior elders, to stand with us on May 13,  2007, to save the world. Our project is based on Sharon Mehdi's book The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering.

I recently posted on realneo about a report I saw on CNN profiling Lucien Gambarota, an inventor in Hong Kong who has developed and begun manufacturing micro wind turbines - see http://realneo.org/Micro-Wind-Turbines. He is also working on technologies to capture energy from waves, and hybrids of wind and wave.