Do you realize that "The removal of lead from gasoline in 1990, regarded by many as one of the major public health triumphs of the 20th century, had an immediate impact. Between 1976 and 1994, the mean blood lead concentration in children dropped from 13.7 mcg/dL to 3.2 mcg/dL, in direct proportion to the amount of tetraethyl lead produced. One could want no clearer testimony to the efficacy of a well-conceived and consistently applied public health policy." Further, "there is a dose response relationship between lead in bones and self reported delinquent behavior in children - grounds for an arrest" and "study of prisoners in Cincinnati finds strong relationship between bone lead and number of arrests" and "statistical analysis of lead in environment vs. murder rate 21 years later is very powerful". So violent and irational behavior is an outcome of lead poisoning. Beyond the statistical proof of how this impacts society, and each of us, REALNEO's Phillip and I have seen the impact in a clinical setting, by visiting the Lead Clinic at MetroHealth and speaking with patients there, and their families, and our observations were highly disturbing.

July 17 – 21 is Ohio Lead Awareness Week. We would like to invite you to participate in the March for Lead Safe Living. This event is planned by the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council to make people aware of the issues of childhood lead poisoning, and to let people know that we can do a better job in eliminating these problems. The Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council, co-chaired by the Cleveland Department of Public Health, Cuyahoga County Board of Health, and Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, along with over fifty community partners, is committed to eliminating childhood lead poisoning by the year 2010.

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As an economist, I've always been fascinated by the wealth of value our foundations provide this region, including funding arts and culture, supporting innovation in education, catalyzing the economy and leading government transformation, and most remarkably forming The Fund For Our Economic Future and funding global change leaders America Speaks to lead the Voices and Choices collaboration now poised to revolutionize our regional insight and economic development. As an open source economic developer for the region, I've had significant opportunity to work on many projects funded by local foundations that are truly transformational, including Voices and Choices, so I feel I must speak up in complete support for this initiative of America Speaks.

Voices and Choices is a groundbreaking initiative of the Fund for Our Economic Future to develop a far-reaching, comprehensive regional dialog for setting a course for our region's future that will produce more jobs and create better economic opportunities for our families and businesses. Voices & Choices is also educating hundreds of thousands of people about the realities facing the regional economy.

If you have the opportunity to rebuild your city from scratch, what will be your priorities - what are the priorities of your neighborhood and neighbors? Well, in New Orleans they don't have any choice about rebuilding their city, so a diverse collaboration of planners and community leaders are using sophisticated tools and methods to make certain their neighborhoods of the future are as desirable and successful as possible... read the report summary and link in below. Note, while this is part of multi-Gulf-State regional planning, which must focus on the big picture, the study here looks are resident preferences by neighborhood and even ethnicity, so it is very granular at the microeconomic level in NOLA, and so entirely applicable to NEO. I strongly believe doing the same exercise here would offer immense value, not just in Cleveland but in every neighborhood of the region... just take the exact same method and tools as used in NOLA, work with the same team at Tulane on analyses, and we'll quickly have some real micro-community development benchmarks and targets for rebuilding our region, with concensus, from the ground up

Residents rank low crime, good street lighting as rebuilding priorities.

Low crime, good street lighting, absence of litter, walkable sidewalks/crosswalks, neighborhood grocery stores, playgrounds, affordable housing and good schools are the top priorities of New Orleans residents as they rebuild or decide whether to rebuild in the post-Katrina world, according to a survey released this week by The Prevention Research Center at Tulane University. "Low crime is a priority across the city," says Tom Farley, director of the center and chair of the department of community health sciences at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. "Crime can be prevented with smart environmental planning, such as well-lit streets. We hope this data will result in rebuilding plans that address concerns about crime and safety."

Just a friendly reminder of the great bash coming up this next Thursday - July 13th at Fat Fish Blue. Thomas Mulready of Cool Cleveland had this fantastic idea of setting an event will help sponsor the Ingenuity Festival. The Ingenuity Festival is the premier event that helps blend (or blur) technology and art together. As part of this event you will get a free ticket to Ingenuity Festival. As always, I am looking to bring people together to celebrate our world class artists and technologists. So please join me!

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Hear the sound of 1,000 Drums. Listen to live jazz, hip-hop, folk, techno, classical, rock, polka, & more. Experience opera, theater, ballet, step dancing, breakdancing, contemporary dance & more. Enjoy exhibits, concerts, poetry slams, stilt walkers, jugglers, parades, food, flowers, & activities for kids, all transformed by technology. That’s Ingenuity 2006 & it’s happening this July in The Festival Village at Prospect Ave. & East 4th St. Seize the dates, at the Ingenuity Festival website and in this book, as the festival comes alive.

I've certainly paid much more attention to my alma mater, Tulane University, and home for many years, New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA), since hurricane Katrina hit last year, and what I have seen is inspired regional planning combined with collaborative community building, from which we in NEO stand to learn many great lessons.

Opening Ceremonies

Ingenuity 06 will launch with a spectacular Symphony for 1000 Drums on Public Square at 5:00 pm. This Symphony, composed and conducted by internationally acclaimed Halim El-Dabh will feature drums from a rainbow of cultures and ethnicities, as well as individual drummers known in the rock and jazz communities. The goal? As Halim, puts it: “The world is filled with conflict and stress. We need to create a vibration that will change the balance to health and joy." The Symphony will be followed by the all county marching band's parade to the Mainstage. You can’t miss this! Please click here for more details.

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Today's Plain Dealer has an editorial about the selection process for the new President of Case University that I find very exciting - partly because it shows great progress with Case, partly because it promotes a concept for the selection process that I initiated on realneo in March, and mostly because I agree completely with the PD position - "Lessons learned? - Case trustees' chairman is making the right moves as the search for a new president gets under way", and I support that "Linsalata also promised to allow the university community - both alumni and those on campus - ample opportunity to provide input on the search this fall."

I was saddened to hear of the untimely death of Kenneth Lay. At the young age of 64, there was so much more he could have done -- like go to prison for 20+ years. The days would have passed quickly with visits from his children and 12 grandchildren. On visits with his wife they could have reminisced (about their last $200,000 cruise). But, life is not fair. I find it difficult to feel any sympathy for Lay -- a New York Times Article and the article in the PD "Lays passing produces some mixed feelings" suggests some did feel sorry for him. Shamefully, Lay maintained his innocence and always blamed others -- rogue executives beneath him -- for the fall of Enron.  Most disturbing to me is the the self-rightiousness, bordering on insanity he reveals in this statement: "We believe that God in fact is in control, and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the Lord," he said outside the courthouse in Houston after the verdict. Did God bless Kenneth Lay's lies? A convenient death or did God strike down Kenneth Lay? Perhaps Lay did not escape his sentence after all, perhaps he was just called before a higher judge.

When I saw last week a preview for the Thursday, June 29, 2006, WVIZ "Ideas" program featured PD Arts and Architecture columnist Steven Litt and Cuyahoga County Planning Director Paul Alsenas discussing the state of ODOT's plans for a new bridge to replace the current I-90 span across the Cuyahoga River, I thought I was having déjà vu. Yes, this was an issue a year ago... even six months ago, but since then ODOT had so thoroughly railroaded the bridge and trench planning process through the public mind-space that it seemed all topics of discussion about this near $billion project had moved completely behind closed doors and forgotten. Well, it seems Litt and Alsenas have very different ideas about that, as they shared in an excellent "Ideas" this week, and as Litt writes at length in today's Plain Dealer. Be sure to read that article... and great work on Ideas, Steven and Paul!!! Read on...

I am really appreciative, this morning. After posting what was certainly the saddest news I can imagine, about the hardship my staff has suffered as a result of a lack of appreciation from my former business associate, Peter Holmes, I opened up this week's CoolCleveland and found that their crew had featured TWO postings from REALNEO. I am very touched and thankful to Thomas and his team for noticing REALNEO and taking an interest in the thoughts posted here - thank you. Please show appreciation back to CoolCleveland... if you are not a member, see what you've been missing... subscribe at CoolCleveland - all free - this is a real NEO must,  and send feedback to CoolCleveland letters at the links below, and supporting the upcoming CoolCleveland/Tech/Ingenuity party at Fat Fish Blue, July 13, and the Ingenuity Festival, as described below... but first, here's the nice write-up about REALNEO from CoolCleveland today, July 5, 2006:

In a really fascinating development, the Plain Dealer attempts today to structure a deal whereby Cleveland citizens accept the idea that the former press secretary to the very dubious former Mayor Mike White, highest-level PR-statute Nancy Lesic is now under contract with the President of the Cleveland City Council, for $48,000, while also being PR-statute  to the Port Authority, and the Clev

Today's article in the PD distills the core revelations from the first in a series of City Club forum sessions on housing revitalization in Cleveland. Some of the important revelations included one by Thomas Bier of CSU's Levin school declaring that an influx of middle-class homeowners will be critical over the coming years to sustain the city tax base. Mitigating this has been an urban sprawl problem problem that has 1500 city housing units evacuated annually. "Cleveland's growth is crucial to Cuyahoga County", he said. Any regional approach, he added, should hinge on the city's development. Bier also stated that efforts to implement comprehensive housing strategy for the city would likely be undermined by the divisiveness characterized by the 21 city council members with ward-centric interests.

The BBC news today reported from the territory of Senora, where native people of modern-day Baja California, southern California, and Arizona reflect a shared history that dates far before European invasions and artificial nations and borders of the United States of America, and Mexico. At the end of the report, intended for the global BBC market, rather than the "American" dribble we call news, the reporter discussed with the leader of one of the remaining communities of Native people in Senora, whose land spans now-USA and Mexico, how disruptive to destructive escalating USA isolationism is to the eternal life-patterns of his people, and the reporter concluded "to these native American people, anyone who is not a native American is an illegal immigrant". 

From the International Relations Center America's Program, Borderlines, from "Ancient ties, cross-border links", please recognize that: "For thousands of years before the artificial border line was drawn between the United States and Mexico, native people in the Arizona-Californias region shared languages, cultures, and oral traditions that traced their shared histories back through time. The earth itself, not today’s border, defined territories: the up-thrust backbone of sierras, inhospitable deserts, great rivers, and watersheds. These natural spaces and barriers also shaped the ranges of plant and animal communities, with stands of oak in the valleys and piñon in the mountains, agave and prickly pear in the deserts, deer in the hills, and rabbits and quail in the chaparral. They influenced the coming and going of humans as well, who, though extremely adaptable to different ecosystems, were profoundly aware of and responsive to the rhythms of their environment. The modern boundary between Mexico and the U.S., however, does not reflect these natural parameters."

Just think about his for a while. What comes to your mind? Now get inside the minds of the European invaders, through the sick eyes and delusional writings of a German Jesuit invader of our Native land named Juan Nentvig from before Cleveland was a city. And consider why we the people are now building borders across native lands we did not succeed to steal. Do you really approve of we the illegal immigrants calling native people illegal immigrants? I find the whole psychotic USA superiority complex incredibly arrogant, disgraceful, embarassing and pathetic, along with the entire free world outside America, and I am especially embarrassed as Cleveland shows such ignorance of culture in the prostitution of our native people's identity through the forever-loser "Indians" and wretched Chief Wahoo brand. Can you really imagine a city with a team with such bad karma could ever win? Or, do you think like an invader?

Where is the honor? Nowhere... definitely read on below...

When I voted this spring, I wondered about the security of the new machines. I had heard that a paper receipt was a part of the process but there was not one available.

While at a meeting in the City Hall Red Room last year, among portraits of many past Cleveland mayors, I asked then Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell's Chief of Staff Chris Ronayne who was Cleveland's best mayor ever, and he said without hesitation Tom Loftin Johnson (b. July 18, 1854 - d. April 10, 1911), who was mayor from 1901 to 1909. I didn't know much about Johnson nor think much more about him until I grew completely disgusted with the inane puffery in the Cleveland Plain Dealer demanding we the public bend over and take ODOT's obliteration of downtown Cleveland, Wolstein's destruction of the Flats, Stark's WalMarting of the Warehouse District, Carney's corruption of the Port Authority, and now Volpe's Disneyfication of Public Square, driving me to stand up and seek reality at the roots of this one-paper-chase misplanting of bad planning seeds into our social subconsciousness, so greedy developers may destroy our civic  mind, heart, and soul. So, I ask you the public to consider, will any of these corrupt land-grab developments serve the masses. or have we strayed so far from the world Tom Johnson left us that we are again just a low-class, groping, leaderless, blind, selfish, forsaken party to few, as Tom Johnson found and fought at the beginning of the last century? For the answers, join me at Public Square below...

The City of Cleveland Division of Water celebrates 150 years of service (1856 – 2006). This is an outstanding organization that servers water the greater Cleveland. There are some amazing facts that we should all be aware of.

eBay was probably my first experience with social computing -- if you can really call it that. eBay is a community of buyers and sellers that for the most part control the environment (what the buy and sell). Like Realneo, eBay users have a profile and choose what personal information to reveal, they post pictures, and writing (though in the form of descriptions of things they are selling). After several years of using eBay on and off to buy and sell, I feel like I don't really understand how eBay is working in an economic sense. Maybe you have some insights? Please post them!

I just came across a recent article on C/Net's website (click here) about the possibility that online social networks are not what we might think they are. They state that they are a fad, something that will begone as quickly as it started.

LifeHacker had a great posting showing a USDA resource to find farmer's markets all across the country.

Strap on your goggles...It's a whole new game!

Presented with the generous support of Cleveland State University Nance College of Business Administration

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