Cleveland Public Library will host Eric Etheridge, the journalist/photographer behind the new book Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders, at an author visit on Sunday, February 22, 2009, 2:00 p.m. FREE and open to the public, the event will take place at the Main Library, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, E.

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Please Join us for a look at the works of some of Cleveland's finest African American Filmmakers

Works by: Fred Boswell, Georgio Sabino, Marcell Dorsey, Nikki Byrd, Robert Banks Jr. and Preston Pickett.

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The Cleveland Public Library welcomes the Year of the Ox with two Lunar New Year celebrations at the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, FREE and open to the public, the event will take place at the Main Library, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, E. 6th Street and Superior Avenue, on Saturday, February 7 at 1:00 p.m. and Sunday, February 8 at 2:00 p.m.

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This area’s private electric company had a stranglehold on the city’s public electric system. Muny Light, as the city’s system was known, in the 1970s was an island serving some Cleveland neighborhoods, surrounded by CEI, which served in Cleveland and its suburbs.

CEI refused to allow electric power to cross its lines – a common practice called wheeling - to serve the city’s much smaller system. It was tightening its grip. It was hoping its hold would become a death grip.

Prima donna Tim Hagan cries the Plain Dealer is “cynical.” Tim, the PD has been propping you up for 30 years. You an arrogant, lazy excuse for a leader. You’ve been given the best press a big mouth with little record has ever been given. You don’t know how lucky you have been. With Brent Larkin leaving the Plain Dealer editorial boss position some reporter might start telling the truth about a guy who talks and talks but does little. “They’re cynical about everything we are trying to do here,” Hagan moaned about the news media and PD.

“Charities feeling the pinch of crisis,” headlines the Plain Dealer this a.m.

Some, however, aren’t feeling the pinch as we’ll see from taxes collected in January from Cuyahoga County taxpayers.

Despite corruption and cronyism galore, Ohio does have it's bright and shiny moments of good and brilliant. Here's a way to make history come alive for your kids (from ODOT!) http://www.dot.state.oh.us/districts/D06/Maps/Pages/OhioUndergroundRailroadMapsPage.aspx

We have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.

Shout out to Slavic Village Sandy, who is the voice of NEO. Thanks for the heads up!

This is your invitation to join Miami alumni and friends from around the globe for a Charter Day Celebration 200 years in the making. Space is limited at each event and the deadline to RSVP is February 7, 2009.

More information and online registration are available at www.MiamiAlum.org/Chapters or you can Joanne Harper at 1-866-MU-ALUMS.

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Last year, my sister and I went to Puerto Rico to find some sun. We had a great time and the weather was perfect. Yesterday, Cleveland had perfect weather, too. It is a matter of luck and how you look at the world. This is Cleveland, too.

 (Heroin addicts lined up for clean syringes in Old San Juan :(

Steve Litt provides a good look at the mall site as the proper one for a medical mart and convention center in today’s Plain Dealer. http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2009/01/chosen_medical_mart_site_... It’s a good argument for where the project should be. However, it doesn’t address really – as no one has - whether we need this project or whether it is worth the price it will cost.

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Gene Krebs says it well: Don’t Bail Out ODOT- an op-ed from Greater Ohio

Brookpark Road at Rocky River Drive a flooded mess after water main break 1-30-2009

Massive Water Main Break in Cleveland Causes Street Collapse, Flood 3-06-2008

Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio offers ARTWORKS, a program where students work with professional artists and other students to create work in music, dance, theater and visual art.

Students entering 10th, 11th and 12th grade are eligible. to apply, go to http://www.yaneo.org/what/artworks.php

Student applications are due March 20. Professional artists who want to work with the students are encouraged to apply by February 12th. The program takes place June 17-July 30th.  Call 216.561.5005 for more information.

A number of times in my newsletter Point of View I published more extensive reviews of Cleveland politics and the local news media.

I hate to see them simply sit on the shelf. Therefore, I’m offering some copies free. I’d like to send 10 copies of a couple of the issues, one on a 16-page review 25 years of Cleveland mayors – “Who Really Governs” - and another a 16-page review of some 25 years of local media coverage – “Don’t read all about it.”

Chers Amis, Join us for a reading of short stories in French by Author Marie-Jeanne Urech. Afterwards tour the Foreign Literature and Audio-Video Departments.

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OK, here we go again - NEORSD is jacking up the rates customers will pay for gray infrastructure without suggesting softpath solutions: Northeast Ohio Sewer bills are about to go even higher

I have written about this here at realneo and at Green City Blue Lake for years. Is there anybody out there?

This Email is being circulated today to the membership of TWDC regarding tonights election. I would ask the membership to review these unfounded allegations. This is direct attempt by several members of TWDC to disrupt tonights election.

 Date: January 29, 2009 6:47:04 AM EST

> Subject: Fw: please go to the twdc annual meeting tonight and
>VOTE.......please read the following .....do not vote for hate vote
 for collaboration and moving forward in our neighborhood

 Pecha Kucha Night Cleveland #2

Friday, February 6th, 2009 Start 8:20pm (doors open at 7)
House of Blues 308 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio

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This is a story of civic sabotage. The desire for the private sector to damage, destroy and take over the Cleveland’s public electric power system reveals an important lesson in how power works in this or any community.

Time to say goodbye. Time to say goodbye to the poisonous politics of greed. Time to say goodbye to our bought-out politics. Time to say goodbye to people as Sam Miller and his type of cynical use of our politics. Forest City Enterprises executives now call for “an open process” when the decision on the Medical Mart and convention center don’t go its way. What a sick laugh. Just the audacity of the behind-the-scenes manipulators asking for the light of public sunshine is shocking. Forest City’s Sam Miller and Al Ratner have run the string out.

We keep paying and paying for projects that enrich multi-millionaires and their private businesses while all levels of our government cry out that they don’t have enough revenue for the essential of government operations and we need more taxes.

As government lays off workers, it pays stiff costs that result from bad decisions by its top leaders - people as County Commissioner Tim Hagan and former Mayor Michael White.

Here’s another 2008 bill for $9.9 million that taxpayers may not realize they are paying. However, they are.

Oh, boy, we’re not going straight, not taking a right turn or a left. Now it’s make a U-turn, Cleveland.

I thought the powers that be here didn’t know what direction they were going on the Medical Mart and Convention Center. Then the decision last week by the County Commissioners was to go the Mall site.

I thought Sam Miller and Al Ratner and Scott Wolstein were out of the game.

I didn’t expect that Mayor Frank Jackson would still take up the Forest City cause.

I was wrong.

Mayor Jackson can now be considered Mayor of Tower City.

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