It’s a good thing Steve showed up today and is letting me use his laptop. The WiFi @ CASE is making it happen. There’s a group of us here in 02 talking about Sustainability here in Cleveland. There’s people from NEO Bio, Hotel Bruce, Entrepreneurs for Sustainability, and Sustainable Cleveland talking about all of the action going on around the issue. Maybe next week you’d like to join us?

Another month, another mention of our metropolis in Otis White’s newsletter:

“Here’s an easy question: Who owns the sidewalk in front of your house? If you say the city owns it, it’s clear you don’t live in Cleveland. There, property owners are responsible for the sidewalks, and when the city repairs them it sends the owners a bill. Not surprisingly, many are not pleased to learn that they are the proud owners of a sidewalk. Take Nick Biel, who recently got a bill for $960 for repairs. ‘Everybody thought the sidewalks and curbs were the city’s (responsibility), because that’s what we pay taxes for,’ he said. That attitude (it’s the city’s sidewalk, not mine) is so widespread that the city is, by stages, doing just what Biel wants: Taking responsibility for the sidewalks. Since the 1970s, the city has set aside money to pay for some of the repairs. Today, the government pays roughly half the cost to fix your (repeat: your) sidewalk. This is so important to city council members, who get an earful from constituents when sidewalk bills are sent out, that they threatened recently to vote down Mayor Jane Campbell’s proposed $27.4 million bond issue because it didn’t have any money for sidewalk repairs. The mayor got the message: There’s now $2.1 million for sidewalks in the bond issue. “

On a positive note, he does mention the Civic Innovation Lab.

I’m not sure if I catagorize Sterling as a humorist:

“Some technologies are so blatantly obnoxious that the human race would rejoice if they were summarily executed. A humorist and science fiction writer offers some candidates.”

I’m down with 9 of them, but DVD deserving to die is pushing it.

Michael asked for feedback on a project of his. It kicked of a discussion and I’m linking the title of this post to a comment by a poet who recently returned to Cleveland. Check it out.

Jack looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned using a satelitte dish for WiFi access in areas that don’t have it:

“While it’s not uncommon for rural communities to tinker with Wi-Fi Internet access, Beaufort has taken Wi-Fi in a whole new direction: Rather than offer the service in a building, the school equipped a van with a satellite dish and 20 Wi-Fi-enabled laptop computers to bring the Internet to students.”

Thanks John for bringing this to my attention:

“Listen for Eric on WCPN Next Tuesday at Noon. In my never-ending quest to keep putting bloggers and blogging on the local media map in slow, steady and sustainable fashion, I gave some thought recently to a simple question: who’s the best, smartest and most probing media interviewer in Cleveland? The answer presented itself almost as soon as the question was formed: why, Ideastream’s Dee Perry of course. Long a staple for her unhurried, gracious interviews on WCPN’s Around Noon show, you may have grown to like her for the charity of her tone, for the way you can hear that big splitting smile in her voice. More recently, with the entry of the Ideastream merger of WCPN and WVIZ, she also gets in some face time on the equally good Applause TV show.

Anyway, I figured that we ought to pitch Dee on interviewing a blogger or bloggers. But in doing a bit of background prep before calling her with that suggestion, I found out that she’d already beaten me to the idea. A week from tomorrow, Tuesday the 30th of September, Dee is scheduled to have our boy Eric Olsen of megasite Blogcritics and the microsite Clev-Blog on After Noon. Do make sure to tune that in. As anyone who was at the May Blogfest knows only too well, his verbal pyrotechnics are well worth the price of admission.”

Funny. Eric didn’t mention it @ Taco Tuesday. I’ll have to call in with a question about blogging.

That rabblerouser Kenn Louis linked me this article. I guess I don’t read many of the “best” bloggers, but Eric and Dawn speak highly of J Glenn Reynolds, so I paid particular attention to his advice:”

• Post regularly, find topics that interest you and track them steadily, and write carefully (I hate blogs that are full of typos and ungrammatical sentences).
• It pays to be polite. Calling people names can sound fun, but most readers are turned off by it.
• Starting off, pick some topics that you know more about than most other people - your profession, your locality, or whatever - and make those a major part of your blog.
• When you have something especially important, email some other bloggers and let them know. They�re likely to link to you and you�ll pick up readers.
• Get a digital camera if you don�t have one. Photographs liven up a blog and, if they�re good, can really be worth 1000 words.

A-ha! Just the excuse I’ve been looking for to buy that camera.

It was a busy week for the Creative Cleveland Coalition. Thursday was the Task Force meeting at Karamu. I have to confess, it was the first time I’d ever been to that Cleveland landmark of culture. C3 met before the 3:30 Task Force meeting, and had a lively conversation about funding and the Creative Commmunity in general. You can check out the notes I posted to the Yahoo Group here. I think Megan and Julie did a good job presenting models of funding from 10 different locals. There were more people attending this meeting and sharing there opinions to the Task Force in addition to Thomas presenting our notes from the meeting beforehand.

Friday, was the Cultural Roundtable at SPACES Gallery. It’s quite a gathering of representatives from the cultural institutions around the area. In both cases, there’s a lack of creative individuals representing themselves. I’m sure Cuyahoga County Commissioners Jimmy Dimora and Tim McCormick were impressed when they walked into the room. Being a Lake County resident and someone not prone to politics, it was the first time I’d seen either one in action. I like Commissioner McCormick’s style. I can relate to his blue-color upbringing and the fact that he churns about making decisions. My advice to Commission Dimora is, leave the stump speech at home. I thought he was much more approachable during the Q&A then while he was orating. I’ll leave you Creative Cleveland individuals with a plea to get involved with C3 and words from Commission McCormick:

“Stop waiting around for Commissioners, Mayors, Poobahs, and Bushwackers. Be strong yourselves. Talk to the community, build your own momentum.”