Does Avon need an exchange at I-90? Should Ohio taxpayers have to pay for it? We don’t get a say in how ODOT money is spent, do we?

[I]f Avon gets its way that’s one more nail in Cleveland’s coffin, overall. Sprawl will continue unchecked, destroying our regional ecosystem, not to mention all the other problems of urban sprawl.

I don’t have any radical new ideas to handle this problem. I will say, thankfully, that at least NOACA exists and has the power to deny Avon’s request. At the very least, we have government agencies tasked with evaluating and overseeing these problems.

Is there a marker-oriented approach to solving the problem of sprawl? Instead of top-down government regulation, can we adjust the market for resident (the “relo market”?) to incentivize more densely clustered housing? How about charging builders of new homes for extending infrastructure to the newly-developed areas? That should slow things down!

Let me know what you think…

Gotta love their quaint smokestack chasing economic development plan. It’s so 1980s. I wonder if anyone their has stopped and thought that people move to Avon to get away from industry? Do you think they’ve looked at other industrial areas, like Lakewood or Euclid?

The Gross Report: Our Sprawling County

Something to consider going into the new year:

Throughout our lives, we are taught to value speed and getting things done quickly. We learn that doing is more valuable than merely being, and that making the most of life is a matter of forging ahead at a hurried pace. Yet as we lurch forward in search of some elusive sense of fulfillment, we find ourselves feeling increasingly harried and disconnected. More importantly, we fail to notice the simple beauty of living. When we learn to slow down, we rediscover the significance of seemingly inconsequential aspects of life. Mealtimes become meditative celebrations of nourishment. A job well-done becomes a source of profound pleasure, no matter what the nature of our labors.

DailyOM - Learning to Slow Down

From Tom Barlow:

The second half of the 20th century may be remembered as the era of the shopping mall. Now there is a web site dedicated to dead (or, in many cases, moribund) malls. Deadmalls.com documents the passing of these hallowed grounds of consumerism. The posts are user submitted, similar to a wiki, so take the facts presented with a grain of salt.

What saddens me is the realization that this list is only a small fraction of the locations that even I, a non-shopper, could name off the top of my head. I can’t help but wonder at the wastefulness of our constant pursuit of the new and novel. The first malls were built to replace the downtown shops, then enclosed to provide a Disneyland-like atmosphere. Now the hottest fashion in malls is to emulate the appearance of small shops in a downtown district…

Dead Ohio malls remembered - Blogging Ohio

Congrats, Joel!

Joel has constantly been consistent with his blog. His blog is his business and his business is growing. He navigates the recruiting blogosphere in a very good way and is always trying to push the envelope. Joel’s blog is a perfect example of how a blog can make things happen

Joel is always trying to get the scoop first and has a unique perspective on the recruiting industry. He is not a recruiter but is deeply immersed in the industry with a heavy slant on SEO and how this can help recruiters and companies get more people hired.

Joel’s blog is a great example of how blogs can be used and is an absolute must read for people involved in the recruiting business…

CheezHead.com Wins The Recruiting.com 2006 Best Blog Awards. | Recruiting.com

Scott Suttell pens Smaller, but not bad:

Cleveland and Youngstown get mentions in this USA Today story about what the paper calls the “burgeoning, European-born ‘Shrinking Cities’ movement.”

The idea: If cities can grow in a smart way, they can also shrink smartly.

Terry Schwarz, senior planner at Kent State University’s Urban Design Center of Northeast Ohio, tells the newspaper, “Everybody’s talking about smart growth, but nobody is talking about smart decline. There’s nothing that says that a city that has fewer people in it has to be a bad place.”

The KSU center runs the Shrinking Cities Institute in Cleveland, which USA Today notes has lost more than half its population since 1950.

The paper sees the Shrinking Cities movement as “a startling admission in a nation that has always equated growth with success.

“Cities are downsizing by returning abandoned neighborhoods to nature and pulling the plug on expensive services to unpopulated areas,” according to USA Today. “Some have stopped pumping water, running sewer lines and repaving roads in depopulated neighborhoods. They’re turning decimated areas into parks, wildlife refuges or bike trails. They’re tearing down homes no one is living in and concentrating development where people want to move.”

Youngstown is cited as one of the most advanced U.S. cities in embracing shrinkage…

Crain’s Cleveland Business

Strickland’s emerging economic development strategy:

His administration will gauge its progress with a new “scorecard” focused on the areas shown to influence economic growth the most, including patent generation…Mr. Strickland and his choice to head the Ohio Department of Development, Lt. Gov.-elect Lee Fisher, said their approach was influenced heavily by The Blade’s “Business as Usual” series from earlier this year.

Strickland vows end to ‘business as usual’

From Jay-C:

I think I was 22 years old before the I was confronted with the idea that Northeast Ohio was a region in decline. Sure, my native Cuyahoga Falls, once a rather typical suburb, was starting its strange crumbling as retail spaces in the State Road shopping center cleared out and people stopped maintaining their houses. But this, I assumed, had more to do with the natural cycle of cities than it did the status of an entire region.

As a journalism student at Kent State, I remember learning that Northeast Ohio was facing “brain drain” and things were dismal. This was around when the Plain Dealer’s “Quiet Crisis” series came out. I was writing a story about historic preservationists for a magazine writing class, and my reporting took me to Chagrin Falls where I met with a woman who had saved an old barn downtown from destruction, moving it to the woods of Geauga County. In our discussion, she mentioned to me a daughter of a little older age who was working to become a doctor. This girl, at her mother’s strong encouragement, was hoping to do her residency in New York City. Cleveland was falling apart and the people are horrible, I was told.

Now three years later, I wonder what has changed, especially in the year since I’ve come home from Detroit. In terms of physical changes, more downtown Cleveland properties have begun being rehabbed to condos and apartments. New entertainment spots opened, and the Warehouse District expansion and the Flats plans have all kept moving forward. Economically, groups and individuals met and met again this year. I’m not so sure there is a formal plan of what we can do to create jobs, though. There are still a lot of poor people, and there isn’t much growth in terms of jobs or population. Basically, in terms of fixing our core problems, I’m not sure if we’ve made progress or not…

clevelandada: Brain drain and the city as a brand

That’s global warming.

El Nino could cause warmer winter, less snow in Ohio

Excellent post from Chris Butler:

When I was 12 or 13, I snuck away with a friend to the Cleveland Arena to see James Brown. I had already played a few JB tunes in a band I was part of in a New Hampshire camp the previous summer, but here was a chance to see The Man in person. I think the tickets were like $3 or something, and that was for the full three-hour-plus revue.

There were some other white folks there, but not many. I had already started hanging around with some black kids, one of whom would be the lead singer in the high school band I’d later join. This seemed like no big deal to me, and only became one when the other school kids began to shun my crowd and me. This was my first taste of being an outsider, of there being an Other Existence that was little represented in my suburban Clevo community.

I had no real sense of racism until that moment…

JAMMED.ON.ON: MR. BROWN

Heard a similar topic being discussed on NPR a week or so ago. This in an email from a BFD reader:

About a month before Christmas, I was making small talk with a customer who was buying Audacity of Hope. It was an older black gentleman. At that point, I had really fell for the book and thought it was gold (after reading the first two chapters) and I’m sure it was also because I was high from the midterm. He asks me, and this was as I’m ringing him out, if the country is ready. that was all he said and I knew exactly what he meant. I answered, yes, and Obama is the right type of candidate too. He then asks me, “even after blackwell?” Ken Blackwell is the black gubernatorial candidate, Ohio sec of state, who got his butt kicked by Democratic gov elect Ted Strickland, a white guy. Blackwell is in good with the likes of our current outgoing gov, Bob Taft, who was involved in “coingate” (the ohio bureau of workers comp invested millions of dollars (tax dollars) into rare coins. The money is gone now.) He also backed issue 4 (big tobacco) and supports the prez, and all his lobbying friends and all that. So Blackwell has given everyone a lot of ammo to NOT like him and NOT vote for him. So, I say to this customer, Blackwell and Obama are apples and oranges. Their politics are totally different and more importantly, their characters are totally different. I think I stunned him. He bought his stuff and left. Probably not an appropriate conversation for the point of sale, but hey, this dude thinks that just because Blackwell wasn’t voted in for gov that we wouldn’t vote for Obama…

Obama on Obama | BarackObama.com

With Three Philosophers and a side of free wifi.

Delicious.

:: Melt bar and grilled, Lakewood, Ohio ::

Rocco v. Hot Coffee Girl:

There is a restaurant, Fahrenheit, on my block that is the issue at hand. It is a very nice restaurant, from what I understand. (I have never been able to bring myself to eat there, for reasons that will soon become evident.)

But the owner and head chef? He is a bit of a wank. He generally behaves as if he owns the entire neighborhood. Or at least the street in front of it. He parks his massive truck anywhere he wants, including in front of fire hydrants when it suits him. And although the restaurant has one (ONE) spot on at the end of the street that is designated by the city as a legal valet drop-off zone, there are often valet cones set up that block off a good three or four spots. And that is not even the worst of it. They charge their patrons $5 to have their cars valet parked….and then PARK THE CARS ON THE STREET. On any given night, between the three or four spaces that are (wrongfully) taken up by the cones, and the spots on the street that are taken up by the valets parking the patrons cars back on that same street, people who live near there may be forced to park blocks away. Now, it is my understanding that it is illegal to charge people to park them in public spots. Hell, I have seen the valet guys park customer’s cars in front of the goddamn fire hydrant. Look, Rocco, it’s bad enough that YOU do it…but do you really think that your customers would be thrilled to know that your employees are breaking the law with their cars? I doubt it…

Hot Coffee Girl - Nice Mugs - park it

In my conversation with Anton Zuiker yesterday, I was reflecting on how a year ago, we interviewed Ted Strickland in the front room at Talkies (that’s where Anton and I met). Throughout the entire campaign, people were referring to Meet.The.Bloggers* for background on Ted Strickland. The stats page on LibSyn.com reports that in the last 3 days, people are still downloading them. This constant activity over time has made our Ted Strickland interview second only to the Capri Cafaro interview.

Also, on 12/22 I posted a graphic of total downloads. Today, that number is 63,056.

By Charles Burkett
Cleveland Tailgate: Christmas Eve at the Browns-Tampa Bay Game

Another in the Colinwood Stories from Matt Bakaitis:

Shaker Square has gone through more incarnations in the last twenty years than Madonna. In the 1980’s, it was home to chic dress shops, stuffy restaurants, a wine shop and a classic music store. I think it had a Benneton, too. None of those mattered, however. The place that mattered on Shaker Square was the Arabica.

Arabica was a coffee-house hang-out for a bunch of teens. Coffee shops weren’t ubiquitous, as they are today, so being in one still had a bit of a cachet. Instead of driving home after school, many of us stopped at Arabica to avoid chores and homework.

Arabica had these big clunky brown mugs that held the heat of a drink really well. For some reason, I really wanted one. This was a silly kid thing. I went so far as to ask if they sold them. They did not. I offered a bribe. No luck.

One day, my friend Bill and I were sitting at a table together.

“Man, I really love these mugs. I wish I could get one.”

“What is it with you and these mugs?” he asked. He’d heard me say this too many times.

I didn’t have an answer, but I suddenly had an idea on how to get one. I raised my voice a notch so that people at the nearest tables could hear us.

“What do you mean? How can you say that?” I said.

In Bill’s mind, mild frustration was introducted to mild confusion…

Bakaitis.com · Collinwood Stories: You Said You Loved Me!

I hate flavored coffee:

Bada Beans are a new specialty product designed to make your coffee more flavorful. I use the phrase “specialty product” here because I haven’t really seen anything like them before. The beans are small, sugar-free tablets that are flavored and are meant to be stirred into a cup of coffee for instant flavor, a portable alternative to the flavored syrups they offer at coffee shops. Immediately, I loved the idea because I often take my coffee on-the-go with me. I tried all three of their flavors: McCoy’s Dream Vanilla Bean, Hazel’s Nutty Hazelnut and Crazy Carl’s Caramel Fudge.

The little tablets all smelled great in their little tins and dissolved easily in the hot liquid. Unfortunately, and this could be partially do to the fact that I like my coffee on the strong side, the flavor from the Bada Beans was not particularly strong…

Add flavor to coffee, tea with Bada Beans - Slashfood

But check out this one from BlogginRyan and the month by month from Scott Bakalar.

Because there’s no transparency:

“A judge ruled Friday that congressional aspirant Christine Jennings has no right to examine the source code that runs the electronic voting machines at the center of a disputed Southwest Florida congressional race…”

Slashdot | Source Code Access Denied in Disputed Race

I need to disable it for a while. It may be causing BFD to crash…

Or is that Blogrolling list that I have in the sidebar always the same?

From Susan:

So now that I have ended my career as artistic director of a modern dance repertory company here in Northeast Ohio, I, like Merce, am still dancing and still seeing dance even though I may not be entering theaters to do so as often as before. Now for example I head out for the dance of dog walking. Today, the lighting design is especially brilliant.

dancer of the day | REALNEO for all

From the HMon website:

You don’t have to put up with lousy support, attitudes, and waiting for help from your hosting company. If you have to roll your eyes when you need to call tech support, you’re hosting with the wrong company. Instead, Call HMon today and discover what you’ve has been missing. Don’t just take our word for it….

You know. I have to tell you. I wasn’t getting “lousy support, attitude or waiting for help” with my previous hosting company. My problem was that I had a dedicated server, and didn’t feel like I was getting the proper performance out of it for the cost. I’m still hosting a bunch of sites there. Over the past several months, WordPress has been hitting the MySQL database pretty hard. Problem is, it’s be dragging down other sites with it because of the MTB Ad Network.

When the guys at HMon offered to take on the problem, I was cool with that. We had difficulty working thru the database move, since it was so huge. They worked it out. The database kept bringing down the Slackware server they set it up on. They kept working on it until all the options were exhausted. The guy who maintains the Windows servers thought it’d be better off on a Windows box, and figured out how to get WAMP configured for BFD. Since that move, he’s also set up some monitoring as well as set up a system that will restart the services.

Bottom line. There’s plenty of hosting companies out there. There’s quite a few in the Cleveland area. I know a bunch of them, and they’re all good guys. I only know of one who’s been there to help me work through this problem (and I’m no slouch when it comes to this stuff)… HMon. I bet they’d help you too.

HMon, LLC is an innovator in shared hosting, coldfusion development, virtual machine hosting, Exchange server hosting, and offers a web portal for Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2006 users.

I guess if you don’t make the trek to Akron, you’re SOL when it comes to alt.nye:

First Night started a few years back as an answer to the problem of not much else being offered besides staying up to midnight to watch the New York Times Square ball drop. Actually, I don’t know how many people in Ohio stay up to watch the ball drop, but the point is, there wasn’t much to do except stay up and drink. Not the best form of entertainment for kids or folks who were looking for some other kind of good time.

First Nights across the state are more than staying up until midnight…

Ring in the New Year with a First Night Celebration - Blogging Ohio

Open Source Economic Development is an approach that focuses on how communities and regions can adjust to a new world of networked collaboration. On January 3, an important new book will hit the shelves that explains these trends in more detail: Wikinomics.

In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by collaborations on an astronomical scale.

Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics explains how to prosper in a world where new communications technologies are democratizing the creation of value. Anyone who wants to understand the major forces revolutionizing business today should consider Wikinomics their survival kit.

The Toronto Globe and Mail has been running a multi-part series on the book:

Part 1: Peer Pioneers
Part 2: Ideagoras
Part 3: Prosumers
Part 4: The New Alexandrians
Part 5: Platforms for Innovation

Jack Ricchiuto:

I was listening to Thich Nhat Hahn last night, talking about how the present contains the past and future. It’s a perfect reflection as we transition into a new year, reflecting on everything good we take from 2006 into 2007…

jack/zen » Blog Archive » Healing .. dreaming …

From this week’s PostSecret, freedumb.

Do you have a favorite this week?

You can download one here. One comment I’ve already heard is there’s nothing in it that addresses the environment.

From an email sent out with Ron Briggs’ and Brad Whitehead’s name attached:

As the development of the agenda moves forward, we will keep citizens informed of progress and actively engaged in decision-making. We believe that individuals and officials in the region will need to play a concerted role in moving the regional agenda from the development phase to the implementation phase.

The Fund and many organizations have begun addressing a number of the priorities identified in the Voices & Choices process.

One notable example is the recent million dollar grant to the Northeast Ohio Sourcing Office (NEOSO), which is working with municipalities from 13 counties across the region to reduce redundancies in the way services are provided. To date, more than 30 communities have signed up for NEOSO and significant savings are being generated by coordinating to collectively buy auto parts, road repair services and other local needs. For example, the city of Maple Heights expects to save more than $1,000 per month by purchasing auto parts with the city of South Euclid.

Individual Fund members have also taken action…

I think it’s worth noting that NEOSO as well as the Individual Fund members all got their starts before V&C got started.

Thoughts?

Voices & Choices | Voices and Choices Official Website

Dave Giffels is on hiatus. Which begs the question, will he be back?

Beacon Journal | 12/31/2006 | Columnist taking break to write memoir

Best wishes to all of you for a prosperous 2K7

n.

The times gone past; the good old days.

[Scots : auld, old + lang, long + syne, since.]

auld lang syne: Definition and Much More from Answers.com