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Loud voices
and large actions
can come from the most unaware.
Quiet voices
and small actions
can come from the most conscious.
© 2007 Jack Ricchiuto
Preview and order Conscious Becoming here.
The GCP has an opportunity to shine.
If it could put more funding into developing our networks of foreign students studying in Cuyahoga County schools, there’s a high probability that the regional economy would benefit.
Here’s a new study from the Kauffman Foundation that explores the issue.
Mac Watson at Baldwin Wallace is an expert on the issue.
I’m reposting this email from one of the members of ArtsCollinwood, because it details all the great stuff going on today and tomorrow. Last night’s Sneak Peek was great fun. The members show is wonderful, the food was great, and everyone had a good time. Here’s what’s on tap:
Waterloo Road is hopping this weekend – ignore the rain and come on down!
Tonight (Friday):
The Arts Collinwood Members’ Show opens at the Arts Collinwood gallery (corner Waterloo and E156); wine and cheese reception 6-9. Get there early; three pieces sold at last night’s Sneak Peek!
AND: The Enchanted Sculpture Garden opens at the Zaller Building (corner Waterloo and E160): hundreds of sculptures and paintings, plus a peace-inducing Zen poetry garden. Wine and cheese reception 7-9.
The Zaller Building also has a show of work by the Arts Collinwood Art&Drama Camp.
AND: TrueArt gallery (410 E156, corner of Waterloo) will be open with work by Dave Cintron, John Howitt, Glenn Baskin and Scott Pickering.
AND the Schwartz Brothers will be playing for FREE (Beachland Ballroom, 9 pm. The Beachland will also present The Two Bobs in NumbSkull).Everything listed to this point is indoors or well-protected by trees. In a short stroll down the street (take an umbrella), you can see the four guerrilla installations by Kent State architecture students.
AND ON SATURDAY, AT THE WATERLOO ARTS FEST, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.,
All this will be on view PLUS:
An ice cream social with live music at MUSIC SAVES
BloggaPalooza at the Beachland (12-7, four bands, comedians and many bloggers)
RocknRoll Flea Market at the Beachland
AND the outdoor Waterloo Arts Fest attractions: 30-40 vendors, the bubble maker, the kids’ crafts, the Euclid Beach carrousel horses and memorabilia inside St John’s Lodge ( ), the carrousel horse painter, the surprise visits of popular highlights from regional events such as Parade the Circle, the Cardboard Festival, and Ingenuity, the creative collaborations with Cleveland Rides, Ohio City Bike CoOp and Clevelanders in Motion. And don’t forget the interactive mural painting with Progressive Arts Alliance, the three stages with live music (Mfune, Passport Project, gospel choir, Hayshaker Jones, readings and poetry) – and of course, Wild Bill’s Barbeque in the Beachland parking lot.You just can’t miss all this!
Eric Vessels called last night. He’s coming up and tells me Jerid’s going to try to come by. Got an email from Kyle Kutucheif. He’s trying to make it too. So yes, this will probably be the biggest gathering of bloggers in NEO since… last year’s Bloggapalooza.
A small chunk from the middle of a lengthy post that’s worth the clickthru:
When I discussed the proposed dress code with my students, a number of them said they would consider transferring to a charter school with no dress code, or enroll in an on-line home-school charter.
It will be interesting to see if there will be any drop in enrollment corresponding to the new dress code. I will also be curious to see the corresponding statistics for attendance, suspensions, and dress code related disciplinary actions. Will anyone be following those numbers?
I know that everyone will be watching the districts’ test scores in the spring. Will collared shirts and twill slacks improve teaching and learning?
Will schools that can not even managed to keep students from roaming the halls and hanging out in the parking lots be able to enforce a dress code?
Will there be a survey at the end of the school year to evaluate the dress code policy…?
MB Matthews: Street Smarts: Cleveland’s New Student Dress Code
I think Wendell is right. If this is a issue for Cuyahoga County, why was it held downtown? It seems that everyone from the GCP, CVB, and Cuy Co Commissioners offices were there:
I say that the hearing was “public” because of its utter inaccessibility. Both today’s hearing and the previous one last week were held during the day, in the center of downtown (the library) where inexpensive public parking is limited. Add to the premium placed on the parking and then take into account that many of the usually available meters were bagged (along with all of the parking on the street that separates the current CONvention center from the current COUNT-hee-hee Building - also known as Franz Pastorius Blvd. ~ who the hell knew that?) and this county resident after having spent a half hour looking for a place to park (and couldn’t find one within five blocks!) decided to bag it and head back to work. Public? my ass…
Sounds ugly:
Remarkably, this is an organization dedicated to strengthening the First Amendment. You know that one about free speech and freedom of the press. Yeah, that. It’s also one that is concerned about the free flow of information — just not when the flow is heading upstream in their direction.
So while the leaders try to circle the wagons and make excuses, I’ll hope that my playmates (from whom I’m banned) keep widening the circle…
Good coverage @ GCBL:
Absent was an abundance of information about the proposed center, keeping alive strong speculation that Forest City is the front-runner to develop it with Merchandise Mart installing a Medical Mart at the estimate $400 million site (paid for in part by the $42 million a year raised by the sales tax. The sales tax hike is capped at 20 years and can be rescinded after 10 years if the center and showroom reach a certain level of success)…
I’ll take that red stripe though. Of course, after you hear what I have to say, you might wanna keep your money. While I don’t agree with Mansfield on everything, at least he has the stones to say something. Most of the Collinwood residents I’ve met in the past several months aren’t very vocal. As for anyone challenging Polensek, I’m pretty sure no one has mounted a serious campaign against him. One last note, it’s probably a good thing the city is delaying the rec center. If you talk to any of the “black kids, white kids, Latino kids, Asian kids or Native American kids” in the neighborhood, they’ll tell you that they probably won’t hang out at the rec center, because it “ain’t cool”:
Where is the rec center that was promised to the Collinwood neighborhood years ago? Where are the after school activities? When kids have nothing constructive to do, some become destructive. While personal responsibility should govern every young person’s actions, they are more likely to make constructive choices when there are more constructive options are available…
But not in a good way:
I was sitting in Mocha Maiden a few months ago talking photography with a retired Akron police officer and owner/developer Tony Troppe. Tony pulled out a blown up picture of the officer walking on W. Market in Highland Square taken in the early 80’s. I asked the officer why, with the amount of crime in the Square lately combined with the efforts at re-development, there weren’t foot patrols anymore. “Money,” he flatly stated…
If I see him tomorrow, I’ll apologize in person:
After having studio ‘Pre’ Final reviews on Sunday and Monday (which deserves its own post, in its own right, trust me) our thesis studio class at CUDC has been working on storefront installations as part of ARTScollinwood’s Waterloo Arts Festival, that takes place this Saturday.As a very shameless plug, do not only come down to see my group’s installation, 24 Hours, along with my classmates installations, but also come to see Cleveland’s number alternative comedy show, Chucklef*ck, perform in the tavern at 1pm as part of Bloggapalooza. I believe that the hilarious Carrie Callahan is coming out of Chucklef*ck organizing retirement for this one, allowing the equally hilarious Jim Tews a respite from the jaws of what is organizing Chucklef*ck.
(Note: I may or may not be friends with these people.)
Its part of Bloggapalooza, which is part of the Waterloo Arts Festival.
As a further plug, deBiase will be performing in the living flesh as part of Chucklef*ck.
(Note: I may or may not be deBiase’s roommate. He also may or may not be telling a story about me almost killing him. Except its not about that at all. Except it is.)So its like this:
Waterloo Arts Festival = art installations by graudate architecture students at CUDC = Bloggapalooza in the Beachland Tavern = Chucklef*ck in the Tavern = people I know being funny.
More info here.
Last night was the private opening, which gave us all a chance to see if our installations actually work.
And to ask Mike Polensek if he’s wrote any good letters lately.
That reminds me. I have to get the pictures off my phone. But don’t wait for me, click thru. There’s some posted there.
rockitecture.: Waterloo Arts Festival Storefront Installations (and Other Misc. Events)
Buckle your seat belts. The competition could be rough…
“When Las Vegas and Orlando offer weather, sun and fun as opposed to Chicago, which offers centrality, clearly there is a major selling job needed in this saturated market,” said professor Marc Levine, director of the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
Still, these three cities, as the market leaders, stand a fighting chance of making expansions work, he said, noting that elsewhere, “the field of dreams is littered with white elephants.”…
With its generous ratio of meeting rooms to exhibit space, the hall aims to attract such meetings-heavy events as association annual meetings, corporate product launches and user group gatherings. The addition will enable McPier to offer meeting dates during peak seasons when the other three halls are filled with trade shows.
City’s gargantuan trade show push
The article refers to Heywood Sander’s congressional testimony. You can download it here.
Cordray said local agencies, private groups and others can search for state-owned parcels in their communities. He’s urging residents who believe underused sites can be put to better use to contact his office.
Public uses, private economic development, conservation initiatives and other ideas are welcome, he said.
Michigan is focusing on the opportunity…
Maybe now that the convention center deal is done, the GCP can start focusing on what really drives higher incomes. Here’s a useful lesson from Milwaukee…
The amazing thing was how fast the conversation turned to education. In a discussion last week among key area leaders on regional cooperation, education quickly became the topic of discussion.
The importance of an educated work force, of good schools and of a regional community that places a high value on education was stressed again and again by the nine speakers in a round-table discussion hosted by the Editorial Board. What became immediately clear is that education is not just an issue faced by one school district - Milwaukee Public Schools - or one community.
Failure at MPS or any other district affects communities and businesses throughout the region. Everyone in southeastern Wisconsin has a stake in what happens in MPS, in Racine Unified, in the Waukesha School District and in all of the other school districts in the area…
Businessman Sheldon Lubar of the Greater Milwaukee Committee put his finger on the problem early in the discussion: “You cannot reach the levels that I think all of you want to see us reach if you have a dropout rate of 50% of your high school students.”
Editorial: Improving education must be the top priority
Mike Fogarty and Paul Gottlieb of the Center for Regional Economic Issues at CWRU outlined this relationship in 1999.
Their report concludes: “If you have to pick a single ‘egg’ to create the ‘chicken’ of fast per-capita growth, you could do no better than to focus on your region’s education level.” Read more.
A big thank you to all of the bands, comics, bloggers, and friends who made this year’s Bloggapalooza the smash success that it was. Tim Ferris tagged and released 180 attendees, and I’m willing to bet he didn’t get ‘em all. I’m looking forward to hearing the accounts, but from the smattering of emails I’ve received so far, everyone had a good time. What do we do next year to top it?
I missed the performance Jeff describes, and really wish I hadn’t. I heard great things about it.
jeffschuler.net : ingenuity: progression, projection (Jul 18, 2007 - 20:47)
From this week’s PostSecret, Smokin’ and Scrapbookin’.
Every week I pick a postcard. I picked these because I laughed out load when I read it.
Powerful:
We need to come to the unpopular realization that all children are not created equal. Some begin life very damaged. Putting a uniform on a kid who has been lead poisoned, abused, or neglected will not make him an academic success.
The Cuyahoga County Commissioners have given CMSD 2 million dollars to help pay for uniforms. How much more effective would that money have been had it been earmarked for remediation and drop-out programs, or even security?
Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc. has identified education - including early childhood education - as one of five focus areas in its “Power of Five'’ Blueprint recommendations. National groups insist that the earlier the education takes place, the greater the economic payoff…
“Educating our children can’t be left only to schools,'’ he said. “Businesses must become involved in the process, as outcomes are critical to our competitive position.'’
Regional economic development is, in large part, about changing the stories we tell ourselves. The stories are valuable. They guide alignments within networks.
A new story is emerging in Pittsburgh. Here’s an good approach to distill and spread the new story. The approach takes some interesting and valuable lessons from Seth Godin’s book Unleashing the Idea Virus.
My guess: Youngstown will follow Pittsburgh’s lead.
This week’s MTB interview. Hope you’ll join us.
Mike posts a pdf of the flyer for a show he’s in at Level 3 Gallery that opens this Friday. Check it out.
Wow. An exposé:
Today is the one-year anniversary of my termination from Ohio Learn and Earn. I’m pretty sure that the non-disclosure period has expired. When I was terminated from the Learn and Earn campaign for this post I was required, along with the other 2 office managers, to sign a non-disclosure agreement and as I’ve said, I believe the non-disclosure period has lapsed.
With that said, it’s time for news from the office, and I mean beyond how our toilets were usually brimming with feces and urine, how soap was never available, how I paid a worker $300 out of my pocket because the company wouldn’t, and how many unscrupulous people we employed.
Working for Ohio Learn and Earn was one of the most stressful periods of my still young life. From the time I began office work until the point of my termination, I put in 100-hour work weeks, frequently not arriving home until 1-2 AM after having arrived there at 8AM, seven days a week. I find myself torn between hating it and not hating it: I surfed the internet freely for hours on end, fell asleep in the office on a couple occasions, read a lot, but at the cost of nearly losing my girlfriend and my best friend. We hired any schmuck off the street, registering them to vote, making sure they had a driver’s license and a social security number. I filled out their I9s and W4s, made them sign on the dotted line, and passed the information along to campaign HQ in Columbus. Interviews were cursory: Could you walk up to people and make sure that they were registered to vote and make them sign a petition? Are you an American citizen? A resident of the state of Ohio? If you can answer yes to all three of these questions, you can work for Ohio Learn and Earn…
Definitely click thru. There’s a ton more!
blogginryan: Learn and Earn: A post-mortem on that adventure
Best coverage (with pics and video) I’ve seen so far:
As Edwin finishes a song, I turn to look around, in case I might recognize anyone. I saw Jill Miller Zimon, of Writes Like She Talks, Jeff Hess of Have Coffee Will Write, Eric of Plunderbund, and a slew of folks I knew had to be bloggers.
Scott and the rest of Word of Mouth (the band) start setting up. Muley and I talk more, and I ask about his green VIP wristband. He takes me to the door, informs the gentleman there that I need a wristband, and I trade the man $5 for it. Now I don’t stand out like a sore thumb, and I can relax a little. Muley and I see Bill Sturgill, and talk with him for a bit about days gone by. Later, I walk outside and look around the neighborhood, to see what Bloggapalooza is really about.
I see booths set up with paintings for sale, a young poet reciting verse she’s written, Cleveland Peace Action selling buttons and T-shirts,a gentleman selling framed and matted photographs he’d taken, and the Lake Shore Garden Club selling greens…
word of mouth » Bloggapalooza 2.0: A Great Time for A Great Cause
Here’s the good:
Went to Bloggapalooza yesterday and had a fine time. Apparently the downstaters who attended are having a Rashomon moment over one incident, which I will get to. Whoever’s at faulth, that’s an unfortunate harshing of the mellow.
Speaking of harshing, I got there well late because my five-year-old pitched a screaming meemie about me leaving and it took some time to calm her down. As a result I missed the alt/emo band about which, Oh well. But I also missed Chucklef*ckers which was a real loss. I heard they had a good set and, according the George, Carrie Callahan killed. This is as good a time as any to mention that Carrie’s blog started a mite slow but I’ve been enjoying the hell out of lately. So much so that I’ll probably add it to my blogroll the next time I’m doing that sort of thing.
Frankly, I went mostly for the company. My schedule doesn’t allow me to make it to meetups any more and I haven’t attended a MTB in maybe nine months. So the great joy was f2f convos with folks there… In addition to enjoying music from The Elderly Brothers, I picked up an excellent pulled pork sandwich from Wild Bill’s BBQ and roamed the booths at the arts festival. I had a long talk with Anastasia Pantsios of the Free Times while I rummaged through the used CDs she was selling at the rock flea market. We talked about the MedMart/Convo Center controversy which is Topic A in Cleveland these days. (And I bought discs by Duke Robillard, Dar Williams and Pavement from her.)
Best of all I bought a pot from a woman whose work I saw in one gallery once but didn’t pull the trigger and had seen nowhere since. Few pottery styles have felt like the one that got away like this, so it was great serendipity to have another chance. She makes coil pots and indents the coil about every 3/4 inch, then glazes only the inside. The effect looks from a distance like a basket made of rope fiber…
You’ll have to click thru for the bad and the ugly.
This time, from Bill Callahan:
Considering the paper’s recent behavior on the convention center tax issue, the spectacle of the PD wringing its editorial hands over issues of procedural integrity and “the will of the voters” is pretty comical.
But their complaint is also BS — at least with respect to the broadband money…
Click thru for the examples.
Callahan’s Cleveland Diary » Blog Archive » Third Frontier broadband money: What we voted for
Michael DeAloia takes a stab at crafting a solution:
While the sales tax increase seems to be predetermined certainty, we can craft a solution that will procure the money and lay the ground-work for a “national case study” on how to raise the level of education and ability to generate wealth. All national studies on wealth creation have come to universal conclusions on its genesis - there are two attributes that create more wealth than any other means - education and innovation, mainly in the form of patent applications. So, instead of raising the sales tax by .25 percent, let’s raise it by .50 percent instead. Half of the capital raised can then be used to service the bond issue for the Medical Mart and the other half can be used to finance a college scholarship program that can be offered through-out Cuyahoga County…
Either comment here or over there, but offer your thoughts.
Sales Tax Backlash? Start Creating Wealth NOW! « Tech Czar Notes
After several comments on last week’s column by Frazier, I thought I’d stir the pot a bit more with this:
Listening to Polensek enumerate all of the things he could do to solve the problem of out-of-control Black youth (if, indeed, he were mayor) I wasn’t troubled at all by what he was suggesting … but I was — and am — deeply troubled by what he didn’t suggest we do to solve the problem. Virtually every solution he put forth had to do with punitive measures: Fix the broken Juvenile Court system, bring back police mini-stations, and crack down on curfews … all good and reasonable measures for the short-term. But what I didn’t hear was any suggestions to actually prevent these Black boys from becoming gang members in the first place; measures designed to keep them in school and engaged in the education process. And the reason I didn’t hear any of those types of suggestions is because they require a bit more rational reasoning and commitment of resources to young Black males …. something that most Americans are not interested in doing. If you doubt me, just look at how hard it is to get adequate funding for inner-city schools.
Polensek has stumbled upon a Democratic northern version of the Republican’s “Southern Strategy” where racial fears and old animosities were exploited during the dawn of the civil rights movement. Reagan gained office — in large part — on a States’ Rights platform, and who can forget the Willie Horton ad that virtually gave Bush the Elder the White House? Karl Rove has since perfected the technique of getting people to vote against their own self-interests by frightening the hell out of them with appeals to emotional issues: Abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in schools … that he knows full-well no president can’t deliver on. It’s a technique used by demagogues the world over: Find out what the masses are afraid of, and then promise to make them feel safe and secure. It’s political snake oil that has proven to work over and over again in terms of getting someone elected, but the problems always go unsolved…
Click thru for the rest, especially the If sending out letters that figuratively bitch-slaps young Black drug dealers had any chance of solving the problem I’d be right in there with Polensek furiously writing nasty letters to these thugs … and their lazy-assed mommas too; but, in fact, all these letters do is allow us to vent our anger, express our disgust and give voice to our fears part.
CoolCleveland.com - Straight Outta Mansfield The Hate Letter That Shook Up The World
I’m sure someone’s going to call me a pessimist for pointing this out, but 5 years ago, things couldn’t have gotten much worse:
One of the main principles of scenario planning is that you can’t plan well for the immediate future–you have to look out five, ten, even twenty years before you can get enough perspective on the possibilities before you to even begin to think about what you might do in the short term. Well, some people around here have been doing just that. And now, when they look back on the past five years, they are already beginning to see signs of dramatic change in the region.
From Tom Waltermire, CEO of TeamNEO, comes the following…
Now is no time to trumpet our successes either. There’s still a shitload of work that needs to be done.
Tech Futures » Blog Archive » What A Difference Five Years Can Make
Just got this comment over on the MTB site. What I’m not clear about is how Bill B knew this person was a “crack dealer”:
Mr. Polensek’s letter reminds me of a recent confrontation I had with a crack dealer in the parking lot of a convenience store on E. 185th in the 11th Ward of Cleveland. As I was walking out of the store a crack dealer was walking in…
Perhaps it’s a stereotype?
I’m gonna be busy for a while, looking thru the archives of a new food blog I just found…
I came across this from CBS News in the course of my current work. Since I consider myself well read and didn’t know about this until recently, I thought I’d share in case anybody could benefit.
As Foreclosures Rise, More Sellers and Lenders Consider Short-Selling
A little-known alternative, once more commonly used in the real estate downturn of the early ’90s, is the “short sale,” which works like this: A homeowner falls behind on his or her mortgage payments, usually due to a job loss, rising debt payments, or both. Facing a situation in which the home value has fallen and cannot be sold for the amount of the mortgage owed, the homeowner works out a deal with the lender to sell the home for whatever the market will bear. If the amount of the sale is for less than the amount owed on the mortgage, the lender gets the proceeds and discharges the remaining debt. The homeowner will have to leave the house as soon as it is sold.
Short sales show up on a credit report as a “pre-foreclosure in redemption” status and can result in a credit score reduction of 100 points or less. After the sale, the mortgage may show up as “discharged.” People who successfully complete a short sale may also qualify for a mortgage at a reasonable interest rate in as little as 18 months. So, if buying a home is a future goal, then a short sale is the better option for many.
Be sure to click through for a thorough overview and video.
The Semantic Web is in many ways in its infancy, but its potential to transform how businesses and individuals correlate information is huge, analysts say. The market for the broader family of products and services that encompasses the Semantic Web could surge to more than $50 billion in 2010 from $2.2 billion in 2006, according to a 2006 report by Mills Davis at consulting firm Project10X.
Taming the World Wide Web - BusinessWeek.com - April 9, 1007
The director, David Wain, grew up in Shaker. Thanks to his Dad for bringing it to my attention. BONUS, it’s at the Cedar Lee.
Guess what Max will be doing this week? Here’s a hint.
Looking for something to do? Listen to this.
