When your perception only equals that of your teacher, you lessen the teacher�s virtue by half. When your perception goes beyond the teacher, only then can you express the teacher�s teaching. - Fayan

A story is told about F.B. Meyer, the great Bible teacher and pastor who lived a century ago. He was pastoring a church and began to notice that attendance was suffering. This continued until he finally asked some members of his congregation one Sunday morning why they thought attendance was down. A member volunteered, "It is because of this new church down the road. The young preacher has everyone talking and many are going to hear him speak." His name was Charles Spurgeon. Meyer, rather than seeking to discourage this, exhorted the entire congregation to join him and go participate... Meyer, even though he was an accomplished preacher and teacher, recognized where God was at work and joined Him in it. Can you imagine this story taking place in our competitive world today?

"We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's the art world's version of reality television when twenty-two artists convene at B.K. Smith Gallery for a weekend of creating art while living in the gallery for 48 hours starting Sat 8/30 thru Sun 8/31 from 12 Noon to 7:30 PM. The event is open all weekend to the public to meet the artists and discuss their work, giving audiences a glimpse into the complexities of generating art. Artworks produced will be installed in the gallery and remain on view through 10/3. This year's group includes painter and CIA Assistant Professor Daniel Dove; Cool Cleveland.com Senior Editor and poet Tisha Nemeth, plus several experimental and visual artists including conceptual installation artist Blake Cook, photographer Hadley Conner, filmaker Cindy Penter, and sculptor/performer Doug Meyer. An opening reception Fri 9/12 with artist discussions will be open to the public at the gallery as well. This event is sponsored by the Ohio Arts Council and by the Harriet B. Storrs Fund of The Cleveland Foundation. At Lincoln Fine Arts Center on the Campus of Lake Erie College. For info call Lyz Bly, Director, at 521-8582

Tisha Nemeth, a poet once stationed in Boston and Los Angeles has set down roots in Cleveland. With a BA in art history, her poetry is based on her work experiences in art galleries and museums: The Boston Museum of Fine Art, Harvard's Fogg Museum, and the Frick Collection in NYC. Her poems have appeared in: HazMat Review (Rochester, NY) Peralta Press (College of Alameda, CA), RiversEdge (University of Texas), Curbside Review, This Hard Wind, Poet Magazine, Unknown Writer, Brutal Imagination, Cleveland's own ArtCrimes, and other literary reviews. In 1997 she was one of fifteen poets selected nationally to present her manuscript to U.S. poet laureate, Richard Wilbur, at the Key West Writer's Workshop in Key West, Florida. Currently, she's the lit-obsessed Senior Editor for Cool Cleveland.com. Aloft by Tisha Nemeth (based on the works Terpsichore by Antonio Canova, and Erato by Charles Meynier at the Cleveland Museum of Art) The eyes' disjunctions travel Over skin fluid as poured milk, Where the lyre is hung, beauty lies And the muse belies its high cost From which men slake thirst's ache over Her marbled horizon; taken up Positions among the periphery Of life to orbit her with distant eye, Speechlessness is her recompense. Costly is her complex inspiration; Charts its course absorbed in men's Curved cornea, her arms and legs Hardened, bare like colonnades Leave them ravenous, all at once The poem's words fall like accidents Their worship is undue, They are all her wounds, old and new. She deserts her true self where Their continuing longing clangs its praise Until she sees their banishment, she will not rest Not one beautiful thing escapes unpunished. © 2003 Tisha Nemeth

"Some people blog and comment with an intention to broadcast their experience; others do so with an intention to spark and facilitate dialogue. I've now joined the emerging group of bloggers who are using wiki to create a unique and common space for people to dialogue. Thanks to G and the GWIS guys for setting up a wiki page on DesigningLife.com. A wiki page is a page anyone can edit -- a collaborative tool designed to facilitate shared mind. When you go there, you will see the link to the Wiki Wednesday page. Every Wednesday here at Gassho, I'll pose a question for dialogue on the Wiki Wednesday page, and start things off with my thoughts there. In the meantime, feel free to post your comments to any day's blog here or start or join the dialogue on the Wiki Wednesday page. Looking forward, as always, to the conversations."

Case Western Reserve University is providing WiFi access to everyone for FREE

�This is the first phase of blanketing Cleveland with free wireless Internet access�a project we call OneCleveland,� said CWRU chief information officer Lev Gonick, who has spearheaded the project. �We are working with our industry partners, Cisco Systems and Sprint, to complete the wireless network across University Circle, providing wireless access to everyone who comes to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, or any of the other cultural and educational resources in the neighborhood.� CWRU is calling the wireless Internet access one of the largest public wireless services in the world. The service will be available via 1,230 Cisco Aironet 1200 wireless access points spread throughout the campus and University Circle area.

For over a century Cleveland�s large industrial employers have been synonymous with the city�s institutional foundation... That model was first shaken by the industrial recession of the late 1970�s and continues to be rattled by economic forces that have been unkind to Cleveland�s headquarters companies... it does suggest that we have invested a lot of influence -- and responsibility -- with corporate leaders who have become minority shareholders in our community... This also means that the process can be co-opted by those relatively few players who truly are stakeholders in the region�s future, giving them unchecked opportunities to enact strategies which will serve their own self-interests, wrapped in a cloak of civic-minded concerns. All of which leads to some interesting questions: What if the decisions affecting the area�s economy were being made by people whose companies are actually growing here? Would the community�s priorities be different? And who might those decision-makers be? The answer to the final question is the most obvious: It�s the area�s entrepreneurs and small business owners who are heavily invested here and are providing virtually all the employment growth here.

A couple weeks ago, I got the chance to shake hands with one of Greater Cleveland's innovative and committed young leaders in technology education...just before he got on a plane and flew home to Dallas. His name is Gregg Lowe. He grew up part of a big Catholic family on Cleveland's West Side. He's one of nine brothers to graduate from Saint Edward High School, where Gregg did well enough to attend Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, one of the nation's foremost engineering schools. He's now a senior vice president with Texas Instruments, and lives with his family in Dallas. Gregg must be doing pretty well, because a couple years ago the President of Saint Ed's flew to Dallas to hit him up for a big gift to support the school's capital campaign. Gregg wasn't too hot for bricks and mortar, but for the last several years he'd been wrestling with an idea: how to provide high school students with an introduction to basic engineering principles that might encourage them to pursue engineering as a college major and a career...There's a trendy title for this sort of activity: it's called venture philanthropy. But call it what you will, it's a tribute to what can happen when one person decides the time has come to make a difference, and links up with a partner organization which shares his vision and enthusiasm. This kind of personal commitment happens every day in our town, sometimes on a grander scale, but rarely on a more personal and visionary one. It should remind us that people, not institutions, are the engines of positive change in our community. And celebrating and encouraging this sort of philanthropic activism can be a refreshing alternative to making massive investments of resources to prop up aging institutions based on obsolete business models. In the scheme of things, I'd trade a million person-hours of institutional collaboration and consensus-building for ten Gregg Lowes anytime.

So what do you make of Richard Florida's work? Jack may be right that Cleveland has knowledge, but how good is the city (and this can be asked of any locale; I'm not singling out Cleveland) at attracting and retaining talent? Fast Company's Put Your City to the Test quiz may help you gauge that. It's a question worth considering.

History shows that enduring social change occurs not during economic boom times, like the 1920's or the 1990's, but in periods of crissi and questioning such as the 1930's -- and today. The task before us is to build new form of social cohesion appropriate to the new Creative Age-- the old forms don't work, because they no longer fit the people we've become--and from there to pursue a collective vision of a better and more prosperous future for all

Cleveland is uniquely situated to generate innovation and creativity because of so many who've come here or returned from other places (among those I've met in the last year are escapees/returnees from New York, Chicago, Boston, North Carolina, California and more).

Fast Company Now: "Gurteen brings up the idea of a knowledge city -- or a city 'purposefully designed to encourage the nurturing of knowledge.' "

Editorial consultant and weblogger Jimmy Guterman rails in Business 2.0 about the absurdity of blogs for business. Among other things, he write, "Several years into the phenomenon...the blogging community is still, for the most part, self-absorbed and elitist. There's only minimal evidence that anyone is using the blog format as a business tool." Rick Bruner comments.

lead�er�ship (ldr-shp) n.

1. The position or office of a leader: ascended to the leadership of the party.
2. Capacity or ability to lead: showed strong leadership during her first term in office.
3. A group of leaders: met with the leadership of the nation's top unions.
4. Guidance; direction: The business prospered under the leadership of the new president.

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." - Henry Ford

"Sam Fulwood's column is the talk of the town. Certainly interesting and provocative. TOBN is far from dead. It will take more than cutting-edge commentary, political niceities, warm handshakes and smiles to wrestle the juggernaut that we call power and influence from the hands of a few into the organizations and political yearnings of the many. Those who disagree with me, should refer to Dick Pogue's comment that those who desire leadership should take the baton from his hands. Who among the emerging leadership in this town, is ready to do that? Anyone?"

"I cannot serve those who make history; I must serve those who are subject to it." - Albert Camus

"Cleveland, Ohio is a beautiful, vibrant city on the shores of Lake Erie. It got a bad reputation in the 1970s due to a series of unfortunate events, most notably the Cuyahoga River catching fire. Ok. It didn't actually catch fire. Some debris floating on top did. Still, the name-calling continues ('Mistake On The Lake' is a perennial favorite). Like any Rust Belt town, Cleveland has endured growing pains as it makes its transition from a manufacturing-based economy. What non-locals don't often realize is that Cleveland's long history of industrial wealth has left it chock-full of cultural riches."

"He was the most courageous person I have ever known." - Jello Biafra on the passing of singer Wesley Willis. Willis, 40, battled schizophrenia and leukemia over the years.

Wishing Happiness Joan Chittister Try saying this silently to everyone and every- thing you see for thirty days: "I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future." If we said it to the sky, we would have to stop polluting; if we said it when we see ponds and lakes and streams, we would have to stop using them as garbage dumps and sewers; if we said it to small children, we would have to stop abusing them, even in the name of training; if we said it to people, we would have to stop stoking the fires of enmity around us. Beauty and human warmth would take root in us like a clear, hot June day. We would change.

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." - Mother Theresa

Coffee Kids has helped thousands of children, women, and men in coffee-producing regions in Mexico and Central America to improve the quality of their lives and build more sustainable communities. Founded by coffee roaster Bill Fishbein in 1988, Coffee Kids is an international nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Our staff works with local non-governmental community organizations in Latin America to create education, health-care, training, and microenterprise programs for coffee farmers and their families. Our projects respect the cultural integrity of our local partners, foster independence, and promote long-term self-sufficiency.

Mentioned in a recent entry are hosted wikki's. He also has several topical Wikki's on his site. It's an excellent tool for information distribution.

A possible espresso tax here is creating a tempest in a coffee cup. In just a couple weeks, voters in this city will decide whether to impose a dime-a-cup tax on espresso drinks to raise money for preschool and day-care programs. 'It's a dime. It's nothing. It's just a dime for kids,' said John Burbank, executive director of the nonprofit Economic Opportunity Institute, which came up with the idea. 'What's next? Is there going to be a salmon tax to pay for literacy programs?' said Robert Nelson, president and chief executive officer of the National Coffee Association.

• Stretching the phrase "tempest in a teapot" doesn't do a whole lot for me.
• I guess they're lumping us coffee sinners in with the rest of the targets for sin tax
• Is a dime all that much to pay for education?
• Will you even notice when you're paying ridiculuos amounts anyway?
• Where the heck did the president of the NCA come up with a salmon tax? It must be more meaningful on the west coast.
• What do you think of the little coffee cups as bullets?

How can we practice �focused hope?� How often do we even associate the word �focus� with the word �hope?� Don�t we rather tend to use �hope� as a synonym for �wish�, as in, �I hope that the weather will be nice for the picnic?' Focused hope seems to be predicated upon a picture of how things might be better: e.g. we are more whole, life is more just, we are more compassionate, we make room for people who have typically been left behind etc.

"The most creative entrepreneurs spend less time than average networking with business colleagues who are friends and more time networking with a diverse group that includes acquaintances and strangers", says Martin Ruef, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Entrepreneurs who spend more time with a diverse network of people are three times more likely to innovate than entrepreneurs stuck within a uniform network. Another discovery was that people tend to be more creative and innovative when they are new to an industry. "I found strong evidence to suggest that the longer entrepreneurs have been in the industry...the less innovative they are," says Ruef. "Veterans just don't come up with wacky or creative ideas that can really spark a new industry."

"The number one thing for people has nothing to do with facilities, but rather who's on campus, who can they collaborate with. You can have the finest facilities, but if you don't have recruitment, it doesn't matter."

This one is key for economic development in Cleveland, the Convention Center may build temporary ties, or fleeting contact networks, but to be a strong regional area we need to build long term networks locally that have many radial arms outside of NEOhio, these radial arms will be the pathway people use to find their way to Cleveland. They will want to be here, be part of the scene. We are developing the rep for having the coolest people, the coolest network in this location. That is really Silicon Valley's secret. Engineers and software geeks go there because that is where the other cool geeks are -- it's not the real estate market, nor even the sunny weather [geeks are indoor types]. We must forget the stupidity of the dot comedy -- place is irrelevant in human ties. Birds of a feather flock together -- the creative class will find others of the same class. We have to help create the 'tipping point' for flocking to Cleveland.

i have nothing to say/ in all this darkness/ everyone runs from/ words that carry light/ from the closed doors/ of the mind . . . . if you want a revolution/ return to your childhood/ and kick out the bottom/ don't mistake changing headlines for changes/ if you want freedom/ don't mistake circles/ for revolutions/ think in terms of living/ and know/ you are dying/ & wonder why/if you want a revolution/ learn to grow in spirals/ always being able to return/ to your childhood/ and kick out the bottom/ . . . . if you want a revolution/ do it "together"/ but don't get trapped in/ words or systems/ people are people/ no matter what politics/ color or words they use/ & they all have children/ buried in their head . . . / walk down the streets/ & flash light at yourself.

As John Carroll University chemistry professor David Ewing walks through the halls of the nearly completed Dolan Center for Science and Technology, he points out that the items on his to-do list are finally getting scratched out. Dr. Ewing serves as the 'project shepherd,' or faculty liaison, between the architects and builders of the Dolan Center and the JCU staff. Opening day for the $66.4 million Dolan Center - the largest capital project ever undertaken by the university - quickly is approaching. The building's grand opening will be celebrated during ceremonies and activities on Sept. 5 and 6 at the University Heights campus. Like many universities around the state and nation, JCU set out three years ago to build a cutting-edge science center to attract students to the campus and to keep up with technology.

Neal Stephenson has always been fascinated by history. Cryptonomicon explored the science of secrets during World War II, and The Diamond Age riffed on Victorian sensibilities. Now he's looking backward even further. He spent the last seven years immersed in the 17th century, working on a three-book series set during the scientific revolution. Certainly, The Baroque Cycle has scope: The ancestors of Cryptonomicon characters cross paths with Isaac Newton and his peers against a backdrop of several continents, a couple of wars, and one fundamental change in the way humans view the world. In the context of the 1600s, Stephenson examines the nature of money, the interdependency of Europe, and the consequences of transformative scientific advances. The writing schedule is ambitious, too: The first book, Quicksilver, is out this month, and the next two will follow at six-month intervals.

Dan Kane could be called the granddaddy of urban agriculture in Cleveland. In 1974, he was a Cleveland police officer doing community outreach when he read about other cities using gardening projects to prevent crime and revitalize inner-city streets. He recruited 23 kids to turn a neglected playground on East 65th and Kenyon Avenue in Slavic Village � the neighborhood where Kane has lived his entire life � into a miniature Eden. �Two years later, then-mayor Ralph Perk drove through the area and saw our garden,� says Kane, now 79 and retired. �It was in full bloom, a wonderful sight to see. The mayor really liked what we were doing and you could say that planted the seed for the Summer Sprout Program.� Kane still manages the garden, where he and 36 others tend the raised beds. Across the street, they�ve landscaped another empty lot with colorful shrubs and trees. �We enjoy the work and one another�s company,� explains Kane, who lives in the same house in which his mother was born. We hang out, talk, have picnics. Sometimes, people play music here and the whole neighborhood comes to listen. We�re growing a feeling of community along with the vegetables and flowers.�

five of us pull ourselves to a table in the center of the city. each day we pass with smiles and irrelevant speech, how was your weekend, you go to that club on 27th street? someone makes fun of the old bat working down the hall, how she's Ethel, from Lucy and we all laugh cause on Tuesday and Wednesday and any other weekday people pass here and throw their smiles through an array of hellos they pull themselves together, then go home to the east side west side north side outside don't mix them up, they say; this is my block, that's your's; we meet at work, but go our own ways. and some of us wonder, why we can't take it further, and you bring your neighborhood to mine, I'll bring mine to yours we'll bring it across all lines instead of me wondering about you and you wondering about me and everyone wondering about each others' hangups and hitches and imagining that they're there, when they might not be and this is just another one of those glitches that rots our chances and keeps our conversations down to minimal glances and tosses smiles and short lived imaginary romances and all the while Bobby Sanchez and Maria Petrocini and Rudy Jackson and Chris Marcusky are all fractions, minorities, that add up to a majority who wonder about each other fear each other, talk, but don't stop to hear each other. we stare and hide, go to church and sing deep and wide and one day, we'll all pass over to the other side and be soaked in the same shade of formaldehyde. We Shall Overcome... and how 'bout; we shall come on over at night, we speak on the phone together but rarely go home together. we shy away and doubt each other hardly ever finding out about each other. five of us pull ourselves to a table in the center of the city, you pass an age... ©2003 J. Scott Franklin

"The future belongs to crowds,'' Don DeLillo declared in his novel Mao II and at the time he was writing it -- the end of the 1980's, when packs of soccer hooligans were rampaging in Europe and masses of undifferentiated couples were getting married in stadium-filled Moonie wedding ceremonies -- that sounded pretty scary. But it turns out, now that the future is here, that the mobs aren't quite so frightening after all. Indeed, a pro-mob culture is forming -- one made up of the individualism-obsessed techno-futurist set. These mostly young, educated, vanguardish men and women have been countering technologies of control (databases, ubiquitous surveillance, etc.) to turn the crowd, paradoxically, into a forum for idiosyncratic behavior. 'Flash mobs' consist of dozens or even hundreds of well-wired folks who gather suddenly, perform some specific but innocuous act, then promptly scatter. A few weeks ago, for instance, a mob formed at a Toys ''R'' Us in Times Square, stared at an animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex, then fell to the floor with screams and a waving of hands before quickly dispersing"

Information is power, but it's not enough. Modern emperors have learned the knack of spinning revelations of wrongdoing and bouncing back. Thus far, the Internet has lacked the follow-through necessary to make a lasting difference. That's changing. As the Internet matures as a place for political action, services like the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Action Center (punch in your ZIP and e-mail your lawmaker), MeetUp's coordinated nationwide kaffeeklatsches for every Democratic candidate (but especially Howard Dean) and MoveOn's thronged mailing list millions (who can conjure the budget for a major media-buy on 24 hours' notice) are providing the bodies, budget and means for advancing proposals and seeing them through to their ends.

"In an effort to support the worlds best browser and email client, RJ Tarpley's has agreed to donate half the profit of all orders from Mozilla users directly to The Mozilla Foundation. The foundations goal is to promote the development, distribution and adoption of the award-winning Mozilla standards-based web applications and core technologies, including the Gecko browser layout engine. The Mozilla Foundation will continue and expand on the efforts of mozilla.org, the group managing the daily operations of the Mozilla project since its inception."

"Some wired folks up in Cleveland want nothing to do with a new convention center and have been dissing our industry. Although the new David Lawrence Convention Center here in Pittsburgh is a beautiful building, it's not in the black and won't be for some time, if ever. While some of the points being made on Brewed Fresh Daily's wiki board are out there (at least for those of us who still don't own a palm device) many of the arguements being made are coherent and show a pretty good understanding of where the action is. It's worth a look. Hopefully some of you will join the debate. What's important to note here is that it appears that nobody believes tradeshows are important to Cleveland's economy. And while it's probably true that as a country, we've overbuilt convention facilities, if the argument that tradeshows aren't economically important wins out in Cleveland, what does that mean to our industry? Will other second and third-tier cities give up on plans to build or redesign their facilities? What effect might that have on smaller shows and managers of regional events? This could be an interesting debate."

"Saint Bonaventure, a disciple of Francis of Assisi, suggested a grid through which we may train ourselves to experience God out of doors. First, consider the greatness of creation�mountains, sky, and oceans�that clearly portrays the immensity of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the triune God. Next, look at the diversity of creation. A forest, with more plant and animal life than you could examine in a lifetime, shows us God can do many things at once. Those who wonder how God can hear many prayers uttered simultaneously have been out of the forest too long. Finally, examine the beauty of creation�the shapes, colors, and shades of rocks, the beauty of individual elements (like trees), and the beauty of overall composition (like forests). God's beauty cannot be revealed through a single form. It is so vast and infinite that it can fill an entire world with wonder."

"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles." - Ayn Rand

"Over twenty years ago, Dennis Kucinich destroyed his mayoralty to preserve Muny Light as a competitor to CEI. Conscious of the large voter majority that supported Muny then, and continued to punish its enemies in subsequent City Council races, all mayors since Dennis have been vocal public power supporters. They renamed the system Cleveland Public Power, pushed a bond issue to expand it to the Southeast Side and the airport, sold its discount service to big commercial users as well as residents, and bragged about how much they were saving us. They also beefed up CPP's interconnection with 'the grid', successfully pursuing a Federal case to force CEI to provide transmission services for power bought elsewhere -- from Niagara, from Kentucky, from downstate utilities and then from CEI/First Energy itself. CPP -- once the third rail of Cleveland politics -- became a consensus issue, a sacred cow... I'm proud to have been part of the fight to save and expand Muny/CPP many years ago, and I'm as committed as anyone in this city to the idea of a competitive public power system. But I think the time has come -- is, in fact, way overdue -- for a serious airing of CPP's operations and strategy. Why are the bills so high? Why is the system still totally dependent on expensive purchased power, with no baseload generating capacity of its own? Does this system have a plan for the future, and what is it? And how is it going to benefit the city's consumers, for whom the whole point of municipal power is to keep electric service reliable and affordable -- as opposed to vulnerable and expensive?"

Check out books on disinformation, and arm yourself with awareness.

I found a nice summary of Donella Meadow's 12 Leverage Points to Intervene in a System in wikipedia. Places where a small change can have large effects, and if you are a participant in the system, awareness and use of these means enable self-organization. Go to the page for a full description. (in increasing order of effectiveness): 12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards) 11. The size of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows 10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport network, population age structures) 9. The length of delays, relative to the rate of system changes 8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impact they are trying to correct against 7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops 6. The structure of information flow (who does and does not have access to what kinds of information) 5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishment, constraints) 4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure 3. The goal of the system 2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system - its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters - arise 1. The power to transcend paradigms "

"Hell yeah. I'm behind George [Carr's commentary in Cool Cleveland] 100% on pretty much every point he makes, and I'll just add that we're a major airline hub so finding reasonably priced flights to just about anywhere is a snap. 'Nuff said. "

"Starting in September, passengers will be able to ride and surf on the Altamont Commuter Express and Capitol Corridor train services in northern California. 'I think I'm going to cry, it's just so beautiful!' Web developer Sasha Akhavi of Oakland wrote on Traintalk, an Internet forum frequented by Capitol Corridor riders, after he heard the news.' The 'Wi-Fi trial lets train riders log on from comfort of seats'.According to these reports the service is expected to be free for the first three months, around $10/month thereafter."

In the hallways of my mother�s Continuing Care Retirement community, residents hang art work from their former homes. A walk through the apartment buildings offers clues to the musings, passions, and idiosyncrasies of the residents of this dignified village. Outside my mother�s door is a black and white framed poster, a reminder, actually, of a national church body�s old fundraising campaign. The graphic is simple-- two figures sit facing each other under a tree. Beneath the figures the text reads: We are the harvest of someone else's hope. We sit under trees we did not plant. We plant trees under which we will never sit."

"Are you listening, Cleveland dear? When Mayor Jane was elected, I was at those techie conferences where citywide wireless access was endlessly discussed. Now you just have to DO it"

"Wesley Willis: Rock and roll star, artist, poet, movie star and friend to all he met passed away last night from Leukemia at the age of 40. The six foot five, 320 pound Chicago area musician who cut his teeth on the streets selling city landscape drawings and playing music on his tiny Casio keyboard was infamous for his raw insightful songs and ability to draw his audiences into a schizophrenic's take on reality."

Charter One Financial Inc. (NYSE: CF) said Starbucks Coffee Co. will open retail locations in two of bank branches in New York state under an agreement between the two companies. Charter One said the initial Starbucks locations in its banking centers will be in Albany and Rochester, N.Y. The agreement with Starbucks calls for future additional openings in the Charter One network, though it was not more specific.

sometimes i ask this rhetorical question when i contemplate the ever-sinking price of coffee, the world price depression long-time readers know as the coffee crisis. to nestle and its fellow mega-multi-nationals who bring you dubious, stale, low-quality brown stuff in supermarket cans and jars! as coffee prices on the market drop towards the south pole, nestle has raised the prices consumers pay and so fattened its bottom line by a nice percentage. dear readers, stick to your local independent roaster/retailer or coffeehouse for fresh, delicious specialty coffee, please! let's contrast nestle with starbucks, who instead of helping crush coffee farmers to line its wallets, actually is working with farmers in peru to develop markets and create relationships.

"Did you know that in Cleveland 80% of those testing positive never pick up their results? 80% So either they don't know and aren't taking precautions; they have a pretty good idea and are in denial and aren't taking precautions; or they are ignorant and aren't taking precautions. Or maybe they are paranoid and taking precautions and are too scared to find out their results. Did you know that between January and April of 2003, the number of positive results in those tested through the Taskforce doubled DOUBLED the positive results from 2002. It's now August, think about it. The age range that's being infected most rapidly? 15 - 25 year olds."

Myth: Low-wage work is a temporary step on the ladder to a better job. Truth: Most people holding low-wage jobs never make it to a better job. Myth: Training and new skills solve the problem. Truth: There are fewer high-quality jobs to move into, even with better skills. Myth: Globalization stops us from doing anything about this problem. Truth: Very few low-wage jobs exist in globally competitive industries. Employers, politicians, (and I will add economic developers) use globalization as a whipping boy to scare people into taking low-wage jobs. Myth: Low-wage jobs are the result of an efficient market. Truth: The market is our creation. We made decisions that created it and we can make decisions to change it.

Economic development guru Don Iannone throws out an interesting option for convention center advocates. He wonders whether a real estate investment trust, known as a REIT, could be formed to privately finance several convention centers in multiple markets. Not sure how realistic the idea is since convention centers are notorious money losers, but it is an interesting concept that deserves some attention.

I'm a prime candidate for what Clevelanders call "brain drain." I'm 31, with a graduate degree and a highly-paid downtown job, and no wife or family in Cleveland. I'm connected, through professional colleagues and social connections, to jobs and housing in Chicago, New York, and Boston. Why haven't I moved already, like many of my grad-school colleagues? Because Cleveland, for all of its failings, sits on the perfect spot on the bell curve: it has all the big-city culture features - world-class museum and orchestra, engaging theater, clubs, and nightlife - at an affordable cost of living. I recently bought a house in Cleveland Heights for just under $100K that would cost $225K in Chicago's first-ring suburbs, or $375K in suburban Boston, or don't even ask how much in suburban NYC. I can go out for dinner and drinks with a date for $100, something unthinkable in a larger city, and I can see the touring production of a Broadway show for $45, and if all else fails, I can actually GO to NYC for $150 and see whatever's there, without having to put up with the constantly absurd cost of housing and trains and taxis and eating out and going to clubs all the time.

"What would your company do with a poet in residence? [There's] a wonderfully provocative essay by a Peter Sansom on poetry and business at http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/places/pobiz.htm. Sansom is the poet in residence at Marks & Spencer, the giant U.K. retailer. "

"'Don, your idea about intergenerational leadership teams for economic development is quite interesting. Native Canadiens have had this concept for sometime, although not specifically related to economic development. I'm wondering if there is a simple way to start this process of recognising the value contributed to economic development by various generations. Maybe I should bring my son to the next EDAC annual conference. Or perhaps a retired executive from my town should attend the next meeting. Many retired executives already work with young entrepreneurs as advisors. The simplier the form of this idea, the more likely it will be embraced.'"

This week's featured content is a new site called WikiTravel that takes an innovative, community approach to sharing travel information. The site is based on a Wiki, which is a bit of web software that allows anyone to edit and create new pages, giving a community of interested users the power to expand the content of a site in any direction. Current hot topics include a great set of tips on flying and tips for driving in Australia. To go along with the multi-author, community spirit of the site, the contents are licensed under a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to reprint, modify, and even use the content commercially.

"Our entrepreneurial spirits are high says the annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor study: More than one in 10 working Americans were creating or growing new businesses last year, off only slightly from 2001 but still 50 percent higher than in 1998, at the height of Internet fever. More findings: �Optimism in business opportunities held steady last year after just one year of decline. Informal investment in new businesses, often from families and friends, is holding up better than venture capital investment, which retreated for three consecutive years until the most recent quarter. The rate of high-growth start-ups tracks closely with the rate of education. And, a gender gap persists in the entrepreneurial ranks, even in the 18- to 24-year-old age bracket, where men are three times as likely as women to start businesses.�"

After decades of doling out millions of dollars to various quasi-governmental, nonprofit organizations with the stated mission of "creating jobs," the state of Ohio should switch its focus to creating wealth and let the professionals take over. This proposal stems from a news release issued this week by the Ohio Department of Development which proudly touted that the state had awarded more than $13 million to 14 different organizations under its Thomas Edison Program that vow to create jobs in industries from biotech to welding. In a few months, the state will also unveil the winners of its technology action grant program - which will likely dole out an additional $12 million to various companies, organizations and institutions that also are trying to generate economic activity. In essence, the state is spreading $25 million a hundred miles wide and a millimeter thick when it comes to economic development endeavors. I'm sure each one of the organizations that gets money from the state has its merits - but the basic premise here is Ohio isn't doing well economically and different economic development model is needed. Philosophically, I am opposed to government investment in the private sector. But Ohio is playing in that game. It's just not playing very well.

In case you can�t get enough post-mortems on the convention center debacle, check out the commentary of some the region�s bloggers who have been conducting an online debate for weeks on the convention center issue. Blogger Chas Rich wonders what he�s going to write about now that this horse is dead. And George Nemeth contributes an e-mail from the Downtown Cleveland Partnership � which is seriously depressed over Mayor Campbell�s decision to kill the project.

On Pacific islands after WWII, some native populations became referred to as "cargo cults" because they built bamboo replicas of planes to "attract" the planes that had once inhabited their island. The world labeled such efforts as "naive", that these aboriginal populations did not understand that it was the mind and the idea of the once-visiting culture that was the original impetus of the planes coming to the remote island - the world knew that no bamboo replica - even if it looked like a plane - was going to work to bring back real planes to the remote island. Building a concrete building will not give the Northeast Ohio area the advanced education which a population needs to attract bioscience and hi-tech industry interest. Building a concrete building will not engender a new, innovative idea. PEOPLE create ideas, and well-informed and educated people create innovative ideas and new industries. The financial rewards they reap from these products of their mind are the result of their innovation. If we want to create innovation and new technology businesses in Ohio, we will have to invest in the people of Ohio, in educating them on special topics and a background of science and technology and deep, rich, innovative thinking, which will be the tinder for their subsequent new sparks of insight, which will create new business and new ways to employ Ohioans. Building a concrete building is a distraction from the root need to provide grants for Ohioans to learn new facts and exercise their minds to think of new ideas. Education has become expensive, and so many intelligent people can't afford it. When education becomes a luxury item for the privileged few, the many intelligent people who might have that incredible idea are displaced into a servitude which they don't deserve, and which does not serve the purpose of creating the industries of tomorrow. We need to invest in the minds of our citizenry! And we need to start investing in them now with a variety of non-traditional and innovative education so that we can capitalize on the insights these trained minds will make in the near future. Ultimately, their achievements will fund the concrete buildings which these professionals will then need. Remember the truth about cargo cults - first came the trained minds. Their result was the planes. And once they were gone, no bamboo plane-shaped replica could bring a real plane back. All you had were a lot of hopeful people gazing at the sky and hoping for a miracle from the gods. If I had the money, I'd be studying chemistry right now. I'd be enrolled in a robotics course. But I can't afford it - the needs of my kids have to come first. I dream of new energy sources, but I don't know enough science to effectively invent a prototype. With the rising cost of eveything, there have to be a lot of people like me out there today: we have the will, we have the urge to learn. All we lack is the money to afford the learning.

"According to a survey of home PC users in Great Britain, from Packard Bell and MORI, only 29% -- when prompted � can positively identify a Wi-Fi hotspot"

People really responded "Something smelly that had been left out too long"?!? BFD recommends you spend $3K on this PDF just because it's got a cool title Veni Vidi WiFi

"'The New Economy,' leadership guru Warren Bennis in On Becoming a Leader, 'was fueled by intellectual capital, as the economy of the 21st Century will be. The days when a company's most important assets are buildings and equipment are gone forever. Ideas are now the acknowledged engine and currency of the global economy. For leaders, and would-be leaders, the take-home lesson of the New Economy is that power follows ideas, not position.'"

We just completed the largest business-school fund-raiser ever. In six years, we raised more than $425 million. [BFD: sounds like the convention center budget. If we start now, we might get one 6 years from now] The campaign was the effort of an incredible team, but one that had to be directed. I took charge of it three years ago when I became dean. My challenge was to create an environment where everybody felt included. With this kind of campaign, the tendency is to read out to senior people I made it a priority to energize the next generation of alumni leadership. When you seek out junior voices, two things surprise you: how much these young alumni have to say and how important it is. At the same time, so many of them - people who have achieve extraordinary success - feel as though they're not being taken seriously. I've learned that lesson multiple times during my career, and it's about listening to what I call "the voice of David". It's actually a tradition in Benedictine monasteries. When a decision has to be made, the abbot asks each monk's opinion, starting with the youngest. The order is intentional. In the Bible, nobody listens to David. There were plenty of gizmos with which to fight Goliath, and David was dismissed as a punk kid with a slingshot. In the end, the kid was right. When I've made a good decision, it's because I've listened to the voice of David. When I've made a poor decision, I haven't taken the time to listen.

By now you have most likely heard the news that there will not be a vote on a convention center or other arts/economic development initiatives this November. The Downtown Cleveland Partnership is extremely disappointed that the community's much-needed new convention center is going to be delayed. Regardless of this decision, we see the need for a new convention center grow by the day. Building a new center is vital to preserving and protecting the businesses and jobs that currently exist as well as spurring additional investment and development in the years ahead.

Mayor Jane Campbell dramatically reversed course yesterday on building a convention center, saying she does not support raising taxes for a new facility. The move effectively ends the debate over building a multimillion-dollar convention center. "We really can't expect people to be ready to raise their taxes right now," Campbell said at a City Hall news confer ence. "I don't think it bene fits the com munity to push something the community does not want to do." Campbell blamed the public's oppo sition on the slumping economy and a series of recent tax increases, including a 1 percentage-point rise in the state sales tax, property-tax reappraisals and the countywide health and human services tax. A poll last month showed that 65 percent of voters opposed a tax increase for a convention center. Several business leaders said yesterday that a new poll showed voter support had eroded further, with at least 75 percent of voters opposing the convention center tax.

"Among Ohio's powerful electric utilities, Akron's FirstEnergy Corp. generates the most political juice. When state legislation threatened its financial health, the firm hired a state senator, a former Ohio House speaker and the governor's top aide. For help with federal bills and regulations, it employs lobbyists whose previous bosses were U.S. presidents and heads of agencies that oversee the regulators. It ranks sixth nationally in money spent by utilities on lobbyists. And its executives - from the CEO to in-house lawyers - have opened their wallets to politicians from Toledo City Council to the White House. Twenty-five executives have contributed a total of $33,500 to President Bush's re-election campaign so far, according to Political Money Line, a database service that tracks money in politics."

: "The Slammer worm penetrated a private computer network at Ohio's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January and disabled a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours, despite a belief by plant personnel that the network was protected by a firewall, SecurityFocus has learned. The breach did not post a safety hazard. The troubled plant had been offline since February, 2002, when workers discovered a 6-by-5-inch hole in the plant's reactor head. Moreover, the monitoring system, called a Safety Parameter Display System, had a redundant analog backup that was unaffected by the worm. But at least one expert says the case illustrates a growing cybersecurity problem in the nuclear power industry, where interconnection between plant and corporate networks is becoming more common, and is permitted by federal safety regulations. "

"Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn't. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall. Yet slideware - computer programs for presentations - is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch."

The Internet is the worst polluter of all. Spam isn't even pollution, it's attention theft. But even legitimate email is typically copied to more people than necessary and contaminated by excess verbiage and endless reply loops. The Web is a procrastination apparatus: It can absorb as much time as is required to ensure that you won't get any real work done. Sites overflow with either low-value stream-of-consciousness postings or bland corporatese. Studies of content usability typically find that removing half of a website's words will double the amount of information that users actually get. Let's clean up our information environment. Are you saying something that benefits your customers, or simply spewing word count? If users don't need it, don't write it. Stop polluting now.

"To release his adolescent angst, I've encouraged him to write and articulate in any medium with which he's comfortable, which led to one especially memorable rant against his parents, in the medium of rap lyrics (which I'll of course keep private--but trust me, it was pretty interesting). So the blog is merely his most recent venture into those waters, which I hope will be a lifelong progression in using language. In just four blog entries, he has already done a couple of interesting things: posted from a remote location (while at hoops camp with his cousin on the west coast), and gone collaborative, by letting his buddy Tyler write the most recent posting. Good luck on your writing, Michael."

Check out these guys hangin' around the offices of Thompson Hine before the EduCAT meeting last night. Thanks to Barbara Payne for snappin' and sharin'. BFD recommends Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion

From The New Devil's Dictionary, a new definition of social software: "Any arbitrary collection of algorithms, protocols and metadata that allows friendless agoraphobics to pretend otherwise."

People who study Buddhism in the present day should for now seek truly accurate vision and understanding. Then life and death will not influence you, and you will be free to leave or to stay. You do not need to seek the extraordinary, for the extraordinary will come of itself. - Lin Chi (d 867?)

Pull Information 1. See how many cards you can collect from prospects, and don�t worry about how many of your own business cards you distribute. Some successful marketers don�t even have a business card. 2. When you meet people, use the time to gather information from them, including: � Primary concerns about their business � Problems they want solved � Unmet business needs. � Areas where the solutions you provide overlap with their needs � Their contact information 3. Continue to expand your network. Whenever you make a contact, ask for referrals to other prospects. 4. Once you have this information, enter it into your database or contact manager. Build Relationships 1. People have short memories. Follow-up after your initial contact and then stay in touch with your network on a regular basis. If you let more than a month go by without making contact they�ll forget that you exist and that you are the best person to solve their financial, legal, human resource, design, or other problems. You�ll want to make personal contact with some people on your prospect list, but in most cases, a letter, newsletter or ezine will do the job. Use the merge function in your software to personalize your mailings. 2. Demonstrate the value of your expertise or products by sending prospects and clients an idea or suggestion they can use right away. You could present this in an article you�ve written, or one you�ve read. Your contact will then associate you with the problems you solve.

George Nemeth, of Painesville, Ohio, learned of the blackout during a cellphone call with a friend whose power supplies, connecting several home computers, started beeping the alarms of an unexpected surge. Mr. Nemeth, who keeps an online journal known as a Web log or blog devoted to Cleveland-related news, said his immediate impulse was to post the news. But when he got home, there was no power at his house either. 'It was disturbing,' Mr. Nemeth said. 'But my wife enjoyed it because we actually talked for the whole time. When we have power, we're usually both on the computer.'

People packed up and left Cuyahoga County at a precedent- setting pace in recent years, but often they didn't move far. The county lost more than 68,000 residents in the five years ending in 2000, the fastest out- migration of any county in Ohio. And newly released census figures show that slightly more than half of them moved just over the county line. The migration of 34,726 residents from Cuyahoga County to its six neighbors in Northeast Ohio accounted for much of the population boom in Medina, Geauga and Portage counties. And people relocating from Cuyahoga to Lorain and Summit helped to replenish the population in those struggling counties.

Mr. Byrne, who is best known as a musician but who was trained as an artist, subjects PowerPoint's characterless graphic templates to a radical metamorphosis. Arrows that curve out of their trajectory and into psychedelic rainbow-colored curlicues, surreal charts that satirize postmodern posturing, typographical compositions that present absurd abstractions with straight-faced conviction and deadpan photographs of the most humdrum of everyday objects all morph into one another with the steady pacing of a corporate sales conference.

Putt's Law: "Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand."

These are not good times for new urban projects. The economy's in low gear, tax revenues are down, and charitable donations are drying up. So it takes some gumption these days to ask a city to raise taxes for a new arts complex. A group in Richmond, Va., did so recently and amazingly got it passed. Background: The Virginia Performing Arts Foundation has drawn up an ambitious plan to create an arts district in downtown Richmond. Ultimately, it hopes to build or renovate several theaters, music halls and galleries along the Broad Street corridor and give tourists, convention goers and residents another reason to visit. The first phase (music hall, gallery, theater, offices and nightclub) will cost $79.8 million. Where can you get such money? The foundation has already raised $13.9 million, but that's still way short of the goal. That's why it went to the Richmond city council with a request: Raise the city's meals tax by 1 percent, to 6 percent, and give us the proceeds. There was the usual grumbling by citizens about taxes and protests from some restaurateurs (although others supported the increase). In the end, the council approved the tax increase on a 7-1 vote. "We are standing on the precipice of a great opportunity," the mayor said, before the vote was taken. A council member agreed, adding, "This is a critical piece of the puzzle to revitalizing downtown." The tax increase is expected to bring in nearly $28 million. Where will the rest come from? The foundation may be back soon to ask for an increase in the hotel tax, not only in Richmond but in the surrounding counties.

Looking back at the 365 entries that weave the fabric of Gassho as well as the countless entries I've read in countless other blogs over the year, one conclusion is simple: no life should be lived without daily journaling of whatever sort one chooses. It is a beautiful medium for appreciating and sharing the mystery life is.

While many of the elected officials have copies, along with some members fo the media, the general public cannot get a copy of the study. You can only go to the CVB on the 31st floor of the Terminal Tower and request to look it over.

I would be most grateful for someone to send me to the links (yes, links) where I can find a coherent definition of the deliverables expected from any large investment in a Cleveland/regional business-attraction plan/program/scheme/campaign/institution/strategy. Then I would read with the following queries in mind:

• Who would be the primary and secondary winners and losers from these deliverables?
• What is the targeted schedule for ROI from the investment?
• How do the deliverables make the City of Cleveland and the rest of its region both equal, symbiotic winners from the investment?

I got home from vacation last night to the new issue of Inside Business & went "damn! who's that fine Morrissey-looking chap in the back pages?!" Only to find that... a. It's you b. You've already made the Morrissey joke on your site...

A good definition from Buddhaghosa, Visuddhimagga: Compassion is characterized as promoting the aspect of allaying suffering. Its function resides in not enduring others' suffering. It is manifested as non-cruelty. Its proximate cause is to see helplessness in those overwhelmed by suffering. It succeeds when it makes cruelty subside, and it fails when it produces sorrow.

• I'd say we're after anyone who pays the bills to use the damn thing. I don't care who it is, if we build it, we need utilization of the thing.
• Let's define "meaningful amount of that business". I'm talking definitive numbers. How much of that business are we realistically going to get? IF (big if) we do this, what size convention will we end up with? How many of those are there? We're not the A list destination. I don't even think we're a B list convention destination. MAYBE (big maybe) we could book SOME of the C list convention. What sort of revenue will A PERCENTAGE of those generate?
• Here's the link to the column Chris spoke of. Good thing I keep an archive of the stuff from Cool Cleveland. I remember we published it there.
• Do we want a union convention here? If we do, why? Political reasons? Financial? If unions are struggling as much as I think there are, are we betting on them to be the future?
• Naming another city that hasn't spent a billion dollars on something isn't going to get us the radical change we need, it's keeping up with the Jones'. That game is why we're playing out this convention center scenerio now, when someone probably conceived this twenty years ago, but was shushed because everyone else wanted to maintain the status quo.
• When someone who (a person of reputation in the blogsphere as an expert in entrepreneurism) was directed to me was inquiring what was happening in this area, he wasn't asking about the Convention Center. He was inquirying about urban revitalization. Things EcoCityCleveland is doing. We need to get a grip. If a campaign is failing, you withdraw your forces to an area where you're winning. Not send crack troops into a hopeless battle. If Cleveland wants to be known as a leader in something, what is it that other people think we demostrate leadership in? There's too much navel gazing around here
• If we're spending money on infrastructure, a convention center is not the kind of infrastructure I'd choose. Let's be forward thinking. What kind of infrastructure should we be building for the next 50 years? How could we influence the way other cities think about their infrastructure by the decisions we make? Can we show leadership?
• Finally, Brewed Fresh Daily is a site where I post my OPINIONS. I invite others to do so as well. Please keep it in mind. I don't like booting people, but if you get rude, I'll give you the virtual back of the hand. If you don't like it, start your own blog. I do my best to create an open forum that will foster this kind of discussion and appreciate everyone effort in making it that

ADVANCE INTERNET SERVICES (including NJ.com, Nola.com, Cleveland.com, Masslive.com, etc.) has been using weblogs as a backup -- their emergency page sends people to The Command Post, Buzzmachine, etc. for updates while they work to restore service. Weblogs as distributed redundant news services. Why not?

A lot of faith is being put into this nebulous organization NEOpreneur Inc. Business and technology leaders say NEOpreneur will do what other alphabet soup organizations � Neosa, EDI and Camp � have failed to do: produce new companies at a pace to offset the number of companies leaving town or getting gobbled up by their competitors. I remain skeptical.

The massive blackout that hit the Northeast on Thursday continued to disrupt business activity Friday morning. While certain Internet Service Providers, such as Adelphia, were back up and running, many remained without power and e-mail services were being disrupted. As of early Friday morning, Cleveland.com, the region's most popular web site, had only limited content. The web sites of Crain's Cleveland Business are back online. However, Crain's e-mail system is down and we don't yet have an estimate for when communication will be restored. We can be reached at 216-522-1383 and temporarily via e-mail at crains@yahoo.com.

[A]s one of the team who is working on the Freelink wi-fi project, I wanted to take a minute to address your concerns... It is free for you, the user. We are collecting e-mail addresses so that we can notify users if there are problems with the system, warning a user if they use too much bandwidth, and also collecting data on the number of users. There's no privacy policy yet and the registration page isn't working properly because we're still working out all the bugs. Registration only works at Star Plaza and in the immediate Theatre District area because that's where we are collecting usage data. For our part, the people on the team, including Michael Barron, myself and Todd Stuart, are trying our best to create something for Cleveland. Please feel free to e-mail me with suggestions as to how to make this project better. It's a learning process for us, so any help is appreciated.

What kills me about all the attention to the Convention Center is that the trade show industry is really going down the drain. The idea that "if we build it they will come" does not apply to trade shows. People are too pressed for time these days to wait for a trade show. Now they can go on the internet and see company information immediately. Attendance is down at most shows around the country and I think a new Convention Center would be a huge waste of our money.

This morning I attended a ConnectionSeries sponsored event with one of Cleveland's established leaders and Chair of TCF Board of Directors. It was constant reminder of the importance of dialogue and the need to consistently push the issue of new and emerging leadership to the inside porch of Cleveland's established corporate leadership. The radical idea is: Why don't we organize a community dialogue on leadership with the Cleveland Bridge Builders, MotiAsians. Asian-Indian Americans for Better Government, The City Club New Leaders and others WITH the Greater Cleveland Growth Association, Cleveland Tommorrow, The Cleveland and Gund Foundations and the CEO's of the major corporations in in town?

Scrap the convention center plan; Let's just set the whole downtown up with wi-fi access.

Sure, leasing a broadband connection with a Wi-Fi base is cheap. But add a billing system - secure login server, transactional database, credit card processing, tech staff, customer service operators standing by - and the outlay skyrockets to $30, $50, even $70 a day, particularly if there are lots of support calls. (Ironically, most of those calls will be about problems with the billing system itself.)

I Like Rats - by Kenneth Koch I never saw a rat Sorry for itself. I never saw two rats Consoling one another for being rats. Rats live good full rat-lives with other rats. Rat mind and rat heart plunge them into other impassioned rats. People say they are poison and ugly and cause disease. I never caught a cold or syphilis or manic depression from a rat.

Starting Fri 8/15 at noon, Clevelanders can log on to the Internet wirelessly for free, 24/7, from Star Plaza at Euclid Avenue & East 14th. It's the only performing arts center in the country sporting Wi-Fi, so bring down your laptops and Palm Pilots to see how it feels for Cleveland to be leading the pack for once. Michael Barron, who is coordinating the Theatre District's Wi-Fi plan, hopes to extend the service into other parts of downtown.

The front page of yesterday's Wall Street Journal sported a story about the emerging trend of men belly dancing, for fun, fitness, and profit. This comes on the heels of a conversation with G's wife Tisha who believes G and I could look great strutting art walks in kilts and cigars.