Brewed Fresh Daily

"What's the first sign of trouble in older suburban cities? Often it's when aging neighborhoods sprout 'for rent' signs. It's not hard to picture what could go wrong: As houses go from homeowners to renters, they fall into disrepair, tenants come and go (often with dire consequences for the school system), crime escalates, and neighborhoods deteriorate. This can happen almost overnight as elderly homeowners die and their children sell mom and dad's unfashionable duplex or aging bungalow at estate-sale prices. Absentee landlords sometimes buy up a number of these places and rent them to successively poorer families until the houses are uninhabitable and the landlord walks away. Is there anything a city can do about this? Some older suburbs near Cleveland are trying a number of strategies. The most common: aggressive inspections (Garfield Heights plans to inspect every rental house every three years, looking for unsafe and unsightly conditions), programs to encourage renters to give homeownership a try and efforts to educate the landlords themselves. For instance, South Euclid requires that landlords take a one-day training course on maintenance and crime prevention when their rental permits are renewed. 'We have a standard here in our community,' said South Euclid's mayor, 'and you have to reach that standard.' Shaker Heights is trying a little more carrot and a little less stick. It's looking for a company to run background checks on prospective renters at discount rates. Its hope: By making the background checks cheap, small-time landlords will use them to weed out troublemaker tenants. 'Anything we can do to help them be a better landlord helps us as a city,' said one city official. Another carrot: Shaker Heights wants to give the city's seal of approval to landlords who meet high maintenance standards and help promote these places to prospective renters. The name of this program: 'Certified Shaker.'"

The Akron Art Museum is pleased to present David Byrne, best known as a musician with the Talking Heads, for an art talk titled, �I ? PowerPoint.� The lecture will take place in the auditorium of the new main branch of the Akron-Summit Country Public Library. David Byrne has made visual art for more than 25 years. Trained as an artist, his latest medium is a bit unusual�PowerPoint. According to Byrne, �It started off as a joke (this software is a symbol of corporate salesmanship�or lack thereof), but then the work took on a life of its own as I realized I could create pieces that were moving, despite the limitations of the �medium�.� He will discuss his use of this unusual art form during the talk.

Last week I was flagged down while driving past what looked like a broken down machibombo (small bus). The bus had been emptied and the passengers gathered around it, spilling into the road. The only white man in the crowd approached us and explained that there�d been an accident, the bus had hit a young boy, he was unconscious but still alive. I got out and before I could walk 10 feet, a couple of guys were half carrying-half dragging the limp child to my car. We opened the back, I tried to make a flat surface big enough for him to lie down, and we raced off to the nearest hospital, about an hour�s drive away. Once I had time to assess him, my heart sank. He had a pulse and was breathing, but he was completely unresponsive and his pupils were fixed and constricted. There was no flicker of life left in his motionless eyes, only his hands twitched occasionally with involuntary posturing. Outwardly, he had a small laceration on the right side of his scalp, but otherwise looked completely unscathed. We are fragile creatures...

This is another great example of what cities can do to attract the Creative Class. Let's face it folks, outsourcing at every level is a reality. As the cost of communicating overseas via the web (i.e. VoIP) goes to practically zero, experts are predicting that outsourcing to Asia at every level (blue AND white collar) will grow leaps and bounds. The only thing to do is to create new markets, business models and industries. More evidence that we will need to exercise more of our Right Brain in creating a new future instead of daydreaming about the good old days.

Wow! I got goose bumbs when I read this. Teaching/encouraging Creativity (Right Brain Stuff) as an important and necessary leadership quality has been something I have been pitching to the Cleveland Social Capital machine for quite some time. The cool thing is that we are all born with a Right Brain. The fact that it is not equally developed, encouraged and accepted (vs. logic, left brain stuff) is ironic.

: "In napping, we allow dreamtime to unfold - in the aboriginal sense of dreamtime. For me, opening space the bigger the space opened, the bigger dreams become possible. Whether it's literal or figurative napping, I am committed to opening my heart to a space large enough for all the dreams of the community now working and playing in the space we've created. Lately, visualizing and breathing an open heart space has been most effective."

"I am a whore and am paid very well to build high-rise buildings" - Philip Johnson

"Where do private property rights begin and end? (Our West End neighbors and not-re-elected Mayor Madeline Cain are all too familiar with that question.) And who will or should decide if smoking is allowed inside of a private property, such as a restaurant or a tavern?"

My comment and feeling for sometime is that I think education should be the #1 priority in the city (for all citizens, children and adults). If you play the game for a minute of 'just imagine," just imagine if the tag line for the city was "Cleveland has the best school system(s) in the country," do you think we would have trouble attracting or retaining citizens, attracting or retaining business or tourists or capital? I don't think so.

There�s an important article in today�s Carlisle (Pa.) Sentinel about how to boost a tired downtown. The key is what consultants George E. Thomas and Susan Nigra Snyder call �the Madonna effect:� reinventing a commercial center every frew years based on current consumer desires and trends. �That means forgetting about images of a 1950s era downtown as the regional shopping and entertainment center where people went for just about everything, they say,� the article explains. �Instead, Carlisle must transform itself into a destination for people seeking leisure activities. . . . One solution for revitalizing downtowns today is transforming the old �Main Street� into �Leisure Main Street.� Such centers offer unique niche stores and boutiques, restaurants and entertainment venues that can thrive in smaller storefront space, the consultants say.� Think how Waltham�s Moody Street rejuvenated � ethnic restaurants, appealing riverfront (including boat rides on the Charles), a movie theater and mixed-use housing, all with an appealing, walkable streetscape. It�s a park-once, walk-to-multiple-destinations downtown. Thanks to Cooltown Studios for the link. �We�re shifting from a goods to services to an experience economy, so it�s wise to let the go of the �goods� and concentrate on the experiences", writes Neil at Cooltown Studios.

I certainly hope someone on the Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners reads this and makes them realize what most of us already know - a thriving city needs more than a new stadium or two, and new mega-shopping centers to attract and keep the intelligent people at the heart of any economic engine. Education combined with social activities are what makes a city tick.

Hi George, today and tomorrow I will be live blogging from the New Communications Forum. I will be showing the Northeast Ohio blogosphere map during my panel session tomorrow,and will be sure to mention Brewed Fresh Daily. Meanwhile the Tinbasher has been somewhat of a sensation, used as an example already this morning twice.

Senator Kirk Schuring (District 29) is introducing legislation that will create a 25 percent tax credit for the restoration and rehabilitation of Ohio's vacant and underutilized historic buildings. The tax credit will encourage private investment in historic properties, generate additional jobs and stimulate economic development within existing communities. Additionally, this credit should spur greater investments in smaller commercial projects and Main Street commercial properties of older neighborhoods - particularly where there is a critical need for community revitalization. Further, the bill has the potential to help local areas meet their air quality goals by investing in thoughtful land use. The bill was developed in close collaboration with Greater Ohio and Heritage Ohio as well as developers, tax credit users, and the financing community. Action needed: Click here for talking points to make the case for the "state investment tax credit." Contact your State Senator (find your senator here) about co-sponsoring the state investment tax credit bill. Ask your Senator to please contact Senator Schuring's office at 614-466-0626 by Friday, February 11, 2005.

Recently there has been a noticeable palaver filling the air in Cleveland, and you might have heard it: the increased communication among business professionals, educators and politicians, with some resultant strategic alliances, partnerships, and collaborations newly infused into the city. While these conscious decision-making efforts and conversations between divergent groups in Cleveland have increased, can these conscious-driven discussions transcend to a new level? Could we learn from the underpinnings of unconscious intellect, and perhaps mine it for answers within the underrated and often overlooked instinctual unconscious? I'm talking about our capability for spontaneous thinking...

Here's another example of the shift of economic incentives from companies to people. In Iowa the state's GOP legislators have proposed a plan to eliminate income taxes for workers under thirty. The plan is not entirely slanted this way, though. It also proposes to give businesses a tax credit for newly created jobs paying at least $10 an hour. Read more.

People who read this blog know that I think Cleveland needs more unionization... especially in the sectors which employ the most low-income, undereducated Cleveland residents, like big-box retail, hotels, food service, building maintenance and security services. I think we need unions, not just for reasons of economic and legal fairness -- though those are perfectly good reasons -- but to advance the more fashionable goals of wealth creation and resurgent entrepreneurism.

The City Club debate is a good excuse to spend a few entries on why I hold this strange opinion. So, from now till next Wednesday, it's "Union Week" at Cleveland Diary.

Let me start with two simple propositions:

1. In general, a community gains wealth to the extent that a) its members create economic value, and b) the economic value created by its members becomes their income.

2. The cure for poverty is not more work (as any slave can tell you), but more wealth.

As hinted, we introduced Mac mini today. Maybe Bill will get one to plug his multi-button mouse instead of calling people "modern-day sort of communists".

"One of these days, a newspaper currently charging a premium for access to its article archives will do something bold: It will open the archives to the public -- free of charge but with keyword-based advertising at the margins. I predict that the result will pleasantly surprise the bean-counters..."

"Cold mornings in Cleveland will find the students in my morning classes bundled up in wool afghans,working Cratchet-like at their drawing boards. No matter how hard or hot the uni-vents blow, they will not often keep pace with the icy drafts of air that pour through the cracks, spaces, and holes of the single pane windows in their ill-fitting frames, along the north wall of my classroom. Winter morning room-temperatures in the forties prompted my purchase of about fifteen hand-knit blankets and afghans from church rummage sales. I keep them in a box at the back of the room, and the kids will sometimes argue over their favorites. We laugh at how pathetic we look and how 'ghetto' it is for us to have to work like this. We console ourselves with the idea that hardships make us stronger, scappier, tougher. Still, I get angry when I think about the public schools a few miles up the road, in the suburbs, whose communities would never tolerate such conditions for their children. The taunt 'No child left behind.' infuriates me so much more during Cleveland's long, cold, winters."

I was down in East Cleveland this morning at Rozelle Elementary. The building was warm and the kids working afghan-free. If East Cleveland can do it, you have to wonder what the folks at the top are doing in Cleveland. I doubt that Mayor Campbell ever has to put her sweater on.

Freecycle is a set of local mailing lists. If you have something you want to give away, you create an "OFFER:" post. If you are looking for something, you create a "WANTED:" post. When people respond to your offer, you decide who gets the item by whatever criteria you like. If you happen to have a wanted item and are willing to part with it, you contact the person who posted and offer it to him or her directly. The only rule is that items must be free...

A Citizens' Comprehensive Planning Overview for Central University Circle is partly compiled from the views of several people who live in the Circle and partly conjecture by this writer. While this document professes to be comprehensive, only limited resources were available for this effort. Some issues that are necessary to build a neighborhood are not addressed here... A Citizens' Comprehensive Planning Overview advocates for a broad based planning process for the people who are often overlooked in big city planning: the neighbors of the project, people who have to live with the results of a plan. Hessler neighbors have repeatedly stated that they are for development. How that development comes about, and the end results matter much to them. Indeed the success of Central University Circle means much to citizens from across northeast Ohio who considers the neighborhood, "Cleveland's Cultural Capital" as "theirs."

The councilman is a little behind the times. Everything is written down, his big decisions, small ones, ones he muddled, ones he championed. In such an age of information, why wouldn't anyone want to add their authentic voice to the record that will be told of their deeds? If you are a public official, you have an obligation to tell your story and to eschew the spinmakers and the crafters of the official record in so doing.

This is an experiment. Public service should be about listening and leading - and I am interested in exploring new ways to reach out to people in order to help. The past year saw furious new use of "blogs" to cover public debates coast-to-coast. I'm hoping Toledo will benefit from equally spirited debate now and in the future. This medium, I hope, will provide candid, reasonable commentary on issues facing Toledo and NW Ohio. It will also allow me to get back into a habit that served me well from childhood through college (and which I've neglected in the push and pull of political action the past several years) - reflective and opinionated writing. What scares me a bit is that words and thoughts could come back to haunt me in some future campaign or debate. Joseph Kennedy instilled in his sons the habit of never writing important decisions down - lest they be used against them later. I believe we live in an age of information where politicians who refuse to engage publicly are less attractive than those do. We'll see. Here goes.

In our view, being Visibly Innovative means putting your business first and delivering concrete, implementable advice in logical steps that bring tangible gain. Forget the powerpoints! Forget the 1000 page studies. Get it quick, get it right and get it inexpensively.

I am doing a debate report for school on whether Cleveland should build a casino or not. Truthfully I didn't care one way or the other. But after I though about it. They are going to waste money putting in something America has billions of. Sure it sounds like fun. But, that is somewhat why people take vacations Las Vegas is a big hit. If people can afford to go to a casino they should be able to afford the bus ride to Detroit. I'm sorry but there are way better things to do with that money, whether it may be their money to use in any way they want or not. I constantly hear about how we are supposedly in debt. I'm sure we can all think of something better to use that money for. Like people who don't have homes. Sure there are plenty of shelters but if u haven't noticed they may be crowded. Or maybe the existing ones can't afford to feed all these people and need some help which i'm sure the food comes from the Government but come on think about it!! But that is not the only example i'm sure someone could think of a million and one ways how to use that money to make Cleveland better.

"I had the pleasure to sit on a panel discussion at a NEOSA (A Technology Association) event in Northeast Ohio, USA this morning. The topic was Profiting from Blogging and RSS for Business. We had an audience of about 50 people, most of whom had very little exposure to blogging but were trying to get educated about how this tool may be used in their businesses. My responsibility on the panel was to discuss 'Why' should a business consider blogging and I wanted to share my thoughts here for my readers benefit. I narrowed it down to some very simple concepts. Blogging is another tool that can be used to acquire, serve and retain customers or clients and that if your business desires a more 'true' relationship with its markets, then blogging may be right for your business. Of course I cautioned, that like all relationships there can be positives and negatives and like any relationship it takes work to make it work. Unlike static websites, blogs take daily effort and daily hard work to insure the tool is building the type of relationship that you want with your market. To see a great example of a business blog vist The Tinbasher Blog here. This is a blog for a company named Butler Sheetmetal and is authored by Paul Woodhouse, you might want to check it out!"

• Lori Kozey
• Nate Paige
• Jeff Hess
• Norm Roulet
• Adam Harvey
• Will Kessel

The folks at Neosa did a great job this morning putting together an informative seminar called, �Blogs and RSS: Profiting from the New Personal Publishing Tools.� Six people heavily involved in the world of blogs � Valdis Krebs, George Nemeth, Eric Olsen, Barbara Payne, Denise Polverine and Steve Rucinski � provided an excellent overview of the blogging phenomenon and laid out a clear rationale for why business owners might want to consider starting blogs on their web sites. On that point, Fortune has an excellent piece entitled, �Want Truth in Advertising? Try a Blog,� that examines how companies can use them in their marketing �without being crushed.� The writer, David Kirkpatrick, makes many of the points emphasized by the Neosa panelists about the value of blogs for businesses. Among them: blogs can serve as a trusted source of information for highly technical products or services; they can provide companies with reliable feedback; they can provide an outlet for happy and unhappy customers; they can serve as a reality check; and they can reach an influential audience. Mr. Kirkpatrick concludes by asking, �Has your company�s CEO blogged, or spoken to a blog, yet? Maybe it's about time.� Something to ask the boss at the water cooler.

Brain O'Rourke, owner-founder of the famous Connecticut diner in his name... practices yoga for an hour at 2 am every morning and does another couple of hours of some form of practice at night. Coming up with award-winning breakthrough breakfast innovations is the "easy" part, according to Brian. As he says with guru-scale humility:they flow naturally from his practice.

"In every basic intro-to-management class, in the part about giving feedback, you're taught to praise in public and criticize in private," said Sandy Kristin Piderit, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. "But when [supervisors] are under pressure, they often reverse that principle, and praise only comes once a year in an annual appraisal meeting when no one else gets to hear it."

[T]he proposed gutting of HUD and CDBG is a very big threat to Cleveland's future. If you care at all about community revitalization in Cleveland -- or Toledo, or Columbus, or Akron, or Dayton, or Cincinnati, or Lorain, or any other city of any size anywhere in the U.S. -- now is the time for a scream of indignation in the direction of Senators Voinovich and DeWine. I mean right now, today. And tell your friends to do the same. This baby must die in the cradle! Contact info for Voinovich is here. DeWine's is here. "Senator, where do you stand on the Bush Administration's reported plan to take community development programs away from HUD and make major reductions in CDBG funding to Ohio communities?" Please, do it now. And if you get a reply, please let me know.

"All the best intentions in the world won�t revitalize our cities� economic vitality unless urban school districts begin graduating, in larger numbers, the type of well-educated future workers who will be able to perform the jobs the new economy demands." -Bill King, Editor, Expansion Management Magazine

Even after five years, Christy Pugh has no trouble sticking to her vegetarian regimen. advertisement The secret to her success? Eating meat. �Sometimes I feel like I�m a bad vegetarian, that I�m not strict enough or good enough,� the 28-year-old bookkeeper from Concord said recently. �I really like vegetarian food but I�m just not 100 percent committed.� Pugh is one of a growing number of part-time vegetarians whose loose adherence to the meat-free diet is transforming a decades-old movement and the industry that feeds it. These so-called �flexitarians� � a term voted most useful word of 2003 by the American Dialect Society � are motivated less by animal rights than by a growing body of medical data that suggests health benefits from eating more vegetarian foods. �There�s so many reasons that people are vegetarians ... I find that nobody ever gives me a hard time when I say I usually eat vegetarian. But I really like sausage,� Pugh said.

"As if spam wasn't problematic enough, it's now causing problems for DNS servers. It seems that some spammers are sending out spam from a domain that doesn't exist. They wait some period of time, and then register the non-existent domain, scoop up a few sales, and then abandon it. They hope this makes it harder to track them down. Of course, it also makes it harder to track down their DNS entry... and that's apparently causing extra stress on DNS servers who are often overwhelmed with requests for entries on domains that simply don't exist."

The Domain Name System or DNS is a system that stores information about host names and domain names in a kind of distributed database on networks, such as the Internet. Most importantly, it provides an IP address for each host name, and lists the mail exchange servers accepting e-mail for each domain.

Bloggers are compiling a list of companies that have allegedly done bloggers wrong, as seen here on Dana VanDen Heuvel's site. The 22 companies making the list allegedly "fired, threatened, disciplined, fined or not hired people because of their blog." On the list are the famous cases, such as Delta Airlines and Friendster, but 20 other names show up, among them Microsoft, Starbucks, Wells Fargo and a bevy of city newspapers.

Indian casinos in New Mexico have been no clear advantage to the state's economic development. While they have produced jobs and income to some, they have taken jobs and incomes from others. And that's the point: Casinos mostly redistribute wealth, they don't tend to create it. As a regional economic development strategy, casinos may make sense in poor rural counties, but that's about it.

Within each of us lives a subtle darkness. Often it is something we fear, for from it comes the emotions we perceive as negative: resentment, guilt, anger, greed, denial, and mistrust. These shadow emotions remain hidden, held apart from the self-image, and so seem to manifest themselves unexpectedly, leaving behind feelings of shame and unresolved struggle. But as the light cannot exist without the contrasting darkness, shadow emotions are part of the miracle of existence and self-awareness. Psychologist Carl Jung asserted that negative feelings are a vital part of psychological well-being and cannot be repressed without stifling creativity, joy, and wisdom...

The NewStandard, an online progressive news service, is running a major article series on Wi-Fi and grassroots community networking. It includes several interviews with wireless networking activists and policy advocates, including the Center for Digital Democracy, NYC Wireless, Austin Wireless City, etc. You can read parts one and two by visiting the NewStandard website. Articles like these provide a counterpoint to the Heartland Institute's and ALEC's anti-municipal broadband agenda. These groups, including the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), which recently put out a "Just say no to municipal broadband networks" paper at the Heartland Institute's conference (on just how bad municipal broadband networks are) completely ignore the fact that having only one or two broadband providers in a community ensures high prices and slow, lousy service, not to mention cherry-picking in which the providers ignore low-income areas. This is not surprising when you consider that people from incumbent telcos are sitting on the boards of these organizations. If you are curious enough to find out what IPI has to say about the evils of municipal broadband, you can download the "Just Say No" paper from the IPI.org's website.

"My friend Judith has stunning taste, especially in jewelry. The other day, I commented on her amazing ring. �It�s a caffeine molecule,� she said." Every so often I see a product line that floors me, and this one has me laid flat. You�ll want every bright, smooth piece Muscovie Designs has on offer, but the molecule jewelry is the wittiest. There are six different options, all representing substances that affect mood. I�ve pictured the Adrenoline Pendant here, but they also offer rings. Science becomes you.

Q: "In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, 'We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights.' What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed? A: "No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

Hello George, thanks so much for connecting me with Susanne Alexander. She forwarded the SPJ newsletter and I went to the salon last night at Talkies. It was so energizing! I came away with a lot of food for thought and also felt a resonance with much that was shared, so I knew I was in the right place.

'Blog' was named word of the year for 2004. Blogs or weblogs are one of the hottest phenomena on the Web today. In this session, a panel of experienced bloggers shares their secrets for how businesses get real results -- with measurable ROI -- using blogs as part of their marketing strategies. Includes discussions about using blogs to market products, advertising on blogs, using RSS (news feeds), repurposing blog content for email newsletters, using blogs to obtain high search engine rankings, and using blogs for business networking among your target audience. You�ll also receive a map of the network of Northeast Ohio blogs � who links to whom -- and how the network can be used as a marketing vehicle. There will lots of time to ask questions of the experts. With local Northeast Ohio bloggers of note: George Nemeth � www.brewedfreshdaily.com Eric Olsen � www.blogcritics.org Barbara Payne � www.blogforbusiness.com and www.biomednews.org Steve Rucinski � www.smbceo.com and www.smbtrendwire.com Network map provided by: Valdis Krebs � www.orgnet.com Moderated by Anita Campbell - www.smbtrends.com and rfid-weblog.com Who should attend: Anyone looking to make new business contacts! Sign up here

Not just the school board, but the public in general is screwed in the head. School funding should be one of the highest priorities for any community. Most people in Ohio think it rates somewhere next to Russian Roulette on their list of �important things to do.� Russian Roulette is exactly what they are playing. Every year the schools don't get enough money to provide a quality education is just like putting another bullet in the gun and spinning the cylinder. The schools decay; the quality teachers head for greener pastures; security at the schools decreases; and the students get the shaft. THESE ARE OUR OWN CHILDREN WE'RE SCREWING OVER! I just don't get it. The ramifications of not educating our children are enormous. Let's think about this in the most simplistic terms. Better education = better paying jobs. Better paying jobs = better quality of life. Better paying jobs = better tax base. Better paying jobs = more discretionary income. More discretionary income = more jobs. More jobs = better tax base. And that's just the local perspective. I won't get started on the global implications. Can't people see we're cutting off our collective nose to spite our face?

"Four factors have to come together to make a perfect cup: the freshness of the coffee, the grind, the proportion of coffee to water, and the water itself. Freshness Coffee needs to be kept away from light, heat and moisture. Oxygen will speed its deterioration, so store roasted beans in an airtight container and keep it in a cool, dry place for up to two weeks. Since ground coffee begins to lose flavor quickly, coffee should be ground only in the quantities needed for a few days. Refrigerate ground coffee to keep it from going stale -- even then, it's only fresh for two weeks or so. Grind The whole point of grinding coffee is to get the most flavor out of the bean. To ensure the best-tasting coffee, buy the beans of your choice and grind them yourself just before brewing. Coffee grinders are inexpensive, widely available machines. Generally, the faster the brew time, the finer the coffee grind. Espresso, which is brewed in about 25 seconds, has a very fine grind, almost like powdered sugar. A coffee press takes about four minutes and uses a coarser grind than espresso. American drip coffee is coarser still -- it can take anywhere from five to ten minutes to brew coffee using a standard coffee maker. Now that we understand the importance of freshness and just the right grind, let's take a look at how measurement and water factor in a good cup of coffee. Proportion For a full-bodied cup of coffee, use two tablespoons of ground coffee for each 6 ounces of water. This produces a strong coffee, similar to what you find in specialty coffee stores. Water Another trick to a great cup of coffee is fresh, cold water. It needs to be heated to around 200 F (93 C) to extract all of the flavors of the ground beans. Your automatic coffee maker will get the water hot enough. Be sure to keep the coffee maker clean (a periodic vinegar rinse does the trick) so that it not only keeps the water pure but also operates at its most efficient."

I went to the Cleveland School Board meeting tonight to watch them take the first step in the campaign to pass an operating levy in May... So there we were in the School District Board room, with big decisions being made about the financial future of a critical public system, a crowd of citizens worried about it, and lots of speechmaking that could only be called political. Democracy in action, right? Except... there wasn't a single elected official in the room."

"Let's try to get together regularly and truly build the writing community in Northeast Ohio."

"Is it me or is Cleveland.com the most convoluted site in the history of the Web?(Wait, don't answer. I'm sure there's worse.) But I've had it with its abysmal navigation. Basically you can't get what you need within any level of simplicity. Were it not for The Plain Dealer, I would have no reason whatsoever to visit the site."

Although her book Selling Women Short is a powerful indictment of how Wal-Mart has treated its female employees, Liza Featherstone nonetheless acknowledges the lure of the Wal-Mart store for female shoppers, who delight "in spending as little as possible, all in one place." At a Wal-Mart "supercenter":

you can change a tire, buy groceries for dinner, and get a new pair of shoes and some yard furniture�a set of errands that once would have required a long afternoon of visits to far-flung merchants.

All these innovations contribute to Wal-Mart's remarkable productivity record, and this in turn has opened up another major source of competitive advantage for the company, its policy of "Every Day Low Prices" ("EDLP"), which makes it possible for it to undersell its competitors by an average of as much as 14 percent. Here the picture darkens because Wal-Mart's ability to keep prices low depends not just on its productivity but also on its ability to contain, or even reduce, costs, above all labor costs. As Sam Walton wrote in his memoirs:

You see: no matter how you slice it in the retail business, payroll is one of the most important parts of overhead, and overhead is one of the most crucial things you have to fight to maintain your profit margin.

One of the ways to win this particular fight is to make sure that the growth of labor's productivity well exceeds the growth of its wages and benefits, which has in fact been the dominant pattern for US corporations during the past decade. From a corporate perspective, this is a rosy outcome. When the productivity of labor rises and its compensation stagnates, then, other things being equal, the cost of labor per unit of output will fall and profit margins will rise. Wal-Mart has carried this strategy to extremes. While its workforce has one of the best productivity records of any US corporation, it has kept the compensation of its rank-and-file workers at or barely above the poverty line. As of last spring, the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three. Despite the implied claims of Wal-Mart's current TV advertising campaign, fewer than half - between 41 and 46 percent - of Wal-Mart employees can afford even the least-expensive health care benefits offered by the company. To keep the growth of productivity and real wages far apart, Wal-Mart has reached back beyond the New Deal to the harsh, abrasive capitalism of the 1920s.

"Spending a few minutes calming the mind and taking note of one's emotions helps slow down complicated thinking that often creates negative reactions. Even trying for a few seconds a day - stopping and looking at how your mind is racing, judging, conceptualizing - and noticing the noise it creates, is a great beginning. Eventually seconds may become minutes and the chain reaction begins. By developing inner quiet and compassion, one's relationships become less stormy. Making economic changes, introducing skillful management and reducing one's cravings, slows down the frenzied cycle of consumption. In turn, consuming less means living lighter on the land which creates a balance in your environment both immediate and far reaching..."

1. Do the people of our poorer urban neighborhoods lack shared neighborhood vision because their circumstances rob them of the capacity of vision, or have urban social agencies and urban planners bought into this myth, perhaps unconsciously, to justify their agendas? 2. What would happen if urban planners and urban social agencies came together to assist in the creation of shared neighborhood vision and then allowed it to form future direction, both for solving urban issues and creating sustainable urban neighborhoods? 3. Lastly, given that these passages are from the bible, what is the role of faith communities in creating a vision for urban sustainability? How do we motivate faith communities to assist in the creation of such a vision in their neighborhoods?

I just like this one because of its shape, which doesn't show as well in this photo. The lower portion has the approximate elliptical curve of an egg, which just feels nice to my eyes. I only received it a few years ago (through a vendor at a conference, obviously). My previous favorite was a chipped and cracked San Francisco tourist mug that I picked up when checking out Berkeley as possible graduate school (went to U Penn instead).

"What does life itself mean? What does it take to get a decent cup of coffee in Colorado?"

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd... - Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope

"Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"So what can a public official do to thwart Internet detractors? Two things: Build a network of informed and sympathetic citizens who'll come to your aid if you stumble. (You can do this the same way as your detractors, through e-mails and web sites.) And deal with the disgruntled before they become determined."

In response to the unprecedented natural disaster in Southeast Asia, Starbucks Coffee Company (Nasdaq:SBUX) has made an initial contribution of $100,000 to two international relief organizations -- CARE and Oxfam UK. Both international relief organizations have been actively involved in the rescue efforts in the countries that were badly impacted by the earthquake and tsunamis...

Jerry and I have known each other for 40 years. We share living quarters, and enjoy our time together, but we both like freedom---each to pursue our individual quests. Our separate grown children don�t need us much, since they're all wonderfully independent. Though retired, we tend to spend work hours apart and link up for meals here and there, or in the coffee shops around town. Jerry and I both love coffee. We each have a favorite cup: his from his other life with his wife of 30 years, and mine from my former life with my husband of 22 years. Jerry's cup is small, made of white porcelain, a sort of refined mug, pentagonal in shape. My mug is shorter and wider, with wavy, brown, rust and white vertical stripes---stoneware really. These cups look like us. Jerry is more proper and traditional than I. I am more rustic and casual than he. Jerry�s cup has chips in the rim and the base. Mine is run through with multiple mini-cracks that look like a maze of tiny roads on a city map, but no chips...

Under a blood red sky A crowd has gathered, black and white Arms entwined, the chosen few The newspapers says, says Say it's true, it's true And we can break through Though torn in two We can be one