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WiFi Comes to Roxbury

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 09/20/2007 - 20:07.

We're close enough to our move in to 1894 Roxbury, in East Cleveland, that we have had our DSL service switched over from Ohio City to East Cleveland. Whereas on Clinton, at W. 45th Street, there were several WiFi signals in the air, my new POP on Roxbury is the only signal in the digital darkness of this corner of East Cleveland.

Did You Know 2.0

Submitted by Charles Frost on Thu, 09/20/2007 - 19:17.

 

Just an amazing 8 minute video. Sent to me by my little sister, the teacher, and School Board member... (the white sheep of my family).

Definately worth the time (in my opinion).

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The Right to Dry....

Submitted by Charles Frost on Thu, 09/20/2007 - 19:09.

A Green Movement Is Roiling America

Clothesline Has Neighbors Bent Out of Shape in Bend; An Illegal Solar Device?
By ANNE MARIE CHAKER
September 18, 2007; Page A1
BEND, Ore. -- It was a sunny, 70-degree day here in Awbrey Butte, an exclusive neighborhood of big, modern houses surrounded by native pines.
To Susan Taylor, it was a perfect time to hang her laundry out to dry. The 55-year-old mother and part-time nurse strung a clothesline to a tree in her backyard, pinned up some freshly washed flannel sheets -- and, with that, became a renegade.
The regulations of the subdivision in which Ms. Taylor lives effectively prohibit outdoor clotheslines. In a move that has torn apart this otherwise tranquil community, the development's managers have threatened legal action. To the developer and many residents, clotheslines evoke the urban blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains.
"This bombards the senses," interior designer Joan Grundeman says of her neighbor's clothesline. "It can't possibly increase property values and make people think this is a nice neighborhood."
Ms. Taylor and her supporters argue that clotheslines are one way to fight climate change, using the sun and wind instead of electricity. "Days like this, I can do multiple loads, and within two hours, it's done," said Ms. Taylor. "It smells good, and it feels different than when it comes out of the dryer."
The battle of Awbrey Butte is an unanticipated consequence of increasing environmental consciousness, pitting the burgeoning right-to-dry movement against community standards across the country.
The clothesline was once a ubiquitous part of the residential landscape. But as postwar Americans embraced labor-saving appliances, clotheslines came to be associated with people who couldn't afford a dryer. Now they are a rarity, purged from the suburban landscape by legally enforceable development restrictions.

Nationwide, about 60 million people now live in about 300,000 "association governed" communities, most of which restrict outdoor laundry hanging, says Frank Rathbun, spokesman for the Community Associations Institute, an Alexandria, Va., group that lobbies on behalf of homeowners associations.

Lights Out for Old Bulbs?

Submitted by Charles Frost on Wed, 09/19/2007 - 19:14.

U.S. Plans a Switch To All Fluorescents For Efficiency's Sake

By JOHN J. FIALKA and KATHRYN KRANHOLD
September 13, 2007; Page A8

WASHINGTON -- The House and Senate are working on legislation that over the next seven years would phase out the conventional light bulb, a move aimed at saving energy and reducing man-made emissions believed linked to climate change.

NEW CLEVELAND CENTERFOLD - BREUER NOT TERMINAL

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 09/19/2007 - 09:07.

Cool Cleveland this week ran a piece by Chris Whipple  about re-naming Cleveland’s Terminal Tower.  Mr. Whipple suggests that “terminal” (as in "terminally ill", dead, or dead end) is too much a downer name and that instead the building should be called  VanView  after the Van Sweringen brothers who built the tower and Shaker Heights, etc. 

Reflections on RealNEO - How far we've come!

Submitted by Sudhir Kade on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 16:34.

I've been a REALNEO regular and member since site inception and I feel that I must add a rallying cry to many of the other posts responding to a very potent question.  Though REALNEO has been encumbered by technical difficulties many have worked through these or indicated or demonstrated the resolve to help navigate what has been a great learning and social networking experiment.  I, for one, believe we have had far too many successes and collectively contributed far too much rich and innovative content to consider any aspect of our ongoing efforts a failure.  Consider how little funding we've had to work with - most of us have funded all we've accomplished from our own pockets.  We haven't had the luxury of million dollar budgets to throw at advanced technologists.  We define lean and mean!

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COUNTING WORMS

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 13:05.

Cindy Hale visited the Shaker Lakes Regional Nature Center on September 13, 2007 to lead a small hands-on seminar on worm census techniques.  Cindy hails from Duluth, Minnesota and is the author of  Earthworms of the Great Lakes

URBAN TURBINES - WHY NOT RIDE THE WIND NOW?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Mon, 09/17/2007 - 10:00.

JOINT POST BY MILLER (TEXT) AND BUSTER (PHOTO) 
The photo above is a copy of a paper flyer from the RTA bus tour at August 07 Ingenuity Fest. Someone decided that photographing the new bus - which cost $860,000.00 each - in front of the Cleveland Science Center wind turbine would look dynamic. So, let's actually DO IT as Susan suggests below.

DUALING PIANOS AT OUR HOUSE

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sun, 09/16/2007 - 20:18.

We have two grand pianos in our living room.    (We were riggers and collected them) Suddenly, guests arrived...  They are on those pianos...........very, very cooo0l!  Our house is happening!
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CIVIC SPACE IS EQUITY BASED

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sun, 09/16/2007 - 11:33.

I  have been attending and photographing events at each end of the NEO citizen spectrum.  What I mean is that I have attended Cuyahoga County Commissioner's meetings  - which I would propose is one of many events at the top of what I'll define as the "civic pyramid", and I’ve  gone to classes with individual citizens at the Shaker Lakes Regional Nature  Center (the raccoon rabies bait story is centered around the Nature Center woods) -which I propose to define as one of many citizen events at the base, the foundation, of the "civic pyramid".   Another example of an event at the top of the "civic pyramid" would be the Cuyahoga County Wind Energy Task Force meeting which was held at the Key Center September 13 and which I will post about shortly.  And another example of an event at the foundation of the pyramid is instructor Donald Isom’s (on left in "Rehab is for Quiters"  shirt) weekly Krump at the Heights Youth Club pictured above.

Question of the day? Noble experiment or futile effort?

Submitted by lmcshane on Fri, 09/14/2007 - 17:46.

Has REALNEO been a noble experiment doomed to failure?  People tune in from all over the world, but apparently the center will not hold. 

Council needs to clean-up act

Submitted by lmcshane on Thu, 09/13/2007 - 09:15.


Press release  posted at the request of Council representative Brian Cummins:

Council needs to clean-up act, move to

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FALLOUT SHELTERS AND RACCOON RABIES BAIT

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Mon, 09/10/2007 - 09:46.

A few days ago I saw the fallout shelter sign above still hanging on the outside of an old brick apartment building on Lee near Euclid in Cleveland Heights.  Fallout Shelters were a massive US goverment hoax - the signs and the buildings were just placebos for public nervousness.
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Merck/Sanofi-Adventis Recombinant DNA loose at a Cuyahoga County Park Near you!

MINDS ENGAGED - SPELLING BEE AT MCGREGOR HOME, EAST CLEVELAND

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sun, 09/09/2007 - 17:55.

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BOBBY SEALE - PEN MIGHTIER THAN SWORD

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sat, 09/08/2007 - 20:55.

Heard Bobby tonight at 3C - heard him in the 60's too.  We need leadership like his today in Cleveland. 

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Mr. Seale addressed a crowd of several hundred at Cuyahoga Community College Saturday evening.   I remember well the Black Panther Party from the 1960’s.  Mr. Seale remembers it well too.   Mr. Seale's visit was sponsored by the Sara J. Harper Leadership Institute.  Retired Hon. J. Harper was at the podium to introduce the evening’s program. 

the Cleveland Public Library is using Drupal!

Submitted by johnmcgovern on Fri, 09/07/2007 - 10:39.

take a look at www.cpl.org   < it looks to be Drupal plumbing!

this certainly provides great legitimacy to this wonderful open-source Content Management System!

GO  Cleveland Public Library - the People's University!!!

HEADED DOWN

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 14:10.

The property next to me has been for sale for over 2 years.   And after a similar fruitless wait, the  owner of the house two doors up just last week pulled their house back off the market.  Nothing is selling in my neighborhood.  In Parma – where I took the “rent to own” and “cash at closing” photos the neighborhoods are littered with empty for-sale houses.  In Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights a few houses are even being auctioned – very unusual for those suburbs.  Then there’s Cleveland and East Cleveland. 

Just A Thought Or Two About Change...

Submitted by Charles Frost on Wed, 09/05/2007 - 19:50.

I read some good comments by Marc Lefkowitz over on GCBL regarding the movie "The 11th Hour". 

http://www.gcbl.org/blog/marc-lefkowitz/saloning-the-11th-hour-0

As I recently saw the movie too, I was thinking that it was a good movie to inspire us to change our current over-consumption ways. This evening I ran into this article that got me thinking about change, and I thought that it had some interesting points.....

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Hope, Not Fear, Inspires Change

lead poisoning petition?

Submitted by Susan Miller on Sun, 09/02/2007 - 21:43.

Didn't we just try to put something else on the ballot?


Ohio Supreme Court says voters can decide lead-paint issue

8/31/2007, 5:31 p.m. ET
By JOHN McCARTHY

The Associated Press

 

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BREUER / POST MORTEM

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sun, 09/02/2007 - 10:51.

On Friday August 31, 2007, while Air Show jets stalled out conversations and blasted ear drums,  Susan Miller and I visited the “open house” at the Post designed Cleveland Trust Rotunda building which sits on the corner of Euclid and 9th next to the Marcel Breuer designed Cleveland Trust Tower in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.   Lee Trotter had announced this open house at the County Commissioners meeting the day before and the Dirty Dealer had carried the news a few days prior.   I wondered, why is the County doing this? 

Standard of Success

Submitted by lmcshane on Sun, 09/02/2007 - 08:18.


Today's Plain Dealer again chronicles the "horror" of living in the city and validates the decision of all the suburbanites that have chosen to flee.  Sister Regina touches on the crux of the real problem in her column today.  Standards.  The school district is changing the standard for success by imposing a dress code.  The City of Cleveland needs to set the same standard for our neighborhoods.  The new second district police commander gets it. 

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CLEV/CUYAHOGA PORT AUTHORITY LETS PUBLIC POUND PLATITUDES PILLOW

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sat, 09/01/2007 - 11:26.

 The Cleveland Port Authority wore no clothes on Thursday.   The King was completely naked – yet about half (including a rep of “first suburbs”) of the 19 adults who spoke to the 100 plus in attendance raved about the “BOLD PLAN”