The Cleveland Institute of Art is extraordinarily important to Northeast Ohio and the world for the great artists and designers educated there, and for the great artists and designers who are the educators, and staff. Each year, the work of the diverse CIA faculty is showcased in an exhibition not to be missed... the reception for 2007 was last Friday, December 7, and a great event, as always... perhaps the last ever in the historic Gund Building Reinberger Gallery space, as the CIA moves in total to Euclid Avenue.

 

“We’ve got it all, together” here in Cleveland, Ohio!   And I'm not talking about the Nutcracker rats, either!

 

As part of the Star Neighborhood Development planning for the Star Complex and surrounding one mile radius, I have been planning the redevelopment of the current Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Building and land, on East Boulevard in Cleveland, shown below (full size image here).

Chef Jonathon Sawyer's blog says "!!!Due to the Overwhelming Response!!!"... and I saw that first hand, last week...  COOK CHEFIN' w/ Kids @ Bar Cento is now a weekly occassion for families to get together at the very cool Bar Centro, being the left side of the Bier Market, 1948 W. 25th Street, from 4.30pm-8.pm, for the kids (and adults) to make their own gourmet pizzas... Bar Cento provides a great spread of organic, fresh toppings and has fresh dough spread out to go. We took our son Claes last week and we all had such fun, and made the best pizza in town, so we're going back tonight and will be regulars... scene is today's header of the day, full size here).

Location

November 28, 2007, renowned architect Carl Stein, FAIA, Principal of elemental architecture, llc, of New York City, shared his valuable understanding about the environment in Northeast Ohio and the world, focusing on the energy of buildings and a specific analysis of the Breuer Cleveland Trust Tower, in downtown Cleveland. This is the only high-rise by revolutionary architect Marcel Breuer, and it is globally appreciated as a masterpiece of modern design and construction... yet it is planned for demolition by Cuyahoga County Commissioners Dimora and Hagan.  Stein worked with Breuer for many years, including when Breuer built the Cleveland Trust Tower, and Stein's conclusion is there is no rational excuse for demolishing the Breuer. As Stein states, "just that Breuer and this building are so important is enough reason to preserve the Breuer"... although Stein gives many other reasons!

Internet Maps Illustrate Environmental Woes

By KEVIN J. DELANEY
November 15, 2007; Page B4

I spent time today cutting up an old dog house - for firewood. 

 

Third and Last of 3 Bauhaus-Breuer events this week: Wednesday, November 28 at 6 pm at Judson Manor —Green building and modernism; are they antithetical?  (I'm  posting this for Susan Miller who's one of the organizers)

Susan Miller had mentioned a strong statement on cell phone use at Dewey's Coffee House, on Shaker Square, in Cleveland, and I happened to be here tonight and saw this posted on their front counter... it is thought provoking, and Dewey's is an excellent place... latest Sunday night free wifi coffee house I know in this part of town (10 PM).

This morning when I was out with Tucker (the dog) this deer got his attention. Tucker stood still and stared at the deer, and the deer stood still, while slow-motion lifting his front left leg up and down to softly stomp his hoof on the leaves.

The mood in the United States is changing towards people who don’t look like they are from here.

For years I have traveled around the US and around the world and, besides being inspected and asked to produce my passport at the physical border crossing between nations, I have only been stopped inside a county once - in the 70’s – by soldados in Patagonia when Argentina was governed by the military right before Peron returned to power.

Be sure to visit the Cleveland Museum of Art and see the Modern Master’s.  Really, it is way too much to take in during one visit. 

 

I wanted to enjoy and capture a last glimpse of Fall 2007 so stopped by the second most important battleground in the history of the environmental movement in NEO, after Whiskey Island, being the Shaker Lakes Nature Center, above (see full size here). Were it not for 11 exceptional women from Shaker, including REALNEOan Martha Eakin's mother, a seriously crude, corrupt, foolish Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairman, former Cuyahoga County Engineer Albert Porter, would have driven freeways through this exact spot in the Shaker Lakes. The scenario is very much like we have in NEO today, with seriously crude, corrupt, foolish political bosses attempting to do seriously crude, corrupt, foolish things to our region, like demolishing the Breuer, over-bridging and retrenching I-90, and likely the "Opportunity Corridor", which is driving far more than 11 exceptional women to take on the latest generation of seriously crude, corrupt, foolish leaders... and, like the Shaker 11, we are winning.

Rockefeller / MLK Drive is as beautiful a place to enjoy nature - these days, fall colors - as any place on Earth that has been touched by man.  As I've been thinking about the Native Americans of this land, and Indians of India and America, and the current hostility in this county of past invaders against all others who want to live here too, I was drawn to the Indian Cultural Garden, today, and it was spectacular (full size image here).

I stood there alone, in one of the world's most beautiful places, as commuting suburbanites whizzzed by, and I thought of the last photos I took near here, of the demolition of historic apartment buildings on East Boulevard, that were part of this park's historic fabric and culture, quietly demolished for parking lots, for the whizzzzzing commuters (Full size images: above and below).

It is interesting to reflect on "Cleveland" as a "shrinking city", with 100,000s in declining population, 10,000s of abandoned residential, commercial and industrial lots and buildings covering 1,000s of acres of land, and a failing tax base. Simply put, much of Cleveland is free to the taking, and taxpayers will even pay to get taken by their leaders - the land that is being freed up in this latest Savings and Loan "crisis" is worth $ billions and is being given to the friends of politicians for long term speculation and short term enrichment... what is bad for the poor is very good for the rich, who can buy low (can't beat free, with public subsidy). I'd say all this foreclosure hoopla is as fraudulent as was the housing bubble itself, being pure voodoo economic bullshit media spin to steal from the poor and give to the rich - the "Developed Nations" way and a NEO leadership specialty. I'd like to propose a completely different spin on dealing with our shrinking city crises, which is to give back to the Native Americans what we stole from them in the first place, since we destroyed it and supposedly it is now a burden to we settlers in our cowardly New World.

Picked up from CoolCleveland.com Mittal Steel & Your Health

Join Cleveland area doctors, nurses, and community leaders for a public hearing on the topic Wed 11/14 at 6:30PM at Tri-C’s downtown Metro campus in room CC10. Light refreshments will be served. Come to find out why 375 Cleveland area doctors and nurses have written to Cleveland’s biggest polluter, Mittal Steel, urging pollution prevention. Dr. Kathleen Fagan from University Hospital's Swetland Environmental Health Center will speak at the event paneled by Dr. Anne Wise, Kim Foreman, and Dr. Dan Brustein. For more information or ridesharing contact Liz Ilg with Ohio Citizen Action at 861-5200. http://www.ohiocitizen.org

Location

Giving Climate Change a Kick

By Eli Kintisch
ScienceNOW Daily News
9 November 2007

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS--Top climate scientists have cautiously endorsed the need to study schemes to reverse global warming that involve directly tinkering with Earth's climate. <--!break--> Their position on geoengineering, which will likely be controversial, was staked out at an invitation-only meeting that ended here today. It's based on a growing concern about the rapid pace of global change and continued anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.

"In this room, we've reached a remarkable consensus that there should be research on this," said climate modeler Chris Bretherton of the University of Washington, Seattle, during a morning session today. Phil Rasch, a modeler with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, underscored the point. "We're not saying that there should be geoengineering, we're saying there should be research regarding geoengineering." No formal statement was released at the meeting, which was organized by Harvard University and the University of Calgary, but few of the 50 scientists objected to the idea.

The field of geoengineering has long been big on ideas but short on respect. Some of the approaches that researchers have dreamed up include launching fleets of space-based shades to dim the sunlight hitting Earth or altering the albedo of the ocean with light-colored reflectors. Perhaps the best-known idea is to pump aerosols into the stratosphere to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes. But there's been scant support from mainstream scientists, many of whom fear that even mentioning the g-word could derail discussion of carbon-emissions cuts. Others worry that technological tinkering might backfire. "I just accepted on faith as an environmental scientist that this had to be a bad idea," said Harvard's Scot Martin, who said he was reluctantly coming around.

Harvard geochemist Daniel Schrag and physicist David Keith of the University of Calgary thought that geoengineering deserved a closer look (Science, 26 October, p. 551). In an opening presentation yesterday, Schrag explained that extensive, rapid melting of arctic sea ice (ScienceNOW, 2 May) and the fact that the world's 2005 and 2006 carbon emissions from fossil fuels were higher than predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are forcing the hands of climate scientists. Schrag also fears that when countries are faced with the prospect of even more drastic environmental change, they will turn to geoengineering regardless of whether the consequences are known. "We're going to be doing this if we're afraid of something really bad happening, like the Greenland ice sheet collapsing," he said.

The degree of scientific uncertainty was clear throughout the 2-day meeting. In a discussion of existing models, climate modeler Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California, concluded that reducing the intensity of sunlight hitting Earth by about 2% could "markedly diminish" the massive warming effects of an atmosphere with a carbon dioxide content of 560 parts per million (ppm). (The current level is about 385 ppm.) But over lunch, researchers debated the analysis. "You know you can get some sea ice back," Caldeira said to David Battisti of the University of Washington, Seattle. "I don't know that," Battisti retorted, explaining that Caldeira's model assumed a so-called slab ocean, which does not include the heat circulation patterns that help determine the fate of polar ice.

And then there are the risks. Harvard paleoclimate scientist Peter Huybers told his colleagues during one session that understanding of the world's climate may not be sufficient to properly wield geoengineering tools. "We should be humble about how much we know about the climate system," Huybers said.

Most of the discussion focused on whether to jump-start what has been an anemic research agenda with no public financing. Some participants said that they were spurred into action by a paper that appeared in Climatic Change last year, in which Nobelist Paul Crutzen called for geoengineering research (Science, 20 October 2006, p. 401). Others were swayed more recently. Just 2 weeks ago, modeler Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago in Illinois, writing on the RealClimate blog, compared discussing geoengineering to "having a shiny new toy" and told climate scientists to "get back to the serious business of trying to figure out how to economically reduce global CO2 emissions." At the meeting, however, Pierrehumbert urged scientists to study the problem as a supplement to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, although he called for a 10-year moratorium on any geoengineering. "To the extent I've changed my mind a little bit," Pierrehumbert explained to Science, the reason is the ease with which countries could embark on geoengineering.

Harvard climate researcher James Anderson told the group that the arctic ice was "holding on by a thread" and that more carbon emissions could tip the balance. The delicacy of the system, he said "convinced me of the need for research into geoengineering," Anderson said. And 5 years ago? "I would have said it's a very inappropriate solution to the problem."

From: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1109/1?rss=1

Photo from: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6818/images/409420aa.2.jpg

There’s a little mystery on the plywood construction wall around the Marcel Breuer designed Ameritrust Tower in Cleveland, Ohio.