Trying to quit smoking? You are not alone, the State of Ohio is staging a major campaign against tobacco use. Case Western Reserve University has also been agressively promoting a smoke free environment and a smoking cessation program for employees. The following story is taken from Case's website, highlights were on the homepage today.

Case's Center for Health Promotion Research to establish the Ohio Tobacco Research and Evaluation Center

The Center for Health Promotion Research, a research and evaluation center in the School of Medicine's Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, recently was awarded a $450,000 contract from the Ohio Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Foundation (TUPCF) to develop the Ohio Tobacco Research and Evaluation Center (OTREC). OTREC will assist with statewide tobacco prevention and control efforts supported by TUPCF.

WIND TURBINES SOLD IN BIG BOX STORES

Canadian Tire stores are located in big box mall slots all across Canada.   If you aren’t familiar with Canadian Tire    http://www.canadiantire.ca/index.jsp , they are a hybrid of  tire/battery sales/service, auto parts, hardware and paint, home wares, lawn care, bbq, and sporting goods.   Canadian Tire’s gimmick is their issue of  “Canadian Tire Money” as a premium on every sale to be used against future purchases.  Your kids usually end up with it. 

While the old Tulane University nick-name, "Green Wave", does not bring to mind a good impression for the hurricane-ravaged region of New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA), the term they now brandish moving forward is perfect - "New Wave" - and new wave the institution has become, and all forces their leaders can muster are now directed at rebuilding every aspect of their community, spanning several states of the Gulf South and addressing every imaginable physical and social challenge.

I receive daily updates from Tulane on their progress and am usually so impressed I feel the need to share insight from there, up here in North East Ohio (NEO), as we attempt a less demanding but as important restructuring of NEO from post-industrial toxic failure to a healthy "New Economy". The first positive outcomes of this sharing has been Case University trustees tapping of the leader of Tulane, President Cowen,  and other global university leaders to assist with the rebuilding of Case, which recently lost its leadership in a faculty-led revolution proving no-confidence. There are many other opportunities for success in NEO by implementing processes and models from NOLA, and I'll share one below we may implement immediately for significant change in a very short term.

 I was sad to learn that the Fulton Street Bar and Grill was closing this Spring, as that was an Ohio City institution and great place to stop for a drink or meal in one of my favorite neighborhoods.. within a few blocks offering great locally owned, high quality dining options, from landmarks Johnny Mangos, Hecks, Great Lakes, and Parker's to relative newcomer Le Oui Oui Cafe. But as a destination and neighborhood, Ohio City can benefit from as much great culinary density as possible, and the loss of the Fulton seemed tragic. But what's new in this oldest part of town is definitely NEO and Ohio City's gain, as the fantastic "modern.mex" joint Momocho (slang for small boy, named in love of the chef/owner's son) is unique to the region and will be a major draw that is already attracting crowds in on the buzz. Momocho also comes in through a very friendly transition - the owner bought the restaurant from the owners of the Fulton, and one Fulton owner John McDonnell is well managing Momocho for the new chef/owner Eric Williams, who is busy in the kitchen making the food... well, hot!

Ode to Joy

John James,14
Refused to serve his conscience up
to indict an innocent man
handcuffed to chair; they tacked his penis
to the table
with a six inch nail
and left him there

to drip
to death
3 days later

Risking death; an act insignificant
in the face of this child’s courage
we sang:

Oje wai wai,
Moje oje wai, wai.

I heard today an interview with Chris Abani, of Nigeria, a poet, writer and activist who was imprisoned many times in Nigeria, and placed on death row, for his art and activism. He spoke of "illiterate soldiers with guns" and the struggles of his people in Nigeria and in other global conflicts around the world, including involving America, and I realized how little I pay attention to poetry and how much is offered to my mind therethrough, so I will begin adding "Poet of the day" to the "of the day" series on realneo... and the first will honor Chris Abani, from a struggling nation of which I have friends. Feel free to add favorite poems and poets as comments as you please.

On realneo, I recently coined a new term 'burbilly", which Phillip Williams found hilarious. He asked if I made this term up, which I did, and I explained to him the origins of the term, which are very serious.

Burbilly is a term for people who dwell in remote, exurban, sprawl areas. In particular the term refers to residents of exurban Northeast Ohio in the United States. Usage of the term "Burbilly" generally differs from other terms referring to rural people in the United States in that it can be used for sprawl-dwelling people anywhere but is generally not used to refer to rural people in non-sprawl areas outside Northeast Ohio. Further, terms like redneck and cracker, often connote rejection of, or resistance to assimilation into the dominant culture, while burbillies theoretically are merely isolated from the dominant culture, despite attempting to assimilate with the rural culture, for which they are generally not competent. Nevertheless, the term is sometimes considered derogatory depending on the manner in which it is used or the attitude of the target.

No recognition of the arts as important to the world, much less Cleveland, may overlook Derek Hess, who first was widely known for powerful, angst-filled figurative music posters promoting shows he was then booking at the old Euclid Tavern, which became a fine art business for Derek, which allowed him to grow his global impact to a level few artists in Cleveland have ever achieved, all while staying in and investing in Cleveland, organizing the Strhess Tour, and Strhess Clothing, and making Gallery 1300 happen and happening (opening there this Friday, July 14th). Read more about Derek below, visit the links, and if you are smart buy some of his work while you still may.

Do you realize that "The removal of lead from gasoline in 1990, regarded by many as one of the major public health triumphs of the 20th century, had an immediate impact. Between 1976 and 1994, the mean blood lead concentration in children dropped from 13.7 mcg/dL to 3.2 mcg/dL, in direct proportion to the amount of tetraethyl lead produced. One could want no clearer testimony to the efficacy of a well-conceived and consistently applied public health policy." Further, "there is a dose response relationship between lead in bones and self reported delinquent behavior in children - grounds for an arrest" and "study of prisoners in Cincinnati finds strong relationship between bone lead and number of arrests" and "statistical analysis of lead in environment vs. murder rate 21 years later is very powerful". So violent and irational behavior is an outcome of lead poisoning. Beyond the statistical proof of how this impacts society, and each of us, REALNEO's Phillip and I have seen the impact in a clinical setting, by visiting the Lead Clinic at MetroHealth and speaking with patients there, and their families, and our observations were highly disturbing.

July 17 – 21 is Ohio Lead Awareness Week. We would like to invite you to participate in the March for Lead Safe Living. This event is planned by the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council to make people aware of the issues of childhood lead poisoning, and to let people know that we can do a better job in eliminating these problems. The Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council, co-chaired by the Cleveland Department of Public Health, Cuyahoga County Board of Health, and Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, along with over fifty community partners, is committed to eliminating childhood lead poisoning by the year 2010.

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Voices and Choices is a groundbreaking initiative of the Fund for Our Economic Future to develop a far-reaching, comprehensive regional dialog for setting a course for our region's future that will produce more jobs and create better economic opportunities for our families and businesses. Voices & Choices is also educating hundreds of thousands of people about the realities facing the regional economy.

If you have the opportunity to rebuild your city from scratch, what will be your priorities - what are the priorities of your neighborhood and neighbors? Well, in New Orleans they don't have any choice about rebuilding their city, so a diverse collaboration of planners and community leaders are using sophisticated tools and methods to make certain their neighborhoods of the future are as desirable and successful as possible... read the report summary and link in below. Note, while this is part of multi-Gulf-State regional planning, which must focus on the big picture, the study here looks are resident preferences by neighborhood and even ethnicity, so it is very granular at the microeconomic level in NOLA, and so entirely applicable to NEO. I strongly believe doing the same exercise here would offer immense value, not just in Cleveland but in every neighborhood of the region... just take the exact same method and tools as used in NOLA, work with the same team at Tulane on analyses, and we'll quickly have some real micro-community development benchmarks and targets for rebuilding our region, with concensus, from the ground up

Residents rank low crime, good street lighting as rebuilding priorities.

Low crime, good street lighting, absence of litter, walkable sidewalks/crosswalks, neighborhood grocery stores, playgrounds, affordable housing and good schools are the top priorities of New Orleans residents as they rebuild or decide whether to rebuild in the post-Katrina world, according to a survey released this week by The Prevention Research Center at Tulane University. "Low crime is a priority across the city," says Tom Farley, director of the center and chair of the department of community health sciences at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. "Crime can be prevented with smart environmental planning, such as well-lit streets. We hope this data will result in rebuilding plans that address concerns about crime and safety."

Just a friendly reminder of the great bash coming up this next Thursday - July 13th at Fat Fish Blue. Thomas Mulready of Cool Cleveland had this fantastic idea of setting an event will help sponsor the Ingenuity Festival. The Ingenuity Festival is the premier event that helps blend (or blur) technology and art together. As part of this event you will get a free ticket to Ingenuity Festival. As always, I am looking to bring people together to celebrate our world class artists and technologists. So please join me!

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Hear the sound of 1,000 Drums. Listen to live jazz, hip-hop, folk, techno, classical, rock, polka, & more. Experience opera, theater, ballet, step dancing, breakdancing, contemporary dance & more. Enjoy exhibits, concerts, poetry slams, stilt walkers, jugglers, parades, food, flowers, & activities for kids, all transformed by technology. That’s Ingenuity 2006 & it’s happening this July in The Festival Village at Prospect Ave. & East 4th St. Seize the dates, at the Ingenuity Festival website and in this book, as the festival comes alive.

I've certainly paid much more attention to my alma mater, Tulane University, and home for many years, New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA), since hurricane Katrina hit last year, and what I have seen is inspired regional planning combined with collaborative community building, from which we in NEO stand to learn many great lessons.

Today's editorial by Dick Feagler on taxing smoking for the arts, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, really makes me think about the unfathomable death and destruction on this planet from humans' use of tobacco, and the evil killers who are to blame for all those deaths. The British site Action on Smoking and Health estimates that between 1950 and 2000 around 60,000,000 people worldwide have died from tobacco-related diseases. That is a shocking number, but a fraction of the 100,000,000+ who have died from tobacco over all time. But still I've been willing to remain an addict to tobacco and smoke... until Feagler's column made me picture myself dying like he may, from smoking. Feagler wrote:

I've smoked off and on (mostly on) for 50 years. My tarred lungs helped build Gateway and Cleveland Browns Stadium. I was an addict. I didn't mind until the doctor told me, "Stop it today." We can't discourage smoking on the one hand and cash in for it on the other.

The more I read about the environment and Ohio the more alarmed I become. It is not just that we are a toxic place, which we are, but that we have been a world-leader making the world toxic and continue in that leadership position today. Fpr examples, we are now the third most polluting state in America, promote very dirty coal as the future of energy, do not as a state take alternative energy seriously, and have significant issues with lead poisoning, including a long, disturbing history of causing that problem for all the world. You probably already know a major defendant in litigation over lead poisoning in America is Cleveland's own Sherwin Williams, and the top litigators for the lead and paint industry against the world are Cleveland, Ohio's Jones Day, and that we have some of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country, but would you have imagined Dayton was the world center of making lead additives for gasoline, which caused the worst worldwide distribution of toxin ever (which was the fault of General Motors), that  Kettering Laboratory on the University of Cincinnati Medical campus was named for the GM research director personally to blame, Charles F. Kettering, director of research at General Motors, and a young assistant professor of pathology at the University of Cincinnati, Robert Kehoe, corrupted the scientific understanding of lead from 1923 into the 1960s, as director of Kettering and agent of the lead industry.

Fortunately, times have changed in Cincinnati as the world expert on the dangers of lead is now Dr. Bruce Lanphear, The Sloan Professor of Children's Environmental Health and the Director of the Cincinnati Children's Environmental Health Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati. Consider the highlights below from  his recent presentation at the Cleveland City Club about lead poisoning, and then read the "Special Note on the Evolution...", as we may not move on to better tomorrows, as a society, without first understanding from where we came, and how we became who and what we are, being toxic and fooled today.

the average I.Q.s of American adults (and you reading this) were most certainly diminished from past lead exposure (especially if you lived in the days of leaded gas)... average I.Q in America is going up, as we eradicate lead 1,000s of NEO children are exposed to hazardous levels of lead in their daily lives today Low income people are most adversely impacted but children in all socio-economic classes are poisoned Often affluent homeowners poison their own families by renovating while living at home, or not properly cleaning after renovations Children pay for lead exposure through diminished productivity throughout life - in very high doses, victims lose their lives (there was a case of this in the past few weeks). Over the past century, American society and government have not addressed lead  effectively, so Americans and our society today must accept responsibilty for the diminished capacities of untold 100,000s of victims and we must pay a $multi-biillion cost for remediation, as well as suffer lead-poison related societal problems like high crime and failing education systems, to say the least. Most tragic, the overall problem was largely avoidable (Europe outlawed lead in the early 1900s), and most individual cases of lead poisoning today are avoidable. If you have or care about kids, you need to read more...

While looking for song of the day Lyrics from Cleveland's greatest, Pere Ubu, I stumbled across the following amazing news on Ubu Projex - the cyber avant garage of Pere Ubu...

RFTT Returns!
After a successful writing session in Cleveland at the end of April Rocket From the Tombs will be playing shows in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, Hoboken, Boston, New Haven and Northampton MA at the end of July, and then Nashville & Atlanta at the beginning of Sept. The band is as before: David Thomas, Richard Lloyd, Cheetah Chrome, Craig Bell and Steve Mehlman.

I saw the 2003 first post-modern tour of TFTT and it was the best. I won't bother gushing on my own about this one - trust me or read more below and at the links and then get tickets to this show at the Beachland Ballroom ASAP as it will sell out... and I'll cover this one.

RFTT 2003: Richard Lloyd, Craig Bell, David Thomas, Steve Mehlman and Cheetah Chrome.

Rocket From The Tombs existed for less than a year, played fewer than a dozen shows and was probably never seen by more than a few hundred people but it has over the decades since 1975, due to a frenetic trafficking in bootlegs, acquired an international status out of all proportion to its popularity.

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I have many good friends who work at the Plain Dealer, I've been published there, including a "Quiet Crisis" feature on bridging the digital divide, I considered their now deceased Washington Bureau editor Tom Brazaitis the most enlightened man I've ever know of NEO, and I respect Editor Doug Clifton very much. I do not agree with everything they do and am critical when I feel that fits, but I am much more often impressed with their work than disappointed, and a feature in Forum today, July 8, 2006, provided more value to the people of Northeast Ohio than any printed words I've read in NEO, ever. As it is from the LA Times, it is not published on cleveland.com, so you will need to go and buy a paper, and turn to page B9, or read on below...

Today's Plain Dealer has an editorial about the selection process for the new President of Case University that I find very exciting - partly because it shows great progress with Case, partly because it promotes a concept for the selection process that I initiated on realneo in March, and mostly because I agree completely with the PD position - "Lessons learned? - Case trustees' chairman is making the right moves as the search for a new president gets under way", and I support that "Linsalata also promised to allow the university community - both alumni and those on campus - ample opportunity to provide input on the search this fall."

Art in the Village at 5700, the gallery space located at Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Cleveland (5700 Broadway Avenue) in the Slavic Village Historic District, will be hosting an art opening on Thursday, July 6th from 5:30pm to 7:30pm. 

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WCPN's "90.3 at 9" show tomorrow is going to focus on urban housing issues in Cleveland. They've invited several of the folks who are part of the City Club's series on Redeveloping Cleveland. (See our website, http://www.cclandtrust.org/News.html#6/20/2006 for information on the series.)

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When I saw last week a preview for the Thursday, June 29, 2006, WVIZ "Ideas" program featured PD Arts and Architecture columnist Steven Litt and Cuyahoga County Planning Director Paul Alsenas discussing the state of ODOT's plans for a new bridge to replace the current I-90 span across the Cuyahoga River, I thought I was having déjà vu. Yes, this was an issue a year ago... even six months ago, but since then ODOT had so thoroughly railroaded the bridge and trench planning process through the public mind-space that it seemed all topics of discussion about this near $billion project had moved completely behind closed doors and forgotten. Well, it seems Litt and Alsenas have very different ideas about that, as they shared in an excellent "Ideas" this week, and as Litt writes at length in today's Plain Dealer. Be sure to read that article... and great work on Ideas, Steven and Paul!!! Read on...

I am really appreciative, this morning. After posting what was certainly the saddest news I can imagine, about the hardship my staff has suffered as a result of a lack of appreciation from my former business associate, Peter Holmes, I opened up this week's CoolCleveland and found that their crew had featured TWO postings from REALNEO. I am very touched and thankful to Thomas and his team for noticing REALNEO and taking an interest in the thoughts posted here - thank you. Please show appreciation back to CoolCleveland... if you are not a member, see what you've been missing... subscribe at CoolCleveland - all free - this is a real NEO must,  and send feedback to CoolCleveland letters at the links below, and supporting the upcoming CoolCleveland/Tech/Ingenuity party at Fat Fish Blue, July 13, and the Ingenuity Festival, as described below... but first, here's the nice write-up about REALNEO from CoolCleveland today, July 5, 2006: