Meet the Public Utilities Commissioners of Ohio - five "public servants" of the State of Ohio who have approved an electricity demand side management program that is so unfair and costly to residents of Northeast Ohio, and so advantageous to a select group of public utility companies, as to raise absolute doubt about the integrity, competency and honesty of those setting energy policy and regulations for our state. Of course, energy policy for Ohio determines our levels of pollution, which are high. These dubious people are:

In coverage of truly depressing news in our region, the Cleveland Plan Dealer today reports "Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port authority passes on grant for Dike 14 preservation". The Plan Dealer reports:

"It is more prudent to allow for the Dike 14 planning to mature along the time frames anticipated for the lakefront projects as a whole," wrote port attorney Joel Pentz in a letter to a group of environmental agencies working to rescue and preserve the area as a wildlife refuge.

Pentz is absolutely correct. The Port Authority is working with these same environmental groups to plan the relocation and development of facilities so disruptive to the local environment and Lake Erie that it would be entirely foolish to spend a penny on any environmental initiatives within miles of the planned port relocation - especially along the lakefront. If we are seriously allowing over 1/2 billion dollars to be spent reconfiguring our lakefront for container traffic, do not spend a penny on anything not container port related around there until done - for the next 30 years or so.

At around 5 PM, on September 23, 2009, WKYC Channel 3 news reported "shocking and disturbing photos, allegedly of incumbent Mayor Eric Brewer, are being circulated in the community, The Investigator Tom Meyer has learned." Photographs that appear to be East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer in woman's clothes, some that are pornographic, have apparently been circulating in East Cleveland for over a year - reportedly many years - and been broadly published by the mainstream media since the 23rd.

On the 24th, I was called by one of the mayor's confidants and told to watch out for retaliation. It seems that Mayor Brewer told the confidant he thinks I distributed the pictures of the mayor. I am not the only person being targeted by such paranoid delusions.

The Real News - Paul Jay speaks to Jessy Tolkan at the Tides Foundations' Momentum conference in San Francisco. They speak about Tolkan's coalition on climate change fighting Obama to establish a moratorium on all coal mining.

Severe Particulate Matter 2.5 Hourly Reading in Cleveland at 8:00 AM on 09/23/09 - see current here

There is clear evidence the leadership of Northeast Ohio has failed to create an environment encouraging world-class monitoring, analysis, research, notification and controls of pollution created in our region of Ohio, and the consequences on residents and society. As a result, the people of this region have suffered significant health consequences, including early death, and impaired learning ability, crippling our schools and workforce, and society and the regional economy have suffered greatly. As much of our pollution is exported beyond our region, our failure to be world-class addressing pollution here causes harm world-wide.

It recently came to my attention that one of the most serious sources of pollution in Cuyahoga County is literally in my back yard. Less than two kilometers upwind from my home are the coal and natural gas fired external boilers at the power plant shown above, at University Hospitals, operated by Medical Center Company (MCCo), polluting the surrounding neighborhoods since the 1930s.

For the 30+ years of my life spent in Northeast Ohio, in childhood and as an adult, University Circle has been at the center of my universe. What Place is at the Center of Your Universe?

Thanks to REALNEO's lmcshane for pointing out one of the most interesting developments in the American "sustainability movement" ever - what appears to be Chicago's real news source, The Chicago Reader, broke the news, September 4, 2009, that "The Green Mayor's Green Policy Maker Leaves for Vancouver". This is the story of former Cleveland and Chicago area sustainability guru Sadhu Johnston, now set to become the deputy city manager of Vancouver.

After reading the story in today's Cleveland.com, "Owner of razed Cleveland warehouse still fighting city, Precision Environmental over lost vehicles", about a second Frank Giglio in Cleveland - this one on the East Side - named Michael Ayers, who had his property condemned, stolen and destroyed under the direction of the Cleveland Building and Housing Department...

As Jeff Buster reported on REALNEO, this summer there was some severe weather activity in the Shaker Heights area, where  my parents live, that took down a huge number of huge trees.

In both areas of Cleveland's West Side where I've lived, I knew there were chickens and roosters nearby (some I saw, and some I heard), but I haven't come across any fowl life on the East Side of Cleveland, or in East Cleveland. I wonder if there are any other chickens in my part of town? There certainly were chckens on every property back when this was farmland, 100+ years ago.

Anne Trubek for Good Magazine - Civic leaders and artists are coming up with some interesting ideas, and often the line between the two groups is blurred. The perfectly-named Unreal Estate Agency in Detroit is aimed at showcasing “new types of urban practices (architecturally, artistically, institutionally, everyday life, etc) that came into existence, creating a new value system in Detroit,” including helping people purchase and rehab a home for under $5,000.

While I was sitting behind Food On The Move, at St. Clair and East 140th, where a friend works, I noticed a pear tree in the lot next door, full of rippening pears. While the lot is well tended, and does not appear "vacant", the lone pear tree is the only occupant. And nobody seems to notice it is there, despite its bounty of free food. There are 100s of pears on the tree - in a market, they would be worth $100s. This lot could contain dozens of pear trees - perhaps 100s - producing $10,000s in income for the owners and those who tended them.

Late on the 4th of July, there was a big fight in my neighborhood. Thankfully, I wasn't there. A friend who was there described it as around 100 people - some from East Cleveland and some from Cleveland - who just plain wanted to fight. No gang or drug issues - no girl in the middle - just a bunch of people so stressed and freaked out by life that they needed to pound somebody. On that night, those folks settled for pounding each other, and little harm was caused.

So I went to see Food, Inc. at the Cedar Lee with a full house of foodies on Monday night. I recommend the film. It features Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser and Joel Salatin and other well known (to foodies) folks. I had received an email invite from Brad Masi and I went with my farm collegues. After the show there was a panel. Brad was on it and some guy (who's name I cannot recall from Whole Foods) and Warren Taylor of Snowville Creamery in Pomeroy, Ohio. Warren was awesome.

There are certainly places in Cleveland where people very much enjoy our greatest natural resource, Lake Erie. To the East or West, rich or poor, it offers pleasures and potential, as filthy as it may be and shall remain.

Do the Port Authority and their planners from New York City have a clue what is the potential of our Great Lake and lakefront? Have you seen any good plans?

Are we doing anything close to what we should to protect the environment of Lake Erie? Is this the Bluest Lake possible, for this brightest greenest place?

Since our founding, in 2004, REALNEO has become a groundbreaking free, open source social network of global interest – recently recognized as one of the top networks of our type in the country, by the Knight Foundation.

In 2008, the members of REALNEO.US formed REAL COOP, an Ohio legal cooperative, which now owns and operates REALNEO.US and REAL.COOP. We are unique in the world of social computing, and a global innovator in the evolution of information systems.

From the REALNEO.US homepage:

Thanks to Laura McShane for posting this morning a comment linking to Will Allen's "Good Food Manifesto" on his Growing Power blog. I, and millions of other people, became aware of Will last Sunday, when he was featured in the New York Times Sunday Magazine article "Street Fighter", but folks who follow local foods best practices surely knew of Will long before.

Over the past 20 years, I've spent most of my "professional" time as an entrepreneur, with world-class expertise conducting multi-dimensional, multi-client relational comparative data and best practice analyses of any aspects of the world's largest and best global enterprises, environments and systems, and developing and consulting on innovations and total quality improvement. This work has generated a wealth of knowledge on large general systems, with a unique expertise in information systems and telecommunications. REALNEO is a product of this highest level expertise, drawn from the best practices of the best organizations on Earth. What REALNEO has developed for Cuyahoga County - what has been generated out of the REALNEO-generated Real Cooperative - takes general systems innovation to a whole new level of making us the brightest greenest place on Earth. So, we really do have a purpose to Cuyahoga County owning the Breuer, and the vision is beautifully expressed in this great rendering above, to be REAL COOP citizen headquarters of the open source capital of this brightest greenest state of Earth.