One of the defenses of the paint and lead industries against litigation over lead poisoning is the paint companies claim there is no way to identify which paint company made which lead paint - they claim is is all one big public nuisance and deny any responsibility.

 The following story with its links ran in CASE Daily (Case's online newpaper) today. Do feel like you have entrepreneurial genes? I think I do! Please post your thoughts
"Do genes influence who will be entrepreneurs?"

ABC News (Reuters), June 5, 2006
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2041245

Driving into the Future: The Innerbelt Project

Location

Day two filming "The Man With The Magnetic Brain", and the economic impact on NEO is adding up. There's the dozen or so people running around town (gas and RTA), and the meals (Rascal House and the grocery store), film and processing (Dodd's), and a hat at Mike-The-Hatter - so, it's only hundreds of dollars, but that's more than would have been spent without the film industry happening here, today. And we had fun, scared a few cops, and entertained a homeless couple on E. 19th - I'd say... all that makes Cleveland a better place to be... and if you're cruising around E19th and Superior tonight, stop by and be in pictures...

 

 It is extremely important to control all dust in and around any home where there is a lead risk. Unfortunately, research shows that where there are lead risks dust control alone has little impact in reducing lead poisoning - the reduction in elevated blood lead levels is measurable and worthwhile but not sufficient to have an overall benefit to the child, or surface a solution for society.

 

Lots of people know that lead poisoning played a role in the fall of the Roman Empire (lead pipes) but in December 2005 it was learned that Beethoven died of lead poisoning - probably from a combination of pipes, lead seals on wine and documents, crystal, ceramics and paints - they started outlawing lead in Europe at the end of the 19th Century... it took America nearly a century longer...

 

While looking for lead testing kits and information in East Cleveland, at Silvermans, I slipped into paparazzi mode as I spotted three future leaders of our NEO new economy, chilling on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. They let me snap their pictures, which will be worth a fortune when these guys are famous. It can happen, when we keep our kids lead free.

While I'm not a pro sports expert, I was very pleased to see today, having coffee at A. J. Rocco's, a friendly table of local sports experts including at least one of the Cleveland Cavliers - probably the only one I'd recognize out of uniform (and I don't mean King James). I asked if they minded me taking a picture but they weren't dressed for the press. So, if you want to hang out with the Cavs, in their hangouts, you'll have to come downtown to A.J. Rocco's yourself. Or, you could reach out to them...

 

 

For so many reasons, University Circle and its institutions and the surrounding neighborhood are core to what I value in NEO, and I look forward to seeing all that continually expand in significance to me, the region and world. But, University Circle is a small geographic domain, which must be optimized for 21 organizational stakeholders, and their 1,000,000s of stakeholders, including everyone associated with Case, University Hospitals, the VA, CIA, Cleveland Museum(s), Institute of Music, Orchestra, etc., and all others in the community.

In visioning for a better region and future here, consider a broader interpretation of University Circle from the small cultural, healthcare and university center of Cleveland to the center of the entire University Community of NEO.

 

The NY Times featured an interesting editorial on "Aging in Place", published 04/22/06, raises many issues to address in NEO right now. The editorial is promoting "reverse mortgages" to allow older homeowners to tap into the equity in their homes to pay for their living costs, ideally until the end. It is very sad the end costs to live and die now eclipse the lifetime wealth and accrued assets of most Americans, who will hope at best to die without major financial hardships - increasingly, dying at home. There are many reasons for these irreversible trends, from the disproportionately aging population (also causing SS crisis) and exploding healthcare expectations and costs to overall longer lifespans.

With a prayor and the promise "this is not some kind of a trick", East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer fulfilled a promise to his citizens, this Saturday, April 8, 2006, and organized a community day to help residents of his city who have criminal records to move forward with success in life. Around 200 citizens turned out to learn how to clean up their records, as much as possible, and find jobs in a world that largely views ex-offenders as unemployable.

 

Northeast Ohio is about to see an explosive, high profile, living, learning and enlightening force hit the scene and landscape, as area filmmakers, learning institutions and the public come together to create NEO Central - a bleeding-edge collaborative media arts center for NEO now and the future.The center will be based on like-minded initiatives around the world, and will provide shared film/media education, incubation, production, distribution, business and technology resources, and facilities, which are currently located in the historic landmark Gillota Building at 300 Central Viaduct (Carnegie) and will be expanded significantly as part of an area economic development plan. More on all of this is found in the links below, which will grow...

JOHN SIBLEY BUTLER, Ph.D, is a University of Texas Professor, who will be the keynote speaker at the Butler Jones Dinner Lecture, Thursday, April 6, 2006, at 6 pm, at the CSU Wolstein Center.

He will discuss “Lessons of Black Success from Business and Military
Organizations.”

THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2006, 6PM (dinner lecture); 5PM (cocktail hour)
CSU WOLSTEIN CENTER (2000 Prospect Ave, 4th Floor). For ticket information, please call 216-687-4500. (tickets are $50, with proceeds benefiting the Butler Jones Endowed Lecture Series)

Location

Come together with leaders of the fight for public health, at the start of National Public Health Week - "Designing Healthy Communities - Raising Healthy Kids", for a globally important program at the City Club, April 4th, featuring Dr. Bruce Lanphear, who will review new data on the adverse health effects of childhood lead exposure. Considering the criticality of lead poisoning in our community, and the huge implications in NEO of the sudden escalation of legal activity around lead poisoning nationwide, it is time to become as informed as possible on this subject. Dr. Lanphear is a world expert on many aspects of this topic, and the City Club will be the place Tuesday for the cutting edge insight on raising healthy kids in NEO.

Greater Cleveland has a higher percentage of elevated blood level children than the national average, and many neighborhoods have significant lead poison problems. This book shares insight generated in the effort to eradicate lead poisoning in NEO, including initiative of the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council... GCLAC.

I've thought for some time about the issues facing East Cleveland, and thought deeply about the potential we have to uplift an underprivileged community by applying a concerted eco-development strategy.  Here I outline some of my core thoughts as framed by our six-sphere model:

 

Constant Systems' Aidan Audouy and Diane Brown drew a diverse audience for a roundtable dedicated to closing the economic development loops needed to attract their company to Northeast Ohio. Roundtable attendees had the one challenge: to learn enough about Constant Systems to determine who we know who may help Constant Systems succeed here - an experiment in viral social networking, open source economic development and the power within very few degrees of separation. In other words, among the diverse thirty-or-so folks who came together for the Excellence Roundtable, we expect to be able to connect the representatives of Constant Systems with the people they still need to meet here to succeed... customers... very specialized customers, primarily in medical-related R&D, of which NEO has many, and access all world-wide.

March 21, 2006, REALNEO and the Kent State University Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC)  hosted a wonderful open-house and Excellence Roundtable featuring, Steven Fong, the Charter Dean of the KSU School of Architecture and Environmental Design, which is based in Kent, Ohio, of which CUDC is part. In prime roundtable form, the attendees were as diverse and remarkeable as is Steven, driving a fascinating hour and half brainstorm through Steven's world of fantastic projects that he's worked on around the world, down to today's reality of NEO, viewed from 30,000 feet down to the streets.

Please come together at the Charter One Global Enterprise Center for a very special Excellence Roundtable with a specific purpose - Closing Constant Systems.

For this proactive lunchtime discussion, Constant Systems' Aiden Audouy and Diane Brown will demonstrate their technology and explore with us the factors influencing whether their company will locate valuable business operations in NEO, or Research Triangle. By being at this Roundtable, you can help them determine NEO is the best location in the nation and prove that to their CEO.

Location

Tuesday, April 04, 2006 12:00 PM Low-Level Lead Toxicity: The Ongoing Search for a Threshold Bruce P. Lanphear, MD, MPH Sloan Prof. of Children's Environmental Health & Dir., Cincinnati Children's Environmental Health Ct Reservation

Lead poisoning is still one of the most serious public health concerns facing children in Cuyahoga County. Rates of childhood lead poisoning are well above 20% in many Cleveland neighborhoods and East Cleveland. Cleveland’s rate is in the top five nationally, with the current U.S. overall rate at under 2%.

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, will review new data on the adverse health effects of childhood lead exposure, review the major sources of childhood lead exposure and discuss the regulations and tools necessary to shift our focus toward primary prevention.

Location

 

Join Steven Fong, the charter Dean of the Kent State College of Architecture and Environmental Design, for a March 21, 2006 Excellence Roundtable at their Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC - http://www.cudc.kent.edu/index.html). Steven will share his vision on his college, CUDC, Cleveland, NEO, and urban and regional planning here - we shall discuss the future of planning NEO's future.

Location

   

We hear of CAFTA, NAFTA, PAFTA, and how our government wants to help those people in areas with low wages by spreading democracy, “stabilizing” their governments, and letting our companies go and set up shop there. Reducing tariffs - we are told - will bring economic prosperity to economically “underdeveloped” regions.

 

 

Who is the film industry in NEO? We started exploring this question at a film excellence roundtable, where over 40 partners in art came together to discuss growing their industry. Today, at a benefit for Independent Pictures - http://ohiofilms.com - called "Cleveland Oscar Night America", around another 150 came out to show their support for film in NEO. The more I'm around this sector of the local economic development picture the more I realize I don't know this industry - who they are, what they do, and how they operate in the regional economy.  This is worth figuring out, so next year some of the folks watching the Oscars tonight from afar can be thanking NEO from Hollywood.