Join us for the next Women’s Enterprise Network (WENetwork) Conversation & Interactive TV show...

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Discussion topic: TBA
Date: Saturday, August 9, 2008

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Waterloo Band Culture in Collinwood

Contributors:

Waterloo Band Culture in Collinwood with Cindy Barber, Beachland Ballroom and Tavern; Ryan Weitzel, Exit Stencil Recording Studio & Mystery of Two, band member. Clint Holley, Audio Spectrum Recording & Hayshaker Jones, band member will not be with us tonight. We will be joined by Clint's good friend, Lawrence Daniel Caswell, This Moment in Black History and National Suicide Day, band member and WCPN announcer.
And You...

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July 15, 2008: Updates in Open Source Economic Development

(Or scraping the bottom of the pond)

The Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council (GCLAC) will be holding a Press Conference in recognition of Ohio Lead Awareness Week, which will take place the week of July 20th – 26th, 2008.  Scheduled speakers will address the significant progress made in reducing the number of children affected by lead paint hazards, as well as the importance of continued vigilance and prevention in light of new evidence linking childhood lead exposure to crime, low school-performance, as well as numerous lifelong health problems.  Scheduled speakers, representing a City, County, and State unified effort to eliminate the dangers of childhood lead poisoning are:

• Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, Cuyahoga County Board of Commissioners
• Mayor Frank Jackson, City of Cleveland
• Mayor Eric Brewer, City of East Cleveland
• State Representative Mike Foley, District 14
• Stuart Greenburg, Executive Director, Environmental Health Watch
• Nakiaa Robinson, Program Manager, Office of Early Childhood, Invest in Children

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EPA Drops the Value of an American Life Almost a Million Dollars

by Christine Lepisto, Berlin on 07.12.08

Back in January of 2007 I first proposed the application of innovative, sustainably powered aquaponics in tandem with organic farming to uplift underprivileged communities and resolve urban blight.  East Cleveland, where we have worked for years now, to facilitate positive change, remains a tremendous opportunity for Urban aquaponics integration, especially given the extraordinary connections falling into place recently toward the Star Neighborhood Vision.  A two-year quest to secure financially viable and socially redeeming use for the old Hough Bakeries building has finally manifested, through trial and tribulation, with the likely emergence of multiple schools at the Star Village, as it is now called, on Lakeview in East Cleveland.  REALNEO and Star Neighborhood Development founder Norm Roulet deserves kudos for perservering through political turbulence and facilitating the key connections to make this work.  

Graphics speak louder than words, but, of course, the kids know that!!!

I thought perhaps I could stump City Fresh's Maurice Small with the question "what county in the world is the leader in urban farming?", but he didn't hesitate responding Cuba. And the July 8, 2008 I GRO EC roundtable concluded we need to plan a best practices mission to Havana. Next Tuesday, July 15, 6-7 PM, come to the Independent Green Republic Of Star Village, at the Star/Hough Bakeries Complex, to help plan our mission to Cuba and discuss other plans for transforming our region through urban farming.

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I was watching an Indians game recently when the sports announcers went a bit agog about the stadium restaurant as the TV cameras panned the Terrace Club where people were happily enjoying food treats with a view of the baseball game.

Happy people enjoying The Good Life.

Too bad you had to pay for it.

When our neighbor Dr. Pat Blochowiak told us to stop by her garden and pick some raspberries, blackberries and snow peas, I didn't realize the depths of her bounty... or how great blackberries may be. As my kids picked through nature, they chomped down probably $50 worth of the best food in town, when you may find food so good. As I looked at the bowls of berries collected in short time, I felt blessed by my community and nature. Over a fresh berries and whipped organic cream desert, our family celebrated Summer and life in the best way. All that is the certain promise of East Cleveland, with community farming. Help plan that reality with Maurice Small and others as we meet again, today, for what has become an every-other-Tuesday City Fresh I GRO EC brainstorming session, in East Cleveland. This week, we'll meet at the Hough/Star Bakeries complex, and also visit Brown's Market, which we plan to convert into a pilot City Fresh Market.

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Sometimes you have to wonder whether Plain Dealer editors read their newspaper. Now at times I can’t blame them for that, however, it might come in handy at times, too.

Sunday, the PD again helped Tim Hagan and his two buddy Cuyahoga County commissioners sound the “we’re out of money again” cry and offer as a solution another buyout. Just as the one Hagan took (retired & ran and re-elected) and now is back on the job pulling down a full salary.

I was thrilled to receive news today that one of my favorite NEO artists, Pamela Dodds, a REALNEO artist of the Day, has been awarded a $25,000 Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation was established by American artist Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) and his wife Esther.  The foundation provides large grants to ‘serious, fully-committed artists,' ‘regardless of their level of commercial success.'  This year the foundation received 482 applications from which twelve artists were selected to receive awards. I'm proud to say Evelyn and I have one of Pamela's inspiring and impressive linoleum cut prints in our collection... "Drift", above... perhaps it is time for more area collectors to seek out her work... website here!

Now that my family has land that we may use for a while, we are growing our own food... and enough for many other families, it seems. One $1.07 packet of radish seeds planted in May is already many pounds of crisp, bright, beautiful, healthy fresh veggies... and eating my first fresh radish of my life taught me radishes are actually delicious. Same for Kale, and all the varieties of lettuce covering our farmland... really fresh pesto is to die for... can't wait for the carrots and shallots!

I love art, and much in the Cleveland Museum's collection, and the old and newish CMA, but I am not convinced the current reengineering of the museum is economically positive for the region, and I am very displeased with their new slogan "art is back" as shallow and disrespectful to the real NEO arts community, which has never left. The museum needs to better explore its identity and role here, as so many arts organizations, our population and economy transition, and the CMA takes a proportionately larger share of the arts funding pie. If CMA is spending $100s millions constructing new edifices for old mold and cobwebs, I will be very disappointed. I'm waiting to see Rub put his shine on anything, other than proclaiming art is back in a place it never left. What do you think... did art leave?

Coming up at Midtown Brews with Meet The Bloggers...

The Youngstown Business Incubator: A Global Model of Quality, Connected Business Innovation
 

Join us to learn about aligning assets and networking talent the old fashioned way: by sharing know-how and seasoned expertise from one company to another just when it's needed.

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UDAG HEAVEN FOR JACOBS, RATNERS

Will Cleveland Council members let Mayor Frank Jackson, Chris Warren and developers steal away UDAG repayments in the millions of dollars from depressed, declining and diminishing neighborhoods?

We all know that taxpayers were very, very generous to the owners of Major League sports teams in Cleveland. It has cost Cuyahoga County taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars since the 1990s.

What we don’t realize is that the subsidization continues for hundreds of ball games in Progressive Field and Quicken Loan Arena each year. The subsidization also suggests that city taxpayers in their neighborhoods are being deprived of services as the wealthy sports team owners are provided with the safety force protection.

It’s been quiet on the medical mart & convention center front of late. However, no news may not be good news.

Wonder why it’s so quiet since the Cuyahoga County Commission voted (privately) to pass a $40 million a year tax to go, go, go.

Two weeks ago, City Fresh's Maurice Small met with friends in East Cleveland to discuss City Fresh, urban farming, and how we may convert a typical urban convenient store, Brown's Market, into a pilot City Fresh local foods market. During our discussions, Maurice mentioned that a dedicated urban farmer may earn more than $30,000 per year from sales of food grown on one typical urban lot (say 1/10th an acre). That being the case, and considering our ever-growing need and realigning demand for locally grown food, and the fact food may be grown locally as cost effectively as elsewhere in the world, it occurred to me that the highest and best use for most of the land now cleared, abandoned, blighted and wasted in our urban neighborhoods is for urban farming. So that is a use we are now planning to be core to redevelopment of the Star Neighborhood. Intrigued? Discuss and plan for this reality with Maurice and friends this Tuesday, from 6-7 PM, at that house on Roxbury, in East Cleveland. Please RSVP if you plan to attend.

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Ed Hauser's sure to be there, but you should be too if you care about the waterfront.  The scary sentence in the PD notice observes that the Port's "move would free port docks at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River for commercial and residential development".  Depending on what these latter developments turn out to be, we, the public, are likely to be no nearer Lake Erie than we are now with the Port taking up prime space.

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Maurice Small is the most economically and ecologically sensible planner I know.

Joe Stanley, Sudhir Kade and I have been brainstorming with City Fresh's Maurice Small about "I GRO EC" - Independent Green Republic Of East Cleveland. City Fresh already operates a Fresh Stop at Huron Road Hospital - which Maurice reports is doing great - and is active in community farming in East Cleveland. Recently, we've been discussing City Fresh having an involvement converting Brown's Convenient store into a pilot City Fresh Market, which could offer a paradigm-shifting model for bringing local food, farming and their economies into very needy urban neighborhoods, in very innovative and important ways.

The newspaper business, as readers here probably know, isn’t what it used to be.

The economic crisis for newspapers now will be felt strongly in Cleveland.

Top Plain Dealer executives – Publisher Terry Egger and Editor Susan Goldberg -  told worried editorial staff members yesterday that the business climate is so bad that the paper plans to cut 35 pages a week from its news pages and 20 percent of its workforce.

Here’s an item that should be thoroughly described in tomorrow morning’s Plain Dealer.

  Let’s see if the PD gives us ANY   description about what the public cost of this will or could mean given the desire of Mayor Frank Jackson, Marty Sweeney and the Plain Dealer to keep the public fully informed about public business.

James Levin (seated) with the Brew Crew at Carnegie Hall - photo by Sandy Kish