Yesterday, before falling into a fever-induced sleep--some 24-hour flu bug--I meant to look up the words to this song.  We've had some awfully beautiful days here in NEO. It's worth remembering:

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

From: http://www.trumanproject.org/files/misc/Truman_Project_-_Clean_Energy_Ad.pdf

Commentary from: http://climateprogress.org/2010/04/29/senior-military-leaders-announce-support-for-climate-bill/print/

The Courage Express is making a stop near you on Saturday, May 1st. 

We would love for you to come out and share the excitement as our grassroots campaign continues to gather momentum. This is your opportunity to meet Jennifer face to face. Come step aboard the Courage Express and snap some photos while you are at it!

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Today, before midnight, we have the chance to give students at a great Ohio school the chance of a lifetime. Back in February, the White House and the Department of Education invited high schools throughout the country to apply to have President Obama speak at their graduation commencement ceremony.

Ohio’s Clark Montessori High School in Cincinnati made the cut and is one of just six finalists! Help us support these great students.

Whether you care about childhood lead poisoning or not, I think you'll be interested by important insight on Lead, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Renal Function that everyone in the world should understand. Think of the cost of this on society - the suffering, reduced quality of life, and lost years for so many people, caused by lead harming kidney function. Here's the intro and abstract - you'll need to set up an account on WebMD to read the rest (apparently free - this is not an endorsement of WebMD... I am not a member... I will join to read the rest of this  and let you know my thoughts)...

While I have never considered Issue 1 - the Third Frontier - offered me direct opportunity, as an Information Technology entrepreneur I do recognize this relatively low-burden, low-exposure state funding offers great opportunities for many other important technology initiatives across Ohio. The results are well documented by the well organized supporters of Issue 1 - see their message posted below - and I certainly expect this will pass by a large majority (if not, I will be shocked). Assuming this passes, I'd like to see changes in the processes for how Third Frontier money is used in the future, as I believe all our processes in the state and region must become brighter and greener. But we can't try to accomplish that without this funding being available for the technology sector. I'll vote for Issue 1, and then become active making sure the money has as great an impact as possible - results so far provide a good foundation. I recommend you do the same... see the official story below:

Why does the Cleveland Plain Dealer try to destroy a beautify, young, smart leader like Jennifer Brunner with their dirty corporate political dealings - to get one of those corporate Republicans in office - by making it seem like she is a lost cause to their 100,000s of readers. Luckily, on realNEO we may share all the candidate's words, in full, directly with all our 1,000,000s of readers worldwide forever... like this message I just received from candidate Brunner, on the road for change for Ohio... read her insight on polls that the Plain Dealer spins as harmful for Brunner - the poll results are in fact totally up in the air and in ways say Brunner should win. The PD should let the people decide without Republican propaganda in a supposedly impartial newspaper...

I noticed a few days ago that the City of East Cleveland website is now a Drupal site. It is a big improvement from the most recent previous website, which looked more like the website for an Eric Brewer fan club than a city website. It is a good start to improving IT in East Cleveland -- now lets get more citizens online!

I've been asked what our traffic looks like over time, so I pulled a few quick charts of the number of visitors to realneo since we started using Google Analytics, and what they have visited, to measure performance of this site - and we've grown by pretty much all counts I've considered important by 30-100% since then - in some cases by 1,000s% - in less than a year-and-a-half.

I just received an email about the Governor's race - Strickland is running against ex-Lehman Brothers Managing Director John Kasich. Strickland released his tax returns today - putting his last decade of returns on open file - and it seems Kasich has not agreed to release his last decade of returns.

I though that was requred by law. This should be enforced or required as soon as possible.

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Wed, April 28, 2010 -- 12:23 PM ET
-----

Regulators Approve First Offshore Wind Farm in U.S.

After nine years of regulatory review, the federal government
gave the green light Wednesday to the nation's first offshore
wind farm, a sprawling project off the coast of Cape Cod.

I just received great news from our friend Max Eternity - very inspiring developments for him in Atlanta, including saving a Breuer (why we all met Max in the first place)... CONGRATUALTIONS AND THANK YOU MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!

Family, Friends and Colleagues:

 

When I was asked the other day to be interviewed by Architects + Artisans, it caught me by such surprise that all I could do was laugh.  You see, in the last several years I've spent so much of my time thinking, talking and writing about others--advocating for various causes--that it had become unfamiliar to actually have someone want to write about who I was, my art, and what I was doing personally.

 

For a piece entitled "To Write, Paint and Save a Monument", the Editor of A +A, Mike Welton, who has written for The New York Times, Interior Design Magazine and Dwell Magazine, writes in part:

 

Now that he’s saved Marcel Breuer’s last building from the wrecking ball, Max Eternity has returned his attention to the things that really matter, like painting and publishing.

Norm -- Both parties have worked for months crafting a bipartisan Wall Street reform bill. But, just hours ago, Senate Republicans -- including Senator George Voinovich -- voted for a second time to protect their allies on Wall Street and block reform.

Maybe they think obstruction is a good political strategy in an election year. Maybe they're hoping the delay will give bank lobbyists time to water down reform with loopholes and exemptions.

"Kudos on providing a forum for hatred, racism and trolling. Hope you considered this project a "success"" - believelandd. I couldn't say it better myself... this comment by a Cleveland.com reader, posted on Cleveland.com today, condemning the departing "Chief Executive" of the smoke and mirrors PlainDealer/Newhouse's wretched little portal to spam. Hard to calculate anything that has harmed  development of the new economy in Cleveland so much in our history... and so The Chief Executive is being universally trashed in departure.

There is a new Facemob that is degrading society worldwide, as is the Facebook purpose.  This trashy Facemob is called DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN. To think "Social Computing" consultants in Cleveland are paid (probably with our tax dollars) to force citizens to use Facebook, just to interact with Cleveland City Council - I believe that foolishness must NOW STOP! Those responsible must be terminated.

On May 11th you may benefit three important peace organizations while being smart and local about your foods... simply by grocery shopping. The Food Coop will generously donate a portion of your total bill, on the second Tuesday of every month, to benefit Cleveland Peace Action, InterReligious Task Force on Central America (IRTF), and Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice

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Come and start your Cinco de Mayo celebration one day early with great authentic Mexican cuisine and Dine Out for Peace! Dining Out for Peace continu

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Dear Norm,

I've been traveling Ohio on our silver school bus that we bought on eBay and our supporters named "The Courage Express." What's it like? Well, it's a little bumpy, as school buses are, but it's one of the happiest times of this campaign.

2008 Lead Poisonings of children in Cuyahoga County, Ohio - do not move here

The Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council has released data on children in the neighborhoods of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs who were tested and documented as lead poisoned in Cuyahoga County in 2008 - about 3,200 of our Cleveland children were KNOWN to be lost to lead poisoning - about 4,000 children poisoned in Cuyahoga County overall. As only a small percentage of our children are actually tested for lead poisoning, the numbers of children in the County lost to lead poisoning is much higher... 1,000s of victims higher.

Cleveland's worst known mass-murderer, Anthony Sowell, is only known to have killed 11 people.... yet that has captured 1000s of inches of pointless newsprint... hours of pointless news coverage... to help nobody.

For a humorous take on a previous transition—the shift from scrolls to books—
watch this clip from Norwegian television NRK (with English subtitles)

realNEO is popular with librarians, and our members are certainly data intellectuals, so I expect an extensive treatment of the future of libraries - Gutenberg 2.0 - in the May/June Harvard Magazine will be of great interest here.

The insightful feature begins:

A photo montage of images taken en route to recently meet with Jennifer Brunner. 
The woman who will help us save NEO :)

This event is the premier event of the Department of Arts Education of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. This is our 11th year of producing this fun packed month of events. Please come out to some of our events and learn what we know – the kids of CMSD actually do some great and wonderful things.

Interesting to see a man who has been responsible for lead poisoning 1,000s of children - 100,000s throughout his "political career" - now "DEFEND" himself about anything, yet here our Cleveland City Council PRESIDENT proclaims "I am not a crook". SO TYPICAL of our incompetent, irresponsible "leaders" to our deathcamp here.