A blog I like

100 Days in Cleveland

Global Cleveland

Today in a downtown drugstore an elderly Indian man with jet black hair--white at the roots-- was buying a box of hair dye and other sundries. The check-out clerk rings him up and then leans over to the clerk who was ringing me out and asks, "you have his coupons?". My clerk glances at his purchases and then ruffles through a stack of coupons and hands over two.

His clerk announces in a loud voice apparently reserved for those who don't speak English well, "you saved ten dollars". The Indian man raises his eyebrows, smiles, and starts fumbling with the gum at the counter. He hurriedly grabs 3 packs of orange Trident and adds it to his purchases.

He pays and gives a pack of gum to each clerk in gratitude. "For you, for you, for me," he says.

My clerk looks at me and explains, "I always keep his coupons for him. He never remembers to bring them. He's been coming here for years. He doesn't understand much English, but he understands ten dollars."

Crooked River Dancing

I made a Weebly today. After a conversation about artistic collaboration last night with Kate Sopko, I decided it was time I had a choreography website-- an online portfolio of sorts. I know that someday I'll have a real website, but I think it will do for now. Next step? Make a dance so I have something to put on the homepage. www.crookedriverdancing.weebly.com

raindark, countercat, athwart

I've turned 26 pages of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy-- a favorite author of mine. I've read most of his novels with the exception of 2 of his earliest, The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark.

His books are compelling, spare, intelligent and poorly/brilliantly (un)punctuated. He makes up words, but I don't read it as gratuitous. I usually end up sacrificing a night's sleep with a McCarthy novel. My intention is to take my time with this one.

The book begins with an italicized intro. Here is just one crazy good sentence from it:

Down there in grots of fallen light a cat transpires from stone to stone across the cobbles liquid black and sewn in rapid antipodes over the raindark street to vanish cat and countercat in the rifted works beyond.

The first chapter starts like this:

Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty watersliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun. A hand trails over the gunwale and he lies athwart the skiff, the toe of one sneaker plucking periodic dimples in the river with the boat's slight cradling, drifting down beneath the bridge and slowly past the mud-stained stanchions. Under the high cool arches and dark keeps of the span's undercarriage where pigeons babble and the hollow flap of their wings echoes in stark applause. Glancing up at these cathedraled vaultings with their fossil woodknots and pseudomorphic nailheads in gray concrete, drifting, the bridge's slant shadow leaning the width of the river with that headlong illusion postulate in old cupracers frozen on photoplates, their wheels elliptic with speed. These shadows form over the skiff, accommodate his prone figure and pass on.

Keep in mind that the dialogue that follows is Hemingway-spare.

Bikespresso

I may attend Bikespresso. Could be a good kick-off to Cleveland Bicycle Week.

Re-thinking Borders

Ron Rael says the wall on the US/Mexico border is expensive, detrimental to the environment, ineffective, and even deadly, since hundreds die of dehydration each year as they try to cross the border.

“I have to accept the wall because it exists, but as a designer I see that something better is possible. Why not do something intelligent, something incredible? I envision not just a ‘dumb wall,’ but a social infrastructure that connects and improves lives on both sides.”

His designs for a better, more useful, more environmentally friendly, innovatiave wall.

Aren't they Cute?

Only a week later, and at least half my seeds have sprouted.

Every Piece of Plastic Ever Made Still Exists Today

No matter where you live, what you do affects our oceans:





Here's what some Clevelanders are doing to get people to "Drink Local, Drink Tap". Visit the Sustainable Water 2019 group Tower City this week to get involved.