Possible Ohio City Crematory

Ohio City's Bodnar Funeral Home applied for a zoning variance on December 22nd to build a crematory at 3929 Lorain Avenue. Ward 14 Councilman Joe Santiago is in support of the building addition and expansion of the funeral home’s on-site services. An Ohio City resident told me representatives spoke with only one block club prior to the zoning appeal which occurred three days before Christmas.

I live 9 blocks east and 2 blocks south of this facility, but that's not close enough that I had to legally be notified about the zoning appeal. The crematory would be located within feet of homes and within blocks of many schools: St. Ignatius, Urban Community School, Orchard Elementary and Paul L. Dunbar Elementary.

In addition to homes and schools, the Gather ‘Round Farm is right next door. According to several reports, crematoria release toxic chemicals into the neighborhoods in which they are located and several health professionals oppose locating them in residential areas. I can’t imagine they would recommend growing vegetables and eating eggs from within feet of those toxic emissions. See below for links to reports.

According to the Board of Zoning Appeal’s applicant guide, the board will take into account “whether the essential character of the neighborhood would be substantially altered or adjoining properties would suffer a substantial detriment as a result of the variance”. I think a crematory operating on a main street in one of Cleveland’s few thriving neighborhoods, could be detrimental to the essential character of the neighborhood.

I am not sure if the appeal was approved, but if it was, I believe the community has 30 days to protest an approved zoning variance. I will check into this and post an update.

According to the All Ohio Cremation and Burial Society which curiously shares the same Lorain Avenue address as the Bodnar Funeral Home:

. . . we do not currently own the crematory facility, we are in the process of planning and obtaining the necessary permits and authorizations for a bran new state of the art facility.

So, it seems as if they are sure enough of zoning approval that they have already started advertising their crematory.

As far as I can tell, most urban funeral homes outsource their cremations. Cremation Service Inc. is a crematory that operates in the Flats at 1612 Leonard Street in a mostly industrial area. Does anyone in the blogosphere know if this facility produces any odors?

Crematory Links

Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.'s chief medical health officer, says the provincial government should consider regulating emissions from crematoriums because of possible health risks.
Vancouver Sun

Crematoria may put babies at risk

Mercury Emissions from Crematoria

By coincidence, a positive application of crematoria emissions found its way into my news aggregator.

Bygone Skills for Our Collective Future

"What is elegance? Soap and water!"                                                                                  -Cecil Beaton  

The Transition Discussion Group met December 22nd to learn how to make soap and to discuss Chapters 3 and 4 in the Transition Handbook. A recurring sentiment is that many of us have been indoctrinated with a fear of making things ourselves—even simple items like soap. The skills we are learning were once common, basic knowledge, but corporations have constructed a world in which many of us feel disempowered to do-it-ourselves; we feel most comfortable purchasing products and services.

We made soap with tallow made from rendered beef suet. As a vegetarian I wasn’t too keen on making soap from meat products, but after hearing the demonstrator’s reasoning behind their choice I felt that it really was the more resilient decision. They chose to use tallow because it is more local and less expensive than making soap with imported vegetable oils. 

Making soap took a couple of hours (it takes a couple of weeks before you can lather up with it), but the ingredients and process are simple. Besides tallow or a vegetable oil, the other ingredients in soap are distilled water and sodium hydroxide. In the past, potassium hydroxide was used instead of sodium hydroxide. Potassium hydroxide was traditionally made by pouring water through hard wood ashes and then boiling the solution to make lye water. Potassium hydroxide results in a softer soap.The soap-making process is outlined on several websites and there are some books at the public library.

Our discussion focused primarily on resilience and its three components: modularity, diversity and tightness of feedback loops. We examined possibilities for resilience in three different communities: Cleveland as a whole, a neighborhood street and a household. 

The breakout groups examined behaviors and skills that add to resilience and those that do not. For example, using compact fluorescent light bulbs provides many benefits including efficiency and lower emissions. However, in order to use them, you still have to rely on the national power grid. The power grid is not diverse, not modular and has loose feedback loops. 

The recent water main break was a reminder of my own dependence on the City Water Department. I have no diversity--no resilience--when it comes to my water source, which is yet another reason to have a couple of rain barrels in my yard. 

We generated ideas for our next two meetings based on resiliency. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be talking about facilitating a community-wide skill sharing network as well as learning how to make rain barrels and creating a simple gray water system in the home. The following meeting, we’ll be learning about non-violent communication and discussing chapters 5 and 6 in the book.

You don't have to be Green to be green

The Green Song from Mario Vellandi on Vimeo.

Resilience in Community

I am part of a loosely affiliated group that meets to discuss and act on our community’s transition to life after cheap fossil fuels. The group had its first bi-monthly meeting last Monday.

Our discussions are guided by the book, "The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience", by Rob Hopkins. We chose this book because Hopkins focuses on actions we can take as a community to plan for (instead of being surprised by) an inevitable energy descent.

Last Monday we discussed theoretical frameworks for our activities as a group; Will adaptation, evolution or collapse occur when fossil fuels are scarce and climate change is affecting our ecosystem? We didn’t agree on what the future will bring, but we did concur that whatever happens, we’d like to be a part of a well-knit, capable and locally sustainable community.

The activities will be hands-on—individuals take turns sharing experience/experiments in resilient living. Last Monday we cut up locally scavenged apples and left them to stew during the discussion portion of the evening. After the discussion, we canned the applesauce. Ingredients: free apples, glass jars, lids and laughs. On December 22nd, we’ll be learning to make soap from lye and vegetable oils.

This group is in its forming stage, but I am truly excited about the list we generated of skills to learn and skills to teach.

What we’d like to learn from others

• Living sustainably without alienating others, being elitist or escapist and being aware of the dynamics of privilege
• Gardening
• Food preservation
• Fire-building
• How to make this group multi-generational, -lingual and -racial
• Knitting
• How to build rain barrels
• Getting off the power grid: Having a home that relies on closed loop systems
• Feel more empowered to make changes
• Cooking
• Yoga
• Making kombucha
• Straw bale houses
• Soap
• Drum circles
• Basic bike repair/maintenance and winter riding tips
• Low-maintenance lawn coverings
• Organize volunteers and hook them up with needy non-profits
• How to spread the word, connect with other communities
• Share mutually
• Recycle water
• Live without so much electricity, natural gas, coal and oil
• Make instruments from scavenged materials
• Eat wild plants
• Build simple structures with easy-to-come-by materials
• Turn dead animals into meat, fur, leather and other useful materials.
• Treat illnesses without modern medicine
• Local plants and wildlife, herbal medicine, holistic mental health
• Self-defense
• Survival in freezing and subzero temperatures for sustained periods of time
• French, Psychokinesis, Tabla drumming, kiai and bi-location
• Fermentation
• Earth-centered paganism

What we know and can teach others

• Fermenting vegetables
• Making kombucha
• Making wine
• Making soap
• Making moon pads
• Living in community
• Interacting with homeless people
• Cooking
• Baking bread
• Rendering tallow and lard
• Knitting
• Yoga
• Pilates
• Modern dance
• Zen meditation
• Website making
• Making apple cider
• Setting up rain barrels, harvesting rain water
• Making plant medicine and Identifying plants
• Growing mushrooms
• Bio-remediation of soil and water
• Fixing bikes
• Capoeira
• Facilitation
• Listening
• Singing
• Playing
• Tromboning
• Chanting
• Outreach
• Working with kids
• Conducting Anti-oppression workshops
• Raising chickens
• Repairing Volkswagons
• Making biodiesel
• Juggling
• Womyn's health
• Mentrual pads
• Salves
• Making massage oil and massage
• Nonviolent communication
• Impromptu theater/dance, rap
• Percussion
• Fitness
• Self-defense,
• Finding free stuff
• Souture thrift shopping
• Action as opposed to talk
• Various arts/crafts (collage, button-making)
• Moderating discussions
• Writing
• Mental health and alternatives to traditional psychiatric methods
• Fermenting veggies
• Changing motor oil
• Converting diesel cars to veggie oil
• Constructing cold frames
• Making mead
• Testicular & prostate self-exam
• Martial arts (tai shin doh)
• Basic womyn's self defense
• Hiking
• Painting houses
• Home repair
• Deck-building
• College radio and audio production
• Natural history
• Spiritual resilience
• Diabetes self-care
• Strategic planning for grassroots groups
• Grant-writing

In the Wry

Perhaps adolescent angst is an appropriate reaction as the human race comes of age on a finite planet. Like teenagers on punishment, we all need an allowance reduction and suspened driving priveleges. 

Take most people, they're crazy about cars.  They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer.  I don't even like old cars.  I mean they don't even interest me.  I'd rather have a goddam horse.  A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

  ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, spoken by the character Holden Caulfield

This fall I think you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind.  The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom.  He just keeps falling and falling.  The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with.  . .  They gave it up before they ever really even got started.

 ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 24, spoken by the character Mr. Antolini

Hearing Colors

Really Bad's Challenge

Christine is right. As far as I know, not I, nor anyone in my circle of friends/acquaintances bothers to comment on clevleland.com. If I didn't live here and based my opinion of Cleveland solely on the PD's site and subsequent comments, I would gladly avoid this city.

Exile

I spent two days and one night in suburban Columbus, Ohio visiting my family last weekend. During a visit to the burbs, I will generally suffer from isolation-induced boredom, lack of exercise compounded by an unwalkable neighborhood and malaise brought on by chain restaurant food and strip mall scenery.

To stave off the onset of acute suburbitis, I packed my knitting, 2 books and my laptop to catch up on work. While having quality time with my family as we gathered together to not speak to each other in front of the TV, I may have offended by reading during Television Time instead of actively participating in the watching.

To hasten my recovery, I sang along to Liz Phair's, Exile in Guyville cassette as I drove back to Cleveland. I started to feel better once I was north of I-480.

Sinking Street; Neighbors Meet

The surface of Chatham and West 30th had been leaking water for a few days before a large sinkhole opened up and swallowed an RV. It was about 15 feet deep and completely hollow minus a couple of bricks and some rushing water. 

I had called the water department a few days before and they had evidently visited because there were spray painted glyphics on the street in red and yellow. I can't imagine they knew the immediacy of the problem from their investigation, but from the photo you can see the red arrows pointing right at the edge of the sinkhole. 

Last night the RV kept falling deeper into the street and it was up to the rear window before bedtime. I am not sure how it was towed it out, but it was gone this morning.  When I got home from work, the hole was filled in somewhat with cement.  

The positive to the bottom dropping out of the street was speaking with a lot of my neighbors as we gawked at the scene and tried to keep the kids from the edge of the crumbling street. 

I Voted Today: No Sticker

The last two presidential elections did not inspire my confidence in Ohio's version of the free and fair franchise. I don't feel this way because my candidates of choice lost; I feel this way because I think they probably won. I am not prone to conspiracy theories, but I can't dismiss a greater plan to disenfranchise: hanging chads in 2000, the touch screen debacles in 2004, long lines both years, etc . . .

In the primary election last spring, a BOE poll worker actually inspected my ballot. She opened it up, read my vote, detached the portion that was supposed to stay attached (I found out later), and then put it who knows where. Believe me, I love going to the polls on election day to commune with my fellow voters -- to get that sticker, but I decided not to risk it this year.

In 2008, I voted as safely, securely and tamper-resistantly as I know how. I requested my ballot by mail and filled it with leisure at my kitchen table with the help of the League of Women Voters. Today I delivered it in person to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and dropped it in the locked, blue ballot box myself.

Lessons

I am in the middle of a career transition. I am a "retiring" modern dancer who just can't quit dancing despite her knee problems. I completed my Master's degree in May, left my year-long assistantship in August, and started a new job last week. Sounds pretty great on blog.

This transition, however, is defying my expectations. I had envisioned a swan song of sorts to end my dance career. One last performance. An evening-length work that would have premiered Spring of 2008 just as I was finishing school and before I moved on to the next phase of my life. I had it all worked out perfectly with no messy overlaps. I was to be so distracted by my new job that I wouldn't have time to mourn the end of a too-short 7-year dance career.

The reality has been that my dance company, Antaeus Dance, has had a difficult time securing a presenter and a venue appropriate to the work. We are still creating the piece that I thought would be just a fond memory by now.

Besides the obvious time, energy and scheduling issues, I am having a difficult time observing myself being replaced in the ranks of the company. Next month another dancer will be performing my role in my favorite dance. I know that it is time for this to happen, but I didn't expect to be present to witness my own obsolescence; I was supposed to be retired at this point.

The piece we are creating, Molt, is about transformation. As the piece progresses my colleagues and I shed our layers, as we struggle for growth. How ironic is it that my own growth is being stunted by my dedication to a dance piece about transformation? Every time I go to rehearsal to dance about change, I am confronted by my own commitment that prevents change.

There are lessons here for me: transformation is painful, let go of expectations, do not linger when it is over. I am sure there are more.

A Lady's First Larder

I was first introduced to the concept of local food when I worked at Parker's New American Bistro in Ohio City. I worked there for four years until the restaurant closed in 2006. Parker Bosley, a controversial figure in Cleveland, started the restaurant that first brought consciousness to Cleveland cuisine.

Despite his polarizing political philosophies, Bosley is undeniably lauded for beginning the local food movement in Cleveland and he opened the first restaurant that sourced its meat and produce from local, family farms. Bosley is currently retired from the restaurant business and is working with the North Union Farmer's Markets.

Since my introduction to local foods, buying and eating locally has become increasingly important to me for a variety of reasons: community, carbon footprint, nutrition, social justice, connection, sustainability, etcetera. I am a City Fresh shareholder and a farmer's market (there are so many in Cleveland!) shopper which makes it quite convenient to eat mostly locally from Spring to Autumn.

I find winter to be the most trying time to maintain my locavore priorities. Although there are some cool weather vegetables available, in January I inevitably buy produce grown faraway.

In an effort to eat fewer imports during Cleveland's winter I made a decision to learn to preserve food this summer. I began with the fruit that grows in the backyard of my century-old, Ohio City rental. First, I tackled the annoying mulberry tree by my driveway. Giving myself an attitude adjustment about the mushy, stinky, fly-attracting mush, I decided to pick the ripened fruit before it hit the ground. I got some recipes online, some mason jars, and some pectin and made my first ever batch of jam. It was fun, edible, empowering, useful and gift-worthy.

I repeated the process with the backyard strawberry patch. I ate many fresh strawberries, but could not consume enough of them in peak season.

Last week, the Concord grape vines produced such a bounty that it would be impossible for my friends and I to eat them all while fresh. I gave about 10 pounds to Lucky's Cafe, ate a ton and then made grape jam. Maybe next year I'll learn to make wine.

Feeling inspired by my blossoming pantry, I decided to preserve some staples. Last weekend I bought almost 20 pounds of tomatoes from the North Union Farmer's Market at Shaker Square. I borrowed a pressure cooker, boiled mason jars and taught myself how to can tomatoes. I hope to can corn next.

I know that my small stash of preserved items is merely a small gesture toward eating locally during the winter, but I hope that I am developing a mindset that allows for thoughtful planning and consistent actions that support my priorities.

Keep your eye out for my February Lasagna Party featuring Mogadore-grown tomatoes and Ohio City Pasta! Also, check out the Local Food Cleveland site.

Mall B

My morning commute typically involves a Rapid ride to Tower City and a walk to Lakeside Avenue. In between those points is one of my favorite downtown places: Mall B.

Right now the Verdant Walk is there--a Cleveland Public Art project with green, round, solar paneled night lights interspersed between native grasses. The grasses are going to seed and little brown birds (finches?) frequent the area to feast on summer's bounty.

Mall B has always been a park and was part of the Cleveland's original City Plan. Someone told me that about ten years ago Mall B was a parking lot. However, Mall C was used as parking until just a few years ago. Below is a picture from the Cleveland Memory Project of a Victory Garden at Mall B in 1945.

I hope the Verdant Walk is followed by other installations and creative uses for this space. I thought maybe free lunchtime Croquet games would be nice. Any ideas for use of this public space?

Ready, (mind)Set, (let) Go!

A group of friends/acquaintances have been having a series of consciousness discussions at Visible Voice Books in Tremont. I am planning to attend on August 6th at 7:30pm. Before each discussion, participants are encouraged to read a set of articles on a chosen topic. Next week's focus is evolution beyond the conflict of Darwinism vs. Creationism.

I was alternately annoyed and intrigued to read views on evolution that I don't ascribe to and so typically ignore. I found most interesting the nuggets about evolution as it relates to social consciousness and the causes of sweeping changes in global mindset.

An excerpt from Daniel Pinchbeck's book, 2012: The Return Of Quetzalcoatl is included.

The Stone Age lasted many thousands of years, the Bronze Age lasted a few thousand years, the Industrial Age took three hundred years, the Chemical Age or Plastic Age began a little more than a century ago, the Information Age began thirty years ago, the Biotechnology Age geared up in the last decade. By this calculus, it is conceivable that the Nanotechnology Age could last all of eight minutes. At that point, human intelligence might have complete control of the planetary environment, on a cellular and molecular level. This could lead to utopian creativity or dystopian insanity--perhaps both would arrive at the same moment.

I also learned a new word: Metanoia. The word has a few meanings: a spiritual conversion or awakening, a fundamental change of character or an attempt of a conflicted psyche to heal itself through breakdown and change.

I have come across a similarly clinical way to think about changing one's mindset in How everyday products make people sick : toxins at home and in the workplace. Author Paul D.Blanc compares the grudgingly slow change of industry and individual mindset about global warming to the stages of grief. He believes that as our fossil fueled convictions begin to grieve their own demise we can expect to experience:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance.

Looks as if the United States is currently hovering between Bargaining (carbon trading) and (economic) Depression. It seems we grieve the death of attitudes and ideas, perhaps more than the death of people. Maybe this is because we expect to lose people, but not our convictions. Looking forward to finding out which of my core beliefs will be challenged on Wednesday.

On July 10th, The Plain Dealer reported "More people left Cleveland last year than any other major city in America". There are 438,000 people living in a city that was once home to 914,000. Cleveland has lost half its body weight and we are looking rather lean these days. What are we going to do with this skeleton?

In Iyengar yoga, teachers often emphasize "squeezing the muscles towards the bone". This drawing in supports the body when it is in challenging positions. The yogi/ni contracts inward to provide a lithe stability instead of building showy, useless bulk by pooching the muscles out thoughtlessly.

I am concerned about the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority's announcement today of rate increases and route cuts. Mass transit is the connective tissue of our community. I will be writing my representatives and encouraging them on a state and federal level to increase funding for public transportation. Cutting RTA isn't trimming the fat; it's removing the heart.

Enchanted

Yesterday, I tried to approach Independence Day without weariness. Nobody says it, but I know it’s gauche to be patriotic among my social circles. The accepted attitude among progressives in my age bracket is a cynical regard for country and a jaded global perspective accompanied by some fatalist notions.

I watched the puff-pop, fizzle-drip, sparkle-drift of Cleveland’s firework display from a vantage west of the Cuyahoga, through telephone wires and above a freeway bridge.

I refused to fret over fireworks’ symbolism as wartime rockets red glare. I didn’t reflect on the current unsound war. I tuned out the auditory violence of explosions. I simply opened my eyes and took it in—enchanted.

UNWRITTEN

Sometimes we regret our failure to write about things that really interest us. The reason we fail is probably that to write about them would prove embarrassing. The things that interested us in the past week, for example, and that we were unable or unwilling to write about (things that stand out clear as pictures in our head) were: the look in the eye of a man whose overcoat, with velvet collar, was held together by a bit of string; the appearance of an office after the building had shut down for the night, and the obvious futility of the litter; the head and shoulders of a woman in a lighted window, combing her hair with infinite care, making it smooth and neat so it would attract someone who would want to muss it up; Osgood Perkins in love with Lillian Gish; a man on a bicycle on Fifth Avenue, a short eulogy of John James Audubon, who spent his life loafing around, painting birds; an entry in Art Young’s diary; about a sick farmer who didn’t know what was the matter with himself but thought it was probably biliousness; and the sudden impulse that we had (and very nearly gratified) to upend a large desk for the satisfaction of seeing everything on it slide off slowly onto the floor.

-E. B. White
The New Yorker
04/26/1930

E. B. White is probably my favorite author. I adore Strunk & White’s Elements of Style and Essays of E. B. White is favored vacation reading. I am presently reading his Writings From the New Yorker: 1925-1976. If Mr. White were living today, he’d presumably be a blogger of the highest authority. Witty, succinct, timely and timeless, his nuggets of prose would be perfect posts.

Last night Jeff and I talked about what’s behind a blogger's content choices. We’ve talked about it before: motivation, intention and audience.

I pursued a journalism degree and had hopes of reporting for the Akron Beacon Journal right about the time that they significantly shrunk staff and budget. Almost ten years later, I am poking around the blogosphere trying to find the boundary between public and private, personal and confessional, noteworthy and not worth mentioning.

I am always surprised when I discover a link to Lustfelt or someone tells me that they've read my post. I often tell myself and others that I write with the “nobody reads my blog” frame of mind. Lies! I don’t write it as if nobody reads it and now Mr. White has me wondering what's in my “unwritten” file.

Panarchy is an alternative to/expansion of the Succession Model that I learned in junior high. Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems relates Panarchy to urban systems.

Systems/Cities will “undergo periodical disturbance in order to maintain overall dynamic stability. Typically, the system accumulates biomass slowly over a long period of time and then when the system is disturbed, biomass drops quickly, releasing nutrients for recycling”.

Panarchy has 4 phases:

1. Exploitation: the birth phase. Pioneer and opportunist species proliferate building biomass and greater connectedness.
2. Conservation: climax phase, biological capital is stored and connectedness reaches its peak.
3. Release: the disturbance phase. Usually short, releasing carbon and nutrients.
4. Renewal: reorganization where it renews itself or flips to another state which may be more or less productive.

It seems like Cleveland is in phase 3. According to Newman and Jennings, the positive part of disruption is the opportunity to release “nutrients” that can be used as the system renews. The urban ecosystem needs feedback loops to benefit from the discharge.

I see Cleveland mostly “eroding” instead of “feedback-ing”. Houses are being demolished instead of reclaimed or de-constructed. Erosion of mined metals is occurring as scrappers sell materials that are probably bound for Dubai.

One feedback loop of a positive note:
This Monday starts the deconstruction of Stanard School in the St. Clair Superior Neighborhood. This deconstruction project is headed by Ward 13 Councilman Joe Cimperman, The Department of Building and Housing, and the St. Clair Superior Development Corporation with technical support from the Ohio EPA.

Most of the usable wood has been reclaimed and the bricks will be re-used by community and market gardens among others. The New Agrarian Center has been documenting the process with video. The goals: keep construction waste out of landfills, make the deconstruction pay for itself through sales of some of the materials, provide materials for community groups in need. I hope this is one of many projects like this.

In an effort to improve electronics recycling in the United States, the U.S. Postal Service is developing a free national collection program for small electronic items. More here.

Right now it's just a pilot program so it may take awhile to get to Cleveland.

Saturday, 12pm
I pick up the litter on my tree lawn spawned from the next-door convenience store: balloons, condom wrapper, malt liquor bottles, chip bags, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, cigarette cartons etc . . .

Sunday, 3:20 am
Four gun shots awaken me. 911 Dispatcher is rude.

Monday, 8:45 am
A lady steps on my heel exiting the Rapid—twice. I am wearing heel-less sandals, she is wearing pointy toed heels. No apology.

Monday, 11pm
Firecrackers and whining dog next door accompany this blog post.

I am reminding myself “we are in it together”. You are my brother/sister. I am picking up my own litter and stepping on my own heels because we are all connected.

I have a hard time loving Cleveland sometimes. Like any substantial relationship, I vacillate in my shallower thoughts. Like any real union, I am steadfast in my dedication. Starting fresh tomorrow.

I caught up on my podcasts. One of the holdouts was a City Club Podcast about the Flats East Bank Wolstein Project . I have mixed feelings, but overall good-faith optimism that the development will inspire population movement to the center city. Most of that population influx will be fully tax abated (part of those mixed feelings).

In his introduction, Scott Wolstein spoke about baby boomers and echo boomers, who will form about ¾ of households in the near future. He hopes to entice those demographics and to “start to build an affluent, creative class community living in our downtown”. He goes on to say that baby boomers are empty nesters, so they don’t have to fret about the poor quality of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

Then, he sounded quite pleased to share this nugget with the audience about echo boomers: “they demand a great education and you start to see a lot more progress . . . parents (will) follow-through the way they do in the suburbs. That will happen if you get the right people living in this town.”

So, who are the right people? I am guessing he means affluent and probably white. His generalizations about the parents who live in Cleveland and send their children to public school are an insult. Parents are demanding better education for their children. It is not living in suburbia that makes parental demand heard. Socio-economic status is the amplifier.

The main problem CMSD faces is not rotten parents who don’t know how to be suburban; it’s that CMSD is broke—a situation that certainly won’t be mended by the tax-lite development project. I found it absurd he felt entitled to speak about the school system that his development will financially forsake.

The Clark Metro City Fresh Stop held a shareholder meeting Monday at C-Space. I was one of 3 shareholders to attend the meeting, so for those who missed it I will summarize the discussion.

We talked about three interrelated issues.

1. The Clark Metro City Fresh Stop is in dire need of volunteers.
2. C-Space, the location of the Fresh Stop is in foreclosure and it is unknown if the Fresh Stop will need to move locations. If it does move, should it move within the neighborhood or to another location such as Tremont or the Dennison/Ridge Rd area.
3. Would a merger of the Clark Metro and Urban Community School Fresh Stops combine volunteer efforts more successfully and solve the location issue?
   

Lisa-Jean Sylvia manages the Fresh Stops and is seeking volunteers as well as opinions on mergers and locations. If you participate in the ClarkMetro or Urban Community Fresh Stop, or are planning to, please answer her survey below.

Are you available to volunteer on some Thursdays from June through October?

If so, are you available during the day? or the evening?

If the C-Space location closes, will you be able to easily pick up at one of these other locations?


Please answer her questions by emailing her: ljsylvia@sbcglobal.net

Also, City Fresh is accepting registration and payment for the first pickup on June 5th.

Yesterday I noted with chagrin the completion of the downtown Cleveland sinkhole repair. I was enjoying the almost completely car-free, pedestrian zone that stretched from Public Square, past the Soldier's and Sailor's Monument to Mall B. I was getting used to my oblique, leisurely, daydream-infused saunter.

Monday's walk from Tower City to Lakeside Avenue was fraught with drivers who ignore crosswalks, coast through stop signs and blow past red lights.

Downtown Cleveland seems compact enough to relegate cars and subsequent parking to the perimeters and to augment the pedestrian experience with bike only lanes, electric trolleys, walkways, mini-parks and benches. Just another one of my daydream fantasies.

Bhikkhu's Blog manages to provide some perspective and insight into the current situation in Tibet.

Urban Garden
West 25th Rapid Station

The weight of snow quieted the city for about half a day. I took a walk on Sunday morning right down the middle of the street, respecting the power of snowfall to render the roar of automobiles inert. Pleased that it melts as it will and not before it will, I was content to calm myself and go where I could when I could and not before I could. I took the rapid to Tower City and watched Fugitive Pieces and Jar City at the film festival.

I am still disconcerted by the reactions of many Clevelanders to the 15 inches of snow that accumulated last weekend. People were galled that the City Administration couldn’t “poof” the snow from the streets by Monday morning. When the plows did pass through, they were miffed that it stacked the snow at the edge of their driveways. These people had to go somewhere, soon and fast. They are important and pay taxes and have a given right to not have snow get in their way.

Last weekend and the beginning of the work week were a testament to how freaked out people get when they can’t drive. And how triumphant they feel when they can shovel out—roaring down the street, peeling out on ice, disregarding pedestrians—as if they are somehow apart from the natural world. Then, they freaked out again when the snow blocked their usual parking spaces.

Environmentalism: The new religion.

The borough of Delfshaven in Rotterdam was moved to action when vacant buildings were transformed into bright blight.

. . . and almost instantly, what was once an overlooked and easily ignorable area became one of the most seen places in the city.

This solution is similar to Detriot's Heidleberg Project.

What if we tried painting urban blight with bright in Cleveland? The city would look like a box of Crayolas from the vantage of Google's satellite map. Maybe tourists would come from all over to see the spectacle. Maybe Sherwin Williams could donate the paint and sponsor the guided audio tour of Slavic Village and East Cleveland. I imagine houses, apartments, warehouses and office buildings empty on the inside, but bright on the outside. Meanwhile Cleveland's homeless shelters will be bursting at their dull, dingy, unpainted seams.

HOWEVER . . .

A paint job wouldn't stop scrappers from taking copper and aluminum, rooftops from leaking, pipes from freezing, animals from nesting, squatters from squattting . . . Seems to me there should be a better solution than letting buildings and housing stock rot until they must be demolished (adding to the lost value of the home, the cost of demolition). My inner- re-user and reducer squirms that the solution for vacancy and abandonment is the bull dozer, but I am not sure that vigilante art installations and monochromatic paint-jobs are the solution. I do think that they serve to draw attention to the problem. However, I think Cleveland's problem is becoming too large to ignore.

Sad news: Killing the Buddha is dead.

My Meta-Meditation List

• Crazy neighbor and his crazy pit bull
• Quigley Road Vehicle Impound employees
• Middle-aged sidewalk vendor who whistles at me in Lincoln Park every time I walk by no matter what, and even followed me in his white, late model station wagon and whistled at me from his car a number of times
  
• The RTA transit cop who “wouldn’t give a nickel for Ohio City”
• The Lakewood Division of Taxation that needs constant proof that I no longer live in Lakewood, forcing me to retain utility records from 2003 in my files
  

Disparate Thoughts

Reading:

I spent an afternoon at the Algebra Teahouse on Friday. I had forgotten about its unhurried feel, the fava beans on the menu and the quality of the coffee. I sat by the wood-burning stove and read Small is Beautiful . . .

Our scientists incessantly tell us with the utmost assurance that everything around us has evolved by small mutations sieved out through natural selection. . . Every complexity, we are told, is the result of evolution. Yet our development planners seem to think they can do better than the Almighty, that they can create the most complex things at one throw by a process called planning . . .

An unemployed man is a desperate man and he is practically forced into migration. This is another justification for the assertion that the provision of work opportunities is the primary need and should be the primary objective of economic planning. Without it, the drift of people into the large cities (Here Schumacher is talking about the shift from rural to urban in developing countries. In Cleveland it would be the drift of people to the suburbs or the Sunbelt) cannot be mitigated, let alone halted.

The amount of real leisure a society enjoys tends to be in inverse proportion to the amount of labour-saving machinery it employs.

The prestige carried by people in modern industrial societies varies in inverse proportion to their closeness to production.

Other Quotes:

Voltaire: “Anything too stupid to be said is sung”

Lustfelt: “Anything too stupid to be said is twittered”

Strategic Essentialism & MTB:

I attended the Meet the Bloggers conversation with Ward 13 Councilman & 10^th District Congressional Candidate, Joe Cimperman. I’d like to take a moment to apply the over-used, yet useful theory of Strategic Essentialism to the situation.

In the conversations that occurred both during MTB and after the microphone was turned off, many of the bloggers focused on the one or two topics on which they disagreed with Cimperman. I felt that most neglected to appreciate commonalities. Not seeing the forest for the trees, they failed to recognize the value of an ally that is not “of the system”, but knows how to operate “within the system”.

Moving On:

I am moving soon (only about a mile away) and am feeling the tension between my desire to be light, free and portable and my wish to be connected to my past. My paternal grandmother, Mentoria recently passed away and my maternal grandmother, Jeanne recently had a stroke that has left her non-verbal. I regret not asking them more question about their lives.

My family history stems from both the African-American, rural, deep-south and white Appalachia. I have experienced neither place beyond short visits.

I am resisting the urge to scour basements and attics for creased photos and diaries. What would I really do with those artifacts?

I remind myself that possessions are impermanent. Trying to trust that I have the useful and necessary past stored away in heart and mind and that more is not always better.

My mouse stumbled across this social networking site, Rustbelt Bloggers. I joined it namely because of the name, but I like the idea of a site that links the region.

As a resident of the Tremont neighborhood, I have been following conversations about the mixed income housing development, Tremont Pointe. I lived on Fairfield Avenue from 2001-2002 when the Valleyview Estates was still inhabited. The neighborhood’s look/feel was more diverse (age-wise, race-wise, income-wise, artist-wise).

I moved away and then returned to the neighborhood in 2004 around the time Valleyview residents were relocated. Valleyview was demolished in 2005. I have noticed some changes in the community since the loss of the public housing project, mostly in attitudes from new residents as to what kind of community Tremont should be and who should live there. It seems to me that many neighbors don't know that many of the Tremont Pointe residents' families have lived in the area for generations prior to their relocation; Ninety-five former Valleyview residents currently live in the new development.

There has been some fear and discussion related to the reintroduction of low-income housing to the community and some positive changes too.

In a context that moves beyond the neighborhood, other HOPE VI developments are popping up in Cleveland and around the nation. The controversy is that city officials seem to encourage these developments in gentrifying neighborhoods, perhaps to make poverty more palpable to higher income individuals who have stayed/returned to center city neighborhoods. How can neighborhoods reconcile the goal of de-concentrating poverty with initiatives to replace public housing in neighborhoods in which property values have significantly increased? Hotel Bruce has elucidated this conundrum better than I have.

Keeping my eye on it.

Feel. Drop the caffeine buzz, the buzz of the cathode ray, the hangover, the career ambitions, the list, the perfect stilettos, the cyber-kin, drop the blizzardnoise off our shoulders like warm rain and feel in silence for bellied clang, yell, whimper.

An excerpt from Systems are Cowards, part of Cleveland poet/author/humanitarian, Kate Sopko's recently released book, Stewards of the Lost Lands.

I recently had a conversation with my boyfriend's mother during which I confessed that I am not dating him for his car. . . just doing my part. He does his part too. He rarely drives his beater of a car choosing transport that is bike heavy and RTA lite.