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