milestone: 700 LinkedIn Connections

LinkedIn: My Contacts: Connections -- As of this morning, I now have 700 connections on Linked In. It's getting interesting watching the seething, teeming mass of humanity assembled there, seeking knowledge of what they have in common, and not what keeps them apart.

I'd say it's a healthy phenomenon.

WKYC's Director's Cut with Frank Macek: Meet the Bloggers: Coverage of Ch 3's Debate

WKYC's Director's Cut with Frank Macek: Meet the Bloggers: Coverage of Ch 3's Debate, from BlogJock Frank Macek, the Tuesday-night view from the WKYC Information Center's Social Media Group.

One of the most inspiring and exciting things for me happened even before the blog software got rolling and the talking heads got to broadcasting, when Rita Andolson, the news director, related the story of how she had politely lobbied early on for the opportunity of having Cleveland host the debate, gotten the outside chance when Columbus balked, and put the whole thing together in a little over two weeks, with a little help from her friends at CSU. It was a story about a community that has it all and is perfectly positioned coming together quickly to seize an opportunity. I haven't felt this good about the way things are going around here since the 60s. We are poised for great things, and now is the time to act. Rita has taken the lead.

I think it's the women especially who are going to turn this thing around. On a dime. Stay tuned.

Guys, admit to it and have a far better existence: They're smarter than us, and they run everything anyway, so put aside your egos and submit to the inevitable eventuality of women running things, of the feminization of society coming into its own. I bring you this advice as a friend, as one of you, as a shadow husband whose life has improved immensely since retreating to the shadows of greatness.

heads up on Breuer/Bauhaus eruptions

I'm hoping everybody is following the fantastic dialoghue about Marcel Breuer erupting over at RealNEO as a result of Susan Miller's organizational and educational efforts for explicating and enriching our local artistic, design, and architectural legacies. Go there. Poke around. There's a ton of Breuer content extant this past 7 or 8 months, and Susan seems to be the nexus. Make sure you catch the links, too, to Marc Lefkowitz at Green City Blue Lake.

All in all, I'm very proud of our arts and professional communities for the effort they are putting behind appreciation of our intrinsic wealth, our legacy in architecture, at this point focusing on Breuer and sustainability. Waste not, want not.

Here's a small sample of the massive synergy Susan is bringing together.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 6:00pm -- Green building and modernism; are they antithetical?

· Guest lecturer, Carl Stein, FAIA, Principal of elemental architecture, llc, of New York City and his late father, Richard Stein, FAIA, have completed numerous historic rehabilitation projects based on their innovative and pioneering research in the analysis of energy use and conservation in buildings and design. He served his architectural internship with Marcel Breuer from 1968-1971.

At Judson at University Circle (free parking available)

Brought to you by Doty & Miller Architects, D.H. Ellison Co., Peter Lawson Jones, Recent Past Preservation Network, Richard Fleischman Architects, Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Robert Maschke Architects, Inc., Process Creative Studios Inc., Jim Rokakis, Schmidt Copeland Parker Stevens with assistance from Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland Institute of Art, Judson Manor, The Sculpture Center, Intermuseum Conservation Association, AIA Cleveland, Kent State University Art History, Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, Cleveland Artists Foundation, GreenCityBlueLake, Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Studio Techne Architects

protecting the innocent, by Miss Nancy

Banner over Cleveland urges against sales-tax petition - cleveland.com -- I'm sure we all feel better now that we have Nancy Lesic and the GCP spending to protect our innocence. The reporter forgot to mention that the resolution the two commissioners are seeking to slide by us says nothing about the medicalmart, but only about the general fund. Makes you wonder. This is some heady stuff:

Don't sign petition, banner says

Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Sarah HollanderPlain Dealer Reporter

An advertising method typically used to hawk drink specials or pop the question has been called into duty for Cuyahoga County's sales tax debate.

Volunteers collecting signatures to force a public vote on an upcoming tax hike said they were surprised to look up and see a plane trailing a banner that read "Don't Sign the Petition. We Need the Med Mart."

The Greater Cleveland Partnership paid $2,000 for four hours of aerial advertising in downtown Cleveland to challenge the petition drive.

The plane flew around Jacobs Field an hour before Indians games Friday, Saturday and Sunday and around Cleveland Browns Stadium an hour before Saturday's preseason game. Volunteers from labor unions and the hospitality industry also handed out leaflets.

"We wanted to reach people who might innocently sign a petition without knowing what the consequences would be," said Nancy Lesic, a spokeswoman for the Partnership. "The petitions could kill the project."

Cuyahoga County commissioners voted 2-1 last month to raise the sales tax 25 cents for every $100 purchased to pay for a new Cleveland convention center. The city needs a new center to attract a Medical Mart, which would house permanent showrooms for health care equipment and products and use the convention center space for related trade shows. The county will begin collecting the 20-year tax in October unless the referendum group collects more than 45,000 valid signatures from registered Cuyahoga County voters by Aug. 24.

Lesic said the partnership learned of the referendum group's plans to blitz sporting events through a news conference held by Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed last week. Reed, a leader of the referendum movement, said telling people not to sign a petition might backfire and anger voters.

Petition efforts will continue at city and suburban festivals and door to door in areas such as Parma, Parma Heights and North Royalton over the next couple of weeks, he said.

At last count - Friday morning - the group said it had collected around 10,000 signatures.

To learn more about the referendum effort, go to putitontheballot.com. To learn more about the convention center and Medical Mart proposal, go to ashotinthearm.org.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
shollander@plaind.com,
216-999-4816

being aware is half the battle: two weeks, and counting

In the matter of putting the issue on the ballot so we can vote on our being sales-taxed in Cuyahoga County, as of today there are two weeks worth of days left before circulators need to get their ballots back in to their sources on August 22nd. There are currently enough petitions being circulated to bring in 126,000 signatures. Roughly one-third of that amount is needed to get the issue onto the ballot for March. Remember, the commissioners did forego the opportunity to put this on the ballot for our vote in November; this delay is squarely their choice. They think the people of Cuyahoga County will not be able to muster the signatures, yet in fact the Ohio counties of Hamilton, Lorain, and Ashtabula already have successfully risen up in the face of such arrogance.

Being aware of time available is critical in the successful accomplishment of any task or, when you're at war, any mission. The fourteen-day countdown looks like this:

9 Thursday
10 Friday
11 Saturday
12 Sunday
13
14
15
16
17 Friday
18 Saturday
19 Sunday
20
21
22 Wednesday

We're going to be at the Cuyahoga County Fair at the Berea fairgrounds this weekend. One of our supporters has paid for a booth. Check out PutItOnTheBallot.com for other places you can go to sign a petition, if you haven't already.

Talk to your neighbors; there are some really interesting dynamics at play here. This issue is uniting and galvanizing the community as nothing has before. This is some really, really good stuff, something we can all agree on. As one of our vets, a union guy, pointed out, we went to war 230 years ago over stuff like this. The people, our neighbors, are telling us what to do. They're giving us our lines. They're framing the issue for us. This is getting to be sort of fun.

Bloggapalooza 2.0+

We'll have to do this often, and annually.

This is our second run through, and it keeps getting better. This has come to be our annual review: I see things changing in our local community, and I see people undergoing transformations. They are coming together and beginning to trust in and rely on each other. They aren't looking beyond themselves for solutions. They are finding out that they themselves are the answer and hold the secret to finding the new keys.

This has come to be about MeetTheBloggers, and lots more: the NEO and the Ohio blogospheres, CoolCleveland, the new media, BrewedFreshDaily, RealNEO, art, aggregators, politics, community, books, coaching, ideas. Communicating. Integrating. Changing. Becoming healthy and wealthy again.

This entire dynamic is leading to other things. There are new players. There's a new game in town.

I want to let everyone know that I want and appreciate the friendships we've established over these past few years circulating throughout the blogosphere and Ohio; without MeetTheBloggers, the Cleveland Weblogger Meetups, and George, things wouldn't have gone so quickly, or so well.

A confederacy of coaches: Stephen Post on the radar of The Christian Science Monitor, and then comes Jack, and Sarano's in town, too

Researchers say giving leads to a healthier, happier life csmonitor.com -- Last week, The Christian Science Monitor ran a review of Stephen Post's latest book 'Why good things happen to good people.' Stephen recently met the bloggers, back on Flag Day, and we had a great discussion that definitely needs to be continued; we merely scratched the surface. I feel so good when our local writers get noticed in national publications. I get the sense that it's all happening right here, right now, and we're at the epicenter.

At the table that day was our friend and fellow blogger Jack Ricchiuto whose sixth book, Conscious Becoming, subsequently came out in July. Gloria just picked up a copy yesterday, and it's autographed. (as is Stephen's, too, by the way.) I also just got word late last night that Jack will MeetTheBloggers on August 16th, two months and two days after Stephen. Details will follow on Upcoming.org, or whatever those yahoos call it these days.

Finally, after Gloria scored Jack's book yesterday in the early morning, in the mid-morning we hiked on over to The Embassy Suites off Rockside to see our friend and coach Sarano Kelley, from whom we picked up a new copy (3rd printing) of The Game: Win your life in 90 days. This copy will go to Jack, whom, along with Valdis, we must introduce to Sarano. This can be a truly powerful network.

It's all converging. Right here. Right now. In Cleveland and in Columbus and in Pittsburgh. Stay tuned.

Ohio City Named One of America's Top 10 Cottage Communities

I just got this email from some of our friends over in Ohio City. We had been there recently, May 19th, as guests of our other friends, Tom and Kathleen, to go to the Saturday evening house preview tour of the Weekend in Ohio City:

Hot on the heels of its feature story in the March 2007 issue of Cottage Living magazine, Ohio City was named by that publication as one of the top 10 "cottage communities" in the country. The full list of the the 10 best neighborhoods in the nation is profiled in the July/August issue, which hits newsstands on June 26.

Quoting from the magazine's press release: "A victim of suburbia’s post-World War II allure and Cleveland’s industrial decline, Ohio City suffered during the 1960s and '70s, but the residents led a comeback that left Ohio City thriving. By working to maintain affordable housing, they have managed to revitalize without forcing out long-term and lower-income residents.

'Ohio City is very friendly,' says Bernie Thiel, a long-term resident. 'It’s a
real talking over-the-fence community.'" '

Ohio City finished second on the list, just behind Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, NY.

The list includes neighborhoods that Cottage Living editors would like to call home, with charming cottages, a sense of community, and an eye on the future. Both old and new, the neighborhoods use creative ideas to solve common problems. "[T]hese neighborhoods are inspiring role models," writes Cottage Living Editor-in-Chief Eleanor Griffin.

Cottage Living canvassed the country for the 10 best cottage communities. The criteria were broken down into four categories: Homes (30%): Inspiring architecture, unifying design elements, and walkable streets; People (30%): Residents who spark a resurgence or designers and developers who envision change and bring it to life; Bright Ideas (30%): Innovative, positive change on a regional or national level; and Cottage Twist (10%): Something that brings a smile.

So come out this weekend, explore the neighborhood, and see what the excitement is all about. Be sure to visit Open Air in Market Square across from the West Side Market on Saturday, and mark your calendar for the Ohio City Garden Tour on July 22. And as always, check back to www.ohiocity.com regularly for news and upcoming events.

another plus from The Cleveland Leader: Plus the Magic Dragon Saves Downtown Cleveland

The Cleveland Leader -- Eugene's blogspace doesn't allow for comments, so I'll have to give him a big "Plus you very much" over here, at my place. His idea may seem sort of off the wall, but Singapore does something like this using RFID technology: It gives money or credits to people coming into Singapore in cars during off hours but takes money or credits from people using cars in Singapore during times of high congestion. It rewards use of public transit somehow, as well.

Perhaps then our sentry at the gateways to the city can be called Plus the Magic Dragon. Plus giveth, and Plus taketh away--you get the incentive, and then the traffic cameras strip you of the incentive, plus. Perhaps Plus can even be made out of retrofitted traffic cameras, plus. The possibilities are boundless--which means "not plusless." Get with the program. Get behind it. Tell people you're from The Big Plus.

I think I'm liking this new Cleveland+ campaign--I'm far from nonplussed.

Have you stopped to think, too, that "plus" can be the local verbal tic of the new milennium, replacing other verbal tics like "y'know," "really," "you see what I'm saying," "man," "at the end of the day," and the many permutations and combinations of the f-word, as in a takeoff on my old drill sergeant's "out-plussing-standing."

Plus you!

Plus me. Plus me dead!

Don't write off the Cleveland+ campaign. There's a certain perverse magic there.

Let's have some fun with it.

coming soon to a neighborhood near you

Works of Love :: A Newsletter from the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love -- There's an amazing project about love, humanity, and spirituality going on at CWRU, orchestrated by Stephen Post, supported by Sir John Templeton's foundation. It's very practical, very basic, and very a propos. The link goes to the latest newsletter. At the bottom of the letter is the link to the full-blown website.

New York Times wheels in its big financial gun

Crisis Looms in Market for Mortgages - New York Times -- here, the NYT has wheeled in its big gun, financial-press hit-woman Gretchen Morgenson, to level the mortgage market, perhaps to drive a panic, certainly to bang a gong and sell the news. The excerpt below is the tip of the three-page iceberg:

The analyst’s untimely call, coupled with a failure among other Wall Street institutions to identify problems in the home mortgage market, isn’t the only familiar ring to investors who watched the technology stock bubble burst precisely seven years ago.

Now, as then, Wall Street firms and entrepreneurs made fortunes issuing questionable securities, in this case pools of home loans taken out by risky borrowers. Now, as then, bullish stock and credit analysts for some of those same Wall Street firms, which profited in the underwriting and rating of those investments, lulled investors with upbeat pronouncements even as loan defaults ballooned. Now, as then, regulators stood by as the mania churned, fed by lax standards and anything-goes lending.

Investment manias are nothing new, of course. But the demise of this one has been broadly viewed as troubling, as it involves the nation’s $6.5 trillion mortgage securities market, which is larger even than the United States treasury market.

Hanging in the balance is the nation’s housing market, which has been a big driver of the economy. Fewer lenders means many potential homebuyers will find it more difficult to get credit, while hundreds of thousands of homes will go up for sale as borrowers default, further swamping a stalled market.

Key in distress, and here comes Cleveland to the rescue

For banks, it pays off to reinvest in the city--As you saw a few days ago, Richard Cordray began taking KeyBank to task for putting its interests ahead of those of the rest of us. Well, lo and behold, here comes Key's champion to the rescue, taking money out of the other banks and shifting it over to KeyBank.

Cleveland stripped millions of dollars in deposits from National City and Charter One banks on Tuesday, citing the lenders for not doing enough to help city residents and businesses.

I wonder how those "city-assigned" rankings were determined. From the article, it appears that a few other people are wondering that, too. I wish Sharon Dumas, the finance director for the city, were more forthcoming with details. For instance, I think bank ratings and overall financials would play a huge part in the selection of a place for our community deposits, but I don't see that mentioned anywhere. One of the criteria, having a lot of branches in the city, might be a sign of bad management and too much overhead, for instance, and I haven't noticed the rates at KeyBank on consumer loans being any more competitive than those anywhere else. Did they identify and then count in the check-cashing storefronts with relationships to KeyCorp, and assess a penalty for parasitic activity?

Also, where is the mention of foreclosure rates and amounts here? I know Key has moved aggressively to cover its own assets in our neighborhood. Is there a foreclosure offset or penalty calculated in?

Is there any talk of what interest rate the banks will pay the city? Are our government employees here, Sharon Dumas and Ken Silliman, acting in the best interest of their fellow citizens if they don't try to maximize earnings? I know of common opportunities where plain old deposit money earns between 4.5% and 5%, yet all I see here is the use of some vague "profit" estimate, where each bank makes 3.5 cents profit per hundred dollars of deposits. First of all, what does this mean? Why are we talking about what the bank makes? Shouldn't we be talking about what the city makes? Quickly, $111,000,000 times the average of say, 4.75% is $5,272,500.

The biggest banks, like those who hold Cleveland's money, made about 3.5 cents profit on every $100 of deposits in 2006, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates them.

Is there talk anywhere else of the deposit insurance, the FDIC coverage, available per account? Again, I know of a common opportunity where the FDIC coverage is $1,200,000 per registration, but has anybody looked into that, in these times when banks earnings are down and they're straining under a heavy load? Is this a time when we should be consolidating our city money in one place, or is it a time when we should be spreading it out more?

Are we doing the right things with our city money, for the right reasons, for the right people?

Oops--almost forgot. Do you think one of the litmus tests could be how many bank executives you find in the city after the sun goes down?

invitation to an exorcism

For a good many years here, we NEO natives have lived in the shadow of fear cast by that cheap shot known as the "Cleveland Joke." So that I don't have to give it further power by speaking its name, henceforth I will refer to this phenomenon merely as the "CJ." I've tried tracing back its origins on Google and failed. My feeling is that there must be some sort of long karmic tail attached to birthing and nurturing a form of humor that gets its sad, sneering little life from making fun of somebody else's origins or affiliations. There must be a name for this sort of lame humor in the comedy world, something like "the takeaway."

So, to exorcise the CJ, the pathetic little insecurity that seems to plague our community, I guess we have to call it out, and to call it out, we have to know its origins and all its sources. These are the things of which I am unsure.

Did it start with Bing Crosby's razzing Bob Hope about his Cleveland origins?

Was it perpetuated by Maynard G. Krebs character (Valdis, did your family have any part in this?) on the Dobie Gillis show, when they trotted out "The Monster That Devoured Cleveland" routines, and did "Cleveland" become a one-word punchline, much as the word "work" did?

Did Lenny Bruce add to the mix? What about the radio jocks of the '60s & 70s, things like Mad Daddy and Wild Child? MAD Magazine? Cracked?

How about Ghoulardi, Ernie Anderson--did he get the laugh-o-meter mileage out of "Cleveland" as he did out of "Dorothy [Fuldheim]" and "Parma" and "Oxnard"? What about Tim Conway? David Letterman? Johnny Carson?

What screenwriters from Cleveland used the CJ when they couldn't think of what else to do?

Who continues to use the CJ today? Do any of our elected officials still toss out an offhand CJ apologetically, to make up for a deficit of friends and well-wishers? Is there anybody at all out there who actually thinks the CJ is funny or even remotely useful?

Finally, are any of us responsible for letting this play on and on? Aren't we all getting sort of tired of hearing about it?

I think what perturbs me most about the CJ is that, from my perspective, it just isn't so, it's never been so, and it's never been fair or honest. I've tolerated it thinking it would go away, and for me, it has. The requisites for the CJ to be real humor were never there in the first place. I'm going to consign the CJ to that quite place, where lie other nerdily clever phrases like "yo' momma" and it's sibling "your mother wears combat boots," "I know you are but what am I," and "so funny I forgot to laugh."

So far as I'm concerned, it's exorcised. I'm done.

breaking news: Judge Peter Corrigan rules on residency for City of Cleveland workforce

News just in from Cleveland Equanimous Philosopher (CEP) at the courthouse: Judge Peter Corrigan has just issued his opinion that the employees of the City of Cleveland need not live within the city limits. Watch Channel 3 news because CEP was interviewed by Tom Beres; CEP says he fumbled a bit on camera, but we are confident he was lawyerly, as is his wont.

new blog by Don Iannone

Conscious Communities: Welcome to Conscious Communities©--be sure to click through to a very promising, thoughtful new blog from Don Iannone. Here's the kickoff--

This new blog explores the complex and essential nature of community in our lives. We live and we die in communities; from the tiniest crossroad towns to the largest megapolitan areas. Conscious Communities looks at community from various vantage points, and it offers a new way to conceive of communities, as we move forward into the future.
This new view encourages us to see communities as having the potential to rise and grow as places or centers of heightened awareness and expression. By heightened awareness and expression, there is an intention to point to the effect of community, in its many dimensions, on our consciousness, or our deepest sense of ourselves. It is in this vein that this blog is given its name: Conscious Communities. Communities should inspire and exhort their citizens' consciousness, and citizens should in return use that inspiration and exhortation to lift up and sustain their communities.
On one level, each of us is conscious, that is perceptually aware, of the communities we know and have experience with. There is more. Have we considered the possibility that communities are powerful agents co-creating our most basic consciousness? Have we considered the possibility that our most intimate and personal interiority is in part supported and shaped by what we take to be community?
Have we considered the possibility that we owe, in part, our capacity for heightened awareness and expression to those communities in which we live, work and play? So too, our communities, when beset by social, economic, political and ecological problems, diminish our capacity for heightened awareness and expression. For our communities to support and sustain us, we must support and sustain them. (more)