beginning to understand what it all meant

AWEARNESS: The Kenneth Cole Blog: After 40 Years Of Olympic History, Tommie Smith and John Carlos Are Vindicated -- At the link is a double YouTube play, about 12-13 minutes in all, taking us back 40 years to turbulent times, showing the beginnings of making amends four decades later. These guys created quite an uproar, were judged as being out of line and traitorous, and paid a terrible price over the years for doing what they thought was the right thing. We're now understand better what they were trying to communicate, what they were adding into the cultural dialogue.

From the perspective of now, we can only begin to listen better, to be non-judgmental, to take words and gestures at face value and not load them up with our own baggage. We cannot ostracize a whole segment of our society any longer; we cannot afford to hold each other apart. We cannot afford to waste time any longer.

Blogging in Tongues Against HB 477, in French

Jill Zimon et Gloria Ferris ont demandé que je parle à l'encontre de HB 477, dénommé "English-Only projet de loi." J'ai suivi le lien Jill HB 477 pour savoir ce dont j'avais besoin pour obtenir toutes les auto-pensants et coudés en place. J'ai trouvé un stupide projet de loi qui émasculé droit lui-même après avoir obtenu de roulement. C'est un tas de rien. Je ne comprends pas pourquoi nos législateurs le font à tous. Il donne l'impression de son cours de restreindre, puis ascenseurs toutes les restrictions. C'est une grosse trame, suivie par une whimper et un vinaigre et une journée de réflexion collective avec la queue entre les jambes. Je me rappelle de ce truc de Shakespeare, nous avons dû mémoriser au lycée, quelque chose au sujet de "une histoire racontée par un idiot, pleine de bruit et de fureur, signifie rien."

Folks, dans un non-événement. Il donne une mauvaise impression du Zeitgeist de l'Ohio. Il ne fait rien de manière efficace, et nous payons pour elle.

And, here is the English translation:

Jill Zimon and Gloria Ferris have requested I speak out against HB 477, referred to as the "English-Only Bill." I followed Jill's link to HB 477 to find out what I needed to get all self-righteous and cranked up about. I found a silly bill that emasculated itself right after it got rolling. It's a heap of nothing. I don't understand why our legislators are doing this at all. It gives the impression its going to be restrictive, and then lifts all the restrictions. It's a big woof, followed by a whimper and a whine and a retreat with the collective tail between the legs. I reminds me of that thing from Shakespeare we had to memorize in high school, something about "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Folks, this in a non-event. It gives a bad impression of the Zeitgeist in Ohio. It effectively does nothing, and we're paying for it.

Stone Mad just opened Monday

The Cleveland Free Times :: Dining :: Dining Lead :: Detroit Nosh City -- Midday yesterday I was passing through the Detroit-Shoreway area with our friend Rudy, and we stopped by Stone Mad, which has been open for business since this past Monday, 11-4 for lunch and 11-2:30 AM for drinks. It's an awesome place. Talking to Paul, the bartender, we found that they had just wrapped up a 3-year rehab; the attention to detail is incredible. The one thing I admired especially was the roof, done with those recycled rubber-tire slate look-alikes. The application of the shingle material to the ridge vent is the best I've seen, and the handling of the air intake in the soffit is very well done, too. But then, too, there are the cobblestones in the yard, the stone benches and tables on the patio, the outdoor fireplace, the paneling inside, the tilework on the floors and the walls throughout, the handpainted ceiling in the dining area, and the list goes on. There was a certain reverence shown for the building, for the craftsman's materials, for the old neighborhood itself, and the overall effect is extremely refreshing. It gives you hope for the future of older structures in a city bent on replacing the old with the new and conferring tax credits to the destructive, the wasteful, and the foolish. Here's a snippet from the Freetimes a year ago:

Around the corner, "Irish Pete" Leneghan is putting the finishing touches on what close friends are calling his "legacy bar." Stone Mad is a two-and-a-half-year labor of love that often found Leneghan, owner of Tremont's Treehouse bar, on his hands and knees laying acres of gorgeous stone pavers. Inside, skilled craftsmen have constructed two magnificent barrooms, one featuring black walnut, the other floor-to-ceiling oak. A dining room in the rear will serve upscale pub fare.

To encourage conversation, Stone Mad will have no televisions or jukebox, but it will have a sprawling stone patio with water and fire features. An intricate tile mosaic of Leneghan's ancestral town, Ballycroy in County Mayo, brightens up the pub's lower level.

Meanwhile, back here in Brooklyn Centre, as a counterpoint to the good things going on with Pete Leneghan, the board of Art House has passed its third year of stone-walling the neighborhood on the restoration of Wirth House at 3119 Denison. I hear that they have rejected and dismissed, quite recently and arbitrarily, the councilman's offer of help in the restoration of the property and want to proceed with the irresponsible demolition of an historic structure, overriding the objections of the neighbors who gave them the money to be in the restoration business in the first place.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the board members come from the neighborhood, and they have refused for three years to let the neighbors inspect the Wirth House itself. I happen to be one of the "interested parties" of the section 106 historic-property review process, and I can attest to the fact that we have not been allowed to see if the property is as bad as they make it out to be, nor will they stabilize the property so that it's not further wasted. This board seems to think it can't live up to their original compact with the neighborhood, and they also refuse to give back the property or the money we fronted them for it.

Please revisit Craig Bobby's "Where Art Lives...and History Dies" takeoff on the yellow Art House motto to see the building I'm talking about. This inexperienced board is the last tired remnant of the tattered, spotty, sad legacy of former councilwoman Merle Gordon. Merle, I understand, just finished another short job stint, this one at the Cleveland Clinic. Her style no longer plays well (never did, come to think of it), nor does that of this Art House board, and financial power plays using other peoples' government and nonprofit money need to get the closer scrutiny they deserve. We can't afford to let them use our money against us any longer, and to continue to steal our productive time now, as well. I think we need to revisit looking at the books and questioning their stewardship. Things just haven't worked out as advertised originally, and there ought to be some adjustments made for that, before this costs us all still more.

homie David Pogue explains why AT&T is running scared

Are U.S. Cellphone Carriers Calcified? - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog -- David Pogue, son of Dick, or Richard Pogue, and now also home-boy expatriate in the NYC area, explains why AT&T was so frantic to jam SB117 up our nether parts, and all with the mindless cooperation of our elected lightweights at the state level: They're losing ARPU:

The cellular industry is going through insanely rapid change. Almost everyone there—800 attendees from 200 phone companies in 65 countries—was running scared of VOIP. That’s voice over I.P., better known as Internet phone. VOIP includes cheapo unlimited home-phone service like Vonage, as well as absolutely free computer-to-computer calling with programs like Skype. It’s all growing like crazy, which is making a huge dent in these companies’ ARPU.

Oh, yeah—that’s Average Revenue Per User. Telecom companies live and breathe ARPU. The talks at this conference were all about “Improving Your ARPU.” (They *love* acronyms in this business. Typical seminar description: “Learn how ISM and FSM can decrease your OPEX and CAPEX and boost your ARPU!”)

Most of these carriers intend to fight off VOIP by growing into a Double Play, Triple Play, or even Quad Play.

What, you don’t know those terms either!?

If you’re a single-play company, you just provide landline service. Add cellphone coverage, and you’re a double play. Add Internet service and TV, and you’re a quad play. You can see the same syndrome here in the U.S., too, as cellphone companies try to deliver TV service, cable companies roll out phone service, and so on.

Gloria Ferris on the Breuer Tower: nailing down the dialogue

Gloria Ferris begins to nail the smarmy dynamics of the Breuer Tower deal and throws some light on self-serving motives, and our recourse. What's important here is that she touches on the perilous tactical position in which the City Planning Commission finds itself.

clutter & noise on the internet

MySpace, Second Life, and Twitter Are Doomed - Columns by PC Magazine -- Good to hear near-brilliant predictions that run parallel with mine. I fled screaming (virtually) from Second Life and MySpace, then forsook Twitter when I decided I was too weird to report, religiously and meticulously, what I did hour by hour--somebody would have me committed way before my time.

the "skyline impact" and the economics of the Breuer Tower

Meet the Bloggers » Cuy Co Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones and Sustainability Director Joyce Burke-Jones re: Breuer Tower -- I see that our May 23rd session at Webtego about Breuer Brouhaha is posted, and I wanted to acknowledge all the fine community discussion this misstep by Jimmy DiMora and Tim Hagan has engendered.

Yesterday, I got my first glimpse of Thomas Mulready's podcast with PLJ (Peter Lawson Jones), and it's worth spending 20 minutes to see an interview done with tough questions done right; because he is a good friend to Peter and to the community, Thomas stayed on task with the issues, especially the gonzo economics, and stood in the place of many of us who are wondering why something so financially counterintuitive is going forward at all. Two of the three county commissioners are draining our collective community power by wasting our time and our energy, as well as our money. Listen to how the proposal process was compromised and manipulated from the get-go, with the consulting firms being told to address only new construction, not adaptive reuse.

George over at BFD took a unique tack on the Breuer session and broke it down into five snippets, for quick consumption. George is making it easy to do business with Meet.The.Bloggers.

Susan rallies the troops over at RealNEO. She advises us to be there early to sign in and also talks about room 501. I guess we'll just have to sort that out when we get there. Norm in the comments invites us over for lunch afterward.

Gloria over at Save Our Land reminds us to show up tomorrow for the planning commission meeting, Friday, June 1st, at 9 AM, room 514, City Hall, even though I don't see it as a topic on the draft CPC agenda. Let's hope they all pay attention to detail tomorrow and show up on time, or show up at all. Cimperman, I have observed personally, has a habit of staying away when the chips are down.

Marc over at GCBL reminds us as well, gives sage advice and agglomeration, and publishes a letter from Daryl Davis while he shows links to YouTube. The Cuyahoga County Planning Commission reports on the arrival of Davis Brody Bond, the out-of-town experts, to present their analysis at the CPC confab tomorrow. There's a lot of energy swirling around this issue--embodied energy, embedded energy, whatever you want to call it, but it's stirred up a storm.

If you can, be there. Take the time to listen to the entire MTB session, especially the comments I brought in from Bob Gaede about "the skyline impact." This is something that had hitherto been absent from the Breuer community dialogue. Also, hear architect David Ellison on Breuer and LEED standards. There's a ton of great material in the full session.

here's another reason for the SB117 full frontal assault

DirecTV May Test Broadband over Powerline - News and Analysis by PC Magazine -- It seems that AT&T may be outflanked here, by just about everybody--the cable companies, the VoIP providers, the cellphone companies, the satellite providers, and now, to add insult to injury, our friend the electric company, and that more than likely accounts for AT&T's haste and desperation in ramming through the bad-for-everybody-but-them legislation known here in Ohio as SB117, sponsored by Lance Mason and Bob Spada.

If we can get broadband over our electrical power lines or through the air or over cable, and we can get VoIP over broadband, we don't really need all that legacy POTS that AT&T has held onto for years without improving, all the while charging premium prices for it. It seems that this is reckoning day for AT&T, and they're trying to dodge their demise by cozying up to our state legislators and trying to put their signature tin boxes on every treelawn between here and Cincinnati.

In the process, they're making us a technological laughingstock and pointing up our technological illiteracy and innumeracy as a community.

Remember, we don't owe AT&T anything. Let the market forces prevail. Let them fail. Do not let AT&T prove the sad old theorem we last heard from the open-source man, Bruce Perens: "If you can't innovate, legislate."

they're doin' it in Knoxville, too

Free Press : Is Tennessee Ready for AT&T to Enter Cable Market? Here's an intelligent piece from The Knoxville News Sentinel about AT&T trying to pull off the same full-court-press offensive in Tennessee that it is in Ohio, regarding delivery of cable services.

There are so few positives and so many negatives to the legislation that I cannot really see why it's still alive and kicking, unless the money's talking just too, too loud to our elected and appointed employees.

The AT$T cable-delivery behemoths we've seen--across from the car barns off Pearl Road and up and down poor Clifton Boulevard--seem to be especially vulnerable to all sorts of disruption. They're hastily contrived and cheaply installed. I think they ought to be put below grade, first of all, for security purposes, then second, for shielding, and then third, for appearance.

The nasty evidence we see of AT$T's late-stage attempt at entry into the cable market, when they're losing telephone market share to VOIP providers, is sort of sad. They've been outflanked and now are lumbering around trying to respond with the quickest-but-not-the-best maneuver to gain a toehold--the technology seems not to be too well thought through, the design is barely sustainable. They are desparate. They want to stay alive, they want to stay in the game, they want to do it on our backs. We've found these past few years, with VOIP telephone delivery, that they've overcharged us for years. They've taken our discretionary savings dollars to themselves and back to Wall Street.

We don't owe them anything. And they don't really owe us customers anything, either, besides whatever service we contract to pay for. Remember that their first duty is to the shareholders, not the customers. And they're not good neighbors.

plus-size me, please

Cleveland+ chosen as 'brand' for region -- Well, I guess that says it all. Let's get back to work.

prancing lightweights

RE: Jennifer Brunner's Son Right Angle Blog - Ohio's Online Conservative Community -- Here's the note from me that Matt Naugle mentioned as being "negative." I intended it to be instructive and defining. These jejune political-specialty bloggers are twisting and perverting our political dialogues still further, to a point where we have prancing lightweight posers and gossip-mongers purportedly speaking for all of us. These Blackwell boy-acolytes are not my Republican party. My note follows:

Matt, it seems you've created a little stir in the blogosphere this morning with that cheap shot using the Brunner kid. This is the kind of cheesy, low-level, inconsequential baiting that keeps us all from moving forward as a community--you're trying to divide people who should be working together.

The worst thing about it all is that you say you're doing this in the name of conservatism and the Republican Party. Please, don't pretend to be speaking for the rest of us.

We may be in the same party, but we're not on the same team.

My team builds community and works for the good of all the people, not just for a particular shrill, fringe faction of a party now in decline in this state because it got too
self-righteous.

Donny Osmond and American dreaming on reality tv

Just when I think I'll get a momentary respite from things acting strangely, here comes Donny Osmond in a reality-tv series about Great Americans trying to envision being anywhere or anyhow or any which way but "present," and Donny is preempting James Spader and William Shatner in the Tuesday 10 PM slot. I much prefer the fantasies about the American legal system I watch in my only regular weekly show, Boston Legal. Which is more real or unreal doesn't really matter--I know the writing product will be better in the environs of Crane, Poole, & Schmidt.

"an extra helping of attitude and entitlement..."

Maybe we should call it Cleveland Shopkins -- I loved the letters to the editor in yesterday's Sunday PD, the letters about the Ricky Smith article on Tuesday, in which Ricky inadvertently shows his true stripe: He really doesn't want to serve the public as much as he wants to use the public.

When we had the MTB interview with Fred Krum down at CAK, the message was service, service, service, resulting in a pleasant travel experience that a passenger would willingly replicate or repeat. CAK is prospering and seems to be on an advertising offensive all over the region--their yellow signs are everywhere, at least in the more expensive advertising media. CAK apparently has the financial means to advertise, and now Ricky, saddled with one billion of debt, wants to go still further into debt to counter their blitz:

Smith said he is putting together a strategic plan for Hopkins. He said he
wants to bring in new airlines and launch an aggressive marketing campaign,
partly to compete with the recent advertising blitz by Akron-Canton Airport.
Smith said he also wants to improve the looks of the airport's terminal and
customer services, including taxi service.

"It's crucial that the airport runs well, has strong customer service programs and that it's aesthetically pleasing," he said. "All I've done is put paint on the walls. I haven't done anything yet."

desperately seeking wisdom

OpinionJournal - Featured Article: While we're talking about Mike Dovilla, here's a fairly balanced piece he sent me a few weeks back, from Joe Lieberman in the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal on February 26th. Read the whole thing. It speaks to the political environment and the war environment under which Mike and everybody else we've required to serve over there must endure, and we must not jeopardize their safety or compromise the mission at this point based on knee-jerk reactions of the lightweights in the rear; most of them are not leaders, they're merely politicians; many of them don't serve our interests first. One of the worst feelings we all had during the RVN era was having our fate being decided by the politicians--thinking first of their safety, some of them, and then of ours--and by the irate public who weren't there, some of whom had opted not to serve. Here's Joe, who's beginning to show wisdom.

"I understand the frustration, anger and exhaustion so many Americans feel about Iraq, the desire to throw up our hands and simply say, 'Enough.' And I am painfully aware of the enormous toll of this war in human life, and of the infuriating mistakes that have been made in the war's conduct.

But we must not make another terrible mistake now. Many of the worst errors in Iraq arose precisely because the Bush administration best-cased what would happen after Saddam was overthrown. Now many opponents of the war are making the very same best-case mistake--assuming we can pull back in the midst of a critical battle with impunity, even arguing that our retreat will reduce the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq."

connecting the dots, doing simple math, just noticing, just wondering

Taxing balance Abatement reviewed: From the SunNEWS on March 15th, with my emphasis added. The SunNEWS quote is italicized:

"Cleveland's existing citywide residential property tax abatement law was renewed in 1999 and is set to expire June 15. A separate abatement law for downtown won't expire until 2010. Cleveland began offering residential tax abatement, at 100 percent for seven years, for new downtown construction in 1987.
In the decade prior, new housing construction in Cleveland was almost non-existent. In some years, fewer than 20 homes were built. After 1987, the pace quickened. It accelerated in 1991 when the use of tax abatement was expanded citywide, offering a 100 percent abatement over 15 years. The abatement applies only to structures, not land.
Since then, 11,259 residential units were built, according to a 2007 study by Cleveland State University's College of Urban Affairs. The study also showed 60 percent of people buying tax-abated housing are coming from outside Cleveland. "

The forecast for 2007 is that Cleveland will have between 10,000 and 12,000 vacant or abandoned properties, which can be accounted for nearly directly by the 11,259 tax-abated new properties. The overall Cleveland population is less now than what it was in 1991. Where is the benefit? Where exactly is the gain? What is the loss?

Nobody's doing the simple math. Nobody's talking straight talk.

like a tumor

Clinic, city consider new Euclid Ave. traffic plan--Like a tumor, the Cleveland Clinic just continues to spread and to grow, now wanting to take out a chunk of Euclid Avenue itself. It's already been the urban renewal shill to take down a whole neighborhood, and now it wants to become a "campus" and sprawl across and overlay the existing grid of streets. ("A Clinic spokeswoman would not comment on specifics, but said the hospital wants to calm not only traffic but also the patients, employees and other pedestrians who now face an unfriendly swath of cars and concrete. "--how ghastly!)

I view this as the height of arrogance and a clear signal that they just have too much money. It's time for a redistribution. We want our money back.

The Clinic already has its own bus system (RTA's not good enough for its employees) to shuttle Clinic commuters who opt to drive to work from remote parking to their jobsite.

It already has constructed enclosed walkways from building to building (like those things we had for the kids' hamster habitat) so that Clinic commuters need never set foot on a Cleveland city street, yet alone be breathed upon by a native Clevelander, one of those quaint figures down on the sidewalk.

It's figurehead has the hyper-preppie name of Toby.

It just has too much money, and not enough sense not to press it's luck. It's grown fat on us, and now it wants to take yet more. Let's start saying "no" to any more incursions from the Clinic into our public spaces and our public purse, and let's start taking back our money, and our heritage. We've had our pockets picked long enough.

I don't quite get it

The Chris Matthews Show--I got up early this Saturday morning, 0630, zero dark thirty, to watch the Chris Matthews show; I've been watching Chris perform since I arrived at Holy Cross in the fall of 1964, finding him a year ahead of me and holding forth daily in raucous and impassioned discussions in what we called "the caf." The 1967 Purple Patcher tells me that--

"Caf" is an abbreviation for

a) a place to sit and watch other people sitting and watching,

b) a room where you can hear lunch-room theologians, boasting casanovas, budding leftists, and "Caf rats" discuss the importance of Polynesian Frog Worship,

c) an enameled chamber designed by the architect of Madison Square Garden's washrooms,

d) all or none or some or any of these

Most don't know that Chris owes much of his style to dead Jesuits. But, I've digressed. But, what the heck, it's Saturday. Anyway, what struck me as I listened to this week's gathered pundits extrapolate political data in order to game the primaries in February of 2008, a full year away, was that we were focusing on something that's a mere whistle stop on the way to the main event in November of 2008, and that's a very long time to be talking about these same aspirants, and a long time for them to be playing to the audience of potential voters. Can't we talk about something else for a while, like what is do-able and achievable here and now, and not after somebody gets elected in 2008 and into office in 2009?

The other, more pernicious aspect of these campaign-horse-race shows is that the candidates, whom we've not yet elected and may never elect, have more ability to form the public dialogue and to sway public opinion than the people we've elected already. Are we being fair to ourselves to take ourselves out of the present and focus on a hypothetical future? Let's get some work done for a change, and stop talking about what might happen, if only somebody gets a chance to implement their ideas, and if only they work out as advertised. Let the aspirants be known by their deeds, not by their promises. Let them be known by their works.

Which begs the question: Does any real work ever get done by people in the political arenas, or do we all just talk about it, as we slide into an abyss we refuse to talk about?