This story in today's New York Times detailing corruption - exposed by blogger Karen Gadbois - in "re-building" New Orleans  warms my heart. 

 A few weeks ago I had dinner in the little farm house (photo above) located in the lovely green rolling hills North of Pittsburg – all because of Realneo.     I hadn’t seen my friend for about 40 years when an email came in a few months back.  

You know what they say about a "new mouse trap"...that there is always a new wrinkle, and a new way to make an improvement.    

 Norm Roulet views Scott Miller works at Grays Auctioneers on December 14, 2007.   Life's an unfinished mash up

 

I am continuing my theme of kites driving the economy.   Today I introduce another type of kite - this kite is an exhilarating  transportation vehicle.   With fuel prices going up (which is good) our entertainment outlets will be modified.  Power boats will be the losers, and wind powered sports will be the winner (which is good).

Motoress (pronounced MOTOR – ESS) is a business out of the usual gender mold.   “Connecting Women with Motorcycling” is Vicki Grays’  (discussing her Ducati Superbike in photo above with trainees at the Rider Training Institute in Toronto) description of her business.

With my criticism of the Memorial Day Indy 500 race behind us,  and the need for transportation still in front of us,  I introduce the Realneo audience to Marcelo da Luz.   Sig. Da Luz is a prime motivator in the development of the slick 3 wheel (two front/one rear) solar car on display behind him last Sunday at Kensington Market in Toronto, Canada.  The solar project is called the Power of One, and “Xof1” cleverly and concisely captures the solar contest in its domain name: www.xof1.com

One of the big pleasures I have is engaging people and finding what interests them. 

Here is a frog photo taken on July 31, 2004.  The green frog is on a lawn chair on the near Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada.  Anyone know the species?  I am posting this here to get a url for the photo, so I can then paste the url into zoomuse's other frog post.

 Moving dirt can be intellectually, as well as physically, challenging.  Mike Mulligan found digging challenging during the transition from steam to Diesel excavating “shovels” in the 1930’s, and digging dirt is still challenging today.

Cleveland's Port Authority has been spending money on "consultants" studying the feasibility of operating a ferry across Lake Erie to Port Stanley, Ontario. In 2004 Toronto was served by a fast passenger and auto ferry from Rochester, New York.  The Rochester-Toronto ferry service operated for one summer.     The photo above is the empty Toronto terminal - now occupied by a movie making business.

In 2007 Bill Callahan reported on the Cleveland ferry spending on his blog.  A 2006 report in the Painesville News-Herald outlines the complexity of setting up a ferry service - whether in Lake County or Cuyahoga County.

There are people and organizations working on establishing a healthy view about automobiles.  In Toronto, Canada Streets are For People. org has created a brilliant crowd stopper - a CAR PLANTER!   

Almost everyone, me included, did  a double take as they walked by and noticed that the hood of the car was a lawn, the moon roof was hatching a healthy tree, and the trunk was full of rooted shrubs.  

The window glass makes it easy to see if the soil is moist or dry - every pot should be so well designed. 

"PARKS - NOT PARKING" one message proclaimed.

I am thinking of what model car I will use in Cleveland - anyone have a place to park the nursery vehicle?  

Here's the Mission Statement from the Streets are for People web site :

Mission Statement!

Since 2002, Streets are for People! has used costumes, trumpets, and big tricycles to liberate the commons from the mundane rule of that deadly beast — the automobile. We deliver the straight-up message that CARS SUCK, while creating the city we all want to live in, a comfortable place where laughter, romance, and dancing children fill the streets.

As the American pass time of entertaining ourselves in "cute" and "muscle" gas-burning automobiles comes up against global warming, new corporate tricks are in store.  

I used to always open the window of the car when I took photos of scenes passing by.   But at 60 mph you’re apt to get your lens cap blown off.  

Charles Stevens was a member of the United States Armed forces.   So he was eligible for a veteran’s burial in the cemetery along Chagrin Boulevard out near 271.  

Following is a piece I posted on BFD in response to Ed Morrison bringing the Boston Civic Engagement Summit to my attention last week.  (the links wouldn’t copy live to BFD when I pasted in my Word doc. there, so I duplicate the post here with live links)

The plain, simple minded, Dirty Dealer is unable to cut through the glib assurances of Town Engineer Ciuni and others who continue to ambiguously suggest that  the Cuyahoga County owned University Square Plaza (mall) 5 deck parking garage is structurally safe .  The photo above shows a typical double T precast garage installation at another parking structure.  Notice that there is much more depth of the vertical leg of the T resting on the horizontal (beam is concrete in the above photo but steel in USq.) beam than in the USq. garage lower photo here in an earlier article on Realneo.

Boston Now, a free daily started last spring in Boston, Massachusetts, and reported about then on Realneo,  has closed up and pulled it's servers off line.  You can't even read about their closing on their web site.  Instead you can find the news here in Google's cache

Does this night shot of Good Year's noisy, fuel-sucking,   electronically advertizing Blimp pounding down  commercial money messages over the Indian's commercial electronical big screen stadium filled with it's captive electronically numb audience constitute GRAFITTI? 

We all know that North East Ohio and Cleveland have to shrink, to get smaller, to dissassemble what we've built.   We have been disassembling for about 50 years now  but we don't want to acknowledge the difficult task we have to do.  

No, we don't quite need to close Cleveland, but we have to become professional shrinkers. 

Get those extra houses out of sight, get those extra blocks where houses used to stand put into forest, tear down those vacant factories,  get rid of those extra cops, extra firemen, extra councilors - and on and on...and the extra banks…

So it is encouraging to see that one of our oldest and wisest corporate neighbors has chosen to really commit to the cause:   SHRINK NEO!

National City has nothing against sub-prime loans.   They brokered them, they sold them, they own them, they hold them,

Showing true grit National City held on to about 25 billion dollars of sub-prime paper.   That's the type of sincerity that I appreciate.   Putting your money where your mouth is.

On Monday, April 15, 2008 when I went to open my SBC Global.net webmail account, I got a message that said that “I had stumbled on a temporary yahoo problem”, and that I should be patient and check back later to see if the problem had been cleared. 

"It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,

There’s a warren of artistic eclecticism on the West Side of Cleveland off Detroit in the American Greetings factory.   

 

Secor’s Nursery in Perry, Ohio specializes in bare root fruit trees.  Bare root means what it says:  the trees are propagated by digging them out of the soil in the fall after they have reached dormancy.   The saplings are brought into an unheated barn and stacking upright in rows according to their species.  The roots of all the saplings are covered with moist sawdust.  And then the lights are turned out and the barn shut up. 

 

Titled "Arachne Weaves Her Web", this imaginative low tech installation by Debbie Apple-Presser is testing viewers.  

Back on  July 13, 2007 Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones announced that her office had obtained a1.1 million dollar federal earmark for a “wind spire”.   The “wind spire” is a  scheme ( often also touted – here in an interview on Green City Blue Lake - by Mark Cironi)  pursued by CSU professor Dr. Majid Rashidi   as a Bernoulli Principle “trick”.

  Robert Carrick,  County Purchasing Department, holds a half million dollar bank check which was submitted as part of the K & D Group bid package.  The half million dollars are non-refundable to K & D should they not complete the purchase of the Ameritrust property.  There are two 6 month periods during which K & D can close the deal with the County.  But if K & D fails to close during the next 12 months, they forfeit the $500,000.00 to the County. 

 

Engineering continues to out do itself - with computers and finite element analysis  - creating "thrill" roller  coaster rides which test our faith in physics.   I love the physics – and the curvilinear ride tracks – and they say riding the coasters is safer than driving…but geezzz, why do it?  

Almost every time I post to Realneo I  find I am asking myself the same question  (which comes from a sense of urgency):   is this post what I should be spending my time on?  is the subject a priority?