I live about two miles from Lake Erie, and went in the water today, for this pan and header, but I do not consider it safe to swim in the water, which is pathetic. Healthy beaches and a healthy Lake Erie would improve the value of all of NEO by $ trillions... that would be worth far more than all the polluters combined. Imagine being able to take a dip here, safely, wherever and whever you like...

Location

 

The Wendy Park Foundation and U.S. Coast Guard Station Need  Your Help!!!

I wanted to enjoy and capture a last glimpse of Fall 2007 so stopped by the second most important battleground in the history of the environmental movement in NEO, after Whiskey Island, being the Shaker Lakes Nature Center, above (see full size here). Were it not for 11 exceptional women from Shaker, including REALNEOan Martha Eakin's mother, a seriously crude, corrupt, foolish Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairman, former Cuyahoga County Engineer Albert Porter, would have driven freeways through this exact spot in the Shaker Lakes. The scenario is very much like we have in NEO today, with seriously crude, corrupt, foolish political bosses attempting to do seriously crude, corrupt, foolish things to our region, like demolishing the Breuer, over-bridging and retrenching I-90, and likely the "Opportunity Corridor", which is driving far more than 11 exceptional women to take on the latest generation of seriously crude, corrupt, foolish leaders... and, like the Shaker 11, we are winning.

Summer 2007—The Cuyahoga County Planning Commission quietly launched a new section on its web site for Whiskey Island, signaling its readiness to move forward with plans to enhance the existing natural areas at the 23-acre eastern end known as Wendy Park. Connections from the city would also be improved with a proposed bike path along the road from
Edgewater Park, and—further in the future—one over the
Cuyahoga
River for the Towpath Trail.

 

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It is official - "Cuyahoga County commissioners voted 2-1 today to raise the sales tax a quarter of a penny to help bring a Medical Mart to Cleveland." Perhaps you'd like time to think about this more, and the opportunity to vote with other citizens on how you are taxed.  Other citizens feel the same and have formed a committee to "Put It On The Ballot"- a grass-roots campaign to collect enough signatures to force the 1/4% sales tax increase to be placed on a ballot. This Friday, July 27, there will be an Excellence Roundtable at The Inner Circle where some of the people involved with this campaign will join a discussion on this issue, from all directions.

To learn more about the campaign, visit http://putitontheballot.com - you'll certainly read more about this initiative on this site and on REALNEO throughout the coming months. 7GEN (developer of REALNEO) is providing this Drupal site for this initiative, and I look forward to learning more about the campaign and all related issues.

This is a shot taken over the breakwater last Wednesday, July 11, 2007.  I thought it would be fun to see it up against Norm's Realneo Header.  I'm not sure where Norm's photo was taken - are there any of the same spinnakers in the two photos?

 

Rush hours are abhorrent everywhere (forget inconvenience to us humans - the exhaust is killing the globe), from Boston's SouthEast"Expressway" to the Cleveland Inner Belt and "dead man's curve" (which ODOT will "fix" - right?) to the interstate 5 in LA

But here is a view of a rush hour in Cleveland that is really exhilarating. 

    

Actually, this is a view from the Peace Bridge which crosses the Niagara River at Buffalo.  The view is through my Greyhound window and shows the (8 – count the blades) Clipper turbines on the huge slag piles of the old Bethlehem Steel mill in Lackawanna.   Look how high the slag is over the ice on Lake Erie.  The turbine towers are over 300 feet tall, so the slag pile is at least 100 feet high - that's the way we used to do it - just dump our debris in the Great Lakes.  Cleveland did that too - Burke Lakefront Airport is on the old City dump.

I received an informative email this afternoon from Richard McDougald Enty, Planning Team Leader, Programming & Planning Department, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, about some of their Transit Oriented Development initiatives and vision. It is very exciting to see this as an active subject for discussion and planning here. I am a strong supporter of Transit Oriented Development and consider it the core foundation on which we should rebuild the City of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs.  Here is the vision from RTA:

 

 

 One of my favorite places in NEO is Whiskey Island... a public park owned by Cuyahoga County, thanks to County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and local citizen activist Ed Hauser. One reason I love the place is it is home of the national historic landmark J. Milton Dyer Coast Guard station at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which has been neglected by the former owner, real estate developer Dick Jacobs, and now the current owner the city of Cleveland. Still, a beautiful image set to the surrounding of spectacular snow drifted ice covered Lake Erie.