Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible.
~Anonymous

As we launch multimillion dollar building projects around Cleveland, from the Art Museum to MOCA, to a reworked freeway and “signature bridge”, to new developments in the Flats, Cleveland might learn something about sustainable development by checking out the award winners of the first construction competition held by The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction

I have a laptop. (A slow starter/late adopter you're thinking.) It was a holiday gift that was meant to free me from my house. I can get out and write, correspond, research anywhere I can get online. But the cold weather and my deep appreciation for my home environment and my dogs have kept me in the house. Now, however, I sit most days in the sunny breakfast room of my 89 year old Cleveland Heights home and write surrounded by windows.

I saw this contest posting that started April 1st and runs for 6 months.  I am sure  someone in our region will win this!

Click here to go to the competition page

BE ORIGINAL
You have two choices in life; You can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct.
To be distinct, you must be different.
To be different, you must strive to be what no one else but you can be.

Blog technology provider Pluck is about to offer content from 600 bloggers to newspaper publishers across the country in a syndicated service called BlogBurst . A number of articles are reporting the details. CNET, and the provocatively titled article "Bloggers Unite to Infiltrate Newspapers" are good starting points to learn more.

If you want to sign up to have your content distrubuted through their service, visit BlogBurst. 

Click here for more information on the graphic.

I am so glad that we {my husband and I} are getting out to the east side more.

I absolutley love the housing and building styles, the little shops and seeing people out on the streets walking with friends!!

Sunday,9 April 06

It was a glorious day at The Cleveland Botanical Gardens!!!

I have never seen as many butterflies in one place as in the Costa Rican Biome!!
    I absolutley enjoyed the outside gardens as well, even though they aren't in bloom...yet. It is exciting to see what will be to come.

Date: Wednesday, April 12

Time: 5:00 P.M. - 6:45 P.M.

Place: Myers University, Chester Campus

3921 Chester Avenue, Cleveland, OH

" I think open source software is a good thing, but I've never bought into the religious fundamentalist fervor of a lot of the circles I move in as an IT reporter. Condemning people for not using Linux instead of Windows, and the strong-arm tactics of some proprietary software makers that try to lock people into a certain product, are just two sides of the same coin. But open standards that make real choices possible? Now, that's something I can get behind." - Tina Gasperson

Today is a beautiful day here in the clevland area!!!

Take a loved one, friend or even just yourself to the lake.

Walk on the pier,or on the beach and relax and breath in the day.

so what if it is chilly. 

About five years ago I watched a bucket truck pull up under this light pole and the guy went up and attached this radio device onto the arm of the light pole.  The unit is powered right off the constant feed to the light’s photo voltaic switch.  It took the guy less than 5 minutes to install.  Note how the power plug is piggybacked by the old photo cell. When he came back down to ground level I asked the fellow what the purpose of the radio unit was, and he showed me a plan of the Town on which numerous hexagonal cells were show.   In the center of each of those cells (1/4 mile radius) was to be one of these radio transceivers.  The cells communicated downstream to the numerous homes in each cell, and they communicated upstream to two or three cell tower locations from which they connected to land telephone lines.  The unit was able to handle dozens of simultaneous discrete individual connections with data rates up and down in the 300kbs range.

Their intended purpose?  Wireless multi-channel digital connection for internet and TV!

ONE: Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully. TWO: Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other. THREE: Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

Do you know this famous Cleveland-area company? When was the last time you saw someone using some of their lip gloss?

Here's a posting from a friend at Tribe.net interested in green roof development, and I wonder how hard can this really be, and how much of this goes on in NEO?   From Georgie's Tribe blog...http://people.tribe.net/terraverde:    ...I'm helping James Kalin prototype the Green Roof on the LBOW (LEEDS Building On Wheels) project. In my system, run-off water will fall into the Slow Sand Filter. I'll have to check with a structural engineer to make sure I can support the additional weight. James showed me the GreenGrid (www.greengridroofs.com) trays going on the LBOW roof. It's basically a recycled-content HDPE tray that holds your plantings.

The manufacturer highlights the following benefits:
• Reduced Energy Costs
• Reduced Urban "Heat Island" Effect
• Sound Insulation
• Extended Roof Life
• Stormwater Management

This is a good primer on GreenRoofs:
www.damonfarber.com/Green_Ro...0Roof.pdf

We are enjoying the early signs of spring, and looking forward to this year's Easter Egg hunt in Cleveland Heights... coming up on April 15, I believe. Above is a photo from the hunt last year.

I've thought for some time about the issues facing East Cleveland, and thought deeply about the potential we have to uplift an underprivileged community by applying a concerted eco-development strategy.  Here I outline some of my core thoughts as framed by our six-sphere model: