Harold Hitz Burton Award for Bruce W. Sanford

The Club is proud to announce that it will present its Harold Hitz Burton Award in 2007 to Bruce W. Sanford. Bruce is a partner at Baker Hostetler and one of the nation's most preeminent attorneys in media law. Author of both a popular work (Don't Shoot the Messenger) and scholarly tomes on libel and privacy, Bruce is also a recognized expert on the First Amendment.  Before going to law school, Bruce worked as a reporter on The Wall Street Journal. The Club plans a celebration in the Sugarman Room at Baker Hostetler, 1050 Connecticut Avenue, N. W., Washington, D. C., at 12:30 PM on January 23. A box lunch will be served. Reservations are requested through Brooke Stoddard. Non-Contributing members and guests: $15. Contributing members: $14.

Cleveland attorney Richard  Herman sent me an outstanding analysis (posted below) of a Duke University study released on January 4, 2007, which is attached to this posting and "concludes that foreign-born entrepreneurs were founders of over 25% of the technology and engineering companies started from 1995 to 2005," and surfaces that "Only 14% of Ohio's tech companies were founded by immigrants, well below the national average." "The study further found that Indians have founded more engineering and technology companies in the U .S. in the past decade than immigrants from U.K, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.  26% of all immigrant-founded companies have Indian founders." "Similarly, the study found that Ohio was successful in attracting only 1% of the Indian tech entrepreneurs and only 5% of the UK tech entrepreneurs." Richard offers three excellent suggestions for addressing this problem, and you should read those and his entire Economic Development Advisory and the attached report below.

Building blocks for bridging digital divide in East Cleveland 

In a recent article on bridging the digital divide in NEO, "It seems time to open up the OneCleveland network vision of Cleveland Heights, to see if there is value for others", I mentioned "An example of a progressive community building a mesh broadband network environment is found in Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), which is a world- leader in such grass-roots broadband community service and technology. That is a model we are exploring in trying to help residents of underserved communities of East Cleveland and Cleveland secure access to broadband services, as carriers have underserved their neighborhoods, and poverty there is a significant issue."

Well, I was pleased to start the first work-day of 2007 with the correspondence posted below, from the Executive Director of CUWiN - globally celebrated community computing expert Sascha Meinrath - who is helping us center in on a viable model for East Cleveland and other undersupported urban neighborhoods in the region to bridge the digital divide here. Read on, as we are clearly on the right track and farther along than anyone may imagine. I'll add related insight and next steps as they develop.

One of my Heroes of 2006 is certainly "Citizen" Ed Hauser, who I had the pleasure of working with closely last year. Not only does Ed get credit for driving into public hands Whiskey Island, but he has taken the lead pushing for saving the national Historic Landmark Coast Guard Station, and he has been the #1 champion in the world for holding the Ohio Department of Transportation accountable for their poor management and inept planning in attempting to steamroll through Cleveland a pathetic vision for a new bridge spanning the Cuyahoga River Valley, where the current I-90 span sits, and turning the Innerbelt Trench into a bypass of historic downtown Cleveland to benefit future development by the Lake. Other than Plain Dealer Architecture Critic Steven Litt and a small cult of other friends of Citizen Hauser, Ed has been alone in waging these battles. What he has been up against are some of the most powerful forces in Ohio - the Port Authority - ODOT - and, it turns out, the powerful contractors who buy politicians like trinkets and then make $ billions from ODOT, the port, etc. That fact was made well clear in a Plain Dealer article titled "Gas-tax increase fuels ODOT building boom" on soon to be dismissed ODOT director Gordon Proctor and his ODOT, which have been wasting perverse amounts of public funds on foolishness, which was to include their hack bridge and trench plans for Cleveland. Incoming Governor Strickland will replace Proctor and could not do worse - then we will move on in determining what will happen with ODOT developing in NEO, with Ed championing good solutions. We are so fortunate, as a community, to have this special citizen activist watching over such seemingly immense battlefields where few have the courage to tread. Read below the December 31, 2006 public communication from Ed Hauser to Director Proctor, which will serve as his send-off to the highway (surely we'll see him lobbying or working for one of his contractors soon enough). We of NEO will welcome a new director in this important position leading this multi-billion-dollar state department, and we will expect that public employee to treat our community with the respect we deserve, and we know Citizen Hauser will keep the process honest. Good bye Proctor.

In a fascinating article in the NYTimes.com today, we learn “The environment is begging for the Wal-Mart business model”... describing "the environmental movement’s dream: America’s biggest company, legendary for its salesmanship and influence with suppliers, encouraging 200 million shoppers to save energy." That Wal-Mart, in October, announced it would pressure suppliers to stop using three chemicals, including the insecticide permethrin, used in pesticides, awoke my attention to good activism by this company that I have not historically liked, but that now Wal-Mart Stores, the giant discount retailer, is determined to push compact fluorescent lamps into at least 100 million homes is truly revolutionary.

Source: Environmental Health Watch 

I'm just old enough to remember Watergate, and Nixon's resignation, and President Ford pardoning him, and Chevy Chase spoofing Ford throughout his presidency, and the end of the Viet Nam War, and then Ford was gone, defeated by Carter. Ford died December 26, 2006, and the headline in the Plain Dealer the following day was "The Accidental President." The news also referred to him as "a healer", taken from the title of Ford's autobiography "A Time To Heal". To me, his legacy was not especially memorable, until I learned Ford had conducted a series of interviews with Watergate investigative reporter Bob Woodward, of the Washington Post, to be published after Ford's death, which make public Ford's exclamation "Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq." This was published in the Washington Post December 28th, and spread like wildfire, and is certainly Ford's greatest contribution to world peace imaginable.

Thank you again, Ohio Republican legislature, for bringing a second city into litigation against Sherwin-Williams and the paint industry in a single day, December 27, 2006, as Canton has joined Cincinnati demanding that those who created the public nuisance of lead poisoning now clean up their mess, that has harmed 1,000s in these communities. From the Canton Repository: "In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Stark County Common Pleas Court, the city says the paint industry knew lead was toxic as early as 1900 but continued to add the metal to paint and even promoted the product as having health benefits. The city wants the companies to pay for the removal of lead paint and for public education about its dangers, as well as reimbursement for money the city has spent dealing with lead-related hazards."

If we have anything to thank Ohio Republican legislators for, and especially Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican,  it is that their cloak-of-night passage of Substitute Senate Bill 117, which seeks to outlaw cities suing polluters for public nuisances they cause, and legislate-away other consumer rights for Ohioans, has driven our state capital of Columbus and now huge Ohio city Cincinnati to storm their courthouses to sue Sherwin-Williams and other paint companies over the public nuisance of lead poisoning in their communities, which is a legal position proved valid in the courts of the State of Rhode Island. In Columbus, the Mayor has said it was the action of these Republicans that forced them to sue. Of course, Ohioans' greatest appreciation goes to Mayor Brewer, of East Cleveland, who was the man who brought such public nuisance lead litigation to Ohio to protect his residents, the most effected by lead poisoning in the state, and so he is protecting all citizens of Ohio.

This is too cool! I was exploring a site linked to realneo called Left Luggage, and came across a project created by Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson as part of their hyperchoreography initiatives, described as "An interactive moving mosaic for the web." I can't recall any so engaging places on the web, where an individual creates a new art form - a dancing mosaic. I'll let words from the Ardnamurchan Zillij website describe this further, below, and strongly suggest you check it out - my first effort is shown in a screenshot above, but what I created was actually a living, moving work of art... each of the images that make up the mosaic are short video loops, so each of the images and the overall composition are constantly moving and changing - as a Flash file, I didn't know how to save it, so it was temporary and so personal... give it a try here.

On Sunday, December 24, 2006, Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Sheryl Harris wrote a column I thought to write myself, titled "My holiday gift to you: A list of Ohio politicians who sold you out", "a list of the Northeast Ohio legislators who voted to curtail your consumer rights" by passing lobbyist, lawyer and industry-benefiting Amended Substitute Senate Bill Number 117, allowing significant corporate entitlements to soar through the Ohio legislature without community debate. The amendments are most significantly designed "to prohibit the use of enterprise theories of liability against manufacturers in product liability claims, and to include public nuisance claims under the definition of product liability claims", meaning to protect the paint industry here from liability for the public nuisance they have caused by selling lead based paint nearly a century after it was known to harm humans, as proved in their loss to the State of Rhode Island earlier this year. The amendments also protect car dealers, scam loan sharks, manufacturers, etc. from real accountability for harming the public. The legislators who are guilty of this abuse of their offices were listed in the PD article with the suggestion that is "a keepsake you could clip and save." Local blogger Jill Miller Zimon repeated the list on her excellent blog, "Writes like she talks", and I repeat it here, so it may be as present in cyberspace and available to the world as possible. We will need this list over the next many years, until all of these anti-Ohioan men and women are driven from public "service", as they have shown they do not protect public interests. By having this information in as many public places as possible, I hope we the people will be more successful protecting the public than has our legislature under current rule. The list of sell outs and further harms they cause the public is as follows, from Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Sheryl Harris:

Since late June, 2006, a growing team of innovative community leaders has been working together with Lamond Williams, the owner of Hot Sauce Williams BBQ, and East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer and Community Development Director Tim Goler, and government leadership in Cleveland, to determine how best to redevelop the historic Hough Bakery Complex, formerly the Star Bakery, which Lamond also owns. The objective is to use that redevelopment as a catalyst for transformation of the neighborhoods surrounding that significant property, located on Lakeview, partially in both Cleveland and East Cleveland. On the map above, the Star Complex is in magenta, and the green circle marks a 1/2 mile radius surrounding that - the other colored areas are key neighborhoods and assets within that radius.

One might think when the capital of our state sues one of the biggest companies in our state, Sherwin-Williams, which is based in the Plain Dealer's home town of Cleveland, and is defended by one of the world's most powerful law firms, also based in our hometown, seeking over $1 billion, that story would rank a few real column inches in the local paper... perhaps hit Section One, or Metro. Not in the Sherwin-Williams Plain Dealer...

 There is lots of major news related to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and their plans for the region, these days.

I met a few days ago with Ed Hauser - the "Citizen Hauser" who single-handedly saved Whiskey Island for the public - to see what he's been up to for the past few months. In brief, besides helping save Northeast Ohio from ODOT and their foolish pursuit of their ill-conceived Innerbelt Bridge and Trench plans, and continuing to single-handedly challenge the Port Authority's ongoing attempts to destroy Whiskey Island, Ed is taking next steps in his one man, multi-year battle to save the remarkable National Historic Landmark Coast Guard Station, at the tip of Whiskey Island, at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, designed by J. Milton Dyer, also architect of Cleveland City Hall. Ed mentioned to me he in the process of pressuring the city of Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi to seek a court order to force the city to comply with its own landmarks-preservation law, which requires owners of city landmarks to keep the properties secure and water tight, and, if the city fails to act responsibly and lawfully, Ed intends to file a citizens lawsuit against the city. Today, the Plain Dealer picked up the scent of the story, and shared some of the sad commentary of some of those related to the sorry state of this landmark, and the declining historic integrity of this city.

Tonight, 1300 Gallery wrapped up five years of transforming the visual arts scene in Northeast Ohio, with a classic showing of hallmark works of passionate visual expressionists Derek Hess and Bask, ending an era of hosting some of the coolest exhibitions and parties in Cleveland history, and doing that just right.

Zygote Press, Inc. is Northeast Ohio's only non-profit cooperative fine-arts printmaking facility. In its tenth year, Zygote is located with other arts organizations and businesses in Cleveland's Quadrangle neighborhood, a developing arts district complete with galleries, restaurants and exciting new live-work possibilities for artists and other members of the creative community.

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One of NEO's most striking and fascinating galleries, Convivium33, is featuring, as its first anniversary showing, Evolution 1964-2006, an exciting retrospective of the work of globally appreciated mixed-media artist and Case University art professor Christopher Pekoc, curated and catalogued by prolific author and Case art history professor Henry Adams, delivering an inspiring and intriguing experience for all visitors. From Professor Adams' writings about the show: “There’s something dark, tough and roughly textured about Pekoc’s work that captures the creative essence of Cleveland”... “His imagery is both repressed and intensely sensual.” I like those thoughts about Pekoc and Cleveland and this show very much.

For Clevelanders and your friends in Washington, D.C., January 23, 2007, the Cleveland Club of Washington, D.C. has scheduled a very special lunch for a celebration of presenting Bruce Sanford with their Harold Hitz Burton Award.

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Leave 'Em Wanting More #1 "Please God Save Us From Your Followers." Final show at the 1300 Gallery featuring Derek Hess and Bask.

Cleveland knows Derek Hess, but they have never seen this before.

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Leave 'Em Wanting More #2: 1300 Gallery celebrates the second to last installment of "Leave 'Em Wanting More" on December 8 with art by David D'Andrea, Stephen Kasner and Douglas Utter.

D'Andrea, a freelance illustrator in Portland, believes in the tradition of the "memento mori" and uses this visual reminder of the transience of life on earth in his work. D'Andrea, "seeks to perpetuate the avowal that is death and in turn catharsis to create archaic crests for modern battles of loss, love and hopeless abandon."

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From the Cleveland Club of Washington, D.C.: if you are in D.C., please join fellow Clevelanders at the Town & Country Lounge of the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C., on Thursday, December 14th beginning at 5:30 and stretching to whenever for some holiday cheer. The Mayflower is conveniently located near the Farragut North Metro Station at 1127 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., and is decorated for the season. The Town & Country Lounge is in the ground floor. No reservations are necessary. Cash bar. Complimentary pasta and hors d'oeuvres will be available. If you aren't in D.C., pass this on to friends there!

Calling for a volunteer or two to go to the Mayflower early, say about 5:00 to stake out our territory. Email me Brooke C. Stoddard if you are interested... brookecstoddard [at] cs [dot] com

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I was very please to be contacted, last month, by the editor of Cleveland Magazine and told they were writing a feature article on the remarkable St. Josephat Hall, home of the spectacular Convivium33 Gallery, which had just hosted a show of the great work of old family friend Clarence Van Duzer, and that the magazine would like to use in their article some of the photos and collages I had posted to REALNEO about that show. Well, the Cleveland Magazine article featuring all that, "Angel Investor" is in the December issue, now out, and very exciting.