Being caught 'brown handed' is like getting caught red handed except that you are caught being a pollut-o-crat.....as in brown fields and and as in the antithesis of Green.

In an effort to continue to clean up our city, our roving patrol at BSI captured another photo of a local business polluting our great land.  See Buckeye Sustainability Institute' NorthCoast Green Spieler Blog for the hot shot!

I look forward to your thoughts!

Architecture that can float is now very much in vogue.

JOIN US FOR CLEVELAND BICYCLE WEEK -- MAY 11-17, 2009. We've got all sorts of interesting events planned!  Visit www.clevelandbicycleweek.org for full details, but here are some highlight events:

* Cleveland Bike to Work Day, May 15th.  Park at the future Bicycle Station at Gateway and see the latest drawings (East 4th Street and High Street, just north of Huron Road).  Bike to Work brought to you about NOACA, visit the Bike Buddy program at: www.Ohiorideshare.com

Cleveland Bicycle Week is coming, May 11-17! Join us for Northeast Ohio's biggest gathering of diverse cycling interests and activities, with events all around town! 

Information technology pioneer and visionary - and Oberlin graduate - Marc Canter helped me launch REALNEO.US, in 2004... from San Francisco. Now, five years of social community and technology building and innovation later, I've convinced Marc to personally return to Northeast Ohio to collaborate with government, citizens and organizations in the community to make the open web a core economic and social strength of our region, at the global level.

Location

For the earliest agricultural communities in Northern Europe, the last six weeks of Winter were the Starving Time. By early February, stored surplus food from September’s harvest was gone or was about to go bad, so there was a last big meal at Imbolc and very short rations to planting time at the Spring Equinox, Ostara. What leadership there was, focused on keeping very hungry people from eating the seed grain and breeding stock, so the community could plant and grow their flocks in the Spring.

Early notice of the most important event of 2009 - this is exciting!

The "Effect" is Ed's house band... rocked the Beachland Ballroom at Ed's going away party... mark your calendars...

Location

I was surprised to see a letter to the editor printed and on-line in the Sunday, March 22, 2009, Cleveland Plain Dealer - "A flag of peace is found out of order at the St. Patrick's Day parade", by Lou Pumphrey. It starts: "Being half-Irish (on me mudder's side), off work on St. Patrick's Day and knowing the day would be sunny and warm, I vaguely considered donning my 41-year-old U.S. Army dress uniform and joining the St. Paddy's Day parade downtown, carrying my flag." But there was no accompanying picture of Lou or the Flag of Peace.

In the print edition, there was a file photo of a parade, but it was hardly relevant.

Are you concerned that your children's health is affected by pollution?
Do you want some answers about your industrial neighbors?
Do you want to build your environmental campaign skills?

Location

May 20, 2009, 7:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.: Environmental Division Meeting
Shula’s 2, DoubleTree Cleveland South, 6200 Quarry Lane, Independence
Discuss upcoming CES events, updates on regulatory issues, and whatever interests you. Free to attend, breakfast is on your own. Register online:  http://www.cesnet.org/evtView.asp?evtID=166

May 27, 2009, 7:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.: Climate Change Roundtable

Topic: An Economic Forecast for Northeast Ohio

Speaker: John Burke, President, Burke Rosen & Associates; Professor Emeritus of Economics, Cleveland State University; Adjunct Professor, John Carroll University

Program Sponsorships and tables available. Earn 1 Continuing Professional Development hour.

Location: Hilton Garden Inn Cleveland Downtown

Location

This event has been cancelled.  Information about future Climate Change Committee programs is available here: http://www.cesnet.org/newsAnnouncementView.asp?nwsID=109

Location

Panel Discussion: "Transportation: How We're Moving Economic Development"

Moderator: Howard Maier, Executive Director, Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA)

Panelists:

Location

Discussion about issues related to climate change. Topic TBA. Free to attend; breakfast is on your own.

Local: Shula's 2 in the DoubleTree Cleveland South

Location

Below is a heartfelt appeal to those to reach out with their social networks to demand inclusion of key legislation that would curtail regional and state funded programming and could have many negative consequences as a result.  This particular piece of legislation, still up for debate is the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.  The importance of this particular element is elucidated here for your perusal. 

By REBECCA SMITH

A substantial increase in the amount of electricity produced from renewable energy would require building a transmission system that would carry a price tag of up to $100 billion, according to a new study. The new system would be needed because the existing eastern grid couldn't handle the volume of power coming from the wind-producing states.

Could we do this here in Cleveland???

--------------------------------------------------------------

This just in, via Cleveland City Council, via Facebook... "Another step taken toward Breaking the Cycle of Abandonment". This is about how City Council has decided to spend our community's $25 million in Federal taxpayer funds from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) - the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development - intended to help our impoverished inner city. You must ask yourself, who decided how your $25,000,000 should be spent here, how did they really decide this, and is this a step forward or backwards?

A Piece of Cleveland provides housing deconstruction as an alternative to housing demolition. This home grown environmentally conscious business has launched a blog where deconstruction, recycling, upcycling and rebirth of Cleveland's housing materials are documented.

Chart from: http://www.drought.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_2_693_208_0_43/http%3B/drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html 

California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, warned on Thursday that his state "is headed toward one of the worst water crises in its history".

Northeast Ohio has the opportunity to rebuild our neighborhoods and by offering healthier and more active transportation choices, we can create thriving neighborhoods where people want to live. However, the current transportation network leaves us way behind the curve. New investment to support walking and biking will create pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, an important step to get the nation back on track. Fortunately, it's a cost-effective step we can take in these tight financial times.

Snow is blowing by my window this morning and I have just watched my neighbor and his 6 year old son dig out their driveway and drive away. I cruised over to cleveland.com to see what is news in NEO... not much.

So I returned to REALNEO and opened a book: REALNEO TOPSOIL - Technology Optimization Platform for Social Organization, Innovation and Learning