This was a great meeting today, which gave the opportunity to connect with several local leaders on positive change.  City Planners, Chris Ronayne, Bob Brown, Fred Collier, and Councilwoman Sabra Pierce Scott - as well as lead designer Jim McKnight.  I highly recommend attending these ongoing weekly dialogues to engage community, they offer great networking opportunities.  Would love to reconvene with the realneo team on discoveries.   Great stuff !   Good to see Martha and Jeff there as well.

So where is the $4 million?

I don't see the rainbarrel plans - water planning here is pure bull shit - all pure bull shit.

Rip them apart, Jeff... I can't stomach these people any more

Disrupt IT

Norm, the meeting offered anyone the opportunity to add input and offer changes.  Rain water barrels are the specialty of Doan Brook Watershed Partnership - they must know what they're doing, right?  And those groups , I'm sure, have that in mind, right?  Creative, right?.  There are some pretty significant installations included in this plan - and a whole bunch of collaborating organizations are sharing in the project.  This ultimately pays the people who did the work.  It does offer a bit of different perspective, though - I wasn't really dwelling on how the 'spoils' were spent.   Perhaps I should reconsider - but I like some of those folks - they are good people, fundamentally.  If we can help them with ideas (as long as they are recognized and given credit) and the greater good is done, why not play that role?

Ideally it would be good to be recognized and rewarded though - folks, you would think, would get restless when the ideas of others (like ours on realneo) get repackaged and sold as someone elses.   So we'll see how the therapeutic garden application - which is an ASLA specialty concept I identified and included for KSV's mission months ago (with my spin to include functionalilty in what is planted)- gets utilized and credited.  Jim McKnight is ASLA certified, with an office in the Caxton - so it will be interesting to see if he'll endorse this and acknowledge the win to the nth power and endorse my concept here.  Today Ray Saikus of Citizens' Vision (the same of Whiskey Island, let's truly Honor Ed Hauser fame?) presented a hand-sketch of a 'Hope Garden' tied to the VA (exploring a 'global gardens unified' idea in conjunction with 'woo the VA hospital and treat PTSD idea') - an identical concept I shared with Frank Mills and many others several weeks ago.

What would Eddie Hauser think?  How did the City reward Ed?

I shared the opportunity long back to unify the cultural gardens and celebrate globalism.  He had this concept displayed on an easel -it looked like it had been drawn up (by hand) very recently.  It's interesting no one really saw or captured this particular opportunity, I alluded to earlier.   Mike Walton of NEO Restoration Alliance and partner on Open Roads Institute's studies involving African American needs - is the green jobs, garden, green roof lead on this project and has been for a year.  I just offered some truly enriching ideas to make the project work better.   I have emails from Hitchcock board members applauding these inclusions and this short form proposal, wanting to drive it.  We can use this model anywhere in the country, though - but why not here?

These therapeutic gardens, that are also functional - make more sense than anything - especially given the workforce development opportunity that can woo stimulus dollars, grant money and so on.  The value added vegetation, the therapeutic value of herbals that an be incorporated within the garden, and of course the fact that facilities like Hitchcock benefit from the intergenerational and connecting aspects add even more value to the proposal.  Hitchcock's not the only one, though - this can be applied to any VA hospital,  correctional facility, and mental institution.  So why doesn't the realneo crew move on this and execute all over?  Don't forget elder care facilities like Judson.  Here's the gift to realneo - go team go!  Who's in?  Facilitated Forums make the whole thing go on the other side - combining cutting edge methodologies like Open Space, AI , and Appreciative Inquiry (my speciality area) to foster stakeholder connectedness.  For the actual short form proposal I submitted, see next comment below.

By the way,  Sabra Pierce Scott just informed me she recommended NPI (Reichtell)  to Mike Walton to support the Hitchcock work now - any objections to that? I raised the need to be truly collaborative in this community.  These folks aren't going to skip town, from what I can tell.  Are you suggesting assasination?  Let's at least be real.  Everyone can't be the enemy- you have to look at helping folks do the right things. I think Chris and a lot of these folks are fundamentally good people trying their best.   In the end, people in this town know whose ideas are whose - they should be able to figure out who acts corruptly.   So call them on it if they are really wasting money. The plan looked pretty extensive with many partners - but in another sense - this is how everyone can 'assure pay' in hard times - keep it 'In the Circle' - no pun intended.   Good points all around -  stay cool,  Norm.  There is a way - alert the community if this is misspending.   I hadn't really looked at that angle, but hmmm... Salaries gotta come from somewhere.  The fountain that filters the water in a sexy way, prior to 'draining into Doan' is pretty darn cool, but is this what we want to see in current leadership?   You raise a good point.   If they weren't in before, The rainbarrels will go in now that you innovated, Norm, lol.

How are you really going to 'rip em apart'(and why) is my question.  Why not instill the right policies and suggestions and be paid consultants because we know the shiznit, so to speak?   These aren't fundamentally bad people, are they?

The Hitchcock Center for Women: A Stakeholder Based Model for Transformational Outcomes

Introduction

This short-form proposal details the basic pieces to help achieve great outcomes for Hitchcock Center and all its stakeholders. The pieces include facilitated forums to induce a culture shift toward loving, serving behavior, a state-of-the-art, therapeutic and productive Memorial garden system, a value-added products facility, and inclusion of ongoing support mechanisms for residents of the center long after the six month term currently used as the key metric for success of the Center.

I’ve recently had the distinct pleasure of meeting Sherry through my colleague and associate Vernon Sweatte. Her story, having been one of those residing within your halls and since completing your hallmark program and achieving remarkable things - now as Special Assistant to the Mayor, and now a member of the Center’s Board of Directors, is inspiring and uplifting. As with correctional facilities, there is no match for having been one of those residing within the facility itself and experiencing all the programs afforded them have to offer. Not only is her insight and experience invaluable in helping bring strategic success and new opportunity to the Center, but as part of this Systems Theory Framework, she could play a tremendous role as a leader and mentor to the women going through their own personal transformations at the Center.

Step One: Culture Shift

So imagine the center as one system. The goal would be to energize and engage all the members of the center to connect and bond with one another and create a more loving and serving culture in the process. There may already be a good foundation for this at the center, but to move the center more in this direction, I recommend a facilitated forum – a workshop where ALL stakeholders of this system:

Staff, Security, Patients, Family of Patients, and Alumni, for example would all be the stakeholders involved at Hitchcock – we want to create new opportunities and a better quality of life for all the Center’s stakeholders. All would be included in the forum, which would employ the very best of cutting edge, positive change methodologies: Gestalt, Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space, and World Café. This forum would be a chance for all the stakeholders listed above to air their authentic feelings about life in the Center, stories of success from those who have graduated out of the Center, and building on this positive core to reach new co-created opportunities that might not have been thought possible before. The end outcomes are actually derived by the process itself – but a physical outcome of action plans and commitments will ensure accountability on the part of all participant stakeholders. Ultimately we want to create a shared vision and stewardship of this collaborative culture created so everyone is informed about what is happening and why.

Step Two: Therapeutic, Productive and Aesthetic Garden and Building Design

  What did happen to the 14 million dollars in mitigation funds?
 

The money which was to go to the Doan Brook as mitigation of the Hopkins runway extension was no where to be seen…that money has sort of vanished…

 (Apologies...many of the original links from posts to the pictures of a flooded Doan Brook have been corrupted or no longer work...sorry...enjoy the pictures).

 and I'm not!

Keep diggin' Henry - we love ya!

               ;)

Hey, its a hard thing to do- but fundamentally we need to strive to love all people.  So I am really, really trying.  Guys, give me some hope here.

 You know, Sudhir, I try to understand your feelings, and I think I do. But, what I think what gets lost in the shuffle is the feeling, hard work and aspirations of many, many people who work so hard, plan so hard, and hope so hard to make Cleveland a better city.

The fact is, we have people steering this city into the gutter, for nothing else other than their personal gain; or to put it less delicately - pure selfishness; or more bluntly - the deadly sin of GREED.

It is just a tad dismaying to have your hard work ignored. But it is a bitter pill to swallow to find out your hard work was ignored because of personal greed. Lets not even go into the fact that all these selfish, greedy "representives" are paid with our tax dollars.

In Jewish philosophy there is a saying- "Do not put a stumbling block in front of a blind person".

Now what is LOVE?

 The Beatles.