The Little Orange
Under a Quiet Snow
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Oh Cleveland, you’re asleep! If only you could see the fresh powdering of snow you’re under, fast and earnest, making all your surfaces even quieter than their usual 4 a.m. hour.
Becoming a Photoblog
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I like the idea of blogging about Cleveland, but in practice I have very little to say in blog format. I do take a lot of photos, though, so I think I’ll start sharing those instead.
Here are some of my favorite photos I’ve taken over the years hiking through different parts of the Metroparks.
stream
tree bark
tree
tree with mushrooms
mushroom on tree
grass
dead leaf
dead leaves
dandelion
spiky flower
purple flower
I hope to keep posting as I take more photos, and start doing some urban photography as well. With all this snow, I have a date with the Rocky River…
Google Trends: Who’s Tops in Cleveland?
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Need to waste some time? Check out Google Trends. It charts both search volume and news-reference volume since 2004 for whatever you type in. For instance, here’s a chart comparing McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, and KFC. You can guess who’s on top — but which would you expect to be higher, Burger King or KFC? Hint: having rats in your kitchen sure can give you buzz.
Here are some Clevelandish Google Trends comparisons:
Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles
Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Youngstown
Grady Sizemore, Lebron James, Brady Quinn
National City, Progressive Insurance, American Greetings, Sherwin-Williams
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University, University of Akron
Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Playhouse
Ways to Engage
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I’m a big fan of private effort towards public good. I believe it’s our responsibility to ensure that every individual within our community — local to global — has the opportunity and the means to thrive. This responsibility is personal: one can’t shove it off to charities or the government; one is obligated, by virtue of being human, to use his own hands to maintain and improve the world around him, to the extent of his capacity to do so.
Lofty words; lofty mission. An impossible mission, for the individual? Absolutely not. For the world? Get back to me in, oh, 10,000 years or so.
So as I’ve grown up and learned how to live, I’ve taken myself to task on living according to my principles. I’ve always had a desire to go out into the community and help, but I haven’t always had the guts to do it. For one — and perhaps primarily — face-to-face volunteering isn’t natural or easy for me. I’m an introvert: while I don’t mind interacting with people, it can be exhausting, especially if I’m not performing a specific, limited role, as I do waiting tables.
When it comes to volunteering, going to the Cleveland Foodbank is right up my alley: move stuff, sort stuff, stack stuff — it’s gentle on the introvert’s boundaries, and I get a kick out of, well, moving stuff, sorting stuff, and stacking stuff. But while volunteering at the Foodbank is worthwhile and enjoyable, it doesn’t seem to meet, as above, the extent of my capacity. My capacity isn’t subject to my introversion no matter how convincingly the latter fights to keep me home. I am a capable, passionate, college-degreed individual who can give a lot to the community if only she figures out what her giving style is. That’s the task I set myself to over the past year: find ways to engage, ways that will stretch me a little, ways that echo what’s in my heart.
This past spring, I contacted a couple of organizations through volunteermatch.org. I searched for opportunities that I felt strongly about — working with the impoverished and homeless — and those that could use my skills — specifically, my computer skills. I began training with one organization to be a mentor to homeless women, and I began developing a database for another organization. I have kept in contact with the first organization all this time, but my contact with the latter organization has fallen off in recent months due to the pressures of school — and, yes, the introversion slide. I hope to re-establish my relationship with the latter organization soon, and I’ll write about my experiences in later posts.
What I’ve learned over the past year is that volunteering isn’t about being there all the time for everything in every way you know how. Volunteering is about maintaining your effort to help and improving on it when and where you can. I’ve had to accept that my desire to help clashes with my personality, and I’ve taken it upon myself to learn my way around my inhibitions so that I can help to a degree and in a way that feel right for me. My desire will always be crying for realization, so, in order to live in peace, the only option I have is to turn it into a reality.
NaNo Recovery
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November is National Novel Writing Month, and as the month has drawn to a close (uhm, fourteen days ago), that means there’s yet another proto-novel sitting on my virtual shelf, gnawing at my brain, begging to be finished and edited. That also means I have a 50,000-word excuse why my blogging frequency fell off over the past month or so. Handy, isn’t it?
As for what I’ve been doing the past fourteen days — Monday ended my school semester, and instead of hopping into one of the snazzy new bus stops along CSU, I walked west down Euclid, under the Playhouse Square sign and past blocks of Euclid Corridor construction. Walking that stretch of Euclid always reminds me of the old photos from the twenties and the thirties showing trolleys and boxy cars and throngs of pedestrians in what was a city bustling its way to the top of the country’s heap.
Monday, Euclid sported encroaching construction, skinny lanes, treacherous sidewalks, and a smattering of commuters rushing off to Tower City and the train ride home. There wasn’t much bustle, and it wasn’t the weather for bustling. Downtown’s empty streets always make me wonder just how many residential units there are downtown and just how many of them are occupied. I know of only one tiny grocery store down there, and the couple of downtown drugstores I’m aware of close at 8:00 PM! Indicators of absence, I’d say.
When I got to Public Square, commuters were flowing through it from all directions and pouring into Tower City. The trees were decorated for the holiday, warding off the darkness of this end of the year. The Square seemed a focal point not many would see. It’s perplexing to have this space of grand display in a place where only passers-by will catch it, as if the shoulders of Tower City wall off downtown from all it fostered.
Despite downtown’s unbustling surface, the inside of Tower City was bustling, not just with commuters but with actual shoppers. It was the busiest I can remember seeing it. Hey, the mall must do good business to keep so many stores around, including one of only two Body Shops in the Cleveland area (explain that one).
On the ride home on the Rapid, my MP3 player played me Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. You’ve heard this piece before — originally written for organ, transcribed for orchestra, the opening piece in the 1940 Fantasia movie. I recommend listening to it while riding in a car or on a train. Bach couldn’t have gone faster than about 30 miles per hour his entire life, but boy, did he understand locomotion. (I guess he could’ve gone about 120 free falling, but that would’ve been a one-time gig after which he probably wouldn’t have composed anymore.)
If I were Bach, I would’ve written three novels in November, and I would’ve spat them out fully edited and ready for binding. As I am not Bach, I wrote 50,000 words of something that could possibly become a novel-like entity after several more months’ work. Oh well. At least I’m not stupid enough to try free fall just to gain insight into fugue.
The 6
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The blog bloomed out of a bus line: the 6. I take it down Euclid to get to school at Cleveland State not because I don’t have a car, but because I can’t stand driving and parking a car for such a short commute. Oh, and that whole environment thing. (Okay, the environment does actually play a role in my choice, but it’s not as compelling as my hatred of commuting by car. If only all the world felt as I do, Al Gore would be so happy.)
Ride the 6 towards downtown Cleveland — as none of you has ever done — and it’ll get you thinking about, well, Cleveland. It scoops up the local residents and takes you past some of Cleveland’s most prominent features — University Hospitals, CWRU, Severance Hall, the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland Play House…and…well, it goes silent there for a while until it rolls into CSU.
Perhaps that two-mile, fifty-five-block silence is why the Euclid Corridor project has so many detractors. What’s on Euclid? they rage. Not me, that’s for sure. Can’t we spend this money on schools, on security, on municipal programs? Besides, there’s already a bus line connecting downtown Cleveland and University Circle. How will reconstructing Euclid and buying new buses change the way the 6 is used? No one rides it, and improving Euclid isn’t going to change that.
In truth, the 6 has a slew of regular riders. It’s at least half-full every time I ride it — except that one time it was just me and an old man, and he debarked at E 55th, and then it was just me…that was eerie. It was the middle of the day, too. If that were the 6’s passenger quota, I’d balk at the Euclid Corridor project too, but the fact remains that it is a heavily utilized route whose buses are consistently packed with passengers despite running every ten minutes or so.
So let’s be honest: the 6’s constituents are probably mostly poor. Those are the people who ride the bus — poor people, people who can’t afford cars. If they had cars, they’d be driving them just like the rest of us do, and the rest of us will keep driving them because convenience outweighs the nebulous tug of the environment, the only reason to ditch your car if driving short commutes doesn’t make your skin crawl.
And because the 6’s constituents are poor and therefore silent, none of the rest of us cares to improve their bus-riding experience. Oh, I know this claim is a bit incendiary, but that’s essentially what’s going on here. Those who don’t ride the bus — who have never ridden the bus — don’t realize that so many do ride the bus and therefore miss the point when it comes a project like the Euclid Corridor. They don’t realize the value in rebuilding the street because they don’t know how ridiculous it is to sit on a bus rumbling over a surface like Euclid’s used to be. They don’t see the high volume of passengers the bus carries or understand how essential the bus is in getting people around their part of the city. Those fifty-five silent blocks see the 6 at its fullest. I don’t know where everyone is going, but they all have a reason to ride the bus.
So before the hecklers spout some more about the Euclid Corridor’s uselessness, I’d like to see them ride the bus for a while, get to know it and its reality. Come sit next to me; I’ll scoot over.
Chief Wahoo Go Bye-Bye?
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The Indians’ Chief Wahoo is a racist logo. Everyone knows it. Part of his original race was buffed away with a makeover in 1951 so that he’s now more of an ethnic mutt, his feather the only clear indicator of his ancestry. His muted race still offends, though, and the deeper we get into baseball season, the more the Chief Wahoo debate escalates.
Someday Wahoo is going to have to go, but there’s probably some way to get rid of him without losing his essence. For instance, maybe we could ditch the head and keep the scalp? Err, feather? Or make him the Cheshire Chief, a disembodied grin?
The Washington Redskins have taken similar flak for their name and logo, but it seems Chief Wahoo gets a lot more abuse. Perhaps our Chief just needs an injection of nobility? After all, a proud chief in profile is a much better representation of Native Americans, who hardly ever smile.
If we have to ditch Wahoo, can we be the Indians without him? And if we aren’t the Indians, what do we become? The Giant Purple Biological Disasters, as inspired by Slider? Maybe it’s just my Barney rebellion coming back every time I look at him, but man, do I hate that thing.
We’d need a fierce name. I figure that’s why so many sports teams drew on Native Americans for their identities: we respect, even revere, Native Americans as a proud, strong people, and being proud and strong, damn if they’re not dangerous on the turf and the diamond.
But if we’re realists, we can’t very well go on operating under the name of a people who actually exist. Greek gods, maybe. Hmm, how about the Cleveland Olympians? Probably too much of a stretch. The Cleveland River Fires? Too traumatic for the fans. The Cleveland Needles, as in Record? Too oblique. The Cleveland WMDs? Fierce, but I shouldn’t even have typed that.
I think we need to dig down into Cleveland’s soul and draw on what we’re really about, where we come from. I propose this: the Cleveland Slavs. Our logo: a belly. The hotdog race becomes a race between a pierogi, a kielbasa, and sauerkraut. The fierceness? Have you ever eaten all three at once?
Of course, this choice leaves out all the non-Slavic people in Cleveland, and so the controversy becomes one not of racism but of discrimination. Cleveland anguishes for another few decades over its baseball team’s identity until it reveals its new name: the Cleveland Humans. Wow, is that wimpy.
Tags: baseball, Chief Wahoo, Cleveland Indians, discrimination, ethnicity, Indians, Native Americans, racism, Washington Redskins
Leavin’ Cleve
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Believe me, this blog is not going to be one saccharine love letter to Cleveland after another. Though I may wax warm and fuzzy, I am a realist. I see the grit. I have my beefs. For instance, why does everyone leave Cleveland?
Okay, take a step back. Not everyone. My family has been in this town since before World War II. The leavers — betrayers — I’m talking about are all the people who constitute a pool of those persons who are, well, dateable.
I cannot tell you how many men I’ve met who are in the process of getting out of here. Maybe it’s a line? What, I’m cute until sentence three? What’s harder to believe than the number who say they’re leaving is that so many guys would have the manners to lie.
The phenomenon goes beyond my mating pool — extends, in fact, into my friendship pool. At one point no fewer than six of my friends were seeking exodus in one fashion or another. Six! Post-college, that’s an entire social network!
I’m young; my friends are young; the men who are possibly maybe once in a while dateable are young at least most of the time — the obvious answer here is Brain Drain, one of Cleveland’s favorite moans. Where are all these kids going? And what can we do to keep them here? Furious, furious whispers among our local big cheeses. Their solutions? Always some form of economic development. Jobs. I’d say a sparkling singles scene would be better glue, but who am I.
The reality remains that at any moment, one of my friends (or potential mates) could decide to mosey on down 80 and leave a hole in my existence (or, what, little black book? ‘Cause you are not a part of my existence at sentence three, honey). The only friends I don’t worry about are those with roots here — like me, except that my family left too, once upon a time. And it was our roots that ultimately brought us back.
Maybe the brain-drain solution isn’t some kind of better economic mousetrap: instead, maybe we should think about tapping the immense human capital that’s been rooted here for decades, growing our own grain stronger. Imagine what the city will look like in a couple generations if we do — and then imagine what it’ll look like if we don’t. To hell with the betrayers; let’s take care of our own.
O! It’s Cleveland!
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Though I’m several years away from being the target audience of Oprah’s O Magazine, I can’t help but pick up a copy every so often. It’s packed with so much delicious information that I kinda wish middle age would get here already. Actually, to be fair, there’s a lot of general information in the mag, and I can devour the rest like so much soap opera and store it away for my makeover-weightloss-divorce years.
Every so often I spot a Cleveland Clinic ad in O, but this month I landed on a page that had me flipping to the cover to make sure I was reading the right magazine. The Rock Hall in the upper right corner, Franz Welser-Most in the bottom left…damn, did Cleveland Magazine auto-renew my subscription again? No, indeed, the city of Cleveland occupies a whole page in O’s October issue: page 94, “The Place to Be: (Renewed and Improved) Cleveland.”
Wanna guess how the article starts? Oh, you don’t even have to guess: “On June 22, 1969…” Poverty, crime, even Lebron James can’t overtake our burning river in the nation’s consciousness. Happily, sentence four and on are all in our favor. Lebron makes paragraph one, and paragraphs two and three are dedicated to the cultural world’s Lebron, the Cleveland Orchestra. The right-hand side of the page lists other Cleveland attractions: Tremont, the Rock Hall, University Circle, the Museum of Art, restaurants Lola and Fire, and hotels Glidden House and the Renaissance. Big names — but what would your Cleveland synopsis include?
I had out-of-town visitors stay with me on two separate weekends over the past month or so, and I must confess that I didn’t take them on the tourism route. First of all, I insisted that we take public transportation (except while shoe shopping) — parking is bad for my health. Both times we made it over to the West Side Market, and both times we took a jaunt up to Coventry. I took the beer lover to the Winking Lizard and Great Lakes Brewery, and we also caught an Indians game. I took the shoe seeker gallery walking and shoe shopping. Their stays were enhanced versions of my daily life; we went to my favorite spots (and shops), which gave me an opportunity to share the things I enjoy regularly with friends I rarely see.
I figure tourism might be a rough business for me, though. The Rock Hall is a must-see! And you capital-M Must hear the Orchestra! Sure, both are very “us.” However, there are smaller, unnamed, and largely unwitnessed parts of Cleveland that I wish I could share with the world: the mass of TV towers blinking silently above Parma; the greenery shoving its way up out of every incline along the road; the city twisting its shoulders as I drive east on the innerbelt; the Cuyahoga bending through its stolid industrial morass, stepping around the complexes as if they were there first.
These are the parts of Cleveland that make Cleveland mine. I share this Cleveland with visitors in sideways comments too shy to take themselves seriously. My Cleveland brochure would be pictures of those most savorous Cleveland quietnesses — and no one would come because, of course, you have to live somewhere before you can love its unnamed parts.
::SuccessTech::
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It’s hard to know what to say about this — a school shooting today at SuccessTech Academy. I don’t feel I have the vantage point from which to evaluate the tragedy as anything more. My thoughts are with the students and families involved.
The same scene has repeated across the country a frightening number of times. The fault isn’t peculiar to Cleveland; though city officials and administrators can always do more, the issue here is societal. Yes, we should always demand the utmost from those charged with our safety, but I find it useful to see the present as a stepping stone towards a time of greater capacity. If we work at it, the phrase “school shooting” will ring as ancient history in future Americans’ ears.
