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…

I’m unsure of how to deal with the Orchestra on this blog for one reason: I used to work there.  No, no, not as some spotlight virtuoso as everyone always assumes — as if an orchestra of 100 players can function autonomously.  As if the concertmaster puts his own stand onstage, and the principal oboist mails out tickets.  As if I would’ve quit.

When I first started at the Orchestra, my dad said I would get to see it “with its pants off.”  And I did: this cultural force, profoundly venerable, public faces of which made me weak in the knees, I dove into its human mess.  And like any other organization run by humans, it was messy.  It was smart, it was dense, it was political, but no matter the mess, I still felt lucky to be there.  My respect for the institution remained intact despite lower squabbles, and so I want to avoid delving too deeply into my experience there for all the world to see.

While I was at the Orchestra, Donald Rosenberg had an internal reputation as, essentially, unpleasable.  For all the brilliance that we on staff heard over the intercom every day, Franz and friends never seemed able to win him over completely.  But as Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun writes, that’s a music critic’s job.  He’s not paid to laud; he’s paid to discern.  He’s paid — or he should be — to add another level to the concert-goers’ experience, to introduce intellectual perception to what is otherwise mere sensory indulgence.

I believe that for all his detraction, Don’s keen observation of and decades-long dedication to the Orchestra made him one of the organization’s major benefactors.  Left alone, classical music seeks an ivory tower.  It becomes impenetrable to its patrons because of the singular vision of the talent at the top.  Given that some narrow focus is necessary in any artistic pursuit, voices like Don’s are essential if the vision is to remain balanced, realistic, and, as the treasurer/timpanist knows best, sustainable.

It’s a shame the Plain Dealer reassigned Don, and if it was political pressure that did him in, it’s an embarrassment — for the PD, for the Orchestra, and for whatever insular dullards pulled the strings.

One of my bus stops faces what looks like a completely empty four-story building.  The bottom floor is titled “Barbara Anne Bridal Shoppe,” but it looks like the last dress it made is probably no longer in style:

So while I stand there waiting for the bus, I daydream about what the building could become.  As it’s on Ontario just south of Prospect, the location is fantastic for foot traffic around Tower City and to the Q and Progressive Field.  I can’t imagine it was taking maximum advantage of its location as a bridal shop.

Then I think, wow, that’s a nice font:

And I think, whatever the building becomes, it should use at least some of the letters from “Barbara Anne.”  But the only thing I’ve been able to come up with is “Bane bar.”  I’m not sure what a kind of bar the “Bane bar” would be, or, more importantly, whether anyone would go in.

I’m not certain the building’s abandoned, but if it is, it’s hard to believe it’s sitting a block away from Public Square.  Then again, that’s Cleveland.  It’s sort of in an awkward spot, facing the side of Tower City (and the Lebron poster, which alone says prime real estate to me).  It’s a neighborhood of parking garages, which some might think is the lot’s best possible function.  Then again, Fat Fish Blue anchors the parking garage just on the other side of Prospect.

The other day I surfed over to the website of North East Ohio’s Coalition for the Homeless and read some of their Homeless Grapevine archives.  I saw several mentions of both the organization’s and homeless people’s desire for an alternative to shelters — something more permanent, more private, and possibly pay-to-stay.

That reminded me of a blurb I’d read in O Magazine (where else) a while ago about Rosanne Haggerty, a woman who bought a failing “homeless hotel” in New York City and turned it into supportive housing.

It seems like a building like the Barbara Anne Bridal Shoppe, given its size and location and assuming it’s in okay shape, would be a good starting point for such a project.  But when it comes to putting an idea like that into action, I’m lost.  Money, people, laws, etc. — I have no frame of reference, and it intimidates me.  I don’t feel “prepared.”

Those are the thoughts that any of us have to overcome if we are to move from daydreams to doing.  Still, maybe I’ll practice on something smaller.

(The best use of “Barbara Anne” I can come up with for supportive housing involves turning one of the N’s upside down: “urban area.”  Descriptive, yes; inspiring…)

It was all but dark on my walk, after 8 p.m. just a couple weeks ago.  Though the post-sunset sky was gorgeous, the city actually looked more like this to my non-digital eyes:

So go spooky little surprisingly talented camera!

Here are some Clevelandish Google Trends comparisons:

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles

Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Youngstown

Indians, Cavaliers, Browns

Grady Sizemore, Lebron James, Brady Quinn

Lebron James, Cavaliers

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

National City, Lebron James, Cleveland Clinic

I hate it. It’s vague, slapdash tripe that really should’ve served as a placeholder on the drawing board and not the actual drawing itself. They took the school’s color, put it on a smiley face, and sat a mortarboard atop its head, as if to say, “With Green, You’re Graduatin’!” Like we attend a convenience store.

I’ve always been thankful that the green dot is usually hidden away within the folds of CSU’s paraphernalia, on webpages only current students would ever have reason to access. Maybe administrators also understand him to be the awkward cousin not ready for society. Maybe he just appears in CampusNet, and is therefore mascot only of my bill-paying and enrollment.

Well, today I logged in to CampusNet to find this:

Class. Happy MLK Day!

For one, there’s the money. Put your thoughts of selling out aside. Money is baseball’s raison d’être: baseball would not be without money. Come to grips with it already. Yes, baseball is also nostalgia. There’s nothing like it to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But if you’re going to go to the ballpark and slug down your $5 coke and $6 nachos in your $30 cap and $100 jersey, or even if you only go for the nachos, I don’t want to hear it when it comes to corporate sponsors. You must be aware that baseball is a moneymaker first and foremost. And someday you will come to terms with the fact that money (usually) means good baseball (unless you’re haunted by a goat) and good baseball means good memories and that the nachos and the sponsors’ names are always worth it in the end.

But much more important than the money is the chance for a Cleveland sports team to partner with a high-profile national corporation based in Cleveland. There are very few companies out of Cleveland that are as identifiable as Progressive. We take pride in our baseball team; can’t we take pride in the fact that such a successful company grew up right down the street?

Not only a successful company — a great company. At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, let me say that my experience as a Progressive customer has far surpassed my expectations. When I got rear-ended last summer — by someone without insurance, no less — every single person I interacted with at Progressive had a great attitude, running the gamut of what customer service should be: sympathy, patience, care, cheerfulness, honesty, precision. Progressive’s service was superior, far above almost every other company I’ve ever worked with. Put their name on my ballpark? Go right ahead!

So I take pride in the fact that one of our corporate jewels has plunked its name atop one of our sports teams’ homes. To me, it’s about the region uniting, about sticking together and backing each other up. Accusations of selling out or of the park losing character miss the big picture, the one in which both the Indians and Progressive are huge regional players, employing us, driving our economy, and being good neighbors to us and to each other. Now doesn’t that make you all warm and fuzzy?

First, I have to admit that if I had my druthers, I’d dance to rap and electronica, neither of which is the centerpiece at Mercury. Most nights I’ve been there, Mercury has been basic dance music with some current chart-toppers sped up and mixed in. That’s the only kind of dancing music I’ve found in Cleveland; if it’s not that, it’s straight-up pop hits of varying danceability. While Mercury’s music is fine for dancing purposes, that it isn’t my ideal dancing music keeps Mercury from being the ultimate place to go. Sigh.

But that’s my only real complaint about Mercury. Beyond that, it’s fabulous. The music is usually pretty good, all but forcing you to get up and jiggle. The crowd is more interesting (and probably older) than the rest of West 6th, a mixture of people you want to get to know instead of droves of assimilated teenyboppers. And perhaps because it’s south of St. Clair and therefore apart from 6th’s main drag, it’s marginally less crowded than the rest of the bars, which means about three more square feet of dancing space per person — essential for a “nomadic dancer” like yours truly.

Hey, the women’s bathroom even has hair products and appliances available for your hair-maintenance needs — if you’re into that sort of thing.

Something that has never happened to me at Mercury is the pouncing that’s inevitable at every single other bar on 6th. Walking through those places is like entering Night of the Living Dead: ghoulish crazed men lurch out of the darkness towards you — towards your front if they’re polite, and if they’re not, up to your derriere, there to wriggle unseen until they get too close or a friend points them out. Even walking past the bar to the dance floor you get assaulted, claws scratching, teeth clacking, strained voices grasping for a clever word.

Mercury, on the other hand, seems to lack the final catalyst that puts the zombies in motion, gripping them in a state of relative reservedness. If men do approach you, they always approach your front first, and they usually make fair — if passing — efforts at eye contact and conversation before going in for the grab. I personally think it’s Mercury’s couches that keep the zombies on good behavior. Ringed around the small dance floor, they ensure that someone is always watching, a sort of dance-club Santa Claus divided among your fellow club-goers.

So thank you, Mercury, for being different, for being better, and for those ass-protecting couches arrayed around your dance floor.

IHN has not yet been able to find me an appopriate mentee, in part because I asked that I not mentor someone who has significantly more life experience than I do. I simply wouldn’t feel comfortable coaching a 40-year-old woman with four children on how to live! However, the program has recently begun to accept single, childless women, and it’s possible that one of them will be a good fit, or that a young, recent mother will come into the program.

Still, I’ve been active with the organization thanks to my experience with computers. IHN wanted to outfit their two main centers, one in Tremont and one on Warrensville Road, with computers so that the clients could develop computer skills while in residence. However, they didn’t have any computers to spare for the project. Luckily, I had recently happened upon the website of Computers Assisting People, a local non-profit that takes in donated computers and outfits them for other local non-profits. IHN contacted CAP, and CAP provided them with four computers to install at their centers for their clients.

I went in a couple weeks ago to set up the computers in Tremont and did the computers on Warrensville this past week. These are old computers, running Windows 2000, some with only 8-gig hard drives (mon dieu!). One of the computers is the very first computer I ever had all to myself, an IBM Aptiva circa 1998, complete with a four-pages-per-minute Canon printer. It had going on 10 years of dust crowded around its power button, and I had to open the entire case to clean it out. If you ever wonder why IBM stopped making personal hardware, here’s why: the case takes six hands to open, and the screws take Barbie-doll-sized hands to replace. Remember that this computer is a contemporary of the iMac G3, the cute little egg-shaped all-in-one Macintosh in pretty colors. IBM was dead in the water.

The Gateway also has power-button issues in that its button is just plain broken. Apparently these computers weren’t intended to be turned on as many times as they have been. I’ve got the Aptiva working fine, but I’m going to have to MacGyver something up for the Gateway. Still, once on, they run perfectly, and broken power buttons are bupkis when the computers are free.

The next step: work with another volunteer to create a computer-orientation program to teach clients the basics of word-processing and other key job skills. The computers don’t have Office, but they do have WordPad, which will at least get us started. IHN is looking into their options for outfitting the computers with Office, and we’re going to hook them up to the internet if at all possible. Once we get the curriculum down, we’ll probably do instructional sessions once a week, progressing as a family spends their six or so weeks with IHN.

I don’t know exactly what this project will bring, but this is the kind of work I was looking for when I signed up with IHN: hands-on do-gooding, putting my effort where my mouth is, investing time and energy directly into a constructive project that will benefit my neighbors and the Cleveland community as a whole.  I will keep you posted on our progress.