Christmas Eve, my family drove across East Cleveland (all 3 miles long) to Nela Park - The GE Lighting & Electrical Institute - to see their remarkable, historic Holiday Lighting Display and share some photos on REALNEO. While beautiful at the time, the conditions were not quite right to truly show-off the lights and season.

The conditions were perfect tonight.

Average Unique Monthly Visitors for REALNEO Benchmarking Sample
November 2008 - November 2009

REALNEO/COOP members, we own this... we accomplished this... in just our fifth year of operations. Congratulations!

In reviewing REALNEO for material on the historic Cleveland U.S. Coast Guard Station, to accompany these November 25, 2009, photographs and Thanksgiving Day Pans of the Coast Guard site, I came across the May, 2006, REALNEO discussion "COAST GUARD IDEAS" about what should be done with the site... with a lengthy vision from "Citizen" Ed Hauser.

Exquisite decay.

On Thanksgiving eve, a little over a year following the death of Ed Hauser - the primary community activist for preservation of the National Historic Landmark Dyer Coast Guard Station, on Whiskey Island - I went Hauser Way to photograph this best location in the nation, to share with you on Thanksgiving day. Enjoy.

One of my most valued resources for insight on health, the environment and aging is The Myth Of Alzheimer's, and I strongly recommend anyone reading this post subscribe to their e-mail updates and read that site regularly - it updates nearly daily.

The Myth Of Alzheimer's is absolutely about you, your family, your friends, and all our futures, as we all age together on this human-changing world until we die.

Julian Stanczak - "Continuous Line + Black" 2005 - Acrylic on board, 28 panels, 16x16 inches each

Happy 81st Birthday, Julian Stanczak... born November 5, 1928. Julian is an originator and continuing master of Op Art - one of the most important and renowned artists ever - and his work is stronger now than ever.

All that is seen without doubt in 116 remarkable paintings exhibited as compositions in Julian's amazing body of expansive, precise, cohesive "Recent Work", now showing at MoCA. Grouped as three colorful masterpieces, and a series of 10 individual black and white expressions, all these paintings stand together as one conclusive, vibrant statement, that life is an amazing experience, as only Julian may know.

Real NEO's favorite librarian, Laura McShane, recently posted on REALNEO "we can agree that aerosol art can be a thing of beauty", which made me think of the graffiti above, which inspired the first novel by Tony Vigorito, Just A Couple Of Days. 

From Wikipedia, "The title Just a Couple of Days comes from a piece of graffiti which appeared on both sides of an overpass just outside of Athens, Ohio on U.S. Route 33 and remained there for over two years. The open-ended tone of the declaration is related to the plot of the book, and the way the words can mean different things to each person who sees them."

For the 30+ years of my life spent in Northeast Ohio, in childhood and as an adult, University Circle has been at the center of my universe. What Place is at the Center of Your Universe?

®press release - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Location

I was deeply saddened to learn today that Rafala Green passed away, April 7, 2009, in Elgin, Texas.

Over the past 20 years, I've spent most of my "professional" time as an entrepreneur, with world-class expertise conducting multi-dimensional, multi-client relational comparative data and best practice analyses of any aspects of the world's largest and best global enterprises, environments and systems, and developing and consulting on innovations and total quality improvement. This work has generated a wealth of knowledge on large general systems, with a unique expertise in information systems and telecommunications. REALNEO is a product of this highest level expertise, drawn from the best practices of the best organizations on Earth. What REALNEO has developed for Cuyahoga County - what has been generated out of the REALNEO-generated Real Cooperative - takes general systems innovation to a whole new level of making us the brightest greenest place on Earth. So, we really do have a purpose to Cuyahoga County owning the Breuer, and the vision is beautifully expressed in this great rendering above, to be REAL COOP citizen headquarters of the open source capital of this brightest greenest state of Earth.

 I have some great pictures from a great Parade the Circle and will post them as soon as possible... here's the end of the parade, which was a true work of art!

If you were there, what were your favorite highlights...?

One I loved for sure was this...

Parade's over... time to get to work....

How an artist sees the world ...

The Twentieth Annual Harvey Buchanan Lecture in Art History and the Humanities

Location

BMW Welt , Munich 2008

Mark your calenders for the first Saturday in April next year -- this is one of the most fun and delicious annual events in Cleveland!

I was thrilled to see all sorts of green sprouts and now colors appearing in our yard this week - and the header of the day features some of the first daffodils on Daffidil Hill, in Lakeview Cemetery - a few blocks from my house in East Cleveland.

I'll let you know when and where are the best flowers in my part of town - you let us know what's popping up around you - let's have a REALNEO virtual garden tour!

There is plenty of opera in Cleveland, though not all of it is live. Now technology allows us see and hear MET performances, almost as if we were there. Severance Town Center is no Lincoln Center, but the tickets are a lot cheaper.

I would like to give someone in NEO Two Free Tickets to a Metropolitan Opera performance of La Sonnabula (The sleepwalker) music by Vicenzo Bellini, Italian libretto by Felice Romani.
Pre-recorded and screening Wednesday April 1, 7 pm at

When I arrived at the Cleveland International Film Festival Sunday afternoon for the 2:15 PM showing of THE TOUR, directed by Goran Markovic, Tower City Cinemas was packed! I quickly took a place in the long line for my film. I later learned that yesterday's attendance broke all previous records; 9,500 had attended. With many of Sunday's films on standby by the early afternoon, the last day of the festival promised to be a record breaker too. The gentleman who introduce THE TOUR also told us that the fund raising goal of $33,000 had been surpassed. By Saturday evening $45,000 had been donated. CIFF staff were optimistic that the total would exceed $50,000 by the end of the festival.

I thought I'd post this since we have had some very interesting dialog in the past on graffiti and art. This tag appear recently on the steps of the Mildred Putnam Sculpture Garden on East 118th Street near Euclid Avenue.