Writing that title recalls the infamous Glenville shoot out of 1968, an event that may have changed Cleveland more than the Hough riots. That's a subject for a different day.
Today I want to correct an omission that could have fit an earlier post regarding this weekend's events and alert readers to the Glenville neighborhood festival taking place today. Following the noon parade from Superior Avenue and East 105 Street, the festival's fulcrum will be at the intersection of St. Clair Avenue and East 88 Street.
Over 10,000 people shared in last year's festival. For more information, visit the festival website here.
In what is either astute planning or serendipity, this is also the 50th high school reunion of the Glenville High School class of 1963. Tonight's reunion banquet is taking place at Highland Golf Course near Chagrin Blvd. and Green Road in Beachwood.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Thursday, August 08, 2013
Nonprofit Thursday | BPA, TPC, Nigerians, One World Festival; East Cleveland Primary
BPA to hold annual gala at new convention
center
The
Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation will hold one of the
first civic events at Cleveland’s New Convention Center on October 19. That’s
the date of BPACF’s annual fundraising scholarship gala, which this year will
recognize Pastor R. A. Vernon of The Word Church as its Black Professional of
the Year. For more information, visit www.bpacf.org
or call 216.229.7110.
• • •
Presidents
Council Foundation seeking volunteers for golf outing fundraiser
The
Presidents Council has put out a call for volunteers to assist in its
5th Annual Golf Outing Fundraiser, which is set for Monday,
August 19th at Barrington Country Club. The Council is looking for
volunteers to help with registration, raffle and auction
sales, golf side games, as well as assorted other odds and ends
around the course.
Morning
and afternoon shifts are available.
TPC
program and operations manager Athena Nimmer will be happy to answer your
questions about volunteering. For more information, call or write her at 216.771.8702 x224 or Athena@thepresidentscouncil.com.
• • •
Concerned Partners in
Education host scholarship luncheon in Lee-Harvard this Saturday
Retired
educator and CPE founder Gwendolyn Norfleet-Rogers has announced the 7th Annual Scholarship Fundraiser Luncheon twill be this Saturday, starting at 11AM, at the Harvard Community
Services Center, 18240 Harvard Ave.
For more
information call 216.921.5130.
• • •
Nigerian
cultural festival and dinner at the Civic this Saturday
Northeast
Ohioans of Nigerian heritage are inviting you to feast, dance and party with
them this Saturday night at the Sixth Annual Iri-ji & Igbo Cultural
Festival Dinner. The event will be held from 7PM until 1AM at the Civic, 3130
Mayfield Road in Cleveland Heights [just east of Lee Road].
The event sponsor is the group Nzuko Ndi
Igbo of Northeast Ohio [NNINO] whose webpage
says they were established in 2009 to promote and foster love, unity and
progress among Ndi Igbo in Northeast, Ohio.
Well-known
area businessman Michael Obi was elected the group’s president earlier this
year. He emailed The Real Deal to say cultural dances and
performances, a buffet style dinner [8PM], a dramatization of the Iri-ji
Festival, and much dancing will be among the evening’s highlights.
Tickets
are $30 for adults, and $20 for children 13-17; children under 13 may attend
free of charge.
For more
information: mobi@spectrum-global.com
or 440.212.2567.
• • •
Cleveland One World Festival debuts Aug. 25
Attending the Nigerian cultural
festival and dinner sounds like a good way to get warmed up for Cleveland’s
inaugural One World Festival, billed as a way to “celebrate the world’s
diversity with a one day cornucopia of music, art, sports, and food”
Cleveland’s first One World Festival
will take place Sunday, August 25 in the Cultural Gardens of Rockefeller Park,
on either side of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
This free community event will offer a
wide array of arts and activities for folks of all ages and ethnicities, and
will feature continuous programming at a half dozen stages, dozens of artisans
displaying their crafts, and various sports.
The one-day event will run from noon
to 9PM along a strip stretching from the Irish Garden to the African American
Garden. Ethnic food offerings will be available, as well as ethnic beer, wine
and national specialty drinks.
The event will honor One World Day, the 66th
annual event celebrating the city’s diversity and will include the naturalization
ceremony honoring new immigrants to the United States. Free shuttles will take attendees from Wade Oval and Gordon Park to
the festival location throughout the day.
Visitors to the festival will be
able to park for free at a large, secure new facility at East 105th
St & Magnolia Dr. Once parked, visitors can board one of the free UCI shuttles
that will circle the gardens for the duration of the festival, dropping them
off at a number of convenient locations along MLK Jr. Drive and East Boulevard.
A Parade of Nations down the main
thoroughfare of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, starting at 1PM, will feature a
diverse range of participants, from flag-bearers and stilt-walkers to bagpipers
and belly dancers. Highlights include the Shaw High School Marching Band, giant
Follow the Fish sculptures, and accordionists from the Polka Hall of Fame. The
parade will begin at the Irish Garden and conclude at the African American
Garden, where the annual naturalization ceremony for newly minted United States
citizens will occur.
Organizers of the One World Festival
envision growing the event through 2016 — the 100th anniversary of the
Cleveland Cultural Gardens — culminating in a spectacular weekend-long festival
covering the entire 276 acres of Rockefeller Park from Lake Erie to Wade
Lagoon.
For more information, call James
Levin at 216-347-3499, email james@levinventures.com, or visit OWF’s website or Facebook page.
PUBLIC NOTICE FOR
EAST CLEVELAND VOTERS
FOR OCTOBER 1, 2013
PRIMARY ELECTION
A
viewing of ballots for the October 1, 2013 Primary Election, to be held in the
City of East Cleveland, will be available for the public on Friday, August 9,
2013 (comments welcome). Ballots will be
posted at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections at 2925 Euclid Avenue,
Cleveland, Ohio 44115 and on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website, boe.cuyahogacounty.us.
Comment by phone, (216) 443-3298 or
e-mail, ElectionInfo@cuyahogacounty.us.
Wednesday, August 07, 2013
A Near Perfect Summer Day [except for those pesky Tigers]
 |
| What? You didn’t know that Cleveland sat in a valley with mountains to the south? On this day, standing in front of the Cleveland Botanical Garden, you could at a glance mistake the curved steel roof of Case Western Reserve University's Peter B. Lewis Building for some distant mountains. |
Today
was a day to celebrate Cleveland. We had some typical Cleveland weather — a
sudden late-morning rainstorm that momentarily transformed the upper Larchmere
area into a feeder stream for the nearby Baldwin Reservoir, followed by a
perfectly lovely sun-drenched canopy for Wade OvalWednesday in Cleveland’s unsurpassed University Circle.
Wade
Oval Wednesdays always suggest the kind of generative spirit that outsiders see
as emblematic of Cleveland’s potential. It’s a summertime party for the
community, a casual recapitulation of a healthy cross-section of our diverse
region, and seemingly a far remove from the tortured spirits of the Anthony Sowells, Ariel Castros, rogue cops, and predatory lenders that prey on the
abandoned neighborhoods and people of that larger community.
I came
to Wade Oval today fresh from a smart assessment of the opportunities and
challenges of our regional economy, presented by the Center for Community
Solutions. I think of the Center as having a somewhat distant and sterile
diagnostic approach to assessing what ails us, but that sense may stem from my
once having been a board member there when it was known as the Federation of
Community Planning. Then, as now, it was the pedigreed agency anointed with the
task of analyzing Cleveland’s emerging socio-cultural issues and charting
strategic approaches to mitigate those challenges. As the establishment agency
of choice, it has both the credibility to sound the alarm but too often not the
temperament to match the temperature. The data may be alarming but the analysis
remains dispassionate.
But
today the Center was on point doing one of the things it does best: convening a
host of dedicated social and civic workers for a quality
presentation on issues
of the day. Keynote remarks were delivered by Sandra Pianalto, president of the
Cleveland region of the Federal Reserve Bank.
 |
| Sandra Pianalto, president of the Cleveland district of the Federal Reserve Bank |
As PNC
Bank Cleveland president Paul Clark noted, our city is fortunate to be a
capital city of an FRB region. It stamps us as a major league player in the
same way as the Cleveland Orchestra or the Cleveland Browns.
I’m not
a financial reporter so I will make no attempt to parse Pianalto’s remarks,
which primarily addressed the labor market recovery and the significance of
recent economic developments for the region and the nation.
I did
think her appearance at this event — the Center for Community Solutions annual
Human Services Institute — was noteworthy, since I don’t think her royal
economic lineage affords her many opportunities to get out among the hoi
polloi.[1]
Pianalto offered a sober but not hopeless
picture of the US’s continuing slow recovery from the Great Recession that
started December 2007. She pointed out that while the unemployment rate has
declined to 7.4% from 8%, there are actually 2 million fewer people working
than in in December 2007, even though the labor force has grown. She said that
an unprecedented 3.1 million people had been out of work for more than a year,
observing that such a prolonged period of unemployment typically contributed to
declining skills.
Speaking of the Cleveland region, Pianalto said that we
have 85,000 fewer workers than in 2000, that a large part of that decline was
due to manufacturing job losses. She observed that manufacturing jobs were a
larger share of the economy here than elsewhere and that the region’s other
economic sectors had not been robust enough to offset those losses.
Pianalto’s prescription for regional growth was straightforward.
Growing a talented workforce, raising the area’s education level, and focusing
on innovation were essential steps she emphasized. She said that Cleveland’s
recovery would require patience, commitment, and endurance. Further, she
pointed out how other communities, most notably Pittsburgh, had rebounded by
emphasizing regional cooperation as opposed to competition.
Finally, she said that economic inclusion was important to
the success of the region. To insure such inclusion, she said, “leadership at
the top has to set the tone.”
 |
| Johnathan Holifield, NorTech |
Responding
to Pianalto’s comments, and extending them, were a strong
panel, comprised of
Ziona Austrian, director of
the Center for Economic Development at Cleveland
State University’s College of Urban Affairs; Lisa Bottoms, the Cleveland
Foundation’s program director for human services and child and youth
development; Paul Clark, PNC regional president; and Johnathan Holifield, the
vice president of Inclusive competitiveness at NorTech.
 |
| Ziona Austrian Cleveland State University |
 |
| Lisa Bottoms, Cleveland Foundation |
Each of
the panelists spoke with energy and passion, perhaps none more than bank
president Clark. Once he referenced his Cleveland roots as a 1971 graduate of
St. Edward’s. And he closed with comments that were both
personal and almost
poetic, saying that he thought of Cleveland’s economy as a large and growing
array of brush fires [small businesses, minority entrepreneurs, innovators all
around] that collectively possessed the essential ingredients to lay the basis
for a robust 21st century economy.
 |
| Paul Clark, PNC Bank |
The
program was held at the Benjamin Rose Institute, a stunning facility that on
this day afforded an impressive view of Cleveland’s skyline about eight miles
to the west. BRI sits on the site of the former Kaiser Foundation hospital,
just uphill from the Baldwin Reservoir, and at the western tip of one of
Cleveland proper’s neater neighborhoods.
[1] There
are only twelve Federal Reserve Bank districts in the entire system. The Cleveland-based
4th district consists of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, the northern
panhandle of West Virginia, and eastern Kentucky. The other districts are based
in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis,
Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco.
Tuesday, August 06, 2013
Kelley to step down in December after 16 years as Cleveland Heights mayor
Cleveland
Heights Mayor Ed Kelley announced
last night at city council’s meeting that he will not run for reelection
this November. Kelley has been mayor since 1997 and a member of council since
1993.
Voters
in Cleveland Heights do not vote directly for mayor. Council selects the mayor
from among its members.
Kelley’s
announcement means that come January 1, 2014 nearly half of the seven member
Council will have turned over since the last council election, a highly unusual
circumstance for a body whose membership has seen little relatively change over
the past decade. Bonnie Caplan announced earlier this summer that she would be
retiring after twenty years on council. And Phyllis Evans resigned in June of last
year in the midst of declining health. Evans
died last week.
Filing Status
Six
candidates have pulled petitions to date to run for Council, including Jeff
Coryell, who grabbed petitions this morning following Kelley’s announcement. He
joins council hopefuls Fran Mentch and Melissa Yasinow and incumbents Cheryl L.
Stephens and Jason S. Stein who are known contenders for the four full term
seats on the ballot in November. Janine Boyd, who was appointed to Council last
October after Evans’ resignation, has pulled petitions to run for the two
remaining years of Evans’ term.
The
filing deadline for Cleveland Heights council candidates is September 6.
Candidates must submit a minimum of 310 valid signatures of registered voters
to be certified for the November ballot. All candidates run city-wide.
Reverie for a Summer Day • Langston Hughes, Eddie Harris, Richie Parker, my Glenville neighborhood
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’ve been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where they ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now —
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
—
Langston Hughes
I received a video from an old friend this morning
that is a tribute to the power of the human spirit. I didn’t know it at the
time I started watching, but I had seen the last minute of it when it was
broadcast on television.[1] The title is misleading, but spending eight minutes of your life to watch it will captivate you as well as reveal what made me [a] retrieve and re-read this Langston Hughes poem[2],
and [b] follow it by the Charles Stepney/Eddie Harris classic, “Theme in Search of a Movie”, introduced to me by my older brother Steve in Glenville days of yore.
Richie Parker:
Eddie Harris:
[2]
Langston Hughes is one of my favorite poets. Part of the reason is encapsulated here, heightened by his Cleveland connections:
 |
| Langston Hughes 1902-1967 |
“He was the first black American to earn his living solely
from his writing and public lectures. Part of the reason he was able to do this
was the phenomenal acceptance and love he received from average black people. …
‘Langston Hughes stands at the apex of
literary relevance among Black people. …[H]e recognized that “we possess within
ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength,” and because he
used his artistry to reflect this back to the people. He used his poetry and
prose to illustrate that “there is no lack within the Negro people of beauty,
strength and power,' and he chose to do so on their own level, on their own terms.””
— Source
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