Driving Around

Megan Lenahan, a student at Portland State University's College of Urban and Public Affairs, is taking a six and a half week trip around the United States to "[study] Main Streets (or Central Business Districts) of small towns (15,000-25,000) and how regionalism plays a part."

I'm so glad I have another summertime saga to follow (other than Hell's Kitchen....)

Socks and Blocks

or, sacks and blacks, as it were. If you want to hear what I sound like on a bad day, check out Meg Ryan's fake Cleveland accent in Against the Ropes. You will never think "there's no such thing as a Cleveland accent" again.

Because

I wanna go home, because at home I could get a decent apartment in a great neighborhood without even having a job, let alone having to provide 16 different notarized documents and getting a co-signer, because I hate New York style pizza, because everyone here is fat, because I saw a Boycott France bumper sticker on the Parkway this morning, because the number of daily Hummers I see on my commute has increased, because there are no Middle Eastern people here, because Jim's brother just bought a house for $60,000 in Chillicothe and I can't even get a condo here for twice that, because a patron called looking for wifi hotspots nearby and there just aren't any, because there are practically zero people here I'd want to be friends with and the ones I am friends with are just as unhappy with this place as I am, because I don't really see any difference between a Great Lakes beach and the Shore, except for the fact that you don't have to fork over $85 for a season pass.

A Very Cleveland Weekend

It looks like this Cleveland transplant loves the old Plum more than she ever thought possible. Check out her impressions of a quintessential Cleveland weekend and suggest some more places for her to try.

That Was Fast

OK, let it first be known that I am typing with my eyes closed, which I'm sure the nasty old librarian who taught typing in elementary school would be proud to read. Mental overload always equals painful eyes for me, and being that a) the lighting in my workplace and apartment are both sorely inadequate and b) I'm convinced I'm going blind for entirely hysterical reasons, shading my precious eyeballs from the soulsucking glow of technology is of paramount importance.

Since I'm starting off my 12-year mayoral campaign with a promise to let it all hang out, and since I just was required to attend a daylong diversity training session which sat us in a nice, big friendly circle and posed the question "describe the first time you felt different", let me admit something that I'm no longer ashamed of.

I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to rich people.

I know you're all shocked. I fully realized this just this evening, as I was paying my tab at the coffee shop where I'm accustomed to eating solitary Monday dinners. The sour-expressioned woman ahead of me was attempting to pay for her takeout, which totaled $15.03, while talking on her cell phone and digging through her expensive-looking handbag. She pulled out a $100 bill, and distractedly handed it to the cashier, who politely asked her if she had anything smaller. (I think I gasped aloud at that point - I can't remember the last time I laid eyes on a $100 bill. It might have been in the movies.) The woman, refusing to make eye contact with the cashier, and still talking on her cell phone, looked supremely annoyed, and started rummaging through her bag again. I saw with my very own eyes that she indeed did not have anything smaller, if you catch my drift. She then tossed her credit card at the cashier, paid, and left without saying thank you.

I know, jerks come in all classes. But there was something in her behavior toward the cashier and her lack of understanding that a $100 bill might be too large to change for a $15 tab that rankled my insides. At the risk of sounding too dramatic, I wanted to yank all those bennies out of her hand and shove them under the door of the low-income serving nonprofit across the street or stick them randomly in dog-eared copies of Free Money to Change Your Life here at the library.

I've thought a lot recently about how it seems that people with money are always those who shouldn't have it. Argue with me on that if you want, but I can't reconcile how rich conservative people in this country can get off thinking they're remotely Christian when I too have read the Gospels and see a Christ who encourages people to give to those less fortunate, keep your earthly possessions to a minimum because they don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

I've been wishing lately that I'd thought about this when choosing a career, that I would have purposely chosen a high paying one so that I could use all that money for things other than myself. My mom always gives me news of what kids from my graduating class are doing, and I'm becoming increasingly chagrined at who's become a lawyer, who's become an eye doctor, etc. Yes, I was an unapologetic snob in high school, but these were kids that were not terribly socially conscious and probably still aren't, and the idea that they have more earning power than me now is depressing. God, why did I have to choose do-good work. It doesn't even make me feel good.

So, that's part of what I'm bringing to the table as future mayor of Cleveland. I'm not going to be shy about it, and I'm going to try, in the next 12 years, to mellow it into something useful. If you have any suggestions on how I might do that (without being too touchy-feely, please), let me know.

The Inevitable Burnt Out Blogger Cat Picture Post

Unlike Jerri Blank, I've had nothing to say recently. And remembering the bulldoggish girl who sat next to me in AP U.S. History in 11th grade, it's better to say nothing when you have nothing to say than constantly wave your meaty little hand in the air and make obvious observations just so you can rack up your "participation points" for the day.

I've been trying to give the old brain a rest, as I've been feeling overly mental, and I've immersed myself in uncharacteristically frilly LUSH products, Order of the Phoenix, and a chaotic list of movies recommended by a friend who understands my need for hilarious and disturbing to come in one slick little package.

Meanwhile, though I risk losing what little reputation I may have gained as a credible blogger, here's a cat picture to keep your eyeballs occupied until my next reasonable post:

Borne For Mayor 2017

How many of you responded to this call from the Policy Watchdog Group? I'm still thinking. And I'm starting to think feverishly. What the hell does Cleveland need? What would I do to it if I were mayor?

If I were mayor.... Hmmm. I was born in the City of Cleveland while Dennis Kucinich was in charge - a peculiar but significant horoscope indeed. Could I, in a few years' time, come back and be elected as Cleveland's Girl Mayor?

So, friends and neighbors, let's pretend. Let's pretend it's 2017 (I'll be 39 then, old enough to be wise but young enough to not start in with the indignant, tiresome "things aren't like what they used to be") and I'm kicking off the Borne for Mayor campaign.

Now let's have some lofty campaign promises:

As mayor of the City of Cleveland, I vow to:

1. Seek out those experts in progressive public education and let them run a huge experiment on the Cleveland Public School system. The system will become a trendsetter in modern urban education, and will be unlike any public school system in the history of public education
   
2. Assess what community groups are already out there doing good work and unite and work with them instead of recreating the wheel
   
3. Actually live in a different city neighborhood during each successive year of my tenure as mayor, while also retaining a centrally located house, which I would open up on a monthly basis to community members to enjoy a free, 100% organic dinner
   
4. Improve community health by instituting a ridiculously massive urban organic gardening program. I want to see heirloom eggplants growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk on Clark Avenue
5. Improve community health by creating car-free neighborhoods which are designed to encourage walking, biking, and using public transportation (which will also be massively improved)
6. Speak frankly and not tiptoe around the sensitive and explosive issues that divide us in Cleveland - namely race and class, but also the "us vs. them" mentality that divides the political left and right - and conduct a citywide campaign to encourage others to do the same (following the Conversation Cafe model)
   
7. Create scholarships and initiatives to encourage young Clevelanders to go out and explore what other places are doing right, and bring their new ideas back to Cleveland
   
8. Create a WPA-like entity for Cleveland that ensures jobs for all and contributes to community improvement projects
9. Ensure that Wal-Mart and other big box retailers do not decimate the city's small businesses by instituting an aggressive Shop Local campaign
10. Completely swarm Cleveland with so many progressive, optimistic-yet-entirely-practical visionaries that those who deride Cleveland as just a plum will be sent adrift, whining and wringing their newsprint stained little hands, on an ice sheet into the depths of Lake Erie in the dead of February.
    

Look, don't ask me how I'm going to finance these projects. I'm a 27 year old reference librarian who has no other experience doing anything except working in the natural foods business and slinging fancy espresso drinks. But let me use those four things that I am to my advantage, please:

1. I am a librarian, and librarians can find anything, including ways to finance insane civic projects.
2. I have twelve years left before I run for mayor, so I can use those twelve years to learn how to best fulfill my ten campaign promises (let's just hope there's not a whole other, much worse list of problems to fix by then)
   
3. I am a big believer that simply changing one's lifestyle to include constant healthy eating and exercise will take care of a whole host of other social ills - perhaps that's a hallmark of someone born under Dennis "Hot Water and Lemon" Kucinich's mayorship
4. Fancy espresso drinks are just part of life in Portland, and Portlanders seem to be doing just fine by their city. Perhaps there's civic gold in them thar lattes.....
   

You're Clevelanders, I know how you are, reactively naysaying is your favorite game. It's mine too. But I want to ditch that game somewhere out here on the sprawling wasteland of central Jersey - it's time for its battered old box to get squished by someone's H2 barreling too fast through the old Asbury traffic circle.

No one will miss it, and we're all better off playing more creative games, like Pretend.

What Do Urban Planners Do?

This sounds like a job I'd like.