Jewel in the Crown

I have finally acquired the one last thing that every authentic Cleveland girl should have:

A set of Polish grandparents.



JN + CBN
October 26, 2007
Brattleboro, Vermont

Will and Won't

Five things I will miss about New York:

1. My job. I worked Monday - Thursday from 10-5:30. It doesn't get better than that. Seriously, if you are a librarian looking for work in New York City, consider working in Electronic Publishing at Facts on File. It's a great example of one of those "what else can I do with an MLS" kinds of jobs (you actually don't need an MLS, but rather the sort of intellectual curiosity and all-around general smarts that comes with being a librarian. George W. Bush wouldn't like this job, but you might.)
   
2. Reading underground. On the subway, that is. There are some books I've read over the past two years that I'm convinced I wouldn't have truly got the essence of if I had read them aboveground. (The Sea Priestess and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, for example). If that's too tutti-frutti for you, skip directly to #3.
   
3. The smell of roasting nuts, and probably street vendors in general. (Can you still buy a curbside Polish Boy in downtown Cleveland? I'm not sure.)
4. FreshDirect. My biggest regret in life is that we didn't start using FreshDirect sooner (note: if you click that link and don't live in New York, just enter 10001 to look at the site. Tell me Cleveland couldn't use something like this). There is nothing like getting a huge shipment of packages and opening them up to discover interesting things like Concord grapes and quince paste. It's better than Christmas. In fact, we should just get rid of Christmas and have FreshDirect day. (pssst...that's what you'll get if you vote for liberal godless communists like Dennis Kucinich!)
   
5. The 6B Garden. Especially that towering sculpture of filthy toys and other detritus. As I remarked to Jim once, no other piece of art has come so close to depicting how I really feel inside.
   

Five things I won't miss about New York:

1. Rat Hill. That's what we half-affectionately call our neighborhood. (Because right by our subway stop, there's a big, weedy, garbage-strewn hill that rats like to caper around on.) This is probably the least interesting neighborhood in all of the five boroughs. We have the world's most pedestrian-unfriendly Main Street and the only coffee shop is a Dunkin Donuts. (But hey, if bail bonds are your thing, Rat Hill is the place for you.) I won't tell you where Rat Hill really is, but if you do some aggressive Googling of "rats dunkin donuts bail bonds good place to shoot people while i'm drunk and home from the army nyc" you might be able to guess.
   
2. Grime. In the summer, you are constantly coated with a thin layer of sweaty grime. Yes, even the Mistake on the Lake is cleaner than this place.
   
3. The airport. Which one, you ask? Whichever. They all have their flaws that drive me insane with irritation. Take LaGuardia - it's a five-minute drive from where we live, yet for some reason it takes an hour and a half to get there on public transit. (In contrast, from Ohio City, we can take the red line directly to the airport in 20 minutes. And what's at the other end? Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, one of the least horrible American airports I've been to).
4. My bank. I've always felt dirty about putting my money in one of those international corporate mega-banking conglomerates. You can't see their presence in the community. (In contrast, my locally-owned Cleveland bank refused to go the subprime lending route because its president, Marc Stefanski, thought it was irresponsible. He's also deliberately kept the bank's HQ in a struggling Cleveland neighborhood rather than uproot it to the suburbs.)
5. My neighbors and their yapping dog, Wookie. I grew up with a yapping dog whom I loved dearly. Wookie is an insult to her memory.
   

Lonesome No More!

All morning I thought about this comment by Cleveland educator Mary Beth Matthews on a Brewed Fresh Daily post about last week's school shooting.

She's right. Talk is cheap. Where are the solutions?

Here's a rudimentary outline for one.

What if we all "adopted" a child in the city of Cleveland to look out for...sort of like the artificial extended families that Kurt Vonnegut proposed in Slapstick. Or Save the Children, only much closer to home.

Let's see how that might work...

There are approximately 117,862 children under age 19 in the city of Cleveland.

It breaks down like this:

age 0-5................26,824
age 5-9................27,637
age 10-14............32,107
age 15-19.............31,294


TOTAL...............117,862

According to Cleveland Magazine's Rating the Suburbs, there are 76 suburbs in the Cleveland area.

Here are the total number of adults age 25+ for only 6 (3 East; 3 West) of those 76 suburbs:

Cleveland Heights..........27,477
Fairview Park.................12,476
Lakewood.......................39,085
Rocky River..........................15,136
Shaker Heights...................19,701
South Euclid........................15,769

TOTAL...........................129,644

See where I'm going with this?

Source: American Factfinder

Ohio City, Here We Come

Despite some misgivings I had during our first recon mission, Jim and I have signed a lease on a lovely apartment in Ohio City.

Back in July 2004, right before we moved away, I went to the West Side Market for (what I thought was) one last time.

This was during the height of Open Air in Market Square. I ran into some friends, who wished me luck. I watched live music. I drank coffee at Talkies. And -- just briefly -- I thought, "I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't go. This is where I belong."

How fitting.

Cleveland = The Moon

Thanks to all who have left comments in the last few days ... I've meant to respond more personally to all of your thoughtful insights.

(I could say I've been busy with moving stuff, but the truth is, I've been busy indulging in Harry Potter fan fiction while pointedly avoiding dealing with moving stuff.)

The way I feel about Cleveland can be summed up in this quote from John F. Kennedy's 1962 speech at Rice University, in which he justifies the lunar mission:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.

School Shooting in Downtown Cleveland

Let me tell you, I never wanted to see the Mayor of Cleveland's website listed as a Related Link on the BBC for something like this!

The difference between this shooting and Columbine - though they are both horrible - is that the SuccessTech shooting didn't shatter any idyllic images.

Whereas Littleton, Colorado, was a veritable suburban paradise, Cleveland is a crime-ridden city with a lot of problems!

So I hope city leaders learn something from the tragedy -- and the bad, bad press generated by it -- and adopt the following attitude:

THINGS CHANGE. NOW.

What is Right, What is Hard, and What is Easy

Inevitably, now that moving back to Cleveland is staring me in the face, I'm starting to get cold feet.

Since July 2004, when our East Coast odyssey began, we've had no doubt that one day we'd return to the good old Buckeye State. We've felt an enormous sense of responsibility toward Ohio (and speaking for myself, Cleveland in particular). We didn't want to be part of the Brain Drain in any permanent way.

In considering whether to stay in New York or move back to Cleveland, I've often turned to the words of that moral paragon, Albus Dumbledore.

When Lord Voldemort returned at the end of Book 4, Dumbledore warned Hogwarts students that soon they would "have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy."

Living in New York has been almost laughably easy. Living in Cleveland was hard, challenging, often disheartening.

So lately, I've been more often considering this passage from The Amber Spyglass, in which Will Parry justifies his use of the powerful-but-dangerous Subtle Knife to the bear king, Iorek Byrnison:

"Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right. It's very hard."

Is Cleveland the right thing, or is it the wrong thing that looks more dangerous?

It's not something I want to be convinced either way about - we're coming back, regardless. But I have to consider this: ironically, I feel like I've lost a lot of what toughness I'd gained from a lifetime in Cleveland by living in New York.

Doesn't that seem a little backwards?

Friday News

So, it looks like we'll be moving to Cleveland at the end of the month.

Jim got the job he interviewed for when we were in town. Myself? Still looking.

Apart from checking out a few reputable buildings in Lakewood and Cedar Fairmount, it looks like we're going to center our apartment search on the Warehouse District.

This could be a huge disaster, noise-wise.

But when I weigh my priorities, public transit wins out.

Earplugs are always cheaper than cars.

Still, though, I wouldn't say no to a well-insulated apartment. (Some of those places have concrete flooring!)

So, if you - or anyone you know - knows of a well-put-together building in the Warehouse District that I should be aware of (one where I won't hear my neighbors going to the bathroom or speaking at normal conversational volume should be good enough), please leave it in the comments or email me at christine [at] christineborne [dot] net.

It's...It's a Major Award!

Even though the American Public Transportation Association has named RTA the best public transit system in North America, I've got some doubts.

I want to be happy about this, but it takes more than increased ridership and good fiscal management to make a transit system really work.

Here are three basic things that are important to me, as a straphanger:

1. Schedules? What schedules? I want to ride buses and trains that don't require carrying around a wad of paper schedules. I want to walk to the bus stop or train station and know that something will be coming within five minutes. I have no use for buses that run twice an hour or three times a day.

2. Attitude. RTA will be an outstanding public transit system when the average Clevelander stops thinking that public transit is for poor people. When your friends don't offer to pick you up "so you don't have to take the bus."

3. Transit-oriented development. Too many rapid transit stations in Cleveland just function as sad little park-and-rides. Tear up the vast parking lot at Triskett and put in some apartments and street-level retail.