Library

I was scheduled to be out of town, but when my plans changed, I purchased my ticket to attend the Data Days CLE 2024 annual conference. The conference took place on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, at the Cleveland Public Library-Louis Stokes Wing. I have been following the activities of Data Days CLE on social media for years, but I have never been able to attend any of their events. I knew I would be in for an impressive day, and what I got was even more. It ended up also being a reunion with people I had not met in person for a while, and gave me the opportunity to meet new people who were attending or presenting.

I like how the Data Days CLE 2024 organizers make an effort to make it easy for all who are interested to attend their events. Since I follow Data Days CLE on social media, I had the opportunity to use the social media promo discount they offered to their followers. I recommend you see their current list of social media accounts at the bottom of their DataDaysCLE.org website, and follow those that you are active on, so that you learn about their future events.

I put together this blog post to share the photos and notes I took during the event. Of most importance is that I want to thank the organizers, sponsors, and presenters for making Data Days CLE possible. I enjoyed learning how our community is now better served after several years of work by the people participating in this annual conference.

A year ago, I learned about and planned on attending the grand opening of the Cleveland Foundation's new headquarters building in 2023. I had learned that the building was going to be much more than the Foundation's home for their staff to work in -- it will also be a resource for the greater community to use! A new role in the community for the Foundation -- very exciting! I looked forward to the opening and to being part of the community celebration.

Next, in May 2023, it was announced that in addition to the new beginning with a new building, there would be a change in Cleveland Foundation professional leadership -- President & CEO Ronn Richard's retirement would lead to the installation of Lillian Kuri as the new leader of the Foundation on August 1, 2023.

Finally, as I attended the Cleveland Foundation 2023 Annual Meeting and open house/tour, I learned about more new beginnings -- a second building!!

In this blog post, I will share announcements that were made before the 2023 Annual Meeting and related festivities, and then write about my experiences at the following celebrations:

• Thursday, July 13, 2023 - Annual Meeting Celebrating Community Service

• Friday, July 14, 2023 - Cleveland City Club Meeting: Honoring Ronn Richard's History of Service

• Saturday, July 15, 2023 - New Headquarters Opening Dedication

• Saturday, July 15, 2023 - Exploring the New Cleveland Foundation Headquarters

• Saturday, July 15, 2023 - Celebratory Performances for the KeyBank Dance and Arts Studio

I learned about another reason to celebrate in the near future:

• THE FUTURE! - Another New Building To Come!!

For me, the timing of the Cleveland History Days 2023 was perfect, since it was two months after my septal myectomy open-heart surgery at University Hospitals, and I was finally able to be active again for the first time in 2023.

With over 50 events happening during Cleveland History Days 2023, I was grateful to the organizations that hosted so many interesting activities. I did elect to skip the the Cleveland "Take A Hike" tours, since I was unsure of myself doing a lot of walking, but near the end of the 10 days of activities, I felt well enough to attend the "Ohio Freedom Path Hike" on Saturday, July 1, 2023. I can highly recommend the Cleveland "Take A Hike" tours from attending them with my wife in the past. I have heard that in recent years they have developed new tour locations and updated old favorite tours.

I was so impressed with all that was happening during these 10 days, that I wanted to capture what I could in my blog post. I hope you enjoy the following and share with others. Remember that even though Cleveland History Days is only once a year, most of the the places it features are available to explore year round!

Please read about the following:

• Friday, June 23, 2023 - Cleveland History Days Opening Ceremony

• Friday, June 23, 2023 - Cuyahoga County – Rediscover The Detroit-Superior Bridge: Community Conversation

• Saturday, June 24, 2023 - Cuyahoga River Rally

• Sunday, June 25, 2023 - Open House at The Historic B&O Roundhouse

• Tuesday, June 27, 2023 - Buckeye Trail

• Saturday, July 1, 2023 - Ohio Freedom Path Hike

• Saturday, July 1, 2023 - Talk at Cleveland Public Library: “The Other Trails of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians”

The Cleveland Public Library, for their Ninth Annual Maker Faire Cleveland, did the event a little differently than in past years. Instead of just a one-day maker event, they planned "family-friendly, free events at Cleveland Public Library locations across the city" for a full week! The week-long maker activities culminated in the Maker Faire Cleveland Showcase 2021 on Saturday, November 20th, at the Great Lakes Science Center.

In this blog post, we will share tweets with photos/videos leading up to and including our attendance at the Maker Faire Cleveland Showcase 2021.

A BIG thank-you to Tom Kunsman who made it a point to be sure that we knew about the Showcase. If it weren't for his tweet, we might have missed this year's event.

In addition to the Cleveland Public Library's Cleveland Maker Faire, we also learned about the The Best Buy Teen Tech Center, which is in partnership with The Clubhouse Network.

Thank you, Cleveland Public Library, for the FREE night at the Great Lakes Science Center for the Maker Faire Cleveland Showcase 2021! We appreciate that the Cleveland Public Library plans interesting tech and NASA-related events. We have attended several of them! The library is "The People's University" in Cleveland.

I have enjoyed attending Akron-Summit County Public Library maker events many times over the years. Thankfully, I learned that Akron Makes would be held Saturday, November 13, 2021, when I saw tweets from the Akron-Summit County Public Library and Summit Artspace. If not for these tweets, I would have missed this fun event!

I was very impressed with the kids who demonstrated their Scratch programming. It is fun to stop and listen to kids as they teach you about their programming projects.

It was very appropriate that a lot of the Akron Makes took place in the library's TechZone makerspace, so visitors to the event would also know what is available at the library year-round.

After leaving Akron Makes, I stopped briefly at Summit Artspace to see their Betty and Howard Taylor main gallery. I wish I had more time to see all their art galleries, since I really enjoyed what I saw in the main gallery from the 19th Annual Kaleidoscope Juried Exhibition. While at Summit Artspace, I was fortunate to meet their new Executive Director, Heather Meeker, who was greeting visitors as they entered.

Looking for humor and creativity on the Twitterverse, and visiting parks while social distancing is what my life mainly consists of currently. There is also a lot of sadness about plans being canceled, but my family has been fortunate to have had no illness or death. I try to support those that I see online that are making a difference in our community.

While no day of COVID-19 social distancing is the same, the typical day often contains the following elements: 

• Absolutely no consistency in mornings

• Forenoon - Twitter online distractions

• 2:00 pm coronavirus #InThisTogetherOhio updates from Ohio Governor Mike DeWine

• Afternoon walk in local parks to help deal with coronavirus-related stress

• Evenings are spent watching online movies

In this blog post, I share my experience visiting local parks, and my online life during these coronavirus crisis times.

I am a very lucky man! In October and November 2019, I was very fortunate to attend many great events. I am publishing seven blog posts today because I really want to thank the organizers of these events. With so much happening, I have not been able to publish my blog posts on a timely basis, but still wanted to recognize and recommend these organizations.

In the interest of time, these are not my usual full blog posts, so I encourage you to click on the links and watch the videos in the tweets to learn more:

• Cleveland Maker Faire 2019 and Cleveland Public Theatre "Día de Muertos"
  November 2, 2019.
  I enjoy writing about the Cleveland Maker Faire every year. Thank you, also, to @CPTCLE for the personal invitation via Twitter to Día de Muertos.

I am truly grateful to all those who made these great events possible.

On the afternoon of Saturday, November 3, 2018, I attended the Cleveland Mini Maker Faire. 2018 marks the sixth year for the Cleveland Public Library - "The People's University" - as a sponsor and host of the Cleveland Mini Maker Faire, and I have attended and written blog posts about three of the previous years' events.

Also, I am excited that my sons had a booth at the Cleveland Mini Maker Faire this year, featuring their tabletop game, PerMUTATIONS. This is the first time they have been invited to share their game with the public at the Library. They have demonstrated their PerMUTATIONS game at the last two Ingenuity Cleveland's IngenuityFest events, which you can read about in our blog posts.

What follows are my 100 @sos_jr tweets and retweets, so you can see photos from the event, and learn how the Cleveland Public Library uses the Cleveland Mini Maker Faire to bring together area makers and creatives to share their knowledge and to encourage others to join them.

This year, the Akron Mini Maker Faire took place at the Main Library of the Akron-Summit County Public Library on Saturday, September 22, 2018. This was earlier in the year than it normally takes place. Stuart had planned to be out of town in September 2018, but a change in plans brought him home early, allowing us both to attend the Sixth Annual Akron Mini Maker Faire! Stuart has attended all six years.

Our @sos_jr tweets and retweets show some of what we and others experienced at the Akron Mini Maker Faire. We hope they give you some insight into what these Makers do, but to learn more, you need to attend the next Akron Mini Maker Faire and talk to the Makers directly.

On Tuesday, July 31, 2018, we ended the month by taking the afternoon to explore the FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art venues in Downtown Cleveland. These are the first venues we have had time to visit since the FRONT International Triennial opening on Thursday, July 12, 2018. 

We spent seven relaxing hours taking our time seeing the artwork, and wanted to share our experience through our @sos_jr tweets and retweets about the day.