Cleveland

1806 - 2024 - 2099! The April 8, 2024, total eclipse was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for Ohio!!! We want to share here what we and our son, Michael, experienced during the three-day celebration (April 6-8, 2024) leading up to the start of the eclipse at 1:59 pm on the third day, and the amazing total eclipse as it happened at 3:15 pm.

We ended our blog post about the 2017 partial (80%) eclipse with the message "See you in 2024!" and a countdown clock. After waiting seven years, it feels strange that the countdown clock now shows the number of days since the event happened! Total eclipse 2024 is now history!

The moment of the total eclipse was incredible (it really can't be put into words), but we also want to note that the three days of eclipse celebration also featured many of the great organizations that improve the quality of life for those of us who live in the Greater Cleveland area. We hope to capture here not just what we observed during the 2024 total eclipse, but also the spirit of our community at the Cleveland events we attended.

We are very fortunate in Cleveland to have Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage make its United State debut at our very own moCa Cleveland in Uptown Cleveland - University Circle. When I saw Manabu Ikeda's exhibition, along with two other new exhibitions, as part of the moCa Cleveland Opening Night Celebration, I knew I would need to come back a few more times. There is so much to see in the details of Manabu Ikeda's artwork. Fortunately, the exhibition is in Cleveland through May 26, 2024, and moCa Cleveland is always FREE and open to all.

This blog post is about the February 2, 2024, moCa Cleveland Opening Night Celebration, and my March 29, 2024, return visit during a Studio Access with Manabu Ikeda session at moCa Cleveland.

An evening of hugs and high-wow-factor presentations! That is what PechaKucha Night Cleveland - Volume 40 was for me!

The evening's festivities took place on Thursday, March 7, 2024. Located on the shore of the Cuyahoga River, the Music Box Supper Club in the Cleveland Flats West, was the perfect spot. I had just been in this entertainment section of Cleveland two weeks earlier for Brite Winter 2024, and I was glad to be back in the area.

I am writing this blog post to try and capture some of the high-level excitement which is PechaKucha, but it cannot be fully described -- it is something that must be experienced in person! This blog post will act as a bookmark for my memory to help recall the feeling of the evening, and for those of you who did not attend, I hope it serves to encourage you to attend a future PechaKucha Night Cleveland event.

It is pretty amazing that PechaKucha Night Cleveland has been featuring creative Greater Cleveland people since 2008! We are fortunate to have one of the oldest PechaKucha Night communities in the world.

PechaKucha is always a good time. Thank you to the PechaKucha Night Cleveland leaders for making these great events happen!! I look forward to attending more!

A BIG thank-you to the Brite Winter leadership team, volunteers, sponsors/partners, and Ingenuity Cleveland Ingeneers for a great #Brite2024! Some of my family visited the event earlier in the day on Saturday, February 24, 2024. They reported that they had a great time seeing people they knew at the event, but said I should be prepared for the cold. I had also seen on Brite Winter's Facebook page the official #FluriForecast from Cleveland 19 News Chief Meteorologist Jason Nicholas -- it would be cold. When I arrived just before 8:00 pm, I heard several people comment on the cold.

Brite Winter Vision Statement: ". . . to build community while helping us embrace the cold winter months. . . . We embrace our core values of positivity, community, creativity, artistic excellence, and accessibility." Remembering to embrace the cold in a positive manner, and acknowledging that it was not really that cold for winter in Cleveland -- come on folks, it is a full 11 degrees warmer than Brite Winter 2014 -- I dressed for the weather and a great time at Brite Winter 2024!

I enjoyed the musical performances Saturday night! I think many people attending that night learned that it is not cold out in winter in Cleveland on a February night if you keep dancing the night away!

Congratulations, Brite Winter, on a successful event for your 15th incredible year. I look forward to attending your 16th year in 2025, and more beyond.

We enjoyed the second day of the Cleveland's Year of the Dragon Lunar New Year Celebration at Asia Plaza on February 11, 2024, and then went to the 2024 Year of the Dragon Downtown Akron Lunar New Year Celebration at Akron Civic Theatre on February 18, 2024. We enjoyed participating in both of these celebrations, and wanted to create this blog post to share with you some of what we saw.

We hope this 2024 Lunar New Year Celebration blog post encourage others to go out and explore more of Northeast Ohio!

I decided to write this blog post for two purposes:

• First, to thank the leadership of Maelstrom Collaborative Arts for their Saturnalia 2024 gathering which took place on Saturday, January 27, 2024.

  . . . kick off our sixth year with the return of Saturnalia, our night to celebrate the art and artsy made at Maelstrom Collaborative Arts!

• Second, and the more important reason, is that Saturnalia 2024 represents a return to normality, and kicks off the realization of more great art events in the future!

  Our last Saturnalia party was December 2019! Obviously, a lot has changed since then . . .
  
  We had such plans at that Saturnalia, plans that did not account for a global pandemic. But despite it all, we continued to make an array of boundary-pushing art.

I support what Maelstrom Collaborative Arts has created, and I was impressed by the friendliness of everyone at Saturnalia 2024. The format of the evening allowed the performers to become the audience for other performers, and therefore encouraged everyone to socialize.

I hope this blog post encourages you to learn more about Maelstrom Collaborative Arts and to partake in some of their entertainment!

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Friday, January 26, 2024, SOLD OUT DigitalC Citywide Network Launch Party -- so much information was shared that evening about what will be happening this year in Cleveland!

I am putting this blog post together for three reasons:

• First, to share a little about the interesting information I learned at the launch event and my past interest in DigitalC's work. Creative solutions to the digital divide issue in Cleveland has always been of interest to me.

• Second, to establish what I publish here as a starting benchmark of expectations. From this starting point, the community can measure the progress of DigitalC's staff as they move forward with the Cleveland digital revolution that they have envisioned.

• Finally, to make this my first step in fulfilling the commitment that all the attendees to the DigitalC Citywide Network Launch Party were asked to make: To support the mission of the organization using whatever resources you have available.

It is my hope that this blog post encourages you to join the people who attended the launch event in making the commitment to support the DigitalC mission.

On October 29, 2023, I started writing this blog post, but I was delayed in finishing it until the middle of December due to another family emergency and some back-end work on my sosAssociates.com website. I am glad that I have now completed this blog post, since the topic presented is part of a long-term trend I have written about in the past. It deals with the important work of improving the City of Cleveland's (and this region's) waterfront and park systems. The plan presented is very long-term, so I wanted to capture today's ideas, and compare them with the future reality.

PechaKucha Night Cleveland - Volume 39 - Untold Lakefront Stories took place on October 20, 2023, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Cleveland's NorthCoast Harbor.

This particular PechaKucha Night Cleveland was very unique!! It first presented the interesting history of Cleveland's Lakefront from a variety of cultural viewpoints, and then showed how the future will build on this past as outlined in the newly updated Cleveland’s North Coast Master Plan.

I also include in this blog post what was recently shared at follow-up presentations that took place after PechaKucha Night Cleveland Untold Lakefront Stories. We are fortunate that so much was shared online from these follow-up events.

The following are the sections of this blog post:

• Past Ingenuityfests Showed Hidden, Spectacular Lakefront Views!

• Images of Today's Lakefront

• October 20, 2023 - PechaKucha Night Cleveland: Untold Lakefront History
  Five Stories Told by Clevelanders for Clevelanders

  I loved the topic, Untold Lakefront Stories, and I enjoyed learning from the five presenters about their good work:

  1) Cynthia Connolly - Chair of the Lake Erie Native American Council
  2) Fran Stewart - Ohio Freedom Path (Underground Railroad)
  3) Keshia Johnson Chambers - Greenbook Cleveland
  4) Ferian Young - Asiatown Migration
  5) Andrew Sargeant - The Whole History

• October 20, 2023 - PechaKucha Night Cleveland:
  First Public Release of North Coast Lakefront Draft Master Plan

• October 20, 2023 - City of Cleveland Beautiful Night Views

• October 23, 2023 - Cleveland's North Coast Master Plan Virtual Draft Presentation

• November 1, 2023 - The City Club of Cleveland:
  Happy Dog Takes On Cleveland's Lakefront Development

• November 11, 2023 - Thank you, PechaKucha International, for your kind words!

• Related Blog Posts

I hope to look back at this blog post in future years after the project is completed and I am standing on the lakeshore enjoying the new lakefront of Cleveland.

The day after attending IngenuityFest 2023: Biologies & Geologies (September 22 & 23, 2023), I left on a trip. Now that I have returned, I want to publicly express here how grateful I am to Ingenuity Cleveland leadership and their community partners for this year's gathering of creative people in Cleveland.

My son, Mike, and I enjoyed exploring the artistically lit caverns of Ingenuity Cleveland's 300,000-square-foot Hamilton Collaborative on the evening of Friday, September 22, 2023. There we found music, art, and much more!!

Then, on Saturday, September 23, 2023, Mike and I returned with our whole family to explore more. In addition to seeing more of the exhibitions I enjoyed Friday night, I spent time talking to people at the community organization booths in the upper part of the building. There is where I learned about the latest new happenings in Cleveland.

Since its founding in 2004, IngenuityFest has featured both technology and art. These are both areas that interest me greatly, so it is no surprise that I have been writing about IngenuityFest from the first year I started writing my blog in 2012.

I have been writing about IngenuityFest since 2012, but I have been taking my family to this great event for even longer. I look forward to attending again next year!

Starting with the 2012 Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Festival, I have created a blog post every year to capture some of the incredible chalk art created on the Fine Arts Garden's stone pathways in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art. This includes both 2020, when #CMAChalkFestival was online only -- "Social Distancing Style" -- due to COVID-19, and 2021, when "a spur-of-the-moment trip south to take care of some family business prevented me from attending," but my son, Kevin F. Smith, saved the day by attending and sharing photos on social media.

I enjoyed creating chalk drawings at the event in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, but have not participated as an artist in recent years.

I am so glad I was able to attend the 34th Annual Cleveland Museum of Art Chalk Festival on Sunday, September 17, 2023 -- my 12th year taking photos and videos of the event. I hope you enjoy what I put together to capture the artwork and the atmosphere of the event.