Today’s Report – March 1st
- Boston.com: Squeezed. Orange Juice is my favorite thing to drink. And “not-from-concentrate” juice is my favorite kind of orange juice. Alissa Hamilton’s written a book about the Orange Juice industry, “Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice,” due out in May from Yale University Press, which goes into great detail about how juice is manufactured and all the sneaky things that are done to make people like me buy more juice. On hold at the library.
- Kathleen Cerveny: Kathleen directs Arts and Culture funding for the Cleveland Foundation. She engaged Glazen Creative to brainstorm on how to get Clevelanders to feel more pride for the area. One item the group hit on was that in most other states there is one, or maybe two, major urban areas, so it’s clear where “urban” functions should go and where “rural” functions should go. And it’s also clear which town the state should market. (Think Chicago, or New York City.) But Ohio has far more urban areas, so not only is there the normal struggle between town and country, there’s as big or bigger struggle between town and town (and town and town and town). Now, obviously the Cleveland area is, by about a million people, the most populous metropolitan area in Ohio, and therefore should drive much of the “urban” agenda for the state. But, unfortunately, Cleveland isn’t the largest “city” in the state. Columbus is, because they were fortunate enough to annex virtually all of their suburbs before the Ohio courts and legislature effectively shut down that option. And so Ohio’s urban agenda — and especially urban federal funding — is largely driven by Columbus, a city that has almost nothing in common with Cleveland and whose metropolitan area only has half as many people. If only Cleveland could convince its suburbs to join it in a single political organization. This would obviously be better for the entire region. But it will never happen if the suburbs must merge into the City of Cleveland. There are long standing racial, economic and educational issues that the Cleveland “brand” is known for. And besides, Cleveland only has about 1/6 of the region’s population and an even lower percentage of land. Cerveny’s and Glazen’s solution: Dissolve Cleveland and make an entirely new “brand” for the entire area. The name they came up with? The original name for this location: Ohio City. Maybe Ohio City will ultimately win that war with Cleveland.
- Speaking of the Cleveland Foundation, I see they’ve started a new “Grantmaking Blog” which covers various aspects of funding and non-profits. Our friends Kathy Hallissey and Nelson Beckford are blog participants.
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