Weekly Tao Te Ching Verse - Week #16

I spent my weekend volunteering at the Engine 2 sponsored 2Forks Weekender here in Cleveland at the Downtown Marriott hotel. The amount of information was absolutely staggering. There were times that I felt such a disconnect to the rest of society, that such critical, lifesaving information is not more widely known. There shear amount of data demonstrating the overwhelming benefits of a whole foods, plant based diet is almost overwhelming.

Congrats Bro

So my brother was one of nine public officials recognized by Governing magazine for 2014. As you may know he is currently the General Manager of DC Water Way to go bro! We are all, as always, proud of you. George is the one in the upper left corner of the picture below.

Governing Article:

Introducing the 2014 Public Officials of the Year

I went to http://www.governing.com and what do I see on the top page? A big picture of Cleveland! Check it out, it's an article about where people have lived the longest.

Fuel Right Program

I don't post much about work. And this post isn't really about work but about food and health. It starts off with Hyland though. This last week Hyland kicked off Good Nutrition Month. The basic goal of the month is to give up drinking soda permanently. Basically the idea is that soda provides two and half donuts worth of sugar with each glass (8oz?) and that by giving it up people would be that much more healthy.

Hyland has won company with the best perks in Northeast Ohio for several years running. As part of that Hyland provides free soda drinks for everyone. There is an irony that this month's wellness program is to get people to voluntarily give up one of the benefits. And this month's program so far has been impressive! Today, for example, we got free fruit (see picture above) and a cup for drinking water. The picture below was my take today! Tomorrow I get a free lunch!

But it really kicked off last week when on Wednesday, we had Kristen Kilpatrick, MS, RD, LD Wellness Manager at the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Center (website, google plus page (+Cleveland Clinic, +Cleveland Clinic Wellness) kick off the month with a presentation. It was a tremendous presentation with an huge amount of information.

グリーンハウスターバンでの誕生日会

East 4th Street

12月には我が家族では多くの誕生日があります。兄貴ダンが12月2日、母が15日、ありさが19日、甥っ子が20日だ。ありさの父も12月です。この誕生日がお月にクリスマスがあります。今年はババラさん（母: +Barbara Hawkins ）とありさ( +Arisa Hawkins の誕生日を一緒にお祝いするということでダウンタウンクリーブランドに行って外食するという形にしました。

母の家に行ってピックアップして高速道路にのってクリーブランドのダウンダウンに行きました。日曜日の夜だったのでクリーブランドブラウンズの試合が何時間前に終わっていて試合を見に行ってた方々既にダウンタウンから離れていたので簡単に駐車が出来ました。

Noodles in Cleveland

Last night we went to Noodlecat on Euclid Avenue near East 4th Street - it's about half a block towards Public Square from the East 4th and Euclid Corner. This is how Noodlecat's twitter account describes itself:

"Noodlecat is Chef Jonathon Sawyer's Japanese and American mashup ramenhouse in the CLE."

Home Projects

Our Home is Our Castle

As I am sure is true for every home owner there is always something to fix, tweak, improve on a house when you are a homeowner.  I'm not including those immediate or emergency things that happen.  Just the things that need improvement.  For example, when we were purchasing the house we had someone inspect the house (@Ron_Gerome)  as is typical.  He found that while we had a whole new breaker box which was clean, well done, at grounded, our other items (water heater, furnace, gas) were not grounded.  Not anything ground breaking but not something that you want to let go forever, particularly since it's "not up to code".  So we have begun the process of getting estimates for these items plus those items that we have noticed we want or have "broken" in the meantime.  For example, Arisa and George did something so now the kitchen sink faucet drips non-stop.  It'll probably be a 10 minute job for a plumber.  So we'll get the estimate for:

1. Electrical (done today)
2. Plumbing
3. Furnace and AC Check
4. Masonry (tuckpoint work)
5. Chimney Sweep (probably not this year)
6. Minimal Roofing Repair (not this year)

Walk to Remember at the Cleveland Zoo

Several weeks back, Arisa and I joined Team Hyland to participate in the "Walk To Remember", a fundraiser walk for the Hospice of the Western Reserve. The great thing about the walk was that it was through the Cleveland Zoo which I haven't been to since I got there on a yellow bus. You can check out some of the pics from the event at hospicewr.org : http://goo.gl/hQkCL. My pics are below:




If you need to know, here is the map to the Cleveland Zoo:


View Cleveland Zoo in a larger map

I think I'd do it again next year since it's for a good cause.

Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom

The cherry trees donated by the Japanese Association of Northeast Ohio (JANO) are in full bloom. This year is the 100th Anniversary of the gift of cherry trees to the United States from Japan for the mall in Washington D.C. This year the blooming is early. I tweeted last night that I wished one of the news organizations would broadcast something. Little did I know when I made that tweet that Newsnet5 already had!

Yesterday about 15 of us had an impromptu "hanami" which was a lot of fun. Check out the pictures below.

If you have a chance, you'll want to stop by today since I think the inbound rain and storms will knock all the blossoms off the trees.

Highland Heights Gas Well Info - Important Meeting

I received this in an email from a concerned citizen.  It's really surprising to me that they would want to start fracking in our community park.  I get the idea that it's generate money, but at what cost?  

映画情報：ノルウエイの森

明日の夜(3月9日）、Cleveland Institute of Artのシネマテックで放映されます。

ノルウェイの森
２０１０年

監督：　トラン・アン・ユン
原作：　村上春樹
音楽：　ジョニー・グリーンウッド
脚本：　トラン・アン・ユン

1987年に刊行されベストセラーとなった村上春樹の代表作「ノルウェイの森」を、『青いパパイヤの香り』『夏至』などのトラン・アン・ユン監督が映画化。亡くなった親友の恋人との関係を通し、主人公の青年の愛と性、生と死を叙情的につづる。主人公には松山ケンイチ、大切な人の死をきっかけに主人公と心を通わせていく女子大生に菊地凛子がふんし、複雑な人間性を繊細に演じる。トラン・アン・ユン監督のみずみずしい世界観と、深遠な村上春樹ワールドの融合に期待。

出演：　松山ケンイチ　菊地凛子　水原希子　高良健吾　霧島れいか　初音映莉子　柄本時生

Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます

Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます

Pizza at Crostatas

This last Thursday night Arisa and I, just the two of us, went out for dinner. This is not an occurrence that happens often. In fact, it's been pretty rare. Though I expect it will start happening a lot more than it has in the past since Elly and Ken are off at college and George isn't far behind.

In particular, on Thursday during the day at work Arisa had her OBP1 certification test at Hyland Software. Yes, Arisa and I now both work at Hyland. Anyway, Hyland has a fairly extensive training program for new employees with "certification" tests afterward. Needless to say all the training is in English as are the tests. So for Arisa it was a very long and mentally tiring day. George wanted to go see the Mayfield Varsity Soccer team play Shaker in the District Finals at Brush High School so we dropped him off and went to eat.

Neohawk's New Homestead

Most of you know that the Northeast Ohio Hawkins Family moved to a new house at the end of June.  For the first time ever, Arisa and I have purchased a house!

Our new homestead is only 5 or 10 minutes away from our previous residence, so George will be attending the same school - Mayfield High School.  We did move to a new city though and we are now in Highland Heights, but Mayfield City School District includes both Mayfields (Heights and Village), Gates Mills and Highland Heights.  The house is about a 5-10 minute bike ride to and from the school.

The house is not that much bigger than the house we were in previously, but the layout is much, much better.  The house overall is in much better shape and incredibly higher quality of any house we've lived in so far.  We bought it with the idea that it'll be really for just Arisa and I as we'll be empty nesters soon.  George has three more years of high school, but beginning this fall both Ken and Elly will spend most of their lives away from home.  Elly, of course, is a sophomore at American University while Ken is a freshman at Villanova University.

While the house isn't that big we have close to one and a half acres (約6000平方メートル). Which for me means alot of gardening space.  As you know, in our previous residence we did some gardening.  Unfortunately, last year I was traveling too much to take much care of it and this year too much flooding to even start.  And then when it dried up some we had already decided to move so I never did plant a garden this year regardless of this post that indicates otherwise.

This summer for me was mostly be about planning and preparing for next year.  I will be planting at least two gardens and a third one eventually.  For the most part, these will be vegetable gardens, though I may throw in some flowers for variety.  In fact, we have a little "hill" that's up against the Euclid Creek where I am planting some native flowers such as the purple cone flower and some others.  Hopefully, these flowers will fill up the area instead of the weeds that were there until Elly and I ripped them out.   In addition to this area, I will be building a raised garden in front of our shed. The plan is for it to be fairly big but we are building it in halves. The first half I'll do this fall, the second half next fall. There is no reason to rush any of this since we'll be here for a while (knock on wood).

One of the big things we need to figure out is what trees to cut down and/or trim. There are three maples next to the house that need to go as they are pushing up against the foundations and will probably cause leaks. We also have two beautiful but massive oak trees in the yard. Both 50 - 70 years old. Unfortunately between the two of them they pretty much shade the whole yard making it very difficult to figure out where to put gardens. But it is more than that - we have probably 6 maples other than the first three I mentioned, 3 pines, another oak tree, an ash tree, a hickory tree and some spruce/evergreen trees and shrubs. Oh, and a dying cherry tree.

I intend to cut down some myself, others we are debating to keep them and, therefore, only trim them. Others we just aren't sure we want to pay to cut them down. So it's a problem we're trying to figure out. And in the meantime I am dreading the fall when all these trees shed their leaves.....

That's enough for now for this post as it has already taken me close to two months to write it. Time to get it out of the way and move on.

International Folk Festival - June 26

Upcoming Events at Arts Collinwood - Waterloo Arts Fest

Med Mart Thoughts

Recently, I read in a Bloomberg article that Toby Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, was quoted as saying this about the Med Mart planned for Cleveland:

“What’s the worst thing that could happen if this fails?” he said. “You have a brand new building and a new convention center. So the downside isn’t too bad.”

This strikes me as complete hubris related to his brainchild. What we get it is an empty new building and 20 years of taxes to pay for a failure.

Note, I am not against the Medical Mart per se. In fact, I like the idea of trying to leverage the Clinic's and University Hospital's expertise in the Medical industry. It's one industry that while it may have ups and downs, you can't export it to a different country.

What bothers me about the plan for the Med Mart and convention center is that there appear to be no plans b and c in case our competitors, Nashville and New York City pound us(Cleveland) in the market place. It seems an awful large burden to place on Cuyahoga County residents with no safety net if it fails to generate the business that they claim.

Now the reality the problem isn't Toby Cosgrove since he simply is pushing for what he thinks is a good idea. My problem comes in with the stewardship of Tim Hagan. He and Dimora (Peter Lawson voted against it I gather) have put all the eggs in the med mart basket with zero risk management or planning in the case it doesn't work. I've heard Tim on the radio a couple of times and I actually kind of like him (the mark of a professional politician), but in this particular instance he has not done the job.

Regardless, now that we are down the path and too far to back out, I'd like to see the Med Mart/Convention center succeed. But I'd also like to see some alternate planning and ideas.

クリーブランドにアムトラック(電車)があった

この間、エリーが帰って来たと英語でブログしましたが、エリーがどう帰って来たと書かなかったです。実はエリーが電車で帰って来て、昨夜アメリカン大学に電車を使って戻りました。

というのは、エリーが帰って来ると楽しんでいたのであんまり帰って来る方法をあんまり気にしていなかったです。でも、昨夜に駅まで連れていた時に「そうか、電車があったのか」と気がついたのです。僕はクリーブランド生まれ・育ちですが、シェーカーハイツからダウンタウンまで、そしてターミナルタワーから空港までの電車以外に電車があるとあんまり意識したことがありません。いや、あるかと考えさえもしていなかったです。クリーブランド内の電車しかないとずっと思っていました。

駅の場所は以下です:

View Cleveland Amtrak Station in a larger map

 

駅で電車の写真を取ってみた。朝2時だったし、携帯電話で握ったので写真の品質がちょっと悪いかもしれないけど、雰囲気をつかめると思います。

 

エリーに曰く、この電車に寝室があります。それが必要でしょうね。だって、Washington D.Cまで13時間かかるわけです。

来週末に日本語能力試験を受けるため、チカゴ市に行ってきますが電車で行けるかもしれません。値段次第ですね。

Cleveland Asian Festival 2011 - Save The Date

The date is set for the 2nd Annual Cleveland Asian Festival - May 21 and 22, 2011.

First Snow of 2010

Yes. It is snowing today. The first of this year. Well, first of this year on this side of summer anyway.

 

ガーリックフェスティバル

ツィッターで知りましたが、来週末にシェーカースクウェアで行うクリーブランドの第一回ガーリックフェスティバル（ニンニク祭り？）があります。なんか、面白そうです。得にカーリックが好き僕にとってクックオフが楽しみなんですよ。

大まかなスケジュールは以下のとおりです

9月11日　13:00～22:00
9月12日　12:00～20:00

今週はまたロスへの出張ですが、これに行けると思います。土曜日にケンとジョージの試合があるかもしれませんけど、このガーリックフェスティバルに行きたいです。