It is staggering to believe, but this year's Cleveland International Film Festival -- the 36th annual -- once again broke the previous year's attendance figures.
 
The 11-day film festival, which wrapped up on Sunday, April 1, checked in a record total of 85,018 filmgoers. This is a 9-percent jump from the previous year and a whopping 143-percent increase from 2003.
 
What's more, the festival saw it's largest single-day attendance on Saturday, March 31, with 13,176 coming to see a film.
 
See you next year for another record-breaking festival?

As part of the multi-part spread in Details magazine, the article "The Rust Belt Revival: What's Happening in Cleveland, Ohio" highlights "Pioneers have brought back made-in-the-Midwest fashion and opened an assortment of innovative bars and restaurants."

Included in the spread are features on:
 
Midwest Fashion Makes a Comeback
Starring Danielle DeBoe and Sean Bilovecky of Dredgers Union.
 
"The Dredgers Union is bringing back made-in-the-Midwest style."
 
The Architectural Upcyclers
Starring Chris Kious of A Piece of Cleveland.
 
"His team then transforms the southern yellow pine, maple, and oak into furniture and architectural elements. APOC sells its smaller creations -- wine racks, benches -- to heritage-hungry consumers and tackles commissions for clients like Starbucks and the Cleveland Institute of Art."
 
The Beer Evangelist
Starring Sam McNulty of Market Garden Brewery.
 
"His latest contribution to the now-thriving hood is Market Garden Brewery & Distillery, a bar-restaurant in a former slaughterhouse that lets you store perishables from the West Side Market while sipping one of 32 craft brews made on site (and soon small-batch whiskey, rum, and vodka, too)."
 
America's Next Great Chef
Starring Jonathon Sawyer of Greenhouse Tavern.
 
"Culinary wunderkinder often leave cities like Cleveland; they rarely come home. But after stints in New York City at the now-defunct Kitchen 22 and Parea, native son Jonathon Sawyer returned with dreams of owning his own place."
 
 
Read more here.
 

A multi-part spread in Details magazine trumpets the remarkable rise of the so-called "Rust Belt."
 
In the piece titled, "Talented, educated, creative people are no longer fleeing the region -- they're flocking to it," the writer kicks off with:
 
"Rust connotes decay and neglect -- and indeed, the Rust Belt's decline coincided with a massive brain drain. But in the past half decade, the region has retained more of its homegrown talent while drawing the best and brightest from across the country."
 
Cited in the article is a Brookings Institution report that found "cities like Pittsburgh and Columbus have increased their college-educated population in recent years, and Cleveland and Buffalo are on their way -- having stanched their decades-long outward migration."
 
Called out for special attention are Clevelanders Eric Kogelschatz and Hallie Bram.
 
"In Cleveland, Eric Kogelschatz founded the think tank shark&minnow with his wife, Hallie Bram Kogelschatz, after both fled high-powered marketing jobs in Boston; besides organizing TEDxCLE (last year's sold out in two hours), the organization collaborates on events with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Museum of Art. What prompted the move? "We really didn't know what we were getting into," Eric admits. "But we were tired of Rust Belt cynicism."
 
Read it all right here.

“Now it seems that Lucy shared Eastern Africa with another prehuman species, one that may have spent more time in trees than on the ground,” writes John Noble Wilford of the New York Times.
 
The name Lucy was given to the famous 3.2-million-year-old skeleton discovered in Eastern Africa and is considered the oldest known ancestor to modern day humans.
 
“A 3.4-million-year-old fossil foot found in Ethiopia appears to settle the long-disputed question of whether there was only a single line of hominins -- species more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees -- between four million and three million years ago,” Wilford continues.
 
Beverly Z. Saylor of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland is a member of the scientific team making the discovery and an author of the report announcing the group’s findings.  She states, “the time this hominin lived, the region had many lakes and streams with wooded shores, thus ample opportunities for arboreal habits.”
 
Fellow CWRU colleague and author Bruce M. Latimer states, “The findings clearly showed that the adaptation to bipedality, though considered one of the decisive transitions in early human evolution, was not a single, isolated event.”
 
Read the full New York Times story with Cleveland connections here.

Thanks to a 10-percent increase in international cargo during the 2011 navigation season, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority nabbed the prestigious Robert J. Lewis Pacesetter Award from the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (SLSDC). It is the Port's 10th Pacesetter Award.
 
A large jump in cargo, mostly attributed to the handling of windmill components originating in Germany and destined for Euclid, is to thank for the increase.
 
"The sustained strong economic performance by the port serves to highlight marine transportation’s importance for the city, the region, and the country," said SLSDC Administrator Terry Johnson. "Through its ongoing infrastructure improvements and forward looking strategic plan, the port is well positioned for further growth in 2012 and beyond."
 
"The Port of Cleveland is clearly one of Ohio’s economic engines and we are fortunate that Will Friedman is leading the organization," said Joe Roman, President of Greater Cleveland Partnership.
 
Read the rest of the shipping news here.

Ohio wine producers, most notably those in the Northern part of the state, got a huge shout-out in Huffington Post's national travel blog, "CarsTravelFood."
 
Titled "Explore America: One of Ohio's Best Kept Secrets Is Wine," the feature goes into depth about Ohio's rich wine-making history while offering modern-day tips on where to go.
 
"Ohio wineries might be one of the state's best kept secrets, something worth exploring when visiting the Buckeye State. What's for sure is that the wineries are definitely popular destinations and a worthwhile road trip for those who live here."
 
Some stats: There are now about 150 wineries in the Buckeye State, and 60 percent of those grow their own fruit. At least eight new wineries will open in the state in 2012.

"Ohio wine country is a welcome glimmer of hope in this tough economic climate."

"There is no recession in wine country; our wineries are exploding," says Donniella Winchell, executive director of Ohio Wine Producers Association. "There is a winery within 45 minutes of every resident of the state of Ohio."

The wine industry in Ohio provides about 4,000 jobs, and these vintners attract about 2 million visitors a year. Winchell says 65 percent of Ohio wines are grown in the northeast part of the state in the Grand River Valley, which is 22 miles long and four miles wide. There are about 20 wineries in this region.

Drink up the rest of the travelog here.

Cleveland’s own Michael Symon continues to receive out of town press, this time in a piece from Sylvia Rector of the Detroit Free Press. 
 
As the newspaper’s scribe for the "Dining Out" column, Rector reports that an upcoming episode of the Food Network’s Iron Chef America will be a "battle between two almost-Detroit chefs -- Takashi Yagihashi of the renowned, now-closed Tribute in Farmington Hills, and Michael Symon, the Clevelander who owns Roast at the Westin Book Cadillac Detroit.”
 
The episode airs April 1.
 
The battle will pit two James Beard Award-winning chefs with notably different cooking styles in a contest focusing on a common “secret ingredient.”
 
Later in the story Rector notes Symon is “often credited with igniting his hometown's restaurant renaissance in the mid-'90s -- and if he didn't ignite it, he certainly threw gasoline on the sparks.”
 
"At the end of the day, I cook a very Midwestern style. It's who I am," Symon told the Free Press as he prepared to open Roast, which was the Detroit Free Press 2009 Restaurant of the Year.
 
As Clevelanders it is difficult to imagine a food scene without Symon playing a major role.  While his celebrity has certainly exploded in recent years, it is certainly well deserved.
 
Read the full Detroit Free Press story here.

Clevelanders are becoming familiar with the cash mob experience, which encourages consumers to converge and spend at locally owned stores. But the warm-hearted initiative is spreading to other parts of the nation, reports Reuters.

"After the original Cash Mob in Cleveland, [Andrew] Samtoy's Facebook friends in other cities picked up on the idea and organized their own gatherings. Samtoy can rattle off a list of friends from Los Angeles to Boston who were the ‘early adapters' of the Cash Mob phenomenon," the article reports.
 
“Flash mobs have been blamed as a factor in looting during urban riots. But now a group of online activists is harnessing social media like Twitter and Facebook to get consumers to spend at locally owned stores in cities around the world in so-called Cash Mobs.”
 
The concept of a cash mob is simple, you are required to spend at least $20 at the chosen location (usually a small independently owned local establishment) and meet three people you have never met before, according to Samtoy, the concept’s founder.
 
“The 32-year-old dreamed up the Cash Mob idea last year after spending time in Britain during summer riots that unleashed looting in cities including London, Manchester and Birmingham.”
 
Read the full inspirational story here.

Triple Pundit, a publication that covers "people, planet, and profit," recently published an article that counters assumptions that the green economy is just a passing fad.
 
"To hear conservative commentators tell it, the green economy is a fad, with trumped up benefits, offering jobs that only come at the expense of conventional jobs. And now, they say, with a recession raging all around us, is not the time to be investing money in a more sustainable future," writes the reporter.
 
Rather, "global demand for renewables grew by 31 percent during 2011 to nearly $250 billion. Last month, renewable energy jobs in the European Union broke through to 1.14 million, finally exceeding through the milestone million. The report goes on to say that the EU is on track to meet their goal of 20% renewables by 2020."
 
Closer to home, clean energy jobs in the US, in the years 1998-2007, grew by 9.1% while overall jobs grew by only 3.7%.
 
Mark Muro, of the Brookings Institution, says the 100,000 green jobs were added between 2003-2010, with the highest levels of growth occurring in areas with green tech clusters, like Albany, NY and Cleveland, OH.
 
Read the rest of the good, green news here.

Seven Days, Vermont's alternative newspaper, takes a seat at the new Crop Bistro in Stowe. Launched by Cleveland-based chef and restaurateur Steve Schimoler, the restaurant has more than a few ties to C-Town.
 
"Key to understanding this work in progress, perhaps, is noting that the restaurant’s concept was imported from Crop Bistro & Bar in Cleveland. Schimoler founded that establishment five years ago as both a farm-to-table eatery and a food lab, in many ways an extension of his work as a food scientist and researcher for Cabot Creamery and Nestlé. In Ohio, Crop has earned a reputation as an innovative, playful spot where the kitchen marries fresh produce with modern culinary gear such as vacuum tumblers," writes Corin Hirsch.
 
"Some of the starters come straight from the Ohio menu -- for instance, deviled eggs dusted with chili powder, two of which are topped with bits of crispy, salty bacon. The Cherry Bomb, a plate of two Roma tomatoes stuffed with chorizo sausage and Jack cheese, wrapped in wonton shells and deep fried, comes off as a midwestern snack."
 
"Other appetizers (and main dishes) mimic their Cleveland cousins with rustic twists. For instance, in Ohio, braised pork belly is served over a malt waffle; in Stowe, the cubes of luscious meat are crisped on one side and served over a delicious tangle of cider-braised cabbage. "
 
Read more Cleveland references and the lengthy review here.

In the lead-up to the 27th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, articles on the birth of rock and roll are as inevitable as the encore at a rock concert.
 
Writing for the BBC, Jude Sheerin delves into the start of it all, right here in Cleveland.
 
"Sixty years ago the world's first rock concert was staged in Cleveland by two men whose passion for music bridged the racial divide in a segregated U.S.," says the writer.
 
Those "two men" were Alan Freed and Leo Mintz.
 
"One of them was the [Moondog Coronation Ball] MC, Alan Freed. The other was Leo Mintz, owner of a music store on the fringes of Cleveland's black community."
 
Sheerin goes on to describe the coining of the phrase 'rock 'n' roll, the events that lead up to the "world's first rock concert," the Moondog Coronation Ball, held March 21, 1952 in the old Cleveland Arena, and the pandemonium that ensued when gatecrashers stormed the 10,000-seat venue.
 
Spoiler Alert: It did not end as planned.
 
Read the rest of the liner notes here.

In an interesting piece titled How Big is Your City, Really by Samuel Arbesman for The Atlantic, readers are shown to look at scale and context in how they view the world.
 
Interesting factoids noted include the first moonwalk by the Apollo 11 crew occurred in an area no larger than a baseball diamond and that a super-dense neuron star would fit within the Boston metropolitan area.
 
“We often have a certain sense of cities’ importance and size, but this is too often founded on a fairly parochial context; our perceptions of cities are based on other cities we are familiar with or that are around it, and we neglect to recognize how big or small cities really are.” States Arbesman.
 
The story goes on to mention that Cleveland, for example, has a metropolitan population greater than that of Dublin, Amsterdam, and Brussels, but that it pales in comparison to importance in global affairs.
 
Read the entire feature here.

“One of my favorite events of the year is right around the corner -- the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) from March 22 to April 1," writes Stefanie Penn Spear, editor of EcoWatch for the Huffington Post.
 
Spear states in her lengthy feature that while she enjoys a wide variety of offerings the festival offers, environmental documentaries are always her favorite. 
 
EcoWatch is sponsoring a film in the festival titled Dirty Energy, “which documents the personal stories of those directly affected by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and their struggles to rebuild their lives amidst the economic devastation and long-term health risks afflicting the area.”
 
Spear goes on to detail another film titled Cape Spin, which she was given the opportunity to preview, about a political battle over the 2001 proposal for a Cape Wind’s energy project.
 
Read the detailed story here.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is gearing up to unveil it $6.9 million renovation project writes Sandy Fitzgerald in a brief report for Newsmax. This latest renovation is the most extensive since the museum opened in 1995.
 
The renovations were completed just in time for the upcoming sold-out induction ceremonies that will take place on April 14.
 
Among the improvements made is the red carpet entrance, as well as new interactive displays, improved signage, and revamped exhibits with more of a natural flow.
 
“Ninety percent of the people who come to the museum love the experience,” said Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the museum. “But what don’t they like? What have we learned over the years that we can do better? We stepped back and compiled those improvements, to make it a better experience without trying to transform it into a brand-new museum."
 
Read the full article here.

“Great Lakes Brewing Company -- arguably the best thing out of Cleveland since Michael Symon’s soul patch -- is finally available on draft in NoVa starting this week,” writes Anna Spiegel of the Washingtonian in her Best Bites Blog, which highlights the Washington, D.C. area’s food, restaurant, and dining scene.
 
While we'll forgive her clichéd snub of Cleveland, we'd have to agree that Great Lakes makes killer beer (and Symon -- now soul patch-less -- is pretty cool, too).
 
Spiegel goes on to talk about GLBC’s appearances at Virtue Feed & Grain and Rustico, restaurants that will hold a series of “tap takeovers” to give the Northern Virginians a taste of what we Clevelanders have loved for years. 
 
“The Great Lakes crew will be hopping around handing out free swag,” Spiegel closes with a witty pun.
 
Read the full post here.

As plans fall in to place for the fall opening of Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA) in its new home, word continues to spread. In this Sacramento Bee piece, the Cleveland museum and its opening exhibition, "Inside Out and from the Ground Up," are discussed.
 
"MOCA's new building is designed to serve as a catalyst for creativity and growth in a cosmopolitan Cleveland neighborhood, which is home to one of the country's largest concentrations of cultural, educational and medical institutions," the reporter states.
 
Designed by Iranian-born Farshid Moussavi, the 34,000-square-foot museum is 44 percent larger than their original home on Carnegie. The four-story hexagonal building rises 60 feet and is wrapped in black stainless steel, which will reflect its surroundings.
 
As for the opening exhibit, the article states, "Organized by David Norr, Chief Curator at MOCA Cleveland, Inside Out and from the Ground Up will feature sculpture, painting, installations, photography, and video."
 
Read the rest here.

"Nonprofit plans $100M development in Cleveland."
 
Columbus' Business First picked up the recent news that University Circle Inc. is planning to spend $100 million developing 2-plus acres near the intersection of Euclid and Mayfield.
 
UCI has hired Cleveland-based Coral Co. and Panzica Construction Co. to develop an office building, apartments and a 700-space garage on the property. Three buildings would share retail and start-up space on the first and second floors, with offices and apartments above. Also in the plan is more than 100,000 square feet of offices and 96 apartments, the newspaper reports.

Read the entire report here.

The George Gund Foundation awarded a $700,000 grant to support the bold strategy to reinvent public education in Cleveland proposed by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon.

"The Foundation has been investing in a portfolio of new, innovative and excellent schools in Cleveland for many years in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, and we enthusiastically support the expansion of this investment as outlined in Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools," said David Abbott, executive director of Gund.

"This plan calls for a transition from a single-source school district to a new system of district and charter schools that work in partnership to create achievement gains for every student. The plan is built upon growing the number of excellent schools in Cleveland, regardless of provider, and giving these schools autonomy over staff and budgets in exchange for high accountability for performance."

The grant was among 75 totaling $3,645,349 approved by the Foundation’s board at its first meeting of 2012.
See the rest of Gund's recent grants here.

Writing for Akron's West Side Leader, Roger Durbin, professor emeritus at The University of Akron, provides an in-depth look at the Rembrandt in America exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
 
"This lushly appointed exhibition, which is on display through May 28, is the first major exhibition to explore how the desire for Rembrandt van Rijn paintings by American collectors has fueled research about the artist’s work," he writes.
 
Billed as "the largest number of the artist’s authentic paintings assembled from American collections in a century," the exhibit contains more than 50 of Rembrandt's works assembled from private collections and American art museums.
 
Read the rest of the article here.