Cleveland Institute of Art professor Doug Paige is showing students how to take a page out of Mother Nature's playbook when it comes to industrial design.

From Joel Sherman for the New York Post:

The Cubs were looking for a way to psych themselves up with their season possibly nine innings away from termination. But even facing elimination, the underdog motif fit these Cubs as well as a Mini-Me costume does Shaquille O’Neal.

Read the whole story here.
 

From the reclamation of the Henninger Landfill to saving a Russell Township farm, the Western Reserve Land Conservancy fosters thriving urban centers, green space and more by preserving some 5,000 acres annually.
 

After initial reluctance to becoming director of sales and marketing at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown, Ronnie Collins now sees what the city has to offer and has become a vocal advocate for all things 216.

From the Washington Post:

The weight-loss industry has long been saturated with gimmicky, too-good-to-be-true diets, so one could be excused for thinking the main benefit of “Eat Fat, Get Thin” is to burn calories by causing particularly vigorous eye-rolling.

I mean, doesn’t eating fat, like, make you fat?

Actually, the answer is a big, fat no, at least according to Mark Hyman, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and the man behind the “Eat Fat, Get Thin” plan.

“The misinformation that has been pushed on our population by the food industry and our government, which is that all calories are the same — that’s true in a laboratory, when you burn them,” Hyman said. “It’s not true when you eat them.”

Read the whole story from Des Bieler here.

A group of buildings built in the late 1800s on Church Avenue between W. 25^th and W. 28^th Streets in Ohio City were once the hallmark of a manufacturing town – housing everything from the original Baehr Brewing Company and Odd Fellows Masonic Hall to a machine shop and a tin and sheet metal shop, among other business and residential dwellings. 

Exhibit Builders last owned and operated the buildings fronting W. 25th Street. More recently, the heavy industrial buildings housed the Phoenix Ice Machine Company, Lester Engineering Company, then a charter school and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority.
 
Today development partners Rick Foran of Foran Group and Chris Smythe of Smythe Property Advisors are converting the structures into contemporary apartment lofts with a nod to their unique history. “You know you’re in historic buildings, but with modern amenities,” says Smythe.
 
The project has been nine years in the making. Smythe and Foran bought their first property in the group from CMHA back in 2008 with a bank loan. Then the real estate market tanked.

Continue reading.

Getting enough fresh fruits and vegetables to eat can be a hit or miss prospect in Cleveland's “food deserts” where full service grocery stores are hard to come by. At the same time, an astounding amount of produce and other food in the United States – more than 30 million tons a year – ends up in landfills.
 
A fourth-generation fruit-and-vegetable wholesaler in Cleveland is taking on those incongruities with a program designed to assist low-income families while tackling food waste.
 
Forest City Weingart Produce Co. has begun selling, at cost, fruits and vegetables that come through its warehouse every week that are totally healthy but cosmetically flawed – an eggplant with a scar, a dimpled orange, the oddly shaped tomato. The "Perfectly Imperfect" endeavor is a unique effort by which the wholesaler is packaging imperfect produce for purchase on a small scale for individuals, says Ashley Weingart, the company’s director of communications and community outreach.
 
It’s also part of a growing push across the country to save misshapen yet completely edible food from the dump. Writer Jordan Figueiredo has a social media campaign to promote the ugly produce movement on Twitter @UglyFruitAndVeg, and on Facebook.
 
“We see an opportunity to reduce food waste and help get more fruits and vegetables to the population that can’t afford them,” says Weingart as she assembles boxes of imperfect cantaloupes, green peppers, potatoes, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, lemons and mangos.
 
“We want to bridge the gap between all the food waste that exists in our country and to help the community around us,” she adds. “We feel like we have the obligation and the opportunity to help.”
 
Perfectly Imperfect sells the produce medleys every Friday. A 15-pound mixture goes for $15 or get 30 pounds for $25 at 4000 Orange Ave in Cleveland (call ahead to order at 216-881-3232). Shoppers also can sign up to have boxes delivered to their homes ($7.50 within the city, $10 elsewhere in the county and $15 for surrounding counties). The program is open to all.

Continue reading.

From USA Today, Oct. 30, 2016, by Bob Nightengale:

Cubs not dead, planning return trip to Cleveland for Game 6 of World Series

The city of Cleveland has never been confused for anyone’s idea of a tourist destination, where even the natives love to poke fun at their two seasons:

Winter and construction.

Yet, despite all of the jokes over the years about their city, and those cold and long winters, there’s nowhere more a group of young men from Chicago would rather be next week than in Cleveland.

“Whoever says they want to go to Cleveland?’’ Chicago Cubs catcher Miguel Montero says. “Especially in November.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say those words.

“But right now, there’s no place I’d rather be.’’

Fresh Water has a simple response to Misters Nightengale and Montero: Cleveland Indians: 7 runs; Chicago Cubs: 2 sour grapes.

 

"Baseball legend recounts how [Louis Sockalexis] dazzled Cleveland fans in 1897. With the first Native American ever to play pro baseball so dominant, Ohioans started calling his team 'The Indians.' His on-field feats and Apollo-like physique had already inspired a Maine writer and rival manager Gilbert Patten, using the pseudonym Burt L. Standish, to create the mythical scholar-detective-superstar dime-novel athlete Frank Merriwell. The great sportswriter Harry Grayson would judge Sockalexis faster than Ty Cobb, stronger than Babe Ruth, and a better outfielder than Tris Speaker.
 
Sockalexis’s rookie year was so dramatic, with his .331 batting average, that 18 years later, in 1915, the franchise resurrected that magical moment. Calling the club “The Indians” made a name that’s now considered racist by some actually a salute to honor this hero, this Native American 'Jackie Robinson,' and his people.
 
Read over the simple story. Savor the legend. Imagine his greatness. Now learn the truth."
 
Read the whole fascinating story from Gil Troy over at The Daily Beast.
 

"Unbeknownst to most outsiders, however, Cleveland’s rebirth is happening at street level as well. This gritty, 'underdog' city is now home to six James Beard award-winning chef-inspired restaurants, a thriving bar, arts, and music scene, and biomedical and 'smart' manufacturing start-ups that are quickly luring America’s youngest and brightest away from Boston, Austin, and Silicon Valley. All of which makes every Saturday night along East Fourth Street just north of Quicken Loans arena look more like SoHo or South Beach than the 'Rust Belt' strip some would conjure up in their minds when anyone says 'Cleveland.' So just who sprinkled the fairy dust on Cleveland this year?"

Find out how Peter Lane Taylor answers that question for Forbes here.