Cleveland International Film Festival

by Jamie Rhein on

When snow dumps in massive amounts, one wonders about the events that happen once a year that require people to attend for a success to happen. Our friends moving back to Japan had two people show up for their moving sale. We managed to slide down their street to pick up a dresser we bought from them.

This past week a mega event started in Cleveland. We won tickets but weren’t able to head north since even heading down our street was questionable. Since this event is continuing through this week and next weekend, here’s a heads up. The Cleveland International Film Festival is a chance to see films that often don’t get noticed and a chance to see creativity at work when the dollar a movie can make is not necessarily the reason to make it. Each day offers a wide variety of choices.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Cleveland, going to this festival could not be more convenient. It’s being held at Tower City, a shopping mall with various eateries that is connected to Terminal Tower. If you park in the garage, you don’t have to step outside once. Although, I do recommend heading over through the mall to Terminal Tower which was once the second tallest building in the world in the early 1960s. The architecture is gorgeous. If you go out onto Euclid Avenue, you’ll see the Soliders and Sailors Monument in Public Square a few steps away. Parking for the film festival is free.

Guide to New Haven: An Introduction

by Jerry Guo on

Tucked away on the northern shores of Long Island Sound, halfway between New York and Boston, the lively city of New Haven is often overlooked by its seemingly more glamorous (and bigger) neighbours. Granted, it’s best known for world-renown Yale University, along with the gothic architecture and storied history that entails.

But New Haven more than stands out on its own right, and in the last decade, the quintessentially New England town is experiencing an absolute renaissance-in dining, the arts, business development, you name it. It’s at the same time both a booming urban powerhouse and an intimate college town, making it a perfect destination to see the best of what New England has to offer.

And everything is steeped in history-from the 370-year-old town square, the Green, to Connecticut Hall, the birthplace of Yale University, the third oldest college in the country and a member of the Ivy League. But there’s plenty to explore beyond the city center, including delightful ethnic neigborhoods like Little Italy (hands down the home of the best pizza you can get in the states) and memorable sights along the historic Connecticut coast.

History

Before the arrival of the first Dutch explorers, New Haven was home to a peaceful fishing tribe, the Quinnipiacs. Then, in 1638, a group of Puritans left the Massachusetts Bay Colony for New Haven because, get this, they thought the strict John Winthrop and his band of party-poopers in Boston were too loose. The new town, centered around the Green and the three original churches (which are still around) quickly prospered, and became one of the earliest planned communities in the country.

In the 19th century, with the invention of the cotton gin and revolver by hometown heroes Eli Whitney and Samuel Colt, New Haven took a prominent role in the Industrial Revolution. But an exodus of intellectuals and the collapse of the city’s manufacturing after World War II led to a period of high crime and poverty. In the last decade, however, New Haven has completely turned around with the help of Yale University, becoming once again a star of New England.

Orientation

With New Haven Harbor on one side, and downtown sandwiched between two rock bluffs, the city feels small and manageable, though the greater metropolitan does give outer neighbourhoods a “suburban” feel. New Haven Green is the heart of the city, with Yale University taking up quite a bit of downtown. Quaint neighbourhoods within walking distance include Dixwell, Edgewood, East Rock, and Long Wharf.

The train and bus stations (located in the same terminal) are a twenty-minute walk from downtown. Trees line every street, which are laid in a very sensible grid pattern, giving the town the nickname of “The Elm City”.

Guide to New Haven:

Buffalo, New York, attempts to attract visitors with its crummy weather

by Catherine Bodry on

Only, the group of weather enthusiasts creating Buffalo’s interactive “Weather Experience Center” don’t consider blizzards “crummy.” Instead, they hope to capitalize on Buffalo’s changeable weather by feature it and other dramatic phenomena such as tornadoes and hurricanes in a museum-quality waterfront building.

One feature on the center’s drawing board is a “blizzard room,” where visitors can bundle into hats and gloves and experience the wind and snow of a blizzard. Also slated are an IMAX theater that will showcase tornado-chasing, and a glass-walled structure that will allow visitors to watch snow roll in off the lake while experts explain what is happening as it happens.

As a lover of extreme weather myself, I would be in to visiting an interactive weather center. It might not draw me to Buffalo, however, as I generally get a daily show 9 months out of the year from my living room window.

Columbus snow storm from an art car perspective

by Jamie Rhein on

Yowza! It really did snow! When the flurries first started to fly, then thicken, I wrote about the leming-like trail to grocery stores. Yesterday, as one thing after another canceled, Greg Phelps, an art car celebrity of Columbus, took some photos from his car and kindly sent a link to one of them.

Every so often, I see Greg driving down the street. Seeing his car is similar to a movie star sighting. These photos give an unusual perspective of what the most snow Columbus has seen in years looks like. These guys are waving high and if you look carefully, you can see a pig snout.

Can you find the pig snout now?

An inside view before the car was parked and buried. Today was a real dig-out fest.

One of Greg’s cars is now a permanent addition to the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft in Louisville, Kentucky. Greg has also been a feature of the Car Art Show in Baltimore and is a regular fixture at ComFEST–and any other neighborhood art event in the area.

This is the car without the snow. It was posted on Flickr just a week ago during the Arnold Sports Festival weekend.

San Antonio Missions need a restoration fix

by Jamie Rhein on

Even though there is National Park status for the San Antonio Missions, and they are of the 14 U.S. sites on the tentative list for possible World Heritage distinction, the money to restore them and preserve them is not enough—yet. So far $4 million dollars has been raised with another $11.5 million to go.

The missions were established almost 300 years ago, as Catherine mentioned in her post on them in our series of the World Heritage tentative list. In U.S. history–(not counting places like the Hopewell Culture sites or Anasazi ruins like Mesa Verde) that’s ancient. One thing I enjoyed about these missions when I visited them is the chance to learn more about the Spanish and Catholic influence on the development of the U.S. When one grows up in the midwest or the east coast of the United States, these are details that can be overlooked. Places like Mt. Vernon and Boston Harbor get more press.

The fund raising effort for the missions is being done by Las Misiones. The organization has the right idea about caring for those things that are important. Although World Heritage status would be terrific, not having it yet is not the worse thing. The missions included in the fund raising effort are: Mission Conception, Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan and Mission Espada.