Water current - in rivers and streams, and wave action - on the sea shore, classify grains of earth by their surface area and their mass. Similar sized grains of sand of similar mass are found next to one another. Dissolved clay is suspended in the Cuyahoga current and washed out into Lake Erie where it settles to the bottom as the current subsides. Geologic strata develop. Cargill [1] mines below Lake Erie the salt strata laid down eons ago. The big massive rocks of the Cleveland breakwater [2] stay in place for years – only budging to pack ice and hurtling storm waves. You “pan [3]” for heavy gold flakes with a swirling action washing the lighter sands over the rim while the heavier metals of the periodic table remain on the bottom.
What “currents”, if any, “classify [4]” the minds of people? Do minds of different IQ’s settle into distinct geographic zones? Why does NEO and Cleveland make what I believe to be one regrettably ignorant and self destructive decision after another? Or are the decisions made in NEO not really any thing we can call “ignorance” but just different ways of politically thinking? Why is Cleveland eroding away? Bad “political” decisions? Or IGNORANCE?
Can we agree that arguments that rely on irrational thinking are a sign of ignorance? Or is talking about ignorance too touchy a topic – and only productive in raising the cry of elitism? Could we agree that one geographically located body of persons can make smarter decisions than another geographically located body of persons makes? How about Cleveland vs Cambridge, or Cleveland vs Toronto, or Cleveland vs Chicago, or Cleveland vs Milwaukee? Or Cleveland vs Hamburg? What’s the score?
Now during the presentation before the City Planning Commission a few weeks ago, a woman on the City staff recited all the negatives about the Breuer Building – though she suggested her commentary was neutral. Let’s look at what she said and see if it is ignorance or just different politics. I will concentrate on only one area of her comments – the Breuer foundations.
She said two things about the Breuer Building’s foundations – 1. that the City had lost the foundation plans for the building, and 2. that the foundations for the building would not meet contemporary earthquake design standards. This combination of comments is in itself ignorant – because with out the plans we are only assuming that the foundations are not capable of meeting contemporary seismic standards. But, let’s grant that the foundations built for the Breuer in the 1970’s don’t meet today’s seismic requirements:
Here’s my reaction:
A. The County Commissioners should have, and could have, known all the engineering data on Breuer before they purchased the Breuer from Jacobs – just to decide to spend more to demolish it. So, for Hagan and Dimora to now suggest that it is a surprise that the Breuer foundations don’t meet modern seismic standards and therefore the building needs to be torn down – is an indication of their IGNORANCE (and or of their corruption). Two of our County Commissioners are ignorant.
B. The Plain Dealer June 29, 2007 editorial here [5] demonstrates similar blatant seismic ignorance –
“And the building violates fire and other codes, including structural requirements related to withstanding earthquakes, which would mean comprehensive structural retrofitting. Only one of the two planned towers was built, and its foundation can't properly handle movements caused by even the low-level quakes common in Northeast Ohio.”
While name calling the preservationists “disingenuous”, it is in fact the Plain Dealer Editors who are both disingenuous and ignorant. The Editors are disingenuous because they don’t rationally extend the seismic weakness argument to the whole Breuer complex – ignoring the seismically inadequate foundations of the building that is proposed to remain, the 100 year old Cleveland Trust rotunda. The PD editors are also disingenuous because they don’t mention that the foundations of the PD building also don’t meet present day seismic codes. Woe to the PD employees should the ground jiggle. The PD language demonstrates ignorance of logic and engineering and building code facts, has a scare mongering swagger, and yet speaks with presumed authority - So, isn’t it true that our one County newspaper has ignorant editors and ignorant editorial policy?
C. No building in Cleveland has foundations that meet contemporary seismic standards because seismic standards are constantly being upgraded as the complexity of earthquake action around the globe is analyzed by more and more competent technologies. The Kobe, Japan earthquake, which took place a decade or more ago, demonstrated for the first time that the earth could move up vertically with phenomenal force - thrusting concrete columns directly through bridge decks like a spear, or pulverizing the concrete inside the column’s rebar cage into dust while leaving the rebar intact. Seismic engineers recalculated building standards in reaction to the Kobe earthquake experience, which made all existing buildings non-conforming. The Terminal Tower is non-conforming, City Hall is non-conforming and the other buildings (Higbees and MayCo?) that the County Commissioners considered buying are non-conforming
D. If the Commissioners wanted a new building – why buy the used Breuer Building and tear it down? Something very fishy with this illogic. The empty blocks across from Terminal Tower and Public Square had their tax assessments cut in half about 2 years ago – from 12 million to 6 million. The PD covered this county tax reappraisal. If the commissioners wanted a new building, why didn’t they buy one of those empty blocks which because of their tax assessment alone could not have cost the 20+ million which the County bailed Jacobs out by paying. Why didn’t the PD remember their own story and rail against the County spending millions more for an empty lot than the Commissioners had to spend to buy across from Terminal Tower.
Are people (who can), especially the young, moving away from Cleveland and NEO because there is a concentrated strata of ignorant people in the press and politics “leading” this geographic area? Wouldn’t getting out of an ignorant geographic location be the appropriate Darwinian response? Every community across the globe “pans” to find the precious metal in their citizens. From your own observations over the last 20 or 40 years here in Cleveland, is it gold or LEAD which is being left in NorthEastOhio?