Have You Read Our Blog? Excerpts from recent posts at blogs.heightsobserver.org

The Real Meaning of the Closing of Seitz-Agin Hardware

The last time I talked to Joel about the store’s health was shortly after I learned that the weekly deliveries had been curtailed. He told me that he felt he had survived the impact of Home Depot. But what he wasn’t sure he could survive is a change he observed in his customers. They just weren’t making repairs anymore the way my father did and the way I do. They had stopped calling for referrals to plumbers and plasterers and furnace guys--old-home experts who bought their supplies from Seitz-Agin.

Maybe Joel has misread it. Perhaps people are finding their experts through Angie’s List on the internet. Or using Home Depot’s growing installation and repair business. Maybe the big box really has done in Seitz-Agin.

-Bob Rosenbaum

Books: An Excerpt from Les Roberts’ The Cleveland Creep

“It’s kind of you to see me on such short notice, Mr. Jacovich,” she said. She’d phoned me the day before and had mispronounced my last name. If it gives you trouble, just sound it out properly with the J sounding like a Y—Yock-o-vitch. It’s hard to say, I think, which is why I christened my private investigation business Milan Securities after my first name. Put the American slant on it—My-lan—and don’t say it the way you’d pronounce the name of an Eastern European, or the Italian city noted for its fashion shows and its opera house. I’d gently corrected her on the phone, and now Savannah said my name carefully, as if she’d been practicing.

Her son, twenty-eight-year-old Earl Dacey, was missing. He had left the house six days earlier and hadn’t been heard from since. Now his mother wanted to know what had become of him. “He never stayed out all night in his life,” she moaned. “If he’s ever half an hour late getting home, he always calls me. Always. He’s a good boy.”

-Frank Lewis

Random Access Oakwood Questions

Here’s a weird below-the-radar fact: The tax revenue going to the schools from this project goes not  to the South Euclid-Lyndhurst School District, as many South Euclid residents would believe, but to the Cleveland Heights-University Heights School District, even though two-thirds of the development’s footprint is in South Euclid.  The developer’s own marketing materials, a brochure sent to South Euclid residents, says “$1.1 million to the local schools," but they don’t say whose local schools. Are South Euclid residents aware of this?

-Sarah Wean

FirstEnergy: Not as Smart as They Want You to Think

So its seems that FirstEnergy’s business philosophy (in my neighborhood anyway) can be summarized like this: Charge people as much as possible to consume as much electricity as they possibly can while providing the most inefficient and unsatisfactory service imaginable.

Clowns? Or an example of brilliant management? Let’s just agree that they have some really big shoes to fill.

-Bob Rosenbaum

School Days

The boy who shoved her was still giggling and headed back for a second go-round.  The young lady didn’t look so happy. I pulled my vehicle to the far side of the street and headed over to the group. They were just playing around but I would’ve hated to see someone hurt as a result of silly kid stuff. So I asked the group to control their behavior and tone down the play. Several of the young men apologized and said they understood. They returned to their walk but not before someone in the crowd yelled, “Get your fat behind in your truck and go home.”

-Andrea Davis

Frank Lewis

Cleveland Heights-based writer / editor / blogger / consultant; frankwlewis.com

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Volume 4, Issue 6, Posted 1:03 PM, 06.01.2011