Power outage got me last night, so please excuse (or blame FirstEnergy) for the delay!

Still no word from the City of Cleveland about Mayor Justin Bibb’s attendance at a “techno-industrialist” conference. Instead, the city has hyped up Bibb’s appearance at the Obama Presidential Library opening in Chicago and his participation at JazzFest. As Bibb continues to tout his “Midline” project — even in tech spaces sponsored by war and the far-right — more pressing issues continue to mount. 

Cleveland is excellent at spending money, but often misses the mark on what people need: reliable public transportation, safe housing, and access to healthy food and basic necessities. Against the backdrop of cuts to RTA and other regional services, Bibb has lost lead removal money, refused to sign off on parking reforms, and has not provided any outlet with responsive records to how it spent $3 million on its Transformative Arts Fund.

In a perhaps insincere attempt to gather feedback from local artists, the city hosted a session on Sat. June 27. Strangely absent from the conversation, was both the city’s sole arts strategist – Rhonda Brown – and any mention of TAF. Brown’s department didn’t set it up, the Urban Analytics Department did. 

The session was marketed as “a structured opportunity” to share experiences to “inform recommendations for improving future processes. It was hosted at LAND Studio in participation with Assembly for the Arts, two of TAF’s community-based partners.

Annoyed by Brown’s absence, some artists took to social media to air out their grievances. Liz Maugans, who attended the meeting, wrote that she is still waiting on Bibb to deliver the arts and culture program he promised years ago. 

“The City of Cleveland has an opportunity here — not simply to collect feedback, but to rebuild trust. This is especially important because there are dedicated people working within these systems who have earned the respect of Cleveland’s creative community,” Maugans wrote.

The saga continues.

In the meantime, this week seemed like it needed to be shorter and focus on the upbeat. Keep reading for pop culture recommendations that feel like summer. 

Happy reading,
Dakotah

Mostly whimsical but slightly dystopian.

From the director of Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop, Carole and Tuesday examines how technology often kills creativity. Set on a colonized Mars, Carole is an orphan and refugee from Earth and Tuesday has just run away from her affluent lifestyle. They meet and embark on a journey to create their own songs, an art that has long been overtaken by artificial intelligence.

During a time when art now literally comes at the click of a button, Carole and Tuesday demonstrates that real art needs feelings behind it. The series has an original soundtrack of music, which further adds to its charm. 

It’s mostly a feel-good show with some darker themes. Tuesday is actually the daughter of a conservative politician, pushing forward plot lines about racism and anti-immigrant sentiments. After all, Earth is mostly uninhabitable, leaving people to escape to a partially terraformed Mars. 

Sound familiar yet?

I’ve been a fan of MisterWives forever and it seems like a lot of people still don’t have them on their radar. These days, it’s rare to see women vocalists in actual bands and to me that makes MisterWives stand out.

Superbloom is the band’s third studio album and features so many cathartic but still surprisingly upbeat songs, including “whywhywhy¹,” “coming up for air,” and “decide to be happy.” The whole album really deserves to be blasted out car windows on a sunny day.

The album is a journey and it concludes with the song, “superbloom,” which is really a celebratory anthem for getting through hard times. Couldn’t we all use a little more of that?

I’ve read most of Emery Lord’s books, and since it’s been several years, my memory for my favorite isn’t the best. Some titles include: The Start of Me and You, Open Road Summer, When We Collided, and The Names They Gave Us. 

The current landscape of young adult media franchises ain’t great. Especially for television, and I say this as a connoisseur of media targeted “at me” and my longtime obsession with hopelessly romantic stories. For example, yes I watched The Summer I Turned Pretty, but I did bail on Off Campus after one episode. Somehow, I made it all the way through Every Year After, though it may be the most disappointing of the lot.

That’s why it’s time to go back to basics: books.

A lot of Lord’s books deal with grief, whether it’s about the death of a parent or a boyfriend. Some of the characters are battling mental illness. She describes her books as “about high school and best friends and weird families and the crushes that make you feel combustible and also more awkward than you thought was possible.”

She also might live in Cincinnati? 

I don’t know why none of her stuff has gotten a TV or movie adaptation, but at the same time, I’m glad that Hollywood hasn’t ruined it – yet.