We all look forward to the day when we can change.  Toss aside the stigma, start fresh, become who we were meant to be…

If only we can find a way to forget those last 50 years.

It’s no secret that I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio.  Hell, I practically wear it on my shirt (and sometimes, literally do).

You’re right. It pissed me off when LeBron left. I pretended that I read “American Splendor” when Harvey Pekar died.  I told my Dad (and almost more shockingly, believed) that I was still proud and loved the Indians, unconditionally, after they lost the 1997 World Series in epic fashion. I’ve awaken the day after Thanksgiving from a Christmas Ale hangover and I’ve seen the Browns play with the foam of my beer freezing. I’ve dreamt about sending my hypothetical kids to hypothetical Walsh Jesuit and living somewhere in Tremont.  I’ve encompassed that experience, and I’m satisfied to say it shaped me into who I am today.

And from 500 miles away in Saint Louis and nearly 5-years removed, I’m still proud to call Cleveland my home.

That’s why it pains me to see so much bullshit thrown my hometown’s way.

Your sports suck. Your economy sucks. Your people suck.

Well no shit, sherlock. You try to thrive when it’s cloudy 200 days a year and you’ve known what lake effect snow was since you were two years old.

I recently touted our city’s addiction (and logic) with losing after the Cavs bowed out of the 2010 playoffs:

In reality, by us continuing not to win, we almost promote ourselves above those who win…

Ie. Look at the bell curve:

On one end you have the city of New York, more championships than one can name, and if that city goes more than five years without one they end-up perpetually sad-faced :( . On the other, you have us, nothing of nothing divided by nothing…proud to just have a team. And in the middle you have a nameless class of teams nobody cares to remember…who won the World Series four years ago? Matters. Super Bowl 8 Years ago? Really f’ing matters. Nobody remembers today’s winner, they only remember the legacies…both good and bad.

I’d rather keep this legacy through our lack of hardware then become some cliff note in a Wikipedia article…

The logic is simple: It’s the un-winning is what makes us great.

Much has been written about our fair “Mistake on the Lake” and its illustrious history of unbelievably sweeping and epic failures, but damn it, I want to focus on the opportunity today.

I want to see past the day where our incestuous love affair with failure is no longer debilitating.  Where the city as a whole can rise up, past its unexplainable need to be the butt of New Jersey-styled jokes and stand on its own two feet; if for nothing else for the merits of the great people that have (and will) call this place home. Because goddamn if we don’t love being that beat-up, sheepish mutt in the rescue shelter; we’re Detroit with a sense of reality. I hate to say it, but we use those downfalls and pain as definitive traits when describing ourselves.

I want to be there for the day when Cleveland is great (again). When the calls home sound like Mozart’s 25th or the Black Keys’ “Magic Potion” and the city lights up for the Browns’ 3rd Super Bowl Championship in as many years.

(And the heartbreaking thing is that the 12-year old who forgave Jose Mesa in ’97 still believes this can happen)

***

The city sits next to the shallowest of the Great Lakes.  A body of (fresh) water that averages 62 feet deep across its nearly 10,000 square miles.  To put that in perspective, Lake Erie encompasses more space that the entire state of New Hampshire.

This fact alone has two wonderful and awe-inspiring things going for it in the world of “tomorrow”.

First, easy and constant access to fresh water pretty much guaranteed cities being “great” up until the advent of the steam engine, and it appears that they will be great for that natural resource in the not to distant future.  It’s easy to create, grow and live near the water; and Cleveland does have (some semblance) of clean, fresh water at it’s disposable.  This is so much more than the idea of recreation and other activity on the water (please, for the love of God clean-up or destroy the Flats), but rather an opportunity for utilizing and distributing that water.  Focus on filtering and distribution efficiencies; I mean reverse-osmosis is a hell of a thing, but how can we make it better? Hell if I know, but Case probably has a lab for that…

Secondly, wind.  Yea, I know what you’re thinking.  “Wind and Water? Easy there, Captain Planet”

But, if you’ve ever had the distinct privilege of heading down to the lake-shore in the middle of February you know exactly what I’m talking about.  That shallow lake has a tendency to whip up some crazy storms, and once it freezes over, it turns into a plain of sheer wind tunnel-age. About 9,500 square miles worth.

So what can you do with a whole lot of space and a whole lot of wind?  You build yourself a nice little wind farm. Or at least that’s what some folks at GE and LEEDCo (The Lake Erie Energy Development Corp.) are planning.

It makes sense, start utilizing the fact that God blessed the region with some of the most unruly conditions in the U.S. Turn those winters of pain and suffering into power, find a way to become iconic.  Bring a new source of renewal and energy to the city; create jobs; foster innovation in a bleak landscape.  Give the people something to talk about more than f’ing LeBron!

I’ve always been taken aback by wind farms; I chalk it up to their almost romantic quality of distant silence mixed with that hypnotizing spin. I’ve got to imagine I look at a modern-day wind farm with the same youthful exuberance as a kid watching the first steam ship meander down the Cuyahoga River 150 years ago. There’s something cool about that, unifying almost, still being blown away by the simplicity of “new” technology.

Sure in about 30 years, wind farms will likely be an eyesore and a detriment to golf courses (think: high tension wires), but presently they’re a symbol for innovative and positive thinking.  And damnit, if that’s not what our flailing city needs.

OK, so maybe I put the cart before the horse.  Maybe Cleveland needs to get past the stigma, to show the world that people, companies, teams can come to Cleveland and succeed before we can officially “rebrand”.  I think secretly, we always thought it would be LeBron to showcase that spirit in the present (a kid from the neighborhood making it, sharing that with a team, and providing to a larger business as a whole).

Well, that didn’t quite work out; maybe what we need first is a couple of turbines churning out some power created by a couple of engineers to give people the faith back in their town.  It would be nice to be great at something again (no offense to the Cleveland Clinic).

The image is just as epic as the failures that preceded it: A burning river being extinguished by the power of the wind.  A complete 180 from a mere 50-years ago.  The idea that anything is possible, and that with hard-work possibility will succumb to reality.

I know I’d drop whatever I was doing to be a part of it.

(And a Super Bowl win would be nice, too.)