Cleveland

I enjoy attending the Cleveland Museum of Art's annual #CMAChalkFestival every year and sharing my favorite chalk artwork on my "Chalk Festival" blog posts. Therefore, I was very disappointed that a spur-of-the-moment trip south to take care of some family business prevented me from attending on Saturday, September 11, 2021.

I asked people on the Cleveland Twitterverse to share on Twitter their photos from the 2021 Cleveland Chalk Festival, so that I could at least attend an online version of the Chalk Festival.

I was rewarded greatly by the Cleveland Twitterverse and my son, Kevin F. Smith.

As I mention in my last blog posts, I have been "delayed" in my normal activities for much of the summer. Well, the week after I published those two blog posts, my activity level increased dramatically due to the large number of events happening in Cleveland the last week of August 2021.

As I wrote on Monday, August 23, 2021, "If you are in #Cleveland and have nothing to do this week, you are just not trying!"

This blog post is an attempt to capture some of the spirit of the events I attended. The one common element of all these events is that I learned about them from following interesting people/organization on Twitter.  I created this blog post to serve as a reminder for me of the fun I had at these events, and I hope it encourages you to go out yourself to learn about the organizations that sponsor these events.

The in-person events included:

• MidTown Hosts the CLEVELAND WALLS! International Mural Program - August 23-28, 2021

• USS Cod Return to Cleveland Party

• Irishtown Bend Tour Hosted by West Creek Conservancy

• 75th Annual One World Day! #OWD2021CLE

In addition to these in-person events that I attended, this was also the week of online events for the 2021 Cleveland Foundation Annual Meeting Week Presented by KeyBank: It Starts With Community.

As I write this blog post, I am very busy preparing for an extended backpacking trip, but I still wanted to get this out, since I had such a great time at the Cleveland Museum of Art. I will let the photos in the tweets tell the story, and I invite you to learn more about this special Cleveland Museum of Art exhibition, Stories from Storage, . . .

As you view the photos we shared on Twitter, please note the incredible variety of artwork presented. We highly recommend seeing the exhibition in person, since photos can't capture all the details.

My mother joined me on my return visits on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, and Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

In 2020, our first adventure out to a public space during the coronavirus crisis was to the Cleveland Museum of Art's #WelcomeBackCMA Reopening. The spaciousness of the museum, along with their coronavirus protocols and site-specific safety measures, allowed us to feel safe while enjoying the artwork.

Now, in 2021, our first excursion of the year was again to the Cleveland Museum of Art. We had not expected to still be social distancing and masking, but here we are, writing another blog post in our "Social Distancing" series.

After the initial reopening in June 2020 for the summer, the Cleveland Museum of Art closed again in fall 2020. On January 18, 2021, the Cleveland Museum of Art reopened again with modified hours of Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. With the 2021 reopening, we learned of a special exhibition created by "the Cleveland Museum of Art, with love," called Stories from Storage.

2020 has been different, with many of the venues we would normally visit closed due to the coronavirus crisis.

We were very pleased when the Cleveland Metroparks announced in May 2020 that they would be offering their fourth annual Trail Challenge, which included 25 trails. In August 2020, we learned that the park updated the list to include 35 trails!

The increase in the number of trails did not change the requirements for receiving the 2020 Challenge prizes . . .

• Complete 10 trails to  earn a 2020 Trail Challenge sticker

• Complete 20 trails to earn a 2020 Trail Challenge mug

. . . but we enjoy a challenge (and enjoy hiking/biking trails), and decided to do more than the minimum. This blog post shares our journey on all but one of the remaining land-based trails. See Stuart's 2020 Trail Challenge tracker sheet with notes on the 33 trails.

When we wrote about completing the first level of the Cleveland Metroparks 2020 Trail Challenge presented by Cigna to earn our 2020 Trail Challenge stickers, we were already working on the next ten trails for the final challenge. We are creating our Trail Challenge blog posts for these three reasons:

• To capture our memories for us to re-read in the future.

• To encourage others to take the Trail Challenge this year and in future years.

• And as we wrote in our last trail challenge blog post:

  We want to thank the Cleveland Metroparks for planning this annual Trail Challenge, and Cigna for sponsoring it again this year! Particularly this year, with everyone in the world facing the health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it has been important for both physical and mental health to have our local parks to visit.

With COVID-19 closing venues we normally frequent, and having to cancel the backpacking trips that Stuart had planned on the Continental Divide Trail and Appalachian Trail, we have been exploring many parks in Northeast Ohio and along the route of the Buckeye Trail. We are happy to share with you our experiences on the second level of the trail challenge to earn our 2020 Trail Challenge mug.

In 2019, I wrote that it was a special year, since it was the 30th year of the Cleveland Museum of Art's Chalk Festival. As the coronavirus crisis raged on over the summer of 2020, I wondered if the 31st anniversary of this wonderful event would need to be canceled as we entered September.

On September 1, 2020, I saw the Twitter announcement "Cleveland Museum of Art’s Chalk Festival goes virtual," stating that the event would take place with people sharing their art only on social media on Saturday, September 12, 2020, and Sunday, September 13, 2020.

It is now with mixed feelings that I gather the #CMAChalkFestival drawings for this blog post about the Cleveland Museum of Art's 2020 Virtual Chalk Festival: Love Your Community with All Your Art. While it is very sad that everyone could not get together this year, I am very pleased that the museum encouraged people to share their chalk drawings on social media.

I am glad to continue my annual tradition of creating a blog post with photos from the Cleveland Museum of Art's Chalk Festival.

Take the challenge!

In 2017, we wrote our blog post: Cleveland Metroparks Inaugural Trail Challenge!

. . . so when we saw the Cleveland Metroparks tweet to "Take the challenge!" in 2020, with 25 trails to choose from, we decided to accept.

With COVID-19 closing venues we normally frequent, and having to cancel the backpacking trips that Stuart had planned on the Continental Divide Trail and Appalachian Trail, we have been exploring many parks in Northeast Ohio and along the route of the Buckeye Trail. We have written about many of our park visits in the Social Distancing Blog Posts that we have been writing during the pandemic.

There were originally 25 trails to choose from for the challenge. During the time we were writing this blog post, we learned that the park updated the list to now include 35 trails!

What follows is information about the first ten challenge trails we have completed.

We were pleased when Fox 8 News Producer Rachel Inch approached us to use some of our Facebook photos for their 6:00 pm news story on #Masks4Community on Wednesday, July 8, 2020. Her request made us think about sharing the story of the great work done by the #Masks4Community leaders, partners, donors, and volunteers in one of our "Social Distancing Series" blog posts.

We first learned about #Masks4Community's good work because our @sos_jr twitter account follows (and retweets) @ShanelleLSmith. In addition to #Masks4Community's website -- Masks4Community.com, we also learned more about the program from Steven Litt's article.

In addition to giving out FREE masks, #Masks4Community distributes information about voting and the census in the kits. We are BIG believers in the importance of voting, and know how the census directly impacts the way services are provided in our community. Therefore, we were excited to learn that the #Masks4Community program also supports our belief in the importance of people fulfilling their civic duty!

We signed up to volunteer once a week, starting with the morning shift on Saturday, June 27th. We were not only impressed by the mission of the organization, but also how clearly they spelled out that they followed safety measures for those volunteering (everyone wears masks, washes hands, practices social distancing, and the number of volunteers is limited). We only volunteered because these safety measures are in place.

O - p - e - n - i - n - g - !

Yes, Ohio is slowly opening in the year of the coronavirus crisis, but can only do so with social distancing and other safety measures. As we approached the end of June, we heard that the Cleveland Museum of Art was reopening following "rigorous safety procedures that adhere to the guidance set forth by state and local officials, as well as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)."

We decided to make this our first adventure out to a public space by getting tickets, but the day before we were going to order our online tickets, we received an invitation from Communications and Media Relations Manager Kelley Notaro Schreiber to the Cleveland Museum of Art's Reopening Media and Influencer Welcome Back! We accepted her invitation and decided to be one of the first to go to the public reopening of the Cleveland Museum of Art on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.

There is much happening both onsite in the museum galleries and online at the Cleveland Museum of Art. While the online resources are extensive, we do have to say that the absolute best way to truly enjoy the museum's art is in person, visiting its galleries! Thus, we were very excited to attend the Cleveland Museum of Art's #WelcomeBackCMA reopening!