Woke up to more Feb. weather... my favorite... 37 degrees and driving rain. Perfect hypothermia weather.
But none the less... found a quote from Thoreau while going through my papers.
Hoping for spring to run through the swamp.

When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most
 interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp.  I enter as a sacred place, 
a Sanctum sanctorum.
  There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.
-   Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 1851

And I wonder why I am so miserable. It must be Cleveland. I just  found an article online from Forbes.com that my hometown of Cleveland ranks as the most miserable US city. I haven't lived there for years, but it is interesting to note that I also lived in Chicago and now NYC. All on that miserable list. What does that say I wonder.

Cleveland leads a slew of Midwestern towns on our annual list, but thanks to high taxes New York and Chicago make it too.

The city of Cleveland has had a colorful history. The Cuyahoga River, which runs through the city, famously caught fire in 1969 thanks to rampant pollution, and it wasn't the first time. In 1978 it became the first U.S. city to default on its debts since the Great Depression. Cleveland sports fans have had to endure more anguish than those in any other city. The city has been dubbed with a less than endearing nickname: the Mistake by the Lake.

In Pictures: America’s 20 Most Miserable Cities

This year Cleveland takes the top spot in our third annual ranking of America's Most Miserable Cities. Cleveland secured the position thanks to its high unemployment, high taxes, lousy weather, corruption by public officials and crummy sports teams (Cavaliers of the NBA excepted).

Misery was on the rise around the country last year. Sure the stock market was up big, but so were unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcy filings. Meanwhile housing prices, the U.S. dollar and approval ratings for Congress continued their downward spiral.

The widely tracked Misery Index initiated by economist Arthur Okun, which combines unemployment and inflation rates started 2009 at 7.3 and rose to 12.7 by the end of the year thanks to soaring joblessness. That is the highest level since 1983.

Our Misery Measure takes into account unemployment, as well as eight other issues that cause people anguish. The metrics include taxes (both sales and income), commute times, violent crime and how its pro sports teams have fared over the past two years. We also factored in two indexes put together by Portland, Ore., researcher Bert Sperling that gauge weather and Superfund pollution sites. Lastly we considered corruption based on convictions of public officials in each area as tracked by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.

We expanded the list of cities under consideration this year to include the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas (in years past we've examined 150), which led to a shuffling in the ranks. Any area with a population of more than 245,000 was eligible.

Cleveland nabbed the top spot as a result of poor ratings across the board. It was the only city that fell in the bottom half of the rankings in all nine categories. Many residents are heading for greener pastures. There has been a net migration out of the Cleveland metro area of 71,000 people over the past five years. Population for the city itself has been on a steady decline and is now less than half of it what it was 50 years ago.

Cleveland ranked near the bottom when looking at corruption. Northern Ohio has seen 309 public officials convicted of crimes over the past 10 years according to the Justice Department. A current FBI investigation of public officials in Cuyahoga County (where Cleveland is located) has ensnared more than two dozen government employees and businessmen on charges including bribery, fraud and tax evasion.

On the housing front Cleveland is dealing with thousands of abandoned homes. The city contributed to its foreclosure problem by providing down payments to many people that could not afford homes through the federally funded Afford-A-Home program. Cleveland led by Mayor Frank Jackson sued 21 large investment banks in 2008 who he felt were complicit in the subprime and foreclosure crisis that hit Cleveland hard. A federal judge dismissed the suit last year, but the city is appealing the ruling.

A 19% decline in foreclosures last year is possibly a glimmer of hope that the housing situation is starting to improve, although Cleveland still ranks in the top third of all metros for foreclosure rates according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed property. Cleveland and Cuyahoga County were awarded $41 million last month from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This money will go towards demolition of homes, foreclosure prevention and the rehabilitation of homes.

There are certainly bright spots in Cleveland. Downtown has experienced a revival over the past 15 years helped in part by the construction of three new sports venues for the city's NFL, NBA and baseball teams. The Cleveland Clinic is one of the top medical centers in the U.S. and the largest employer in northeast Ohio.

Mayor Jackson's chief of staff Ken Silliman calls 2010 a very exciting year for Cleveland. He points to three projects in development for the city. The first is the Cleveland Medical Mart which is a convention center that targets the medical and health care industries. Next is a casino plan. In November Ohio voters approved casinos in four cities, and Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert is leading a group that hopes to have a Cleveland casino up and running in three years. Lastly is the Flats East Bank project, which ran into funding issues during the financial crisis. The waterfront development will include an office tower, hotel and space for retail and dining.

"Clevelanders over the years have developed a tenacity to deal with these kinds of situations, and we are very aggressive in attempting to solve our problems rather than awaiting someone else's solutions," says Silliman.

Other cities on the list include Memphis, which came in third thanks to the second-worst rate of violent crime in the U.S. and an alarming rate of convicted public officials. Detroit, ravaged by the ailing auto industry was forth. Flint, Mich., was fifth. Also on the list?Chicago (No. 10) and New York City (No. 16). Torturous commute times and nosebleed-inducing taxes are the high prices locals pay for the cultural opportunities and corporate headquarters located there.

Our most miserable city last year, Stockton, Calif., nabbed the second spot on this year's list. Unemployment and crime continue to be major issues. Stockton ranked seventh worst in both of these areas. Stockton residents have average commutes that are among the highest in the country and, like all Californians, they suffer from onerous sales and income taxes.

Stockton Mayor Ann Johnston says the city is working to fix its problems. It has seen a reduction in crime in recent months as it targets troubled areas with an increased police presence. On the economic front, the city recently expanded the Port of Stockton, which it hopes will attract new companies. Stockton is an agricultural community, but the Mayor says the city is working to diversify its economic base and echoes Silliman's comments about Cleveland. "We're an All-American city," says Mayor Johnston. "And it's not because we sit on our hands and do nothing. It's because we recognize our problems and work to solve them."

Ahhh, it's Valentine's Day. Not exactly my favorite holiday. But I thought I would post about a show I sorely missed back in Nov. at the Italian Cultural Institute called Feminine Futures. The show was about women in the Futurist Movement in Italy especially Valentine de Saint-Point.  I never really looked into her work, but while reading up on this show I stumbled upon her "Manifesto of Lust". Amazing that this was written in 1913. I can't agree with everything stated in the Manifesto, but it is a powerful document that suggests that all of us are crippled by sentimentality and novel romantic ideas. Much like ideas of moral religious laws are used to oppress women, instead acknowledging true lust is a revolutionary and empowering creative act for both sexes. Here is the text from Valentine De Saint-Point's "Manifesto of Lust"

A reply to those dishonest journalists who twist phrases to make the Idea seem ridiculous; to those women who only think what I have dared to say; to those for whom Lust is still nothing but a sin; to all those who in Lust can only see Vice, just as in Pride they see only vanity.

Lust, when viewed without moral preconceptions and as an essential part of life's dynamism, is a force.

Lust is not, any more than pride, a mortal sin for the race that is strong. Lust, like pride, is a virtue that urges one on, a powerful source of energy.

Lust is the expression of a being projected beyond itself. It is the painful joy of wounded flesh, the joyous pain of a flowering. And whatever secrets unite these beings, it is a union of flesh. It is the sensory and sensual synthesis that leads to the greatest liberation of spirit. It is the communion of a particle of humanity with all the sensuality of the earth.

Lust is the quest of the flesh for the unknown, just as Celebration is the spirit's quest for the unknown. Lust is the act of creating, it is Creation.

Flesh creates in the way that the spirit creates. In the eyes of the Universe their creation is equal. One is not superior to the other and creation of the spirit depends on that of the flesh.

We possess body and spirit. To curb one and develop the other shows weakness and is wrong. A strong man must realize his full carnal and spiritual potentiality. The satisfaction of their lust is the conquerors' due. After a battle in which men have died, it is normal for the victors, proven in war, to turn to rape in the conquered land, so that life may be re-created.

When they have fought their battles, soldiers seek sensual pleasures, in which their constantly battling energies can be unwound and renewed. The modern hero, the hero in any field, experiences the same desire and the same pleasure. The artist, that great universal medium, has the same need. And the exaltation of the initiates of those religions still sufficiently new to contain a tempting element of the unknown, is no more than sensuality diverted spiritually towards a sacred female image.

Art and war are the great manifestations of sensuality; lust is their flower. A people exclusively spiritual or a people exclusively carnal would be condemned to the same decadence—sterility.

Lust excites energy and releases strength. Pitilessly it drove primitive man to victory, for the pride of bearing back a woman the spoils of the defeated. Today it drives the great men of business who run the banks, the press and international trade to increase their wealth by creating centres, harnessing energies and exalting the crowds, to worship and glorify with it the object of their lust. These men, tired but strong, find time for lust, the principal motive force of their action and of the reactions caused by their actions affecting multitudes and worlds. Even among the new peoples where sensuality has not yet been released or acknowledged, and who are neither primitive brutes nor the sophisticated representatives of the old civilizations, woman is equally the great galvanizing principle to which all is offered. The secret cult that man has for her is only the unconscious drive of a lust as yet barely woken. Amongst these peoples as amongst the peoples of the north, but for different reasons, lust is almost exclusively concerned with procreation. But lust, under whatever aspects it shows itself, whether they are considered normal or abnormal, is always the supreme spur.

The animal life, the life of energy, the life of the spirit, sometimes demand a respite. And effort for effort's sake calls inevitably for effort for pleasure's sake. These efforts are not mutually harmful but complementary, and realize fully the total being.

For heroes, for those who create with the spirit, for dominators of all fields, lust is the magnificent exaltation of their strength. For every being it is a motive to surpass oneself with the simple aim of self-selection, of being noticed, chosen, picked out.

Christian morality alone, following on from pagan morality, was fatally drawn to consider lust as a weakness. Out of the healthy joy which is the flowering of the flesh in all its power it has made something shameful and to be hidden, a vice to be denied. It has covered it with hypocrisy, and this has made a sin of it.

We must stop despising Desire, this attraction at once delicate and brutal between two bodies, of whatever sex, two bodies that want each other, striving for unity. We must stop despising Desire, disguising it in the pitiful clothes of old and sterile sentimentality.

It is not lust that disunites, dissolves and annihilates. It is rather the mesmerizing complications of sentimentality, artificial jealousies, words that inebriate and deceive, the rhetoric of parting and eternal fidelities, literary nostalgia—all the histrionics of love.

We must get rid of all the ill-omened debris of romanticism, counting daisy petals, moonlight duets, heavy endearments, false hypocritical modesty. When beings are drawn together by a physical attraction, let them—instead of talking only of the fragility of their hearts—dare to express their desires, the inclinations of their bodies, and to anticipate the possibilities of joy and disappointment in their future carnal union.

Physical modesty, which varies according to time and place, has only the ephemeral value of a social virtue.

We must face up to lust in full conciousness. We must make of it what a sophisticated and intelligent being makes of himself and of his life; we must make lust into a work of art. To allege unwariness or bewilderment in order to explain an act of love is hypocrisy, weakness and stupidity.

We should desire a body consciously, like any other thing.

Love at first sight, passion or failure to think, must not prompt us to be constantly giving ourselves, nor to take beings, as we are usually inclined to do so due to our inability to see into the future. We must choose intelligently. Directed by our intuition and will, we should compare the feelings and desires of the two partners and avoid uniting and satisfying any that are unable to complement and exalt each other.

Equally conciously and with the same guiding will, the joys of this coupling should lead to the climax, should develop its full potential, and should permit to flower all the seeds sown by the merging of two bodies. Lust should be made into a work of art, formed like every work of art, both instinctively and consciously.

We must strip lust of all the sentimental veils that disfigure it. These veils were thrown over it out of mere cowardice, because smug sentimentality is so satisfying. Sentimentality is comfortable and therefore demeaning.

In one who is young and healthy, when lust clashes with sentimentality, lust is victorious. Sentiment is a creature of fashion, lust is eternal. Lust triumphs, because it is the joyous exaltation that drives one beyond oneself, the delight in posession and domination, the perpetual victory from which the perpetual battle is born anew, the headiest and surest intoxication of conquest. And as this certain conquest is temporary, it must be constantly won anew.

Lust is a force, in that it refines the spirit by bringing to white heat the excitement of the flesh. The spirit burns bright and clear from a healthy, strong flesh, purified in the embrace. Only the weak and sick sink into the mire and are diminished. And lust is a force in that it kills the weak and exalts the strong, aiding natural selection.

Lust is a force, finally, in that it never leads to the insipidity of the definite and the secure, doled out by soothing sentimentality. Lust is the eternal battle, never finally won. After the fleeting triumph, even during the ephemeral triumph itself, reawakening dissatisfaction spurs a human being, driven by an orgiastic will, to expand and surpass himself.

Lust is for the body what an ideal is for the spirit—the magnificent Chimaera, that one ever clutches at but never captures, and which the young and the avid, intoxicated with the vision, pursue without rest.

Lust is a force.