"Catching the Light in Lakewood"

[Alex Belisle]

The winner: Bib #104 Abraham Chelanga M/30 2:16:20 2:16:20 5:11/mi
on a very humid day!

[Alex Belisle]

I have 6 cats but now maybe i should add a dog as a fellow photographer?
http://petapixel.com/2015/05/17/nikon-m ... eart-rate/

[Alex Belisle]

5/18/15

Wow! there sure is a lot of "light" to catch in Lakewood. I just had an abundance of "light" shed on me in Brian Essi's piece on Lakewood Hospital. Check it out at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13373

[Alex Belisle]

Lakewood has been called a "city of trees" by some and I decided to take a different look at some of them and portray them differently also. Take a look:

http://lakewoodobserver.com/photoblogs/ ... k-at-trees

[Gary Rice]

Great tree shots Alex!

Being right on Lake Erie, once in awhile we get walloped with a fast moving wind storm, and then you really see those trees in a new light. Most of us old-time Lakewoodites have some "tree storm" story to relate. One of the worst would have been back on July 4th, 1969, just before the fireworks were to start at Lakewood Park. Out of nowhere on an otherwise nice day came a monster wall of water and wind out of the northwest. There were lives lost, including a girl right there at Lakewood Park whom I had just graduated from high school with.

[Alex Belisle]

Wow Gary. I read about that storm but you experienced it. The water was that high (like a tsunami?) that it breached the breakwall and reached the level of the park?

[Gary Rice]

Hi Alex,

Not exactly. While they are still not sure what exactly hit us on that day, the general consensus was that it was a derecho, or straight line wind/rain wall. It indeed appeared to us visually to be a wall of water hundreds of feet high, coming at us, like an insane attack of Niagara Falls. It was actually a storm and not a tidal wave.

That said, Erie is the shallowest of the five great lakes and can kick up some pretty violent weather very quickly for that reason. You should research the number of shipwrecks out there in Erie alone. Fascinating.

I was not at the park that evening but was on a side street with my band playing a block party on a porch. We barely had time to get some of the big equipment inside before it hit and that was only because from our vantage point we were looking through a clearing where there were no big trees so we could see it coming. I would guess that we had a minute or two maybe to get inside before everything blew away. The hundreds of people at the park unfortunately did not have that luxury. Old growth trees started snapping like so many matchsticks, and any number of them came up by the roots. Grills, lawn furniture, and anything not nailed down took flight.

Gary

[Alex Belisle]

"Faces of Lakewood"

Structured after the extremely popular and globally viral "Humans of New York", I've set up a photoblog entitled "Faces of Lakewood" with the well known face of Lakewood HS coach Mike Ribar as our 1st face, at:

http://lakewoodobserver.com/photoblogs/ ... f-lakewood

Since I'm new to Lakewood I need your help, the citizens of Lakewood, in choosing more faces to include in this photoblog. Tell me why you think they're "worthy" (this should prove interesting, LOL) in a sentence or two and I'll try to get their photo.

Please free to give me any suggestions like whether there should be a small section in the printed version of the Observer (this decision is not up to me - speak to Jim) or anything else.

Looking forward to catching some wonderful visages!

[Alex Belisle]

Guess who's also "catching the light in Lakewood?"

[Alex Belisle]

Inspired by the Cavs' play in their 2nd playoff game against the Hawks, here's a basketball shot I took when shooting for NIKE. This is the kind of "light" I love watching!

[Alex Belisle]

Just watched the Brelo verdict of the overkill incident in nearby Cleveland and am left with the feeling that more and more of these cases involving mainly the disenfranchised members of our society are serving to polarize and fragment our country to a future boiling point I fear to be around to witness. Do these events shed "light" on just law enforcement ( the idea that the police themselves need to weed out the bad elements ) or society in general?

[Stan Austin]

Alex--- So many thoughts and emotions come to mind.

First, I understand technically what the Judge's reasoning was. I think his logic was good. That having been said, what happened and the perception of what happened was appalling. How to reconcile or bridge these two totally divergent observations? I just don't know.

In our own backyard, Impetts Park just a stones throw from where I grew up we have a petri dish of some form of potential trouble brewing. I first heard of rumblings of this two days ago. Then I started reading the medial accounts of it and accounts of the social media (isn't that a weird half step away from reality-accounts of the social media?!). It is so close geographically from where I grew up and it is such a throw back to the time I grew up. I'm hearing the same damn exact words being used now by a neighborhood hot head that were used 50 years ago during the Hough riots.
Somebody on Facebook posted a picture of Army Humvees on a train being presumably shipped to Cleveland in anticipation of riots. This is the same kind of paranoia that was recently demonstrated by some strange folk in Texas.

Is it my imagination or are things eerily quiet right now?

Stan Austin

[Alex Belisle]

All I can say Stan is wait and see?

[Alex Belisle]

Here's my "Save Lakewood Hospital" lawn sign. Thanks Marguerite!

[Alex Belisle]

Memorial Day weekend

There's nothing like sitting on your porch after mowing the lawns with a cold drink, reading the paper in a Norman Rockwell setting that I call Lakewood. The morning light shines on my front porch on what looks to be a warm day this Memorial Day weekend.