The Eastwood Mall in Niles, Ohio has opened a space called "The Outreach Gallery", which features art created by children and young adults and their mentors in the surrounding area. The gallery is divided into three sections: The Youth Gallery, The Professional Gallery, and the Youngstown State University Student Print Gallery.

Almost all of the art is for sale, even the children's, which was vibrant and alive with a lot of creative energy when I visited the gallery over the holidays. The space is large, well-balanced and brings a warm feeling to the rest of the commercial hallways in the mall. Sponsors of the Outreach Gallery are: the Eastwood Mall, the Warren Junior Women's League, and the Fine Arts Council of Trumbull County.

These days Art has been reduced to an irregular status in our schools, and because of that it's been reduced to an irregular status in the lives of not only our children, but our own. If you happen to be visiting the Eastwood Mall, stop in the Outreach Gallery and make it a part of yours and your family's day. It may just bring a warm feeling to your own life as well as to the commercial halls of the Eastwood Mall.

In the rural towns outside of Youngstown and Warren Ohio, you can find many great shops and historical sites like this general store, still operating in Fowler, Ohio. One of the things I like about Ohio is how you can seemingly time travel like this once you leave the borders of many of its cities.

A neat look at Youngstown during the 60s using photos to walk you through.

For a city with a lot of problems, Youngstown has a lot of citizens with a great passion for the place. Particularly in the younger, newer generations growing up in the wreckage of past industrial economic betrayals and disappointments, I find more and more Youngstowners who are blogging and journaling about the city and what it was, is, and what they hope it will become.

What many of the Youngstown blogs I come across do are paint a portrait of the city rather than the bloggers themselves, which I find fresh, and a welcome addition to the many blogs that detail the daily lives of their bloggers.

In the online blog of the Walruss, Youngstown's new alternative newspaper, the city's renaissance call among its bloggers has been reported, detailing a variety of blogs, like John Slanina's "I will Shout Youngstown" blog, which he states has been a way for him to remain connect to his hometown and also as a tool for him to express his thoughts on city planning and economic development. His blog, among many others, like Mike Prelee's "Tales from the Rustbelt" provide readers both in and outside of Youngstown with a picture of the city from the inside.

This city has many tales to tell, and needs its tellers. Hopefully we'll have more in the near future.

Youngstown's Governor Jay Williams has done something in his Youngstown 2010 Plan that seems like it's the opposite of what most city planners think of as progress: instead of growing the city, his plan aims to shrink it. In a featured article about the plan in Governing.com, the shrinkage of Youngstown's community and the greening of its abandoned neighborhoods are listed as two of the main items Williams plans to accomplish while in office. He's trying to develop a new infrastructure for the city which future mayors and city council members can develop as well.

One part of the plan Williams wants to change quickly is the city's refurbishing of low income and poverty stricken households, which previously has allowed people to sign up for the program on a first come first serve basis, rather than attempting to work on specific neighborhoods one at a time. In some cases, Williams wants to move some low income families who are holdouts in abandoned neighborhoods that could be returned to nature into neighborhoods the city is focusing its energies on revitalizing, rather than fixing up one lone house on a street of ten dilapidated, abandoned homes.

The Youngstown 2010 Plan seems to be made of a lot of common sense that past Mayors and Councils have sadly declined to employ. The plan is getting national coverage in venues such as The New York Times. To learn more about it, visit the Youngstown 2010 Plan website, and if you're a local, attend one of the meetings and see if there's any way in which you could contribute to the betterment of the city that's decided to shrink in order to grow.

The Blue Man Group is part of New York performance mythology at this point in their career. Now they're back with a new show entitled, "How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.0", which is set up as a satirical "workshop" about creating the perfect rock concert experience, analyzing, critiquing, and making fun of the rock star world and its egocentric excesses in the process.

Taking off from "The Complex Rock Tour", the Blue Man Group "downloads" a new how-to manual that gives the audience the illusions of an interactive game or show one might watch on the internet, inviting people to upload pictures of themselves taken at the show to a website later on as a symbol of the true process of what a rock star at a good concert is: the energy that it takes an enraptured audience to create.

Tickets go on-sale beginning Saturday, Jan. 20th at 10a.m. so mark the date in your calendar!

For more on the event, please visit the main website for the show.

Across the country, The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas has been protesting at the military funerals of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq because they claim God has taken that soldier's life due to the tolerance of gay people that is permitted in the United States. One would hope that despite an individual's beliefs, this sort of behavior would not interrupt a family's time to grieve the death of one of their children who has gone to war for this country. But for people like those of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, it seems respect of this sort is non-existent.

In response to the problem, many Midwestern states are considering passing legislation that prohibits protests at funerals, at least within a three hundred foot radius. Ohio has already passed such legislation to take care of the problem, but the Westboro Baptist Church was still set on protesting the death of a local Warren, Ohio man, Army Sgt. Marco Miller, 36, who died in Iraq serving his country on December fifth.

Various patriotic groups have begun to attend the funerals of military men in an attempt to dissuade or intimidate the protesters from causing too much trouble. One such group is the Rolling Thunder, a patriotic group of bikers, who were in attendance at Miller's funeral to serve as a buffer, along with the Trumbull County American Legion Honor Guard, who stood at the entrance to the cemetery. Another group like the Rolling Thunder, who has been defending funerals from protesters across the country is The Patriot Guard Riders, who also appear as a group of bikers.

It seems odd that legislation has to be passed in order to protect citizens' rights to bury their children and brothers and sisters who have died in a war that has nothing to do with what the protestors claim to be protesting: homosexuality. I'm glad Ohio has already passed legislation to bar such people who would protest at funerals, which to me seems inhuman, no matter what a person could possibly conceive would be worth protesting at such a difficult period for families who have lost loved ones.

The Oakland Center for the Arts, located on Boardman Street in Downtown Youngstown, has become host to a new event that's bringing together the various local artists, singers, songwriters, poets, novelists, actors, playwrights, stand-up comedians, drag queens and dancers. The Stage at the Oakland, as it's referred to by its patrons, is an open mic event in which members of the community as well as passers-through the city can showcase their various talents and netowkr with like-minded individuals who might otherwise be unaware of each other's artistic and commercial endeavors.

Spear-heading this event is Brooke Slanina, a local actress and university instructor of English, who organizes and executes the event. The Stage at the Oakland has become, very quickly, a place where people, regardless of age, race, sexuality, class or gender differenes, can take part in a creative community that gives voice to the city's renaissance project.

The first few Open Stage events were held in September, October and November, but despite the seemingly monthly schedule, Slanina says the Stage will be taking a break in December in order for Robert Dennick Joki's original play, "How the Drag Queen Stole Christmas", to be produced. The next Open Stage event is tentatively scheduled for Valentine's Day 2007. For more information on The Stage at the Oakland, check out its myspace page.

Two years ago I left Ohio for Japan, where I taught English in junior high and elementary schools in a rural district outside of the suburbs of Tokyo. When I left Youngstown, the city was at its worst. Upon returning this past summer, though, I've found the city has changed in many ways that made it almost unrecognizable to me at first sight. The Downtown of the city has gone through a major overhaul, and many new businesses have opened up in the once dead business district of the city.

What was once a cluster of governmental offices and dilapidated buildings is undergoing a face-lift. Road repairs and restoration of historical buildings are only part of what's occurring in the Downtown. New businesses have opened up shop in the once abandoned commercial buildings, featuring new clubs, cafes and clothing stores, signaling that the once upon a time industrial city is perhaps moving towards reshaping itself as a college town in the future.

Some of the businesses, old and new, that you'll find in the downtown are: Imbibe, a martini bar that features New York lounge interior stylings as well as a menu of over a hundred different martinis; The Core, a nightclub that rivals the looks of the hippest clubs in the biggest American cities; The Lemon Grove, a cafe opening in January of 2007, which features a juice bar, hookahs, and will stay open until four in the morning; and Cedars, an old favorite of downtown socialites, functioning both as a restaurant specializing in barbeque and Mediterranean food, and as a bar that hosts local open mic nights and features the best area bands around.

So if you're in the area, don't drive past, drive into Downtown Youngstown and check out what's happening in a city that's refusing to let its past hold it down.

Youngstown, Ohio is not known for its many positive qualities, even by many of its citizens. This negative attitude towards the city that has recently been listed as the ninth worst city in America is one that originated in the early eighties, after the steel industry pulled out of the area, leaving the community without another industry to support itself. In the aftermath, much crime ensued.

In recent years, though, the Youngstown community has been trying to resurrect itself, and one person who is combating the negative stereotypes of this city is Phil Kidd, the man behind the Defend Youngstown project. Kidd grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, but attended college at Youngstown State University. After some years spent in the armed services, Kidd returned to Youngstown because of his affection for and faith in the city. Kidd has decided to fight the negative image of Youngstown by replacing it with an image of community awareness and personal responsibility.

To do this, Kidd has created the Defend Youngstown logo, a steel worker swinging a sledgehammer, which pays homage to the city's working class past but also looks towards a future in which the citizenry demands progress for the city's future. To date, Kidd has sold over 2000 shirts and stickers of the logo, finding that the new image he's promoting resonates not only with current community members, but also with those who have left the area behind, yet still hold high hopes for their former home.

For more information on Kidd and Defend Youngstown, visit the Defend Youngstown website.