Say No Cleveland

For students whose families’ annual income is $75,000 or less, the scholarship will cover the full difference between the total cost of tuition and standard fees minus the total amount of federal and state grants received by the student

I met this incredible woman who had some terrible ideas.  She loaned me this book.  The wonder of her made me want to give her ideas a chance.  I read that book almost all of it.  Was mostly the history of rock n roll.  The author thought it was incredible how many rock stars had families who worked in military intelligence.

I've actually had some experience marrying into an intelligence family in another country.  The scale of the country smaller than ours as most are.  A perfect model of an earlier time here.  In the summer of love there were only 200 million Americans.  We were also at war.  

I left Serbia March 22.  NATO started bombing March 24.  I was in Sarajevo for a job interview.  We sat down to drink coffee and saw bombers on the tv leaving England.  I got back to Nis March 25.  My wife at the time was 8 month pregnant so I was motivated

That trip is another story, but where I returned and how I was able to thrive was because of my connection to military intelligence.  This wasn't something special about the job.  It was something special about the people.  The way most people organize their country is they get very particular people to do that job.

My father-in-law was an officer, but he was a doctor. His best man—our neighbor and my “Kum” (that’s Serbian for godfather or best man)—worked in military intelligence.  During the bombing, I was once brought in for questioning by the military police.  They ran a classic good-cop, bad-cop routine in their downtown office.  It was Kum who vouched for me—reminding them I was a family man—and got me home.

It was intelligence officers that were our neighbors.  Most of my friends were their children.  They were from every republic of the former Yugoslavia.  Nis Specialists.  Our electricity usually got turned on before the rest of the city.  Heat came sooner in the winter.  We were a priority.  It was nice.

Now you would see a complete mess.  The government didn't really function.  I went to court there once and watched as they sorted through two closets of paper to find the right one.   It was a relative mess.  In every inbox the critical flags rise.  The children of intelligence get special treatment, this was not shocking to me.  Sure David Crosby was a son of intelligence, but he could sing.

Those canyons in California twist and turn.  So the book like her to me so silly.  The wonder of it all to me is about Cleveland.  A place I came to appreciate more being gone so long.  A place I chose to invest.  Such a beautiful wonder with the worst of ideas.

My son graduated from the Cleveland School of the Arts and qualified for the well-advertised Cleveland Say Yes scholarship.  After his first year at State University, he received exactly $0.  This is what it feels like to live in Cleveland.

Me?  I vote with my feet.