Introduction: "That's stupid" This past summer I went to a Cleveland Guardians baseball game with some college friends. We had all been students at Case Western Reserve University 20-odd years ago; some, like me, still live in the area, others now live elsewhere. While chatting with one of my old friends, he mentioned memories of going jogging around Horseshoe Lake (located a little more than a mile from where I now live in Cleveland Heights). Horseshoe Lake, October 2016 "It's not a lake anymore," I told him. He was surprised, and I explained how the (very old) dam that created the lake had had problems, and it had been decided to remove the dam and restore the brook through where the lake had sat. (Note: I didn't know at the time that the "restore the brook" concept was misleading. We'll get to that later. Anyway...) "That's stupid," he said. I think this moment was instructive when we consider the ongoing debate ...
That the Cleveland Metroparks are a shining asset to our communities is one of those rare things that almost every Northeast Ohio resident can agree on. Everyone has complaints about how our cities and other institutions are run, which is obviously not unique here but is true anywhere, but the Metroparks? I've heard people say that everything they touch turns to gold, and if you remember what Edgewater Beach was like before the Metroparks took over, it's easy to see why. In my very first post on this blog, I briefly mentioned the man-made pond at Garfield Reservation where the Metroparks recently did a restoration to once more allow people to enjoy this historic body of water. The fact that they did this is a clear example of how people who are experts at managing parks recognize the very high value that bodies of water bring to the human experience of spending time in a park. There are two other Metroparks at which notable restoration projects have happened in recent years, a...