Join the Federation of India Community Associations, Cleveland Peace Action, and other organizations in the Fourth Annual Mothers’ Day Peace Party in the India Cultural Garden at 1190 MLK Jr. Blvd.

Click on the link for your invitation and details.

Mothers’ Day Peace Party–May 8, 2011

Discussion on the event found at the following video link:  http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/about_us/kaleidoscope/this-week-on-kaleidoscope—april-17%2C-2011

General cleanup and weeding was done by volunteers during the weekends of April 17 and 24.

Mother’s Day  (May 9) was celebrated at the India Garden for the 3rd straight year with activities for the whole family.  The event featured a portrayal of Septima Clark, the civil rights pioneer and educator by Sherrie Tolliver of Women in History.  Attendees learned to make origami cranes, a symbol of peace, and had their family portraits taken in front of the Gandhi statue.  They were also treated to fine music and food.  The Federation of India Community Associations, Cleveland Peace Action and Women SpeakOut jointly sponsored the event.

Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday (October 2) was celebrated again this year, but the event was moved indoors to the India Community Center due to inclement weather.  The event kicked off the campaign to designate Cleveland as the City of Peace and Non-Violence.  Rev. Marvin McMickle of Antioch Baptist Church was the chief guest, and endorsed the campaign.  He and other attendees added their signatures to the non-violence pledge at clevelandpeople.com (the cyber wall of non-violence).  Several organizations, such as Council on American-Islamic Relations, Black on Black Crime, Peace in the Hood, and Asian Services In Action participated in the event.

India Garden delegates and members participated in the One World Day 2010 celebration, starting with the dedication of the Armenian garden and the parade of nations.

Ambassador Arun Singh, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC visited the India Garden on December 3, 2010.  He had previously served as India’s ambassador to Israel, and had come to Cleveland at the invitation of the American Jewish Committee and the Cleveland Council on World Affairs.  He spoke at the Chanukah celebration at Temple Tifereth Israel in Beachwood.  Also speaking was his wife, Dr. Maina Singh, author of “Being Indian, Being Israeli: Migration, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Homeland”, a study of Jews of Indian origin who immigrated to Israel in the 1950’s.  (The attached photograph shows Raj Pillai, Amb. Arun Singh (middle) and Ratanjit Sondhe, former CEO of PolyCarb, Solon)

We did not have any problems with vandalism in 2010.  No fundraising activities were held last year.

India Chief of Mission, Indian Embassy, Washington, DC (middle) with Raj Pillai (left) & Ratanjit Sondhe

At long last, we have incorporated the Cultural Gardens into Cleveland Historical (http://app.mobilehistorycleveland.org/), the smartphone application that was developed by the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities.  Available for Apple iPhones, iTouches, and viewable on your iPad, our team produced great text, located photographs, and included oral history audio. We will be conducting more oral histories this spring and adding more content, including panoramic movies with descriptive narratives. Additionally, version 2 of Cleveland Historical will be available in March with improved functionality that includes social media connectivity (i.e. Facebook and Twitter), as well as more formal tour functionality.  This should add a new dimension to visitors Garden experience and is a great outgrowth of our efforts at the Center to study and promote the Gardens.

Additionally, I would note my essay on the history of the Cultural Gardens is now available in the Winter 2011 issue of the Journal of Social History; if you’d like a PDF copy, email me at m.tebeau@csuohio.edu; I’d be happy to send you a copy.

Join the Federation of India Communities Association this Saturday, October 2, at 5 PM, in the India Community Center, 12412 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights; near Fairmount Blvd intersection.  Parking in Firestone lot nextdoor as well as on adjacent side streets and in the city parking lots across the street and behind the commercial buildings.

Speaker is the renown Rev. Marvin McMickle of the influential Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland.

Additionally, a new program to support peace, person by person, will be introduced.  No more fitting a location to do this than next to Gandhi’s statue.

The Center for Public History + Digital Humanities (which developed and maintains www.culturalgardens.org) is very proud to announce that on September 25th, at Cleveland’s Ingenuity Festival, we will be unveiling Mobile History Cleveland, an iPhone/iPad application that allows users to capture Cleveland’s history while walking, biking, or driving the city. Complete with oral histories, images, and text stories, it will be a phenomenal tour for teaching & learning about the city’s rich history. EVEN BETTER, we will include a brief walking tour of the Cultural Gardens that we will flesh out further this autumn. Indeed, imagine your next walk through the Gardens will be informed by oral history, photographs, and stories. Over the next several months, as we explore user experiences and understand this new platform better, as well as work to extend it from iPhones to Android, which will allow us reach more than half of all smartphone users.

During the winter, we will work to build the tour of the Gardens in collaboration with interested delegations from Federation.  By next spring, EVERY visitor to the Gardens with a smartphone will have a rich array of multimedia history available to them. We hope that you will join us in getting excited about these tours and help us make them a richer community resource.

Speaking of technology and design, we are updating the design of culturalgardens.org.  Over the next month, at the request of many of you, as well as Bill Jones, we are revamping the site. We are making the content, especially photographs, more legible and easier to use. This is important for our users, whose profile differs from many folks using the web. Our readers tend to be older, somewhat less web savvy, but dedicated Internet users.  We appreciate your feedback and will continue to welcome it and incorporate it into the site. Every day, more than 100 people from all over the world come here to learn about the Gardens. We want to enhance that experience as best we can.

Finally, I should note that we are, as ever, indebted to our friend Bill Jones who uses this space to promote the Cultural Gardens and does a brilliant job at it. He is one of the best bloggers anywhere in the city.