7 minute read
PLACE Megan Lykins Reich shares what she
PLACE
MOCA Cleveland
This space was built to respond to our mission, and it embodies what we’re trying to do at MOCA. The flexibility of this space, along with our ability to change it up and use it in as many ways as an artist can imagine, is exciting. And the angularity, dimensions and irregularity of the building kind of keeps us all on our toes and reminds us of the need to be open and adaptive. It’s a challenge as a building; it’s a weighty, loud and aggressive space. It’s also something where we’re always in dialogue with it, which is important because it is where we do our work. It’s very present.”
— MEGAN LYKINS REICH
KOHL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MOCA CLEVELAND
WAR
The Long Haul
Volunteer truckers rush to ship much-needed supplies to Ukraine.
Nykola Sas prepares a truckload of supplies headed to help the effort in his homeland of Ukraine.
THE PALLETS IN THE DIM warehouse carry the basics of survival. There are totes full of Gerber’s baby formula, hospital gauze and ibuprofen. Next to them, feet away from a 2,000-pound bag of long grain rice, sit plastic-wrapped boxes of shirts and sweaters from St. Gabriel School in Mentor.
Around the pallets, which in sum total 25,000 pounds at any given time, walks Nykola Sas, the owner of Nica’s Freight in Warrensville Heights. Ever since the outbreak of war, Sas and his volunteer crew of truck drivers have enlisted themselves in the seemingly never-ending race to supply Ukrainians 4,882 miles away with aid. Because pharmacies and hospitals outside Kyiv are barren and short on supplies, Sas knows he must be speedy.
When there’s a plane from New Jersey to Poland with any space left at all, Sas hears about it. “If they call us and say, ‘Okay, we have space for 10 pallets,' we get the 10 pallets,” says Sas, standing near a half dozen crates waiting to be filled.
With global fuel prices skyrocketing, Nica’s volunteer operation is more important than ever. Hauling a full truck load to Newark Airport in New Jersey costs at least $2,000. To then fly a 1,000-pound load to Ukraine costs another $1,000 or so.
It’s why local aid efforts, like the Cleveland Maidan Association in Parma, have been coordinating hauling operations. If any of the 35 truckers working with Sas have room for, say, an extra medical pallet or two, it’s crammed in the load and dropped off at Newark Airport.
For Sas, working 11-hour days securing and relocating aid is a way of hand -ling immigrant’s guilt during war. His family has aunts, uncles and cousins living in Kyiv, who have brandished Kalashnikov rifles or hunkered down, praying Russian bombs don’t find their way overhead.
“I don’t know what I would do there,” says Vladimir Sas, Nykola’s brother and the head of Nica’s maintenance. “I’m not a fighter. I’ve never been to the Army. I don’t have military training.”
Three miles south of Warrensville Heights is the Pokrova Ukrainian GrecoCatholic Church, a Parma-based house of worship built entirely by Ukrainian hands in 2000. On a recent visit, the banquet hall bustles with two dozen aid volunteers. Both Pokrova’s dance floor and stage are hidden by hundreds of shipping boxes, as gloved volunteers in their 50s and 60s stuff them with soap, water bottles and caffeine pills. At 6 p.m., a bell announces a buffet dinner of chicken and egg noodles. Then, at 7 p.m., it’s back to work, readying boxes to be stored at Nica’s until space opens up.
Organizers at Pokrova say that, with some shipping efforts costing up to $250,000, they are keen to find money saving deals, like LOT Polish Airlines’ 10-bags-for-free offer.
Sas always finds a way. Recently, a soldier named Roman urged him over WhatsApp to ship a container of tourniquets as his faction was getting drastically low. “It was on me,” Sas says. “Anything he want, I buy. No problem.”
Viktor Bobyk, a 55-year-old trucker at Nica’s who is originally from Chernivtsi, shares this up-and-ready sentiment. He thinks of his 47-year-old former neighbor, who is fighting for Ukraine as a tank driver. “I have to work,” Bobyk says in the middle of his shift. “I have to give money to send to military support."
NATURE
Splash Pad
How a fresh river of funds will make Northeast Ohio’s slowly improving waterways even healthier.
In late April and early May, the rookery of almost 200 great blue heron that nests near the Black River and Lake Erie shoreline in Lorain transforms into a noisy nursery. Chicks hatch from pale blue eggs and demand food from their parents. The baby birds stay in their not very neat, but efficient, stick nests until they fledge at about seven to eight weeks. The fact that the blue herons, with their 6-foot wingspans, are flourishing along the Black River, a waterway that once carried the ignominious “river of fish tumors” label, is a sign that a healthier future for Northeast Ohio’s waterways is not only possible but achievable. Since the beginning of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in 2010, the birds' quality of life has steadily improved thanks to efforts to revitalize its 300-acre nesting area along the river with better water quality and food sources.
“We still have two active projects behind Lorain’s old abandoned steel mills,” says Lorain Mayor Jack Bradley. “But what I am most proud of is the return of fish and fowl to Lorain’s reclamation site.” And now, with a fresh round of federal investment, conditions along the Black River and waterways like it are bound to improve even more. In March, President Joe Biden visited Lorain to announce
The health of Northeast Ohio's waterways, like the Black River in Lorain, is improving.
that $1 billion from the recent bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has been earmarked for cleaning and restoring the most severely degraded sites in the Great Lakes region.
Lorain wants to get a piece of that pie. The Black River is still designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as an “area of concern,” a waterway with conditions that adversely affect the environment, human health and the local economy. But Bradley hopes that it will soon be taken off the EPA’s list. The city received a $15 million federal grant for river improvements in the past, and is now eyeing additional grants.
“The health of the Black River has been integral to the development of the city of Lorain,” says Bradley. “Not only can the river be a source of economic development but an environmental jewel.”
Lorain is not alone in that hope. The Black River is one of 14 waterways in the Great Lakes region on the EPA’s list, including the Maumee River in Toledo and Cleveland’s infamous Cuyahoga River. Despite recent changes to the Kent Dam and the 2020 removal of the Brecksville Dam, the Cuyahoga is still dealing with legacy sediment contamination — years and years of indiscriminate dumping that will take either dredging or capping the bottom material. But in yet another sign of progress, the Ashtabula River was taken off the list in 2021.
“Our goal is to take care of most areas of concern by 2030,” says EPA Great Lakes National Program office director Christopher Korleski. “The rest will be in healing mode. When a new habitat is planted, sediment is cleaned up and other actions are taken.”
Better conditions on Northeast Ohio’s rivers will hopefully lead to a cleaner Lake Erie, which is still fighting harmful algae blooms, invasive species, climate change and exploitation of its resources. And the fresh round of federal funding into projects like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative offers hope for a lake that's healthier in the near future.
“I have a saying: ‘If you clean it, they will come.’ If you have an old abandoned lakefront with a lot of dead fish, no one will want to go there,” says Korleski. “But if you improve the water quality and clean the lakefront, it will be beneficial to the entire community.”
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