North Coast Sunday, March 22, 2015 | Section C | cleveland.com/living
Cool Spaces
Apartment restoration takes time and vision
MY WINTER THAT WAS
Recycled materials keep the cost low Roxanne Washington rwashington@plaind.com
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Story and photographs by Andrea Levy alevy@plaind.com
I hate winter. Then, before the first snow this season, I was looking back at my Instagram gallery from last year. A beautiful scene of freshly fallen snow inspired me to create a new Instagram account: @lookslikesnow.
hen it’s warm enough, Jackie Taylor loves to relax with his dog, Rufus, on the balcony of his secondfloor apartment on Madison Avenue in Lakewood, taking in the sounds of traffic, dog walkers and the chatter of passers-by. He says he and Rufus sometimes sleep on the balcony “and just listen. About 2 a.m., it gets really quiet and very peaceful.” The two-story commercial/residential building Taylor bought in 2003 is close to the busy intersection of Madison and Warren avenues. The brick structure houses two small businesses on the first floor and two vintage two-bedroom apartments on the second floor. Taylor lives in one of the apartments. He prides himself on creating an affordable vintage space, where everything is restored, repaired and reused. Most of the materials came from Habitat for Humanity.
My hope was that daily attention to the details of winter might soften my resistance to it. I love Instagram. It’s different from Facebook. Less showy. Less calculated. It’s about simple, real-life moments — the scenes and events that catch your eye, but don’t really belong in a frame. Grainy, out of focus, random. Our lives are the endless accumulation of these seemingly mundane scenes. And as I look back, a bigger picture comes into sharp focus. I don’t really hate winter after all. In my photo gallery inside, I share this evolution. MY WINTER THAT WAS | C4-C5
LISA DEJONG | THE PLAIN DEALER
“In doing this, I realized that things don’t have to be perfect,” says Jackie Taylor. Taylor, 63, is almost finished renovating his upstairs apartment in Lakewood. “At first I bought it as an investment,” says Taylor, who paid $200,000 for the building. “But after spending so much time here working on the apartments, I thought, ‘I really like it here.’” When he took over the building, the apartments had been neglected for 90 years. And the dark, rich oak baseboards, crown molding, trim around the fireplace and even the doors had been painted white. “If it were pine, I wouldn’t m i n d ,” s a y s Ta y l o r, w h o stripped all of woodwork himself. “You can’t buy tiger oak anymore. It’s beautiful.” The doors have polished crystal doorknobs and brass hardware. Most of the window glass is original.
see COOL | C6
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The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com
MY WINTER THAT WAS
MN
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Sunday, March 22, 2015
The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com
MN
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MY WINTER THAT WAS
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The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com
OpinionArt Andrea Levy
| alevy@plaind.com
Blank canvas Bombings. Kidnappings. Plane crashes. Or a kitten wrestling a string? There’s no contest. I have to pace myself with real-life horror. Even the single still image announcing a beheading video floods me with panic. Empathetic overload. We all feel it ... just not enough. More cat videos, please. A week ago, I watched scenes from a suspected ISIS bombing. Three minutes, 11 seconds of bodies and blood. Babies screaming. What’s my human homework? Disbelief. Nauseated sorrow. Anger. And so there you have it. Terror is teaching us to fear. Then to hate? Mission accomplished. Hatred loves company. Hope is an art that we dare not behead. A daily discipline of experimentation, perspective and vision. In collaboration, the dove is colorful revenge. Peace is a blank canvas bravely waiting.
To watch a companion video to this column, please visit cleveland.com/andrea-levy
Go to cleveland.com/andrea-levy to follow the OpinionArt blog. Like Andrea’s page on Facebook: Levyart
MN
Sunday, March 29, 2015
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The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com
OpinionArt Andrea Levy
MN
| alevy@plaind.com
Their Just ‘Desserts’ I hear that certain people would like protection by law to discriminate against people they deem sinners. Refusing to bake wedding cakes, for instance. Well, assigning sinfulness to others is pretty tricky business. And often the sins hardest to recognize are our own. So I say, let them keep their cake ... and eat it, too.
Go to cleveland.com/andrea-levy to follow the OpinionArt blog. Like Andrea’s page on Facebook: Levyart
Sunday, April 12, 2015
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OpinionArt Andrea Levy
The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com
| alevy@plaind.com
All babies need a doctor. Love is not a crime. America the beautiful is more than just a line.
To see a video interpretation of this OpinionArt, please visit cleveland.com/andrea-levy
Go to cleveland.com/andrea-levy to follow the OpinionArt blog. Like Andrea’s page on Facebook: Levyart
MN
Sunday, July 5, 2015
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The Plain Dealer | cleveland.com
OpinionArt Andrea Levy
| alevy@plaind.com
My sister and the scientist I noticed National Sister’s Day was this month. My sister Toni is 10 years older than me. When I was a little kid, she was more like my mom. She taught me how to tie my shoes and bake cakes. She let me “help” her get ready for big dates. She also initiated those uncomfortable conversations that our mom never seemed to get around to. Her college sweetheart, and soon to be husband, Thomas, came straight from a sophisticated upbringing in Philadelphia to our quiet streets in Findlay. Tom was a quick-witted scientist, studying biology. His viewpoints quickly infused our home with broader sensibilities. From a child’s view, their relationship was like a real-life fairy tale. I worshiped them both. Over the years, they engaged me in important dialogue. Tom always respected my nerdiness, which came as a revelation to me. He opened the world of biology, an exposure that is still quite evident in my work. In the highest sense of the word, they raised me. A big phrase, isn’t it? “Raising children.” As their family grew, I helped with diapering, walking and baby-sitting their three sons. The years flew. Soon enough I left home, got married and had children of my own. One beautiful day in April, there came the kind of phone call that drops the floor from beneath your feet. The unimaginable kind. One of their sons called to tell me that Tom had nearly died from an aneurysm. Utter catastrophe. Spring stopped cold as Tom fought for his life. Our entire family would never be the same. Over the next hours, days, weeks, years and now an entire decade, once again my sister taught me. Once again
I was the little kid, as my big sister now taught lessons in grit and humor, dedication and ingenuity. A very big sister. She showed the profound role love plays in the complex, often private, fracturing struggle with grief. I come away understanding that tragedy strikes each of us with a lesson all our own. One tragedy, myriad lessons. And that there is no right or wrong in how we endure. This class is not pass/fail. I see it as a divine science lab of sorts. (The biologist would approve.) In May, my devoted brother, Mike, and my savvy sisterin-law, Christina, and I accompanied my sister on an incredible excursion she had hatched. Her mission: get Tom to the ocean. It was a grand experiment. The cooperative airline staff provided great assistance, but my sister was clearly the expert. Given the severity of his disabilities, it was a monumental endeavor. However, for my big sister and the scientist, it was just another chapter in their still-beautiful fairy tale. And I was happy to “help.” For this was a very big date indeed.
To view a little animation I made for Tom and Toni and all other unsung heroes struggling with disability, please go to: cleveland.com/andrea-levy
Go to cleveland.com/andrea-levy to follow the OpinionArt blog. Like Andrea’s page on Facebook: Levyart
MN
Friday, August 21, 2015