First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Lynn Ischay / The Plain DealerThe Daily Life is a weekly photo column that offers readers a glimpse of their community through the visual reporting of photographers. Frank Glick makes his fishing line dance and skate over the clouds reflected on the calm, spring-fed lake in Chardon. And for the first time this bright Thursday morning, he gets a bite. “The fish are really rising today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll bite,” Glick
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Dale Omori / The Plain DealerBen Barrick, 3, holds his nose as his mom dunks him underwater. His twin brother, Nate, is next. A moment later, Nicole Barrick lifts Ben to the surface. He blinks the water out of his eyes, ready for whatever’s next during this Tuesday morning parent-toddlers swim class at the West Shore YMCA in Westlake. “They were a little hesitant at the first class, but by the second they did everything willingly and happily,” said Barrick.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Thomas Ondrey / The Plain Dealer“Ballroom is hot right now,” says dance instructor Minas Katsantouris, and he isn't referring to the temperature. In fact, inside Case Western Reserve University's cavernous Carlton Commons practice room, it's a little chilly. Katsantouris is referring instead to the growing popularity of ballroom dancing, stimulated by ABC's hit, “Dancing With the Stars.”
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Dale Omori / The Plain DealerThe chorus from “Eleanor Rigby” bounces off the buildings and sidewalks, then rises above the traffic noise at East Sixth Street and Superior Avenue. It’s the sound of Kelvin Young at work. Young, 57, of Cleveland, also known as Samad Samad, is a self-taught saxophone player. His workplace most days is at this intersection or at the West Side Market. On game days he can be found, depending on the season, outside The Q, Jacobs Field or Cleveland Browns Stadium. His pay is whatever people are willing to toss into his saxophone case.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Lynn Ischay / The Plain DealerMaggie Cooper leaps and spins, landing on tiptoe, arms straight at her sides. “Stop dancing up there! The light fixtures are moving!” yells Kitty Cooper, mother of seven Irish stepdancers. Five of the seven head downstairs, taking over the living room and kitchen. Maggie, 17, gets dibs on the dancing space. She has just placed second in national competition and is practicing for worlds in Belfast in April. Michael, Patty and Mary Clare must wait their turns. Katie brings out the accordion for practice music.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Thomas Ondrey / The Plain DealerPerforming a forward handspring takes just a few seconds. A running start, a lunge onto the hands, legs kicking upward, one's momentum lifting the torso up and over, landing on the feet. It's quick because humans are not meant to fly, much less hover in the air. This photograph of Parma Senior High School cheerleader Jacklyn Anderson freezes that movement. She appears to levitate over the track at Bedford's Bearcat Stadium, reminding us that football players aren't the only athletes under Friday night lights.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Dale Omori / The Plain DealerWhen caregiver Peggy Farrow, right, makes her weekly visit to Rose Zakrajsek, the work eventually turns to talk, then to laughter. Farrow works for Visiting Angels, a for-profit agency on Cleveland’s East Side that provides non-medical care for the elderly. Zakrajsek, 87, of Euclid, homebound after an illness, is her client. But their relationship is more than that just business.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Thomas Ondrey / The Plain DealerThe first thing to know about dog yoga is that dogs don’t really do yoga. They have their own agenda. Besides, “the dogs don’t really need yoga,” instructor Colette Barry tells a group of four women and their canines who have come to her Saturday class at Barry’s Health and Wellness Center in Westlake. “They live and breathe it every day. People are the ones who need to develop the long-lost art of feeling connected with our Earth and the beauty it embodies inwardly and outwardly.”
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Dale Omori / The Plain DealerTony Nieves helps make Cleveland go – and stop. For 17 years he's been a lineman in the Traffic Signal Department in the city where Garrett Morgan invented the traffic signal. Recently, he was working with apprentice Jeff Vanche, assembling new units in the shop on East 49th Street. Before the end of their shift, they would put together about a dozen units. The need for replacements is constant.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Thomas Ondrey / The Plain DealerRare November sunlight filters down through lemon-yellow leaves, casting a flickering light onto a row of postage-stamp yards and white front porches. Felix Grabowski, 74, takes full advantage of this Indian summer interlude to mount yet another attack on the autumn leaves that keep piling up on his Fleet Avenue home in Slavic Village. Today he rakes beneath his neighbor’s maple tree, the last stubborn holdout in a row of otherwise barren trees. He has already filled six big bags from his own lawn earlier in the day.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Thomas Ondrey / The Plain DealerAs Edie Hardin-Steiner softly calls out commands, her border collie, Madibo, weaves swiftly to and fro across the pasture, all business about the business of sheep herding. Every gene in his body is happy. This is what he was born to do. Hardin-Steiner, a music therapist with the Akron schools, had wanted a border collie ever since she was a little girl.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Lynn Ischay / The Plain DealerJungle Terry Sullivan lifts a sleepy skunk out of a travel case. The children at the Cleveland Sight Center’s Highbrook Lodge in Claridon squeal and scoot their chairs backward, putting a little more distance between their noses and the potential stink bomb. But 7-year-old Kali Magwood stays put, even leaning forward to better focus on Alpine, the albino skunk.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Joshua Gunter / The Plain DealerBruce and Dawn MacLaren sealed their love for one another, and for the Browns, with a kiss on a recent Sunday. For die-hard Browns fans like Bruce and Dawn, the Muni lot was the perfect setting for their orange and white wedding. Amid the grilling of burgers, the downing of beers, and the tossing of beanbags, the two felt right at home saying their “I do's.” “We fought like cats and dogs,” Dawn said, laughing, her miniature Browns-helmet earrings wagging. “Then we kissed, and it was all over. He had my heart.”
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Dale Omori / The Plain DealerJeff Boni clings to the sandstone with fingertips and toes. He hopes to make it to the top of the 40-foot rock formation climbers call “the island” at Whipp’s Ledges in the Hinckley Reservation. When it comes to climbing and the outdoors, Boni is a true believer. “You go to a lot of places looking for God,” he says. “They spend billions of dollars building churches and synagogues and mosques. It doesn’t seem necessary to go out and spend that kind of money and that kind of time and that effort when you can just step outside.”
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Lynn Ischay / The Plain DealerThe metal wheels clang together, making the contest sound more like a sword fight than a basketball game. Rod Ramsey and Juan Woidtke fight for a loose ball during the Wheelchair Cavs practice at the Metzenbaum Learning Center in Chester Township. A loud crash behind them barely gets their attention as they battle for possession. “Man overboard!” yells Alan Burgess, the oldest member of the team.
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Lynn Ischay / The Plain DealerExcited conversation bounces around the room in the Very Special Arts class for disabled adults at the Schaaf Community Center in Parma. Lorie Koehler leans into her work, mixing paints to find the right colors for her wooden flower magnet, one of the 38 hands-on activities that will be offered May 11 at “Dig The Arts — A VSA Garden Party” at the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds in Berea. “See what I did with the paint?” she asks, swirling red and white together to make a perfect petal pink. “I'm clever.”
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Lynn Ischay / The Plain DealerMiss Jaime pulls Elijah Alford close to her heart and wraps him in a big, warm hug. For the preschool students at the Achievement Centers for Children in Highland Hills, it is the last class before summer vacation. “You did a good job today,” says Jaime Alspach, music therapist at the center. “Thank you for good sharing and making good choices.” Alspach works hard to keep the students, some of whom have physica
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Dale Omori / The Plain DealerSinger Lisa Zebrowski loves the oldies. And three nights a week she and the cast of Follies Cabaret Rock go back to the 1960s – go-go boots and all – at Pickwick and Frolic. For one song, she teams up with Jared Sampson for the Sonny and Cher tune “I Got You, Babe.” Music director John P. DiSanto describes it as Zebrowski's “Cher-eoke” number. Then she brings out her biggest voice in Dusty Springfield's “You Don't Have to Say You Love Me.”
First Place, James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award - Thomas Ondrey / The Plain DealerIn the amber gloom of an almost-empty St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic Church in Cleveland’s Slavic Village, the slightest noise reverberates up into the shadowy heights of the tall Gothic ceiling. On Thursday afternoons, sounds echo through the great nave. Clicking broom handles. Splashing mops. The heavy clatter of a water bucket rolling across the tiled floor. An all-volunteer parish cleanup crew is sprucing up St. Stanislaus.
