New book details history of Cleveland’s Cultural Gardens, a living monument to diversity

In the opening pages of his new book on Cleveland's iconic Cultural Gardens, historian John Grabowski gives heartfelt acknowledgement to those who created the gardens, including migrants and immigrants and their offspring.

He writes, "In reshaping a city and a landscape, they have built a stunning monument to diversity - a symbol both of cultural memory and of hope."

There are currently more than 30 gardens on the trail, located along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Boulevard in Rockefeller Park. To name just a few, there's Ukrainian, Syrian, Chinese and Ethiopian. There are also many proposed gardens, including Pakistani, Scottish, and Native American. We'll get to learn more about the creation, history and future of the gardens, as laid out in the book "Cleveland Cultural Gardens: a Landscape of Diversity" that just came out this month.

We begin the hour with our statehouse team.

Electric bill customers may have noticed a small credit showing up on their recent bills.  The reason for the credit is that after paying monthly subsidies for years to support two coal-fired power plants -- those plants are now making a profit, thanks to inflation driving up energy costs. And the plants -- one of which is in Gallia County, in southeast Ohio, and the other in Indiana -- are sending some of that profit back to consumers. The exact amounts per customer range from about a nickel per month to about 35-cents. It's also not clear how long those credits will last.

By comparison, customers have collectively paid more than 186-million dollars toward supporting the coal plants after they were added to the large-scale energy legislation, House Bill 6. That same bill -- called a "nuclear bailout" by opponents -- is at the center of an ongoing bribery scandal investigation.

Andy Chow, News Editor, Statehouse News Bureau, Ohio Public Radio/TV  
John Grabowski, Ph.D., Krieger-Mueller Associate Professor of Applied History, Case Western Reserve University & Krieger-Mueller Senior Historian, Western Reserve Historical Society 
Lauren Pacini, Architectural Photographer and Local History Author