Presumably there are many ways in which Northeast Ohio is different from Alabama. But one in particular strikes Kourtney Sladek, a 20-year-old Baldwin-Wallace College student who hails from that southern state: North Coasters are kinda wigged out by guns.

"It's a very different culture here," says Sladek, who says she was target-shooting by age 8. In Ohio, she's met only a few people who admit to owning guns, and two of them are in law enforcement. In Alabama, she notes, "I didn't know anyone who didn't have guns in their house."

Sladek understands that firearms can be unnerving to those who didn't grow up around them. But she still wants the right to carry one (when she turns 21) just about everywhere she goes. Including the Baldwin-Wallace campus. Sladek is the representative there for Students for Concealed Carry, and next week she will wear an empty holster as part of a nationwide awareness campaign organized by Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (concealedcampus.org).

Part of the mission is to drum up support for Ohio House Bill 225, which would make it legal to carry a concealed weapon on college campuses, among other places. Short of that (the bill has sat in committee since it was introduced last year), Sladek says she hopes to spark conversation, even debate. That won't be hard. She says she knows of only a few like-minded members of the Baldwin-Wallace community and isn't sure whether any of them will join her in the holster protest.

And if a professor decides to turn her stunt into a teaching moment?

"I don't mind," she says. "I've never been one to bite my tongue."

- Frank Lewis

BLOW JOBS

What would it take for you to start believing in Cleveland? Jobs would help. But how about green jobs that could start to ease the grease off the Rust Belt and transform it into the Wind Belt instead? Winds of change is right.

A tenacious local nonprofit called 10,000 Little (micro) Ideas to Keep You Believing in Cleveland (10000littleideas.com) is corralling entrepreneurs, government officials and other Northeast Ohio cognoscenti for another gathering to brainstorm ideas to help shift the climate, this time in the realm of green manufacturing jobs.

It isn't as quixotic an effort as it appears. Back in 2004, a US Department of Energy report ranked Ohio second to only California in its capacity for wind manufacturing. If the state were to invest now in the field, the report stated, it could secure as many as 80,000 new jobs - 12,000 in turbine production alone.

"There's some really neat growth aspects in this area for an economy that's shrinking," says Kiley Smith, a 10,000 Little Ideas representative. "The [wind turbine] industry is two to five years behind in orders. That's a huge backlog in orders, and this is throughout the world, so it may not be as sexy as building a whole manufacturing line here, a turbine system from beginning to end, but it'd be okay to be known for building these turbines part by part, too. That'd be just fine."

The group's last meeting in February attracted 700 people; some had to be turned away. This year's event, from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, at the Great Lakes Science Center's wind turbine display (601 Erieside Ave.), is being sponsored by Great Lakes Brewing Co., which will help collect signatures for a petition urging legislators to aid in the effort.

Linda Silver, the science center's executive director, will speak at 5 p.m. Save your questions for your congressman. - Dan Harkins

COMIC RELIEF

Sometimes it seems like Fate has it in for Medina resident Tom Batiuk, creator of the popular comic strip Funky Winkerbean. But Batiuk has a way of turning his bad luck into good fortune.

During a recent battle with prostate cancer, Batiuk wrote a storyline that featured one of his main characters, Lisa Moore, waging her own war against The Big C. In a bit of Stephen King-like weirdness, Batiuk's cancer went into remission after he sacrificed Lisa in the strip. That storyline became a book - Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe - that was published by Kent State University Press late last year.

And for a while anyway, everything was looking pretty good for Batiuk. He continued to write and ink Funky and collaborate on Crankshaft with Chuck Ayers. He drove around Montrose in his limited-edition wood-paneled PT Cruiser and spent afternoons reading Batman comic books.

Then, during the last winter storm, Batiuk was driving his PT Cruiser when a woman in a car coming the other way veered and hit him head-on. Paramedics told Batiuk the car was smashed so badly, they were surprised he lived through it. He suffered painful soft-tissue damage as well as bruised ribs, and has spent the last few weeks in intensive physical therapy.

"It was dumb luck," he says. "It was like walking under a window and having someone push a safe out of it and onto your head."

Karma once again balanced out for Batiuk last week, though, when he was announced as a Pulitzer finalist. Unbeknownst to him, his editors at King Features had submitted Lisa's Story in the editorial cartooning category.

Batiuk is already back at work, writing future Funkys and reading new Batman comics in his spare time. We wish him well. - James Renner

GET VOTESMART

Project Vote Smart (votesmart.org) sounds like a great idea. The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, founded in 1992, provides unscreened information about a vast array of candidates for office. The group gathers candidates' bios, voting records, campaign finance information, rankings by various interest groups across the ideological spectrum and public statements. It also posts responses to something it calls the "political courage test," a questionaire it sends to candidates to solicit their stands on controversial issues.

Now PVS has put together a mobile training center it's dubbed the "Voter Self-Defense System," containing a movie theater and wi-fi terminals, aiming "to train voters how to defend themselves from the self-serving, manipulative claims made by the campaigns." It'll be in Cleveland for demonstrations from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday, April 18 at Cleveland State University's Centennial Mall outside the Student Center.

But speaking of self-serving and manipulative: While all three of the leading presidential candidates declined to fill out the questionaires, perhaps warned off by anxious consultants averse to the potential for "gotcha" politics, only one of those candidates is a founding board member of Project Vote Smart! It seems that John McHypocrite McCain endorsed the group but lacked the political courage that the group's promoting. But his attempt to burnish his good-government, "straight-talk" credentials without actual engaging in any straight talk or good-government transparency came to an end a few weeks ago when someone at Project Vote Smart apparently woke up to the problem of having a board member who didn't live up to the group's aims. McCain is now a former board member. - Anastasia Pantsios

THE PARKING PARK

Bargain parking has always been available in a crude asphalt surface lot beneath the Detroit Superior Bridge in the Flats. One lot off Center Street used to charge just 50 cents a day through a coin-op style machine near the driveway - until a couple weeks ago when, without explanation, the machine disappeared.

Since then, and for the near future, people who don't mind walking a little bit to get to Warehouse District offices can park there for free. Clevelanders who are accustomed to paying every time they leave their car could be forgiven for scratching their heads.

The lot, formerly operated by Ampco, has been acquired by the city in a transaction facilitated by the Trust for Public Land, and will eventually become part of the national park system. That's near the site where the Ohio and Erie Canal once ended, and where the Towpath Trail champions, Ohio Canal Corridor, plan the trail's official terminus, at Canal Basin Park.

OCC Director Tim Donovan says he can't really talk about timing, but that the goal is to have the park completed in tandem with the arrival of the towpath trail there. But don't get all excited. That's not scheduled until 2014.

A source in the city department of parks, recreation and properties said that department is meeting with officials from the national parks system this week to discuss the transaction, and details - like a timeline, the potential need for a parking lot to serve the park, and whether someone might operate a fee-based parking lot there until something actually happens. Until then, though, feel free to park down there under the bridge. It's on the house. - Michael Gill