Hiram College student Nathaniel Eaton is aiming to make a big splash in the summertime toy market with an invention that enhances the old-fashioned water fight.
 
Eaton's "Water Dodger" is a simple plastic shield embossed with the slogan, "Can you stay dry?" In back is a net pouch that carries a half dozen or more water balloons. The idea is to offer an alternative to suggestively violent squirt guns while creating an active, competitive environment limited only by a user's imagination.
 
"It's like Laser Tag or paintball, but in the form of water," says Eaton, 24. "Plus it gets kids moving around outside."
 
Eaton, graduating from Hiram this fall with a bachelor's degree in business management and a minor in entrepreneurship, began with a drawing that evolved into a cardboard cutout and then a foam shield. He built the original foam model in his dorm room, and is now preparing to send to market a final plastic version of his product.
 
Using $1,500 in prize money from Hiram's 2016 Ideabuild competition, Eaton applied for a provisional patent and trademark. The South Euclid resident also devised four games to play using his water-centric brainchild: Solo Madness, Team Fusion, Captain Protection and Intruders.
 
“It's like a water balloon fight in reverse, whether it’s between two players or 20-plus," says Eaton. "The driest person or team wins."
 
Launching his invention is the next step for the company founder and CEO. To that end, Eaton partnered with a Case Western Reserve University industrial design student, who will help the budding entrepreneur build 10 plastic Water Dodger prototypes. He also connected with nonprofit startup accelerator JumpStart for assistance with funding and formulating a business plan.
 
"I'm starting off targeting independent toy stores with a good customer base," says Eaton. "This is my full-time job. I go everywhere with the Water Dodger in hand. When something's new, you have to inform people about it."
 
Eaton has been conceptualizing inventions and business ideas in a sketchbook since his freshman year of college. The Water Dodger was originally a wristwatch water squirter, which Eaton transformed into an entirely new product that sends a message of hot-weather fun without water guns.
 
"This is something you can promote to summer camps, because it's not a gun," says Eaton. "I show kids the shield with water balloons in a pouch, and they get excited."

All eyes are on Cleveland, with concerns waxing over Ohio's open carry law.

From the New York Times: Dallas Shooting and Open-Carry Laws Loom Over Cleveland Convention Plans
 
Cleveland officials are promising increased security during the Republican gathering, with resources from city, state and federal authorities. And within the convention area, the Secret Service will set up a smaller perimeter near the Quicken Loans Arena that will have stricter security and prohibit guns. Delegates to the convention, for example, will not be able to take their guns onto the convention floor.

From TIME: Why Guns Won’t Be Allowed at the Republican Convention

Delegates to the Republican national convention would do best to leave their guns at home.

The Secret Service and the Quicken Loans Arena hosting the convention next week are both barring firearms within the convention, though state law allowing open carry will still apply to unsecured areas within the convention’s event zone.

From NPR: Some Delegates May Carry Guns Around Cleveland During Republican Convention

The list of items banned from downtown Cleveland during this month's upcoming Republican National Convention includes tennis balls, grappling hooks and canned goods.

But not guns.

 

The city of Pittsburgh will send a team of police officers to Cleveland to help keep the peace during the Republican National Convention via legislation Pittsburgh City Council approved preliminarily on Wednesday.

Cleveland originally requested 70 Pittsburgh officers. After assessing resources available and local needs. Pittsburgh is planning to send 23 city police, including seven traffic officers, 12 SWAT officers, four members of the police command staff, and one legal adviser from the city law department. Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay, said an additional 35 crowd-control officers could be sent to Cleveland in the event of an emergency. They all would be part of a security force of several thousand police assembled from various jurisdictions.

Read the whole story from Pittsburgh's Action News 4 - WTAE here.

From an army of giant snails invading the Cleveland Public Library's Downtown branch to colorful murals lining RTA's Red Line, the 216 is alive with new eye-popping art to welcome RNC visitors.

Fresh Water uncovers the weird, the overlooked, the hidden, the has-been and even the naked in this rollicking roundup.

In just three years, the Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen has produced a wealth of successful food businesses, some of which have outgrown the incubator and moved on to their own locations.

Chess is a game that crosses racial, language and socioeconomic barriers, say its players and proponents. South Euclid resident Mike Joelson is doing his part to teach the millennia-old tradition to thousands of Northeast Ohio students.
 
Joelson is founder of Progress With Chess (PWC), an organization that offers after-school programs and camp-based instruction to 50 regional K-12 schools, reaching about 2,500 students annually. In harnessing a mission to improve the lives of area children and teenagers, PWC works with private schools as well as students from Cleveland's inner-ring suburbs and inner-city.
 
"We serve the entire spectrum of the community," says Joelson, a card-carrying national chess master who founded PWC as a nonprofit in 2000.
 
After-school sessions are held one hour per week. Though hourly instruction costs $9 per class, PWC also offers free programming to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), paid through foundational and corporate grants.
 
"We have more demand than we can fill," says Joelson. "We're always looking for additional funding to help us serve more schools."
 
Chess skill level doesn't matter, as PWC takes on everyone from newbies to more seasoned players. 

"Students are divided into groups based on their age and skills," Joelson says. "We start off showing what the pieces do and how to play a legal game. More advanced students are taught advanced strategies and checkmate patterns."
 
Young chess charges are taught by two dozen independent contractors, some of them tournament veterans themselves. PWC instructors will be out in force this summer at chess camps in Beachwood, Parma, Westlake, CMSD's Patrick Henry School and elsewhere.
 
Joelson, who continues to play chess competitively on a local, state and national level, says the grand game embraces higher-level thinking abilities like pattern recognition and strategic planning, along with the critical life lessons of sportsmanship and perseverance.
 
"Every move you make has consequences, similar to life," says Joelson. "If you lose you're cool early, you'll keep that habit for the rest of the game."
 
Chess - and by extension PWC - is also a wonderful vehicle for exposing young people to those of different backgrounds.
 
"Multicultural and multiracial players are sitting in the same tournament and having a dialogue," says Joelson. "It's a win for everyone." 

Per Politico:

A slot at the Republican National Convention used to be a career-maker — a chance to make your name on the big stage and to catch the eye of the Republican donors and activists who make or break campaigns.

In the year of Trump: Not so much.With the convention less than a month away, POLITICO contacted more than 50 prominent governors, senators and House members to gauge their interest in speaking. Only a few said they were open to it, and everyone else said they weren’t planning on it, didn’t want to or weren’t going to Cleveland at all — or simply didn’t respond.

Read the whole story - including who they queried - here.