Barnestormin

"Y" The Word Irks Me

2012-01-28T22:50:00.000-08:00

"I think it's cute," the very pregnant thirty-something woman at the Squirrel Hill coffeehouse table next to mine said of the Y-word, or "yinser," as I tried to argue with her and Gary, a fifty-something New York transplant and acquaintance of mine who'd just used the slur to rip on someone.
When I’d called him on it he began arguing with me that the Y-word is appropriate as a slur, and that it's OK to use because it's also embraced by many Pittsburghers, who claim it represents a working class ethos of which they are proud. (Never mind that most of those same people have never painted their house on their own, repaired their roof, or picked up a wrench to fix their cars).
Ms. Preggo, a city native, folded her hands over her full, eight-months-pregnant belly and smiled smugly. "I don't mind it," she insisted.
Prior to the turn in conversation she had been complaining about what she was going to do for the next few weeks before giving birth, since she was off from work on maternity leave. Gary's suggestions that she go to Phipps Conservatory, or to Scaife Art Gallery or the Carnegie Museum fell on deaf ears, then somehow Gary brought up the word which triggers the chip on my shoulder like a sledgehammer to a sore toe.
I should explain.
Don't use the slur "yinzer" around me, even if you spell it in a way I think is phonetically correct--"yinser." I don't like the Y-word and never have, never will, and I won't accept people trying to embrace this stupid, derogatory tag.
People are surprised by the hostility I express when they use the Y-word and some no doubt are amused. But I must admit, it all goes back to the elitist schools I attended--Kiski School and Carnegie Mellon. Growing up in mostly working class Bellevue, there was very little elitism in my childhood world, since most of us didn't have a whole lot and most didn't look down on the rest as being inferior for having less. We were pretty much all in the same boat.
Then as an adolescent, I got into trouble and into the court system and Schuman Juvenile Detention Center, and my life changed. My parents sent me to a shrink of dubious character--a minister's wife, no less--and the smartest thing she ever did for me was suggest that a change of environment might be very helpful to keep me away from my hell-raising friends. So I ended up at Kiski--one of the last boy's boarding schools in the nation, run by a hard-ass guy named Jack Pidgeon, who was uncompromising in his expectation that every one of his "Kiski boys" would get as much as possible out of their boarding school experience. I became good friends with kids from the more affluent suburbs of Pittsburgh and some of those fellas introduced me to the "Y-word," using it as a pejorative for people from working class areas of Pittsburgh, like Dormont, for instance, who some of my high school friends claimed always had thick Pittsburgh accents.
On I went to Carnegie Mellon, receiving a partial athletic scholarship for football and a partial academic scholarship, since I'd worked hard at Kiski. I ended up becoming friends with some talented and kind individuals who I will simply refer to as Trustafarians, since they were (as I was) longhaired neo-hippie types, but unlike me, they were trust fund kids who never had to work but always had money with which to party. "Scooby" was one of them, and we became very close for a time, though he and I in some ways were as different as Caketown is from Greasertown.
"Jonny Yinser," he dubbed me, laughing when I’d say something in what he perceived as a particularly thick accent. "You're such a Yinser!" Scooby would say, cracking up. I put up with it because I liked him and knew he meant it with love, and I enjoyed hanging out with him. But Scooby was from Boston and he also liked to use to Y-word in its most negative sense, like when he was trying to get some paperwork through the CMU administration or do something elsewhere and a person with our proud Pittsburgh accent angered him and he’d say, "F-ing Yinsers can't do anything right!"
Some things never change, or rather, sometimes stupid things become the norm, like white suburban boys calling themselves the N-word while akwardly trying to rap, or suburbanites feigning a love for a working class ethos they’ve only heard of and never experienced.
And there's the rub. Almost without exception, the intelligent people who use the Y-word want to use it in both senses: They want to call it a badge of honor and they want to use it in the elitist sense as well, as a bludgeon to insult people whom they think they're above. And when they are called out on this incongruity, and on the fact that many Pittsburghers detest the Y-word, they, like Gary, obstinately refuse to change their ways and refuse to accept that other people’s feelings matter enough for them to stop using one word in the English language.
I am talking about one single word here—I am not sayin you shouldn’t use “hat” or “mouse” or “pussy” or “wimp.” I am insisting that you be a real Pittsburgher, by not using a very specific slur to look down on your countrymen. And if I were talking about the “C-word”—a nasty slur used by some to refer to women—all the gals in the audience would agree. If the “N-word” were the axe I was grinding here, all the African-Americans reading these words would have my back. But since I am using an elitist word, based in class differences, many women and Blacks would disagree with me as stubbornly as people defend their religion and their children. That’s because in America, Land of the Fee and Home of the Knave, it’s always open season on lower class people. God may bless America, but the Deity leaves Americans to curse it on their own.

Burn This Blog

2012-01-18T12:15:00.000-08:00

You may think I am a flake, a wing-nut, a corner-chattering wacko, but maybe I still inform or entertain you some here on Barnestormin, so you check in from time to time. Whatever your reasons for reading, I am glad that you do. But would you like it if this blog were shut down because I am not in full agreement with the way things are run locally, statewide and nationally in the good old US of A? Probably not, even if you often disagree with me. Most of us would recognize I have a Free Speech right to say what I think here on my blog.

But not Big Brother, who’d rather the Political Elite and Corporate Elite get to control what I can say, especially if it goes against what they think about things like drug use, income disparities, or other unpopular topics. I am completely opposed to the Drug War, because it is a war of sanctioned human rights abuses, in the name of safety but truly waged for the safety of the elite.

Why all the preaching? Because a would-be law could result in Barnestormin going dark, since the legislation would allow the government to shut this blog down for taking any of a number of unpopular stances, or even for linking to copyrighted material, such as the following:

“Why is the U.S. government working so feverishly to crush independent, truthful information on the internet? Because the globalist controllers realize that the internet is the last bastion of freedom in a world run by global elite corporatists.
“While the global elite own and run the mainstream (corporate whore) media, and they own Congress, and they own all the influential non-profits such as the wholly corrupt American Cancer Society, they do not yet control the internet!”
http://www.naturalnews.com/034682_SOPA_online_piracy_protest.html#ixzz1jqEf6HNK

But we don’t have submit to this oligarchy, and we don’t have to yield to this proposed draconian law. We can kill SOPA before it’s passed. Contact your legislator and tell him why you hate this bill and that you will vote to fire him if he votes for it. Let’s make this legislation a hot potato that politicians fear to touch.

Poser Alert

2012-01-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Journo Tip 183: When writing a story on a city's coolness, quote as many snarky sources as possible.
Writer's note: The posers quoted in the following story (you decide who they are based on their quotes) are NOT representative of what is cool about Pittsburgh, but rather, what is fake about it.
You decide what to think:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12015/1203716-455.stm
One must wonder why the reporter of the article chose some uncool people to quote on whether Pittsburgh really should be considered cool at all. Consider the sources!
If real Pittsburghers are anything, they are respectful of each other. Those who are condescending, be they native or transplant, are not real Pittsburghers.

Slim's been everywhere, even played Sedona

2012-01-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

Because I value your readership, my friends, I must crow a bit more about Pittsburgh's Country King--Slim Forsythe. Following are several links to tunes he's played including old time originals and covers "Jambalaya," "Jackson," "Angel Band" and more. Yins have great taste so I know you'll like 'em:

Jambalaya, by Hank Williams (played in Sedona)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY38IUMlDaU&feature=related
Down on my knees at Nied’s Hotel, by Slim Forsythe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj1JMGtRnoo

Oh Come, Angel Band, by Jefferson Hascal
(This is an old gospel played by Slim and his current band, the New Payday Loners—turn it up so you can hear every part of the harmony or it doesn’t sound as great!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM0uGTCk7MI&list=UUwMfOh7H7irVEPYpkwoqjQw&index=5&feature=plcp

I’ve been everywhere, by Johnny Cash
(Slim changes the words some to reflect his Bradford, PA background and his adopted hometown—Pittsburgh, PA. I was at this show it was wonderful—Johnny Cash Day, it’s a benefit held yearly!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05qvclCw4Dc

Jackson, by Johnny and June Carter Cash
(This was the same show at the Elks in Northside as above.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA9b6tL4-wI&list=UUwMfOh7H7irVEPYpkwoqjQw&index=6&feature=plcp

Allegheny Mountain Queen, by Slim Forsythe and Craig Roberts
(very old timey tune, yessir)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOyq7yRnBJs&list=UUwMfOh7H7irVEPYpkwoqjQw&index=2&feature=plcp

One Sweet Stara Baba

2012-01-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

Ruth Zofchak, keeper of the guard at Clairton's Croatian Fraternal Union Club (where I was a member as a kid), recently passed away. She was as sweet a stara baba as you could ever meet. We were lucky to know her. Rest in peace, sweetheart.

Being Of The Community

2011-12-23T12:35:00.000-08:00

Joe the Politician’s voice was strained. We’d been talking on the phone for just five minutes, but the emotion in his voice croaked out like a worsening flu.

“I want to talk to the JONATHAN BARNES who called me two months ago, wanting to do a story on my political career. That’s the Jonathan Barnes I want to talk to,” Joe said, his voice cracking.

It was at least the tenth time he’d called me by name, though his bullying repetition didn’t sway me. Joe was mad at me for working on a story that was going to be unflattering to his career (not long after he’d ascended to a higher office), and he was trying to talk me out of it. We argued and it got heated, with Joe uttering some words my mom would soap my mouth for when I was a kid. Already, Joe’s voice was slightly hoarse from his yelling.

“I have a lot of power in my new job,” he reminded me. Then he told me again he’d sue me and the newspaper if the story ran.

“You’ll get nothing out of me, and the newspaper has plenty of lawyers,” I said.

Over the course of a 75-minute conversation, Joe tried every tactic to scare or cajole me into doing his bidding. He then offered me work with his office, which would be tempting for a full-time freelancer, if I didn’t know he was difficult to work with. Nothing he said scared me, because I am from the community affected by the story I was writing.

Not really. I grew up a couple rivers and hills away from this town, and it’s not exactly the same culture as my hometown. But as a reporter covering this particular town for years, I developed a feeling of kinship with it. Still, why emotionally invest yourself in a community you don’t live in, when covering that community is just a job?

Because good reporters aren’t just in the beats they cover, be it a town, high school football, commercial real estate, or whatever the topic—good reporters are from there. They bond with their readers’ interests and try to protect them. I’ve published thousands of newspaper, magazine, and news service stories, stayed awake more than a day covering the Sago Mine rescue, ran from police with G-20 protestors in Pittsburgh, and covered hundreds of council and school board meetings over the years. I’ve learned tricks and sometimes, editors offer them.

“Become a cheerleader of the topic you’re writing on,” one prominent national magazine’s editor advises freelancers.

When he told me this I knew he meant you have to get excited about the topic, feel a real interest in it to get to where you find the details that make for interesting stories. But if you are worried about pleasing people rather than being a good reporter, you won’t attempt (or complete) the difficult stories that sometimes make political or business leaders squirm.

Muckraking is not the intent of journalism, but acting as a representative of the readership is part of being a reporter. Some articles, though, defy the professional logic that tells a reporter it’s safer to go for easy, uncontroversial stories. Still, the tough stories often are the ones people talk about around the water cooler and email to each other, or post in chat rooms.

Readers now have more choices than ever for learning about their communities, but those sources are diverse. Many publications are more concerned with advertising dollars and more conservative in their coverage than in the past. And many reporters are justifiably concerned with writing some things that are unpopular, when it might make the boss angry.

Even so, readers know to take their gripes about issues needing scrutiny to the locals—the reporters from their community. It takes time and work to build that rapport with readers, but the best reporters always have it, partly because they show some guts on occasion.

By the way, I wrote a few stories on the topic which made Joe uneasy. He didn’t sue.

Former daily newspaper reporter Jonathan Barnes is a freelance writer who has published more than 2,300 stories in newspapers, magazines and with news services including Engineering News-Record, Fortune.com, and Reuters. He can be reached at pittsburghreporter@yahoo.com.

Lights Please

2011-12-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

Come to Pittsburgh for a Steelers game. We'll keep the lights on for you.

Kin To American Music

2011-12-08T11:38:00.000-08:00

I hear that train a-comin, it’s rollin around the bend, they call it the Empire Builder and it’s carryin Slim. Forsythe, that is.

“Now boarding on Platform 27, the Empire Builder…”

Finding singers and performers playing with great heart and talent is more and more common in Pittsburgh these days, with is vibrant music scene. But none are like singer-songwriter Slim Forsythe, and many of those in the country-bluegrass-rockabilly world in Western Pennsylvania and beyond know it, because they have played with Slim. Some of those folks are in a new release he will be performing with the Beagle Brothers and others at the Lawrenceville Moose at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

Slim’s new CD, Slim Forsythe & Friends, Down On My Knees At Nied’s Hotel Again, is a musical journey, taking us via railroad all the way back to the originators of the genre including Stephen Collins Foster, who lived and is buried in Lawrenceville. In addition to The Beagle Brothers, the CD includes collaborations with The Stillhouse Pickers, The Nied’s Hotel Band, The Turbosonics, Elliot Sussman, Stu Braun, The Parklane Drifters, Russel Oblinger, Sr., and the New Payday Loners, Slim's current band.

With drinking songs like Why Can’t I get Duquesne On This Sad Lonesome Train, and songs that give the sound of the wide open road, like Empire Builder, Forsythe is a regular mountain Shaughnessy. Cracking jokes and telling stories as he strums happy tunes and others played from a once-broken heart, like Down On My Knees At Nied’s Hotel Again, Slim takes us back to our shared regional and national heritage, connecting us to the mountains that surround us and the rich American musical legacy of Western Pennsylvania and the great old USA. Chugging back to the originators of the genre like Foster, Father of American Music, Slim gives tribute through his lovely rendering of Gentle Annie, which includes sweet short riffs on different Foster tunes—Beautiful Dreamer, whistled by Slim, then Old Kentucky Home plucked on guitar, followed by Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair on piano, and a few bars from Oh Susanah on banjo.

Allegheny Mountain Queen also is a gorgeous tune, but Gentle Annie, played so deftly and sung so movingly by Mr. Forsythe, will make you think again about Slim, Pittsburgh, American music, and much more. Slim carries us down worn graveyard paths to tombstones, and tells us stories of wildcatters, strawberry blonde mountain beauties, passed away pets, long-gone loved ones, and folk heroes new and old, tying his life (and our own lives), to that long track of memory that is the American Experience.

In The Wake Of The American Dream

2011-11-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

Writer's note: I wrote a version of the following story about the work of Pittsburgh photographer Ross Mantle a couple years back for In Community magazines. Ross's poignant observations of life in the Mon Valley were striking to me then, and now they will be seen by much wider audiences, thanks to 707 Penn Avenue Gallery in Downtown Pittsburgh. A showing of his "In The Wake" project, which was partly inspired by his familial ties to the Mon Valley, begins at the gallery at 6 p.m., Nov. 25. Please see Ross's work; a couple of his photos are here.

Driving around the Mon Valley a few years ago, photographer Ross Mantle checked out old mill sites and aging buildings, sauntering around people still pursuing their versions of the American Dream in places including McKeesport, Duquesne and Braddock. While wandering the Mon Valley with no goal but a possible documentary project on the area, somewhere deep in Mantle’s creative soul, a fire was started.

It could be the atavistic yearning of a McKeesporter’s child (his mother and maternal grandmother are from there) or the rusty view of a native Pittsburgher, but something beckoned Mantle to chronicle the people and places that make up the Mon Valley. He had been thinking about such the project for a while.

While attending Ohio University, Mantle had thought often of doing some sort of photo project when he came back to Pittsburgh. A 2004 graduate of Bethel Park High School, the freelance photographer began to practice his craft by shooting photos for the high school paper. He threw his heart into photography while in college. After earning a B.S. in Communications with a photojournalism focus from Ohio University, Mantle came back to Pittsburgh and it wasn’t long before he was pursuing his dream of a Mon Valley documentary project.

But don’t call Mantle’s project the American Dream, because he doesn’t believe there is such a thing.

“I don’t think the American Dream is real,” he said. “I think there are a lot of people who buy into it, but I don’t think it’s really there at all.”

Even so, he’s spent countless hours photographing some of the aftermath one aspect of what some would call the Death of the American Dream. So far, he’s photographed about 8,000 images, which he expects to be part of a published book some day.

The photos include people and places, rusty spots and care-worn faces. They all appeal to Mantle, who finds his subjects by going to spots he thinks he might find interesting and wandering around until something strikes his fancy. Often, observe people and if he wants to photograph a person, he’ll approach them.

“Usually people are pretty open,” Mantle said. “The people here [in the Mon Valley and Pittsburgh] have a rawness that inspires me. There’s a straightforwardness of the people… There aren’t many places where you can speak your mind and still remain friends with a person.”

Mantle has not yet found a publisher for his Mon Valley project, which means he’s working on it pro bono for now. The work is something of a vocation for him.

“I think it’s an important time in this country. What’s happening in the Mon Valley is the same stuff happening in Detroit. It’s an important thing to look at now,” Mantle said. “Hopefully, the project changes the way people think about the people who are living in the Mon Valley and how things are working.”

While he has taken some photos of the bustling Braddock U.S. Steel mill, Edgar Thompson works, Mantle is mostly shying from the newer businesses in the Mon Valley. He said he would like to speak with Mon Valley residents who want to offer suggestions. Some of those people, he conceded, no doubt feel they are living the American Dream. “Somebody might have no money, but be living somewhere with his family and feel that he’s living the dream,” Mantle said.

Having grown up visiting his grandmother in McKeesport and hearing the stories from his mother of taking the trolley into downtown when the place was happening with throngs of people, Mantle had an idea of what things were like there in past decades.

“‘I can’t believe what McKeesport’s like now,’” Mantle recalled his mother, Monica Mantle saying.

Much of the impetus for his work, which is informed by his admittedly left-of-center perspective, is an attempt to get at the quirkiness that is the Mon Valley. “I shoot a photo because it makes me think, or laugh,” he said.

The best part of the work itself is that it gives him a chance to wander around, Mantle said, laughing at the thought. “It is liberating to not have to focus on anything but these ideas I want to photograph,” he said.

Despite the somberness of his project’s title, Mantle believes that part of what he is chronicling is the vibrant life in the Mon Valley.

“Somebody from California might not think it’s so vibrant,” Mantle said, “but there’s a character to it, a toughness, that’s still there. You have to have been emotionally and mentally tough to have survived there.”

Mantle has worked for the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, but the project isn’t exactly journalism, he said. In fact, he doesn’t call himself a journalist. But he does find the layers of history of the Mon Valley to be compelling—even with its towns partly shaded by long-vacant houses. The many vacant homes—some of them obviously once grand—in parts of the Mon Valley astound him.

“I can’t imagine being so desperate that you just up and left a house. It’s mind-blowing,” Mantle said.

Millions of people came to this region to for jobs in which they created things, Mantle said. “You can’t erase a century of ideals,” he said.

But what happens when the promises of some of those ideals seem to have been broken, and people’s lives are ruined in the process, such as happened in the collapse of Big Steel in the 1980s? It appears to be up the following generations to consider. To Mantle, the American Dream is a myth; an idea that many people build upon.

“When the economy collapses, you have to realize that the American Dream wasn’t there to begin with,” Mantle said. “What I’m looking at now is the values and traditions that are left over. The idea of home, a sense of place and how people fit into that place.”

While Mantle is not a believer in the American Dream per se, he would not argue that Mon Valley folks don’t believe in the dream.

“I think the dream is not gone there, but it has changed forms. I think it needs to be evaluated,” Mantle said.

Many people in Western Pennsylvania are so tied to their history and so close in their identification with a specific place, that it makes them unique in this country, Mantle noted.

“The stuff I’m shooting has a lot to do with place and how it reflects the people,” he said.

Images from “In the Wake of the American Dream” can be viewed at Mantle’s web site, www.rossmantle.com. For more information on his project, email Mantle at mantle.ross@gmail.com.

http://www.rossmantle.com/index.php?/portfolios/in-the-wake-of-a-dream/

Middle of Nada?

2011-11-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

Mark Roth's series in the Post-Gazette, titled Middle Of Nowhere, couldn't be more timely in Pittsburgh or the nation. It's a must-read (this is the first installment, this week there was a second):
http://postgazette.com/pg/11317/1189629-455.stm

Th P-G's timely focus on this largely undetailed problem couldn't be more appropriate in Pittsburgh, capital of the Rust Belt. The series reminded me also of local photographer Ross Mantle's work, which will soon be shown locally but is here right now:
http://www.rossmantle.com/index.php?/portfolios/in-the-wake-of-a-dream/

Please check out both of these collections.

Barnestorminism #23

2011-11-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

"Vegetarians should avoid havin beefs." Jonathan Barnes

Barnestorminism #22

2011-11-18T15:11:00.000-08:00

"Please refer to me as 'The Jonathan Barnes,' so the others won't be confused." Jonathan Barnes

Act Naturally

2011-11-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

Psst.. It's Slim Forsythe and Big Rock comin--just act naturally, man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTv_VzSbevc&feature=related

Ornery Tribesmen

2011-11-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

I spent most of Wednesday afternoon watching Croatians yell at each other as politely as they could. It was tiring, listening to septuagenarians and octogenarians with such high levels of POCB (Pissed Off Croatian Blood), while exercising self-denial and not joining in to woof on somebody (I am part Croatian). I wasn’t interested in making myself part of a story I was covering. But for the several years I have been writing stories about St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in North Side, I’ve had this gut feeling I am part of the story.

By the end of all the commenting I was drained. I hadn’t slept enough the night before or had lunch prior to attending the city of Pittsburgh’s Historic Review Commission meeting Downtown. The HRC was hearing testimony to consider allowing the Diocese to demolish the city designated historic building, St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in the North Side. Still, while the real-life drama played out in front of me, it felt strangely satisfying to see people in their roles and to recognize how energetically everyone took up his part.

Some of those testifying before the Commission to support demolishing the church were members of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale. The small Romanesque brick church, which is perched above Rt. 28 a few miles from the other St. Nicholas church, is known for its world-famous collection of murals, painted by artist Maxo Vanka in the 1920s and 1930s. It has about 220 active members and is struggling, and part of that financial hardship includes maintaining the closed North Side church, which is costing the parish about $1,700 per month.

St. Nicholas Millvale parishioner Darrell Woodrow said it pained him to think of the amount of money diverted from the word of Christ. “If we continue on this path, our future as a viable parish is in serious danger,” he said.

The Millvale church’s finance committee chairman, Bob Ehrman, said the burden of the East Ohio Street church on his congregation began before the North Side church’s closing. Millvale’s parishioners had to subsidize it for years, he said. In 1994 the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese joined the Millvale church with the North Side church and created one parish. Ehrman noted that $360,000 has been spent maintaining the building since it was closed in 2004.

“These expenses have already threatened our church in Millvale. Without relief, our church, a national historic landmark, faces the fate of the East Ohio Street property,” Ehrman said. “We are pleading to demolish the East Ohio street building and reduce the financial drain.”

St. Nicholas Millvale’s priest, Father Dan Whalen, said he’d seen “the continual strain that this building has had on our parish… We do not have a reasonable use for this building. We’re barely maintaining it at this point. There’s no reasonable return on this building for us,” he said.

Mary Petrich, 83, a lifelong St. Nicholas Millvale parishioner and one of the leaders of the Society to Preserve the Murals of Maxo Vanka, said six of the church’s murals have been restored since being damaged from Hurricane Ivan in 2004, but more work must be done. “You never want to recommend razing a church… The Millvale church is representative of immigrants who came here to the Northeast,” she said.

This testimony was a bit hard to take. I had worked very hard with Mary and others to bring attention to the production of Dave Demarest’s “Gift To America,” and for the preservation of the murals in general a few years back when the play about the murals’ creation was staged again after it’s initial airing in 1981. I wrote web site copy, magazine and newspaper stories, press releases, fundraising letters and other stuff, and called people for donations and support. I contacted editors and reporters in print, radio and TV news to ensure that the production got plenty of attention, and it did—four sold-out performances, and lots of funds raised and media attention, and many supporters gathered.

When I’d been working with the murals folks I had recognized a less-than-charitable attitude among some regarding the North Side church, and it bothered me. Some of the Millvale parishioners viewed the North Side church as not unique, and it hurt to hear that. How could you be so wholeheartedly dedicated to preserving Croatian heritage in one place, and be heartless towards your tribesmen down the road, who are in many cases your kin, I wondered. If you talk about Balkanization, Pittsburgh’s Croatian community should be referenced.

I am a quarter Croatian—my mother is half, and her mother was a child of Croatian immigrants from Minnesota by way of Zagreb. I am a native Pittsburgher, born in Bloomfield, raised in Bellevue and a resident of the city part of Regent Square. I am not religious and was actually raised Presbyterian, but just as I view the home of the Vanka murals as a unique Pittsburgh treasure worthy of working for, I see the closed St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in North Side in a similar way, and also as a testament to the dreams and ideals of all of our immigrant forefathers.

Members of North Side Leadership Conference feel this way, too, and are attempting to buy the church from the Diocese, with a plan in place for making the church into a museum dedicated to the immigrant experience. That museum would be the centerpiece of a thin park running alongside Rt. 28, connecting the museum and a parking lot with the nearby riverside trail in two spots—giving greater accessibility to the trail and connecting the neighborhoods of Troy Hill and East Deutschtown with the other nearby neighborhoods. Supporters of the idea say it could attract 50,000 new visitors to the area each year.

Reusing the closed church as an immigrant museum is a way to stimulate economic growth in Pittsburgh, and also will compliment nearby historic structures such as St. Anthony’s Chapel (with its world-class reliquary) in Troy Hill, and the Maxo Vanka murals at the Millvale church, PCHF member Richard Sestric said to the Commission. “We care about out shared community heritage, and want to honor our great-grandparents who settled in this region from Eastern and Central Europe including Croatian and German immigrants of North Side, and the Polish, Italian, Hungarian, Swiss, Slovak and other groups who populated Pittsburgh as a whole,” he said.

Others said that the North Side church’s supporters would be generous to the Millvale parish if it would finally sell the church to preservationists, who for years have been trying to save the church building.

“Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation is ready to produce substantial financial resources to the parish,” PCHF Foundation president Bill Vergot declared in a booming voice to his fellow Croatian-Americans from St. Nicholas Croatian Church in Millvale. “We are looking for a commitment that the people of both sides will support fundraising efforts for both sides and for the parish in general.” Then he read from a letter sent several years ago to the Millvale church by Peter Karlovich, a strong supporter of the cause. “‘It’s our desire to heal old wounds and save Croatian heritage.’ I want my fellow parishioners at Saint Nicholas to know we made every effort to work together, but we were refused.”

St. Nicholas North Side church supporter Bronco Benardic, a construction contractor, testified to the Commission, which was considering whether to allow the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh to demolish the church building, though it was given historic designation by the city 11 years ago. The building is in decent shape, he said, and should not be demolished.

Anthony Benvin, chairman of the Troy Hill Citizens, said his group is against demolishing St. Nicholas North Side. “We see it as a very important part of our neighborhoods,” he said of the church at the base of his neighborhood’s hill, directly connected by a small stairway ascending the hillside. “It’s a gateway to our neighborhood.”

People don’t like to be bullied, whether they are ancient Hebrews, shouting “Let my people go!” or modern-day Croatian Americans saying “We will never give up!” And some people just won’t tolerate their holy places being desecrated, either, though this has been repeatedly been done to St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in North Side, known partly for the fact that you speed by it and it is literally feet from your car.

And so to some, it seems the lies stink to high Heaven, as the Croatian blood burns here on Earth. The Roman Catholic hierarchy is the original Old Boys Club, they say, but the Diocese puts the burden on the parish. Still, they add, we will get our church back.

Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation’s motto is “Saving our place in the future.” Amen. But a more earthly treasure could be at root of this years-long question of ownership of the church building. The longer trail of this story could lead straight to the bank.

It’s not about economic hardship, it’s about profit, PCHF member Jack Schmitt said. “The issue is about money and profit. PennDOT needs two slices of the property [for its planned rebuilding of Rt. 28]… For the sake of profit, we cannot allow our landmarks to be demolished one-by-one," he said.

North Sider John DeSantis, who was chairman of the Commission for 13 years, said the Diocese had not presented a good case for demolition. “There are in fact people who can provide reasonable use of this building. Right there, it’s an open-and-shut case,” he told the Commission. “It’s not a matter of how much they can get. This building has to be found to have no use.”

Susan Petrick, a former parishioner of the closed church and a member of PCHF, said her group had covered the costs to board up the closed church. Despite their efforts to secure the closed church, three people caught stealing from the church were not prosecuted by the Millvale parish. NSLC is in negotiations with the Diocese for the church building, but an agreement hasn’t been reached, she said.

“If the parish is truly experiencing financial hardship, you have to ask yourself, why haven’t they signed this agreement?” Petrick said.

HRC Acting Chairman Ernie Hogan said based on the ordinance, there are more questions raised that the HRC needs to have answered. He said the Commission would have its staff ask those questions, and after they receive answers, a decision will be made. He continued the hearing on the matter for 30 days. The issue will be discussed at HRC’s December meeting.

Demolish This?

2011-11-04T06:44:00.000-07:00

Following is a beautiful, snow-covered panoramic view of the closed St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in the North Side, photographed by a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photographer from the (now empty) hillside shrine. Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese officials and members of St. Nicholas Millvale want to tear this all down. I wonder if anyone remembers the commandment, "Love one another?"

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10011/1026269-429.stm

Protecting St. Nicholas

2011-11-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

In an age when profit trumps pride, place and position elbow out posterity, and when spaceship-like buildings supposedly owned by the public are discarded to cater to sports franchise owners, saving something as simple and unimportant to most people as St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Pittsburgh’s North Side might seem the fancy of a graying blue collar apologist. But those who love the old church, which welcomed Croatians for more than a century to their New World, believe it’s worth a thousand Civic Arenas, and then some.

Saving St. Nicholas Church has always been the task of a hardcore group of former parishioners and preservationists. Closed since St. Nicholas Day 2004, the fight to save the venerable old church has always been a war that’s been fought battle by battle. Those trying to preserve the 109-year-old church building, which is the oldest Croatian church building in the Americas, have another uphill battle: passing again through a city of Pittsburgh Historic Review Commission meeting unscathed.

Today, at 1:30 p.m., the Historic Review Commission will consider the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh’s request to demolish St. Nicholas Church because of the economic hardship placed upon the Bishop, who is the owner of the property. The meeting will happen at 200 Ross Street, on the first floor. Everyone is invited. Please come if you love Pittsburgh’s unique history, or if you’re Croatian and proud of it, or if you simply can’t stand to see another of Pittsburgh’s great landmarks torn down.

That designation won’t happen if North Side Leadership Conference chief Mark Fatla has anything to say about it. Fatla, who is Polish American, sees the closed church as potentially a strong draw that could bring 50,000 new visitors each year to the Deutschtown and East Deutschtown neighborhoods. The plan his nonprofit and other St. Nicholas supporters have put together would create a green park-strip alongside Rt. 28, from East Deutschtown by the Penn Brewery, with a trail system that would connect at two separate points with the existing riverfront trail. The plan would also create a new space for parking for the trail, by the old church. He called the infusion of so many new visitors into the North Side “a game changer.”

Fatla, NSLC, members of Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation and others are clamoring to save the church to convert it into a museum dedicated to the immigrant experience in America. Built with the pennies, nickels and dimes of Croatian immigrants, the church has been stripped by Diocesan officials of its religious items, and the hillside shrine beside it which seems suspended above the church no longer has its statues. But the tangible collective memory of generations of new Americans striving to make a home in a strange land, sweated and prayed into this church built against a hillside in Pittsburgh-esque fashion, will never be forgotten and forever will imbue the place with an earthly reverence that most would find ineffable.
The Rev. Dan Whalen, priest of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, said the Diocese needs to have the option to demolish the church because the costs to pay for it are too much for his small congregation to continue to bear. “We have to try to stop the financial bleeding,” he said.

Rev. Whalen added that neither his parish, which owns the church since it was closed and was part of the parish at that time, nor the Diocese are opposed to the church being used as an immigrant museum. “The problem is, nobody can come up with any money,” he said.

But according to Fatla, St. Nicholas supporters have money to buy the building and have tentatively agreed with the Diocese on a price for the property.

“We’re not really there yet,” Diocesan spokesman Rev. Ron Lengwin said of the would-be deal to sell the church to preservationists. “We’re covering all of our bases… We’re doing this on behalf of the parish.”

To make the museum a reality, supporters must raise a $5 million endowment and $10 million capital fund, Fatla said. “We’ve been trying to acquire the site for two years,” he said.

In North Beach

2011-10-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

We were somewhere in North Beach, walkin hand in hand down the street when we heard a lone guitarist playing and singing Johnny Cash in in a soft baritone. Shana and I turned our heads and saw some dude jammin inside a long narrow bar, and she said “Cool” and we walked in. Dude finished playing Ring Of Fire, then launched into Folsom Prison and Shana and I were grinning, because we both like Johnny and the tune holds special meaning for divorcees like us. I can’t help but think it, and then I say “He’s good but he’s no Slim Forsythe” and she says: “He’s not bad…”

Then Dude comes to a turning point in the song, singing:

I shot a man in Frisco

And he stops, a few folks laugh as if in on a joke, then he continues:

Just for callin it Frisco…

And Dude finishes the tune as some in the crowd applaud and laugh. Shana and I don’t even stay for a beer and walk out, hand in hand. She is wearing a short denim mini and a white peasant top and looks striking—at 5’9” tall she is curvy beyond imagination, crowned with that wild dark hair, a hundred percent good Russian Orthodox girl who turns the heads of the skinny Italian boys in the pizzerias we walk past. I ignore them, knowing I have her full attention. A bit further down the street, she whispers into my ear: “Those Italian guys looked at me, then they looked at you… I feel so safe with you.” We kiss.

*

Just a couple weeks before, I’d been texting Shana Mae while I watched Slim and his New Payday Loners jam at the Inn Termission in Pittsburgh’s South Side, in the back room of that narrow bar. The room has a vaulted ceiling with wooden beams and stained glass skylights, and about 20 people were spread around the place and Slim was his characteristic wiseass self, jokin a bit between songs.

“Thanks for comin out, folks. We’re happy to be here playin the Inn Termission’s Great Hall,” he says and laughs. Then he starts into Ring Of Fire and I text the name of the tune to Shana, as I chug on my beer and puff a smoke like I gotta finish them and run out, but I’m just feeling fast…

Slim and the band are makin a joyful noise and the acoustics are fine, and it surely helps that he is backed by Evan “Big Rock” Knauer on electric guitar, standup bass player “Mister” Craig Roberts, “Bossman” Shane McGraw on drums, “Spider” Bob Wentzel on tenor sax, “Uptown” Steve Browne on trumpet, and singers “Country” Don Bistarkey Perrone and the Gospel Girls: “Wailin Jenny" Safron and the “Queen of the High Cs” Melissa Ippolito. They roll into Ghost Riders In The Sky and it is haunting, magical and some tall yuppie-looking guy moves over in front of me, blocking my view, and he glances back at me. He looks like he works for a bank, with his close-cropped hair and habit of wearing a blazer when he’s out partying with his buddy, a guy who looks like a muscular “Hootie” of Blowfish fame.

I don’t hide my enthusiasm, hootin and hollerin “Yeah!” because I just can’t get enough of this guy and his band, who play like they’re in the Grand Old Opry instead of in the back room of a mostly empty Pittsburgh bar. I look around and, through an old reporter’s habit, I do a head count of the place and find that there are just 18 people in the back room, watching these folks play like pros. I can’t believe it, just as I couldn’t believe it when I first caught a Slim Forsythe performance months earlier, in Murphy’s Tap Room in Regent Square, where about a dozen souls were groovin on how talented these people are.

“I’d like to wish all the Sons and Daughters of Abraham a happy Rosh Hoshanah,” Slim says between tunes. “And may each and every one of us, have peace…”

He starts singing Peace In The Valley, with that harmony behind him so angelic, the musicians so perfect, it’s like everything is flowing right all at once. Tall yuppie blazer guy looks back at me incredulously, and shakes his head. I nod back at him, knowing what he means—amazing. After the song ends, yuppie guy is clapping as he says to me: “These guys are great!” I say I know, I see them every chance I get.

“I’m from New York, and just moved here… It’s been a long time since I’ve heard this kind of music,” he says. “My wife heard from a friend that he’s good, and she told me I should go see him… They are incredible. Will they play any old time stuff?”

Oh yeah just hang out, I say, as Slim and the Loners croon into Long Black Veil, and the Gospel Girls' high voices sharpen the poignancy of the sad tune. Yuppie guy shakes his head, smiling from ear to ear. I smile back, then text Shana the name of the tune. “He plays a lot of Cash,” she responds.

He plays with a lot of heart, too. A former lawyer, it wasn’t so long ago that Slim Forsythe was Kevin Forsythe, working in city government. But several years ago, the nickname he took for the stage overtook him, and he transformed himself into the schoolbus drivin, guitar playing cowboy from Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood. His second CD soon will be released, and those who know this country crooner recognize his real style and talent, and know he lives above Nied’s Hotel and that he has a song about it, too. He has created his country-playin character, and performs it very well.

*
I have my right arm around Shana’s shoulders and she has her left arm around my waist as we slowly walk down the street and head to a bar that pretends to be a pub, but which Shana calls “Irishy.” We are both playing our roles flawlessly—she’s the hot divorcee with the charms that can lure a man across the continent to see her. I am the Pittsburgh stud writer who has come all this way to claim her as my prize, acting as if I fully deserve her.

Inside the bar, she whispers to me: "You’re the best looking guy in this bar,” and I kiss her neck and her full lips and ask her if she’s sure she’s not Irish. She’s drinking a rum and coke and laughs at the suggestion, as I sip a Guinness. Then she tells me about how she visited Ireland, and all the guys in the bars thought she was Irish. She melds into a sweet, soft brogue:

"'So tell me Shana, are ya married?' No, I’d say. 'Who’re ya here with, then?' I’m here with my mother. 'Yer here with your mum? Lemme meet your mum… I’ll marry you.'"

Full Circle

2011-10-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

Writer's note: I wrote this piece three years ago, and was reminded of it with the passing of my old friend, Dave Demarest.

My former English professor, David Demarest, ambled up to me in the basement hall of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, which was partly filled with food-munching parishioners and members of the crew for “Gift To America,” Dave’s play about the church’s famous Maxo Vanka murals. Dave leaned toward me, his lamb-chop beard trimmer than it had been in my college days, and thanked me for my help in the production, which originally was staged in 1981. I was embarrassed, because I couldn’t express all he’d done.

About 20 years ago, I first visited St. Nicholas Church in Millvale for a field trip for a class Dave taught at Carnegie Mellon. He arranged the Saturday afternoon tour, and he checked to see that we had rides to the church. “Those of you who have cars, help your classmates out,” Dave instructed.

We all made it to Millvale and assembled outside the small Romanesque building. Perched on a bluff along State Route 28 outside Pittsburgh, the little church didn’t look impressive. But walking into the church, my heart felt tight in my chest as I viewed Vanka’s paintings on the ceiling beneath the choirloft. Christ on the cross, wearing a crown of barbed wire and being bayoneted by a World War I-era soldier, and Mary separating two soldiers on the battlefield, snapping a soldier’s bayonet from his gun like a matchstick. Those two scenes are part of 22 murals that decorate the church, and nothing Dave told us could have truly conveyed their magnificence.

I’ve been amazed by the murals ever since, and I have written about them for various publications. I just recently started volunteering with the Society for the Preservation of the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka, which produced Gift To America. Dave had known about the murals for decades, and had written a play about them and also an illustrated guide about them. He’d told friends, students and many others about the masterpieces.

I’m thankful that Dave introduced me to the murals, which convey an understanding that is universal, while being uniquely Croatian. The paintings also are special to me because I am part Croatian, through my mother.

My late father sometimes referred to Carnegie Mellon as a “communist” school, because in his eyes the school was liberal. I know my churchgoing father would be pleased to see that my connection to CMU led to an awakening. I realized that working with others on the goal of restoring and preserving the murals gave its own catharsis.

On the opening night of the play, as the first strains of tambura began to play and a few soulful Croatian voices sang as the actors slowly entered the sanctuary, a teardrop crept out of the corner of my right eye. I quickly wiped it with my hand. Then a teardrop trickled out of my left eye. I felt foolish, not understanding why I was reacting so, and quickly wiped the tear. My stomach was strangely queasy. And for a moment, I never felt closer to my great-grandparents, Franjo and Lucia Vukelich, who came to America from Croatia nearly a century ago.

A Kum By Ya-like Group Hug

2010-06-30T09:38:00.000-07:00

I wonder if all of my Barnestormin blog readers are on Facebook. I hope all are not, and even though I don’t update this space that much anymore, it would be flattering to know there are many out there still keeping an eye on Barnestormin.
Some of the best Barnestormin writing being published these days is short bits I place on my Facebook page. The place has become more of a sounding board for many voices than this space really ever was. It’s kind of fast-moving over there and I am very much enjoying the discourse.

I toss out one-liners on my FB to get folks going and to see what they think. Sometimes it amounts to a sing-along, sometimes it’s an out-and-out debate and other times it is lots of back-patting. But it is a lot of fun, and here are some excerpts, some teaser Barnestorminisms, to get you interested in joining the rest of us over there. Enjoy:

Compared to blogging, Facebook is a Kum By Ya-like group hug.

A jaggerbush and a jagoff are entirely different, but both will prick you.

People who call themselves Yinzers and think it's cool are completely uncool.

"Are we going to argue about it now Honey" is a phrase I learned while married.

What does your therapist say about being hostile?

I like to question authority, but question gender? I'd rather not.

Does anyone else feel for these stroller-chained Squirrel Hill kids who are forced to be in their parents’ middle-aged buggy races? Jog alone, please...

I'm about to have a Helen moment and tell these young knucklheads with their keisters hangin out to go home to Poland or Germany and take a shower and wash their shorts...

Drunks subjugating potheads is like trying to stave off the Enlightenment.

I've now got 700 FB friends, and I can't imagine being any closer to all of you. Thanks for giving my life meaning...

A steady downpour, amber sky, growling thunder... Beautiful Pittsburgh rain welcomed by my flowers...

Writing is solitary, but you publish with help.

Maybe if we play Up On The Roof they'll open up the roof, JT said to us fans in the Civic Arena. The roof slowly opened as sweet summer air rushed in.

Jonathan Barnes is cheating on himself in a casual relationship.

I think I've finally grown into my head.

Don't hyphenate my freelance

Not "Sorry," Please

2010-05-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

Writer's note: I wrote this piece about a year back when I was newly separated from the now ex-wife. It is dedicated to all of the lovelorn folks out there who rebel against the condescension of the happily coupled.

When I tell you I’m getting divorced, please don’t say, “I’m sorry.” I’m sick of the comment, though I don’t expect everybody to understand why I feel this way.

I may have lost a life partner, but I’ve regained a lot of hope in the process of being separated and filing for divorce. Freed from an unending feud with my wife, I now see possibilities I didn’t see before. I have a new life and have regained full control over it, no longer caught in a relationship that wasn’t progressing.

But my wife is not dead, nor am I, so there’s no true reason to be sorry. My romantic relationship with my wife, whom I married a little over six years ago and whom I was with nearly 11 years in total, is kaput. The dream I had for the two of us is gone, but now new dreams form in my head. Still, few people seem to be able to see that in me, at first glance.

It’s often the same—I run into somebody I haven’t seen in a while, and I tell the person that I’m getting a divorce, and the person recoils a bit, jaw dropping in surprise, then a pitying look lights his face. “I’m so sorry…” he begins.

That cadence of words has the power to turn off the intended recipient of the condolences. Especially in Pittsburgh, the City of Champions, being separated and soon to divorce can make you feel like a loser, even if it’s far better than when you were married.

I recently ran into an old friend from high school, whom I hadn’t spoken with for many years. Jim greeted me warmly, with compassion in his face. I’d heard he was getting divorced, and I’d seen him from afar not long ago walking in a local village, his cute young towheaded daughter on his shoulders and a bounce in his step. When I saw him this time I caught him unawares, and Jim seemed more reflective than I’d remembered him from high school.

He and I caught up in no time, and we both admitted we wouldn’t be going to the upcoming reunion of our boy’s high school. The timing wasn’t right for either of us.

Jim mentioned how he’d seen an old friend of ours from school at a gathering a while back, and was turned off when the friend began speaking to him by saying, “I’m sorry to hear about the divorce…”

“We’re done,” Jim said to the old friend, and walked away.

For those of us on the receiving end of it, there’s a slightly condescending tone to the phrase, “I’m sorry,” when uttered in reference to our failed marriages. Saying you are sorry to hear that my marriage failed is like saying any of several negative things about me, my spouse, or my life. I have my reasons for getting divorced.

Why would a friend be sorry for another friend who, say, escaped an abusive husband, or an alcoholic or mentally unstable wife, or a ferret-collecting, unsupportive boyfriend? There’s an implied judgment in the words, “I’m sorry,” when people say them so unthinkingly, meaning to comfort.

Sorry? Really, sorry, you are? Sorry I’m not desperate and depressed, like I was? Sorry I didn’t stick it out, and be a saint in a doomed marriage, and die an angry death?

All of this feigned compassion for my separated-and-divorce-pending status makes me more than just a bit suspicious. Being a trained journalist, I know from experience that people need to know about the misfortunes of others, which is why we journalists have a saying: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

We need to know about others’ misfortunes because they make our struggles seem like small potatoes in comparison. Knowing that others are doing worse—and the worse they’re doing, the better—makes many of us feel happier about our lot in life; it’s a comfort to us.

Being a freelance writer, I will gladly pin my heart on my sleeve and wax about its contours for you for a small fee, but I don’t like being used any more than my friend Jim. I’m grieving the loss of my marriage, while also trying to move on, but I’m not doing it for anyone’s amusement. And if a person truly is sensitive to what I’m going through—that I lost my best friend and some life dreams, as well as a house, a garden, a dog, and many small things and feelings too close to describe—they won’t tell me they’re sorry.

Please, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me; I don’t want your pity, because I’m not pitiful. I want you to try to understand what I might be going through, even if you’ve been happily married for years.

So, what should you say to us hyper-sensitive soon-to-be-divorced types? How about, “I feel for you.”

Barnestormin on Fortune

2010-05-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

I just had a story published in Fortune on the most recent PR push for “clean coal”-- industry groups want the technology to work, but don’t want to pay for it. So who will? You guessed it--taxpayers. http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/20/news/companies/clean_coal_pr_push.fortune/index.htm
The story came out of the Global Carbon Capture Storage Insistute's conference in Pittsburgh last week.

Carnival Urban Cowboys

2010-04-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

The best was the Bucking Bronco—the hand-operated mechanical bull. This was one of the coolest, most profitable and most devilish of rides ever designed for Carnegie Mellon University’s Spring Carnival. The creation was broached in the dining room of our fraternity—think Animal House but dirtier.
We all said “What?” as our ATO fraternity brother Jim “Camper” Camp gave his slightly maniacal grin.
“A manually operated mechanical bull,” he said with that sick grin still fixed on his face.
Camper was not tall, but solidly built and a little crazy for a quarterback. He had short blonde hair that was spiked on top (in the style of some footballers at the time) and a ruddy, Irish-looking face, with the droll expression to match. Many of us in ATO (which was ousted from the campus years ago) were football players and we knew this crazy Ohio guy’s intensity, so we listened.
“You get an old oil drum, drill some holes in it and attach ropes on the corners, though they’re not really corners,” he explained, pulling out a crudely drawn illustration he’d made of the device. Essentially the drum would be connected from the ropes and pulleys to a wooden frame.
“You slap a saddle on the drum, put a brother on each of the ropes and have them pull on it to give the bucking motion… it’ll be great!” he said, looking more excited as he talked.
Joe “Boltzie” Boltz stood up and arched his eyebrows, comprehending the idea. His girth, goatee and overall impishness gave him the look of a skinnier Dom Delouise. He scanned Camper’s drawing and declared, “This is a great idea,” almost under his breath
It wasn’t long before several brothers were working to make the thing happen. In no time they had the thing up and running, but we had to have brothers manning the thing at all times, and it really was a 5-brother per shift ride (you needed a caller, too), which took a lot of manpower. The thing was all set up with mattresses for cushioning when people would fall off, but it still looked dubious until we saw it in action.
It didn’t seem too enticing to work the ropes on the Bucking Bronc ride before we did our first shifts, but once we experienced the thrill of operating the ride, we were hooked.
Guys lined up and gladly paid their $5 and accepted our disclaimer that if they got hurt it was on them, doing their best to be Urban Cowboys on the parking lot of Skibo Hall on a Spring evening. I won’t lie; some of them limped away from the ride.
We even got a few hayseed types, with cowboy boots, hats and belt buckles, ready to take us on. ATO won every time. We also made a ton of money for charity.
That was Back When The House Was Good, as they used to say. But maybe it should now just be, Back When The House Was.
I bring this all up because Spring Carnival is happening right now and I am hoping some crazy fratheads came up with some cockamamie idea like Camper’s Bucking Bronc, because that’s what it’s all about at CMU. If Andy Carnegie engendered anything, it was innovation, right?

Auld Lang Steel City

2010-03-19T09:39:00.000-07:00

It taxes the mind and no less one’s soul, to really try to understand something one hasn’t lived through, dealt with or had at least some interest in or second-hand experience with. And so it goes with some younger people and some non-native Pittsburghers who find it inconvenient and unfortunate that many Pittsburghers don’t seem to want to forget about those days when Big Steel bankrolled a booming local economy in which most people were employed and many of them with higher-paying jobs than compared to these days. The wages and salaries many of these people were making, in terms of buying power, no doubt would make today’s salaries and wages in Pittsburgh pale in comparison.
It’s a commonly accepted truism in the erstwhile Steel City that salaries and wages here have been depressed ever since we lost much of our industrial base.
No matter that Pittsburgh-made steel and many Pittsburgh companies such as US steel and American Bridge Co. worked from their mills and headquarters here to build some of the great bridges and skyscrapers of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere (American Bridge is still doing so, by the way); and don’t worry about the fact that phrases such as “Pittsburgh Seam,” “Eichleay Formula” and others and others owe their existence to our robust industrial past, or that many of us and our kin worked with or in businesses involved in industry.
Don’t worry about it, just forget about it or at least minimize it, since it didn’t turn out so well in the end. Don’t worry about these old things that happened before many people were born, or long before some folks set foot in the formerly Smoky City. It’s all a bundle of unfortunate memories, in the view of some Pittsburghers who seem to be doing their best to try to cheerlead for the city, while simultaneously condescending to its residents in patronizing, uber-educated white-collar tones.
But you can’t understand what you don’t fully try to comprehend. If you are closed off from the possibilities of a people seemingly fixated with their recent (and glorious) heavily industrialized past, which many here lived through and many others are still feeling the consequences of, all the preserved buildings in the world won’t help you to truly connect with some of the people whom you might positively influence with all your smarts.
“Just get over it,” is a common and callous instruction to those going through a period of grieving or loss for a loved one. It aint delicate, but it was how we sometimes dealt with each other as boys, urging one another to move on, away from some ugly fact of our lives.
Part of the problem with the intellectual disconnect between some old and new Pittsburghers lies in the fact that generations of Pittsburghers are still hurting, stuck in an underclass or even middle-class poor rut which has them mired them in low-paying work, lack of rest and an understandably warped and negative perception of life. Lack of sleep, lack of opportunity and lack of an ability to advance oneself can lead to a spiritual and mental paralysis in many people. But I guess they should all just move on…. And consider the glories of the Colonial Era in Pennsylvania, when all was fresh and new here.
Wesylvania’s history should not be viewed as some a la carte cafeteria offering, where we pick and choose what we’ll have based on our momentary mood (or guilty conscience). In talking about our proud history—especially that industrial history which made Pittsburghers into the tough people they are known to be worldwide—you have to remember that we are talking about a history of people who aren’t even dead yet. Still, revisionist history isn’t just about altering facts to fit one’s political perspective, it also can amount to paying inordinate attention to one era of history, say 250-odd years ago, versus another era, like 30-odd years ago.
The scariest thing about this dilemma is that the same sort of corporate incompetence of recent decades was visited upon the Rust Belt in the 1970s and 1980s, by companies that were going under or shrinking. This de-industrializing world-change was viewed and is viewed by many as something so perfectly natural—after all, it was just business, they say. It’s as if it were natural as rain that the world leaders in steel should get so fat and stupid that they let the developing nations eat them alive.
But that’s just my perspective—and it’s an inconvenient one, I’ll admit.

Keystone Commons Upgrades Anticipate Growing Industrial Sector

2010-03-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

Many have counted out or disregarded Pittsburgh’s industrial sector in recent years, focusing instead on the progress of the education and medicine sectors in the region. But others have quietly continued to build on Pittsburgh’s solid industrial foundation, bringing in more companies and jobs without widely publicizing those efforts.
One of those quiet players in the market is the Regional Industrial Development Corporation of Southwestern Pennsylvania, which for the past 21 years has been redeveloping the former Westinghouse “mother plant” in Turtle Creek, East Pittsburgh and North Versailles, for industry and other business. The businesses housed in the old plant now occupy about 2 million square feet of space.
Soon, an additional 220,000 square feet of space will be available for lease at the Keystone Commons industrial park. The 92-acre old Westinghouse plant site is in the valley beneath the Westinghouse Bridge and spreads through the communities of Turtle Creek, East Pittsburgh and North Versailles.
These days, workers for RIDC of Southwestern Pennsylvania are gearing up for more business, being about halfway through rehabbing the former Crane Shed and East Shop on the old mill site. Currently, Metal Tech occupies some of the building, which is being completely readied for more tenants. The rehabbed space will be available for tenants by spring, said William Burroughs, vice-president, development, for RIDC of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
About $1 million is being spent to rehab the space, which has had asbestos removed from it and is being finished with insulated metal panels to make it more attractive. “Re-skinning” the building and breaking up the space will make it more accessible for use by smaller tenants, Burroughs said.
Would-be tenants already are inquiring about the space. “We have some interest from potential clients,” Burroughs said.
The newly refurbished site could be a good fit for metal fabricating companies that need to assemble smaller parts, or also for machine shops, Burroughs said.
Some of the recent industrial activity in Western Pennsylvania is being driven by activity in drilling the Marcellus shale, Burroughs noted.
“There’s a huge requirement for pipe for that. Contractors who are coming in to drill [the Marcellus] want to set up a yard where they can store pipe,” Burroughs said.
Many of these out-of-state contractors, who are drilling 6,000 feet into the earth, want to have a site with river access that is about 50 acres in size and they are having a tough time finding it, he said.
That is because when it comes to old industrial sites put to good use in a similar fashion to their original purpose, the Pittsburgh area is ahead of much of the nation, Burroughs said. “Keystone Commons is really the bellwether. People can see that site and see that [successful redevelopment] has been done,” he said.
What the next surge of industrial activity will require of the Pittsburgh area is unclear, but Regional Industrial Development Corp. of Southwestern Pennsylvania is looking forward to it, whatever those needs may be.
“You just never know,” Burroughs said. “The phone rings and you’re off in another direction.”

Recipe for Economic Miracle Bread

2010-03-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

Ingredients
-Large supply of cheap labor
-Raw materials aplenty
-Good locale with river, rail and road access
-Three pinches of capitalists

MIX IN BOWL UNTIL STUCK TOGETHER

-Add one Great Steel Depression
-Halve the labor
-Take away half the dough

BAKE FOR 24 YEARS, UNTIL AN EVENLY RUSTY BROWN

-Remove from oven, cool for 10 minutes on Phipps windowsill
-Serve with organic butter, jam and tea to G-20 leaders

Real Pittsburgher Test #1: This is a not a rich person’s work of art

2010-02-01T09:42:00.000-08:00

The other day I was reading a piece by Mike Madison at Pittsblog in which he critiqued the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s recent feature story on “iconic” Pittsburghers. Though Madison said a couple of local bloggers should’ve made the list (I disagree), I do agree with him that certain Pittsburghers shouldn’t have made the list.
Usually I think such lists are silly, about as meaningful as the “40 beautiful Pittsburghers under 40” and stupid popularity contest stuff like that. These contests, though, usually are dictated by the editors and writers at the publication listing the “beautiful,” or “up and coming” Pittsburghers. Ballots are not counted because there usually are none, and old favorites are shoe-ins for the list.
Madison seems to disagree with who gets to say who is truly Pittsburgh in his or her character, and he also seems to disagree with what constitutes Pittsburghness.
By the P-G’s “iconic” story measure, you need to have lived here decades and followed he minor and major figures in local politics to really “get” what is Pittsburgh, and to know these Pittsburgh “icons.” But I beg to differ, though I do know who Jeep DePasquale was and what Lynn Cullen did.
You need to know and understand the connection between the people and the places in Pittsburgh if you expect to be a true Pittsburgher, whether or not you live in the South Hills or other suburbs or in the city.
So Madison gave me a nice idea, without even knowing it. Why not run a regular Barnestormin feature mentioning tests you must complete to be a “real” Pittsburgher? After all, my opinion is as right (or as wrong) as the P-G’s or as Madison’s opinion, I believe.
So here’s your first test, wannabe hardcore Pittsburghers: Visit St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale and behold the proletarian-inspired murals of Croatian socialist painter Maxo Vanka. I guarantee they will blow your mind and you will be a lot more proud about being a Pittsburgher after you see them. Then make a small donation if you can afford it, please.
You can read more about the murals in this piece I wrote for Pittsburgh Quarterly:
http://www.pittsburghquarterly.com/pages/library/2008spring/2008spring_082ofthewall.pdf
And here is one of several pieces I wrote on the murals for Barnestormin:
http://barnestormin.blogspot.com/2008/05/gift-to-america.html
I'm letting folks know about this as the first of several pieces in advance of the next production of "Gift To America," which will happen in May.
Please support this truly Pittsburgh treasure, created by an outcast for people who were new to this country and on its lowest rung and treated as grist in the mills, flattened to dust in the mines and killed on the battlefields. This is part of America's story, and it is a testament to some of the "true" Pittsburghers who came long before us and helped to pave the way to a better life for all Americans.
To learn more about the murals or to contribute, write to 151 Stonegate Drive, Leechburg, 15656; or call Diane Novosel at 724-845-2907. http://www.vankamurals.org/

Faced

2010-01-19T14:43:00.000-08:00

Growing up years ago in Bellevue, we had a saying for when we’d show up each other: “I faced you.”
The phrase quickly evolved into simply, “Faced.” You would say it to your friend and put a hand like a baseball glove over your face as a sort of exclamation point in gesture form.
My mind is a sprawling attic full of seemingly useless artifacts, but sometimes these objects serve as props. I bring up the “faced” thing because I recently joined Facebook, after avoiding joining for a while. I joined because, as I’ve said here before, I tend to get a bit reclusive sometimes and connecting with others more just helps in many ways.
Point is that I’ve been having fun with it, though my “wall” is pretty bare since I’m not the greatest at using this tool just yet. But one of the cool things that I’ve been enjoying about FB is that I’ve been able to connect with longtime work connections, childhood friends, and many folks I’d like to know a little bit better.
A lot of people have been kind enough to “friend” me or to accept my friend request, so thank you all very much. Some of you know my work and me pretty well, so it’s natural for us to meet up virtually. And some of you have followed my work, or even read Barnestormin. I am especially grateful for you folks and your friendship.
Perhaps an aging dog can learn a new trick or two from time to time. After all, even in the dead of winter, it can be good to shake off the cobwebs and make a few new friends or renew old acquaintances, even virtually.

Watching My Dark Side on the Jersey Shore

2010-01-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

I remember Sylvia Lucci. She was tall for a girl back in middle school, and very thin with long wavy blonde hair, blue eyes and a beautiful smile that captivated me, as we chatted for hours at the intersection of Brighton Road and Lincoln Avenue, just a half-block in either direction from our homes.
That was before I raised so much hell I had to be shipped off to boarding school… I had a huge crush on Miss Italian-American Sons and Daughters Debutante and I’d walk her home from school and we’d talk for hours at that corner. Sylvia was lovely—fair-skinned and as I said very thin, but naturally so. She was one of the sweetest girls you’d ever be lucky to meet.
I mention Sylvia by way of explaining a recent nasty little vice of mine involving a certain bunch of young, slightly insane Italian-Americans. Yes, I’ve become a Jersey Shore cumpie, a wannabe Seaside Heights paisan. And I haven’t felt so strange about a similar fixation since Growing Up Gotti.
Before I go further, I’ll explain the connection—the Italians I grew up with in the North Boroughs much more resembled the Lucci family than they did any of the over-tanned kids on Jersey Shore. So, in a way (this is how rationalizing happens), when I watch the show I am really making a cultural field trip.
Truth is, for me watching the show is like rubber-necking a train wreck that keeps on going. Seeing the tapestry of idiocy unfold in front of me on that show makes me feel much better about my crazy childhood growing up in a family of 12 Anglo-Croat-Irish-Norwegian-Welsh-Scots-German kids. As a kid, the combination of my insane youthful highjinks and my wild family could lead at any moment to a front-yard fistfight between a couple of Irish-mad 200+-pound brothers, like my brother Scott and me. So I must say that part of me resembles this nutty TV show.
I have gotten hooked on the Shore way too late it seems, since it is almost over. The seaside train-wreck has grabbed my dwindling attention, fixating my prurient interests.
And though Jersey Shore is almost over, I have so many pressing questions, like:
-Where the hell do the guys on the show get their haircuts?
-How come all the guys on the show have skinny waists and the girls seem kind of fat?
-Does The Situation do anything in the gym besides curls, triceps and posing?
-Will Snookie ever get a boyfriend? (She might want to stick with the Irish.)
-Can Ronnie get a handle on his roid rage?
-Will Jwoww get some help with anger management (and will her boyfriend grow a pair)?
-How will the network follow this show? Will we have a bunch of trash-talking Pittsburghers living in a Mt. Washington house with a hot tub and a nitrous tank and lots of balloons and Iron City Beer?
-Or maybe there’s room for a show based in the Outer Banks, with a bunch of drawling, drunken white-bread Southerners on the horizon?
Stay tuned. And no bathroom breaks—you might miss a fistfight.

Penn Lincoln Hotel Uses Studied by PHLF

2009-12-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

Walking with Mario Noce around the Penn Lincoln Hotel in Wilkinsburg 4½ years ago, I was struck by the beautiful art deco light fixtures, wrought iron railings and the spacious ballroom that once hosted weddings and other affairs.
At the time the 70,000 square foot building had been empty for 13 years, but Noce was undeterred, and was having workers renovate the building’s lower floors. Since then, Noce has sold his stake in the building to Wilkinsburg nonprofit Deliverance, Inc. Under the direction of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation and with $75,000 in funding from Allegheny County, the three groups are working together on a feasibility study to see what can be done with the historic building.
PHLF has been involved in the effort for about a year and recently selected one consultant for the study, which will be done in about six months, PHLF director Arthur Zeigler said.
The hotel project came out of discussions PHLF has had with borough stakeholders about the town’s various assets, Zeigler said.
The hotel is just one of the projects the foundation is working on in the borough. PHLF is working to revitalize structures along Hamnet Place and also along Holland Avenue in the borough. The hotel building was built in 1927 and hosted the Pitt Panthers football team in the 1950s. Back then, the team would stay at the hotel on Friday evenings before home games.
“It is the largest and one of the most historic buildings along the main street in Wilkinsburg,” Zeigler said, noting that Penn Avenue in that area also was the former Lincoln Highway.
The feasibility study, contracted with PHLF by the county, will include architectural, engineering, environmental and marketing evaluations of the building. It also will determine possible uses for the structure, which Noce previously had hoped to convert to housing for senior citizens.
"This was a nice place," Noce said when I met him at the hotel years ago. "I saw Mike Ditka [as a Panther] coming out of here." Noce's sisters had their wedding receptions in the hotel's 1,600-square-foot ballroom years ago, too.

The Truth about Donuts and Journalism

2009-12-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

I am unveiling a trade secret: I have my addiction to donuts to blame for some of the stories I pull out of my old hometown of Bellevue. I stop into the town with some regularity to get donuts from Lincoln Bakery, where as a kid I used to buy a dozen glazed donuts after delivering the Post-Gazette on Saturday mornings, then take them home and eat several, gorging myself with the sweet dough, washed down by large glasses of cold milk.
To me, Lincoln Bakery’s donuts—all of them—are like the cookie and tea were to Proust—the sight, smell and texture all combine in the first, second and third bites and sips that take me home again, to being a worriless kid finishing up my paper route on the rain-swept streets of Bellevue. Wherever I am, just a bite of one of those sweet Lincoln donuts and I’m home.
So I stop into the old hometown when I am in the North Hills area and occasionally for work visits. I was dropping into town for donuts several weeks back when I parked my car and ran into Sam DiBattista, owner of Vivo and former owner of the now bank-owned (it was foreclosed upon) former G. C. Murphy Building. He was coming out the building’s front door as I was walking across the street to go to the bakery. Sam has been a great source for stories for me in the past and I consider him a friend whom I wish well, so of course I stopped to talk with him.
I knew and know that though I might not always agree with Sam, I can trust him to plainly speak his mind. This time I spoke with him, though, Sam wasn’t in a good mood, having lost the building and having his own troubles with his restaurant, where he said business has been slow. We talked for a while and later I phoned him and we talked some more. He had a cold when I spoke with him over the phone, and that interview was part of the basis for the Post-Gazette story I wrote titled “What to do about Bellevue.”
Another journo trade secret: In walking through my old hometown, or in walking through any town where I might find stories, I have my news radar on. If someone walks up to me and tells me a story, as Sam did, I naturally pull out my notebook and start writing. That’s what I did when I talked with Sam on the street.
Some of what Sam told me at the time was disturbing, so I followed it up by speaking with a couple of merchants across the street from the old G.C. Murphy—Lincoln Barbershop owner Aaron Stubna and Larry’s Collectibles owner Larry Wilson.
“You would laugh,” Sam said ruefully of Wilson’s alleged struggles with the zoning office.
I went across the street, but Larry had so much to say that I had to call him later to get more of the information from him. While we spoke in person, Larry told me to talk with his business next door neighbor—Stubna.
Aaron told me about his then-plan (now instituted marketing device) of giving away two beers to customers as a way to draw in new business. A couple weeks later, the Post-Gazette’s John Allison wrote a little ditty about Stubna’s beer give-away. Allison got the idea for the piece from a PG photographer who was in Bellevue and had read a sign regarding the promotion on the front of the barbershop.
The negative comments coming from the three aforementioned merchants weren’t ad-libbed by me in either of the two stories I recently did about Bellevue's business district. The second piece is “Revitalization plan first step for Bellevue."
The merchants said their pieces and I recorded them, because that’s what reporters do. I have been criticized by some who believe I needlessly criticize Bellevue, but I am just doing my job.
The fact is, though, when we reporters are taken from the evil machines which conceive us out-of-wedlock, we are implanted with small devices behind our left ears that repeatedly offer helpful suggestions, like: “Listen to the little guy’s comments, no matter what,” and “If there is a crazy-man in the room, make sure you quote him.”
Trade secret three: We rabble-rousing reporters do it all because WE CARE—about getting our names into print. After 2,000 stories published in my name, I can’t get enough of it. For a writer, seeing your byline is like another hit to the drug addict, and we want the fix to never end, so we’re always looking for more stories.
We reporters learn early on that when everybody in the town council chambers says all is hunky dory and one little lady stands up to beg to differ with the crowd—Presto! We have a story!
Part of the reason is because the crowd is rarely entirely right, which is why the dissenting voice always should be heard, if not thoughtfully considered, simply because these folks are right at least part of the time.
That’s how some of these stories come together. They often are a “found art” sort of process of discovery.

A Christmas Production, by Danny O’Leary

2009-12-17T11:51:00.000-08:00

Self-absorbed writer's note: I wrote this holiday piece a couple years back and posted it here on Barnestormin, but I was reminded of it this summer when I had the pleasure of going to a Northgate High School reunion (though I didn't finish there, and graduated from Kiski School). I ran into a lot of childhood friends, including Dan O'Leary, whom I hadn't seen for many years. It was like coming home, in a way. Dan and I are in the picture--we met for lunch in North Side after the reunion.

When I was an adolescent we used to go Christmas caroling. If it was snowing, with large snowflakes blowing wildly, it was an even better time to do so. Back when we were about 13, a group of 10 or 12 of us would walk around Bellevue, sometimes from door to door, singing carols to raise money for charity. Some of the times the money would go to benefit Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital, where my younger brother Pete had recuperated after being hit by a car and nearly killed six years before. That fact alone might have been part of the reason why I was so easily suckered into going caroling, when I would’ve rather have been raising Cain somewhere. The other reason I was so easily convinced was that the girls were involved. Danny O’Leary, who lived a few blocks away from me and whose mom was our Cub Scouts den mother, seemed to always be the ringleader of our caroling expeditions. Like some salesman of the art of performing, Danny would talk a bunch of us childhood friends into doing something selfless and fun for Christmas. For a time, he always succeeded in getting us to go caroling, and now I look back at the memory as sort of a quaint reminder of a bygone era—back when milk was delivered to our doorsteps in the morning, and when kids delivered the daily newspaper. Even back then, at least some of us thought that caroling was corny, but Danny could sell it. “It’ll be fun!” Danny would say, wide-eyed and grinning, his enthusiasm reminding me of how he had led our childhood games of Planet of the Apes years before, hanging off of tree branches and acting the perfect monkey. “And we’ll raise money for charity! It’ll be great!” Danny’s charm would invariably talk me into going, and soon I’d be singing harmony with Penny Balouris, Kim Stewart, Karen Ehlinger, Pete Sourlas and other kids I’d known since kindergarten. We’d walk up the steps to the front porches of the old Victorian homes in Bellevue and ring the doorbells, sometimes anxiously beginning to sing just after we rang the doorbell, other times waiting for the homeowners to open the front door before we started. Bundled up in out thick wool coats and scarves with the soft snowflakes falling, we almost looked like a greeting card scene as we sang “Hark the herald angels sing” and other well known tunes. Most often, people would hear us out for our first song, then we’d tell them we were singing for charity. Usually, they’d give us a donation and we’d sing another song or two. I can still recall the kindly smiles on some of these folks’ faces as they watched us sing, noticing how our harmony was perfect and our delivery was nearly professional. For some of the old ladies, it was no doubt the first visitors they’d had all day—a sad fact that we realized as we moved from home to home, spreading our Christmas cheer. Danny had a lot to do with the entire productions. He would warm us up and go over a song plan before we began to carol. We’d loosen up a bit as we began to sing together, hearing again how well we harmonized. “We sound good,” Danny would coach us. “They’re going to love us.” Danny went on to study musical theater at Point Park. Last time I heard about him, years ago, he was working as an actor in off-Broadway productions. Back when we were Christmas caroling, though, Danny was the star.

R.I.P., Honsman

2009-12-16T13:37:00.000-08:00

Wow. I used to enjoy his angry scowl on his TV show on weekday mornings, taking pleasure in Fred Honsberger’s displeasure at all sorts of things. I rarely agreed with him, but sometimes I actually found myself nodding along with the Honsman, finding something he said to be on-target, all my leftie views be damned.
So I guess I am one of the last to learn of the death of local radio/TV personality Fred Honsberger, whose angry conservative indignation made Rush Limbaugh look like a wimp. Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato's office let me know, with Onorato stating:
"This region has lost a broadcasting icon and a great independent voice for our region. I had the pleasure and honor of working with Fred my entire political career and whether you agreed or disagreed with him, he was always fair and a consummate professional. We will all miss Fred and our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.”
I liked the Honsman, though a lot of his politics weren't to my taste. In fact, one of the first blogs I ever wrote was about calling in Honsberger’s talk show. I posted “Joining The Conversation” in June 2005, so I guess you could truly say that Honsman actually inspired me. In homage to Honsman, I have reprinted the piece here:
Joining The Conversation
Under the influence of too much coffee in the morning, I sometimes say or write things I wish I hadn’t. The other day it wasn’t the coffee that had me out-of-sorts—I think the late dinner I’d eaten the night before had made me fuzzy.
So while tuning into Fred Honsberger Live, which is my favorite television show to hate, I acted a bit impulsively and called up “The Honsman.” I called despite my better judgment, and despite the fact that I never call talk shows.
While I disagree with mostly everything Honsberger says on-air, and I have been known to pitch a liberal’s fit while listening to him talk, for some time I have taken a perverse joy in occasionally watching his show. I can only attribute that enjoyment to a desire to hear people yell at each other in argument, which brings back warm memories for me, because that’s how I grew up eating dinner with my family.
Also, I had covered Lynn Swann’s press conference the day before, and I wondered what Republicans thought about the possibility of Swann becoming a gubernatorial candidate. Not having a Republican sibling handy to ask about a Super Steeler governor, I called Honsberger. Perhaps it’s not surprising, since I recently started my own weblog.
* * *
I capitulated. I got tired of all the attention bloggers have been getting, so I started my own.
A couple weeks back I joined the blogosphere by getting my own punk pulpit. I now am a member of the dorky world of webloggers, and I can’t say I’m exactly comfortable with my new affiliation.
My friend Geoff confirmed my discomfiting suspicions when he responded to my e-mail announcing the launch of my blog.
“You e-writing weenie!” he wrote.
As a journalist, I have learned to check out blogs to look for news tidbits, but I have been wary of joining the blogosphere. I will admit that I have been thinking about it for a long time, though. I just didn’t like the idea of being part of the world that enables people to make unfair personal attacks on individuals. I didn’t want be considered like one of those nerds who lambastes others on his blog, using the medium against those he hates.
Leaping into the blogosphere was an act of faith, because over the years I’ve developed a mistrust of blogging. I have been insulted online by at least one blogger who personally attacked me in a few instances.
Full disclsure: I was attacked for having been in public relations at one time, and also for supporting the plan that built two sports stadiums on the North Side. Some people in Pittsburgh can’t get over the fact that those stadiums were built. Because of my stance on the issue, I have been called everything from a “hack” to “unethical.”
Still, I figured a blog would give me a place to publish essays that I have been writing that wouldn’t fit into other publications. I felt that a blog also hopefully would, to some degree, bring me into the ongoing conversation happening in the blogosphere.
While I was commenting indiscreetly on a blog titled “The Conversation,” an anonymous poster attacked me. This pusillanimous poster tried to smear me with the same lies that another blogger once had employed. The right-winger Honsberger treated me more respectfully than I was treated by a fellow blogger who also is opposed to the Drug War, but afraid to sign his name to the statement.
* * *
Maybe it was the mind-addling effect of too many pasta calories still dumbing me down from the prior evening that made me call. I can’t really explain it, except to say that for some strange reason, I couldn’t resist jumping into the argument.
My call was patched through almost immediately.
“I’m from the left side of the world…” I began, in a voice softer and more timid than I expected, realizing suddenly that I was out of my element. I asked Honsberger what he thought of Swann, an “incredible athlete,” possibly running for governor, and if he thought the former Steeler had much of a chance of becoming governor.
Honsberger responded sneeringly that he also thought Swann was an “incredible athlete” and that Swann stood a good chance of winning if he decided to run for governor.
“What do you think of him running?” Honsberger asked me.
“I think it’s interesting,” I said in an uncharacteristically soft voice. He went on to complain about how lousy the governor had been performing, and about how many people Rendell has pardoned since he took office.
I realized Hons wanted a fight, but though I am pugnacious by nature, I didn’t feel so confident, since television and radio are his “neighborhood,” so to speak. I let him talk, without adding much, and I thanked him for his thoughts and hung up.
I had joined the conversation and become one of those “cranks” that you hear on the radio or television. It was a natural step, after starting my blog.

Lamar Advertising Could Save St. Nicholas

2009-12-07T11:22:00.001-08:00

It’s an old journalism axiom that when writing a story, a reporter should always get a second source. Another rule is that a journalist should work to confirm the veracity of information before going to press with it in a story. That fact alone is often what separates blogs from real journalism—publishing verified facts versus rumors.
Recently I acted like one of those jagoff bloggers out there and jumped to a conclusion in e-print, for the world to see. After catching a brief TV news story on St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in the North Side possibly being sold to Lamar Advertising, who supposedly would tear down the building, I went off half-cocked and wrote a piece for Barnestormin in which I said Lamar must hate Christians and Croatians.
I should’ve known the company wouldn’t be iconoclasts in this matter. I actually thought to myself that it made no sense that an advertising firm would invite such public ill will, since of course, advertisers know all about image-making. I thought of calling Lamar for an interview, but I was angry and hot to write my story, “A Multi-hued Capitalistic Glow.” I have since removed the piece, because I was embarrassed at the falseness of it and I didn’t want to continue to cast any pall on Lamar’s reputation.
I couldn’t have been more wrong with the now-yanked blog story. And though I had expected a reaction from the piece, I am embarrassed that I so wrongly depicted Lamar Advertising’s motivations in wanting to buy the church. It turns out that Lamar could be the savior of St. Nicholas, just in time for Christmas.
Stan Geier, vice- president and general manager of Lamar Advertising, sent me an email to let me know that I got it all wrong and to appeal to my sense of Christian brotherhood to do the right thing. He said he is meeting with members of the North Side Leadership Conference, the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance and Preserve Croatian Heritage this week, with the goal of finding a way to preserve the church.
“All I need is a three-foot diameter area to relocate one of the forty nine billboards that PennDOT is taking. I have never intended to knock down the church, simply to find a home for one of the forty nine billboards impacted by the expansion of the state’s Rt. 28 project,” Geier said. “I have 70 employees that count on their jobs to feed their families. Losing 49 billboards could affect some jobs. Relocating just one billboard to a viable location like the St. Nicholas Church property could preserve a job for one of my employees. That’s why I bought the property.”
In explanation, but not as an excuse, I will say that I was quick to jump the gun about the church because I am emotionally vested in the issue and a little bit hurt by how it has been handled. I have been told by representatives of the Pittsburgh Diocese in the past that the Diocese would like to see the oldest Croatian church in the Western Hemisphere torn down, and that has clouded my perspective on this issue. The added hurt I feel at seeing some of the attitudes of the St. Nicholas Millvale church people, some of whom seem immune to their Croatian kin’s pain in having their old church and its sacred objects in limbo, also is disheartening.
But I am hopeful that Stan Geier, Lamar Advertising and the preservationists can come up with a plan all parties can agree on to save St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church. Godspeed, folks.

Barnestormin’s Gone Literary

2009-11-28T16:51:00.000-08:00

I hate to brag, unless I am trying to impress you. Even so, I’ve been a bit reluctant about telling my faithful Barnestormin readers that I’ve managed to “sell” a couple more of my blog-published essays to other publications.
I put “sell” in parentheses because in this case I didn’t actually get paid for publishing the pieces elsewhere as I have with stories I’ve re-printed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Magazine and other publications. But I did get some folks over at the online literary journal Sampsonia Way interested enough in my Sago Mine essay “The Other Side of the Pittsburgh Seam” to publish it in their journal.
For Sampsonia Way I also had my friend, Pittsburgh Tribune Review photographer Chaz Palla take my mug shot. I put the photo up on the blog, so those who don't know me get to see my handsome mug. The wind was blowing when the photo was shot, but that doesn’t explain how hunky my eyes look; I have no explanation for it, other than my Croatian heritage.
It’s not the first time I have had essays published in a journal—I have published a few of them in TPQ Online, the online version of literary journal The Pittsburgh Quarterly (not to be confused with the glossy magazine known as Pittsburgh Quarterly, which began after TPQ). I also have had my essays published in Philadelphia Weekly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Engineering News-Record magazine and elsewhere.
I have my friend author Hilary Masters in part to thank for the appearance in Sampsonia Way, since he recommended me to them as a Pittsburgh writer whose work might run with his in the same issue of the journal. Sampsonia Way publishes mostly international writers, but likes to publish a couple of Pittsburgh writers in each issue—an old pro like Masters, and an “emerging” writer, like me. (I do like to emerge from my cave-like dwelling occasionally, to get coffee and other essentials.)
Hilary has a couple of new, critically acclaimed books on the market now—“In Rooms of Memory,” a collection of essays, and “Elegy for Sam Emerson,” a novel. Masters' wife, author Kathleen George, also has a new book out—“The Odds,” which also has gotten great reviews. The novel is the fourth in a series she has written, and the setting is Pittsburgh. Places in the North Side and East End will be recognizable to readers of “The Odds.”
I also recently had my Barnestormin original humor essay “At The Salon” published in another online, Pittsburgh-based publication. The publication also is named after a thoroughfare: Ophelia Street.
Obviously, I am trying to raise my profile a bit; to put a few more planks in the platform, so to speak. Again, thanks to Ophelia Street, Sampsonia Way publisher Henry Reese and others at that publication, TPQ Online, and all of the wonderful people who currently publish my work. And to those who are interested in what I’m offering, please keep reading.

How We Survived Alternate Reality Television

2009-11-09T10:06:00.001-08:00

The kids in our family were born too early. We had to suffer the Rust Belt Depression of the 1980s without a Reality Television show to bail us out. I’ll admit, when were younger we daydreamed of living in a Brady Bunch-style house, but we knew it was just musing. Maybe if we had been born several years later, things would have been different.
If the Barnes Dozen had their own show, it wouldn’t have been something ridiculous like "Growing Up Gotti" or "Jon & Kate Plus Eight." It would’ve been more refined, especially since my parents were raising eight boys and four girls on my father’s engineer salary. Anything could happen in that old Pittsburgh Victorian house, crammed with 12 kids and led by Born Again Christian parents Harvey and Joanne Barnes…
VOICEOVER: “This week on A Barnes Dozen…”
-Camera angle over shoulders of boys giggling, facing an open window
-Cut to-
-Mother Joanne Barnes answering the kitchen phone and speaking with neighbor Naomi Rittenhouse, who says: “Your sons are urinating out the third-floor window again.”
-Cut to-
-Joanne clutching a wooden-handled broom, chasing two sons around the dining room, swinging wildly at them and connecting at times.
“Stand still!” she yells.
* * *
Ah, the good old days of sharing two bathrooms with 13 people. We should’ve been stars with a TV show, but unfortunately, Reality TV wasn’t even a greedy notion in a producer’s mind back then. My parents struggled financially because they had so many kids, but that shared hardship and close living also created lots of opportunities for memories that we kids, now long grown, pass on in our own ways.
I bring this up because of the recent bad press on Jon and Kate Goselin, who are inextricably linked forever because of their dubious celebrity. Lately they have consumed themselves with mudslinging, and their kids are no doubt the worse for it. I pity the kids and their parents, who apparently were striving to make a good life for their family and destroyed their marriage in the process. I wonder if it would have been better for them if they had continued to struggle financially, at least somewhat. I doubt it.
One thing that’s clear to me is that the Goselin children shouldn’t have been allowed to be on their own TV show, because they are too young to consent to being on a reality TV show and they aren’t a family of performers like the Osmonds or Jacksons, who, like carnies and circus folk, got their professions by birth.
There should be an age of consent for allowing a child to be on TV or in movies because there is no approximating the damage that early celebrity or unwanted celebrity can have on a person. If you don’t believe me, look no further than Danny Bonaduci or Leif Garret, or more recently, Hulk Hogan’s kids. If the child is not at least, say, 15, perhaps he should not be allowed to consent to appearing in such a show. And maybe nobody else should be able to give that consent, either.
This all seems obvious to me, not simply because I can see that children are being exploited and consequently warped on television, but also because I have a bit of personal experience in this area. In 1983, not long after my father lost his job as a civil engineer for U.S. Steel, our family was on TV. We were on a show that I would now peg as “alternate reality” television—the 700 Club.
Dad had gone through a stretch of unemployment after losing his job. Then after praying, he’d finally gotten some work and was doing pretty well again, at least for the moment. Feeling buoyant, as was part of his spirit, Dad answered the 700 Club’s call to tell them how prayer had changed his life.
When he told us kids we’d be on the show, some of us remarked, “Well at least it’s not the PTL Club.” We affectionately referred to that show as the Pass The Loot Club.
Then all of a sudden, a camera crew was on our doorstep. They filmed Dad giving his story, and they filmed all of us in our Dad-led early morning Devotions, which was a routine my father had instituted around that time.
The 700 Club story on us was a short, upbeat piece, with not too much footage. I remember seeing us kids all looking tired and sitting on the couch, Bibles in laps. I know that after seeing the story, I, and some of the other kids, felt used.
The story didn’t seem to be the truth to me at the time, and still doesn’t. I remember being skeptical about the relationship between prayer and Dad getting some work, which hadn’t exactly changed our lifestyle. The tenuousness of our situation hadn’t changed, and this fact I knew in my gut at the time. Harve was in his fifties and nobody wanted to hire him on for good because of his age, experience and salary level.
Though I know Harve didn't intend it, the 700 Club story on my family made me feel like I was part of a lie. But the worst part was that the fiction was not my creation, and I resented it. Soon, the Goselin kids will feel the same way.

Jonathan Barnes is a Pittsburgh freelance writer. Email him at pittsburghreporter@yahoo.com.

A New Nobility

2009-11-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

A minute after one of the black-clad anarchists was snatched by two guys in fatigues, hustled into an SUV and driven away, the crowd of G-20 protestors milled around the intersection of Baum Boulevard and Enfield Street. The usually busy boulevard was deserted, save a few hundred protestors and hundreds of riot-ready cops who’d closed the streets and were converging from two directions on the protestors.
The dissenters didn’t know what to do and retreated up Enfield towards Bloomfield proper, scattering from police. The cops had begun to move more quickly and were trotting behind.
“They’re charging us!” protestors said, and the crowd began to run in panic. I sprinted to the front of the group as it went through Khalil’s Restaurant’s parking lot, and passed Khalil, who shook his head.
“No, it’s not O.K. to come through here,” he said.
I don’t really know who Elliot Madison is, but allegedly he may have been texting marching orders to some of the folks in the crowd I was running with as I covered the protest for Reuters. Madison and a compatriot were charged with crimes including Hindering Apprehension, charges which recently were dismissed by police, but I wonder if he isn’t just another fly, who the system New Nobility system attempted to smash to smithereens.
Using batons, tear gas, armored vehicles, police dogs and other sledgehammer-like tools, Pittsburgh Police, ATF officials, Pennsylvania State Police and other lawmen deputized ostensibly to prevent chaos during the protests ended up causing more trouble than their time-and-a-half paychecks warranted. I say this because the ugly militarization of Pittsburgh’s streets on the afternoon of G20 Day One that I witnessed only got worse that evening and the next, when police arrested masses of protestors and even college students exiting restaurants or trying to get back home.
Welcome to G20 land, where the Constitution is suspended and the Law Class has special rights—like the titled nobility our forefathers rebelled against. How is it that an idea of freedom can be bastardized into the majority’s tacit approval of military-controlled streets?
These police overreactions were supposedlly meant to keep order during the recent G20 Summit in Pittsburgh. The irony was that the meeting of the most entrenched of old boy’s clubs, in a city so bankrupt that it has sold off some of its utilities and still can’t manage to keep its public park restrooms in working order, seemed like the height of effrontery to many Pittsburghers. The city is still climbing back from the Rust Belt Depression of the 1980s, and President Obama and other world leaders are talking about the wonderful recovery the Steel City has made.
Who's zoomin who?

Hindering Comprehension

2009-10-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

New Yorker Elliot Madison recently was charged with Hindering Apprehension and other crimes for using Twitter to inform protestors about police movements during anti-G-20 Summit demonstrations in Pittsburgh. Police found Madison and another protestor allegedly directing their comrades via computer in a suburban Pittsburgh hotel room on the first day of the Summit.
As a Reuters freelancer I covered some of the protests, and I’m wondering why police were allowed to hinder my comprehension of what was happening. Their RoboCop-sounding message threatened everyone present with arrest and physical action by officers, and warned:
"No matter what your purpose, you must disperse."
Blasted over a military-issue PA system that was mounted atop an armored police vehicle, the message was serious enough for many journalists to lose enthusiasm for the humid march on G-20 Day One. Just after that day’s first protestor-police clashes, a large Wall Street Journal reporter huddled close to a couple in their yard as riot police stormed past.
“They can’t arrest you on private property,” he said to me.
“We’re protecting him,” the couple said.
Later, at 5 p.m., after more than two hours of cat-and-mouse between protestors and officers, police again chased protestors—this time, ironically, near Liberty Avenue, in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield section.
“Get out of the street!” a shotgun-armed officer shouted at a CNN journalist near him. She collapsed on her haunches.
I was nervously reporting on the scene, while trying to evade police. Several journalists weren’t as lucky and were arrested during the protests. But dodging the cops while trying to work made me wonder how we can hinder or stop reporters from covering news and still have a truly free press.
Police texted each other during the G-20 marches, protestors tweeted one another and reporters texted and phoned their peers while being threatened for doing so. The Internet has changed the political game, but our law officers, and our laws, are slow to reflect the anarchic freedom and immediacy of the Texting Age.
Even so, you can’t harass, threaten and arrest journalists for covering news, then say you have a free press. When journalists cannot freely report news happening on the street, those scenes will lack objective eyewitnesses to give the details of what happened. Without journalists covering such incidents, whose job will it be to tell the entire truth about them?

No matter what your purpose

2009-09-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

Nature’s wisdom at times is unquestionable, like with the milder temperatures we’re having in Pittsburgh. The unseasonable weather seems a cooler-heads-prevail time, following an angry and angst-filled period during which Pittsburgh hosted the G-20 summit. The weather cooperated for the event, meaning it was hot part of last week, with the Pittsburgh humidity thicker than the bullshit in city government.
During the protests on Thursday it was humid and uncomfortable as Pittsburgh summers can be, but hot weather makes tempers flare. Running with those protesters, I literally soaked the top half of my shirt with sweat. I looked terrible, when about two minutes after the cops shot the gas around 32nd Street I was retreating with the crowd and ran into former Pulp newspaper editor Geoff Kelly. I gave him a big hug and he was half seat-soaked himself.
But the thing that has me thinking is the vague, not-quite-formed thought that ran through my head a couple times on Thursday as I was following the Black Clad Rapscallions.
How can I cover this if you’re going to arrest me? I wondered.
I tried my best to cover the protests on Thursday, but I was hampered by the fact that I was trying to duck the cops, who at times were running after us. At one point closer to the end of the hours-long march on Thursday afternoon, the police chased a group of protestors I was with through the parking lot of Khalil’s restaurant in Bloomfield.
“They’re charging us! They’re charging!” people yelled, and everyone began to run in panic. I looked over my shoulder and the military or whoever these stormtrooper-looking guys were indeed were close on our heels. I ran faster, to the front of the crowd, as someone said “Don’t run!”
As I sprinted to the front of the group, I passed Khalil. He was shaking his head at the protestors.
“No, don’t come through here, it’s not OK,” he said.
A lot of reporters covering the somewhat violent protests, which were nothing compared to an impromptu, student-led Steelers or Panthers victory celebration in the streets of Oakland, also had mixed feelings about their situation. They didn’t want to go to jail, either.
Running up Denny Way I think it was, after the cops appeared out of their armored vehicle in front of me, I saw a Wall Street Journal reporter I’d met, hiding behind a front yard chain-link fence, standing close to two residents who owned the place. He was about six feet three inches tall and not slight.
“We’re protecting him,” the couple said.
How can a reporter do his job when the government says doing so will get him thrown in the clink? But it’s not even that simple, or so benign.
We’re talking about a government that blasts high-pitched, deafening whistles meant to disperse crowds while ordering over a loudspeaker in a computer-generated creepy Robo Cop-sounding voice:
By order of City of Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper
You are in a restricted area
You are hereby ordered to disperse
No matter what your purpose, you must disperse
Failure to disperse could make you subject to arrest or other police action
That could result in injury
We have a free press, but reporters who are covering a protest will be arrested or roughed-up if they do their jobs? Sadie Gurman of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and five other journalists were arrested during the melee in Oakland on Friday night. Two of the journalists are from Minneapolis-based Twin Cities Indymedia, including Nigel Parry, who said at a press conference yesterday at Thomas Merton Center that the police tactics follow a pattern of unconstitutional methods used by police to harass protestors in the days leading up to and during the G-20 summit.
“Police responded to the demonstrations with riot control equipment including batons, tear gas, pepper spray, percussion grenades, and Long Range Acoustic Device used by the New York City Police Department during the 2004 Republican National Convention,” said a press release put out by Twin Cities Indymedia, Thomas Merton Center, and Glassbead Collective NYC.
The acoustic device was used by the military to disperse crowds in Iraq, according to the press release.
“Pre-recorded dispersal orders including the phrase ‘no matter what your purpose’ were blasted from police loudspeakers in crowded public spaces, making it clear that anyone who stayed in the areas following the warnings would be in danger of riot control weapons and arrest—including journalists,” the release said.
Melissa Hill, a reporter for Twin Cities Indymedia, had her camera broken and footage confiscated while being arrested Friday night by Pittsburgh Police. She hasn’t gotten her tape back.
Among the others arrested were Dominic Dimauro, a freelance journalist who had his camera confiscated and was charged with Obstruction of Justice and Failure to Disperse. Freelance cameraman Tom Larkin had his camera damaged by an impact round, and while he was he filming, he was punched in the face by a policeman. Keith DeVries, a member of Pittsburgh Filmmakers and a University of Pittsburgh student, had his camera destroyed as police tried to confiscate his tape following his arrest. He was charged with Failure to Disperse, and was part of a mass arrest on the lawn of the Cathedral of Learning.
The Thomas Merton Center, ACLU and some of the individuals who were arrested (100 were arrested Friday night) intend to sue the City of Pittsburgh and others, including the University of Pittsburgh.
The thought of more costs to Pittsburgh reminded me of some of the comments of protestors during marches last week: “This city is bankrupt, and it’s putting on a $20 million party,” some said.
Pete Shell, a member of the Thomas Merton Center, said the police actions on Friday night were a stark contrast to the G-20 protest march earlier. “We had a peaceful and legal march of 8,000, and hours later it was the police who acted violently and unlawfully,” he said.
Twin Cities Indymedia and Glassbead Collective were the core part of the team that made the documentary “Terrorizing Dissent,” about the 2008 Republican National Convention. According to Twin Cities Indymedia, during the Republican convention, which TCI said was the last major political gathering to get a “National Special Security Event” designation, a similar pattern of police and security overkill happened before, during and after the event as happened here in Pittsburgh.
“We are left with many questions about the state of freedom in America, about the casual and indiscriminate use of police violence and authority in non-riot situations as standard practice, and about a society that accepts the militarization of its cities in the name of ‘security,’” the press release finished.
I’m wondering about it, too.

The Unofficial G20 March

2009-09-26T15:37:00.001-07:00

In Lawrenceville around 34th Street on Thursday when the riot police were chasing us from one end of the alley we’d just run up and more of them appeared in front of us at the other end of the alley, I thought I could be arrested right then, since cops were piling out of armored vehicles in front of me. They passed me, chasing after the real protestors, as some of the neighborhood people on their porches and in their yards yelled encouragement to the militarized police.
It was like they were cheering the home team. I rooted for another home team that day—the protesters—because I can’t imagine any other course but to object to the status quo now, given the economic situation and the disparities the majority is being forced to fund.
So I wore an all-black polo-style shirt on Thursday for the Unofficial G20 March, in a smartass sort of way but also because I wanted the home team to win, and they wear black, no gold. I don’t agree with all the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance, P.O.G. or Thomas Merton Center or whoever the main group of protesters were stand for, but I am appreciative of their efforts to confront those they say are oppressing others.
Two days later, I can still hear the Black Garbed Mob chant:
“Anti. Anti. Anti-Capitalista!” they said over and over again.
The group, most of which aren’t football-player-sized and many of whom are women, got up practically in the grills of the cops. While I know it isn’t right or fair to destroy windows of businesses because you hate them, I don’t think those actions represent the bulk of the group’s behavior, which while being confrontational, seemed lawful enough so that many people joined them out of curiosity, swelling their ranks.
Let’s be straight up about it: Multi-national corporations, “Free Trade,” and other organizations and policies are hurting Americans and other people throughout the world, and you don’t have to be a Commie to say it. Example: Alcoa closes aluminum smelters in North America, while simultaneously building a smelter on the edge of a pristine glacier in Iceland—a setup that also will include a hydroelectric plant to service the smelter and many residents, so a lot of folks there are all for it. Global conglomerate A.B.B. seeks to cap its asbestos-related liability, successfully cutting future claimants out of the payment pie for asbestos-related deaths and health problems. PNC Bank wins, and many other banks lose, because PNC was picked as the winner. Steel industry executives sell out themselves and the entire industry for a few more short-term profits, buying steel from foreign competitors and neglecting capital improvements, killing the once-dominant Golden Goose-like U.S. steel industry. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are gone almost overnight, and a standard of living and a part of the middle class vanishes along with the jobs, depressing wages for generations.
*************************************************************************************
“They’re just college students,” said the bald, middle-aged looking guy wearing a white polo shirt and khakis. He shook his head. We were watching the growing crowd of protestors in front of Carlow University on Friday afternoon, checking the human tapestry of the folks there. But I got his meaning: They’re kids and they don’t know shit.
“College students don’t have opinions?” I asked. He didn’t respond.
“Were you a college student?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t you have opinions when you were in college?”
“Yeah, but…”
I’m thinking of that exchange because so many people want to marginalize the actions, beliefs and issues associated with Thursday and Friday’s protests, and say it was just a bunch of college kids, or rich boys from Mt. Lebo, St. Clair or Shaker Heights, so what they hell do they know anyway?
Of course Friday’s Big G-20 March was a stew of beefs, causes and convictions, with a healthy smattering of crazies. It went off well, except that the cops looked like military. Most everyone played their part in this human drama practically scripted from earlier confrontations. Still, it was fascinating to see.
But back to the guy by Carlow University. His perspective reminded me of comments of many Pittsburghers regarding the marchers, like the near-altercation that happened in Bloomfield between a hard-looking, heavy-set middle-aged gal and a group of black-clad protesters right after nearby businesses had some windows smashed.
“Get a job!” the gruff-voiced gal shouted at them.
Clearly there’s an age and sometimes a class difference that is perceived by other Pittsburghers when they see these protesters in action. That could be one of the divides that must be bridged before these protesters can be embraced by more of the working class and middle class. But some people will never be convinced that such protests are anything but a nuisance.
“They were like a bunch of little ants, scattering when the police came up,” said Smarty Huffing, a local reporter who has the neo-con bully pulpit of Pittsburgh’s best news radio station. At a different point during his show, he said: “They’re just kids. You want to give them a hug and tell them to go home and take a bath.”
The conversation that opened my eyes was a talk I had with a middle-aged white guy wearing a black Steelers shirt, which is practically an all-occasions-acceptable uniform in Steelers Country. He and some black-clad friends and others had followed Saturday’s march, and I was walking back through Bloomfield with them for a bit.
“I was worried for a second that I might get it from the cops, because I’m wearing a black shirt,” I confessed to the guy.
“They wouldn’t if it said ‘Steelers’ on it,” he said, tugging on his shirt.
“I’m kind of more on the side of the protesters than the cops, in this case,” I said.
“You are?” he said, looking surprised. “I’m not.”
“Why not? Aren’t you from Pittsburgh?” I asked. He said he was from here.
I judged him to be a few or so years older than me. “For short-term gain, they killed the steel industry,” I said.
“I know.”
“Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs and a whole class of people was gone.”
“Yeah, but what are you gonna do?”
I felt like saying, “Just continue to take whatever they dish out.” But I said nothing.

Militia Controlled Corridor

2009-09-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Standing high in the landscaped median in front of the Allegheny County Courthouse, we laughed with the crazy anarchist-peaceful-hippie-whatever protestors on the street in front of the Oliver Building side of Grant, dancing their heels off around a core of three garishly painted gals, flailing their limbs in joy. Their effusiveness was one extreme of the crowd, and juxtaposed to the angry, in-your-face brazenness of the Nameless Black Bandana Mob, it seemed to balance things some.
Counterpoints in the same crowd, the two groups were just planets flying in a galaxy of people representing causes, beliefs, grievances and interests of the 10,000 gathered on Grant Street, the heart of downtown Pittsburgh’s legal/governmental section. Lots of journalists in town for G-20, plus an equal number of attention-seekers in the crowd, such as an Abe Lincoln impersonator and a guy dressed in a Batman suit, added color and flair to the group.
At the starting point of the march in front of Carlow University, a reporter held a microphone to Faux Batman’s face, and asked: “What do you think of Christian Bale?”
It was a melting pot of malcontents and others, simmering and bubbling but never boiling. Wall-to-wall riot police along Grant Street and elsewhere along the parade route effectively cordoned activity into a militia-controlled corridor. The force included National Guardsmen and Pittsburgh Police, Port Authority of Allegheny County officers and Allegheny County Police, officers with the ATF, CIA and Pennsylvania State Police and cops from other parts of the nation. It seemed like a hell of a waste of a bunch of money spent on an occupying army in a free country.
The overwhelming force was offensive, but not as seemingly malevolent as police appeared the day before, when a much smaller group of protestors clashed with the armed forces, bashing a street barrier with a dumpster and being gassed in return. I wasn’t at the front of the crowd when that happened, because I was texting like a teenage girl. My boss wanted me to text him with info every half-hour, and more frequently if anything happened. As I was trying to do that, I’d fall behind as the Leaderless Mob ran up and down side streets in Bloomfield, Lawrenceville and the Strip District.
Back to grooving with the kids while they danced—in that lovely elevated stone-edged planter, looking at the dancers and hopping to the drum beat, I laughed with a guy standing next to me who also was enjoying the scene.
“Why’d you come here? Did you come out of curiosity or to protest?” I asked.
“Both,” contractor Mike Kelly said. “I’m a contractor…I work for rich people. And my wife can’t get health insurance…”
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the rest of Mike’s story, and I am sorry about that, because I know it is a powerful one and I missed the boat. But the point is that he is just one of many folks who went to the Big G20 March on Pittsburgh to have their say for a moment. That’s what made it so beautiful.
*************************************************************************************
I’m trying to tell Anne about how it felt to see the police occupying our city, to hear their Apocalyptic-sounding Robo Cop loudspeaker demanding that everyone disperse, upon penalty of arrest or worse.
It’s one thing to talk about jackbooted militarized police, about Guardsmen and cops from Alabama deputized to kick ass and not take names of locals and non-locals alike, and it’s an entirely different thing to be there to see, hear, and smell the scene—and to feel the bad vibes of it all.
“If you remain in this immediate vicinity, you are in violation of Pennsylvania Police criminal code,” the loudspeaker from the armored behemoth warned during the protest in Bloomfield on Thursday. The vehicle was about as big as a combine, and that’s why the cops nicknamed it the Hippie Harvester.
Taking in this scene, with riot-ready cops chasing people around and gassing them, it’s hard to not feel pissed as an American—that the police can treat people like this because they disagree with their beliefs. You start to feel very resentful about that police pressure.
“Why do they have to be so intimidating?” said a well-dressed lady in her sixties whom I met when she and a collared pastor from Greensburg allowed me to share a cab ride home with them afae Friday's march. The lady could’ve been one of the pastor’s parishioners, but she actually lives just blocks from me.
Seeing the police act like that can radicalize people, making freedom-loving Americans angry—like the contingent of folks who thronged to join the marchers as they traveled through Uptown and the Hill District.
Being Americans, most all of us feel in our hearts from birth (or from when we adopted this country) that being American isn’t about being Black, White or Latino, or about being rich or poor—or at least it shouldn’t be about these factors that for many are dependent upon the circumstances of their birth. Being truly American, we know in our hearts, is about doing the right thing by treating people fairly.
When some people can’t make a living because they are denied a living wage, that’s not fair and it aint American. When nations are oppressed ostensibly for liberty but truly for greed, that’s un-American. And when Americans are denied the right of free assembly, that is a sin.
You have to be there to feel it—to hear the heavy click-clack sound of leg protectors slapping boots stomping pavement, and the whack-whack of hundreds of Billy clubs against body armor. The message: Don’t even try to mess with us.
But who was this roving band of police protecting? They clearly were guarding the important stores, businesses and landmarks along the marcher's route. This was especially apparent in Uptown, where the troops formed protective barriers around particular buildings, and left the old beat-up and empty or nondescript storefronts and buildings unguarded.
Ted Haretos, a building owner in that section of town, watched the marchers bemusedly as he stood in front of his building along Fifth Avenue. “They have the right to protest,” he said.
Taylor Smith of Philadelphia, a member of the Peoples Caravan—a group of about two dozen demonstrators who traveled from Philly for the protest—said the Caravan is meant to connect grass roots organizations. “I think it’s undemocratic for the G-20 leaders to be meeting here,” he said.
Prague, Czech Republic native Jana Ridvanova held a sign that read: “Organize, occupy, fight for the right to work.” She was unabashed in her Socialism.
“I’m here to protest capitalism not only because it’s not working, but because capitalism is enslavement, through slave wages, and also murder, in Third World countries," Ridvanova said.
Members of the Green Party, Socialists, Communists, Palestinian activists, single-payer health care proponents, Free Tibet people, peace activists, Libertarians, and proselytizing Christians mixed together in the crowd, along with many others.
Dressed entirely in black, wearing a “Free Mumia” patch on her shirt, Denver-resident Renee Sandefer said she came to the Big G20 March because the people who caused the current economic crisis are here.
“Obama needs to be speaking to those who are suffering,” Sandefer said. “I want to be here in the streets because I’ll go home tonight and sleep easy because I tried. I support the people, not the bigwigs who caused the crisis.”
Perennial Pittsburgh activist Vincent Eirene said he came to the march to spread awareness of what G-20 is, and the effect it’s having. “It’s cutting labor laws, cutting environmental laws, and controlling people through loans,” he said.
Some protestors carried signs that read: "End Corporate Rule,” and “People Before Profit.”
Bail Out The People activist Larry Holmes led part of the crowd in chanting as they marched.
“When I say bailout you say people. Bailout!”
“People!”
“Bailout the people!”
“Not the banks!”
Pittsburgh resident and peace activist Jessica Benner directed the marchers at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Grant Street, waving them onto Grant. “We’re hoping for a people’s march combining many voices as one to protest G-20 policies,” she said.
Through it all the Black Garbed Mob carried their black standards and banners, chanting “Anti Capitalista!” At a few places they confronted police, forcing their black banner up to within feet of the occupying force while chanting their slogans. The cops were unmoved.
Within feet of the Black Garbed Mob was Ithaca, N.Y. native/CMU grad student Gwendolyn Barr. She was happy to share her views, which she said are based in her Evangelical Christian beliefs.
“Clearly the G-20 [attendees] won’t pay attention. But the world media will pay attention to the issues we care about and are raising here," Barr said. "The G-20 makes decisions that are good for their countries, and are devastating to third world countries.”

Up The G-20

2009-09-24T20:40:00.001-07:00

We were somewhere in the bottom of Lawrenceville when I heard the boom of police shotguns blasting tear-gas on the crowd. It took a minute or two before the gas wafted up the street, scratching my throat and burning my eyes. I think I get why P.O.G. wears those bandanas—not just to piss off Pittsburghers like me, I remember thinking.
It wasn’t quite midpoint through what was a several hour cat-and-mouse game protestors were playing with the police when I had the realization. Starting around 2:25 p.m. at Arsenal Park in Lawrenceville, a crowd ranging from about 600 to a few hundred marched their way around the city, passing through parts of Lawrenceville and the Strip District and Bloomfield, until an overwhelming force of police with German shepherds and batons, accompanied by National Guardsmen, ATF officers and others, bullied protestors from one location to another, finally fragmenting them and thinning the ranks of the leaderless mob.
I spent several hours running after the group, moving from one locale to another while I frantically texted notes to my editor Downtown.
“You must leave the immediate vicinity regardless of your purpose,” police told protestors through bullhorns.
While the tactics of the police, who were in full riot gear and outfitted with shiny wooden batons, could be construed as heavy-handed, some might call it restraint that nobody was beaten to a pulp. This is a huge advance for Pittsburgh police, after all. I remember when several years back (I am dating myself—it could’ve been 20 years back), Pittsburgh cops were laughing on camera as they punched gangly Deadheads while tossing them into the Paddy-wagon. To think that they could have disgusted looks on their faces (and some did) and that no doubt some wanted to do some beating, but there was little evidence of the beatings, seems in retrospect a victory for all. At one point, towards the end of the march, near Baum Boulevard on a side street, the cops did begin to charge after the leaderless mob; though I think they were just funnin.’
That was, of course, after some in the mob had smashed out a window in the BMW dealership along Baum, and after they’d smashed windows in a nearby KFC and a Boston Market and a Fidelity Bank around the corner. That was after they’d thrown rocks and bottles at cops earlier in the march, which was sponsored by the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project.
I wore a black polo-style shirt because it matched with the brown pants I was wearing, but also because I actually wanted to show a bit of solidarity with the protestors—not because I believe in all they do, but because I think more people should take up banners and protest, and precious few are doing so.
The world’s economies were ruined by Greedheads and not one of them went to jail for it. In fact, many were given bonuses to top off the booty they’d already plundered by making financial deals with a wink and a nod.
When it comes to discussing the G-20, we are talking about a system that has rewarded some of the most evil and corrupt people in the world. The current economic crisis is the direct result of the avarice and short-sightedness of some of the most privileged and powerful people in the world, and they all made more money off of the worldwide economic collapse. We let the foxes guard the henhouse, and after they ate all the hens and even the eggs, we gave them more hens.
But of course, I guess it depends upon your perspective—or on what side of the terlet you pee from, or the sign you were born under, perhaps.
Some of the residents living along the streets the protestors traveled today wore bemused looks, but others were disgusted and angry at the demonstrators.
“Fuck the G-20? That’s classy, and how does that help?” one angry middle-aged woman living along Friendship Avenue said as I walked past.
“So you disagree with the protestors, and what they’re marching for,” I said, fishing for quotes.
“What are they marching for?” she said indignantly.
“They’re marching because they believe the same people who caused the economic collapse are meeting here in Pittsburgh.”
“What economic collapse? Show me the economic collapse,” she said, waving her hands in the air as if the collapse would materialize if she mentioned it.

On The March

2009-09-24T07:21:00.001-07:00

Walking up to the “tent city” camping and protesting site along Wylie Avenue in the Hill District on Sunday afternoon, the first dissenter I ran into was a dreadlocked brother from Jersey City, New Jersey, who wore a charmed, if somewhat pissed smile. A postal service worker and a member of the Peoples Organization for Progress and Social Justice, Larry Adams was sitting on a side lot across from the main encampment, appearing ready for action prior to the March For Jobs.
“I came here to confront the organizers of the economic collapse. We’re not going to accept a jobless recovery. We’re here to say we need a new WPA [Works Projects Administration],” Adams said. “The crisis is dragging the standard of living of everyone down. The workers have nothing to lose.”
Adams said he was trying to help build the people’s ability to fight back against overwhelming forces.
“They brought the G-20 to Pittsburgh to piss in the eyes of the people of Pittsburgh—to propagate the lie of a model recovery,” Adams said. “This is the capital of the Rust Belt.”
He quoted Frederick Douglas, who said “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.’”
Adams noted that in the world he was fighting for, poor kids wouldn’t have to take out loans for college, and that housing, health care, and full employment also would be a reality.
I kept that thought in mind as I approached other strangers for quotes.
Detroit resident Antonio Cassone, an unemployed janitor who said he was fired for engaging in union activity, looked depressed. He had been employed by Detroit Metro Airport, and was waiting for his case to be heard, but in the meantime, he looked chagrinned. The member of SEIU Local 1 sat in the tent city, seeming a bit stunned by the hubbub around him.
“I’m fighting to get union representation to people and to get more jobs available to people,” Cassone said.
Joe Mosyjowski, of the Akron, Ohio-based American Friends Service Committee, held a placard saying: “No more money for war.”
He said violence in all its forms is hurting America and the world.
“People on people violence is the biggest problem that faces the world. Economic violence is just as bad—we need to see that money go to feed the hungry, and for jobs, green energy, and health care—not warfare and megabanks,” Mosyjowski said.
Pete Shell, who some might remember from the Justice For Johnny campaign, also is a member of the pacifist Thomas Merton Center, and was at the march with a few friends from the Center.
“We’re here to stand with the protest for jobs,” Shell said. “G-20 policies of globalization caused the economic crisis.”
Looking over the crowd of a few hundred people, some of whom came from California and farther, Monumental Baptist Church pastor Rev. Thomas Smith wore his formal purple vestment shirt, and a pleased smile. “We got a good turnout—it’s a good start,” he said.
From the back of a pickup truck serving as a stage, Bail Out The People organizer Larry Holmes led the crowd in chants:
“What are we gonna do?”
“March!”
“Are these bankers and leaders going to hear you?”
“Yeah!”
“A jobless recovery is like a dead patient after a successful operation,” Holmes said, and then launched back into the chant. “We got the right!”
“We got the right to a job!” the crowd chanted.
The chants continued as the group moved peacefully down Wylie, along with a hefty and quiet police escort. Some of the protestors talked about hassles being faced by other dissenters who’ve come from across the country and could find no place to sleep. Some had tried to camp in Schenley Park, but had been forced out by Pittsburgh Police. Local churches are being tapped to provide places for protesters to sleep, one said.
Walter Jacobs, a “South Hills resident” and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, made it clear that his group, which was carrying a banner and taking up the tail end of the march, intends to change the system.
“We want to build a movement to build working class power. We think the means of production should be controlled by the workers,” Jacobs said.
Though he was quite boyish-looking and clearly didn’t want to be identified as a resident of Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair or Bethel Park (we won’t say from which he hailed), Jacobs was saying some powerful things. The culture of short-sightedness and greed is ingrained in Americans, but not inevitable, he said.
“We need to work on organizing people and fighting back. Our real enemy is not each other…We need to fight the capitalists,” Jacobs said.
Veterans For Peace member Mike Hastie, in town from Portland, Oregon for the G-20 Summit, clicked away with his camera, chronicling the event. “The corporate rich are taking our jobs and exporting them overseas,” he said.
Paul Wohlfarth, a retired auto worker from Toledo, carried a sign that read “Short term fix, long term debt.” He said he and many others see where the country is heading.
“It’s heading for bankruptcy,” Wohlfarth said. “We’ve been listening to the 1 percent, and they lead us astray. That system doesn’t work.”

At Joe Mamas

2009-09-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

In my trade, you can work for someone for several years and never meet him in person. Until yesterday that was the case with a particular Irishman editor of mine, who I’ll call Seamus to keep him anonymous, and also as a nod to my young nephew Seamus, whose father has a great sense of humor.
I met Seamus and a fellow reporter I’ll call Nancy in Oakland on Sunday, prior to the March For Jobs kickoff of G-20 Week in Pittsburgh. Upon meeting Seamus and Nancy, I was struck by the fact that he looked more Irish than I had expected. I had made an incorrect mental picture of him based on his editor voice over the phone. He was fairer-skinned than I thought, more typically Irish looking, and he seemed younger and less banker-looking than I’d imagined. Though we met at noon, I resisted the smartass urge to wish him “Top of the morning!”
So an Irishman, an Australian and an American meet in a Pittsburgh restaurant. What happens next? Not a whole lot, except that I ran my mouth a bit much out of nervousness, and I got a better sense of how much they would need my help this week.
The two travelers ate, and the Australian gal mentioned the funny taste of the water.
“I notice it too, and I live here.”
"Where do they get the water from?”
“The aquifer. I think they treat the water with chlorine.”
Mostly they commented kindly on the city, and Seamus said he’d stopped into Heinz Chapel, thinking he’d “say a little prayer, but there were no kneelers… What’s up with that?” he asked.
“The Heinz family built the place, and they were Protestant. Lutheran, I think,” I said.
“So?”
“Protestants don’t kneel.”
“Protestants don’t kneel?”
“Well, maybe Episcopalians. But Heinz Chapel is a nondenominational church.”
Seamus mentioned that he went to Schenley Park and there was a group of Muslims finishing their worship service in the open on that calm late-summer morning.
“Do they do that all the time?”
“I don’t know, I’m more of a Frick Park guy,” I said.
“Today was the last day of Ramadan,” Nancy offered.
I imagined the worship service: a group of well-dressed folks kneeling and praying in the green fields of Schenley Park, taking in the morning sunshine and witnessing to their faith in front of all. I decided I had to see it myself some time.
I spoke with my friend Ali, from Braddock Avenue Express, and he told me he was at the worship service, and that the service usually happens every year on Flagstaff Hill, weather permitting. Good to know. And it's nice too know that at least one visitor to Pittsburgh witnessed such a neat cultural scene on Flagstaff the other day.

At the other G-20 Press Conference

2009-09-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a Hill District press conference in advance of a Bail Out The People march held today in the Hill. (The march proceeded today from upper Wylie Avenue to the famed Freedom Corner in the lower Hill, and included a quiet police presence, all going without incident.)
The press conference was kind of an un-press conference, and was sort of sedate, in that things were looking pretty casual when I strolled into the basement of Monumental Baptist Church. A group of middle-aged and older folks and a younger person or two, more or less silently stapled together placards for the march, the ca-chunk of staplers fixing placards together resounding on the church’s basement walls.
“So I was asked to give this speech about how unemployment can lead people to be depressed,” said BOTP organizer Larry Holmes, a Harlem native, to a fellow organizer, while not missing a step in the staple -together-affix-to-handle process of creating the placards. “And I gave the speech, and it was to a room full of men dressed in suits, none of them unemployed.”
He didn’t laugh, but I had a feeling the comment was the beginning of a lot of understated jokes to come during the protests before and during the G-20 Summit.
There are many misperceptions about what caused the current financial crisis, but the one thing everyone in the crowd of about a dozen BOTP volunteers agreed on was that things need to change, and that more attention must be paid to helping the unemployed and underemployed to get work.
After a while, a few of the folks gathered in the church basement joined hands and stood together, holding a poster calling for a revival of Martin Luther King’s People March for the Poor. Their comments were succinct and without much floweriness, but still pointed. Particularly with the backdrop of the depressed Hill District, nurturing place of August Wilson, George Benson and many other greats, and the horizon of Emerald City of Pittsburgh, home of the Revitalized America, to those who know Pittsburgh's (and Detroit, and Baltimore, etc.'s) true history, it was not difficult to see why the chose the Hill.
"The Hill District?" a hipster barrista at a coffeehouse I frequent said, when I told her they would be having a tent city in the Hill. She seemed confused and more than a little wary. It reminded me of something Holmes had said: "People don't come to the Hill," he said, meaning of course that most middle-class folks don't frequent the neighbohood because they are afraid to visit.
I attended the press briefing on behalf of Reuters news service, and I was not required to do a proper story on the event. But I still wrote a little ditty about the gathering, to give the bosses what I thought might be a better sense of the event than if I’d just given them the bare facts. Here it is:
G-20 Summit to be met by New “March for Jobs”

By Jonathan Barnes

PITTSBURGH-Grass roots organizers volunteering with the Bail Out The People movement held a press briefing Thursday night at a church in Pittsburgh’s traditionally African-American Hill District neighborhood, announcing a Sunday afternoon March For Jobs to begin at 2 p.m. at the church and going several blocks into the neighborhood to the famed “Freedom Corner,” gathering place of protestors during the Civil Rights Movement.
With the silhouettes of the U.S. Steel Tower and One Mellon Center in nearby downtown framing the poorer neighborhood in an afterglow of corporate prosperity, the struggling neighborhood was a pointed location for the organizers. The church and a lot near it that is owned by the congregation will be centers of activity for some protestors in advance of and during the G-20 Summit, to be held next week in Pittsburgh. The grassy lot near the church will be the location of a tent city, to be filled with protestors from throughout the region and the nation who will be involved with presentations, teach-ins and other gatherings focused on jobs for the unemployed and other issues.
About a dozen volunteers with Bail Out The People demonstrated their commitment during the briefing by assembling placards to be used during the march. The placards advertised the March, to start at Wylie Avenue and Soho Street, in front of Monumental Baptist Church. The protestors will be demanding a jobs program for all, a moratorium on layoffs, foreclosures and evictions, and no cuts in social services.
“Launching the march from a place like this is a message in itself,” said BOTP organizer Larry Holmes, a New York City native in Pittsburgh for the group’s events, which are scheduled from Sept. 20 -25. “This is an African-American neighborhood. This is the Harlem of the Midwest.”
Volunteers will begin to assemble a stage for presentations and erect other parts of the tent city, on Sept.19.
“We don’t want to send a message that this is just about African-Americans—it’s about whites and Latinos, too,” Holmes said. “We’ll be assembling in large numbers outside this church. We’ll have a rally and then march to Freedom Corner. The main message is the need for jobs. We’re inviting everyone to come here.”
The tent city will be the setting of discussions and teach-ins on Martin Luther King’s legacy, the death penalty in Pennsylvania and other issues, Holmes added. “It’ll be an exciting, eventful week up on the Hill. And it’s open to everyone,” he said.
Rev. Thomas Smith, pastor of the church, said the black community in the U.S. has been disproportionately hurt by unemployment, with some neighborhoods having unemployment rates or 30 percent or more. The G-20 represents corporations working to advance their interests, not those of workers, he said.
“We need a G-20 for workers throughout the world,” Rev. Smith said. “It’s time for us to change some of the old [social] structures. We’re all human beings, and we need to realize that we need to work together as human beings… The eyes of the world are on Pittsburgh—it’s time for us to come together in Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign.”
The organizers said they’d been hearing reports of people coming to the march from throughout the nation, including a caravan of vans filled with protestors coming from California.
Organizer Sharon Black, from Baltimore, MD, said she is excited that many people, including many young people, would be involved in the march. She also commented on the disparities of Pittsburgh neighborhoods.
“This town is supposed to be revitalized, and you go downtown and it’s beautiful, because a lot of money has been spent there. But if you come to the Hill District, many of the buildings are boarded up,” Black said.
Those interested in taking part in the tent city, where campers will be sleeping during the nearly week-long event, can register to do so by going to the www.bailoutpeople.org web site and registering online. They also can email the group at march4jobs@gmail.com.
If more people want to camp than can be accommodated on the empty grassy lot, overflow campers may be heading the historic West Park, in the lower part of Pittsburgh’s North Side. Organizers haven’t gotten local government permission to camp in West Park, and have been denied permission to camp in Schenley Park, located near the Oakland and Squirrel Hill neighborhoods.
Martha Conley, a retired corporate attorney from Pittsburgh, will be helping with a 7 p.m. teach-in on Tuesday, Sept. 21, at the Tent City, which will focus on innocent people on death row. In Pennsylvania, there are 34 innocent people on death row now, Conley said. “I’m just trying to spread the word about some of the injustices in society,” she said.

Coming Up: At The March

Last Call at Cammarata’s Cafe

2009-09-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

Pittsburgh bartender Angelo Cammarata served his first beer a few seconds after Prohibition was lifted in 1933, and last Saturday, he served his last.
The 95-year-old, who is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's longest-serving bartender, only had one break in his career -- to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
When Prohibition ended he was working in his family's shop in Pittsburgh's North Side, selling 10-cent bottles of Fort Pitt Beer just past the stroke of midnight. He was 19, liquor laws were few, and patrons stood on the sidewalk, beers in hands.
"We had about 20 men standing outside waiting for us to open," Cammarata said. "That was the beginning of something."
The business sold 12 cases of beer in its first two hours.
Cammarata’s sons Frank and John owned the bar, but sold the place and were still running the place while awaiting state approval of transfer of its liquor license, which was one of the first bought in Pittsburgh prior to Prohibition's repeal. Cammarata’s immigrant father, Catino, had been selling some of the ingredients for beer and saw the opportunity in being able to sell beer.
Angelo “Camm” Cammarata and the cafe, which was started as Cammarata's Grocery by Catino and relocated to West View borough in 1954, were local institutions. One local union actually held its meetings in the basement of the two-story, stone-fronted bar building, which is inconspicuously located in the midst of a West View residential neighborhood and has an apartment atop it that the Cammaratas and their four kids once occupied.
Despite his age, until just days ago, Mr. Camm worked three to four-hour shifts daily at the small neighborhood bar.
Recently he proudly pointed to a wall of the homey, wood-paneled bar, which held various certificates honoring the barkeeper, from accolades from the Busch family and Iron City Beer, to a framed letter from former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. All of those mementos, including the photo of a very young Mr. Camm looking dapper in a white shirt and tie back when he was twenty-something, have been packed up to allow the new owners to take possession of the place.
Without pretending or trying to be philosophical, Mr. Camm betrayed the wisdom that only some bartenders gain after a lifetime serving drinks.
"Tending bar is an education. You have to follow what's going on. You have to be crisp," he said.
A Catholic, Cammarata attends church regularly and cares for his wife of 71 years, Marietta. They have four children and 21 grandchildren.
For the last call party held last Saturday at Cammarata’s Cafe, Mr. Camm thanked his wife and gave her a priceless smooch in front of the crowd of family, friends and patrons. As he did so, she gave him a look that belied her advanced years and the much more conservative era from which she came, as if to say: How dare you kiss me in front of all these people!
Though he never read Plato, Camm’s advice to others is, Know thyself.
"You have to take care of yourself, and you have to respect yourself. Your image is important ... I love myself first of all. If I'm not honest with myself, I'm not honest with others," Cammarata said, slapping a hand on the bar to make a point.
One change he has witnessed is women being welcome in bars. "Now, there are more women tending bar than there are men," Cammarata said.
He still enjoys a regular Jim Beam bourbon and Coke.
"I have a drink at my own bar. It's like being at home and having a glass of water. But it's not every day."
Camm told me a little story recounted years back by ace Post-Gazette feature writer Bob Batz, about a particular patron he once had. It’s short and sweet:
A guy walked into Cammarata’s Cafe on Ash Wednesday, and stopped Angelo the barkeep from pouring his usual beer. For Lent, the drinking man had quit his habit of having a few after work.
“Gimme a Coke,” he said.
“Said O.K., and I got him a Coke,” Angelo Cammarata says, telling the story again.
“Thursday, he ordered a Coke. Friday, same thing.”
“He came in Saturday and I started to get him a Coke and he stopped me. ‘No, I’ll take a beer,’” Cammarata says. “‘What happened?’ I asked him... He was a very good Catholic.”
“Guess what my wife gave up?” the guy said, giving the bartender the look of a husband deprived of his wife’s intimacy.
“I said ‘No,’” Cammarata says. “He looked at me, and said, ‘Yeah.’”
Going silent for a moment, he smiled at the thought of all the good times.
“Was that guy in the story Irish?” a visitor at the bar asked Cammarata.
After a long pause, the wise old bartender responded with a practiced charm: “I have the Irish to thank for everything,” he said. “You’re Irish, right?”
***
As a sort of postscript, I have to say I’ve enjoyed working recently with photographer John Altdorfer, who helped me with coverage on the Sodini mass murders for the New York Daily News and who came to the rescue by taking some great photos of Angelo Cammarata (with his son, John, in the background in one shot) so that my story could make it to press, so to speak.
John was nice enough to talk about it and mention me on his flickr photo web site:
When writer Jonathan Barnes called me a few days ago to work with him on an assignment taking photos of the World's Oldest Bartender, it seemed like an easy way to make a few buck. After all, the guy's bar is about 5 minutes from my home. So while I thought there were some good shots, I never imagined that this photo would end up in newspapers and web sites around the world, including China and Malaysia. But best of all, this photo showed up yesterday in the Wall Street Journal Photos of the Day Blog.
John, I also must say that if you work with the pros, the exposure follows. You are welcome, and thank you again.

But Camm wasn't the oldest bartender, but rather, the longest serving bartender. Cheers to Mr. Camm and all the Cammaratas.

Pittsburgh's Other Story

2009-08-16T13:42:00.001-07:00

Recently I’ve written some gung ho pro-Pittsburgh pieces for ENR magazine and Reuters, and I’ve had a queasy feeling ever since. That’s because I know that those stories, and others that could appear one-sided in touting the city’s supposed miraculous recovery, have not said much about how poor the region became before it made the climb back up the economic ladder. A climb, by the way, that many in this region don’t seem to realize is still ongoing.
Simply put, we as a city and region are not where we were thirty years ago in terms of our economic mightiness. While the steel industry hasn’t gone away entirely, and we are fortunate to have numerous companies founded in that industry still thriving here (not the least of which is U.S. Steel), a way of life was largely discarded with the cooling of most of the blast furnaces and the dismantling of many of the mills.
Maybe things were changing anyway with the American way of life in the 1970s, even without considering the narcolepsy of steel industry leaders, but I don’t know. When I was growing up in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties in Bellevue Borough, many large families lived on one paycheck—the pay of a tradesman father or white collar dad. The families bought the big houses in the North Boroughs because their idea of the Good Life was living in a small town in a fixer-upper Victorian house with a big family. A huge family nowadays is four kids, but in Bellevue back in the day, four wasn’t considered large at all, but more average. Large was probably at least six kids, if not seven or more kids. The North Boroughs had many such families back when.
Now, it seems that most families must have two paychecks to get by. I’m sure that part of that economic urgency is based on the fact that expectations of what folks want for their families have changed and become costlier. But part of that daily grind also is based on a true economic need, since the average job no doubt brings home less in real income then it did just a quarter-century ago. I am no economist, but I know that mill workers were making $25 an hour twenty-five years ago. Now try and find a job for a non-college grad that pays the same, decades later.
A whole way of life was lost when Big Steel was dismantled to a shadow of its former self. Certainly, for many decades before the collapse, industry titans (both white collar and union) were allowing mills to become antiquated, making the steelmaking process costlier and inefficient than it needed to be to remain competitive. But a lot of folks here in Pittsburgh still are blaming the demise of Big Steel on the federal government allowing foreign government-subsidized companies to “dump” steel imports here. Maybe there’s some truth to that, but clearly, many steel industry executives had a few too many three-martini lunches to care enough about their charges.
Why should they have cared, though, since they had contracts guaranteeing them golden parachutes? It's reminiscent of today's banking industry.
I am not complaining about this just to be a down-in-the-mouth Pittsburgher, like so many others. I mention it because I know that many of Pittsburgh’s traditional “inner ring” neighborhoods, like Bellevue, or even Squirrel Hill, seem more impoverished than they were 25 years ago. In some parts of Squirrel Hill and Bellevue, the neighborhoods look more run-down than ever. I should know, since I have been hanging out in Bellevue all of my life, and in Squirrel Hill for 25 years.
Sure, “eds and meds” are benefiting many people in the region and raising the standard of living for some, but those sectors are no panacea for the economic depression that Pittsburgh still is working through.
I’m not saying that I have the answer to this conundrum, but I had to get my feelings out. The notion of Pittsburgh’s Miraculous Turnaround is only somewhat true. Part of the reason why we continue to tout that myth is because we Pittsburghers are hard workers, and we will continue to strive and survive. But shouting “We’re Back!” doesn’t make it true, no matter how many times we say it.
Also, I mistrust those who would discount the many contributions of blue collar people in the making of this city and nation. But when we aren’t honest about what happened with Big Steel, and when some of us continue to not own up to the blame for expediting that collapse, we tell just part of The Pittsburgh Story.

Finding Sarah Palin

2009-08-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

Those who know me or who are readers of Barnestormin know that I lean left-of-center, though I am an Independent voter. Still, I can’t say I was star-struck, but rather, somewhat confused to see yesterday what erstwhile Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been doing.
There has been much speculation in the media regarding why Palin stepped down as governor of Alaska, but Barnestormin has the scoop—she is working undercover as a reporter for ABC.
Let me explain. Yesterday I was doing some follow-story coverage of Pittsburgh’s most recent mass murders for the New York Daily News. I was hanging out with a local freelance photographer, who was trailing me as I tried to get comments from neighbors of gunman George Sodini’s mother, and also from Sodini's own neighbors. I was somewhat successful, and John, the photographer, also got some decent shots that ran in the print edition of the Daily News.
Overall, we were pretty lucky to get comments from and photos of some of these folks. It was an overcast day, and we were kind of late on the scene in Baldwin, attempting to get info and shots from Sodini’s family and neighbors, but still, a couple of folks who live near his mum did speak with me. A couple of neighbor of Sodini’s, who live across from the gunman’s house in Scott, did speak with me. Trish Cohen and Bob Fox had a few things to say, and not a whole lot of their comments made it into the paper, but you do what you can to make a story, then editorial runs it the way they want.
But what was weird about the whole situation was that when John and I went to Sodini’s neighborhood, at first we didn’t encounter any news vans or reporters. But we did see a reporter or producer of some sort waiting patiently and quietly in a rented car near Sodini’s house. We also saw a weird thing for a news scene—a proper, four-door, black Lincoln Town Car limousine—presumably from the airport. The limo was for a woman who wore the schoolmarm glasses of Palin, and who also bore a striking resemblance to the former governor. She was dressed plainly, in a knee-length skirt, designer flip-flops and casual shirt. She was standing in the middle of the street, clutching a notebook and looking like a rather clueless reporter. We asked her where she was from, and she said she was from ABC.
She was accompanied by an older gentleman in a separate car. He was a tall, nondescript white guy wearing a crisp white dress shirt and pressed dress pants. I approached him and found that he was a local private investigator. I didn’t immediately realize that he was working with Little Sarah Palin—I call her that because the woman looked like she could be Palin’s younger sister, if not the Alaskan herself.
They were working to get quotes from neighbors who live across the street from Sodini, and were trying to conduct private interviews with the folks in their home. I was able to get some quotes when Cohen loudly commented on the strange blogs Sodini had written, which in part spoke nastily about Cohen’s daughter. After a while, I was able to get Cohen to speak with me on her porch, and later, I got Fox to do the same.
After I’d been in touch with my editor at NYDN and John and I had gotten pretty much what we could, we waited to be told what to do next. We were told by the editor to sit tight for a bit and wait to hear from her. So as we tried to get a bit more info and a few more photos, we hung around chatting with a couple of other news guys—an Antonio Banderas-looking dude and Jerry Garcia-looking chap, who were stringers that were there to cover the scene for Fox News. They were a howl, and fun guys to work around. John, Antonio and Jerry started snooping around Sodini’s house, and eventually they all headed into the gunman’s back yard, and I trailed behind. This is what we reporters and photographers often do at such scene; we help each other out, give directions, and sometimes even share information with each other.
Which is why it was weird when a bit later, I walked up to Little Sarah Palin and asked her what her name was. Her response would have been typical, if she was a witness to the shooting and I was asking for a quote:
“I don’t want to give my name,” Little Sarah said.
That got me thinking. When I approached the limo driver after I’d been at the scene for a bit, he told me he was there to drive the Palin lookalike around town. When I’d asked the private investigator who he was when we’d first met, he’d given me his business card and told me we could talk in a week or so. But Little Sarah wouldn’t tell me her name, which I found strange, because I’ve never been covering a story and had a fellow newsperson refuse to identify herself. That was odd.
But I also found it strange that a reporter, sans cameraman, was being accompanied by a P.I., who was helping her to cover the story. And it was very weird to me that a reporter was allowed the expense of having a chauffeured limo (with the driver in full formal driver attire) to taxi her around Pittsburgh while following a day-old news story. Then she refused to give her name.
I’m a bit slow sometimes, but I think I may have figured it all out. Former Gov. Palin has said she wants to write a memoir for a cool million or so, and she also has expressed an interest in becoming involved with the news media. Some reports have speculated that she might become a political commentator for one of the big news companies, or that she might get her own talk show. I think I have the answer—Palin is being groomed to become a newswoman for ABC, who obviously will spare no expense to school the simple-minded governor in the ways of the news business. Having the P.I. with her and the chauffeured limo was like giving her gold-plated, motorized training wheels as she learns the business.
What’s Sarah Palin been up to? Ask ABC. They’re banking on her.

City of Mass Murders?

2009-08-05T07:10:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been in the media business so long that I am truly cynical, but I may be getting there. I guess I never expected to have taken part in coverage of three mass murders in and around the city in my 14+ years of being a journalist. I am talking, of course, about the Collier Township L.A. Fitness slayings last night, in which four people (including the gunman) were killed, and at least 10 others were shot.
I saw [the gunman] laying there with a chunk out of his head, one male twenty-something gym member said to me as I arrived late at the scene. I was called after 9 p.m. by one of my Reuters editors, who wanted me to find out what I could over the phone and head to the shooting scene to get more “color,” as we call it in the business.
Hey, I’ll admit it—I am in an ugly business sometimes. We casually refer to our getting the tear-smeared testimonies of people who’ve witnessed mayhem as “color,” and we have a funny little saying for why these tragedies get such play in the media—“if it bleeds, it leads.”
These sorts of events are like mini-reunions for me sometimes, where I see good people like some of the fine journalists I’ve worked with around town. Last night, I saw for the first time in quite a while Mike Hasch, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s finest longhaired reporter, and also John Schisler, a photographer for the Trib who also is a friend, and who actually took the photos of my wedding some years ago.
This is what we journalists sometimes do while we are sitting around waiting for a police press conference to start. We jawbone about what we’ve been doing, and catch up.
The shooting scene wasn’t all reminiscing, of course. It reminded me of the chaos after to Baumhammers shooting several years ago, in which several people were killed because of their race. At the time, I was working for the Tribune-Review in its North office in Cranberry, and we kept score on the shootings by listening to the police scanner speakers mounted on the ceiling. One by one, we reporters were sent out to cover the most recent spot where the roving murderer Baumhammers had shot someone. Because I was working on other stories, I was one of the last reporters to be called by my editor Tony LaRussa to head to one of these scenes. Consequently, I only had to cover a “perp walk” that the local media was hoping to catch when Baumhammers was transferred from the Beaver County Jail.
The cops snuck Baumhammers out the back door of the old prison, avoiding the cameras and note-taking reporters. While we all were waiting, though, we did as reporters do—we pumped people for any information we could get on the killer. I spoke to a lady who said she was a relative of one of the victims—her nephew’s sister dated the guy, or some such thing.
“HOW was this woman related to the victim?” one of my Trib editors sternly questioned me over the phone. I want to say it was Marty Kinnanen, who was always a great ball-buster, but I don’t remember who it was.
That’s what we do in the aftermath of these tragedies—we try to find whatever scraps of information we can gather, to try to make some sense of the story.
With the Wilkinsburg killer Taylor, who went on a racially charged shooting spree not long after Baumhamers, his first victim was the carpenter who was fixing his apartment door. John Kroll was gunned down by Taylor, and I got to go Kroll’s funeral, where I was to pester people for quotes, and get as much as I could out of the church service itself.
It was ugly—some people who were closer to the family wanted to kick my ass for having the guts to ask questions. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. I felt terrible for the Kroll family, though, and the tear-streaked faces of Kroll’s daughter and son, both in high school at the time, were devastating to see.
My friend Ryan, a Cleveland native who came to Pittsburgh to attend CMU and never left, has lived around the country and sometimes thinks he has a better sense of what Pittsburgh is about, because of his experience. Ryan says every city has its crimes that are common to it, and in Pittsburgh, those crimes are bank robberies and arsons.
I will have to agree about the bank robberies and arsons, since I read the paper and also, since I grew up in Bellevue Borough in the 1970s and 1980s. While growing up in the borough, I knew two different guys who went to jail at different times for robbing banks in the Pittsburgh area. One of them died of an overdose after doing his time, and the other did his time, and then thought he was smarter because of prison. So he tried to rob some banks again after he was released from prison, and he went back to the Big House.
Steve has since been released from prison, and I understand he’s doing well. But with this third mass murder in Pittsburgh, I am thinking of adding slaying sprees to crimes that are typical of the Steel City. Not that I want to.

Fisher of many

2009-07-31T09:35:00.000-07:00

Attorney, angler and Pittsburgh booster Ken Komoroski was one of the driving personalities behind the CITGO Bassmaster Classic, which was held in Pittsburgh in 2005. Now he is working to snag another fishing tournament that could further establish Pittsburgh’s reputation as a sport fishing region. Komoroski enjoys the spectacle of a good fishing tournament, but even more, he enjoys luring anglers to discover the city and experience the region’s rivers and other destinations.

By Jonathan Barnes

When Ken Komoroski talks about bringing another fishing tournament to Pittsburgh, he sometimes gets excited. He’ll stand up, extend his 6’3” frame to its height and gesture with his hands a bit so an observer from afar might think he was talking about the one that got away. But when he talks about the economic and publicity benefits of bringing another bass fishing tournament to town, he is really talking about the ones that didn’t get away. After experiencing Pittsburgh, tourist-fishermen will keep coming back, bringing their friends and family to enjoy the place, Komoroski says.
These days, Komoroski is angling to bring the 2009 Forest L. Wood Cup Championship to town. He is co-chairing the local host committee for the 2009 event. The four-day bass fishing tournament features a $1 million prize for the winner, and likely will bring as many tourist’s dollars—$20 million to $40 million—as the Bassmaster Classic did in 2005.
Komoroski has been talking with local and state government officials and potential corporate sponsors to get financial commitments to host the event. He’s aiming to raise $500,000 or more, which would include the $200,000 tournament fee. The Bassmaster Classic required a $750,000 tournament fee. The two fishing tournaments are the largest in the sport, and the marketing benefits of hosting these tournaments are almost immeasurable.
The positive impression that the region and its people made on the visitors during the Bassmaster Classic was taken with them to their hometowns, and they spread the word when they talk about how great it was to fish in Pittsburgh, Komoroski says. During the Bassmaster Classic, Komoroski was approached by a family from Salt Lake City. “Salt Lake City has a great reputation,” they said. “We’ve got nothing on Pittsburgh.”
Seeing visitors express such warm feelings for his hometown is one of Komoroski’s joys. A resident of Peters Township, Komoroski has seen family move from the region to pursue other opportunities. He would like Pittsburgh to be a place where his three children can get jobs if they want to. Part of accomplishing that goal is ensuring that more people know how much Pittsburgh has to offer visitors and would-be residents. Television footage showing people fishing the rivers around Pittsburgh, once known for its smoky steel industry, makes such a strong impact, the attorney explains. “The image-changing it does for the region is why we’re doing this,” Komoroski says. “Boosting Pittsburgh is really what I care most about.”
It makes sense that Komoroski should be involved in events that feature fishing in the region, since he’s been a fisherman most of his life. Originally taken fishing by a friend when he was 18, Komoroski would fish in Canonsburg Lake and Slippery Rock Creek. To the Brentwood native, those spots were pretty far out at the time.
The waterways that he likes to fish have changed; he now is more likely to be at Lake Arthur in Butler County or at Cross Creek in Washington County. But the enjoyment he gets from the activity hasn’t changed. “It’s very relaxing, mentally. It’s a great place to focus your energies,” Komoroski says. “Choosing the lure, or deciding how to attract the fish…”
A catch-and-release fisherman, the attorney has a couple of trophy fish he did keep. On the wall of Komoroski’s downtown office are two mounted fish: a Louisiana speckled trout, which was the largest speckled trout caught in inland waters in 1985; and a small mouth bass caught in the French River in Canada.
Bass fishing is so popular, Komoroski says, because of the bass. “It’s the most popular sport fishing in America. Bass can be found in all 48 contiguous states,” he says. “They’re very aggressive and will hit a lure even when they’re not hungry. They’re a good fighting fish.”
It’s fitting that Komoroski should be involved with these efforts because he has been involved, in one way or another, with environmental issues for much of his career. Komoroski originally was an environmental engineer. He worked for PPG in that capacity for several years. He is a member of the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, and was appointed to the commission by President George W. Bush. The organization sets the water quality standards for the Ohio River system, as well as doing water testing of the rivers and fish population studies.
“The fact that Pittsburgh is able to host these tournaments shows how far we’ve come in changing our rivers, but it also shows that we need to keep them clean. People need to realize that the rivers are a resource,” Komoroski says, adding that Pittsburgh’s rivers rival any rivers in the major cities in Europe. Among the species fisherman can catch locally in the rivers are walleye, pike, and white trout, he says.
One of the people who helped to bring the Bassmasters Classic to Pittsburgh was Davitt Woodwell, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council and an avid fisherman. Woodwell has fished with Komoroski for about a decade, but their collaboration to bring a fishing tournament to Pittsburgh began seven years ago, when they started to consider the possibility of getting the Bassmasters Classic to come to town.
“It ended up as the largest event in Pittsburgh in 2005, in terms of tourism,” Woodwell says. “Ken’s out there pushing again and we’re hoping to get another tournament… Throughout this, he’s been really hard-nosed in getting these events here. He’s incredibly excited about it, and justifiably so.”
Local fishermen are keyed up about the effort to bring the tournament to Pittsburgh, says Mike Dunkerley, past-president of the Pennsylvania Bass Federation. The Pennsylvania Bass Federation provided more than 100 volunteers for the Bassmaster Classic, and local anglers will no doubt again come out to volunteer with the FLW Cup. Komoroski said such volunteers are crucial to the effort, and will be important to making the FLW Cup happen. “There are literally thousands of people who go to these events and work for free,” he says.
Dunkerley recalls how Mellon Arena was so packed for daily weigh-ins during the Bassmaster Classic, that organizers of the event put television monitors outside so tournament watchers could observe the weigh-ins outside the arena. More than 23,000 people were gathered at the Mellon Arena every day during the Bassmaster Classic, not for rock concerts, truck pulls or a circus—but to watch fish being weighed.
Pittsburgh fish, that is. Fish that were pretty low weights, ranging from 1½ pounds to 2½ pounds, Dunkerley says. “That’s your standard fish for the river,” he says, adding that the low weights make the tournament suspenseful, because you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. That is, no fisherman is likely to bring in a huge fish that beats everyone else’s.
Part of the fun at the Bassmaster Classic also was that the fish around here are tougher, Dunkerley adds. “That’s because they’re always fighting that [river] current. That’s why they’re short and stocky,” he says.
Professional boosters of Pittsburgh also are grateful for the work Komoroski has done and is doing to bring the sport fishing world to Pittsburgh. Craig Davis, vice-president, sales and marketing for VisitPittsburgh (the Pittsburgh Convention Bureau), has known Komoroski for a few years. He calls him a great asset to the community. “He’s an amazing booster for us,” Davis says, also giving Komoroski credit for helping to bring the Bassmaster Classic to Pittsburgh.
Davis is hopeful that Pittsburgh will be able to land to FLW tournament. “I think Pittsburgh stands a very good chance of getting the FLW here. I think it will further add to our reputation, and again show our ability to draw a crowd,” he says.

A version of this story was published in 2008 in Pittsburgh Professional Magazine.

Barnestormin: BS, for short

2009-07-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

I use this blog as a way to show some of the work I’ve done, but more importantly, as a way to vent every now and then. Still, even after years of posting on Barnestormin, I sometimes am surprised by the reactions I get. Part of my surprise is due to the fact that I sometimes write my posts not caring about how others might take them, or rather, caring how they take my comments so much that I am willing to offend them in an effort to make them think.
Sometimes the only thing I make folks think about is that they are offended by my ramblings. And often, I am guilty of failing my journalistic duty about as regularly as many full-time newspaper and magazine reporters.
But it is gratifying when people agree with me, especially if they do so in a way that legitimizes my comments. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette again commented on Barnestormin, and in the wonderfully prominent section of their Sunday editorial pages in which they riff on local blogs. My little blog post “Pittsburgh’s G-20, and Mau-Mauing the Press Corps” made the cut, and actually was the lead-in to the column, which the P-G titled “City of Insecurity.”
I thank you, P-G (for whom I do a bit of freelancing), for mentioning my blog and my post. However, there is no “g” at the end of Barnestormin, though I hope sometimes readers feel a little “gee” when they are reading what I’ve posted.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by the P-G picking up my comments. I should’ve known the P-G would seize on my editorial perspective, because my perspective so closely fits the newspaper’s perspective. There are some folks over along the Boulevard of The Allies in downtown Pittsburgh that work in the Post-Gazette building, who have an inkling of how great a place Pittsburgh is. For years, many of them have been tired of the whippings given to the city by its own people, who sometimes seem unable to handle the compliments we receive for Our Fair Town. It’s like the smoke hasn’t cleared in our minds yet, and we unconsciously downgrade or downplay Pittsburgh’s strengths.
Which reminds me of the old Hillman Company saying: “The spouting whale gets harpooned.”
Perhaps it’s a fear of people finding us out that keeps us so modest about our town, but I don’t think that’s most of the problem. I wrote “Mau-Mauing the Press Corps” because I was annoyed by how Mayor Ravenstahl’s spokesperson, Kristen Baginski, talked to a group of engineers from out of town about how the G-20 summit is Pittsburgh’s opportunity to market itself to the world.
Granted, the Summit is a big deal, and it is a great opportunity to showcase our city’s progress, and its beauty, and its many strengths. But that’s not what you say to engineers from across the continent, or to professionals gathered in Pittsburgh from overseas. That’s the sort of thing that we Pittsburghers can say to each other, but it’s not how we should address visitors, because that sort of tone is downright pathetic, when used on visitors.
We try to hard to impress sometimes. Instead of saying breathlessly that we have a great marketing opportunity, we should be telling people how great our town is. As in: Did you know that Pittsburgh is still home to U.S. Steel, and that the company employs around 4,000 people locally? Or, do you know about the incredible turnaround of engineering firm American Bridge Company, which once was a subsidiary of U.S. Steel? Or, did you know that our rivers have been cleaned up so much that Pittsburgh again is hosting a large fishing tournament? And were you aware that Pittsburgh fish are as tough fighters as Pittsburgh people?
There’s so much more to say about Pittsburgh’s greatness, and its historic and current place in the world. I mean, I was at a bridge conference in the City of Bridges, surrounded by engineers from everywhere, and looking out over the Allegheny River and the “Three Sisters” bridges that span it. Setting is everything in writing sometimes, just ask Faulkner. Or just ask Barnes, because I say that our town has one of the most dramatic topographical looks of all the cities in the nation. Drive through the Fort Pitt Tunnel on your way into Pittsburgh for the first time, and your perspective on our city could be re-born.
Pittsburgh is a great place, with the amenities of a larger city and the small-town approachability of smaller places. It’s not just that we have great sports teams, or great companies such as UPMC, and wonderful school such as CMU and Pitt. We have so much that is good here that we are recognized across the globe as great, and not simply for American football.
Get over it, dyed-in-the-Iron City Beer-Pittsburghers: your town is great. And it’s OK to admit it.

Losing a Lost World

2009-07-14T11:10:00.001-07:00

By Jonathan Barnes

"We never had dogs on the farm. My father didn't like them very much because they would tear down the wheat while chasing rabbits. He did keep opossums as pets. In the winter, he would put them in the barn to keep warm. We also had raccoons and barn owls. The baby barn owls were very tame and would sit on sticks or your finger."-- Robert Schlag, writing in the 1980s

The old, overgrown lane off Sangree Road in Ross looks like a typical farm road, with fences and fields spreading out on each side -- an odd thing since the spot is less than a mile from bustling McKnight Road.
As the lane hooks to the right, it opens into a ravine, where a partially dismantled barn's hand-hewn beams are exposed. The sandstone wall of the barn, built into a slope of the land, has started to crumble but stands mostly intact. A roofless wooden-sided silo looms behind.
The berry bushes have grown thick in the fields around the old brick farmhouse, built around 1834 and empty since 1995. A spring gurgles out of the hill, spilling clear water into a stream that runs through the property.
On a ridge above an old log building near the spring's source, seven deer leap across the horizon in single file, white tails showing. Deer have worn paths across the land to places in the bushes where they bed down. They are safe in this rustic cocoon, surrounded by development and too close to homes to be hunted. Birds sing over the muffled din of nearby traffic.
As recently as last week, the overgrown fields on the last 24 acres of the old Schlag farm stood undisturbed. It's a place where, not long ago, time seemed to have stopped. But not anymore.

"There were only farmhouses out our way. Most of them were a half-mile or more apart. ... Our farm was bordered on the north by the Sangree family farm. Peebles and Apples were to the east." -- Robert Schlag

A rumble echoes over the fields as a worker tears down the chimneys of the old home, the bricks cascading into the back yard. Vandals have smashed several windows.
The windows of the two-story springhouse, too, have been torn out, and a dead raccoon lies just inside the doorway. Another dead raccoon lies sprawled under the front porch of the house. Some of the outbuildings have been stripped of their walls, making them appear half-naked. The hand-hewn beams of the barn, too, are being cleared out.
The buildings are being torn down, their remains bound for salvagers, landfills or burn piles.
Only the scraggly apple trees dotting the fields seem to be making a defiant last stand against the imminent development.
The property soon will become the Sangree Farms plan of homes, named after the farm that adjoined the Schlag property. Each originally was about 200 acres and part of the Ephram Jones farm.
The 200 acres that became the Schlag farm was given to Revolutionary War veteran Paul Zantzinger as a Depreciation Lands grant in 1798, according to an account Robert Schlag wrote in the 1980s for Northland Public Library, which had asked for a history of the farm and surrounding area.
Henry Schlag bought the land in 1864, and for 131 years, it was home to a Schlag, until Robert Schlag died in 1995 at age 86.
In November, Minnock Realty Inc. bought the last 24.6 acres of the old homestead for $350,000. The company wants to put 21 single-family houses there on lots ranging from three-fourths of an acre to a little more than an acre. The houses would be priced from $300,000 to $500,000 and be built by Minnock Construction Co., which built the nearby Kinvara housing plan. The company is scheduled to present its plans to Ross commissioners March 11.
The cleft created by the main spring on the property -- more than likely the drawing point for the first settlers -- will remain.
"We've already gone through the [state Department of Environmental Protection] on the wetlands issue," said Patrick Minnock, president of Minnock Construction Co. "Our plan is to maintain the wetlands and protect them. The big lots gave us the ability to leave the wetlands alone."
Some of the large old trees and vegetation around the house also could be saved, he said, noting that leaving a large tree standing is easier than cutting it down. "Anything we can save, we will."
One thing the Sangree Farms housing development will save is the name of one of the families who farmed the area in its earliest days.

"Was married this evening to Florence J. Whitesell. Raining most of the day but broke off, got cooler & very pleasant tonight, fine moonlight. A very happy occasion to me. Quite a good number of friends were present -- about 3 dozen & all seemed to be full of glee & satisfied with the event." -- Dec. 29, 1881, diary entry of John Rosberg Sangree, 28.

The farm might have disappeared without much notice, if not for Ross resident Sandy Brown.
Brown, an amateur historian for Hiland Presbyterian Church in Ross, has been telling everyone who will listen about the historic homestead.
A native of North Carolina, Brown has a distinctive sense of place.
"A friend of mine said, 'I sat on the steps [of the Schlag house] and it was so quiet,' " Brown said. "It's a great place. There's not one like it in the county I come from."
People who live around the farm have been stopping by to have a last look and, perhaps, pay their last respects.
Jane and Tom Walworth, who bought their property along Maruth Drive from Robert's brother, Byron, 45 years ago, stopped by last week.
"When we moved here in '57, there were three farms," Jane Walworth said.
"We used to stop and buy stuff from [the Schlags]," her husband said. The Schlag family worked the farm until about 20 years ago, he said. "They were old and they were still working the farm, so they were special," he added. Robert Schlag lived at the farm with a sister, Sara, and brother, Carl.
"Sara Schlag would call all the time and say 'the berries are in,' or 'come and see the green beans,' " Jane Walworth said. "They were very refined, nice people."
She walked into the house and surveyed the damage done by salvagers and the demolition crew. Crevices in the interior brick walls revealed where the wooden mantels, chair rails and baseboard once were. The plaster on the 12-foot-high ceiling was falling in spots. The wallpaper was faded and yellow. She shook her head.
"I remember standing in the doorway, admiring this room," she said of the living room. "Sara was so proud of this house. She kept it so perfect. And it was a graceful, beautiful home."
Janet Sangree Brant, the granddaughter of Henry Schlag and John Sangree, recalled the beauty of the farm, and how Robert, Sara and Carl Schlag cared for the place.
"Robert had a beautiful dahlia garden behind the barn, and he sold flowers to Pittsburgh Cut Flower," said Brant, 81, of Bellevue. Sara Schlag was an excellent gardener, she added. "They had double rows of roses and flowers by the house -- it was beautiful. I always loved going out to the farm."
Henrietta Schlag Schultz, 78, Henry Schlag's great-granddaughter, grew up just down the road from the farm and still lives in Ross.
"As a little girl I spent a lot of time at the farm," she said. "Listening to the cow bells tinkling in the morning and being around when my grandfather was milking the cows. ... When we were children, my grandparents would pick us up in the sleigh and we'd go sleigh riding. At that time, McKnight Road was a cow pasture."
Robert Schlag's nephew, Walter Schlag, 77, of Shaler, recalled spending a couple of weeks in the summer at the farm as a child.
"Me and my buddies would camp up on the western ridge, and we'd cook some of our meals there. ... We used to jump off of the upper rafters of the barn into the hay. And it was a soft landing. We had good times over there."
In later years, he kept a garden plot there.
He said he was sad to see the place go. Some of the family members had talked to nonprofit groups about preserving the place, but they weren't interested, he said.
"I feel badly about the whole thing, but times change. ... It kind of brings tears to my eyes to think about it. I had good times there. My Uncle Carl had hummingbirds trained to sit on his finger where he'd feed them," he said. "I haven't gone over there in quite a while. I just feel so bad."

This story previously was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Photo of Jonathan Barnes and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photographer Bob Donaldson courtesy of Sandy Brown.

Ten Minutes with Louis and Dennis Astorino

2009-07-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

Astorino Architects recently opened new offices in West Palm Beach and Naples, Fla., but the firm takes most of its identity from its base city, Pittsburgh. Astoriino is the second largest architectural practice in town with $26 million in annual revenue and 191 employees. This year promises to be especially busy. Astorino is teaming up with San Francisco-based Gensler on PNC Financial’s $170 million, 30-story skyscraper in downtown Pittsburgh. And officials of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hospital, who are building a $575 million medical complex, have tapped Astorino for the job. “They tend to focus on not only the function, but the design of the project,” says Roger Oxendale, president of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Astorino is also expanding its services. The company says it is exploring what it calls the Deep Design Process and describes itself as the first architectural team in the world to use, through a sister company, groundbreaking research techniques that elicit subconscious thoughts and feelings and translate them into design criteria.
Louis D. Astorino, who is chairman of the company, founded L.D. Astorino Cos. in 1972. Its second employee was Dennis Astorino, his brother and the company’s chief executive. ENR Correspondent Jonathan Barnes recently spoke with them.

ENR: How was Astorino started?

L.A.: I was always blessed with the ability to sketch. I rented a space and did renderings of buildings for other architects. That really helped me.

ENR: How would you characterize the growth of the company?

D.A.: It’s been a very slow, methodical growth. My employee number is number two. The company’s growth was more about the kind of projects that interested us. Our size is a product of our doing the projects that we always wanted to do.

ENR: Astorino Architects has a long work relationship with the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese, having done its first job on a historic Pittsburgh church. Astorino’s most famous work is likely the chapel that the company designed recently for the Vatican. How’d you get that job?

L.A.: The company landed the highly prestigious Chapel of the Holy Spirit job in the Vatican through a connection with Pittsburgh businessman John E. Connelly. He introduced us to the top officials and that allowed us to present our credentials. We did some early work as a consultant to Vatican architects on Domus Santa Marta, which is a Residence hotel where the Cardinals are housed during a Conclave… As a result of that, we were asked to do the Chapel of the Holy Spirit as the sole architects.

ENR: Does Astorino have a signature design?

L.A.: We really don’t believe in a signature style. Each project is influenced by so many factors—site, program, client, context, etc. We believe in keeping an open mind and letting those factors influence our design.

ENR: How did your company become a health care facility design expert?

L.A.: Twelve years ago we bought a firm that did mostly health care related work. Health care work now comprises 60% of our work. We’re dedicating ourselves to creating buildings that create a healing environment.

ENR: Astorino is known for its use of the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System. How has LEED been important to Astorino’s approach to design?

D.A.: When we first got into LEED, we were 70% through with the design of PNC’s operations center, and it became the first LEED certified project in the country when it was built in 2001. When we looked at the [current] project, [LEED techniques] were things that we were doing anyway. That made using LEED a no-brainer.

This story origially ran in the 6/9/2006 issue of ENR. Reprinted courtesy of ENR magazine.

Ten Minutes with Clarke Thomas

2009-07-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

Pittsburgh also lost a great individual this year, with the passing of Clarke Thomas, former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor. I have been so busy this year that I missed the passing of Thomas, one of Pittsburgh’s finest journalists. Clarke was a thoughtful and even-handed writer and sharp journalist whose editorials, and editorial judgment, enhanced the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s pages for many years. He also was kind enough to answer some questions that I posed for him a few years back, for my how-to on print journalism (which is not yet published).
Chris Potter had a nice send-off for Clarke in the Pittsburgh City Paper a while back, which is worth reading.
I am posting Clarke's answers to my questions, though I plan to use the material for my book, because it’s great stuff and it’s my way of offering a small homage to this kind and decent individual who helped to make our city the great place that it is.
For folks interested in what it takes to be a journalist, and why the profession is worth pursuing, this Q/A will be especially meaningful.
Barnestormin: What things should an aspiring print journalist bear in mind while she begins to learn the craft?
Thomas: Brush up on spelling and other grammar essentials. Read, read, read newspapers and magazines to learn about ledes and other “hooks” to get the reader’s attention. If you are still in high school, work on your student newspaper or magazine. And get guidance on a college with a good journalism school.
Barnestormin: What qualities are most important in a person who wants to be a good journalist?
Thomas: Curiosity. Willingness to learn about subjects that are not your specialty—or even especial interest. Elements of courtesy so people will be willing to open up to you. The ability to write grammatically correct and readable sentences.
Barnestormin: What does it take to create a good op-ed?
Thomas: Thanks to the plethora of syndicated columns available, all of the necessary ingredients are there. One must seek variety on the page on any given day. Good newspapers are willing to run columns that express views opposed to those of the paper’s editorial policy. This builds trust among readers, not to mention serves to attract a broader range of readers. Finally, good papers seek local opinion, either by calling on local persons knowledgeable about a given subject, or—in some cases—asking the writer of a good letter to expand and expound.
Barnestormin: What qualities do good op-eds have?
Thomas: Variety. Articles appealing to different readers, especially those who may not agree with the newspaper’s editorial policy as manifested on the editorial page itself. Again, referring to a point in question 3 above, readers like to see articles on local subjects and by local people, particularly including from “ordinary” readers, that is, not always just the local experts. Often the best humorous (and engagingly sentimental) articles come from local writers.
Barnestormin: Do you have any thoughts on how things are changing in the media business, and what it might mean to future journalists?
Thomas: The impact of the Internet clearly is challenging and changing the business. Newspapers now are giving away their product via the Internet. Some way must be found to obtain revenue from the Internet. Note: Future journalists may need to point more in the direction of the Internet—whatever that means in terms of career preparation.
Barnestormin: Is objectivity in journalism overrated?
Thomas: No and yes. No, in the sense that people in general think they want stories to go straight down the middle. Yes, in the sense that people say they want “the truth,” meaning a story that presents their point of view and not that of others, i.e., not really objective. Journalism right now is in a bind on this issue and not just because politicians and other leaders in society like to blame the media for everything that goes wrong in their realm. “I did nothing wrong. The media distorted what I said…or did.” Print journalism is in a particular quandary because its usefulness for instant news has been pre-empted by broadcast journalism and now by the Internet. By the time I pick up a newspaper in the morning, I’ve already heard or seen on TV or the Internet most of its headlined stories. Therefore, the print media’s hope for the future increasingly will lie with analysis and explaining the “why,” rather than just the “what” of breaking news. Yet analysis calls for subjectivity, the very element that brings cries of “distortion” from critics. Journalism now is even being criticized for the “he said/she said” type of coverage that constituted objectivity in the past. Critics say, “If you know something from one side is wrong, why do you repeat it in the name of ‘balance’?” One answer certainly is to be more diligent about affixing the label of “analysis” to such articles to inform the reader that that is the purpose of the article.
Barnestormin: Why is journalism a craft worth pursuing?
Thomas: These will sound like clichés but aren’t. Service to humankind. Knowledge is power and journalism spreads that power beyond just the powerful. Second, speaking of power, quite frankly, being a journalist is the only way most of us have a chance at power in affecting and effecting events. Other than being elected to office or being a high ranking corporate official, most of us would never attain that power opportunity. People, especially journalists, don’t like to talk about power because it sounds aggrandizing. But the phrase, “power of the press,” is not to be dismissed. If this makes one uncomfortable, go back to the “service to humankind” reasons.
Barnestormin: What do you like about journalism?
Thomas: For the reasons described in Question 7 above. But also because you are working with a wonderfully motivated, highly intelligent group of people in the exciting cauldron of a news room or an editorial writers’ section. There is a constant synergy of excitement, particularly when you get a hot tip for a story or obtain a “scoop” over rivals. You are in both a business atmosphere (a newspaper must make money to survive) and a non-business atmosphere (like governmental and nonprofit agencies, there is more to it than making money) (sympathetic to the role of government in society but also a constant watchdog). Journalism is a profession where most days you can go home feeling “I did something today that mattered.”
Barnestormin:Will newspapers survive, in your opinion?
Thomas: This takes us back to Question 5. I think the best hope is that as people find themselves flooded with information from so many sources, they will realize they need something that makes sense out of that plethora of facts, figures, and opinions. And something in a form that they can read at leisure and can clip out (without having to use print-outs). Having said that, I go back again to Question 5 and the point that newspapers have to get past of just giving away for free their valuable output and find a way of making the money needed to stay in business.
Barnestormin: Who is a good model for aspiring journalists to pattern themselves after, and why?
Thomas: I would watch for the bylines of writers whose work you find both enlightening and interesting and read them not just for the content but for the ways they find to express themselves. One tip that may surprise you: James Reston, the great New York Times reporter and columnist, started off as a sports writer. He called that a great experience for writing because you are essentially writing the same story over and over (who is going to win, who won and the score, and why did that person or team win). To avoid boredom, a sports writer therefore has to be clever in creating analogies, metaphors, etc., to make the same old story fresh for the reader.

Luffy leads American Bridge’s resurgence

2009-07-08T09:23:00.001-07:00

Sitting behind a desk covered with stacks of papers, Robert Luffy looked like he’d just taken a break from work in his office at American Bridge Co.’s headquarters in Coraopolis. The wall of windows behind him, framed by exposed steel beams, made a visitor recall the company’s glory days as a large construction contractor in the 1970s. The window also gave a panoramic view of the Ohio River and the hills above the opposite riverbank—the ideal perspective for a commander, or a strategist.
Luffy, 59, president and CEO of American Bridge, has the corner room with the view. He also has a compelling vision for the company, those who know him say. Even people who don’t know him well have been impressed with the way he brought American Bridge back from the edge of bankruptcy in the past dozen years. Luffy’s achievements recently lead to him winning the prestigious Metcalf Award, which is a lifetime achievement award given by the Engineers Society of Western Pennsylvania.
Michael Bock, a construction attorney who also is an engineer and president of ESWP, said when he nominated Luffy for the award, everyone on the board thought it was a great idea because of Luffy’s reputation. Bock worked with Luffy as a young design engineer at American Bridge in the early 1970s. Luffy was a field engineer, and the two worked together on the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayetteville, West Virginia. Until recently, the bridge was the longest steel-arch bridge in the world.
“He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy,” Bock said of Luffy. “He’s a guy that people look up to. He expects people to do their best, as he does.”
Luffy said he appreciates the recognition from his peers. “It was unexpected, but it felt great. Awards are given to individuals, but that recognition of me is due to the work of a lot of people,” Luffy said.
He leaned back in his chair as he considered the first days of his second stint with American Bridge, which began in 1993. He was recruited from Mellon Stuart to run the struggling company, which was close to folding. Sales at American Bridge were just $32 million in 1994.
“We were without much bonding support, hadn’t been profitable for many years, and we didn’t have any work. We were down to one project,” Luffy said.
American Bridge had about 25 employees at the time and was just a skeleton of its former self. The company had no production facility and was at a disadvantage to competitors who assembled the steel for bridges and buildings before erecting the structures on-site. The firm did have a well-regarded name and an archive of drawings from projects that dated back to its founding in 1900.
American Bridge was once the world's largest builder of bridges and skyscrapers around the globe, but by the early 1990s it was a minor player in a market it had dominated. Even before the company was sold by USX Corp. in 1987, tough competition and poor construction markets had resulted in declining sales.
When he took over leadership of American Bridge, Luffy found that the company’s name still opened doors. No matter where he went, he could walk in anywhere and talk to anybody as president of American Bridge, he said.
“It was obviously a challenge, but we had a nucleus of good people who needed direction and a strategic plan. And we still had a great name,” Luffy said. “Everywhere you went you ran into an alumnus [of American Bridge], and it made the job easier.”
Luffy’s modest streak doesn’t allow him to take too much credit for the impressive turnaround he’s helped to orchestrate. You can’t separate the man from American Bridge’s transformation, though. Standing nearly 6 feet, 4 inches tall and broad-shouldered, Luffy is impressive-looking. Even in just a crisp dress shirt, slacks and loafers, he looks like the type of guy who might get through to the CEO, regardless of where he worked.
Still, he downplays his part in the nearly miraculous rebound of the company.
“There’ve been tougher turnarounds done. We just had to set the right course,” Luffy said. “I wanted to do my part to make it the company of choice for building challenging structures.”
Back in the early 1970s, when Luffy was starting his career as a recent engineering graduate of University of Pittsburgh, he worked for American Bridge. After a few years he moved on to Mellon Stuart, where he stayed for 17 years until he was recruited back to American Bridge in 1993. Much has changed since then.
The company was located in Pittsburgh, but these days, its headquarters are in an attractive modern building in Coraopolis. Soon a new engineer-training center will be added onto the building, which shares a piece of riverfront with two larger production facilities.
During the past 10 years, American Bridge has focused on winning and completing the most complex projects, as it was known for doing in the past. In 1999, the company bought 32 acres next to its Coraopolis offices and opened a manufacturing plant. The plant now is in two sprawling buildings on the property.
A few miles downriver from the company’s headquarters is the old American Bridge steel mill in Ambridge, the town named for the company that built the Empire State Building, Yankee Stadium and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The days of the Ambridge mill finishing steel for the company are long past, but the legacy remains, thanks in large part to Luffy.
He had envisioned taking the company back to its status as one of the top bridge builders in the world, and that goal certainly has been achieved. Sales for American Bridge in 2006 were $330 million—a tenfold increase from 12 years prior. American Bridge now has offices in Coraopolis, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tampa, Orlando and Richmond. The company employees about 300 engineers and 50 staff people, as well as field workers ranging from 500 to 2,000 workers, depending upon the ongoing projects.
Its most prestigious work currently is the $1.43 billion job of building a new earthquake-proof eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. American Bridge recently won the contract along with partner Fluor Enterprises, of Sugar Land, Texas. The contract amounts to about $100 million each year over seven years for American Bridge. The company wouldn’t have won the contract without the tenacity of Luffy, said Mike Flowers, executive vice president for American Bridge and project director of the Bay Bridge Project.
Flowers remembers the old American Bridge from his work there early in his career in the 1970s. He started with the company in 1975 and recalls it as an exciting place to work. After being hired away from the company by Luffy to Mellon Stuart in 1986, he ended up following his chief back to American Bridge in 1994.
“The reason I came back was a shared vision for what the company once was, and what it could be. The company came very close to not existing,” Flowers said. “I run into people across the country who are still surprised that we are a force to be reckoned with.”
Flowers gives much of the credit to Luffy, saying the CEO has tremendous vision and the energy to make that vision reality.
“He doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. The Bay Bridge [project] is the classic example,” Flowers said, noting that the project had to be bid twice before the company won the contract with Fluor.
Patrick Flaherty, senior vice president for Fluor Corp., was his company’s point man for winning the Bay Bridge project. Part of the reason why Fluor chose to partner with American Bridge was because few companies in the United States have a track record of working on large suspension bridges, and American Bridge has such a record. The personalities and skills of the employees of American Bridge and Fluor also seemed to work well together, Flaherty said.
“We enjoyed working with Bob, first of all because he had a great team. You could tell people enjoyed working [for American Bridge], and I think Bob helped put that culture in place,” Flaherty said. “We felt that the skills they had were very complimentary to the strengths that we brought to the table.”
Winning the most complicated projects, such as the Bay Bridge project, is part of Luffy’s strategy, Flowers said.
“We’ve grown back into our reputation. We were a shell of the company we had been. It’s been a huge team effort to get us where we are,” Flowers said.
Cooperation is a strong suit for Luffy, who is a former chairman of the Pittsburgh Zoo and former chairman of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania. He also volunteers with his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Pitt’s engineering school, where he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1972. Gerald Holder, the U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering at Pitt, said Luffy is generous with his time.
“Bob is very pro-engineer—engineering is very important to him,” Holder said. “He really is an advocate for engineering education.”
That advocacy has paid off, even in Luffy’s own family. Two of his five children are involved in engineering—he has a son in the engineering program at Pitt, and a daughter who works in bioengineering.
With the toughest part of rebuilding American Bridge completed, Luffy is enjoying the ride that comes with leading a world-class company.
“The bridge-building business is something I always wanted to do for a living. I love going to work. I would love to be involved with our company for a long time,” Luffy said.
Those who work with Luffy can’t imagine American Bridge without him. Michael Cegelis, executive vice president for American Bridge, works with Luffy at the Coraopolis headquarters. He hasn’t been far from his boss since they met in the 1980s. Cegelis credits Luffy with being instrumental to American Bridge’s turnaround.
“It starts with him,” Cegelis said. “He’s the leader, the visionary, the guy that cuts to the chase.”
Unlike some bosses, Luffy is the type of leader who will take input from his employees, Cegelis added. “He has a very clear vision of where we’re going. It can be adjusted with input. But he’s the guy that’s ready to make it happen,” he said.

A version of this story first appeared in Pittsburgh Professional Magazine. Photo of Bob Luffy reprinted courtesy of ENR magazine.

Real Pittsburghers: DiGioias

2009-07-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

Barnestormer note: Because the eyes of the world are focusing on Pittsburgh and its people in anticipation of the G-20 summit, I've decided to run some stories in Barnestormin that I've penned on some of the great people who live in our fair city.

Beginning today, I will be running profiles on some of the folks who make our city the garden spot of the world. To start with, I have a piece on Tony DiGioia Jr. and his son, Dr. Tony DiGioia III. Both CMU graduates, these men have impacted the engineering and medical professions in many positive ways. Enjoy.

Engineer Anthony M. DiGioia, Jr., and his son, Dr. Anthony M. DiGioia III, have made unique contributions to their fields. The elder DiGioia co-founded GAI Consultants, a prominent engineering company, and is a part-time professor. Following after his father, Dr. DiGioia started his career as an engineer, but quickly went into medicine and now has an orthopedic medical practice and is an expert in computer-assisted orthopedic surgery.
Each man’s success is the result, at least in part, of the ability to effectively communicate scientific ideas into basic concepts. Technically speaking, this father and son speak the same language.

By Jonathan Barnes

Those who are familiar with engineering know it’s not just a profession; it’s a mindset. Engineers are taught to think analytically, and they tend to bring that type of thinking to nearly everything they do. Or at least this seems to be true in the case of the DiGioias.
The story of these two men began at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) more than fifty years ago. Engineering professor Elio D’Appolonia knew he had a sharp civil engineering student in Anthony DiGioia II. His student was so smart that in 1956 D’Appolonia hired him and a few of his bright classmates to work for his nascent engineering company, D’Appolonia Associates. The young engineers worked for their professor while they were completing their graduate degrees. D’Appolonia quickly noticed DiGioia also had people skills.
“He was an excellent communicator,” says D’Appolonia, who at 90, has been retired for a decade from his company, D’Appolonia Consulting Engineers. “Tony was one of the few people I selected to communicate for our firm. He was very good at making contacts. He had a very pleasant personality and he knew what he was talking about. He made the client feel comfortable.”
DiGioia was equally impressed with his professor, and knew he wanted to be associated with him. “I could see in the way he dealt with people, he’d be very successful,” DiGioia says. “He’s very enthusiastic about engineering. He’s very client-oriented.”
One of those students who were hired by D’Appolonia was Dick Gray, who co-founded General Analytics Incorporated (now GAI Consultants) with DiGioia, and who now owns DiGioia Gray Associates with his longtime partner. Gray attributes part of their success to D’Appolonia’s influence. “Having Dap as a mentor was a wonderful thing. He got us started and kept us going,” Gray says.
Gray reflects back to his time as a student at Carnegie Tech with DiGioia, and recalls that his business partner was always gifted, and was first in their civil engineering class. “He’s a detail person. And he’s very good, technically,” Gray says. “Over the years, even though he was president of GAI, he’s maintained his technical skills and added to them. He’s very well known for his work on transmission line foundations, and also for the utilization of coal combustion waste products, such as fly ash.”
DiGioia was at the forefront of the then-emerging area of geotechnical engineering; a field that was introduced to the nation at a conference in 1936, D’Appolonia explains. “Prior to 1936, foundations were handled in the U.S. by people who worked in a local region. Geotechnical [engineering] existed with contractors, who knew it by the school of hard knocks,” he says. “The whole concept of [DiGioia’s] consultation work was just getting underway.”
Contacted for this story, DiGioia met a reporter in the DiGioia Gray office, which is the old GAI office in Wilkins. In a sparsely furnished boardroom, DiGioia answered questions about his career, while trying to steer the conversation away from himself. “I thought this story was supposed to be about Tony,” he says, genuinely surprised that so many questions are directed to him. His humility may have something to do with his humble background—just another kid from Lincoln-Lemington.
“His dad was a tailor,” explains Bob DiGioia, the engineer’s fourth child. “And I think that [humility] came through in the way he was raised—you work hard. He and Tony are very quiet when it comes to talking about themselves.”
DiGioa, 73, is terse when speaking about his accomplishments, preferring to focus on the achievements of others, such as his eldest son Tony, or on the help he received from his co-workers in building his businesses. “I’ve been fortunate to be associated with some really good people through my firm,” he says, adding that he enjoys his work. “I like the challenge of developing a cost-effective solution that is environmentally acceptable. That’s the fun of our profession.”
Along with D’Appolonia and Gray, DiGioia was one of a group of individuals from 10 companies that founded the Association of Soil and Foundation Engineers in 1969 to get relief from professional liability claims that were so frequent that their firms were uninsurable. The group decided to insure themselves, and for decades its members have had no trouble being covered by regular insurers, due in part to the practices of ASFE, such as Peer Review.
Despite more than a half century of ceaseless work, DiGioia’s dedication to his profession has not waned. Even after he and Gray sold GAI to its managers in 2005, his passion for the work led him to again partner with Gray and form DiGioia Gray Associates. In addition to teaching and volunteering, DiGioia works nearly full-time for his new company. It’s obvious that his heart is in his work.
DiGioia’s ability to simplify technical concepts for his clients works well with his didactic personality. In addition to mentoring young engineers throughout his career, DiGioia also taught at Carnegie Tech, including several years of night school, after graduating. He recently returned to teaching as an adjunct professor at his alma mater. Additionally, he teaches a continuing education course on foundation engineering offered to practicing engineers by the University of Wisconsin.
“It’s an interesting opportunity, working with youngsters,” DiGioia says. His classroom instruction is just part of his educational labors—he is a large part of efforts of the Engineering Society of Western Pennsylvania to spread the word about the benefits of careers in engineering, says attorney/engineer Michael Bock.
DiGioia is a longtime member and current first vice-president of ESWP, Bock notes. “He’s very much involved in our strategic initiatives to get more kids interested in engineering. Only 6 percent of college students pursue careers in engineering. If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be globally technically noncompetitive,” Bock says.
Part of the reason for the trend could be simple ignorance of engineering, DiGioia suggests. “You ask the general public, what do engineers do? That’s a very good question. We’re trying to spread the word about that,” he says.
Being passionate about engineering, DiGioia sometimes takes an unconventional approach to generating interest in the field, Bock explains. DiGioia set up a program where he brought in professionals over pizzas at lunchtime, to talk to students about what you can do with an engineering degree, Bock explains. “He’s a real peach of a guy,” he says.
* * *
While DiGioia was working on his civil engineering degrees and starting a family with his wife, Carole, he was showing his children the benefits of Carnegie Tech, teaching, and engineering. Before he had finished graduate school with his doctorate, the couple had three children, including young Tony. Dr. DiGioia grew up observing his father teach, and he also saw him start an engineering firm. That early introduction to engineering impressed Tony III with the desire to be an engineer. He attributes that interest to his father introducing him to the profession.
“He kept very close ties to CMU. The early exposure of seeing what engineers really do was important,” Dr. DiGioia says, adding that his father’s influence on him went beyond the professional. “Through the whole process of building a large company, he never changed as a person. In some ways, he was the same way with his family as he was with his employees.”
Both father and son are groundbreaking professionals who have had the good fortune, or good sense, to work in emerging fields of study. The elder DiGioia began to work as an engineer when geotechnical engineering was a rising field in the United States. He became an expert in the field, helped build a sizable company and has written and lectured on geotechnical engineering. Dr. DiGioia got into robotics and orthopedic medicine when the two were converging. That field of interest turned out to be a good fit for Dr. DiGioia, who has combined his engineering education and analytical background with his medical knowledge to address the problem of replacing joints in peoples’ hips and knees.
Dr. DiGioia’s first inklings of an interest in medicine were the result of accidents, when he broke his ankle in high school and when he broke his knee while playing football at Carnegie Mellon. Those painful incidents led him to begin to think about the mechanics of the body. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science and Master’s degree in civil and biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon, he worked for three years in the orthopedic biomechanics lab at University of Pittsburgh. “The reason I went to medical school was because of Albert Ferguson, who was head of Pitt Medical School,” Dr. DiGioia explains. “My interest turned toward building the bridge between clinicians and engineers.”
After graduating with honors from Harvard Medical School, DiGioia interned in general surgery and did his residency in orthopaedic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He then completed a fellowship in adult reconstructive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American College of Surgeons. He has authored many scientific papers and book chapters.
Dr. DiGioia is a leader in the development of computer assisted surgical technologies and processes to promote patient-focused care. He is a senior research scientist, founder and co-director of the Center for Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery at Carnegie Mellon University. He has received many awards, including the Metcalf Award from the Engineering Society of Western Pennsylvania—a distinction his father also shares. His father is justifiably proud of him.
“Tony’s thesis supervisor was Red Whitaker, who got him involved with robotics. That’s how Tony became interested in medicine,” DiGioia says, noting that his son took an analytical approach to deciding whether to pursue medicine. “He studied whether he wanted to be a doctor.”
At 50, Dr. DiGioia is a practicing surgeon for Renaissance Orthopaedics at Magee-Womens Hospital, and a clinical associate professor of orthopaedic surgery with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He also is the founder of a nonprofit organization, the AMD3 Foundation.
Maybe it’s the result of the nurturing of a man who is an entrepreneur, engineer and father of eight that enabled Dr. DiGioia to excel professionally. Or perhaps it’s the genes. Whatever the reason, the father and son share a common understanding of engineering and an ability to apply that knowledge to benefit others.
“The mechanics of the body are not too different from the mechanics we learn in engineering,” Dr. DiGioia says, adding that the thought process of an engineer can be beneficial in medicine. “The skills that I needed to be a skillful doctor in the long run were the skills I learned as an engineer. Engineering teaches you how to solve problems. Engineers always look at the whole picture, the whole process… We focus on the entire patient experience. Surgery is one part, but rapid rehab, specialized gyms and other things are part of the whole approach.”
You can see the influence of Tony’s engineering background in his work, his father says. “The way he approaches problems—I think CMU teaches you to define and solve the problem,” he says. “It’s a very good way of approaching things in general.”
While the understanding of a potential closeness in engineering and medicine is now generally accepted, it wasn’t when Dr. DiGioia was applying to medical schools. “I always had to explain why I was going into medicine,” he says. “Now, engineering is a very accepted pathway into medicine.”
* * *
Dr. DiGioia’s gift for effectively communicating his knowledge to patients and colleagues continues to benefit many others. He has organized and chaired several conferences on Patient and Family Centered Care; Bone and Joint Health; and Less and Minimally Invasive and Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery. He is conducting Arthritis Fairs meant to educate patients on conservative and operative treatments of arthritis.
He also is a blogger. One might wonder where a busy surgeon finds the time to maintain a web log, but Dr. DiGioia says he considers it an important part of his job. He regularly posts articles on his Renaissance Orthopaedics blog, in which he discusses various subjects of interest to his patients.
“It’s a part of our educational process,” DiGioia explains. “We have four conferences a year just for patients. The blog came about because a lot of people were asking the same questions, and we use the blog to respond to that.”
That ability to interrelate with his patients is part of what makes the doctor exceptional, some say. Robert Mehrabian, former president of Carnegie Mellon and now CEO of Teledyne Technologies Incorporated, says Dr. DiGioia is a gifted surgeon who truly cares about his patients. “Because of his engineering background, he has a great understanding of not only how the human body functions, but he also really understands the tools that aid him in surgery,” Mehrabian says, adding that he tore his ACL while playing soccer with students at CMU, and Dr. DiGioia operated on him. Mehrabian was so pleased with the success of the operation that he referred a few of the university’s trustees to DiGioia.
The orthopedic surgeon takes the “Do no harm” credo of the medical profession seriously, performing surgery as a last resort. DiGioia’s ability to relate with patients, Meharabian says, is wonderful. “Our provost had a secretary who was about 70 and could barely walk. She was scared to have any surgery,” Mehrabian explains. “Tony was visiting me one day and I introduced them to each other, and he spent about a half-hour talking to her about her problem. Very soon thereafter, he did her hip. He just communicates so well with patients.”
* * *
Dr. DiGioia started his family with his wife Cathleen when he was still in school. She was working at Children’s Hospital in Brookline, Mass., when her husband was attending Harvard. Their daughter Angela was born in his second year of medical school, and daughters Noel and Maria were born within the next few years.
Some wives who rarely see their husbands due to school and work commitments might not be able to handle such an arrangement, especially while pregnant. Even now, with Dr. DiGioia well established as a surgeon, he typically works 10-14 hour workdays. But Cathleen DiGioia says the long days were always expected. “That’s just the way it is. Growing up, we knew that’s the way it was,” she says.
The couple literally grew up together, meeting each other and beginning to date in high school. They have been married for 26 years, and these days, they are able to spend a fair amount of time together in and out of work. She is the office manager of Renaissance Orthopaedics.
Her mother-in-law, Carole DiGioia, echoes Cathleen’s blasé attitude regarding sacrifices made for the family. Asked how they managed with three young children and her husband in grad school, Carole laughs. “We didn’t do much. We were always at home,” she says. “In those days, everyone had big families. That’s what you did then.” The couple met in grade school at Corpus Christi Elementary and have been married for 51 years.
Carole gives her daughter-in-law credit for being a support to her son. “Without Cathy being how she is, young Tony would not be where he is,” she says. Dr. DiGioia agrees, and credits his wife with keeping the family together “She’s the rock, the stability for everything,” he says. “When I was in medical school, she was working, and had our oldest daughter, Angela. She kept the house together when I was working 120-hour weeks…She helped me start my practice at Magee.”

Photos of the DiGioias by Jim Judkiss, courtesy of ENR magazine.

Pittsburgh's G-20, and Mau-Mauing the Press Corps

2009-06-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

It has been oft-reported that when the White House announced that the upcoming G20 Summit would be held in Pittsburgh in September, some in the White House press corps snickered. The snickering was news in Pittsburgh for several print and TV news cycles. Maybe that small town, smoky city feeling is tough to overcome here.
Perhaps it’s surprising that some here in Pittsburgh, the City of Champions, home of the Super Bowl Steelers and the Stanley Cup Penguins, are a bit insecure about our city’s current place in the world. We are prone to perceive insults, and to detect snobbery of Big City press, like working class kids at a prep school party. We try to impress too hard sometimes, and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s deputy chief of staff, Kristen Baginski, seemed a bit like that to me in her opening remarks at the International Bridge Conference, held last week in Pittsburgh.
She waxed about the opportunity presented by the upcoming G-20 Summit. “The G-20 is Pittsburgh’s opportunity to show itself to the world…Pittsburgh’s a city that’s been able to reinvent itself,” she said.
Which is in fact the point of the G-20 being held in Pittsburgh, and in a way, the same point was being made by the International Bridge Conference being held Here. Held in the award-winning, LEED-certified David L. Lawrence Convention Center, in the former industrial powerhouse Steel City (which could be the unofficial capital of the Rust Belt), the very presence of the engineers underscored Pittsburgh's success in transcending its past, and making the most of it. Indeed, that’s why the Obama administration chose Pittsburgh as the meeting place for some of the world’s most powerful leaders. The idea is to showcase the turnaround that Pittsburgh has been able accomplish since the dark days of mass layoffs in the early and mid-1980s.
The International Bridge Conference was being held in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center for the second time. It’s not hard to see why—the center staff caters to the needs of each conference, tailoring offerings for each group, with a warm Pittsburgh friendliness that echoes the welcoming nature of this neighborly city. Another obvious reason for the convention being held in Pittsburgh—also known as the City of Bridges for the thousands of bridges that traverse rivers, streams, creeks and hollows in the area—is the city’s pivotal and historic role in the bridge building and engineering industries.
It doesn’t hurt that the David L. Lawrence Convention Center provides sweeping views of both the cityscape and river-scape, giving the feeling, with its huge, sail-like windows, of a ship on the edge of the water. It is impressive, no doubt, and it also is the structure that led me to be a stringer for ENR magazine. Several years ago, in the wake of the collapse of the 13th truss being erected for the new convention center, ENR senior editor Richard Korman contacted me by phone to enlist me to cover the coroner’s inquest into the truss collapse, which killed ironworker Paul Corsi, Jr., 38, and injured two of his co-workers.
Covering part of the bridge conference (I have covered several conventions in the building for various publications over the years), it struck me how far our city has come. Now, we are no longer America’s best kept secret; The Economist says we’re simply the best place to be. The President says we’re a place to emulate, and a place study on how it rebounded from tough economic times.
More than 100 multiglobal companies are headquartered here or have a base here, Baginski said. “We’re a world-class city whose future is bright,” she said.

Glenn Greene Exhibition and Celebration set for June 20-21

2009-06-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Glenn Greene

412-243-2772

PITTSBURGH (June 10, 2009) — His creations are prized artworks in structures throughout the region, but many people don’t know they can walk into Glenn Greene’s Regent Square stained glass studio and browse for gifts or talk with the artist nearly any day.

In celebration of his thirtieth year of working with stained glass, and to welcome the public to enjoy his creations, Greene is opening his studio for an exhibition of a series of his work. Greene’s exhibition of his “The Great 48” series—48 stained glass pieces created consecutively—will be the focus of an art opening and celebration at his Guthrie Street studio from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. on June 20, and from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. June 21. Refreshments will be provided at the summer solstice event, which will feature live music performances.

Originally built as the former Frank French Machine Shop along Guthrie Street (the address is 635 South Braddock Avenue, rear), the studio building is 100 years old this year, and also is being celebrated by the exhibition. While Greene’s appreciation for history is evident in his involvement in restorations, that craftwork supports the main part of his business—his original artistic creations. “My art is a melting pot of many styles and influences; craftsman and church and on and on,” Greene said.

The Great 48 is a group of 48 stained glass leaded windows, varying in size and fabricated in a whirlwind of creativity by Greene four years ago. Each piece was made as part of a group of 12 per month, over four months. Greene was inspired to fashion the artworks after finding a crate of frames he had set aside. The fruit of that creative burst is the series of striking works that blend stained glass, beveled glass, agate, and many other items from Greene’s collection of glass goodies, in richly evocative scenes that are abstract, yet familiar.

Greene is thankful to be pursuing an art that he loves, and appreciative of the many opportunities Pittsburgh has offered since he arrived here 27 years ago from Cleveland to do what he expected would be a short job. Despite the struggling economy, Greene’s business is booming, which he attributes in part to his growing reputation, but also to the more reflective nature of people during a recession.

“Tough times create more of a need for emotional and aesthetic nourishments. With the economic downturn, my business has improved. People are traveling less, staying at home, and appreciating what they have,” Greene said.

Those interested in attending the exhibition/open house are asked to RSVP at ggsginc@gmail.com.

###

Glenn Greene’s Stained Glass Adds Color to Regent Square and Beyond

2009-06-14T13:19:00.001-07:00

From the transom of McBroom Beer Distributor to the stained glass windows in Waverly Presbyterian Church’s front staircase and beyond, Glenn Greene’s works are part of the artsy feel of Regent Square. Many are familiar with Greene’s sandwich board, which sits along South Braddock Avenue advertising his stained glass studio, but fewer people know that he created McBroom’s transom window from bottle bottoms, or that he donated two stained glass windows, original creations decorated with a Frick Park motif, to Waverly Presbyterian Church. Some of his restorations also grace the Honors College at the University of Pittsburgh.
Greene’s original stained glass artwork, stained glass window reproductions, and antique window restorations accent many homes in the area. He has been practicing his art since he became an apprentice to a stained glass artist 30 years ago.
“You want to be a stained glass artist, kid? Here’s a broom,” Greene recalled his first mentor saying.
The artist originally worked in a studio in Oakland, moving to in his current studio 13 years ago. The former Frank French Machine Shop, the century-old building located along Guthrie Street is filled with Greene’s original artwork, restored antique windows, and various types of stained glass gifts. The studio offers items that are affordable to people of all income levels.
From noon to 10 p.m. on June 20, the public is welcome to the studio for Greene’s first self-hosted exhibit of some of his artwork: “The Great 48.” The series is a group of 48 stained glass leaded windows, varying in size but related by the fact that they were created in groups of 12 over four months, 12 per month, four years ago.
Greene decided to fabricate the art pieces in a series after finding a crate of empty frames he had. His original works are abstract, combining familiar shapes and abstract forms with antique stained and beveled glass and newer stained glass. The images he creates are somehow familiar, capturing and transforming light, and serving as points of reflection to those viewing them.
While he is renowned for his original artwork, Greene also is well known for the stained glass window reproductions and antique leaded glass window restorations he’s created for many local homes. His ability to collaborate with homeowners to create lasting impressions through stained glass is a part of his work that is exceptionally satisfying to him.
“People can come in and talk to me. I really like to do work around here,” Greene said. “If you’ve got an old door that could use leaded glass, talk to me. I’ve done a bunch of them, and it’s a very exciting process.”
Annie Stunden, a neighbor of Greene’s who lives nearby in Edgewood, commissioned him to create original art glass windows to replace older transom windows in her Queen Anne Cottage style house. “He said, ‘I’ll design them and you’ll love them,’” she recalled.
Greene went to Stunden’s house and scoped the place, taking pictures of it from different perspectives, Stunden said, and even took into consideration that she is a quilter and has her quilts around the house. The original creations he made work well with her quilts, as well as with the home’s architecture and even a front stone wall.
“He came up with beautiful windows. And they have life to them,” Stunden said. “You just have to walk around the neighborhood to see Glenn’s creations. Mine are the most colorful, though.”

What to do about Bellevue?

2009-06-05T11:12:00.001-07:00

Sam DiBattista has a cold. His voice is strained as he talks about Bellevue's business district. Every so often, his voice breaks, either from the cold or from the frustration.
"We're struggling right now. The market is different," said Mr. DiBattista, owner of Vivo restaurant, in the borough's business district. "Being a destination in a town that doesn't have anything else happening isn't working right now."
Some of his feelings are echoed by others in the borough who say not enough is being done to strengthen the community. Vacant stores dot Lincoln Avenue, Bellevue's main street, and the tired look of the business district hasn't helped to spur investment.
The business district of several blocks has a variety of storefronts, but it hasn't looked so tough since Pittsburgh's last big recession in the early 1980s.
Mayor George Doscher, a lifelong resident, remembers those times. He recognizes the current struggles in the town and is concerned with the loss of businesses.
"Those borough businesses are our lifeblood," Mr. Doscher said.
Mr. DiBattista agreed but said some of those in local government aren't doing all they can to help. Some Bellevue council members aren't interested in helping the development committee, Bellevue Initiative for Growth, which new council President Kathy Coder leads, Mr. DiBattista said.
"She's set up a situation to get hundreds of thousands of dollars for development, though council is against her," Mr. DiBattista said. "Who benefits by keeping Bellevue down? Who benefits by Bellevue having less income for local government services and the school district?"
Ms. Coder leads Bellevue Initiative for Growth, or B.I.G.. A Republican, Ms. Coder said she had a wakeup call in the primary election, where she did "terribly. It was a reality check for me." An overwhelming majority of Democrats in the borough who vote straight Democrat made her realize she had to make herself known to people. She said she also has recognized that she might not be able to retain her seat on council, to which she was appointed.
"I've come to the conclusion that you have to build towards sustainability. But there are people who are not looking toward the future," Ms. Coder said of those who don't support the development committee's initiatives.
Linda Woshner, Bellevue councilwoman, said she's not opposed to Ms. Coder's ideas for the committee, but she said many of those ideas are her own.
"Her ideas were my ideas to begin with. They are council's ideas, because B.I.G. is a council committee. Definitely, I am for revitalization, but we need to promote the community, to bring in people and bring in businesses," Ms. Woshner said.
She added that the vacant storefronts in the borough are more a sign of the times, rather than some indicator of serious trouble in a solid business district.
"There are vacant storefronts everywhere. We have a good business district, especially for these times. This is not the best of economic times," Ms. Woshner said.
One lifetime member of the community, former councilman and former Northgate school board member Rich Furis, said the development committee could be viewed as a political football, but it shouldn't be. With the group, its responsibilities and boundaries with regard to the town's government are blurred, he said.
"I've gone to a couple meetings, and my philosophy is the town needs new thinking. And a good idea is a good idea, no matter who comes up with it. … I worry about how these ideas will be focused, though," Mr. Furis said.
Mr. DiBattista led the wave of small restaurants and eateries that located in Bellevue several years ago and in subsequent years. His much-acclaimed Vivo restaurant is surviving, though he recently decided to open on Sundays to improve business. It's helped, but other factors have led Mr. DiBattista away from the bullish attitude he once had regarding the borough.
Last month, four years after he bought the closed G.C. Murphy building on Lincoln Avenue for $250,000 with the help of an investor, the building was sold at sheriff's sale. Mr. DiBattista had cultivated and rented to several small businesses in the building, and now most of them plan to move out of the building, he said. Some of the newer businesses on Lincoln Avenue were among the first to flee the borough. Regina Margherita, a pizzeria serving wood-fired oven-style pizza, relocated in 2008. Laughing Lizard, a juice bar and soup shop, closed last year. Affogato, a coffee house started by Mr. DiBattista in the wake of his success with Vivo, survives under different ownership. Still, he doesn't see more trendy business coming anytime soon.
"There's just no interest in investing in Bellevue right now," Mr. DiBattista said.
But members of the development committee and others, such as former mayor and current Bellevue council treasurer Paul Cusick, are working to promote Bellevue. Mr. Cusick, who's lived there for 39 years, recently started a news Web site, North Boroughs News. The site is linked to Bellevue's Web site, which has made Mr. Cusick the target of criticism by some residents. They say the link is essentially a borough government endorsement of his Web site. He disagrees.
" 'Enjoy Bellevue' and Northgate School District's Web sites also are linked," Mr. Cusick said. "I think some people are resistant to change."
Enjoy Bellevue is a nonprofit group.
Mr. Doscher, who is in his fourth year as mayor and in his 10th year with local government, said he was unaware that Mr. Cusick's news site was a for-profit business when he allowed the link to be put on the borough's Web site. An information technology committee has subsequently been formed by council. The committee will decide which links are placed on the borough site, the mayor said.
Mr. Cusick said he began his site because he believed the borough needed an online source of news.
Michele Smith owns QUI Interiors on Hawley Avenue and leads Enjoy Bellevue. The group's site, enjoybellevue.org, is an example of Bellevue merchants helping themselves, she said.
"It started as a group of merchants not satisfied with their representation on the old borough Web site," she said.
The year-old organization has hosted events in the borough intended to entice people to the town, including two days of free swimming at Bellevue pool last summer and a craft market on Hawley Avenue. The group recently hosted a classic car cruise on a closed stretch of Lincoln Avenue in the business district. About 200 antique cars and their owners attended, and about 1,000 visitors came.
"That Sunday, the restaurants had their best Sunday in years," Ms. Smith said.
The group's Summer Solstice Party, a three-day celebration first held last year, will be held June 18-21 with free swimming June 21 at Bellevue pool and a June 20 street dance on North Sprague Street. The events are in keeping with the focus of Enjoy Bellevue, which is meant to promote Bellevue's businesses, history and housing stock.
Ms. Smith said the borough's location is a great advantage. "We're 20 minutes from everywhere," she said.

Jonathan Barnes is a freelance writer and Bellevue native. pittsburghreporter@yahoo.com
This story originally appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Photo of Sam DiBattista by Andy Starnes.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09155/974676-54.stm?cmpid=localstate.xml

First Person: Back in the neighborhood

2009-05-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

By Jonathan Barnes

Growing up in Bellevue Borough, we kids knew everybody "upstreet," and nearly everyone there knew us. We'd go to Young's Drug Store for a milk shake at the marble soda fountain counter, and old Mr. Young made our drinks as we marveled at the huge mounted swordfish hanging on the wall above him. In later years, Jack, Mr. Young's equally old assistant, would serve us.
Jack was a raspy-voiced character, dark-skinned and inscrutable, with an ever-present cigar nub hanging from his mouth. Every so often Jack would re-light the stub, drawing deeply and blowing blue clouds of smoke, giving him a shaman's aura. But Jack was a realist, and he kept an eye on some of my sticky-fingered friends.
"Hi, Jack!" we'd say, all smiles and middle-school mischief.
"Put your hands in your pockets and whistle," Jack said.
Upstreet was a second home for us Bellevue boys. Many of the merchants knew us, as did most of the cops. Mostly they all were warm, even protective of us, like a bunch of uncles and aunts who'd squeal on us if we screwed up, but help if we needed it.
Luigi Della Ragione, co-owner of Luigi's Pizzeria, put up with our fooling around outside his Lincoln Avenue restaurant on nights after football games, and we never forgot the homelike warmth that just the thought of some of his pizza brings to us. Now that we are adults and many of us have moved from the old neighborhood, we still visit Luigi when we are in Bellevue, enjoying a slice and a chat. He looks as youthful and happy as ever, though his hair is grayer. When you see him, he'll always ask about members of your family, because that's how he is.
With Luigi, Mr. Young and Jack, and with Al Benitz and his men's shop or the Lincoln Bakery folks or many others upstreet, we kids had an extended paternalistic network. Those folks kept an eye on us, to see that we didn't get into trouble. And if we did run into a jam, as when my little brother Harve had his foot broken by an unwary driver backing over it, one of the adults was there to help. With Harve, it was Bellevue Police Chief Bill Bracken who scooped him up in his strong arms.
Maybe that's part of why I am glad to once again live in a traditional neighborhood with its own business district.
•
For the past decade I lived in Blackridge, a sidewalk-less neighborhood of tidy brick and stone houses that covers parts of Wilkinsburg, Churchill and Penn Hills. While the folks there are wonderful, it was never my ideal neighborhood. My idea of a perfect neighborhood always has been a place I can walk to for a movie, or to buy some milk, or to enjoy a Penguins game with other fans. It's a place where I'm comfortable, and people know my name when I walk into their store.
Since moving to Regent Square recently, I'm again starting to feel the comfort of the old neighborhood, albeit in a different place, with different characters.
While Bellevue has Frankfurter's, Regent Square has one of Pittsburgh's original hot dog shops -- D's Six Pack and Hot Dog Shop. The place has some of the best hotdogs in Pittsburgh, and the best fries in town. Joel, Adam or any of the other nice folks there will get your order in a jiffy, and if you come often, they're liable to remember what you like.
But so will Karen, or Nora or Jay at Murphy's Tavern, down the street.
"This place was named Regent Square after the Regent bottling plant, which was where McBroom's Beer store is," Karen explained to me one night. It occurred to me that it's quintessentially Pittsburgh for a place to be named after something that's long gone. (I remember those big, dark-colored Regent pop bottles, and I believe we got a nickel -- or was it a dime? -- for them.)
There is a sort of closeness among folks who work at these town-square establishments and their clientele. For those of us on the consumer side, I believe it's comforting to know they are nearby. It's nice to know that Margie and Jess will be at the Map Room, that Ali will be at Braddock Avenue Express on the corner, or that Angela and her crew will be at Clipps Salon.
•
These regular transactions that we small-town consumers have with our local merchants give us a bit more for our buck. For some of us, buying a handcrafted stained glass window from Glenn Greene, or a meal at Square Cafe, is a little more than just the cold hand of commerce. It's more than just an exchange of dollars and goods across a counter. It's about building and maintaining relationships.
For me, it's nice to know that when I pay that bill, part of the money is going to Peggy at Katerbean, or to Julie, owner of East End Fitness. The money isn't going to some heartless corporation based far away, but to someone here whom I know a little, and whom I like.
Through our purchases, we village consumers fill our daily needs, but we also fill a much more basic need -- to feel connected to others, to feel like we're part of a community. That's why I'm at home in Regent Square.
Jonathan Barnes is a freelance writer (jdavidbarnes@hotmail.com).
First published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on May 30, 2009 at 12:00 am
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09150/973698-109.stm

CACEA helps Croats here and abroad

2009-05-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

For those going through rough times in their lives, asking for and accepting the help of family members and friends during a crisis can be humbling. But when people who are close can only give so much to those needing help with difficult medical conditions, those in need can be forgotten by others. A new program now enables people in the U.S. to help such Croatians here and abroad.
For Croats in dire need, The Angel’s Fund can provide the help that others cannot. The program, a partnership of Pittsburgh-based Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance and the Croatian Fraternal Union, was the idea of Dr. Marion Vujevich, president of CACEA and a prominent Pittsburgh dermatologist. Dr. Vujevich recently met the parents of Antonela Kacic, a Croatian girl living in Pittsburgh who is here with her parents to get medical treatment for her condition.
Dr. Vujevich learned of Antonela’s situation through the CFU, and he sympathized with the young girl, who has had health problems since shortly after her birth. Antonela’s situation was relayed to the CFU in 1999 by the Rev. Grgo Sikric, who at the time was priest of the now-closed St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Pittsburgh’s North Side. CFU also was informed of the Kacic family’s situation by architect Louis D. Astorino, a longtime friend of the Croatian community who designed and built the addition to the CFU headquarters outside Pittsburgh.
Dr. Vujevich was moved by the Kacic family’s plight. His recognition of the hardships of the family compelled him to act.
“After talking with Antonela’s parents and learning of the severe medical status and great financial and personal hardships they have endured, I felt overwhelming compassion. As a physician, and as a person of Croatian heritage, I felt compelled to help establish some type of assistance program for Antonela and other children, and for people like her with serious medical conditions,” Dr. Vujevich said.
FAMILY STRUGGLE
The unusual problems of Croatia, which survived through subjugation as part of Yugoslavia and which was hard-hit by the subsequent war for Croatian independence, have contributed to some of the dire needs of the country’s citizens. The war has informed the views of many Croats, who have had to stoically deal with hardships that others cannot imagine. Croatia, partly impoverished through the war, also has sometimes had a difficult time being able to care for its own. But The Angel’s Fund is tending to the needs of Croatians harmed by the war, as well as those hurt by life’s sometimes unfortunate circumstances.
Frano Kasic survived the war, but he still sees devastation. He was hardened by the many tragedies he witnessed in the conflict, but the war wasn’t as harrowing as witnessing his daughter’s suffering, he explained. “None of this can get you prepared to watch your own daughter die a slow death,” he said.
Antonela is the only daughter of Frano and Mirela Kasic, and was born in Metkovic, Croatia. Antonela has been ill since she was 16 months old. Her intestine became twisted and gangrenous, and most of it had to be removed. Surgery took all but 15 centimeters of her intestine, after which Antonela recuperated for months in the hospital, being fed intravenously.
Her doctors initially believed she would live less than a week. Antonela now is twelve, and as beautiful a child as a parent could hope for, but her medical problems persist and she must get nutrition through an IV in her chest.
The Kasic family relocated to Pittsburgh 10 years ago to be near Children’s Hospital, where Antonela is receiving medical care. Antonela often must stay in the hospital due to complications of her condition, which makes her prone to getting infections. And though she is an otherwise active adolescent, she cannot play sports or engage in activities that could cause her undue strain.
So the Kasic family waits, staying in Pittsburgh and hoping for an improvement in Antonela’s condition and the cure for her medical problems. They are dependent upon others for help, and thus far, most of that help has come from Croats in Croatia. Even so, the family is relying upon charitable contributions to make her transplant possible.
Fortunately, the CFU, CACEA and The Angel’s Fund intervened. To initiate The Angel’s Fund, CACEA president Dr. Vujevich, who is an Honorary Consul to Croatia, gave $12,000 to the Kasic family. The fund, with the help of Rev. Skiric and Astorino, was able to raise a total of $90,000 for Antonela’s first transplant.
By reaching out to support the Kacic family, The Angel’s Fund is connecting Croats with other Croats. The charitable fund is bridging the cultural divide between Croatians in America and those in Croatia, by providing medical assistance for Croats who need it.
FRATERNAL TIES
Founded in 2002 in Pittsburgh under the leadership of Dr. Vujevich, CACEA’s mission is unique among Croatian organizations in the United States. The group works to promote and enhance economic, cultural, educational and community collaboration and development between the two nations. Its goal of introducing U.S. companies and organizations to Croatia’s resources, and of introducing Croatian companies and groups to opportunities in the U.S., demonstrates CACEA’s fraternal thrust. CACEA believes Croatians should help each other, as good family members do.
Through strengthening collaborative efforts between Croatia and the U.S., and by building a network of chapters across the U.S., CACEA members hope to reap benefits in both countries. Thus far, one obvious benefit has been the organization’s work to encourage the exchange of educational and arts opportunities between Croatia and the U.S. CACEA also serves as a vehicle for successful Americans to help others reach their economic and cultural potential. Numerous individuals have taken the opportunity to help the nonprofit group, such as prominent Croatian Americans including Nadine Bognar, Drazen Jukic, Dave Klasnick, Joseph Katarincic, Bernard Luketich, Zoran Micetic, Edward Pazo and Bernadette Sikaras, to name a few. Many other Croats also have provided aid to the charitable group.
CACEA’s cultural focus has led its members to host exhibitions in Pittsburgh of naïve art from Croatia. The organization also has been a major player in the plan to save St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Pittsburgh’s North Side, which is the oldest Croatian church in America. The nonprofit has worked to preserve Croatian cultural heritage in Croatia, by aiding in the preservation of the Church of St. Eusebius and Polion, in Vinkovic. CACEA also has forged contacts in Croatia and in the U.S. to develop agreements that could lead to more collaboration between professionals in the biomedical and informational fields.
CACE’s insignia, The Dove from Vucedol (which is the oldest dove in the world, at 5,100 years old), is reminiscent of the ceramic sculpture found at a Neolithic site in Croatia. The Vucedol dove, which is an ancient symbol of peace, exemplifies the fruits of CACEA’s mission—caring for others and goodwill in the world.
Since its inception, CACEA’s purpose has broadened to include the edification and enhancement of the cultural assets and living conditions of Croatians in Croatia and in the U.S. CACEA is a nonprofit, community-based foundation that built its endowment largely through donors in Southwestern Pennsylvania. One purpose of the group is to enable individuals to become involved by investing in the people and resources of Croatia and the U.S. The organization’s decisions are made by a community-based board of directors.
MEANS OF MOBILITY
The Croatian war of independence affected many families, especially those with kin involved in the conflict. Anto Bosnjak, of Zupanja, Croatia, is still dealing with problems from his 1993 injury in the war. He was wounded when a mortar shell exploded next to him, and fragments from it tore the artery in his upper right leg.
Captured by Muslim soldiers, Bosnjak was taken to a hospital in Tesanj. There he received minimal care, and his right foot had to be amputated. Irregular re-bandaging and cleaning of the wound created the need for seven other amputations. Two of the surgeries were done without anesthesia. In December 1993, with the help of a Croat from Usora, Bosnjak escaped from the hospital and found his regiment. He was transferred to Zagreb, where he received proper medical care and his first prosthesis.
With the help of Croatia’s Ministry of Defense, Bosnjak attended college and earned an engineering degree. He has yet to find employment in his chosen profession, and his hopes of finding a job already have been damaged. Since he was wounded in the war in Bosnia-Herzgovina as a member of the Croatian Army, Bosnjak petitioned the government for a pension and a job, both of which he was promised. But his requests have been ignored. He must pay all of his medical expenses out of his own pocket, and partly because of that, recently he was in need of a new prosthesis and could not afford one. But the transcontinental connections of CFU and The Angel’s Fund made the difference for Bosnjak.
Damir Bacic, president of the CFU lodge in Zupanja, Croatia, asked the fraternal group to help Bosnjak. As a way to assist immediately, Zajednicar, the CFU’s newspaper, published an appeal for aid for Bosnjak. CFU members sent $1,655 in donations. The Angel’s Fund covered most of the cost for the new prosthesis, by providing $10,000 for it. The $11,655 provided to Bosnjak covered all expenses for the prosthesis.
Bernard M. Luketich, president of the CFU and a co-founder of CACEA, said that though the group is new, it has received a lot of support. Part of that support can no doubt be attributed to the group’s altruistic mission. “It was organized to help our people,” he said.
To donate to The Angel’s Fund, please make checks payable to CACEA, and send them care of Bernard M. Luketich, president, Croatian Fraternal Union, 100 Delaney Drive, Pittsburgh, PA, 15235.
Jonathan Barnes is a Pittsburgh freelance writer who is part Croatian.
This story was published in the Croatian Chronicle.

Patriotism Is Spendy

2009-05-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

Writer’s note: I originally penned this story in October. It’s one of a handful of posts I have long-handed but not posted because I’ve been busy with writing for which I’m paid. But with the cutbacks some time ago at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and then this story in the Pittsburgh City Paper regarding print journalism, I figured I’d better get this post up sometime soon.

People, please read a newspaper, for the good of the nation, and I promise you'll feel better immediately about the economy, knowing that you've just helped it some. Right now, I’d love it if at least some of you would blow off reading this piece, and move on to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Business Times, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review or the Pittsburgh City Paper. Buy a subscription to a newspaper, or buy another subscription to a newspaper. Or if you have a business and you advertise, please do so with a newspaper, or even with a magazine.
Why should you advertise in or read newspapers?
Patriotism – People talk a good line about patriotism, about how great the troops are and on and on, but when it comes to the bottom line, those same folks often are Scottishly tight-fisted. Open up your wallets, Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Buy more newspapers and magazines, and advertise in more of them (especially newspapers). You’ll see a cyclical effect of strengthening our economy. More newspaper and magazine pages printed equals more work for those in the industry, but it also means more advertising, which amounts to more sales and more employment.
Self-edification – Many people seem to be able to barely think, much less speak well or write well, so it’s no surprise that newspaper readership is declining. We should all fight this glacial ignorance freezing discourse across the land, by educating ourselves, and when possible, educating those around us. Newspapers and magazines help in this process.
Keeping up the discourse – As a freelance writer, in the past the majority of my work has been with newspapers. I cut my teeth in the profession 15 years ago, stringing for the nascent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and also for the Pittsburgh City Paper. As a stringer, I’ve contributed more than 830 stories to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This is just part of my professional experience, and it is meant to illustrate the help I have been given in learning my craft by being able to work with local newspapers.
To whatever degree I am successful as a writer, part of that success is attributable to my experience as a newspaper reporter. I like to think I bring something different to the public’s discourse on a variety of issues. I believe that other trained journalists who also blog (and who also may now be working in PR or marketing), such as Jonathan Potts and Jason Togyer, bring something to the buffet of editorial views that others, many of them well paid, don’t. If we lose those perspectives, which are partly the result of the level of training such people receive, how effectively will we communicate with each other?
What spurred this post was a conversation I had with a former editor of mine, who’s employed by one of the dailies here. I asked him how it was going, and he was, as usual, sour.
“The newspaper business stinks. Unless someone across the country figures out how to make money on their web site, I don’t see it getting better,” he said.
This guy always was uplifting to work for. His paper is losing money, and it makes him nervous, as it should.
Generally speaking, newspapers provide more in-depth, knowledgeable coverage than any other media (other than some magazines, and some web sites). When we lose more smart, trained newspaper reporters and editors, some of those jobs never come back—like the formerly standard position of copy editor, which all newspapers once had. Fewer and fewer copy editors are working these days, and it’s helping to bring newspapers, as a product, into decline.
And who, with all of these job cuts, will be left to guard the henhouse of the Treasury as legislators raid it? You think this bailout fiasco is news? More like old news repeating itself, on a grander and uglier scale. We could’ve predicted our current problem with the banks by examining the Savings and Loan bailout in the late 1980s.
Please, do something patriotic, while helping the economy at the same time. Help to save the struggling print journalism industry by subscribing to a newspaper, or by advertising in one or two. And don’t forget to pick up one or two of your local magazines, too.
Here are links to some of my favorite publications, all of which I contribute to, except for the Trib (which I’ve worked for):
http://www.post-gazette.com/
http://enr.construction.com/
http://www.cooperator.com/
http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/
http://www.incommunitymagazines.com/
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/x/pittsburghtrib/

A People of Color

2009-02-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

I am trying to convince my classmates that I’m black. Or at least not completely white…
I once began a college essay with the words above, titling the piece “On Whiteness.” The phrase “person of color” was getting very popular at the time, and I was taking a Black World Literature class. I’d become more aware of the divisions that the language surrounding race can create. No longer were we referring to a Caucasian with one-eighth African blood as an “octoroon,” but everybody who is white now belonged to one class (white=oppressors), and everyone else was “of color” (colored=oppressed). Something about that approach, perhaps it was the exclusivity of it, irked me. So I penned the piece on whiteness.
I thought of all of this recently, of course, due to the election of Barrack Obama, for whom I voted. Over the course of his campaign, Obama made a believer out of me. (I’ll admit it—I have a “Hope” pin.)
Pundits now are talking about a “colorless” society, but I think they’re getting ahead of themselves. We need to reflect on how far we’ve come, but also how far we need to go.
To start, consider how the “white” race used to define and segregate itself. Just a century ago, Slavic peoples who helped settle Pittsburgh were referred to in the city’s newspaper as “mixed race”—they weren’t regarded as fully white.
My late grandmother, Helen, whose father, Franjo, came from Croatia before World War I, suffered discrimination for her ethnicity when she was a kid. With some prodding, she told me how some of her classmates had called her a “Bohunk,” and that some also had done so while throwing mud on her dress. (Croatians particularly hated being called “hunky,” because they were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.) Her father, Franjo, was fired from his job at the iron ore mine because (in part) he voted for a candidate opposed to the mine owner’s candidate in a local election. My grandmother's people are olive-skinned, and lived in the part of their Minnesota mining town in which the Italians lived. Not exactly white?
Nowadays, few people outside of the Aryan Nations would consider a white person with the name Cervac, or Zivic to not be white. Generations before most Croatians arrived in America, the Irish, who’d been brutally ruled by the English for centuries, were the ones who weren’t quite white. The Emerald Isle’s sons and daughters realized this when they went job-seeking in the New World, and were confronted with Help Wanted signs that stipulated “Irish Need Not Apply.” They also saw it in the racist depictions of Irish people in newspaper illustrations.
Given all of this baggage—I am Irish and Croatian, plus many other nationalities, which makes me particularly mixed—I’ll have to do it again. That is, claim kinship to the phrase “Person of color.” Call me Kubla Barnes. I am part Slav (original meaning=slave), as anyone who looks into my eyes and notices their deep setting and their slant can see.
As a kid growing up in Bellevue with my eleven brothers and sisters, we all recognized which of us had more “Chinese” eyes. One of my brothers, whom I’ll just call “Cato,” is one of the few kids in the family who most resembles his Croatian heritage. With his olive skin, black hair and deep-set eyes, Cato could pass for a full-blooded Croat, though we kids are just one-quarter Croatian. All of us are Croatian Quadroons, so to speak, but Cato would be what white people used to refer to as a “throwback.”
Another of my brothers, whom I’ll call Chun King, also is olive-skinned, and has a Roman nose, so even more than Cato, he could pass for Italian, and has been mistaken for one. Cato and Chun King’s resemblance to Croatians, and Italians, reminds me of the mixed background of Croatians. Depending upon which scholar you believe, Croatians originated in western Afghanistan and migrated to central Europe more than 2,000 years ago; or they originated in the Caucasus region, the ancestral home of Slavic peoples. Since the time of the Romans, Croats have been known as Slavs, who are mixed race Eurasians.
The Croats made their way to the Balkans around 600 AD, and mixed with the Romans who were living there. The Romans had mixed earlier with the descendants of the Celts and Illyrians, who’d settled the Balkans long before. Croatians are just one small tribe or Europe, but I think they are as purely “white” as any European tribe. As DNA research moves forward, racial and tribal distinctions seem to blur. Scientists recently concluded that the ancestors of the people of the British Isles—Irish, English and others—originated in what is now Spain, 10,000 years ago.
So is it a wonder that there are darker-skinned “Dark Irish?” They were probably all dark at one time. And some day, most Irish might be dark once again. Experts say that’s where the world is heading. Eventually, they say, most of us will be part of one big mixed race.
Now we have a black president, and I think that’s a good thing. But we still haven’t had a Slavic president, or an Italian-American president, though Kucinich and Feraro tried. One hundred years from now, will our first “mixed race” president be viewed as the first truly “American” president? I hope not. Maybe in a century or so, we’ll all see each other as people of color.

PennDOT is considering destroying historic church

2009-02-04T13:47:00.000-08:00

In the struggle over the fate of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Pittsburgh’s North Side, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials are caught between preservationists and the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese. So it’s déjà vu all over again, in the fight over this holy place.
PennDOT planned to raze the church, built in 1901, to make way for State Route 28’s planned reconfiguration. The plans to remove the church were canceled after preservationist George White devised new road plans that wouldn’t require removing the church, saving $50 million from what was initially estimated to be a $200 million road project. Now, PennDOT may buy the church to tear it down to make it easier to replace an $180,000 section of sewer line.
PennDOT officials say they are considering buying the church property at the urging of the Pittsburgh Diocese. Dan Cessna, district executive of PennDOT District 11-0, said there’s no immediate need for the church to be removed to make way for the road reconstruction, but his organization still is considering the idea. “The Diocese approached us and opened up the dialogue,” Cessna said.
Officials of the Pittsburgh Diocese agree that they broached the idea of selling the church to PennDOT. Father Daniel Whalen, diocesan administrator for St. Nicholas Church in Millvale and acting priest for the parish, which owns the closed St. Nicholas Church, said the sale of the church to PennDOT would be the best outcome for the long-running dispute.
“The idea is if we sell it to PennDOT, they’ll probably demolish it,” said Whalen, who is part Slavic, but not Croatian. “I just got off the phone from talking with someone about the malfunctioning security system” at the closed church.
Cessna said PennDOT is moving forward slowly on the issue. “We’ve had several meetings with preservation groups and with the Diocese. At this point, we’re not sure what we’re doing right there…The Diocese asked us to buy the property. We have a tentative plan to meet this month with preservation groups,” he said.
Those organizations include members of Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, a group comprised mainly of former parishioners of the closed church; representatives of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation; and members of the newly formed nonsectarian Friends of St. Nicholas preservation group. The new group was founded by PCHF member and Preservation Pittsburgh board member Jack Schmitt. Friends of St. Nicholas plans to buy the church and its hillside shrine and surrounding property and rehabilitate the structures to serve as a museum to the immigrant experience, while honoring the site’s Croatian heritage.
Schmitt recently met with Pittsburgh Bishop Paul Bradley, who confirmed that the Diocese thinks tearing down the church is the preferable outcome of the dispute. Whalen agreed with the assessment.
“That church is a monument to the fact that Croatian Christians could not come to agreement about it,” Whalen said. “The old adage ‘out of sight, out of mind’ applies.”
Schmitt is a lifelong Catholic who is not Croatian, but for years he has been working shoulder-to-shoulder with members of PCHF, Preservation Pittsburgh, PHLF and other organizations to save St. Nicholas Church. Over the years, the Diocese has aggravated the unresolved situation with the closed church, he said. “For the Catholic Church to blame the Croatians, is really sad,” Schmitt said.
Friends of St. Nicholas is raising funds for a feasibility study, which will determine the cost to repair the church property. The study will cost $50,000. Schmitt said he believes the investment is appropriate, given the preservation group’s plans for the church. “It’s really a historic place. It’s a place where things have happened,” he said.
The refurbished church/museum would be tied to the North Side proper by a park running along the narrow strip of land between Rt. 28 and the steep Troy Hill hillside. A recreational trail would wind from the North Side’s Deutchtown neighborhood, past the grotto and the church, to nearby Rialto Street. Originally, preservationists had sought to transform the church into a shrine—an idea that former Pittsburgh Bishop (now Washington, D.C. Archbishop) Donald Wuerl first voiced. Of late, the Diocese has nixed that idea.
“Making the church an immigrant museum has potential,” Schmitt said. “It could have a gift shop, and a series of ethnic concerts.”
Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, a powerful broker in preservation politics in the Steel City, has been supporting efforts to save St Nicholas Church for nearly a decade. Arthur Zeigler, president of PHLF, said his group still wants to see St. Nicholas Church saved. “It’s a fine example of its type of architecture,” Zeigler said, adding that he is looking forward to a positive outcome. “PennDOT and the Diocese have been cooperating.”
Meanwhile, some of those who grew up with St. Nicholas Church are hopeful. Bill Kurtek, a member of PCHF whose parents and grandparents were married at the church, said he’s more optimistic about the church’s future than he has been for some time.
“Now, it seems like things are more positive. Especially since the effort has a broader base,” Kurtek said. “From what I understand, there are different legal aspects that would make demolishing the church difficult.”
The church is a designated City of Pittsburgh historic landmark. Demolishing the structure would require approval through the city’s Historic Review Commission.
Kurtek recalled St. Nicholas Church being a gathering point for Croatians throughout the Pittsburgh region, not just for those in the North Side. He recalled having the family food blessed by the priest there at the church at Christmastime, and other warm memories of fellowship at the church. “I’m excited about anything that can be done to save the building,” Kurtek said.
Other supporters of the church said the church’s place in American history is significant. Bernard Luketich, president of the Croatian Fraternal Union, noted that the closed church and the CFU share the same roots.
“The parish began in 1894, the same year as CFU was organized, started basically by the same people,” Luketich said. “CFU was organized to help our people.”
CFU, a fraternal benefit society, has been publicizing efforts to save the church in its weekly newspaper, Zajednicar, which is sent to the organization’s 40,000 members. To Luketich, St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Pittsburgh’s North Side, though closed for more than four years, has a prominent place in Croatian history in the New World.
“Pittsburgh was one of the main gateways for Croatians before and after World War I,” Luketich said. “A lot of those people went to those coal mining towns.”
To learn more about the effort to save America’s oldest Croatian church, contact the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation, PO Box 5812, Pittsburgh, PA, 15209, or check out the group’s web site at www.stnicholasNS.org. Photos of the church in its present state can be viewed at http://www.eyeonheritage.com.

Steelers City

2009-02-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting on the edge of my seat, my fingernails already whittled to nubs, my stomach tied up with dark, cold, Steel City angst. Arizona is about to score on our beloved Steelers, and they’re nearly in the end zone. It could be the last call, of sorts, for the New Steel Curtain.
“OK, guys, what we need is a turnover, and run it back for a touchdown,” I said aloud to the television, as if voicing the words would make it come true. I reminded myself of my late father, who also yelled and hoped vocally at the TV during Steelers games.
“Confess it and you’ll have it,” he would tell us when we were kids. He was a big believer in positive thinking, and he meant that you should voice your dreams and thus make them more likely to come true. So maybe that had something to do with James Harrison’s spectacularly timely interception and runback for a touchdown; a feat he accomplished the moment after I had voiced my hope for the Steelers to do so.
I believe I was part of a collective prayer group, so to speak, who was confessing our desire—or maybe our need—to see the Steelers win the game. Many members of Steelers Nation were no doubt voicing the same wish at precisely the same moment, sending out good vibes that God heard, or that made the stars align, or that enabled Harrison to play like one of the finest players to ever work the gridiron.
We won. Again. And I think for some of us, the Steelers victory is an affirmation of Pittsburgh’s greatness. Our hometown region might not be as populous as it once was, but it’s still the home of a lot of exceptional people, businesses, and recreational activities, as well as being the home of the Super Steelers. It may be a bit cocky to think so, but we Pittsburghers believe the Steelers are emblematic of our region’s greatness.
That greatness we so enjoy witnessing in the Steelers excellence on the field also is a reflection of the perspective of the Rooneys, and of the character of the players. Pittsburghers aren’t usually braggarts, nor are they totally full of malarkey. Pittsburghers generally just do their jobs, and try to do them as well as they can.
Case in point: Willie Parker. In the off-season, the Steelers’ star running back occasionally works out at the gym where I work out. The place is not at all a glitzy gym, but it is evenly mixed, with both black and white members. I’d seen Parker a few times while I was lifting in the weight room, and I nodded hello, not because I knew who he was, but because I’m friendly. He’d work out with a buddy or two, and hardly speak a word. Then one day after he left, a friend asked me if I knew who that guy was. I said no.
“That’s Fast Willie Parker,” he said.
L.C. Greeenwood, from the old, classic Super Steelers, works out regularly at the gym. He’s about one of the most down-to-earth people you’ll ever meet.
Maybe people like Parker, Harrison and many others on the team typify the varieties of greatness that makes the Steelers. Or perhaps they are just the best football team of all time, with some of the greatest players of all time, like Big Ben, and Santonio.
We are lucky. We’re lucky to have thrived through the last two recessions, and to now be a model of economic strength that the rest of the nation is admiring. And we are so very fortunate to have the Steelers as our team.
My brother Harvey, who lives in Seattle, would love to be at the celebration that will undoubtedly take place downtown this week. Because he, like so many in the Steelers Nation outside of Pittsburgh, would love to be downtown for that event, I just might go. I'm hoping to run into Mike Madison there.

The Past Is Present

2009-01-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church was closed by the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese four years ago, and it now appears lonely, in need of friends. The hillside grotto beside the church is bereft of its statues, and weeds and fallen tree limbs give the holy place a forlorn look. Though its cupolas once funneled the prayers of the faithful heavenward, this beloved landmark may be Pittsburgh’s most endangered historic place.
The Croatians in the congregation up the road, who are the stewards of this, the oldest Croatian church in America, want to tear it down. They want to sell the “desanctified” church and its property to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, which would then tear the church down for the reconstruction of PA State Route 28—the same road the church was moved up the hillside to accommodate generations ago. The members of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, home of the world famous Maxo Vanka murals, want their former sister church destroyed, and they’ve found a way to profit from it. They’d like to sell the church for the Rt. 28 reconstruction project. Ironically, it’s the same project that preservationist George White helped save $50 million on by offering an alternative to the box-like thinking of PennDOT engineers, who only could envision tearing away the hillside for the reconstruction of sprawl-engendering road.
Who cares about Mala Jaska, or what’s left of the formerly bustling Croatian immigrant neighborhood the once lined both sides of Rt. 28? The road was known back when as East Ohio Street, and St. Nicholas Church was the hub of that neighborhood. Home to the first Croatian-English newspaper in the United States and the birthplace of the Croatian Fraternal Union, Mala Jaska beckoned to the homeland, drawing in thousands, and making Pittsburgh one of the largest Croatian diasporas.
The importance of the neighborhood to the development of this nation, and the church’s impact on Croatians throughout the New World, is only hinted at in the array of stained glass windows in the 108-year-old church. The windows were donated by various CFU lodges throughout the country, reflecting the regard that the new Croatian-Americans felt for what was one of the first stops for many of them on their journey to their new American homes. Generations later, the descendants of some of those optimistic Croats now seem thoroughly jaded, and want to see the old church torn down at taxpayers’ expense.
I am part Croatian, so one can see why this church might matter to me. But I was raised Presbyterian, and I rarely attend church services anymore. My interest in St. Nic’s Church in the North Side is not just due to my Croatian blood, but also because I am a lifelong Pittsburgher who is proud of our region’s many immigrant and working class contributions to America.
But parts of what’s left of this cultural fabric are being chopped up and torn apart, justified in the name of Almighty Private Property, cultural legacy and history be damned. Such an approach is as shortsighted as that of strip miners, who once despoiled the land to get its riches, and fouled the waters in the process.
Since St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church—the oldest Croatian church in the nation, representing a continuous line of Croatian-Americans over a century long—is again being seriously considered for a date with the wrecking ball, no church in Pittsburgh is safe. Not even the other St. Nicholas is safe, even with its passionate murals documenting the immigrant experience in America.
If the oldest Italian church in Pittsburgh were slated for demolition at taxpayers’ expense, would this essay need to be written? Wouldn’t Pittsburgh’s Italian-American community, and many of those who love that community, be up in arms, squashing the plan? If the Port Authority were planning to destroy that church, would it be acceptable?
It’s interesting to note the motivations of those who want to sell the church. Father Daniel Whalen, diocesan administrator and acting priest of St. Nicholas Church in Millvale, which owns the North Side church, wants to see the closed church gone.
“I truly believe that the best thing to do for everyone involved would be to demolish the building,” Rev. Whalen said. “That church is a monument to the fact that Croatian Catholic Christians could not come to agreement about it.”
Balkanization in Pittsburgh? Not just here, but all over the country—splitting apart and forming our own groups has always been a portion of the American experience. The Episcopalians, to name just one example, are doing it nowadays. Our country was founded by such dissenters. Weren’t the Puritans dissenting Christians, who wanted a less oppressive place in which to live?
So why save St. Nicholas Church? Because it’s a legacy to the independence (and interdependence) of newly arrived immigrant Americans. And because the church is a reminder of the values of faith, hard work, and humility that have helped propel this country forward. Or, because the slowly decaying landmark is a warning that if we don’t guard and cherish these values, they might become as quaint as a museum display. We need to save St. Nicholas Church in the North Side because it is a touchstone for discussion about our shared heritage, and its continuing impact on American life.
What’s it matter that I, a partial Croatian person, care about this issue? It matters because it's to be expected that some Catholics, some Croatians, and some former parishioners of St. Nicholas Church would care enough to fight to preserve it. But that small group isn’t enough to sustain the effort that will be needed to make the church a viable cultural destination point. Friends of St. Nicholas, a nonsectarian group, is aiming to buy and save the church and hillside shrine, with the intention of transforming it into an immigrant museum and national shrine to St. Nicholas. The building would contain a repository of immigrant artifacts, a cultural center offering foreign language classes, and it would host weddings and other respectful celebrations. But the group will need lots of supporters, from many backgrounds.
We never really outgrow some of our experiences, and perhaps we shouldn’t. Pittsburghers would do well to remember that the past is never past, and that our shared cultural legacy is one of this region’s greatest resources. We all carry our histories, experiences and understandings with us. Sometimes, we carry those understandings in a landscape devoid of any physical reference to them.

On blog reporting

2008-12-01T13:10:00.000-08:00

“Every time someone stops blogging,
an angel gets its wings.”

I’m not in the habit of calling reporters first thing in the morning to complain about a story, but I have been known to do it. I did it again the other day, over a story on Pittgirl, who I’ve never read. She’s a local blogger who formerly was anonymous, and who recently set down the blogging burden. A fan of hers found her out, and Pittgirl made good on her promise to quit blogging if her identity was revealed.

Why? Because the revelation would affect the blogger professionally, according to the story by Dennis Roddy. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, being ga-ga over Pitwitchick’s writing, placed the story on the front page of one of America’s greatest newspapers. The story angered me because Pitwitchick got to say her piece on whoever she wanted, but once her mask was removed, she didn’t want to play anymore. That is, she’s afraid of the criticism and potential professional repercussions that can accompany flaying people in print online.

For all I know, Pitwitchick works for the mayor, who’s been a frequent object of her derision. And if she does work for those whom she attacked, she’s even more of a chickenshit than the run-of-the-mill anonymous blogger. The internet has engendered far too much pusillanimous behavior. We don’t need to applaud it. And yes, I know about the Federalist Papers—Pitwitchick is no Alexander Hamilton.

I’m getting off track. Roddy is one of the P-G’s most talented reporters and he’s also a top-notch columnist. But I had to take issue with the story, because it had been bugging me for some time that the newspaper had chosen to endorse this nameless writer. Where is the P-G’s objectivity, when it endorses an anonymous blogger? As she proved in her exit from the blogosphere, Pitwitchick is the type of person who wants to lambast people, but will not be held accountable for her own words. And yet much of the local media was enamored with her—the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review also wrote a story about her quitting blogging.

This blog has been the recipient of some favorable press from the P-G, but that was by design, because I figured I’d get some of the attention that other bloggers were getting. And I’ve always liked the P-G, from my experience as a paper boy delivering the paper when I was a kid, to my recent experience freelancing for the paper. Dennis Roddy has very generously allowed me to include some of his insights in the book on writing on which I’m working, so I think he’s especially cool because of it. So it pains me to bust his chops.

But as I told Roddy, I find all of this writing in the newspaper about local blogs to be a bit cloying. Why is the P-G spending so much time and precious space writing about blogs? It’s so embarrassingly derivative.

You might be wondering if I was a tad bit jealous about all of the attention Pitwitchick was getting, and if so, you’re right. I was a bit envious, but I didn’t feel that I merited the attention, either, simply because I do very little blogging these days.

Reading a blog, though, is more about the whimsical choice of consumers who can change their brand whenever they want. They might read this blog for a while, but if something said here makes readers think the Barnestormer is a jagoff, or if I just fail to entertain, readers move on. So I don’t exactly understand the point of newspapers writing about blogs. The P-G and Trib aren’t writing regularly about the City Paper and the Pittsburgh Business Times, are they? So why blogs?

Where is the news value in writing about blogs in the newspaper? Is it really necessary, especially when news pages and news holes are shrinking? Aren’t there more important things to report on?

Friends of St. Nicholas takes lead in church’s preservation

2008-11-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

Recent moves by PennDOT officials had some supporters of the closed St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church worried about the future of the building. But after a meeting two weeks ago between PennDOT district executive Dan Cessna and supporters of St. Nicholas Church, members of the Preserve Croatian Heritage Foundation and other church supporters have regrouped, forming the nonsectarian Friends of St. Nicholas organization.

The new group was co-founded by Preservation Pittsburgh member Jack Schmitt (who also is a member of PCHF), and is working to buy and transform the church into a museum to the immigrant experience. If FOSN’s effort takes hold, the idea of making a shrine of the church could be finished.

With this new plan for the church, which is supported by PCHF, North Side Leadership Conference and others in the area, the church preservationists seem to have dodged another bullet from PennDOT. With the PennDOT meeting that was held Nov. 7, a new cooperative attitude may be growing between the preservationists and PennDOT officials. Barnestormin heard of PennDOT’s newest interest in buying the church to demolish it for a revamped Rt. 28 from Dr. Marion Vujevich, head of the Croatian American Cultural and Economic Alliance, a local group that had been negotiating to buy the church from the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese. Negotiations for the church recently broke down after an offer made by Vujevich for CACEA was rejected. Following a story in the Post-Gazette about the issue, Vujevich said he was contacted by Cessna, who wanted to know if CACEA would mind if PennDOT bought St. Nicholas and demolished it. Vujevich said CACEA no longer was interested in the church.

Contacted in late October (Barnestormin has been unable to get recent comments from him), Cessna said he’d called Vujevich to confirm what he’d read about the church in the newspaper. The option of PennDOT buying the church has always been open, Cessna said. Because of narrower shoulders on that stretch of Rt. 28, “access is available but not optimal,” Cessna said. “If we do need to buy the church, our purpose would be to demolish it.”

Cessna added that Diocesan officials had expressed interest in selling the church to PennDOT. “As we refine final design [of the reconfigured Rt. 28], we could make a determination that the access issues could compromise safety,” he said.

But it appears that the church’s supporters were able to take PennDOT’s aggressive stance on the church and possibly turn it to their advantage. “We’ve asked PennDOT to buy the church from the Diocese, take the land they need [for Rt. 28], and sell the church to us,” Schmitt said. “PennDOT is looking into it.”

According to Schmitt, there are precedents for such a deal. St. Boniface Church, on the east side of Rt. 279 in the North Side, was bought by PennDOT and sold back to parishioners, Schmitt said.

In its proposed new mission, St. Nicholas Church would be the crowning jewel of a green belt beside Rt. 28, running from the church to Deutchtown. The park also would include a trail for bikers and walkers that would run behind the church and connect to Rialto St. Mala Jaska Park trail would reconnect the church to all of the communities around it.
The park design was created by Astorino Architects. Lou Astorino, founder of the firm, has a long association with the church, which was built in 1901 and is the first Croatian Catholic church in the nation.

Mala Jaska, the once-thriving neighborhood that used to line both sides of Rt. 28 (then East Ohio St.), was named for the town in Croatia from which many of its inhabitants came. The area is what is left of Pittsburgh’s original Little Croatia. The neighborhood was the home of the first Croatian-English newspaper in the U.S., and was the birthplace of the Croatian Fraternal Union. St. Nicholas Church, topped with its lovely onion domes, is emblematic of Pittsburgh, so it is heartening to know that the church again could be a stopping point for visitors and natives.

FOSN would like to make the church a museum to immigrants, and also a repository for immigrant artifacts. The church’s difficult location, sandwiched between Rt. 28 and the hillside below Troy Hill, will be a great advantage for the museum, Schmitt said. “Seventy-thousand vehicles go by there each day,” he said. “It’s wonderfully situated for stopping in.”

Desecration

2008-09-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

It’s been a busy summer, but not so busy that some desecrations should pass by unnoticed. I am talking about the status of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in the North Side of Pittsburgh. The church was shuttered years ago and was stripped of its religious objects to make way for its sale to a would-be developer, now confirmed con man Rafaelo Follieri and his Follieri Group.

To get a sense of what was lost when workers tore out the marble altars, pews, and other objects from the church, check out the Post-Gazette photo of the church that is above. Antique marble altars literally were torn out of the building. Religious objects were taken away and allegedly disbursed among members of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, the estranged sister congregation of the North Side church.

Why? Because some Italian con-man whose uncle is a Cardinal, and who at the time was dating lovely actress Anne Hathaway, said he wanted to buy the building. It makes you wonder if the Diocese is as swayed by celebrity as several investors, including Penguins co-owner Ron Burkle, appear to have been when they trusted the Italian con-man with their money.

But develop the church into what? When I asked Father Ron Lengwin, spokesman for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, what the building would be used for, he said he didn’t know, possibly apartments or senior housing. So, essentially the Diocese had broken off negotiations with Pittsburgh Croatian Catholics that wanted to save the church to create a national shrine, and had instead gone for the higher offer of Follieri, a person they obviously hadn’t vetted. It makes you think that perhaps the Diocese was biased against those who wanted to save the church. Some of the former parishioners have said as much, but really, actions speak louder than words.

With behavior like this, it’s no wonder that the Catholic Church in Pittsburgh is losing members. Of course there are many, many good clergy and lay people in the faith, but the actions of a few can poison the well of dialogue for others. The Diocese needs to clear this situation up, by seeing that the church is sold to the preservationists for a nominal fee, and by ensuring that the religious objects are placed back inside the oldest Croatian church in America.

What Obama Nation?

2008-09-10T09:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve been biting my tongue for a while, not saying anything. But I feel that I have to do so now, though I’m sure it will do no good. So I must ask, how the heck did this year’s Democratic presidential nomination come down to a relatively unknown and highly liberal elitist first-term black senator, and an arch-liberal elitist white woman senator who at least half of the country hates like sin?
I’m starting to think the Democrats like suffering, and that they unconsciously shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to presidential races. Perhaps their agenda is to allow the Republicans to take the White House, so they can blame the nation’s problems on the party. If so, they’re halfway to succeeding at that goal.
Remember, this is supposed to be the year the Dems take back the presidency, because people are so fed up with the warmongering Repubs. Yet the gap between Methuselah McCain and Sonyboy Obama is closing fast. The answer is obviously the Saltine Factor.
Before you call me a racist, I have to say I hope that Obama wins. But as this presidential race goes on, I am less sanguine that he will be victorious. Why? Because this country is full of crackers who’d sooner vote for a parrot then vote a black man (or a woman) into office as president. Could this be a “Dewey Wins” upset of an election? You bet it could.
The pandering of this election astounds even my cynical self. The Dems wager an arrogant and inexperienced ivy-league educated black man. The Repubs raise the stakes with a gun-toting, fetus-centric, wolf-hating and inexperienced white woman as vice-presidential candidate. Palin’s eyeglasses are better traveled and more experienced than she is, yet she is just one failed heartbeat from the red button and the big presidential chair. The way things are going, she could be your next vice-president, or president.
Why might it be so? Because the United States is a racist, class-based society, with deep divisions that a presidential election won’t fix. White flight is still happening, folks—if you don’t believe me, ask Penn Hills School District educators what is happening in their mostly black (though historically white) community. Their football team was ranked #1 until a minute ago, and then was pummeled in the season opener, after the school board replaced the winning white coach with a black coach. Ask Penn Hills folks why so many of the whites and many middle class blacks are leaving Allegheny County’s most populous suburb. Ask the residents there why one of their elementary principals left the district after he wasn’t allowed to try new things to improve student performance, and then was hired by Pittsburgh City School District for $20,000 more?
Racism in this country doesn’t go one way, like water going downhill. It’s all over the place—pitting blacks against whites, and vice versa. The only Obama Nation I know of is in the minds of a lot of Democrats and liberals. But this Independent voter isn’t buying the idea that Obama, who worshiped in a church led by an outspoken whitey-hating “reverend”—who even had the cracker crusher baptize his kids—hasn't capitalized on the deep divisions in this country.
Again, I am rooting for Barry. But I’m not so sure he’ll win, or if he’ll do much good if he does win. I just hate the alternative.

Ben Stiller is a jagoff

2008-08-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

Because of the pervasive superficiality of American culture, we get what we pay for. Many of us want cheap laughs, and we pay for them and get them. We also often get actors who are little more than script-memorizing chimps, incapable of reasoning and analysis that would lead to true empathy. It’s a quandary of late great Hollywood: Many of the top actors do a great job of pretending to feel, but inside, they’re empty shells. Approach some of them with a genuine emotion and they recoil in horror, or make fun.
So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that actor Ben Stiller, who directed and co-wrote “Tropic Thunder,” thinks it’s OK to make fun of people with intellectual disabilities, like those with Down syndrome. After all, it may well be that he’s a soulless husk, like so many of his Hollywood peers. If that’s the case, perhaps we can forgive him personally for helping to validate verbal abuse and marginalizing of people with disabilities. But that doesn’t mean we should forgive the film or the others who took part in it.
Yes, I am on my high horse about the use of the word “retard” to get laughs in the film. I have a vested interest: My young nephew Aidan, age 5, has Down syndrome, and life’s been just a barrel of laughs for him. He had to have a tracheotomy when he was a week old, open heart surgery at six months, and reconstructive throat surgery at 18 months. He also had several operations in the first couple years of his life. He also has an allergy to wheat products that gave him stomach pains and diarrhea for months, until it was diagnosed.
Many people with Down syndrome have complicating medical problems throughout their lives. Many won’t live past their fifties.
I was made aware of this whole fiasco regarding the movie from my brother Christopher, who is Aidan’s dad. Christopher has no tolerance for such verbal abuse of people not as fortunate as many of us. “They’re talking about my son,” he says.
And they’re talking about my nephew, or rather, nephews. My nephew Matthew, age 11, has a rare chromosomal abnormality. But he’s no “Rainman,” with gifts that make the world look upon him and appreciate him. His family loves him. His uniqueness, though, is overlooked by the people who produce, pay for, and create the gags for those cheap laughs they have at his expense.
I will not see the Stiller movie, but I have to wonder how much the script would have been harmed if the bit with the “r-word” had been edited out. Would the storyline have suffered so much that the movie just wouldn’t be funny, or not edgy enough? If so, then it’s not a very good story. And if not, then the bit should have been removed before it became part of a film.
Disparaging remarks about people who are disabled, or any other minority, leads to objectification of those people. When you objectify them, it’s a short step away from locking them up in a room or a cage. Then it’s a small step to killing such people, in the case of the Nazis and other regimes. People with disabilities once were dealt with in these ways, in this country and throughout the world. It wasn’t that long ago.
Ben Stiller is a jagoff. He can’t say that the off-base bit in his movie wasn’t meant to harm, because it did cause harm, and he knew it would cause harm. This millionaire star is so desperate for attention and more millions that he’ll take cheap shots at people who get insulted by assholes like him all their lives. I have to wonder about Robert Downey, Jack Black, and Nick Nolte, too. Why did these rich stars think it was fine to bust on people who get busted on all of their lives? Nick Nolte was even in Lorenzo’s Oil, a film about a child with a rare disease (one scene of which was filmed in my parent’s house in Bellevue), so I have to wonder where his empathy went, or if he really ever had any.
I shouldn’t even have to make such a point. I am arguing over behavior that most of us were taught was wrong before we were ten—that is, making fun of people who have a disability. Putting it in a film doesn’t make such behavior somehow innocuous; rather, it enshrines such behavior in the minds of some people. It makes such behavior more acceptable to them.
Things have become so twisted in this doublespeak Repubmocrat Golden Age that everything—race, religious beliefs, physical and intellectual disability—is up for grabs, or possibly, sophomoric gags. But the gags aren’t nice and gentle, they’re mean, and those who might take offense are told to lighten up. People of lesser gifts, those of us who weren’t lucky enough to be born with the capability of reading this paragraph, for example, are “respected,” but the respect is really tolerance that is only skin-deep. There’s an obvious resentfulness to it, as in, “I respect you, now get away from me.”
But every once in a while, the jagoffs, like Stiller, show their true colors. He crossed the line, and he makes no bones about it, and he thinks everything should be fine. We are to accept him as he is, is Stiller’s implied message. If only he gave the same respect to people who are disabled.

Full Circle

2008-07-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

My former English professor, David Demarest, ambled up to me in the basement hall of St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, which was partly filled with munching parishioners and members of the crew for “Gift To America,” Dave’s play about the church’s famous Maxo Vanka murals. He leaned toward me, his lamb-chop beard trimmer than in my college days, and thanked me for my help in the production, which originally was staged in 1981. I was embarrassed, because I couldn’t express all he’d done.
About 20 years ago, I first visited St. Nicholas, for a field trip for a class Dave taught at Carnegie Mellon. He arranged the Saturday afternoon tour, and he checked to see that we had rides to the church. “Those of you who have cars, help your classmates out,” Dave instructed.
We all made it to Millvale and assembled outside the small Romanesque building. Perched on a bluff along State Route 28 outside Pittsburgh, the little church didn’t look impressive. But walking into the church, my heart felt tight in my chest as I viewed Vanka’s paintings on the ceiling beneath the choirloft. Christ on the cross, wearing a crown of barbed wire and being bayoneted by a World War I-era soldier, and Mary separating two soldiers on the battlefield, snapping a soldier’s bayonet from his gun like a matchstick. Those two scenes are part of 22 murals that decorate the church, and nothing Dave told us conveyed their magnificence.
I’ve been amazed by the murals ever since, and I have written about them for various publications. I just recently started volunteering with the Society for the Preservation of the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka, which produced Gift To America. Dave had known about the murals for decades, and had written a play about them and also an illustrated guide about them. He’d told friends, students, and many others about the masterpieces.
I’m thankful that Dave introduced me to the murals, which convey an understanding that is universal, while being uniquely Croatian. The paintings also are special to me because I am part Croatian, though my mother.
My late father sometimes referred to Carnegie Mellon as a “communist” school, because in his eyes the school was liberal. I know my churchgoing father would be pleased to see that my connection to CMU led to an awakening. I realized that working with others on the goal of restoring and preserving the murals gave its own catharsis.
On the opening night, as the first strains of tambura began to play and the Croatian voices sang with the entering actors, my stomach was strangely queasy.

Photo of actor David Crawford in St. Nicholas Church in Millvale, by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

At the salon

2008-07-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting in a hairstylist’s chair in a fruity salon in the swanky Pittsburgh neighborhood of Shadyside. Women are all around me, but I’m getting my hair cut by one of just two male stylists in the place.
“Quentin,” my stylist, is an avowedly gay man—wide open, yet respectful of others’ heterosexual hang-ups. But you can get him talking, and I always do. I notice the inch-thick rubber choker around his neck, which seems out of place with his dress shirt and skinny tie.
“You’re looking a little S&M, a little fetishist today,” I say. He smiles, seeming happy I noticed.
“I like to be totally free with the person I’m with,” Quentin says, tossing his head and smoothing a bang of his jet-black, chemically treated hair with the back of his hand.
He deftly places a comb over my right eyebrow and says in a low voice: “I’m just going to trim your eyebrows, O.K.?”
I nod my head, and with a few sweeps of his clipper, my eyebrows are shorter, less full, and neater. I check myself in the mirror and immediately notice the improved effect. Though I feel a bit funny, the trim didn’t hurt a bit, and it sure did make I difference, I think.
That bit of man-scaping brings up a question that has been nagging my insecure macho ego for a while. So I ask myself again: Could I be a metrosexual?
I consider my location, and then go down my mental checklist of possible metrosexual indicators. I’m in a quichey women-centered hair salon. I’m getting my hair styled by a gay man in S&M regalia. I just got my eyebrows trimmed.
Sitting in that chair, I once again began to worry that I am at least partly metrosexual. What had happened to me, I wondered. How did I get to be such a sissy, seemingly overly concerned with my grooming? Was this some sort of midlife crisis of self-confidence?
On any other day I might’ve been in denial like all the other times, sitting there at the capable hands of my gay-boy stylist, but today is different. A frightening specter of my past—an old mistake of a girlfriend who I’ll call Scary—is sitting just feet from me. With a plastic bag covering her hairdo, she is reading a magazine and pretending not to notice me. I start to feel just a bit shy and effete, thinking of how she knew me years ago, when I was less refined. Then I momentarily feel like I am invading her womanly space, and possibly shocking the hell out of her. Part of me takes a perverse pleasure in the thought, and I talk louder and more brashly to Quentin because of it.
“I’ve been studying women for thirty years. I can pick out the strange haircuts, and also the awkward-looking knees,” I say. “Some women should not wear certain haircuts, because they don’t fit their face—just like some people can’t wear pastels.”
Even as I am saying these things, I don’t hear how potentially sweet they sound. But with Scary just feet away, I do realize how far I’ve come from years ago, when I was dating her and shoveling concrete for work while not finishing college. My old self would not have been caught dead in a place like the salon, unless he was there to pick up a girl.
When it comes to metrosexuality, if you have to ask yourself if you are one, you’re probably in denial. I haven’t gotten to the point where I get “mannies and peddies” yet (and I’m not ruling them out), but I have found myself paying a lot more attention to skin care products. I’m hip to StriVectin-HS, which somehow makes fine lines on the face disappear, at least temporarily. I’ve used it and seen the results, but it’s too expensive for me to want to regularly use.
A couple of haircuts back I mentioned to Quentin that I’ve been feeling like something of a metrosexual.
“There’s a difference between metrosexual and heterosexual,” he says, looking at me in the mirror and continuing to trim my hair. “A metrosexual will pluck his eyebrows, and a heterosexual won’t.”
“Well, I use Hylexion, for the dark circles under my eyes…” I say.
“You’re metrosexual,” he says, nodding his head.

A Father and Son's Climbs and Falls

2008-07-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

Growing up in Bellevue Borough, outside Pittsburgh, I would go with friends to climb the superstructure of Jack’s Run Bridge. The bridge traverses a ravine between Bellevue and Brighton Heights, and the deck of the structure is 150 ft tall and unsafe to climb. We’d climb to the top of the structure beneath the roadway and drink beer and race each other down the bridge, shimmying around the piers and sprinting the ramps between them. We acted as if we were fearless.

I grew up working in landscaping and construction. I’d climb a tree, or scale a ladder, and it was no big deal. When I was 17, though, I got into a brawl in the North Side of Pittsburgh and was pushed down some outside cellar stairs. Trying to catch myself, I stuck my left arm though the window in the cellar door, severing the artery and causing me to nearly bleed to death. Ever since, I’ve had a healthy fear of falling and it’s been reinforced by more recent tragedies.

Nineteen years ago, my neighbor Doug, a guy who was all shoulders and arms and a favorite of the girls, was working for a contractor when he fell through an opening in a roof deck for a skylight. The fall permanently disabled him, at 25, and he now lives in a wheelchair and has the mind of a child.

That summer I was working for a company at a suburban airport, replacing the roofs of airplane hangars. Before we scaled the first roof, our foreman said: “Walk where the nails are. That’s where the trusses are.” There was no plywood decking on the hangar roofs, and the only things keeping us from falling to the concrete floor below were the prefabricated trusses. The roof deck we were replacing was a thin layer of corrugated material, rigid tarpaper a few sheets thick.

The heat and the realization that I could become crippled, like Doug, got to me. I was hesitant up there--not cocky, like some of the guys. After a while, they relieved me by having me carry sheets of plywood and push them up ladders to the guys on the roof.

When I write about contractors fined for fall safety violations, I think of workers who made an avoidable mistake, like Doug. Why doesn’t the fear of falling and dying stop contractors and workers from getting too comfortable on dangerous jobs? The answer is simple: They aren't afraid because tragedy hasn't struck them or someone they’ve known, and if it has, it was so long ago they don’t remember. I've had some unforgettable trouble from falls, even after my brawling days.

Sixteen years ago, I was working as a laborer, building a home. The company’s owner was flipping out one day, screaming for a saw, and I scrambled over with the saw. I stepped onto the corner of a piece of plywood we’d placed over the floor joists and the plywood slipped from under me, sending me down through the joists. I caught myself between two joists, saving myself from hitting the garage floor. My left side got the brunt of the fall, landing hard on a joist. That was a painful close call.

But the toughest fall involved my family, before I began covering accidents for ENR.
My dad, Harvey Lea Barnes, had been a civil engineer for U.S. Steel and American Bridge. He’d worked in steel mills across America, and on projects in Europe, Asia and Africa. Once he sent me a postcard from Mt. Kilamanjaro saying: “Some day you’ll climb mountains higher than this.” But his accident happened at home.

Eleven years ago, he was on a ladder scraping paint from the woodwork on the porch and fell onto the driveway below, hitting his head. He made his way to the basement, where my brother Pete later found him lying on the floor. He was rushed to the hospital, his survival in doubt.

He had a miraculous recovery, and came home, but the old square-shouldered commanding presence and booming voice (needed to focus the attention of his dozen children) were gone. He still had a wonderful vocabulary, but he was somewhat retarded.

Several months later, he fell again at home, breaking his hip. That hospital stay was his last; he died several weeks later.

If he’d not fallen, Harve would’ve congratulated me on writing for ENR. “You have a natural inclination for engineering,” he would’ve said. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Jonathan Barnes is Engineering News Record’s Pittsburgh correspondent. This story was published in ENR.

Grande Pajaro Rules

2008-06-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

A while back I had a piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on my complicated feelings about my late headmaster from Kiski School, Jack Pidgeon. As was the case in some of my favorite essays, “On The Headmaster’s Passing” was created in a flood of emotion that surprised me. I realized a few things from writing the piece, not the least of which was that I regret not having visited the old man more since I’d left the school.
So I was a bit unsure about what sort of a response I’d get from my story on Mr. Pidgeon. Some former students had a keen dislike for the man, in many cases because he’d thrown them out of our all-boys boarding school. Others have said he was too hard on them, but I don’t know. I often think that part of the problem with America and the world is that more men don’t stand up and tell people when they are out of line. If that sounds sexist to you, then you don’t understand what I’m saying. Driving down the street in lower Wilkinsburg, some idiot throws his McDonald’s trash in the street, while waiting at an intersection, yet nobody says anything. Young boys run wild without fatherly supervision, trying to one-up each other with bullets and false bravado, yet the right people don’t reproach them, or show them a better way. A president seemingly justifies a costly war in a faraway land, and almost no politician makes a peep about it until long after the fact.
Whether or not you agree with my politics, you may agree that people need to know how to behave correctly, and with dignity. Not enough of this sort of “breeding” is being taught, and consequently, we’ve become a nation of whiners and crybabies: My dad hit me in anger. The headmaster was too hard on me. Nobody’s given me a job; I earned every one on my own.
Mr. Pidgeon didn’t settle for excuses or wallowing. He once told me: “Jonathan, get in a better mood.”
Now more than ever, we need a slew of Jack Pidgeon-type tough guys to instruct rambunctious young men on how to behave. And we also need such men to teach the young men how to be tough, but not self-pitying.
I’ve kind of gotten off-track. I began this post in part to reprint some of the wonderful comments I received in emails from P-G readers. To start with, I was relieved to get the first response around 9 a.m. on the morning the story ran, from Mr. Pidgeon’s youngest, his son Kelly, who’s a friend.
“All I can say is…WOW!” Kelly wrote.
I was both relieved and complimented by his note.
Then Dave “Hollywood” Conrad, another Kiski School grad of 1985 (as is Kelly), gave me a shout, heartily approving of the piece in a manner that is unprintable here. He also tried to give me a new nickname, “JD.”
Sorry, Hollywood, I do the naming around here.
Then Kiski boy David Harouse, who I remember from the football team and who graduated in 1983, I believe, sent a kind note:
“Great piece. I had the privilege of having lunch with Mr. Pidgeon last year, and speaking with him as late as March. You are on the money, center bullseye.”
It was good to know that others fondly recalled Mr. Pidgeon’s tough approach, and approved of how I’d described it.
My old music teacher and Glee Club director Mary Vlahos sent some sweet thoughts, and it was actually the second time she’s emailed me about an essay I’ve written for the Post-Gazette. She wrote:
“Well, you’ve done it again with your writing and how pleased Jack would be at how well you write. By the time I had finished reading your article I was in tears—again. We will miss him… Keep on writing, Jonathan.”
Hearing from Mrs. Vlahos was, in a way for me, the psychological equivalent of receiving an “A.”
Barrister Hal Ostrow also was kind enough to send a note:
“I’m a Kiski grad (1992), and I found your column over the weekend to be moving and comforting. I had a similar relationship with Mr. Pidgeon; I spent four years at Kiski, and didn’t get to truly know him until having him for senior English. In the seven years of college and law school that followed, I didn’t have a single professor who came close to intellectually challenging me and stimulating me as Mr. Pidgeon did. I have only seen him a handful of times since I graduated, though we did write to one another and speak from time to time. I am kicking myself for not going to visit him when I was in Pittsburgh last month…Thanks for writing and publishing your feelings on his passing. I’m sure it was helpful for you, and I know it was for others.”
Talk about Wow! That was one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about anything I’ve written. We journalists simply hope that our writing will occasionally make an impact, and we seldom hear from readers regarding their feelings on any of our stories. Realizing that I was able to bring a bit of solace to some of the other grieving members of the “Kiski family” was comforting to me. But I was just one of many people in the media who were commenting on Mr. Pidgeon’s death. Steve Blass, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, published a nice letter to the editor in the P-G:
“I was out of town when Kiski School Headmaster Jack Pidgeon passed away, thus this late letter.
I had a baseball camp at Kiski because of Jack. I tried to run it in a fashion that Jack would feel good about. I also tried to soak up as much as I could the way that Jack Pidgeon dealt not only with his students but everyone he came in contact with.
I have never met a more consistent, principled man in my life. I also have never met a man who enjoyed a good laugh or a good story more than he did.
Jack Pidgeon touched my life and I am better because of it. I think I speak for a lot of people.”
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review had a nice story on Mr. Pidgeon, including this gem of a quote:
"I had known Jack since he was my swimming coach at boarding school in 1950. He was a lovely and very kind man, and will be sorely missed," said Tribune-Review owner Dick Scaife.
On Sunday, May 18, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette even included a nice editorial obit on Mr. Pidgeon on its editorial page:
“THE KISKI SCHOOL in Saltsburg was founded in 1888 and is one of the oldest all-boys college prep boarding schools in the United States. A good part of that history was dominated by one man, Jack Pidgeon, headmaster for 45 years, starting in 1957. From a humble background himself, Mr. Pidgeon by dint of character and intelligence became a prince of education and a revered figure to legions of boys. Mr. Pidgeon, 83, husband of former Pennsylvania auditor general and treasurer Barbara Hafer, died Monday of complications of Parkinson's disease. The school community is not alone in mourning its most influential leader. Rest in peace, Jack Pidgeon.”
The Indiana Gazette also had a lengthy and well-researched story on Mr. Pidgeon, and I’m sure I’ve missed numerous other stories that were written about him. One of the most interesting emails that I received on my P-G article on Pidgeon came from David Wolfson, a Kiski boy from way back:
“I just read your obituary for Jack Pidgeon, and I thought I would say thanks for your all too accurate remembrances of him. I was in the class of ’61 (his first graduating class) so I got to watch the whole thing happen. And, oh yes, he caught me spitting on the floor. Thanks for clarifying that; I had no clue why he went so ballistic.”
I was a bit taken aback upon learning that David Wolfson didn’t know Mr. Pidgeon’s mother had been a cleaning lady at Andover. It made me wonder if Jack once had been much more sensitive and class-conscious, nearly revealing his working-class roots. Back then, when he was a young teacher and headmaster in his early thirties, Mr. Pidgeon wasn’t telling students that his mother had been a cleaning lady at Andover.
One of the neatest emails I received regarding my essay on Jack came from someone who never met the man. Tim O’Brien, of Tim O’Brien PR wrote that he was reminded to write to me after reading Steve Blass’s letter to the editor. Tim wrote:
“This is to say that I never knew Mr. Pidgeon, but reading your article about him was a very nice piece and it helped those in my position to gain a quick appreciation for the man. Now, I wish I had met him, so I guess your piece achieved its goal.”
I have not mentioned all of the comments that I received by email, but I must admit that I was more than satisfied with the response from readers. Thanks to all of you writers, professional and not, for chiming in on the life of a great man.

Photo of Jack Pidgeon courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

On the headmaster's passing

2008-05-17T20:01:00.000-07:00

Headmaster. Pidgeon. El Grande Pajaro.
Just knowing he's gone, I really miss him. I hadn't seen my former headmaster from Kiski School, John Anderson Pidgeon, in many years, though I had spoken with him on the phone over the years.
Each time he'd invited me to visit: "Get your ass up here sometime," he'd say. Now he is gone, at 83, and I missed my chance.
I had mixed feelings about Kiski and Jack, which isn't the worst thing because I also had mixed feelings about my late father, and Jack Pidgeon was one of the greatest father figures America has seen. This ambivalence about my old headmaster and prep school in Saltsburg explains why I've been back to the school only a few times since I left it 23 years ago.
I sometimes thought fondly of the place and of Mr. Pidgeon, grateful for what they taught me. When he'd drilled us on Emerson in his honors English class, we students learned why Kiski gave two grades for English: It was the most important subject in the tradition he had inherited. In English, we were graded on both grammar and content because Mr. Pidgeon made us write, and he made us read, and he expected us to accept his challenge to better ourselves.
After Mr. Pidgeon retired years ago, there seemed no real reason to go back to Kiski, since the man who was the heart of the school was no longer there. It would be a different place -- the whole tenor of the school would have changed, I reasoned, so I stayed away.
•
For a while after graduating, I wouldn't consider stepping back on the old campus. And being so much of Kiski, Mr. Pidgeon played a part in my alienation from the school.
My ambivalence toward him was largely due to the fact that he was so tough on us. My dad had 12 kids to keep in line, a great task to be sure, but Jack Pidgeon had to keep in line a few hundred boys at once.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with an aquiline nose and confident bearing that made him seem patrician, Mr. Pidgeon was far from it. His mother was a cleaning lady at Phillips Andover, he would remind us, with the admonition that we should treat everyone with respect.
"Those snotty kids would spit on the floor, and my mother had to clean it up," he said more than once. "If I hear about anyone spitting on the floor ... "
Jack Pidgeon was the commandant of Kiski. He would ride his golf cart to the dining hall for dinner, one foot hanging jauntily out to the side. Then he'd saunter into the building, and everyone would stand nearly at attention. In springtime, if the student body had been well behaved, Mr. Pidgeon would reward us. He'd gather the students and teachers in the basement of the dining hall, which was a serious place, as we had our SATs and dances there.
You could hear a pin drop before the headmaster would render his verdict. When he'd announce that we were getting spring schedule, the place would break into applause. Students and teachers alike were all smiles, because spring schedule meant the usual class schedule would be shortened, with classes from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Those of us who were part of his honors English class saw a different side of Mr. Pidgeon -- a man impassioned by the written word. He made us consider who we were. We learned that "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist," and that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
He so thoroughly drummed into our heads the last passage of "The Great Gatsby," that I still remember much of it:
Most of the big shore places were closed now, and there were hardly any lights except for the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away ...
He made us memorize the passage to teach us the need for beauty, imagery, rhythm and song in language. It is fitting that he would pick a fellow Irish-American writer to teach us. The Irish, as every scribe knows, are among the best writers.
I once told him that I am about one-quarter Irish. "Not enough," he responded.
"Gatsby believed in the green light ... " and Mr. Pidgeon believed in it, too. His job was to educate us and make sure that we could pursue the future he knew we could have if we worked hard. He taught us about the American dream.
•
When I was at Kiski planning on college, I applied to Carnegie Mellon University and was worried that I wouldn't get in. So I went to talk with Mr. Pidgeon about my grades and his recommendation, which I knew could put me over the top and ensure my admittance.
I went into his office and sat, hemming and hawing about my worries, but I really wanted to see the recommendation. He got tired of my pussyfooting.
"You want to see your recommendation?" he said, obviously irritated, pulling open a desk drawer, yanking a piece of paper from it and setting it on the desk in front of him. "There it is."
Then he proceeded to read it, and by the end, I was embarrassed. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever written about me, absolutely full of praise.
I thanked him, shamefaced, and walked out of his office, humbled and grateful.

Jonathan Barnes, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, is a freelance writer living in Wilkinsburg (jdavidbarnes@hotmail.com).

This story was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Photo of Jack Pidgeon by Bob Donaldson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Gift To America

2008-05-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

Mary Petrich, Diane Novosel and St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church, Millvale

(photos courtesy of Pittsburgh Quarterly)

Passing the little yellow Romanesque church next to Rt. 28 outside Pittsburgh, many drivers don’t give it a thought. Perched on a hill overlooking the highway, St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale is not grand—its pews seat 350 worshippers—but it has been the center of community life for generations of immigrants. Entering through a side door of the church, a visitor ascends a set of stairs and sees a painting of Christ on the cross being bayoneted by a World War I-era soldier. Christ wears a crown of barbwire. A picture next to the warlike Crucifixion depicts Mary grabbing the bayonets of two soldiers on a battlefield.
Croatian immigrant artist Maxo Vanka painted those and many other scenes on the walls and ceilings of the church in 1937 and 1941. The murals are a vivid mix of religious and cultural themes and commentary depicting the struggles of Croatian immigrant workers in America. The murals also represent Vanka’s hatred of war and his disgust at the human toll taken by industrialism. The artist considered the murals he created in the church dedicated to the gift-giving saint to be his “gift to America.”
Not so long ago, some parishioners didn’t recognize the wealth they had, until David Demarest learned of the murals. The Carnegie Mellon University English professor and booster of Pittsburgh’s industrial history helped to generate interest in the artwork by preaching of it to students, friends, and those in the art, education and labor communities around Pittsburgh. The Society for the Preservation of the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka was a by-product of a historical play, “Gift To America,” that was written by Demarest and originally staged at the church in 1981.
Demarest learned of St. Nicholas in the 1970s, when a friend invited him to check it out.
“We came into the church and it was really something else,” Demarest said. “It was just beautiful, striking, and surprisingly enough, quite unknown.”
On May 7-10 at 8:30 p.m., “Gift To America” will be staged at the church. Demarest, who is now retired from Carnegie Mellon, will again witness Carnegie Mellon drama students and faculty helping to produce the dramatic reading.
The one act, hour-long play is a fictional walk through the church and discussion between Maxo Vanka, the Croatian immigrant artist who created the murals, and Father Albert Zagar, the priest who commissioned the murals. The two characters discuss the meanings of the murals, as theatrical lights brighten the paintings. Two unnamed female supporting characters also are part of the play, which is accompanied by Tamburitzan music. The play will launch a campaign to restore, illuminate and preserve the murals.
Organizers of the event timed it to coincide with Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary celebrations. They hope the play enlightens the public to one of Pittsburgh’s greatest cultural treasures.
Vanka was commissioned to decorate the church by Zagar, who sent for the artist when he heard he was in New York. Vanka had married an American and had recently moved to this country, and he hoped to make his name here with the church paintings. Zagar allowed the artist to illustrate his political views, and Vanka understood the opportunity he had. “Father Zagar was one priest in one hundred thousand courageous enough to break with tradition, to have his church decorated with paintings of modern, social meaning,” Vanka said.
He was not a religious person, but as Vanka labored nearly round-the-clock on the murals, the vision he illustrated revealed a deep spirituality. Working from 7 a.m. to 2 or 3 a.m., he was accompanied at night by Zagar, who prayed as the artist painted.
“It was well toward the end of May before the final murals complementing these on the back walls took shape and made the women on their way out after mass stop and weep and burn candles,” wrote Louis Adamich, a Slovenian immigrant writer and friend of Vanka.
In addition to writing the play, Demarest also wrote the text for an illustrated guide to the murals that is free to people visiting the church. His literary contributions have changed perceptions of the artwork, said Diane Novosel, head of the Society for the Preservation of the Millvale Murals of Maxo Vanka. “Ever since Dave’s play, awareness of the murals has increased. Once we started to tell the stories, the parishioners who didn’t like the murals recognized it was something special,” she said.
The murals express a passion that is universal and uniquely Croatian. After seeing the paintings, Talking Heads rock musician David Byrne called Vanka “The Diego River of Pittsburgh.”
While the murals are somewhat known around Pittsburgh, on many Sunday mornings after Mass, visitors will stop into St. Nicholas to see them. Many will express amazement that more people don’t visit the dramatic cultural site, while others will be visibly moved. One of the people who sometimes lead the way is Charlie McCoelester, a professor of labor relations at IUP.
“The church is unique in that it provides a vision of heavenly beauty and a stark vision of earthly greed and violence,” McCoelester says. “I took a group of Polish filmmakers there and they were shocked and amazed at seeing that kind of vivid depiction of violence in a church.”
Chatting in St. Nicholas Church after a post-Mass tour, Novosel nodded in understanding at the bewildered look on a visitor’s face as he scanned the paintings of a Croatian mother grieving over the corpse of her miner son, the Holy Spirit depicted as an eye with the dove of peace as a pupil, and other images.
“It’s an overload,” Novosel said.
Novosel and Mary Petrich, both lifelong parishioners (Mary saw some of the scenes being painted), lead tours of the murals and spread the word about them through their contact with the public, the media and arts organizations.
Lacking the finances to preserve the murals, the society and church members must witness their slow destruction. Some of the murals have been damaged by water leaking into the building. Some were repaired in the past, only to be damaged again by water seeping through the walls of the church.
Petrich would like to see the church’s brick exterior re-pointed and waterproofed. “That must be done first before we do anything with the murals. I’d also like better lighting installed,” she said, adding that all of the work could cost $1 million or more.
Without help from many more supporters, Vanka’s gift could be destroyed as time wears on. Fans of the murals don’t want to see that happen.
“It’s one of the historical/artistic treasures of western Pennsylvania,” Demarest said. “It’s the repository of real history of people who lived in that valley, and the artwork they allowed to commemorate their lives.”
To learn more about the murals or to contribute, write to 151 Stonegate Drive, Leechburg, 15656; or call Diane Novosel at 724-845-2907. http://www.vankamurals.org/

A version of this story first appeared in Pittsburgh Quarterly.

Jonathan Barnes is a Pittsburgh freelance writer. pittsburghreporter@yahoo.com

Fear Of Falling

2008-05-06T19:09:00.000-07:00

As an adolescent growing up in Bellevue Borough, just beyond Pittsburgh’s North Side, I would go with friends to climb the superstructure of Jack’s Run Bridge, known by locals as Bellevue Bridge. I shake my head at the thought, because the bridge traverses a ravine between Bellevue and Brighton Heights, and the deck of the structure is 150 feet tall, supposedly eight feet taller than the deck of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s not a safe climb.
We’d climb to the very top of the superstructure (without any climbing equipment, of course), all the way up to right beneath the roadway. Sometimes we would drink beers up there, then we’d race each other down the bridge, shimmying around the sides of the huge pillars and sprinting down the ramps between them. We acted as if we had no fear.
From the age of 12, I grew up working in landscaping and construction. Occasionally I’d have to climb a tree to prune it, or work on a ladder or on a roof, and it was just part of daily life, like when my brothers and I helped my Dad re-shingle the house. When I was 17, though, I got into a brawl at a party in the lower North Side of Pittsburgh, and I was pushed down some outside cellar stairs. Trying to catch myself in the 8-foot-fall, I stuck my left arm out and it went though the window in the cellar door, disfiguring my upper arm, severing the artery and causing me to nearly bleed to death. Ever since, I’ve had a healthy fear of falling.
Growing up in heavily working class Bellevue, I was occasionally reminded to hold onto that fear. In 1983, a friend of one of my brothers was killed on the job. Dan was working on a roof and he accidentally touched his measuring tape to a “hot” electrical wire, and was electrocuted and fell off of the house. They said he was dead before he hit the ground. He was 21, and left behind a wife he’d married months before.
Nineteen years ago, while I was working my way through college, my neighbor Doug, a guy who was all shoulders and arms and a favorite of the girls, was working for a contractor when he stepped through a hole on a roof where a skylight had been removed. The fall permanently disabled him, putting him in a wheelchair. He was about 25 when he was crippled.
Doug’s accident hit close, because that summer I was working for Kenyon Roofing, whose family was from the neighborhood, and I had my own job hazards to navigate.
We were working on a smaller airport in one of the suburbs that summer, and we had to tear off the roofs of several airplane hangers, in the humid Pittsburgh sun. Before we got onto the first roof, the owner’s son Brian, our foreman, instructed us: “Walk where the nails are. That’s where the trusses are.”
There was no plywood decking on the hangars’ roofs, and the only things keeping us from falling to the concrete floor below were good footwork and the prefabricated trusses. The roof we were replacing was a thin layer of corrugated material that was just rigid tarpaper a few sheets thick; step through it with one foot and you could fall.
The combination of the intense summer heat, the scary conditions and the realization that I could fall and become crippled, like Doug, got to me. I acted unsure while working up on the roof—not cocky, as some of the other guys did. After watching me working nervously up there for a while, Brian switched me to the job of carrying sheets of plywood and pushing them up ladders for the guys atop the hangar to nail down before shingling the roof. I was relieved.
I think about these and other unnerving work experiences when I write for Engineering News-Record. Injuries and deaths resulting from falls are among the most common accidents in the construction industry, and I often cover safety issues for this magazine. When I see contractors fined for fall safety violations, I think of the workers who made a mistake that could have been avoided, like Doug, who has the mentality of a child and is still in a wheelchair. Easter Seals pays for his apartment.
Doug came to mind when I noticed recently that several companies across the country had been cited for fall safety violations. In a one-month period, five contractors were slapped with a total of $777,300 in proposed fines for alleged violations. And on Apr. 2, OSHA issued $224,000 in proposed fines to a Carbon Cliff, Ill. company for safety violations after an Oct. 10, 2007 accident in which an employee was killed when he fell through a skylight.
My old neighbor Doug apparently absentmindedly stepped through a hole where a skylight had been. I imagined the Illinois worker doing the same thing. The similarity of some of these accidents, and the seeming inrease in such accidents, is troubling.
Ironworker Harold Billingsley, who died on the job on Oct. 5, 2007, is one of the statistics. Laboring on the construction of the Las Vegas City Center, Billingsley was about 60 feet up, walking in his steel-toed boots on uneven decking and going for some extra bolts, when he stumbled and fell through a 3-by-11-foot hole in the decking. Billingsley’s harness wasn’t connected to a safety cable he should’ve been tied to, and he fell to his death. The hole in the decking shouldn’t have been there, OSHA officials said.
These accidents made me wonder why the fear of falling and dying doesn’t stop contractors and workers from getting too comfortable on dangerous jobs? The answer is simple: Workers and owners aren’t afraid because tragedy hasn’t happened to them or someone they’ve known. Or if it happened, it was so long ago that nobody remembers.
But you don’t even have to fall very far for it to lead to your death. Eleven years ago my Dad, who had been a civil engineer for U.S. Steel and American Bridge, was standing on a ladder scraping paint from the woodwork on the porch, when he fell into the sloped concrete driveway below, hitting his head. He went into the house and laid on the sofa. My brother Pete came home and Dad asked him for a wet towel for his head, and said: “I hit my head. I feel sick.”
He seemed a bit out of it and went to the basement bathroom and after a moment Pete thought something was wrong, and went down to check on him. He found Dad lying on the floor of the bathroom. Dad, who had heart problems and hypertension for years, had brain damage. He was rushed to the hospital where they did emergency brain surgery, removing a piece of his skull to relieve some of the pressure on his brain. On life support, doctors weren’t sure he’d make it.
He did make it back—sort of. He made a fairly miraculous recovery, and eventually came back home. But my Dad, Harvey Lea Barnes, with his square-shouldered commanding presence, his booming voice and intensity that could focus a roomful of people (a good skill when you’re the father of 12 children), wasn’t really there.
Dad still had the wonderful vocabulary of his formerly inveterate reader self, but it was like he was somewhat retarded, or stoned beyond recognition. About 10 months after his fall, Dad fell again while at home, breaking his hip. The subsequent hospital stay was his last, as his condition slowly worsened and he died several weeks later.
If he’d not fallen, old Harve would’ve lived to tell me I was writing for the best engineering and construction magazine around. “You have a natural inclination for engineering,” he would’ve said. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Harve had worked as an engineer on projects in Africa, Europe and Asia, and had regularly inspected steel mills in Birmingham, Gary and elsewhere, but he wasn’t working on a hazardous site when he fell. He was working at home. But many workers also labor as casually as if they were doing home repairs.
Why do we climb to dangerous heights so carelessly? Climbing the bridge as kids, we scaled the height to prove our manliness. I wonder if the blasé attitudes that some of us show when working up high might be machismo in the face of potential calamity? Or is our boldness just feigned bravery masking denial of our own mortality? Even when our subconscious tries to broach these questions, we sometimes ignore the warnings.
In the weeks leading up to ironworker Paul Corsi, Jr.'s death, he had dreams of falling and premonitions that something bad would happen. On Feb. 11, 2002, the day before his death, Corsi called his girlfriend from work to tell her he didn't feel right about being there. She told him to come home, which he did, but she couldn't convince him not to return to work the next day. He was killed the next day when the truss on which he was working, the 13th of 15 trusses being erected at the David. L Lawrence Convention Center, fell and crushed him.
I was contacted by ENR to cover the coroner’s inquest into the accident, which killed Corsi, who was 38. It was my first story for this magazine, and Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala said Corsi and other ironworkers caused the accident by using the wrong nuts to secure connections on the structure. But the D.A. found no one criminally responsible for the accident, which also injured two other ironworkers.
"If you're going to climb the steel, then you've got to see that the connections are made properly," Zappala said.
Connecting the recognition of our own mortality with the best methods of work might seem simple, but it’s not always easily done. The ironworkers at the Pittsburgh convention center thought they were using the correct nuts, and no one told them otherwise. Matthew Abate, a fourth generation ironworker who was injured in the truss collapse, was saved from falling with the truss because his lanyard snapped and he was able to scramble to safety as the truss fell. His lanyard was meant to save him in a fall, but it would’ve helped to kill him if it hadn’t broken.
One could argue that the ironworkers were careless, but all of the men had been climbing the steel for years. It would perhaps be more appropriate to blame the inspectors who were paid to ensure that the job progressed according to the specifications for the project. Maybe there’s plenty of blame to spread around in this sad case.
To remind contractors and workers of the danger of fall hazards, OSHA steps in. Large fines remind business owners that they can’t ignore the rules. For some, such fines also replace the lack of fear of tragedy with an apprehension about losing money for not having adequate safety protections. Even so, people make mistakes. But in construction, a mistake can be fatal.
Sixteen years ago, I was working as a carpenter’s helper for a contractor, building a large home in a Pittsburgh suburb. The head carpenter/owner of the company was a drinker and a hothead, and he would fly into rages over the simplest things, throwing the other workers off-kilter. Bill was flipping out one day, screaming at me and another laborer about needing a power saw, and I scrambled over to him with the saw in my hand.
In my haste I stepped onto the corner of a piece of plywood that we had placed, un-nailed, over the floor joists of that area of the second floor. The plywood slipped from under my feet, falling through the joists, and I fell too, still holding the saw. Luckily, I caught myself between two joists, saving myself from falling about 20 feet to the concrete garage floor below. My left side got the brunt of the fall, landing hard on a joist. My back hurt for weeks.

Jonathan Barnes is Engineering News-Record’s correspondent in Pittsburgh. jdavidbarnes@hotmail.com

A shorter version of this essay first appeared in Engineering News-Record.