We're still accepting your nominations for your favorite Mon-Yough area spot --- the kind of a place you'd take an out-of-towner. The best ones will be added to our Mon-Yough visitors page. We've already received several good ones, and the best will receive a free gift from the Tube City Online store. Email jt3y at dementia dot o-r-g or leave your information in the comments section of the Almanac.
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Norwin High School has a connection to a Nobel Prize winner, reports Craig Smith in the Tribune-Review. Alumna Jacquelyn Savani, Class of 1966, is married to David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize for physics this year.
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The News shares the Almanac's call to arms for Mon-Yough residents to protest Port Authority's service cuts:
In some communities, it is a nuisance; in others, a nightmare. "That means anybody up here after 9 p.m. or the weekend can't get out of here," Liberty Mayor Edward Slater said. ...
The message is, contact your state legislators and get more money for Port Authority and other transit agencies, or else.
How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?
None. There's nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn’t work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness.
Today's New York Post: "Damned Yankees" and "What a Choke."
Today's New York Daily News: "The Choke's on Us" and "Hell Freezes Over."
Today's Long Island Newsday: "Biggest Collapse in Sports History."
Nice to know that New Yorkers aren't fair-weather fans.
While I don't really have much of a rooting interest in the American League, in general, I'm a fan of two major-league baseball teams: The Pirates and whoever is playing the Yankees. So besides being delighted that the Red Sox were able to come from three games down in a best of seven series, it's nice to see the Yankees get what they so richly deserve. As well as the crybaby New York media. The callers on WFAN (660) must have been apoplectic last night.
Where's Bob Prince when Boston needs him? "They had 'em all-ll-ll-ll-ll-ll the way."
And Kerry must be happy; if the Boston Red Sox can beat the Yankees, maybe there's hope for the rest of the Boston Brahmins. Not to mention the fact that the Yankees are undeniably a Republican party team (the hapless, perpetually disorganized Mets are unquestionably a Democratic team).
Although there's another omen --- does this mean that the "red states" will beat the "blue states"? Alert CNN! I think this is the indicator that they've been looking for!
(Cut me some slack: Is predicting the presidential race on the basis of "Red Sox vs. Yankees" any more unscientific than most of the national polls?)
Anyway, speaking of the Man from Massachusetts, I caught part of his rally on the radio yesterday, although I had to get out of the car before he spoke. Poor Joe Hoeffel sounded great; too bad for him he's getting next to no support from either the state or national parties. I heard Ted Danson, too --- eh? What's the matter, was John Ratzenberger busy?
Yes, I know Danson's a CMU grad, but I'm not sure why I should care that much about what the guy from "Cheers" and "Becker" has to say about public policy --- or what any other celebrity thinks, for that matter.
I did think it was funny when Danson mentioned his father, who was a Republican, and the crowd booed. Folks, you were booing his dad. Them's fightin' words. Who would have blamed Danson if he had leapt from the stage and started clocking people?
"No, no, he was a good Republican," Danson said. How can you tell a good Republican? Do they look like Glenda, the Good Witch in "The Wizard of Oz"? Maybe bad Republicans wear striped socks. Someone dump a bucket of water on Karl Rove and see what happens.
And then we came to Franco Harris. Pittsburgh's beloved Franco Harris. What can I say about Franco Harris, an idol of my kidhood, except that public speaking ain't his strong suit.
I particularly liked his attempt to mention every college that could potentially have students in the crowd: "How many people here from CMU? And Pitt? A lot of people here from Pitt? And Carlow? And Chatham? How about Penn State?"
It sounded like some jokers in the crowd booed Penn State, by the way --- at least they didn't start chanting "Penn State Sucks" --- forgetting, apparently, that Franco is a PSU grad.
In case some Republicans want to use Franco's remarks in an attack ad, as best as I could tell, he forgot Robert Morris, La Roche, CCAC and Duquesne. Oh, and Poland --- he forgot Poland.
A couple of people who did attend the rally told me they were disappointed that Kerry's remarks weren't more "inspiring." First, this is John Kerry (or as he's known to Almanac readers, "Yawn Kerry") we're talking about. Steady? Yes. Resolute? I think so. Smart? No one seems to question that. But inspiring?
Um. Well. Kerry. Inspiring ... how 'bout those Red Sox?
Second, it's a political campaign, not the March on Washington, and he's no Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He's not even Reverend Lovejoy, for goodness sake.
Speaking of clergy (boy, the segues just keep on comin', don't they?), there's other good news to report today. Common-sense appears to be busting out all over, as a group of Catholic priests in the Pittsburgh diocese take out an ad in the Pittsburgh Catholic urging the faithful not to be single-issue voters.
As Ann Rodgers points out in the Post-Gazette, Bishop Wuerl has "stopped short of saying it is the only issue on which Catholics should base their vote. And memos that leaked from the Vatican this summer also stopped short of saying it is always wrong to vote for a candidate who supports legal abortion."
According to Rodgers' story, Susan Rauscher, the diocese's secretary for pastoral and social concerns, says that for a Catholic to vote for a candidate specifically because they support abortion, the vote would be "problematic. ... However, if you vote for a candidate who happens to support abortion, but your conscience moves you to vote for that candidate for other reasons, that falls into another category."
A group of liberal priests are scheduled to hold a news conference this week calling on Catholics to "obey your conscience" when voting.
Poor misguided fellows. Apparently, they're members of the reality-based community.
Sadly enough, and to tie the subject back to Franco Harris, neither the bishop nor the Vatican have yet made an official ruling on the Immaculate Reception.
Finally, I mentioned David Craig Simpson's "I Drew This" a while back. Why doesn't this guy have a syndication contract, while Ted Rall does? The titles are mine, by the way:
Oct. 21, 2004: Bush questions Kerry's judgment
Oct. 19, 2004: Will Kerry raise taxes?
Oct. 14, 2004: The mainstream press: Watchdogs of objectivity
Oct. 6, 2004: Liberals: Full of vile hatred
Did you ever have one of those days when you misplace something important? Man, if it's not my car keys it's my checkbook or my hat. I've lost more umbrellas than I can count, though the one I left on the bus the other day was returned to me. (The bus driver, bless him, had it waiting on the dashboard the next time I saw him. "Is this your umbrella?" he said.)
Once I lost my wallet on a bus. I didn't even realize it was gone until I got a call from the Homestead postmaster; someone had dropped it into a mailbox. The money and credit cards were still intact. How's that for honesty? That's the Mon Valley for you.
Well, yesterday I realized that I'd lost something else. My sense of moral outrage.
I've been trying to figure out the last time I used it. I know I had it when the Vice President claimed that voting for a Democrat for President would cause a terrorist attack. I used it just the other day when a Catholic group said that voting for the Democrat was a "sin."
If it seems that my sense of moral outrage only works on Republicans, that's not true. It goes off every time the Democratic presidential candidate claims that there's going to be a draft in January if the President is re-elected, and it works every time I hear leftists compare the President to Adolf Hitler.
Anyway, last night, a major chain of TV stations that makes large campaign contributions to the Republican Party denied that it had ever planned to show a documentary knocking that Democratic presidential candidate. That, despite the fact that the very same chain of TV stations had sent out program listings to newspapers that had the documentary scheduled to run.
A reasonable person might be led to conclude that the CEO of the TV station company was shading the truth a bit. So I waited for my sense of moral outrage to kick in, and there was ... nothing.
I looked all over the place for my sense of moral outrage --- in the car, in the basement, at work, at home. Nothing. It's always in the last place you look, of course, so I'm hoping it will turn up eventually.
Or maybe there have been too many cases when my moral outrage has had to kick in. It's an interesting thing, too, because I've noticed that when my moral outrage swings to the left, it only swings a few degrees, but when it swings to the right, it goes off the scale. Maybe that's because the Democratic candidate for president seems prone to "those exaggerations," in the President's words, while the President's campaign is "pushing the factual limits," as Howard Kurtz recently wrote in The Washington Post. Maybe it's pushed the limits of my moral outrage meter, too, so that it's not as sensitive as it used to be.
So, it may be that my sense of moral outrage is just worn out, and that it's there, but I've been using it too much lately. Maybe it just needs some time to cool off, like an overheated electric motor, and that when I need it again, it will be ready.
I sure hope so. Because I have a bad feeling I'm going to need it again before Nov. 3.
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For instance, this is the kind of thing that would normally cause my sense of moral outrage to be triggered, but there was nothing:
An ostensibly nonpartisan voter registration drive in Western Pennsylvania has triggered accusations that workers were cheated out of wages and given instructions to avoid adding anyone to the voter rolls who might support the Democratic presidential nominee.
Sproul & Associates, a consulting firm based in Chandler, Ariz., hired to conduct the drive by the Republican National Committee, employed several hundred canvassers throughout the state to register new voters. Some workers yesterday said they were told to avoid registering Democrats or anyone who indicated support for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. ....
"If they were a Kerry voter, we were just supposed to walk away," said Michael Twilla, of Meadville, who said he has been paid for only eight of 72 hours he worked. Twilla provided the Post-Gazette with a copy of the script he said he had been given. It instructs the canvassers to hand unregistered Bush supporters a clipboard with a registration form, and to advise them the canvassers will personally deliver the forms to the local courthouse.
Most people I speak with agree that a fair increase is not out of the question. But more has to be done by the Port Authority to earn our support. Too many times have the commuters paid out increases only to see no return on our investment. Park-and-Ride lots continue to be littered with trash and broken glass. Cars continue to be broken into at these lots with no visible security patrol or maintenance. Buses continue to run in delapidated condition. Some buses have not been cleaned since the Pirates were contenders! It is not unusual for a bus to be full with urine and trash. Bus drivers have no concern for what takes place on the buses. People openly eat and discard their trash as well as grafitti to their hearts content. As a patron I would like to see my funding combat some of these issues.
To quote that great philosopher, Red Green: "If you don't have anything to say, stop talking. If you find yourself quoting a funny story you read in the Reader's Digest, shut up. You have nothing to say."
Today, I've got nothing, except some of our patented Tube City Online Internet Time-Wasters:
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One of the issues that allegedly led the Mon Valley Midget Football League to kick out the Clairton teams was Clairton's supposed violation of a so-called "mercy rule." Most "mercy rules" state that when one team reaches a certain point margin that would make it impossible for the other team to win --- the game becomes a massacre rather than a blowout --- then the other team pulls back. In PIAA football, there's an official "mercy rule" that states if one team leads by 35 points or more in the second half, the clock doesn't stop, except after a score. PIAA also has a 10-run "mercy rule" in school baseball.
According to this story from 2003, the midget football teams are not the only Clairton teams to be accused of ignoring the "mercy rule." In January 2003, the high school girls' basketball team pounded Winchester-Thurston 123-24; a guard on the Winchester team called it "humiliating." (Read the Clairton coach's side of the story in the Valley Independent.
It's not fair to single out Clairton. On Saturdays, I always read through the high school football scores, and some of them are so lopsided as to be obscene; scores like 68-3 or 77-0 are not uncommon.
I suppose there are cases when the other team is so inept, you can't help but score on them. Yet I still wonder what some of these coaches are thinking: This is high school football, for cripes' sake. Why humilate the other team? Isn't 48-0 or 54-3 a big enough margin? Why not put the freshmen and the third-stringers in?
Then, of course, I come back from my magical trip to Gumdrop Mountain, where chocolate-syrup rivers run through candy-cane forests. After all, it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether or not you grind the other guys into a bloody pulp.
Oh, and what's the Time Waster? Well, you can download official PIAA rules bulletins here. Read through them and you'll be much better informed this Friday night when you're yelling insults at the refs: "Hey, jagoff, are you blind? It says right on page 1 of the October bulletin that you should sound your whistle when a successful kick clears the uprights!"
Admittedly, it's not as concise as, "So's your mother."
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What would happen if you titled movie based solely on descriptions of what the poster in the theater lobby looked like? Well, you might end up with something like this collection at SomethingAwful.com (warning: some of the language isn't suitable for the kiddies).
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I'm ashamed to admit how much time I spent the other night looking at Gas Signs, which, as you might suspect, is a site dedicated to photos of gas station signage.
Some how, a friend and I started discussing car trips, which led to a discussion of how you used to be able to spot regional gasoline companies (like Sohio) when you took car trips, which led to his mentioning that there used to be a Purple Martin gas station on McKnightmare Road in the North Hills, near his home.
Which led to us searching for information about Purple Martin gas.
Which led to "Gas Signs."
Which led to me spending several hours looking at pictures of gas station signs.
Which led to me being covered in shame, once again.
Why, oh why, couldn't it have been porn instead? That, my family could understand, but gas station signs? Yeesh.
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James Howard Kunstler is in a bad mood:
John Kerry has made some joking references to the immense wealth he married into, but a few years from now it will not seem very funny to a public with no jobs, steeply declining standards of living, and no way to get around. Nor will George W. Bush's family advantages go unnoticed. Personally, I am allergic to Marxist doctrine, but I believe nonetheless that a few years from now, the American public will want to eat the rich. Some demagogue will arise out of the NASCAR mob and then the real fun will begin.
I never wanted to play at the expense of someone getting hurt, especially when he is as great of a guy as Tommy is. But I knew I had to be ready when the team needed me, and I am trying my hardest to fill in well for Tommy and just win football games. These games have been a lot of fun (obviously it’s always more fun when you win!) I definitely need to take some time here to thank my teammates for everything they do. They are making my job so much easier, and they really are the ones doing all the hard work.
I keep reminding myself, and I want to remind everyone else, that it has only been a few games and we have a long way to go until we will be satisfied. I know I won’t be satisfied until the Steelers win a Super Bowl!! And even then I will want to win more. One thing I know is that we have a better chance of winning if you the fans keep supporting us the way you have. I have to thank you again!
Bad news for "France Lynn," who has been scratching his, her or its name into all of the buses using the West Mifflin Garage. Come next spring, France Lynn may have a lot fewer buses to deface.
Bad news for the Mon-Yough area, too, which as expected would be fairly heavily hit by the Port Authority's proposed restructuring --- the "poison pill" designed to force the state Legislature into increasing its funding for public transit.
According to a preliminary list of bus routes that would eliminated, released on Friday by the transit agency, three local routes in Our Fair City would be cut altogether: 60A Walnut, 60P Port Vue-Liberty and 60S Crawford Village-Jenny Lind. The 58C McKeesport Express --- the motorcoach service that replaced the PATrain --- would also be eliminated, though riders could use the 58P and 58V that serve Port Vue and Versailles, respectively.
Elsewhere, the 50B Glassport-Clairton? It would be gone.
67J Lincoln Highway? Gone.
The Clairton, Elizabeth and Homestead Park "flyers"? Gone.
The 51E West Mifflin-Jefferson, 55B Homeville, 55E Whitaker-West Mifflin? You've got it: Finito, splitsville, headed for the big bus garage in the sky.
East Hills routes affected would include 63B Rankin, 65E North Braddock, and a bunch of Valley routes: 75A Monroeville Shopper, 75B Pitcairn-East McKeesport, 75C Garden City, 75D Penn Hills-Monroeville.
Of course, the Mon-Yough area isn't being targeted unfairly --- from Sewickley to South Park, and everywhere in between, bus routes would be lopped, and all weekend and night service would be ended.
The Port Authority says that in many cases of eliminated routes, "some service" would be provided by other buses --- it helpfully suggests the 58P Port Vue could supplant the 60P, for instance --- but that's really like saying that because United Airlines flies over Greensburg, it provides "some service" to Westmoreland County. In nearly every case where the Port Authority suggests that "some service" will be provided on a cancelled route, only a handful of stops will be duplicated, often at inconvenient times.
You can say that many of these routes are lightly patronized --- as Jon Potts puts it, "I've been on buses that were standing room only, but also ones in which I could have stripped naked, and no one but the driver would have noticed." (That was a mental image I didn't need, Jonathan.) The first bus that I catch each morning, for example, has anywhere between zero and a half-dozen riders.
But I would also argue that the lightly patronized routes are often the most necessary ones in some suburban areas of Allegheny County, where residential neighborhoods are often far from commercial districts. Speaking as someone who, during college, occasionally had to walk three miles home from the McKeesport Transportation Center after missing the last local bus to my neighborhood, I think I know of where I speak.
(And I did it uphill both ways, in the snow, fighting off dinosaurs. And I liked it!)
Without a bus, many elderly residents, students, single mothers getting off of welfare and others are going to lose their only lifeline to the doctor, school, work, or shopping areas. We have a car-based culture --- some would argue the merits of that, but it's here, and we have to deal with it. Private automobiles grant many Americans a great deal of freedom, but, ironically, they make some Americans even more isolated. Many neighborhoods lack drugstores, supermarkets and other necessities within walking distance; those local stores have been replaced by big-box retailers on the outskirts of town, easily reached by car, not so easy to reach if you can't afford one.
Is public transportation underfunded? Hard to say; how much is "enough"? According to PennDOT's 2003 Annual Report, mass transit agencies received about $658.6 million in assistance; "highway-related" expenditures ran about $3.6 billion, or more than five times as much.
One problem that PAT has pointed out is that government grants are often available for capital improvements --- extending light-rail to the North Side, for instance --- but not for operating expenses.
This is doubly stupid. The mentality of government agencies is often, "well, we might as well take the money for capital improvement projects and use it, because if we don't, someone else will." But each time PAT expands its capital plant, its operating and maintenance costs go up. Thus does PAT dig its budget hole a little deeper each time it gets a grant for capital improvements.
What should you do if you're concerned? Don't bother writing or calling Port Authority. Instead, contact your state legislators or senators. It's an election year, after all, so you have some leverage --- they need your vote --- and from my experience, a nicely-worded letter will do wonders.
Whether it will roust them in time to stave off route cuts that would leave the Port Authority less of a transit system than a parody of one remains to be seen.
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Daily News coverage of the Daily News' sale is now online (tip of the Tube City Online hard hat to an Alert Reader who asks to remain anonymous).
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Park Corporation has taken out a permit to demolish the Carrie Furnaces in Rankin and Swissvale (the old blast furnaces near the Rankin Bridge), reports Ann Belser in the Post-Gazette. This comes just after the county finally made progress on obtaining the money necessary turning the old furnaces into a tourist attraction.
Folks active in the effort to create a regional historic site explaining steelmaking in the Mon Valley have often accused Park Corporation of acting in bad faith in Homestead and Munhall. They have claimed that Park Corporation promised to preserve artifacts, then demolished them or refused to sell them to historic preservation groups.
Kelly Park told Belser that 16 years is "a long time for a private company to hold onto something" --- meaning the furnaces --- "and not do anything." That's true, but it also is easy to see why the historic preservationists have become so frustrated. Every time they have approached a hurdle, it's been moved further away from them. A tiny fraction of what could have been saved at the Homestead Works was needlessly bulldozed when The Waterfront was built.
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Alert Reader Officer Jim reports that while In Philadelphia, Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin, at least one writer at the Inquirer is reading the Tube City Almanac.
Well, maybe not. But at the very least, Inky columnist Tom Ferrick Jr. was on the same wavelength Sunday as the Almanac was on Friday:
Does abortion trump everything else? What happens if the candidate is pro-abortion, but is in line with, say, the Pope on other issues --- pro-social justice, anti-death penalty, anti-Iraq war, etc.? The most frequently heard answer, albeit muffled in pastoral euphemisms, is: Yes, abortion does trump the others. In my experience, next on the list is parochial aid in its various manifestations, including vouchers. ...
Catholics should resist the bishops' attempt to turn them into single-issue voters. A democratic, pluralistic society is best served by voters who consider the range of a candidate's positions and performance and make their judgments accordingly.
That doesn't mean people shouldn't vote their interests. For God's sake, though, use your common sense.
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