I'd like to offer a special welcome to those of you visiting the Tube City Almanac for the first time after reading about it in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Are you ready?
Welcome.
Ahem. Since that's out of the way, just a note to say that the Almanac principally concerns life in and around the Greater McKeesport area, which sometimes includes Picksberg, a city about 12 miles down river. Which is not to say that the Almanac is parochial; just that I sometimes feel bad for Picksberg. It might have amounted to something if only it had been closer to Our Fair City.
I have been corresponding with Peter Leo longer than either he or I cares to remember, so when he called yesterday to ask if it was OK to write about the Almanac, it tickled me like feathered underpants. But I was taken aback when he said that he might have to explain to the Post-Gazette's readers what the "Tube City" is. Great jumping George H. Lysles!
It's the Tube City because we once produced a large percentage of the world's steel and iron pipe, or "tube." Our once-prodigious tube output is down to a fraction of what it used to be, but we still make a fair amount of steel pipe and pipe-related products (only in McKeesport could you use the phrase "pipe-related products"), thanks to companies like Camp-Hill Corporation, CP Industries and Dura-Bond, among others.
And of course, McKeesport is also home to a different kind of "tube" --- the Canady catheter invented at UPMC McKeesport hospital by Dr. Jerome Canady.
We get together twice a week, at least, to update you on things happening in and around Our Fair City and its suburbs, which for our purposes include, oh, most of southwestern Pennsylvania when we're really hard up for a topic to write about. And your participation is always welcome.
Anyway, thanks for coming by. Feel free to look around. Some of the links in the menu at the left may also amuse you; the Almanac is just one part of Tube City Online, the Mon-Yough area's leading source of misinformation on the Internet since 1995. (And if you're so inclined on your way out, we also have a nice selection of souvenirs in the gift shop.)
I've been in my house in North Bittyburg for a little more than a year now. Going through some old bills the other night, I found a letter from my state senator, welcoming me to his district and offering his services. He sent it last November.
Well, I never wrote back, and I guess I feel a little bit bad about that. Here's this busy guy, who takes the time to send me a bunch of free stuff in the mail, including a nice letter, and I didn't respond.
But the funny thing is, he's been on my mind lately. So, I decided to sit down at my trusty IBM last night and write to him. (I've omitted his name and my home address, because it really doesn't matter anyway, and I don't particularly want to put my personal information on the Internet. Suffice it to say that he's one of a big group of our servants in the state Legislature who had a very fruitful summer.)
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Dear Senator -- :
Last year at this time, you wrote me a very nice letter, welcoming me to your district. Since you took the time to write, I thought it was about time I gave you an update.
(Frankly, I'm surprised you had time to write. Last week, when Tom Barnes from the Post-Gazette called to ask you about that protest at the state Capital, you were too busy to talk.)
You even wrote on that fancy state Senate letterhead. Sorry if this letter doesn't look as classy as yours was to me. My printer doesn't work any more, and I can't get a new one until payday, so I had to write this on my typewriter.
Anyway, enough about that. You wrote about my new house, so I'll tell you about that. Everything is pretty good, except for the water leak in my one basement wall. I had a man out to look at it, and he says it'll cost $1,800 to fix it. (I did some quick math, and it looks like you could pay that bill out of your annual expense account, and still have $8,200 left over. Hint, hint! You don't even have to show a receipt. Just kidding!)
Otherwise, the house is fine, except for the refrigerator, which is wearing out. The repairman says it's not worth fixing. For now, anything that needs to stay cold, I put in the freezer part, and it doesn't spoil. Most of the time.
I'm not complaining. I'm pretty lucky, mind you, especially compared with all of those people on fixed incomes. I just have to save my money until I can afford a new fridge. I was hoping that my annual raise would cover the cost of a new one, but I work for a non-profit, and we get part of our budget from the state. Well, our subsidy keeps getting squeezed, and as you can probably guess, our salary pool got capped, too. (And it's not like we can just vote ourselves raises. Ha, ha!)
Plus, with fuel prices getting so high, I have to save money any way I can. I just paid my gasoline credit card bills tonight. I used to spend about $77 per month for gas. This month, I'm spending $125. (That's ironic, because I see where you guys get $129 per day in travel expenses. I could pay my gas bill for a month, and still have $4 left over.) I suppose I could look for a more fuel efficient car, but I still have a year's payments left on this one. It's a '99, and I got it second-hand. Luckily, it's still worth about $7,000. (You get $7,200 per year for a car lease. Want to lease mine? Kidding, again!)
Come to think of it, I just did some more quick math. I added up the value of the car, and the house, and my yearly salary. And guess what? It comes out to less than you'll be taking in "unvouchered expenses" through the end of your term. (According to The Associated Press, that's $103,683. Does that sound right? It seems high.)
How was your summer? You get two months off, right? Great! In fact, I see where state legislators work an average of 77 days per year. Good for you. I just took a second job, working on Sundays, so I'll be lucky if I get 77 days off per year.
Personally, my summer was pretty good, right up until August. First my thermostat went bad. I no sooner replaced that, and the air-conditioner itself broke! To make a long story short, I'm trying to save money (blah, blah, blah), so I haven't gotten it fixed yet. Sometimes, the heat and humidity made it pretty hard for me to sleep at night.
How have you been sleeping at night, by the way?
Thanks again for writing. I really appreciated that, and I also appreciated the fact that you sent me a nice "reminder" card with your contact information on it. That way, I won't forget your name.
Well, don't worry, because you can bet I'm not going to forget your name! In fact, I see that you're up for re-election in 2008, and I'm going to make sure I talk with all of my new neighbors (I have some really nice neighbors here) about you.
In fact, I can hardly wait for election day!
Sincerely, etc.
(To) cite another example we ought to be talking about, take Act 201 of 2004, the “Responsible Utility Customer Protection Act.”
Utilities sought the bill because, they said, too many people were able to get out of paying their bills, passing the cost to the rest of us while they hid behind fake names or hid from meetings with utility reps, who under the old law had to speak to customers in person before shutting them off.
But as much as the pay raise itself, Act 201 was a classic piece of Harrisburg chicanery. Passed by the Senate in 2003, it sat in a House committee for a year. Then, in a single week during a late-November “lame-duck” session last year, the House rammed the bill through, sent it back to the Senate and then to the governor’s desk. Throughout the entire process, there was not a single public hearing on the measure.
The results were predictable. In June, the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) reported that utilities were shutting off service to twice as many customers -- at Columbia Gas, the number of shut-offs jumped by 230 percent. Critics have already linked some deaths to utility shut-offs enabled by the new law.
Editor's note: The following article from a news organization far in the future was recently discovered on a computer at Tube City Omnimedia's world headquarters just outside Our Fair City. Dr. Pica Pole, director of research for the laboratories division of Tube City Online, speculates that an unusually warm October, combined with the surprising 5-0 start of the Penn State Nittany Lions, caused a temporary fracture in the space-time continuum.
Dr. Pole is continuing to investigate the phenomenon with the help of what he calls "liberal application of Newton's theories of motion, Einstein's theories of relativity, and Glenlivet's theories of malting."
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Pirates end season with 20-3 home loss
By UPMC-Eat 'n Park-Gazette-Tribune Staff
Oct. 10, 2105
The Pittsburgh Pirates last night closed their 113th consecutive losing season with a 20-3 loss to the Havana Fidels at New Forbes Field.
An outstanding pitching performance by rookie robot phenom XDR-201-A, which gave up only 17 hits in seven innings, wasn't enough to overcome the Bucs' anemic hitting. Interim Manager Suzanne Rodriguez said that a new combination of steroids and mind-altering drugs prescribed to the Pirates' humanoid players by team physicians was to blame.
The start of the game was delayed for about two hours because of high ultraviolet radiation levels. The temperature at the surface of the infield was 43 degrees at the scheduled 7:05 p.m. start, but had dropped to a more manageable 32 when play began.
Though they ended the season at 75-107, Stewart McClatchy, managing general partner of the Pirates, said he was pleased with the progress the team had made this year.
"We have a very young team, including several experimental players," he said. "I also think Suzanne did an admirable job as the interim manager, especially considering the tragic circumstances under which she took over."
The previous manager, Herbert Delmark, was gunned down by crazed fans on July 13 during an exhibition game between the Pirates and Schenley High School. According to investigators from Halliburton, who currently police Pittsburgh under contract, the fans were angry after two fielding errors allowed Schenley to put runners on base.
A Halliburton jury later ruled the shooting "justified" because the Pirates have led the Eastern League in fielding errors since 2091. Schenley went on to win that game, 7-3.
McClatchy said next season is likely to be a "rebuilding year."
"We have some excellent clones nearly completed in the laboratory, and our minor-league programmers say that they've greatly improved the AI in their most promising robots," he said. "Next year is going to be our best season yet. I only wish my Uncle Kevin had lived to see it."
Kevin McClatchy, who led a group that purchased the Pirates in 1996, was placed in suspended animation in 2065, after asking his doctors to revive him when the team won the World Series. A team of medical experts last year advised the McClatchy family to remove him from the machines, saying that freezer burn had caused irreversible cell damage.
Fans interviewed last night outside New Forbes Field said they couldn't share Stewart McClatchy's optimism.
"How long have we been hearing about this?" asked Farishta Salahuddin, 27, of Kandahar, Afghanistan, as she waited in line at one of the teleportation chambers near the Bouquet Street entrance to the ball park.
Salahuddin, like other fans, blamed McClatchy's partners and co-owners, the Nutting family of West Virginia, for keeping the Pirates payroll artificially low. "How can they expect to compete when they're only paying seven-and-a-half trillion per year?"
The Pirates' payroll, which is actually about $7.4 trillion, is the lowest of International Major League Baseball's 78 teams.
Asked about claims that the Nuttings, who own West Virginia's largest chain of mind-control rays, are unwilling to spend the money to make the Pirates competitive, McClatchy pointed out that the team's board of directors is obligated to make a profit for shareholders.
"That's one of the reasons why we were so glad to get New Forbes Field, and access the new revenue it provides," he said. "We are confident that with the new ball park, we're going to be competitive again within the next few years."
Yet the ball park, erected two years ago in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood, also remains a point of controversy. Historic preservationists were angered by the destruction of Hillman Library for the ball park. Experts considered the building to be among the best remaining examples of 1960s architecture still standing.
Anger over the diversion of tax money to pay for New Forbes Field --- the seventh home of the Pirates since PNC Park closed in 2020 --- helped lead to the ouster of former Pittsburgh Mayor Cyril Costa-Flaherty.
"I feel good about our prospects for next season," McClatchy said. "I think our young players continue to get better. Those who are organic have a lot of room for improvement, and as for those that are mechanical, we'll disassemble those that aren't working out, save the parts that we can, and move forward from there. We're as committed and as hungry to win as we've ever been."
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