The Post-Gazette has endorsed state Rep. Marc Gergely for the Democratic nomination for re-election to the 35th District seat, calling George Matta's campaign one of "lies and deception."
I didn't realize this --- shame on me --- but Matta's billboards and literature claim that Gergely took a "34 percent pay raise." The P-G correctly notes that Gergely's pay raise (which he voted against, but took anyway) was only 16 percent.
And the P-G, like the Almanac last Wednesday, calls "bushwah" on Matta's claim that he's the "reform-minded and independent" candidate. Matta, notes the P-G, "was one of the party leadership's outspoken foes of the row-office reform approved by voters in 2004."
The P-G also says that Matta has fabricated the newspaper clipping shown in a TV commercial he's running (I haven't seen it). According to the P-G, the supposed headline about Marc Gergely is a complete phony.
And, according to the newspaper, Matta is also grossly distorting the amount of money that he accuses Gergely of "taking": It wasn't "taken," but was actually "legitimate expenses incurred by running a legislative office," including payments for office furniture, supplies, and rent.
"Under that twisted logic, how much money has George Matta 'taken' to operate the clerk of courts office?" editorializes the P-G, which concludes that Matta's advertising is "dim-witted" and that his "campaign mastermind" should resign.
Uh, ouch.
Matta, incidentally, has one of his billboards on the Dravosburg end of the Mansfield Bridge, and had a bunch of signs at the top of Dravosburg Hill, near Bettis Laboratory, last time I looked. That's nice attention to detail: Someone might want to tell him --- or his campaign workers --- that Dravosburg isn't in the 35th District.
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Meanwhile, state Rep. Ken Ruffing, running for the Democratic nomination against perennial candidate C.L. "Jay" Jabbour and newcomer William C. Kortz II of Dravosburg, tells the newspaper he regrets voting for that pay raise.
Ruffing adds: "I don't want to be held accountable on that one vote. Judge me by my record."
Sure thing, Mr. Ruffing. What the heck is your record?
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Hey! Come to think of it, which legislators from the Mon-Yough area besides Mr. Ruffing voted for a pay raise? Let me see ... oh, yeah! I remember!
Voting "yes":
Paul Costa, Democrat, Wilkins Twp.; Pete Daley, Democrat, Coal Center; Joe Markosek, Democrat, Monroeville; Ken Ruffing, Democrat, West Mifflin
Voting "no":
Jim Casorio, Democrat, Irwin; Marc Gergely, Democrat, White Oak; David Levdansky, Democrat, Elizabeth; Harry Readshaw, Democrat, Carrick
Did not vote:
Ted Harhai, Democrat, Monessen
Just remember, folks: Judge them on their records!
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What's New: Appropos of the Almanac I'm writing for Monday, I've added a new story to Tube City Online's "History section."
Hi-Way Tux was a landmark on Route 30 near Irwin for more than two generations. The story is re-written from notes and interviews I did when the store closed a little more than five years ago.
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To Do This Weekend: North Huntingdon Township holds its spring wildflower tour from 10 a.m. to 12 noon Saturday in Braddock's Trail Park. The tour is free and the guides are Norwin school superintendent John Boylan and local nature photographer Warren Gardner.
It's more demographic fun from the Tube City Almanac, the Mon-Yough area's leading source of useless, but mildly interesting, data!
Earlier this week, we talked about religions in Pennsylvania. Now, thanks to the Modern Language Association, we're going to see what languages people are speaking. (Tube City hard hat tip to Penn State professor Michael Berube's "Web" "Log", where I learned of the MLA language maps in the context of a funny but pointed political essay.)
In Our Fair City, according to MLA's analysis of U.S. Census data, English speakers are by far the majority (there's no breakout for "Pittsburghese"), with 23,031 people reporting that their first language is English.
But 441 McKeesporters say their first language (the one they speak most often at home) is Spanish; 146, Italian; 110, German; 108, Serbo-Croatian; 93, Polish; 76, Greek; 74, "other Slavic languages"; 68, French; 55, Hungarian; 37, Russian; 31, French Creole; 27, Arabic; 23, African languages; 23, Japanese; 13, Korean; 9, Vietnamese; 6, Scandinavian; and 6, Portuguese (!).
International Village, indeed. Portuguese?
I have a feeling that Census data from 50, 75 and 100 years ago in McKeesport would show many of the same languages in use (I don't have that data handy, obviously), but with many more people speaking Greek, Polish, Italian, Hungarian and other Eastern and Central European languages.
We also would have had many more people speaking Scandinavian languages, particularly Swedish: Not for nothing does McKeesport have a street named for "The Swedish Nightingale," Jenny Lind.
All right, how about some suburbs? Say, West Mifflin?
According to MLA, 20,026 people report English is their primary language at home (again, the number of people saying "jagoff," "jumbo," and "yinz" isn't counted --- a shocking slight against the Mon-Yough area, and I intend to write my congressman).
People speaking "other Slavic languages" at home are the next largest number at 188, followed by Spanish speakers (93), French (90, and you didn't even know West Mifflin had a "French Quarter"), Italian (77), Serbo-Croatian (56), Polish (36), Korean (21), Russian (18), German (18), Urdu (!!) (17), Japanese (12), Greek (10), Vietnamese (7) and Hungarian (6, and it's nice to see there are still a few of my grandfathers' countrymen hanging around Titan Country).
Urdu, incidentally, is a language primarily spoken in Pakistan and parts of India. So why can't I get a decent curry in West Mifflin, hmm?
In North Versailles Township, according to MLA, you'll find 16 French-speaking residents who wince every time they hear someone say "ver-SALES."
You'll also find 65 people who speak Spanish at home, 55 speaking "other Slavic languages," 50 speaking Korean, 50 speaking Serbo-Croatian, 43 speaking Polish, 29 speaking Italian, 28 speaking Hindi, 14 speaking German, 11 speaking Hungarian, seven speaking Greek and five speaking Arabic. Oh, and 10,048 who only speak English.
And finally, let's look at South Versailles Township, also known as Coulter, where 151 persons report speaking English as their primary language at home, and only one person reports speaking another language --- Italian --- though since he's the only one in the 15028 ZIP code who can speak Italian, I have no idea who he's talking to. Maybe he makes a lot of phone calls to the 29 Italian speakers in North Versailles.
In any event, if you see that man, tell him "buon giorno" for me.
And now, for something completely different: Maps showing the concentration of various religious groups, county by county, across the United States. They've been compiled by the Valapariso University Department of Geography and Meteorology. (Presumably, if you're praying for rain, they count you twice.)
To no one's surprise --- at least if you've seen all of the churches around here --- more than 50 percent of people in Allegheny, Washington and Westmoreland counties consider themselves religious. (Less than 50 percent in Fayette or Greene counties make the same claim --- heathens.)
In fact, the most religious parts of Pennsylvania are the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas --- the parts of the Commonwealth traditionally considered "liberal" or "Democratic." The "T" --- the center and northern parts of the state, traditionally considered "conservative" or "Republican" --- are comparatively less religious.
Roman Catholicism is the leading religion in most Pennsylvania counties (a papist plurality?), with several counties reporting more Methodists than any other faith, and three claiming a Lutheran majority. (Paging Garrison Keillor.) The best place to find a potluck supper, of course, is still the Upper Midwest.
And if you're looking for Baptists, you go through St. Louie and Joplin, Missouri, then take a sharp left: You can't miss 'em.
On the other hand, you're hard-pressed to find a Unitarian around here, with many counties reporting no Unitarians, and all of the remainder reporting fewer than 1 percent. There are even fewer Muslims in the Keystone State, and not many Quakers in the Quaker State, either.
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In other news, gas prices are still under $3 in the Mon-Yough area, at least as of this morning. OK, one-tenth of a cent under $3, but still. The Mon-Yough Gas Gauge --- a copyrighted, award-seeking feature of Tube City Online, a division of Tube City Omnimedia --- is at $2.961 as of Sunday, up 18.5 cents from the week before.
Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite gags from "The Simpsons." Neighbor Ned Flanders is lost in the countryside somewhere and doesn't know how to get back, so he stops at a pay phone.
"I'm not sure where I am, but the gasoline is a dollar forty-nine and eight-tenths," he says.
To which someone replies, "Donny's Discount Gas!"
So, why do they still price gas in 9/10ths of a cent, anyway? Opinions vary. A story from the Washington Post concludes that it's just to make the gasoline seem cheaper.
There's circumstantial evidence that it first began in the 1930s, when the federal government put a fractional tax on each gallon of gas; station owners started posting the decimal behind the price to show consumers the impact of the tax. Then, other station owners started shaving tenths of a cent off of their prices.
But that made a lot more sense (or is that "cents"?) when gasoline was 25 cents a gallon or so --- the fractional cent was a much larger proportion of the actual price. Why are we still clinging to this? You don't buy anything else in fractional cents. At least one gas station owner in California is dropping the practice altogether. Bully for him.
Then again, a state senator from Minnesota is trying to outlaw the practice, which seems like using a hammer to kill a fly.
Maybe the next time I stop at the gas station, I'll ask for $20 and 9/10ths worth of gasoline. Odds are I'll get a punch in the nose, but it will be worth it. I think everyone else should do the same thing: We'll start a movement!
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Meanwhile, gas prices at Doneldo's II Citgo near the Duquesne Village Shopping Center in West Mifflin are still at 89 cents for regular, 99 cents for high-test and $1.09 for premium!
It's a pity the place has been closed for at least seven or eight years, which is the last time anyone changed the numbers on the sign. Every time I drive pass, it's like getting a glimpse of Brigadoon, or maybe Shangri-La.
I was listening to Ben E. King's "Stand By Me," and thinking about all of the people who made that classic recording possible.
There's King, of course, who wrote the song, and whose magnificent vocal performance sent it straight to the top 10 charts in 1961.
But the recording itself is also a minor masterpiece. Credit Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller who produced it; Stan Applebaum, who arranged it; and all of the musicians (especially in the string section) who performed on it. Then there were the mixing engineers, the people who placed the mikes, even the mastering technicians who made the final copies for distribution.
They truly made magic happen during that Oct. 27, 1960 session at Bell Sound Studios in New York City.
And then, I was thinking about what they all would have said on Oct. 27, 1960, if I had told them that some day, I would be listening to their carefully crafted melody being fed by a lousy amplifier into a dry-rotted PA speaker in the ceiling of a crowded fast food restaurant in Pittsburgh during the lunch rush, with the employees screaming over the din of the customers.
My guess is they'd have said "to hell with this" and gone home.
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How did a Comic Strip Aficionado such as myself miss the fact that a popular web cartoonist is based right up the Youghiogheny River in Dawson? (Especially considering that he was mentioned last year in Gene Weingarten's chat on the Washington Post website. I read Weingarten's weekly chat transcripts religiously. Meaning, presumably, I cross myself and genuflect first.)
Anyway, in addition to comic book illustration and commercial graphic work, D.J. Coffman also draws the five times a week comic, "Yirmumah." (Warning: Some language and situations are not suitable for the easily offended.)
And the setting? Fayette-Nam, natch.
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Speaking of just up the river --- but this time, the Monongahela --- here's an item of note from the Magic City, Charleroi.
You know, I've been assigned a lot of stories based on flimsy topics, so I can sympathize with the author of this front page story in Saturday's Valley Independent. It involves Charleroi Mayor Frank Paterra:
According to the mayor, his vehicle broke down as he left the borough building Thursday afternoon. He had it towed to L&M Motors in Speers, where a 1985 Camry also owned by Paterra was parked. The second car was there because it needs a new alternator, Paterra said.
The mayor did not have a ride back to Charleroi, so he drove the Camry back to Charleroi, parking it along side the borough building.
Paterra admitted that the Camry has a license plate with a registration that expired in February.
A giant sinkhole that swallowed an Alta man in his living room Friday night was still growing Sunday, delaying rescuers from recovering the body until late in the day. ...
The Alta area was heavily mined for gold in the late 1800s. A mine collapse is one likely cause of the tragedy, but officials say they can't explain it yet. A team of 100 people was investigating the site Sunday, including numerous geologists brought in to determine if the hole was safe enough to resume a recovery effort. (Sacramento Bee)
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