Cluttered items from an empty mind:
. . .
What the hell: I paid $3.09 a gallon for 87 octane gas on Tuesday night. Jumpin' Jimmy Carters, this is worse than odd-and-even days. And the next wise-arse who says, "Well, they pay a lot more in Europe, I think we should be paying more," should be forced to ride from Rhode Island to Seattle in a 1970s school bus.
Of course, you could use public transportation, unless you ride the 50B Glassport, the Clairton, White Oak or Jefferson flyers, or any of the McKeesport local routes that are down to five or six trips a day. And about the service cuts: I suppose it's slightly better than the original plan to eliminate all local McKeesport routes --- we die from a thousand little cuts instead of a guillotine.
The Mon-Fayette Expressway looks like a better and better idea. Yep, let's build new highways, spread people further out, and make 'em use their cars more!
As for public transportation, I know the state can't fund it adequately, but at least work is underway on that new arena for the hockey team. Let's go Pens!
. . .
Speaking of Mr. Peanut: Way to show some backbone, Jimmy. You folded like a cheap card table. Now I remember why we look back on the Carter administration with such fondness. Says Mark Evanier, "You get the idea that the man's just plain giddy that he's no longer regarded as our worst recent president?"
. . .
Nobody Cares, But: I rarely write about writing, because no one but other writers care. On the off chance that someone does give a rat's patoot, however, I thought I'd give a little insight into the "creative" process as it's practiced around Tube City Omnimedia's World Headquarters overlooking Our Fair City.
Sometimes aspiring writers ask me for advice. After I tell them, "Don't become a writer," I tell them to "revise, revise, revise."
I did a lot of weird things during my failed career as a newspaper writer (sitting around in my stocking feet, for instance), but one that I'm not ashamed of was my habit of printing out my stories and editing them over a cup of coffee. My editor at the Observer-Reporter used to tease me whenever she saw me walking around the newsroom reading from a sheaf of copy paper: "Well, you must be almost done, because you're rewriting."
At right is a page from the long-promised G.C. Murphy book, which is going to be finished someday --- in fact, it's due to the publisher next Wednesday. (Next Wednesday? Holy crow, why am I writing this drivel?)
Depending on how I count, this is either the third or fourth draft, and you can see how much I'm still marking up, trimming and rewriting. Never let your first draft be your final draft --- edit your work and when you're done, edit some more.
You also have to learn how to cut passages of which you've really become fond. Former cow-orker Dave Copeland, who's apparently written a few things here and there, talked about this a few weeks ago. Writing teachers call it "killing your children," and I've had to kill a whole chapter of the Murphy book --- it had some funny stuff, but it just wasn't working.
Sure, you can --- as my art teacher, Sister Dorothy Ransil used to say --- "futz too much." At some point, you have to back off and say, "OK, it's good enough." (Another old O-R mentor, chief photographer Stan Diamond, used to tell me, "They can't all be Pulitzers.")
But if you want to be a writer, learn to edit your work ruthlessly. Few people have ever looked at an article, book or blog posting and said, "Gee, I'd like to read that, but it's too darn short."
Oh, and how to live on ramen noodles and peanut butter.
. . .
Get a Grip: Dan Rooney is wringing his hands with anguish over the fact that one of his coaches accidentally sent a dirty video out via email to half the known world. The usual suspects in the media are cluck-clucking their tongues.
The guy screwed up, but it's not necessary for the Steelers to cover him with ashes and flog him. It's the National Football League, not a ballet school for pre-teen girls. I don't seriously think many football players and coaches would be offended. I'll bet the air in the locker room at Heinz Field is plenty blue on game days.
And any fans that are offended are hypocrites: If you don't mind the cheerleaders and the endless bikini-clad bimbos hawking beer on TV during time outs, then cry me no tears about emailed porn.
The song "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" by Cannonball Adderley came on the radio as I started this Almanac. That somehow seems appropriate.
The young man who died yesterday when the car he was driving slammed into DiSalla's Pizza in Munhall Junction apparently had an older brother who was shot to death in Mon Vue Heights last year.
According to the Post-Gazette, Homestead police spotted a car going the wrong way down a one-way street just after 12 a.m. Monday. When they tried to stop it, the car fled and the police pursued. A few minutes later, the car crashed into the wall of DiSalla's, narrowly missing one of the customers and critically injuring the driver, identified as Terrance Raiford, 17, of West Mifflin.
Raiford died last night at UPMC Presbyterian hospital.
Last year, Raiford's brother Eric Martin, 20, a specialist in the Army National Guard who was home on leave from Iraq, was shot in the back in Mon Vue Heights in what police called a "senseless, cold-blooded" killing. A 19-year-old McKees Rocks man was charged with homicide in connection with the slaying, but no motive --- if any --- has been revealed.
Martin, a former star tight-end on the West Mifflin High School football team, left behind a one-month-old girl. Now his mother and stepfather have another tragedy to cope with --- another son has died senselessly. KDKA reports that two loaded handguns were found in the car. If that's true, it explains why Raiford ran; otherwise, driving the wrong way down a one-way street is at worst a $25 fine.
There's no moral to this story, just despair that 17-year-olds are dying in car crashes after police chases, and that 20-year-old Iraq war veterans are being gunned down in the street for no apparent reason.
If you're a praying person, say a prayer for the Raifords. Say a prayer for the community.
Mercy, mercy, mercy.
Thoughts on returning from four days and three nights in beautiful southwestern Ohio at the annual geekout:
. . .
A few years ago, I described Dayton, Ohio, as looking like a large McKeesport: "(S)ome very nice sections, some very seedy sections, and a large muddled middle that could go either way."
I am happy to report that Dayton seems to have cleaned up its act ... a little bit. There are still lots of boarded-up buildings downtown and on the west side of town, but it looks like they're trying to make an effort to address blight.
The parallels with the Pittsburgh area are still pretty obvious --- Dayton is a middle-class industrial city devastated by the loss of its major employers, struggling to support its basic infrastructure while the tax base is collapsing.
It turns out there's another parallel, according to Sunday's Dayton Daily News, and it's a dubious honor to share: Dayton, like McKeesport and Pittsburgh, is still sharply divided along racial lines:
Areas in East Dayton were up to 99 percent white in 2000, while West Dayton had tracts that were up to 98 percent black. A few tracts, mostly in neighborhoods close to North Main Street, had diverse populations ranging from about 36 to 66 percent white ...
Scroggins, who is black, said the general pattern she has seen is that most people choose to live where their families have lived ... Wietzel thinks market forces determine who lives where, and he thinks city neighborhoods will become more integrated naturally as quality housing is developed in neighborhoods that have traditionally been racially homogeneous. He said another element that is needed is an economic recovery that will bring new homebuyers into the area.
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