September 14, 2007

Work, Work, Work

At Tube City Omnimedia's World Headquarters overlooking Our Fair City, we are frantically working on a new, improved Tube City Almanac for debut ... hopefully ... on Monday.

Your editor is on a very steep learning curve as I try to simultaneously understand the new content management system, called Pivot, and teach myself CSS (cascading style sheets).

I'm way behind in my understanding of CSS, which would help me in my day job, so I decided there was no time like the present to teach myself. (Some people say I have a fool for an instructor and a bigger fool for a student.) A book from Pogue Press' "Missing Manual" series is helping me greatly.

Anyway, this should take my understanding of HTML (the language that all webpages are built in) from my present 1997 knowledge to roughly ... oh, 1999.

What does this mean to you, our the 500-or-so loyal Almanac readers? Hopefully a cleaner-looking page that loads faster ... and without the fershlugginer frame that currently surrounds the Almanac.

In plain English, you should be able to more easily link to any entry you like. Also, the current clunky filter that rejects many comments will go away. Huzzah!

. . .

Point, Counterpoint: Comments are still coming in on the Mo-Fo Excessway essay. Feel free to add yours. Mark Rauterkus, candidate for Pittsburgh city controller and city council, writes:

The talk of HEAVY RAIL as an alternative would be welcomed. The freight lines can often be diverted. We've got plenty of lines. We have a glut of lines. I think they can live in harmony. Other cities have trains. And the line from McKeesport didn't stop just at Station Square -- it went to Sewickley (years ago).

A few comments, if I can interrupt: First, it's easy to talk about "diverting" freight railroads in the abstract. Try selling that idea to CSX and Norfolk Southern and their stockholders.

CSX alone hauled 160,000 carloads of freight out of Pennsylvania last year, serving 300 different companies. Most of that haulage was through the Mon Valley. The company has five main freight yards in the state; three of them are in the Monongahela and Youghiogheny valleys, including Demmler Yard in McKeesport.

"Diverting" that traffic is a hell of a lot easier said than done, and it would have to be done at the taxpayers' expense. If you think it's hard getting funding and approval to build a highway, try telling people you're going to build a railroad for a private company through their backyard ... and their expense.

Second, "other cities have trains." Yes, notably New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. The Boston-to-Washington corridor is one of the most-densely populated stretches of land in the Western world. Pittsburgh is not comparable.

Third, there hasn't been passenger service to Sewickley since the 1960s, when the Pennsylvania Railroad discontinued its local commuter service around Pittsburgh, when it was losing thousands of dollars a day ... mainly to Ohio River Boulevard.

I love trains. I think it's a great way to travel. I think it's very efficient and environmentally friendly. I just think it's a pipe dream (although with oil possibly going to $100 a barrel by the end of the year, it becomes more realistic every day).

Mark continues:

PA Turnpike makes new PA toll roads. Go figure. PAT (a bus company) isn't well suited for light rail either. Go figure. We can do better and think again about rail, the rails for human cargo, and freight elsewhere.

I can't argue with any of this. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission builds turnpikes. That's all they know. And as a friend often tells me, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Alert Reader John M. writes:

$3-some billion in tax money doesn't have a lot to do with the free market. You fight the tide by fighting the tide, otherwise you are just part of it.

I hate to sound like a wiseguy, but I assume you've been to the ocean. You can't fight the tide. You drown.

I want to be convinced that there's a viable alternative to the Mon-Fayette ... or to some limited-access highway serving the Mon-Yough area. It hasn't happened yet.

. . .

Here's a Thought: What if the Mon-Fayette was re-routed from Large to McKeesport out to Monroeville, like the old Route 48 bypass was supposed to go, and avoided Hazelwood, Braddock, Turtle Creek, etc.? Is that crazy?

. . .

Tragedy in Elizabeth: Officials are investigating a suspicious fire in Elizabeth Borough. Fire Chief Lenny Bailey Jr., who was also an Elizabeth councilman, died on his way to the scene of that blaze. Raymond Pefferman has more on Bailey and the investigation in the Daily News.

There's a discussion thread ongoing at the Elizabeth Borough website, where residents can post comments and remembrances; the funeral is set for tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. at Bekavac Funeral Home on Second Street in Elizabeth. Requiescat in pace.

. . .

National Affairs Desk: Something about the President's address last night leaped out at me:

The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is "return on success." The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home.

What's he saying? That it's the fault of our American soldiers and Marines that they're still in Iraq? "If only they were more successful," they could come home. So it's their fault, not the President's ... nor the Vice President's, though by many accounts Cheney has micromanaged the Defense Department.

Oh, my aching head. If Bill Clinton had said that, they'd be burning him in effigy in Lafayette Park this morning ... and rightfully so. History is not going to be kind to us for re-electing this man in 2004.

. . .

In Other Business: In the Post-Gazette, Eric Slagle writes about the proposed referendum to change the city charter and allow employees to run for public office.

. . .

To Do This Weekend: State Rep. Bill Kortz hosts a sportsmen's and outdoor expo at The Palisades, Fifth Avenue and Water Street, tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Representatives of the Fish and Boat Commission, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen, and other groups will be on hand to answer questions. Refreshments are free; free flu shots will also be administered.

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
Filed Under: Mon Valley Miscellany | thirteen comments | Link To This Entry

September 12, 2007

Who's That Again?

More alleged humor from the radio show.

Remember, I kid because I love.

And also because I'm an extremely warped, frustrated and jealous hack.

Incidentally, the announcer at the end is a former WEDO disc jockey, Glenn Tryon, who went onto bigger and better things at WQED-TV and elsewhere; he's presently retired and in Puerto Rico, but I was introduced by a mutual acquaintance and fortunately get to correspond with him from time to time. (He's even cut some material for me.)

Harv Pauley's The Story Behind The Story: Labor Day Edition (2.8 MB)

. . .

Page ... 2: Speaking of WEDO, did I ever mention that the website for McKeesport's "Station of Nations" is back online?

There's no streaming audio, unfortunately, so you'll have to use an actual radio if you want to hear "Benedictine Oblate Connection with Fr. Donald Raila" or "The McKeesport Slovak Hour with Barb Mima."

. . .

Page ... 3: The best Harvey impersonation I ever heard was done by Rich Hall on a 1980s Showtime special that I and about two other people saw called Rich Hall's Vanishing America.

Good day!

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
Filed Under: So-Called Radio Humor | No comments | Link To This Entry

September 11, 2007

Meeting of the Minds

As usual, there's almost as much truth this one story from The Onion as in a week of the AP wire. (Thanks to Alert Reader Jeff for sending along the link.)

Some people hate borough and township and school board meetings. I love them. They're a great place to meet people, corner public officials who don't return phone calls, and get ideas. I could attend a township commissioners' meeting and return to the office with a week's worth of things to write about.

But there are a few crackpots at almost every meeting who month after month demand the microphone during the public comment period and say nothing. (The great American philosopher Melvin Kaminsky nailed this phenomenon years ago in a classic documentary, as this soundbite will demonstrate.)

During my failed newspaper career, I was able to identify a few archetypes:

• Angry Balding White Guy: Every month he singles out the councilmen or school directors for some perceived slight that happened 25 years ago when they were in high school. He usually tries to couch his attacks in weak, sometimes ethnic, jokes.



• Elderly Nervous Lady: She walks up to the podium, quivering, with pieces of spiral-bound notebook paper clutched in her hands, which she then reads from in a timorous voice. She's terrified the planning director might leap from the stage and beat her to death for questioning his decision to grant a side yard variance on Elm Street.



• Crazy Wanna-Be Academic: A self-professed political independent (who nevertheless has never voted for a Democrat), CWBA is smarter than you. He spends his spare time listening to right-wing talk radio, poring over state websites, and demanding photocopies of contracts and ordinances from the township manager. At meetings, he gets his kicks by grilling the roadmaster on finely nuanced points of the second-class township code.



• Shouting Heavy-Set Woman: She's angry, dammit. About everything! That's why she put on her good sweatpants before she came down here! Kids are going to get killed! She pays taxes! Somebody better do something! And her family and neighbors are mad, too! (They're the ones in the audience spitting tobacco chaw into paper cups and clapping loudly whenever she pauses.)

There's been a new twist on this phenomenon recently at West Mifflin borough's council meetings, thanks to former state representative, now borough councilman, Richard Olasz Sr.

Olasz sits on the dais until public comment period, then walks down to the audience podium, and as West Mifflin Resident Richard Olasz Sr. he questions Councilman Richard Olasz Sr. ... and then he walks back up to the dais to answer himself.

Perhaps it's more evidence that the state should rethink its decision to close Mayview.

As always, H.L. Mencken (himself a notorious crank) offers a useful comment on this situation: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

. . .

'Next To Yours, The Best Town in The U.S.A.': Speaking of people who have attended a few public meetings in their lives, my old cow-orker Scott Beveridge of the Observer-Reporter has been writing about the history of Donora and its neighbor across the Monongahela River, Webster, an unincorporated village in Rostraver Township.

Check out his series called "Welcome to Nowhere" at his blog, Travel With a Beveridge.

And don't miss other entries, like his story about how Tom Savini is bringing the dead to life in Monessen.

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
Filed Under: Good Government On The March, Mon Valley Miscellany, Politics | one comment | Link To This Entry

September 10, 2007

Goin' Down, Down, Down

Occasional Almanac contributor Officer Jim writes:

As much as I hate to say this, I thought that the Trib's story on the Mon Valley was pretty good. It wasn't overly optimistic, but it didn't trash the region either. "Fair and balanced" in the Trib? Say it ain't so!

And I'd like to say that we both have brilliant insight into regional redevelopment, but obviously not:

Demand for industrial space is low in Pittsburgh, Stephenson said -- doubly so for a location without a major highway.

"If somebody can go someplace and they get easy access off the turnpike, why wouldn't they go there instead of getting caught up in the Mon Valley?" he said.

The "brilliant insight" to which Jim refers is last week's thumb-sucker, published here, about the Mo-Fo Excessway.

Although the Trib piece, by Mark Houser, was a nice package, I could nitpick a few details. The chart called "Homicides 2001-06" doesn't weigh the crimes by their per capita population. Ten homicides in Braddock Borough (population 2,900) works out to a much higher per-capita rate than 18 homicides in McKeesport (population 24,000).

And I'm not sure how useful it is to measure only "homicides"; "all violent crime" might have been more helpful.

But finding that data is difficult; some Mon-Yough area police departments don't submit Uniform Crime Report data to the federal government, and Pennsylvania's notoriously weak open-records laws mean that police departments don't have to release information if they don't want to.

So these are minor quibbles, and overall, it was a pretty good story.

Still, I remember writing a cover story called "Mon Valley Makeover" for City Paper in roughly May or June of 1996. And I'm sure if I thought about it, I could find other stories in other outlets about the "Mon Valley's recovery" from the last 20 years or so.

We writers keep churning out pieces about the "Mon Valley's recovery." When is the region going to, y'know, recover?

. . .

Old King Coal: Also in Sunday's Trib, Rick Stouffer wrote about the use and abuse of "pollution credits" by coal-fired power plants. There are two big coal-fired power plants in the Mon-Yough area --- Allegheny Energy's Mitchell Power Station near New Eagle and Reliant Energy's former Duquesne Light plant in Elrama.

Meanwhile, the Observer-Reporter and other outlets note that the Eighty-Four Mine in Washington County will close next year. About 100 miners will be laid off.

The closure comes about 10 years after 84 Mine's owners, Consol Energy, began longwall mining under several townships in Washington County, causing millions of dollars in property damage to homes, businesses and highways.

File that under the heading "long-term public welfare traded for a few short-term jobs."

And remember to look at that file once the new casinos open.

. . .

That's Not Funny, That's Sick: A few jokes stolen from Sunday night's Johnny Lightning show on WBCQ:

• "They say Osama Bin Laden's new video tape is trying to exploit our memories of 9/11. Wow. Someone get him a job on the Rudy Giuliani campaign."



• "An Ohio congressman was found dead inside his Washington apartment. His family is mourning their loss. They're comforted by the fact that at least he wasn't found dead in a men's room at the airport."



• "Did you hear that Halle Berry is pregnant? And she's going to keep the baby. There was a rumor that she was going to have an abortion, but after all, she already made Catwoman."

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
Filed Under: Mon Valley Miscellany | No comments | Link To This Entry