Category: default || By jt3y

Sometimes I get really worried that someone might actually take the babble written in the Almanac and elsewhere at Tube City Online seriously. Like, for instance, a few weeks ago, I commented on two things that made me scratch my head about Our Fair City's website; namely, that the bridge pictured in the banner was obviously not in Our Fair City, and that a page about the history of the city made a very flattering reference to the former mayor.

About a week later, I checked the website, and both of those things had been corrected. Geez-oh-Pete, someone at City Hall isn't really reading this stuff, are they?

If so, I have four words for them: Get back to work!

No, seriously, to Mayor Brewster and anyone else who might be out there looking at this nonsense: Hello, and feel free to send complaints, corrections, bouquets and brickbats to me via email or snail mail. Don't hesitate to give me the business. (Everyone else already does.)

Also, I tease the Mon-Yough area because I love the Mon-Yough area; I hope that's obvious. It dawned on me the other day that I've never lived more than walking distance from the Monongahela River; the farthest away was three or four years when I was first growing up in Versailles. Even in college, I was only a mile or two away from the mighty Monongahela.

(Meaning for all of these years, I've been drinking Mon River water, which probably explains my dain bramage.)

That's why I'm always happy when I see a story like this one by Jonathan Barnes in the Post-Gazette:

Next month, Canady Technology will open its headquarters in the Industrial Center of McKeesport, and the firm's founder, who lives in McKeesport, as well as town leaders say a new Mon Valley legacy will start on this former site of the National Tube mill.

The town already is the birthplace of the Canady Catheter, which spawned the company and which is named after its inventor, transplant surgeon Dr. Jerome Canady.

During his residency at UPMC McKeesport Hospital in 1991, Canady developed the flexible catheter which bears his name.

According to Barnes' story, the Canady office will employ 10 people at first. Eventually, up to 300 people will be working there at a facility to manufacture the catheters.

And you wonder why they still call it the "Tube City."

You can read more about the Canady Catheter here. (This is a good time for one of those disclaimers: You know, the opinions expressed here are not those of my employers, my friends, my family, or the Commissioner of Major League Baseblog.)

Also from Barnes in the P-G: Efforts to rehab the Lysle Boulevard parking garage continue. Possible uses include parking for RIDC's industrial park, just across the railroad tracks, or a park and ride lot for Picksberg-bound commuters (as was suggested here in the Almanac some time ago).

In an item from elsewhere in the news, let's play "what if."

Let's say hypothetically that you had an alcohol problem and you beat your spouse. Then, hypothetically, let's say the cops showed up one night to break up an argument. Hypothetically speaking, you shot one of them in the chest at point-blank range with a .44 Magnum and blew him over the railing of your porch.

And then, again, strictly hypothetically, you were arrested, charged with attempted homicide, then convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Hypothetically speaking, do you think your employer would allow you to take an early retirement and collect your flipping pension?

At my alma mater, that's apparently how it works. I was reading the news stories this week (Post-Gazette, Tribune-Review) about the shooting of Mount Lebanon police officer Daniel Rieg and noticed that the person convicted in the shooting is being referred to as a "former" or "retired" professor. A quick search through the archives of those newspapers revealed that after his arrest he took early retirement.

Now, I'm assuming that this fellow had a contract that obligated the institution to pay his pension. But don't those contracts have morals clauses? Meaning that if you did something illegal that brought disrepute upon yourself and (by inference) the institution, like, oh, I don't know, for example, shooting a cop, the contract was no longer binding.

I appreciate the need for compassion, and I'm glad that my alma mater has some compassion for someone who's clearly having a rough time of things right now.

But I also wonder exactly what tiny fraction of those big student loan payments I make every month are going for this fellow's pension.

By the way, remember that disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone, not those of my employers, my friends, my family, or the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County, which according to the commercial that runs every morning on the radio, was voted as having the "best-tasting water by the American Water Works Association."

Which brings up another question: Isn't water supposed to be odorless and tasteless? But that's a question for another Almanac, I suppose.