Category: default || By jt3y

Correspondence! We get correspondence! We get stacks and stacks of correspondence! Bad weather? We scoff at bad weather. Scoff, scoff! Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays our electrons from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

First-Time Reader Angela checks in to ask:

I am moving up to McKeesport sometime soon. I am curious to know where I could start my search for a job in reception. I have already looked in the local papers (well what I could find on here) and I just need some help from a local around there. And is there any shopping around McKeesport? Thanks ahead of time for any help!

Well, welcome to Our Fair City, Angela, and good luck! There are some challenges in the Mon-Yough area, but there are a lot of opportunities, too.

When you say "reception," I assume you mean a job as an office assistant or something similar. Two large employers in McKeesport right now are Dish Network (Echostar) and UPMC McKeesport Hospital. Echostar has a national call center in McKeesport, and they post job openings on their website. UPMC McKeesport is a large community hospital affiliated with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

You should also check with McKeesport Area School District and Penn State McKeesport Campus.

Our Fair City is close to West Mifflin, Monroeville, and North Huntingdon, and only about 20 minutes by car from Pittsburgh, so you may also want to expand your job search slightly. You can find job listings from The Daily News and other local papers via Adquest.

As for shopping, there is a fairly new shopping development called The Waterfront up in Homestead, and large shopping malls in West Mifflin (Century III) and Monroeville (Monroeville Mall). Shopping in McKeesport itself is, unfortunately, pretty limited these days to supermarkets, florists, etc. --- no big clothing stores or stuff like that.

Good luck, and welcome to the area!

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Alert Reader Arden wants to know:

Just read about this in the latest Wired ... have you ever thought about podcasting Tube City Online? Sorta like doing a radio reading of your blog ... which might be a interesting new frontier for Tube City Omnimedia.

Well, I have been told I have an excellent face for radio. Also, some of my friends say they like to hear me on the radio, because then they can turn me off.

One problem is that we lack the infrastructure here at Tube City Omnimedia World Headquarters, high in the hills above Our Fair City, to support a podcast. However, thanks to a donation of a new computer by Dementia Unlimited Technical Support, we have recently replaced our Timex Sinclair with a newer machine, and we are also looking to upgrade our 300 baud modem. So, something like that is a possibility in the future.

Of course, there is still a semi-dormant effort to bring a low-power FM radio station to Our Fair City, and I am involved with that organization, along with seven other people. We were rarin' to go until Congress kicked the legs out from under the FCC rules that would have allowed these small community broadcasters to go on the air.

However, U.S. Senators John McCain, Patrick Leahy and Maria Cantwell have introduced new bipartisan legislation that would relax the arbitrary restrictions that have hampered our effort, and those of so many other non-profit groups. As they say on the radio, "stay tuned"!

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Alert Reader John says:

I thought I'd share with you some stuff I found on the internet while looking for other things. This website has information regarding St. Mary's German Church on Olive Street. I was depressed when I learned it was demolished back in 1997. I'm happy to find out that paintings in the church were saved, and are displayed at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Carnegie, Pa. The site has some interesting information about the artist-monks who painted them in the early 1900's. I'd like to know where the very large image of God sitting at the throne is located. That image seemed so life-like when I was a kid.

Great website, John! Thanks.

I attended St. Mary's German School from second through fourth grades, and I don't remember that particular painting, though we went to Mass once a week. I do remember being surprised that there were swastikas carved into the marble pillars; of course, the church was built 30 years before those symbols would come to be associated with the horrors of Nazi Germany. I was later told that swastikas were originally benign and was a form of decoration that German Christians often used.

To a little kid, St. Mary's German was a dark, forbidding church. Unlike modern churches, which strive for a relaxed, informal feeling, St. Mary's made you feel the foreboding power of God --- as if he was not only present in that church, but he was ticked off. That's very Germanic, now that I think of it.

Like you, I found the demolition of St. Mary's disappointing, though McKeesport was definitely "overchurched" at the time. St. Mary's had very unusual architecture (historians considered it one of the best examples of Italian basilica-style church design in the U.S.), and had it been located in Pittsburgh, it undoubtedly would have been preserved for some other use, like a concert hall or restaurant. Once architectural treasures like St. Mary's are gone, they're lost forever. And what did we gain in place of St. Mary's? An empty, weedy lot.

On the other hand, the old Protestant church (Baptist, I think?) across Olive Street is still standing even though the congregation is long gone, and it's been sad to watch that building torn apart by vandals and homeless people. Sometimes I wonder if it's for the best that St. Mary's is gone, rather than watching it fall into disrepair.

John adds: "I just wanted to say I love the Tube City Almanac. I look forward to reading it every morning."

Thanks for the kind words. Some people like to print out the Tube City Almanac and take it into the necessary room when they have their morning constitutional. They find it comes in handy in case they run out of paper. In fact, Tube City Omnimedia is thinking about introducing a new quilted, double-ply version of the Almanac just for that purpose. Other people like to read the Almanac at lunchtime, especially if they're on a diet; it helps suppress their appetites.

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Confidential to Professor Quackenbush: Just because you can't drive a rear-wheel drive car in the snow doesn't mean that the big kids don't know how. After all, the late Hunter S. Thompson used to tool around Colorado --- which gets a lot more snow than Western Pennsylvania --- in a Chevy Caprice convertible with a 454 V-8 and a racing suspension (the infamous "Red Shark"). And he was doing it high on God-knows-what --- we're sober. My advice, Quacky, is to keep the training wheels on your bicycle and stay on the sidewalk where you belong!

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To Do This Weekend: McKeesport Symphony Orchestra presents "In Sousa Style," 7:30 p.m. Saturday at McKeesport Area High School auditorium. Tickets start at $12. Call (412) 664-2854 ... The Al Lewis Big Band plays The Palisades, Fifth Avenue at Water Street, 9 p.m. Saturday. Call (412) 678-6979 ... The Flow Band plays Beemer's, West Fifth Avenue near the Mansfield Bridge, at 9 p.m. tonight. Call (412) 678-7400.

And last but certainly not least, the girls' basketball team at my dear alma mater plays Clairton at 5 p.m. today at the A.J. Palumbo Center for the WPIAL championship. Serra Catholic is 20 and 1 and averaging more than 70 points per game. The Tube City Almanac, being the objective publication that it is, does not take sides. But I do. GO EAGLES!