John Linko

The Bus Is For All Of Us

2012-01-25T16:45:00.003-05:00

Public transportation is on my mind.

With regard to this topic, I must temporarily digress back to Grand Junction, Colorado for a moment.

Residents and business owners around the location of the proposed Greyhound station and Grand Valley Transit transfer center in the 24 1/2 Road and Patterson Road area are correct in their assertions that the proposed location is not a good one. They're just right for all the wrong reasons.

Recent reporting in the Daily Sentinel seemed to indicate that the basis for most of the complaints is rooted in classism, NIMBY, and/or financial self-interest. Not mentioned is the questionable appropriateness of a regional ground transportation hub so far removed from the centers of commercial activity and education, as well as the seats of government and location of essential social services.

As a property owner in the Downtown area, I continue to be amazed at the lengths that some will go to attempt to artificially gentrify this area and the surrounding neighborhoods. When the homeless shelter was moved from Downtown to North Avenue, did the homeless leave Downtown with it? How many of us honestly believe that flinging the Greyhound out will do the same?

I'm driven to recall the very first GVT transfer point, when the service was first instituted nearly 12 years ago. The former parking lot at 12th and Orchard, owned by the former Mesa State College, seemed a logical choice, and appeared to function well until the College's expansion plans forced a relocation.

Now that Colorado Mesa University appears poised to expand its campus all the way to 7th Street, an opportunity presents itself to re-establish a connection between the University and the remainder of the Grand Valley through development of such a transportation hub in the heart of the North Avenue multi-use district that the City has worked so hard to plan for.

A combined Greyhound / GVT transportation center on the CMU campus would serve all manner of people coming to Grand Junction to work, access government services, and learn. These people would find access to these services and facilities to be much more efficient than trying to reach them from the west end of town, and CMU students would have easy access to buses across town or across the state. Win-Win.

City and County government leaders, who do not have the authority to prevent CMU from doing what it wants with their property, should nonetheless consider expending some political capital in trying to convince CMU administration of the potential benefits of such an establishment. Groups who represent potential stakeholders and beneficiaries of such an arrangement, i.e. CMU's Associated Student Government, should also be discussing this and getting involved.

Regardless of some inaccurate public perception about those who utilize public transportation, these types of facilities should be considered for the benefit of the entire community, irrespective of social or economic status. I feel bad for those who look at the area and its needs with such narrow vision.

Best wishes to those tasked with bringing improved local and regional public transportation to a reality.

Public Loss, Private Pain

2012-01-19T18:55:00.000-05:00

'Michael' left us yesterday.

With no notice and little fanfare, the small tree that graced the right-of-way in front of our house in Leetsdale was unceremoniously removed. After contacting the borough office, they quickly owned up to being responsible - Public Works Director Doug Ford stated that he removed it because it was "obviously dead", and that they would be replacing it with another come spring.

Leslie was somewhat upset about this. The tree was planted by the borough 5 or so years ago, when her younger daughter Michaela was still alive, and naming every tree, bush, and plant in and around the yard. She named the tree Michael. Leslie thought for sure that the tree had bloomed over this past spring and summer, and questioned how anyone could really say a small tree like this is "obviously dead" in the dead of winter.

I conveyed her concerns to Mr. Ford, along with an admonition that he could have at least left a note on the door. He was unconvinced about the tree's viability, but seemed mildly sympathetic to my concerns about communicating with citizens.

In reality, you can't fault the borough. They're just doing a job and providing a service. They had no idea about the sentiment associated with this particular lowly tree, and if it was dead, it needed to be removed. Like so many other impacts of this life, one's ability to absorb the shocks, learn from them, and move on is part of what defines life itself. As one friend on Facebook has brought to my attention of late, "Sooner or later you have to give up all hope for a better past".

Even with this in mind, however, I cannot personally begin to fathom the anguish of losing a child. All I can do is draw on what I know from my own life, and try to be as supportive and loving as I can. I got to see my own son over the New Years' weekend. After returning to Colorado, he promptly ate it while snowboarding, and found himself lamenting the Steelers' fate at the hand of Tim Tebow from the waiting room of Community ER. Luckily, he is making a steady recovery from the effects of just a pinched nerve.

The last several weeks, which encompass the passing of one year into another, seem fraught with all manner of stress points - political, personal, presidential, predictional. If the Mayan calendar is to be given any credence at all, and the possibility of apocalypse is upon us, will Mel Gibson direct it?

Leslie and I watched the movie Soul Surfer last night - based on the true story of a champion teenage surfer whose faith and courage helps her to transcend the effects of a devastating injury. I'll take that kind of attitude and self-confidence into the abyss any day of the week.

In the course of life and work I encounter many whose lives are dealt tragic blows, and at the same time are thrust into the public perception - for a moment, sometimes longer. They must try to pick up the pieces as best they can, often with the cameras rolling.

Before Christmas, the line of duty death of East Washington (Pa.) police officer John David Dryer was tragic enough without the revelation that he was also a dedicated and respected veterinarian, who operated his own clinic in Washington proper. Leslie thought she had heard of him, but had never met him.

As a volunteer firefighter and Game Commission officer as well, Dr. Dryer's commitment to service extended above what American society seems to think is a citizen's call to duty these days. His passing and legacy were something that touched us beyond the normal measure.

There are fundraising efforts afoot to honor Dr. / Officer Dryer's memory, and provide assistance for his special needs son. Please consider lending your assistance.

During one recent shift, I answered three 9-1-1 calls from three separate people who found loved ones deceased. It’s my job to get the most critical information – where are you, what’s the problem – in a calm, dispassionate way, while still conveying an attitude of compassion and caring toward the caller and their plight. It’s a delicate balance to maintain, especially with hysterical callers or other out-of-control situations.

People who work in public safety have reactions to these kinds of situations just like any human being does. There are specialized resources available for them to help deal with what is known as Critical Incident Stress. Over my career, acceptance of these resources has penetrated some of the cultural and social barriers that permeate these disciplines, and that’s a good thing.

Still, nothing can really prepare you for dealing with the death of someone close to you. From both a professional and personal level, the loss of co-workers and family members hits the hardest, and all of us need help at times. Inevitably we must all find our own path through the five stages of grief - hopefully a healthy path - until we come out a more "human" being on the other side.

Making this kind of transition all the more difficult is when ambiguity and confusion about a person or set of circumstances clouds the path by which we navigate our feelings. Another friend on Facebook offered me some sage advice in this area:

One way I put situations into perspective is to view them as if I or my family was inserted into them and ask myself how would I react...how would I feel...etc. It is a very sobering way of corralling my emotions.

Such seems to be the case with the untimely and tragic death of Charles "Chaz" Buswell, age 19, on January 5. Mr. Buswell's public life was a turbulent one in recent months. You can read more about this here.

Mr. Buswell chose to post a final farewell to family, friends and others via Facebook. While his page has since been taken down, his final post is still available here.

His family chose to observe and mourn his passing privately; I will not attempt to embellish any of these circumstances with any feeble efforts at analysis, or attempting in vain to achieve an earthly understanding of this tragedy. Such an understanding feels to me to be one for each individual and their God, "whatever you conceive Him to be".

Still, as many young people search for answers and understanding in their lives, and many in the public safety and criminal justice communities try to make sense of and learn from cases like John David Dryer's and Chaz Buswell's, there is a need to rely on each other, and on those who have trod the path before us.

All I know is that if my family were inserted into these circumstances, I would want to try to spare others the same pain and anguish, with the knowledge that the God I believe in did not mean for us to feel alone and helpless, or to isolate ourselves.

I'll conclude with a clip from a movie that is one of my most recent favorites. I got it for Christmas - thanks, Gianna. While not the most technologically savvy or visually stimulating scene, it is by far the most significant - for me.

Leslie told me that she did not want another tree planted in front of the house.

Maybe they'll at least let us hold on to Michael's stump for a while.

Holiday Potpourri

2011-12-27T23:20:00.000-05:00

I hope that everyone has had a blessed holiday season thus far.

It's been a somewhat hectic few weeks. Over the course of that time, I've been trying to catalog those stories, observations, and ideas that made for short stops on the bullet train of my attention span.

Like a simmering pot of subtle fragrances designed to provide a pleasant ambiance, these numerous topics of interest have presented themselves to me as a fragrance, an odor, an olfactory metaphor that stimulates the thought process in some way - either memory, contemplation, or an emotional response.

While not all connected to the holiday season (and not all subtle or pleasant), they are no less topical and appropriate to the time of year, as well as our immediate future:

Pine Boughs, Warm Shortbread, Melting Candle Wax

It's been many years since I celebrated Christmas in this area, but it was still good to see luminaria lining Thorn Street in Sewickley as well as adorning other locations. There is a certain comfort to tradition and ceremony, whether as part of a religious community or as someone who exercises their formidable kitchen skills for the benefit of family and stranger alike. Lots of homemade cookies are comforting to the psyche if not the waistline.

As I picked up the spent bags from outside of the house on Christmas morning, I was reminded of the last few years in Colorado, when the luminaria I placed in front of the houses on my block seemed to be a unique addition to the usual holiday decorations. I continue to cherish both the simplicity and profundity of the message that is symbolized by a bag, some sand, and a candle.

Brine and Benzene

A couple of significant developments in the continuing controversy over fracking:

For the first time, the EPA identified fracking as the cause of groundwater contamination.
Colorado passed and is set to implement new rules regarding disclosure of the contents of fracking fluid. The new rules are being touted as a model for the rest of the country - a model that Pennsylvania seems to have particular need of.

I normally try to resist making comparisons to Colorado and Pennsylvania, especially in terms of government and politics. However, chemicals and groundwater know not what state boundary they are flowing underneath, and contaminated water is just that, no matter where the humans that have to use it happen to reside.

Considering the revelation that the energy industry is employing public relations personnel with a background in military-style counterinsurgency tactics, it's more important than ever to get to the truth, and assure that the government charged with serving citizens understands that truth, and does their job accordingly.

Chalkboard Dust and Musty Textbooks

Back in 2009, I wrote about some of my memories of Mount Gallitzin Academy in Baden, upon the announcement of its closure. Now the sounds of schoolchildren will again fill those tall, old hallways and classrooms, thanks to the recent state approval of the Baden Academy Charter School. It's noteworthy that the school's approval at the state level was unanimous on the part of the charter school appeal board, overturning a unanimous disapproval (twice) by the local school board, Ambridge Area.

I don't know what to think of the whole charter school concept, especially as it relates to the local experience. What I know is what I see - many school districts experiencing much more difficult times in terms of declining enrollment, dwindling tax bases and state subsidies, and constant if not rising infrastructure and personnel costs. Many see merit in the ability to establish a school and receive public money for it, and the government oversight appears to be fairly robust.

Still, some of the methods with which many local charter schools are getting their message out and their faces in the public eye - such as high-profile advertising and corporate-style sponsorship - seem disingenuous to me as both a parent and taxpayer.

Nonetheless, I wish the school and its students the best, along with the ongoing mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who will rent their building to the school. As an overview on the school's website states:

The former Mt. Gallitzin facility offers superb classrooms in a safe, serene setting. Decades of successful education attest to the practicality of the facility as a desirable learning environment.

Can't argue with that.

Stale, Moldy Bread in these SOPApillas

It's been heartening to see how much coverage the mainstream media have been giving to controversial legislation of late. One particularly odious bill is the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. This bill is part of a continuing effort to place restrictions on the flow of information in an effort to combat copyright infringement and the sale of counterfeit goods online.

Proponents of the bill are those whose profits and livelihoods are tied to entertainment product - the MPAA and RIAA, and the AFL-CIO among others. The bill's opponents include the bulk of the Internet community, including Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, and on and on.

The core premise of the bill is to create an Internet blacklist - to facilitate the wholesale censorship of information deemed to "infringe". The bill infringes, all right - not only upon individual liberty, but free enterprise as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent overview of the subject matter, as well as links to take action.

As it happens, Politico reports that corporate support for SOPA and it's Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) appears to be eroding in the face of continued vocal opposition and at least one boycott of the largest domain name provider.

SOPA puts over-reaching "protection" of a lucrative industry ahead of the fundamental rights of citizens.

New Car Smell

The National Transportation Safety Board has gone on record advocating for a complete ban on cell phone use while driving.

From a personal standpoint, I believe that texting while driving is dangerous. I'm also uncomfortable with trying to manipulate a phone while behind the wheel. This includes trying to hold the phone up to my ear.

I have a Bluetooth headset, and my phone has voice dialing. I believe that I can safely engage in a conversation with both hands on the wheel and eyes facing forward. The vehicle manufacturers that have incorporated Bluetooth hands-free into the sound systems of their cars would appear to feel the same way.

A complete ban on cell phone use while driving seems to me to have the same kind of government over-reach that SOPA does. Enforcement of such a law would also be difficult in my mind, especially if expanded to the entire spectrum of distracted driving.

A CBS News consultant and former NTSB member took this one step further, implying that the current board "missed the boat" by ignoring additional technology advances, such as frontal collision avoidance systems, that could help to mitigate accidents regardless of any inattentive behavior on the part of the driver.

I Love the Smell of Asphalt in the Morning

Sometimes there's nothing that can be done to prevent or protect yourself from life's pitfalls, whether on the roadway or not. One faulty valve on a truck loaded with liquid asphalt can really ruin your day (and your car) if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now it seems that the Nov. 22 spill along 40 miles of the Turnpike has damaged so many vehicles (including a couple of luxury models totaled) that the insurers are throwing up their hands or attempting to deny coverage, for which they're being sued.The driver of the truck apparently decided to leave the area after the State Police told him to stay so his truck could be inspected - a big boo-boo on top of everything else.

This is another example of how tenuous the nature of travel is - how dependent it is upon due diligence, attentiveness, and an attitude that is rife with a lot of patience - especially around here. This was brought home to me on the way back from work this past Friday, when a flatbed semi loaded with drilling rig assemblies, followed by a large tanker truck full of something (fracking fluid?), passed me inbound on the Parkway East.

Fresh Sausage

Thinking about this topic, I was reminded of the quote that is attributed to German chancellor Otto Von Bismark (1815-1898):

"There are two things you don’t want to see being made—sausage and legislation."

That being said, it seems that there are similar goings-on in my former home and my current one that warrant some attention. Both have to do with the bumpy road of transition.

It seems that the City Council in Grand Junction, Colorado elected to force the resignation of City Manager Laurie Kadrich...just in time for Christmas. Ms. Kadrich, who held the post for five years, cited “fundamental philosophical differences between me and City Council" as the reason for her departure.

Ms. Kadrich was a fine City Manager. She was the last one I had the pleasure of working for, and even after my departure from the City's employment she was accessible and straightforward, even in the face of disagreement.

Mayor Tom Kenyon was quoted in the Daily Sentinel story as stating, “The city manager has a lot of authority, but they have to remember they have seven bosses".

When some of those seven bosses change, the dynamics and priorities often change as well. This is something that is about to happen in Leetsdale. With not just the current Borough Manager, but the position itself, under threat of termination by the council members-elect, the future of the borough's day-to-day operational structure remains unclear, even if the stated intent of the incoming council members is not.

The transition has already begun to impact those operations. Sewickley Patch reported that a sitting Council member questioned one incoming member's request for reimbursement from the borough for classes she and the other three newcomers are taking in preparation for their new duties.

These classes comprise the Newly Elected Officials Course, offered by the Local Government Academy, located on Pittsburgh's North Side. The academy has been in existence for over 25 years, and serves as a clearinghouse for training and information to help those elected and/or employed in the field of local government succeed on behalf of the citizens they serve.

It's a good idea that these incoming council members have this kind of baseline training. I personally don't have a problem with the new Council members requesting reimbursement from the borough - just so that request is accompanied by a copy of a certificate of completion. The course is scheduled to conclude on March 10.

Here's looking forward to that, and for more good tidings into the new year. Until then..

Public Recordings, Recorders, and Records

2011-12-04T14:09:00.000-05:00

All censorship exists to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.

All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions.

Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

- George Bernard Shaw

Over the last 25 years, incidents of local, national, and international significance have been made more so by the increasing availability of portable recording devices.

Whether as part of a mobile phone or other platform, when combined with Internet access and ubiquitous social media networks these compact devices collect and disseminate information in a manner that has literally changed the way the world is perceived and governed.

Most recently, the so-called 'Arab Spring' and the Occupy Wall Street protest and its various offshoots across the country have demonstrated the power of instant messaging and video to document activities and mobilize citizens to action.

Issues have arisen locally and in other parts of the country concerning the recording of public safety and other government personnel in the conduct of their daily activities. The issues involve not only the practice of recording these personnel in public, but also the availability of the official recordings of their activities, and/or the 9-1-1 calls that precipitated them.

Here are some examples of how these activities affect us as citizens:

Your Right to Record the Police

From Long Island to Leetsdale to Las Vegas, this past year has seen public servants finding themselves on the wrong side of both the law and public opinion when confronted by a citizen with an audio or video recorder, and attempting to stop the recording. A recent federal court decision may put to rest any hint of ambiguity about the public's right to record public officials in the exercise of their official duties, including those in law enforcement.

The case involved Simon Glik, a Boston lawyer who recorded some questionable handling of an arrestee in 2007. He was himself arrested for doing this. The charges against him were dropped, and Mr. Glik successfully established in court that the attempt to prevent him from passively documenting the actions of the police flew in the face of our most fundamental liberties.

Here in the local area, law enforcement seems well aware of a citizen's right to record them in action, as well as a citizen's responsibility not to unlawfully interfere with police activities or jeopardize safety at the same time. Law enforcement training and legal bulletins, including this one, are getting the word out to police agencies about these rights and responsibilities, on both sides of the badge.

There are several online examples out there of how to record police, and how not to. A good overview is available here.

Pittsburgh CopBlock: Monitoring or Meddling?

Organized monitoring and recording of police activity has its roots in the time of the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, when home video cameras were becoming an affordable reality for many. The first of many "Copwatch" groups was organized in 1990 in Berkeley, California. Their message and mission is clear:

Berkeley Copwatch is based on the idea that WATCHING the police is a crucial first step in the process of organizing. We do not attempt to interfere in police activity or to resist police misconduct physically. It is our hope that, one day, mass outrage at police and government violence will increase to a point where fundamental change in the nature of policing becomes inevitable.

As the years and technology have provided a means to instantly transmit video over the Internet from any number of small devices, some concerned with the behavior of their local police have taken this concept and tried a different approach.

Copblock.org states that it exists in part to:

"..highlight the double standard that some grant to those with badges. By documenting police actions – whether they are illegal, immoral or just a waste of time and resources – then calling the police stations involved (ideally while recording and then later sharing your conversation), we can work together to bring about transparency and have a real impact".

This national organization has several affiliates, including one locally. Pittsburgh CopBlock has taken the strategy of the national organization one precarious step further - engaging in direct action that appears designed to elicit, or perhaps provoke, an emotional response from the officers involved. You can check out one of these activities here, and several more here.

Sewickley Patch, Beaver Countian, and other media have attempted to cover the local Copblockers and their activities, some of which have run them afoul of the local law. This occurred most recently in Leetsdale at Magistrate Robert Ford's office. The national CopBlock group has taken issue with some of this news coverage.

CopBlock Pittsburgh's efforts thus far consist largely of attempts to antagonize local law enforcement - by local I mean mostly Ambridge and the Quaker Valley departments - instead of calmly documenting their public activities in non-confrontational ways. Cops have to eat like everyone else - why go after them in a convenience store?

Despite the counterproductive nature of their rhetoric and tactics, I believe that Pittsburgh CopBlock has a valid point to get across, especially as it relates to our rights as citizens to document the activities of public servants. They're just going about it in a way that will serve only to isolate them in the larger arenas of public discourse.

Police officers have a very difficult job. I like to believe that the majority of them perform their duties with a healthy balance of respect for citizens, while possessing a situational awareness that sometimes makes it necessary to use force and aggressive tactics to mitigate a threat to themselves or others.

I also believe (but don't like to) that there are police officers out there that exceed the boundaries of both their authority and responsible conduct as a public servant. Citizens such as Simon Glik, along with excellent bloggers such as Carlos Miller, have demonstrated and brought attention to this on several occasions. The most recent affront to reasonable police actions, on the campus of the University of California at Davis, embellishes the point even further.

Perhaps CopBlock will consider joining the efforts of Copwatch, the ACLU, and others who seek to assure that police do their jobs within the boundaries set by law, while continuing to assure that their own behavior is protected by those same laws themselves.

The Official Record - Your Right to Know

Pennsylvania is one of only six states where the official recordings of 9-1-1 calls and public safety radio traffic are confidential, unless an agency or court decides that their release is in the public interest. These recordings and other information were specifically exempted in the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law of 2008.

Computer and written logs that provide information on response times are public, however, as is information regarding 9-1-1 callers, their phone numbers, and location information. This was reaffirmed by Commonweath Court in February of this year, reversing a lower court decision after a reporter filed suit to obtain records in York County.

In response to the Commonwealth Court decision, in March State Rep. Joseph Hackett (R-Delaware County) introduced HB 1174, which would specifically exclude the information about callers to 9-1-1 and their geographic location.

The bill was marketed as an attempt to protect crime victims and witnesses from possible retribution from the release of this information. It gained the immediate support of the bulk of the emergency response community and crime victims groups alike. With this support, and perhaps the looming approach of their summer recess, the state House unanimously passed this bill at the end of June, and sent it to the Senate.

The bill has remained in the hands of the Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee since then, perhaps in response to fairly loud voices in opposition to the bill. This includes the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, expressed through the editorial pages of its member newspapers, including the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review. The Trib seemed to sum up these concerns best when it wrote:

"We can't support them unconditionally if they hide from us this critical information about their work," says Trib legal counsel David A. Strassburger about first responders, speaking on behalf of both newspapers and the public...The Senate must not fall for this rollback of transparency masquerading as aid for a victimized group.

If there is a true, genuine concern that criminals, abusers, and stalkers will resort to showing up at a police station or other government office to obtain this information through a Right to Know request, then build amendments into the law to specifically exclude information related to certain criminal cases from release without a court order.

Otherwise, the media and general public should have the ability to obtain information on how their public safety agencies respond to requests for assistance. A big part of this is being able to independently assess response time data to all areas of the communities that these agencies serve.

This information can also provide insight into additional resources requested to an emergency scene, how long it took those resources to arrive, and the appropriateness of the resources requested. This is important to assure that the most proximal resources needed for the job are the ones being requested and sent.

HB 1174 will allow government agencies to withhold much of this information.

As a public safety professional for most of my working life, I strive to make sure that the job I am doing can be held up openly before the public as an example of conscientious, professional service. I believe that accountability and transparency trump what seems to me to be an over-reaching effort to "protect" crime victims and witnesses. I also believe that there are those who seek the same "protection" whose aim is to conceal from the public examples of less than professional
service.

In the process of researching this bill, I requested comment from the ACLU of Pennsylvania regarding their take on it. Legislative Director Andy Hoover responded, "At the moment, we have no position on this bill but will continue to monitor this legislation and offer our input when appropriate".

As this bill has a potential direct impact on the ability of citizens to independently assess the accountability of police and other public servants, I would think that some kind of analysis and positioning on the part of the ACLU is well overdue, especially since police accountability is one of their stated priorities.

Contacting your state senator, and encouraging them to closely evaluate these factors when considering whether to support or oppose HB 1174, is definitely a good idea.

Why Does This Matter?

If you're interested enough to have read this far, then you're probably someone who values their ability to question government, assemble peaceably to voice concerns collectively, document the response of public servants, and not be subject to violence or criminal prosecution as a consequence of those actions. You can even deliver a relatively anonymous screed to a talk show host, or express your feelings responsibly online, and feel confident of your freedom and safety.

You can thank the Bill of Rights, and those like the ACLU who make it their mission and passion to defend the liberties granted under it. You can also thank laws that make government activities part of the public record, and prevent attempts at secrecy in the large majority of those activities.

We all have an obligation as citizens to be responsible stewards of these freedoms - not to take them for granted, not to set them aside just because someone thinks we should.

One of the linchpins of a free society is a strong and vibrant news media. The media needs to have the tools at their disposal to report to the citizens, and as a consequence encourage public discourse and the means by which citizens engage in participatory government, whether as a public servant or an informed member of the electorate.

With that in mind, enjoy your freedoms, and your week ahead.

Extreme Customer Service

2011-11-25T13:45:00.003-05:00

I hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.

The season of celebration and bustle that marks the arrival of high holy days for numerous religious denominations is upon us once again. I'm remembering more and more about how much Pittsburghers, like so many others across the country, are largely creatures of habit; Thanksgiving means family, turkey, and football, and with it the associated travel across the region or the nation.

The roads were not as busy with rush hour traffic on the way home from work Wednesday afternoon, but there was sufficient congestion caused by what seemed to be drivers appearing to be unfamiliar with the nuances of navigating the Pittsburgh area in a vehicle.

As those of us from this area know, finding your way through the Burgh can be as much an intuitive exercise as it is a cognitive one. These factors often confound the cool, electronic mind of the GPS receiver, and those wide-eyed, weary travelers who depend upon it.

That being said, be careful out there this weekend. Many of you will most likely be planning on attending services at the many temples of what I like to call The First Church of My Stuff.

In recent years the high priests and priestesses of the retail industry have elected to begin their convocation of cash earlier and earlier on their highest of holy days, Black Friday. Unfortunately, many of them ran out of zero-dark-thirty time to be the first to offer that bauble or gadget at a ridiculously low price.

As a result, some businesses are commencing their annual assault on the debit and credit accounts of consumers on Thanksgiving Day itself. Perhaps retailers are betting that the warm, fuzzy, comfortable feeling generated by the combination of l-trytophan and carbohydrates will help to set aside any trepidation about spending too much.

Caught in the middle of this morass of humanity are those who ply the retail trade - myself included - and those who are charged with answering requests for emergency assistance on holidays and every other day - hey, that's me too.

I'm working as a Cashier this weekend. Over the course of 2 years in 'big box' retail, I've been formulating some general rules based on my individual experiences, which those handling checkout duties can use to help them deal with the everyday realities of the profession:

Murphy's Laws of Retail Cashiering

1. The customer approaching your register will have their cell phone ring as they arrive, and will endeavor to carry on two independent conversations simultaneously.

2. The most time-consuming, complex, and/or tedious transaction will occur approximately 2 minutes before the end of your shift.

A corollary to Rule 2- The customer involved with that transaction will have many questions, asked in an English that is for them a second language - a distant second.

3. The majority of legible UPC barcodes will be presented to you at an angle of between 180 and 359 degrees from the location of your scanning device. The remainder will be illegible or not in the SKU database.

4. The smallest items in a cart to be unloaded and scanned will be scattered randomly, and located underneath several sheets of cement board, plywood, drywall, or a combination of similarly sized and weighted goods.

Despite these challenges, in order to be successful in serving the customer you have to be prepared to calmly deal with all of these situations, and the numerous other complications that arise with the job. I've managed to deal with this kind of stress by remembering a few things:

Each customer gets as much time and attention as they need - one at a time.

The customer is not always right, but the customer is always the customer.

It's not about life and death here. It's about stuff, plain and simple.

Of course, in my other job the last of these tenets doesn't apply. It can be about life and death - in many circumstances. There is one rule I know that applies very well:

Murphy's Law of Random Synchronicity
Emergency calls will randomly come in all at once.

I won't get into the debate about when to call 9-1-1 - the news media seems to have a handle on that - but there are some things that citizens can do to help 9-1-1 operators provide access to critical services as quickly as possible:

First and foremost, know where you are. There are 130 municipalities in Allegheny County. A post office does not count in most cases - places like Wexford, Gibsonia, and Allison Park exist only in terms of where to send the mail.
The Sewickley zip code (15143) is used in all or part of the following municipalities:
Sewickley, Edgeworth, Glen Osborne, Sewickley Heights, Aleppo Township, Glenfield, Haysville, Sewickley Hills, Leet Township, Bell Acres, Franklin Park, and Ohio Township.
Depending upon where you are and the services you need, there are six different places that could be involved in the process of delivering those services. The more you know and can provide to a call taker, the quicker they can be mobilized.
Technology only goes so far, especially when using a wireless phone, or phone service that uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), such as Vonage or Magic Jack.
If you're on the road, know which road you're on. Try to remain cognizant of the last exit, mile marker, or intersection. Take note of businesses or other landmarks. If you have a GPS unit, know how to obtain your Latitude and Longitude from it.

Stay calm and speak clearly.

Be sure to listen carefully and answer all of the call taker’s questions to the best of your ability.

Do not hang up until the 9-1-1 call taker has obtained all of the information that is needed.

Customer service in 9-1-1 also differs from the retail environment in that the greatest impediment to effective service delivery can often be the customers themselves. As a public safety communications professional, I have attempted, succeeded greatly, and at times failed to address these challenges to the satisfaction of customers, both internal and external.

I mention this because relationships with internal customers - co-workers, field personnel, and managers - are at least as important as the essential interaction with those external customers in need of services. That's a common challenge with any workplace, but even more so with the critical nature of public safety operations.

As the perceived demands of the holiday season begin to intrude upon us, I'm looking forward to remembering what this season really represents, along with the rigors of mastering an old job in a new setting, and hoping for success on the multiple fronts I've mentioned above. Above all of this is my wife and family, both here and across the country. Is it any wonder why the holidays carry with them more stress than joy for a lot of us?

Enjoy the weekend and the season ahead.

Municipal Miasma - The Pain is in the Process

2011-11-13T13:13:00.004-05:00

I've been a citizen of Pennsylvania (again) for just 8 months; it's taken me some time to re-acclimate to the way things are done across the myriad layers of government at work here.

Something that is hastening this process is my getting back into the business of public safety communications. I've been in training for the last month. One thing I've been learning is the nuances of dealing with 130 separate municipalities, some who dispatch themselves and others who are a mix of being dispatched by the county 9-1-1 center and other municipalities or public safety agencies.

One quick example; there are five municipalities in Allegheny County where depending on the type of resources you need (Police, Fire, or EMS), three separate dispatch centers will be involved. Four of these five communities are in the Quaker Valley School District. In case you were wondering, Edgeworth is one of them.

More about that later. Today I'm interested in the recent election results, and their potential impact on my own community, Leetsdale. If you need to see a timeline of what has been reported about the recent history of borough government, check out this overview from June by crisis communications expert Dan Hicks. He's got some interesting things to say about the whole Penn State situation as well.

Voters this past Tuesday followed the entreaties of four candidates who banded together under the name Concerned Citizens of Leetsdale, and elected three of them to four-year seats and one to a two-year seat.

This action gives these four citizens (Melanie Dunn, Joe McGurk, Linda Michael, and Jeff Weatherby) a majority on Council come January. According to statements made by the candidates to Sewickley Patch and other local media, they intend to waste little time in undoing some of the current Council's actions over the last couple of years.
This will largely center around the following:

Eliminating the positions of Borough Manager and Junior Clerk.
Re-creating the position of Borough Secretary/Treasurer.
Promoting the current Senior Clerk to the re-created Secretary/Treasurer position. This employee, Elizabeth Petalino, served in this capacity previously until Council eliminated her position in 2010 and created the position of Borough Manager.

One question I had for these candidates at one of their get-togethers before the election had to do with Ms. Petalino, whose demotion, along with what could best be described as a unique recruitment process for Borough Manager, seemed to be the primary focus of the Concerned Citizens campaign.

My question related to succession planning; who, if anyone, would be prepared to take over in Ms. Petalino's stead if there were no Junior Clerk or Borough Manager? Mr. McGurk stated that a part-time person would likely be hired to learn the duties of Secretary/Treasurer, with the intent of eventually replacing Ms. Petalino upon her retirement.

I should mention here that the current Junior Clerk is Sandra Bajsec, wife of councilman Mike Bajsec, whose term will be ending in January. Ms. Bajsec's seemingly imminent departure appears driven more by a need to assure that all vestiges of her husband's influence are eradicated from borough operations, than any effort to streamline those operations and/or reduce costs. It sounds as if the councilmembers-elect know they need someone like a Junior Clerk - they just don't want her.

At this point I'm struggling to look at this from the perspective of positions and processes, which is what I'm accustomed to. The bulk of my government work experience, at least in the Human Resources arena, involved a formal recruitment and assessment process, conducted in a way that assured all qualified applicants a fair shot at being hired.

Pre-employment testing, an interview with several stakeholders, and a thorough background investigation (including a home visit) were the norm for positions in public safety. This process was exhaustive and needed to be, considering the significant access and responsibilities being entrusted to the successful candidate.

One could assume the same things would apply to recruiting and hiring someone to be in charge of the day-to-day operations of a municipal government. Then again, I am trying to compare what I knew from Colorado with what exists in Pennsylvania.
I promised I would not dive into those comparisons, so I must turn to what is here and now, and try to understand what may be the short tenure of Leetsdale Borough Manager Paul Scimio.

I've spoken with Mr. Scimio only a few times. In those interactions I found him engaging, articulate, and somewhat excited about his work. How he actually ran the borough's daily operations is something I can't speak to. He did, however, at the October 13 meeting of Leetsdale Council, when he endeavored to highlight some of his accomplishments during his one-year tenure. These include:

Reviewing and consolidating borough insurance policies, saving money.
Changing borough phone service from Verizon to Comcast, saving money.
Spearheading the refinancing of the borough's bond indebtedness, resulting in a savings of $108,000 this past year.
Helping to coordinate the resolution of an addressing conflict on a borough street, shared with Leet Township, that was affecting public safety response.
Securing an insurance settlement for a damaged police vehicle.
Putting forth an insurance claim for the loss of trees in Henle Park.
Securing a private donor to help pay water bills at the Henle Park Splash Pad.

It has also been stated by some in the business community that they appreciate the ability to be able to access someone in borough government who can act as a point person for their concerns, direct them in the way of navigating the necessary processes, and basically be the face of government operations on a daily basis.

However, additional questions about the borough's actual needs begin to raise issues that transcend the personalities and politics that seem to have dominated the controversy up to this point, and impacted the processes in ways that citizens last week appeared to have collectively deemed unacceptable.

According to a publication from the Governor's Center for Local Government Services, "More than 80 percent of Pennsylvania’s municipalities have populations
under 5,000, a size generally accepted as the point where full-time municipal management becomes feasible". Leetsdale has a residential population of about 1,100.

A Post-Gazette story after the May primary elections took this a step further:

Issues beyond population have to be weighed, as well. For example, Leetsdale has about triple the number of people working within its boundaries as residents, due to a pair of industrial parks, a copper mill, Quaker Valley High School and a shopping center.

As I've written previously, Leetsdale is perhaps the most dynamic of the 11 boroughs and townships that make up the Quaker Valley School District. The influx of workers, students, and material goods in and out of the borough, and the various layers of government that provide essential services to them, is of sufficient complexity that it requires someone of authority to be readily accessible, research and respond appropriately, and report comprehensively to the citizens and their elected officials.

How the new council addresses those needs will say a lot about exactly how much Leetsdale is poised to make changes in its operating philosophy.

In a Sewickley Herald article from August 2010, Councilman Bajsec was quoted during a council meeting as saying that the process of advertising for the Borough Manager position for one day in the Beaver County/Allegheny Times was due to a desire "to allow people 'familiar' with the borough to apply". Perhaps the true intent was to exclude anyone not possessing that 'familiarity', which appears to be centered on having grown up in Leetsdale, or lived there for a lengthy period of time.

Regardless of Mr. Scimio's experience, competence, or performance over the last year, the circumstances surrounding the creation of his position and his ascendancy into it has tainted those accomplishments, and created sufficient cause for concern among citizens as to precipitate the results of last week's election.

Nonetheless I believe that Leetsdale, like its nearby counterparts, needs a competent and experienced Borough Manager. This needs to be someone with sufficient educational and professional credentials, who can look at the borough's operations from a fresh perspective, not necessarily one steeped in the strong tea of the status quo.

Positions and processes need to be more important than personalities and politics.

That being said, all we as citizens can do is hope for the best from our newly elected officials. For me that includes thinking outside the traditional boxes, among those being the man-made lines that serve not only as municipal boundaries, but also at times barriers to more effective and responsive governance for all of us.

Best wishes to our new soon-to-be council members, and for those already on council that will also be charged to effectively represent the citizens of Leetsdale.

Have a great week ahead.

Farewell to Air Com

2011-10-20T12:10:00.001-04:00

For just under a year, I worked at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction as a Communications Specialist in their telephone office, known as "PBX" to those familiar with the hospital's operations.

The dedicated staff of that stuffy, windowless room, some of whom have been there for over 25 years, also took on the duties of receiving requests and coordinating the helicopter and fixed wing resources of what is now called St. Mary's CareFlight. The flight program, originally called Air Life, changed names when the hospital switched aircraft and maintenance vendors from Englewood-based Air Methods to Petroleum Helicopters Inc. (PHI). "St. Mary's Air Com" was the telephone and radio voice of the program.

One of the toughest calls I have ever had to make as a communications professional was to St. Mary's on February 28, 2001. I had to inform them that a helicopter had crashed in the Whitewater area, and knowing that their ship was out on a maintenance test flight at the time, could they check it's status? The voice on the radio repeatedly trying to reach CareFlight afterward, without success, still resonates with me. The program lost a pilot in the crash.

As of today, St. Mary's Air Com has gone silent. As Paul Shockley reports in today's Daily Sentinel, the hospital elected to outsource its communications needs to a communications center in Phoenix operated by PHI.

St. Mary's VP for PR Dan Prinster is quoted in the story as stating that the ability for PBX to answer CareFlight calls was somehow impacted by the operators being "barraged by a lot of other calls". Having been in the room for a year, I'd have to agree and disagree with that statement. The PBX workstations and job assignments were set up so that the operator handling CareFlight would typically be the last to answer other phone lines, and could take themselves out of the call distribution queue when a flight request was in process.

This being said, the hospital apparently could not justify setting up a separate communications center that could handle CareFlight and other hospital resources such as Security and Engineering. As a result, you have what happened today.

This practice has become somewhat of a trend in the air medical industry. Air Methods operates a communications center in Omaha, Nebraska that handles requests and aircraft coordination for numerous flight programs across the country. I was offered a position there in 2010, but turned it down. I wasn't ready to move yet, and got a local job offer that made more sense at the time.

This trend has affected air medical operations in my the area of my new home as well. Pittsburgh-based STAT Medevac, which started with one aircraft in 1985, now coordinates 17 aircraft across 4 states and Washington DC from one communications center here. Air Evac Lifeteam, which operates and coordinates nearly 100 aircraft from headquarters in Missouri, has a ship in East Liverpool, Ohio and 4 aircraft based across West Virginia.

Is this a good trend? I believe it depends on the nature of the flight program. Some hospital-based air medical programs have re-engineered their communication centers into "transfer centers" that can act as a one-call destination for outlying facilities needing to get a patient accepted by a physician, transported, and admitted to a facility capable of providing more specialized care. The flight program I worked for in the 80's and 90's is an example of this model.

As much as I feel for the "Comm Specs" at St. Mary's Air Com, I did not believe that their operation was sustainable in this operational climate. That's why I sought to attend a school that would certify me for more complex work with aircraft of all types, and left St. Mary's in pursuit of that.

Two years ago I was in San Jose for the annual conference of the leading trade group for the air medical industry. Ironically, October 19 marked the conclusion of this year's conference in St. Louis, and along with it the end of an all too short tenure for a small center and a dedicated group of communicators.

Best wishes to those impacted by the closing.

Have a good weekend ahead.

Station 138 - An Unfair Farewell

2011-10-04T23:10:00.001-04:00

Edgeworth Press Release re Edgeworth Vol Fire Dept De-Certification

With this rather concisely-worded release, Edgeworth Borough announced to the press a week ago that it had de-certified its volunteer fire department, and intends to contract with the Cochran Hose Co. of Sewickley for fire protection services forthwith.

When I wrote in July about the need to have conversations concerning the most effective way to provide public safety services, I didn't think that more change would be this soon in occurring, or in a manner that raised more questions than answers.

Judging from the reaction of Fire Chief Tim Scott in the Sewickley Patch story on the subject, those discussions did not involve him or anyone with his department. My initial reaction was that Chief Scott made it sound as if he and his fellow firefighters had been blindsided.

I made some initial comments on the Patch story that reflected my feelings at the time, including:

It appears to me based on this report that Borough Council and manager (Marty) McDaniel have some madness to their methods.

After delving into the situation some more, I think some modification of this stance is in order. The manner in which this action was taken, and subsequently reported to citizens, raises more questions about the borough's methods and motive.

For those who value transparency in government, answers to these and other questions are essential to gain an understanding of how tax dollars are being spent, and how effectively citizens are being served.

What We've Got Here Is...Failure to Communicate

Clearly, some discussion had to take place within the walls of the Edgeworth Borough Hall before a decision like this could be served up to Borough Council and voted through - unanimously. What was the rationale behind this decision, and the manner in which it was carried out?

Edgeworth Borough manager Marty McDaniel was willing to speak with me this past Wednesday. He wanted to make clear that the fire department was a separate entity, independent of the borough itself.

When asked if the borough had approached the fire department about their concerns and the possibility of consolidation with a neighboring department, Mr. McDaniel stated that the subject had not really been broached. With regard to consolidation, he added that "most of these groups aren't really interested in talking about it".

I asked Mr. McDaniel if the borough had ever told the fire department something to the equivalent of "improve service by a certain deadline date, or else". He stated that no such action had been taken.

When asked to comment about Chief Scott's response to the borough's action, Mr. McDaniel stated, "No one likes to be fired". He added, "3 guys showing up for a fire call just wasn't cutting it".

Mr. McDaniel also stated that among the factors that precipitated the borough's decision were concerns on the part of insurers that provide homeowners coverage to borough residents, as expressed through the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule of the Insurance Service Office (ISO). The single-digit ISO Rating is a factor in determining premiums for homeowners insurance in many areas, but its use and significance are changing with some insurers in many states, including Pennsylvania.

Mr. McDaniel stated that Cochran Hose's two pumpers (fire engines that primarily pump water) as opposed to Edgeworth's one may give the borough an improved ISO rating of 5 instead of the current 6.

With regard to the two Edgeworth fire vehicles, both owned by the borough, Mr. McDaniel stated that no specific plans were currently in place as to their sale or other uses.

I then spoke with Chief Tim Scott on Thursday. He and Mr. McDaniel appear to be in agreement on two things:

1. Up until just before the council meeting, there was no prior notice to the fire department of the borough's intended action.

2. The borough made no notification to the department that they were not
performing to the borough's expectations.

Chief Scott stated he was out of town for the meeting with council that occurred immediately prior to the public meeting. The fire department board of directors, which includes one line officer, was present when the word was delivered.

Chief Scott also stated that the fire department still exists as an organization, even if it is not providing fire protection services. While the borough owns the fire trucks, the department owns the ancillary equipment, such as SCBAs, radios, bunker gear, etc. In addition, the department has obligations to its life members to provide insurance, as well as accountability for money received under the state relief fund program.

The department's membership will meet this month to discuss the future, and their immediate plans.

Chief Scott also said he was interested to learn the terms of the proposed agreement with Cochran Hose Company. When asked if his department had any formal agreement with the borough for services, one that would define a time frame for notification by either party to end the agreement, the chief stated they did not.

The minutes of the Sept. 20 meeting will not be available until approved by council at their next meeting on October 18, which is also when council is slated to formalize their relationship with the Cochran Hose Co. According to the borough office, the proposed ordinance that would formalize that relationship is slated to be published this week.

Cochran Hose Chief Jeff Neff, reached on Sunday, would not discuss any specifics regarding his agency and Edgeworth Borough, referring me back to Mr. McDaniel's office. He did cite the trend in the local area of several volunteer fire departments disbanding, or being de-certified by their municipality. Chief Neff mentioned the Guyasuta Fire Department in O'Hara Township as a recent example.

At least Guyasuta VFD got 90 days notice. Edgeworth VFD got about an hour.

Where Was the Media?

The decision to decertify the fire department was made at the September 20th Council meeting. The file tag on the press release is dated Sept. 23, and the release appeared to have been sent out on Monday, the 26th.

Subsequent reporting on Sewickley Patch and the Sewickley Herald website on Tuesday the 27th, almost one week after the fact, appears to be the first media coverage of any kind regarding this change. That's a travesty.

Sewickley Patch Editor Larissa Dudkiewicz told me that she was at the beginning of the meeting, which involved the approval of a contract with Duquesne Ligh t for a controversial power line project. She then had to leave early.

There is no indication that anyone from the Sewickley Herald, Allegheny Times, or other local media was present for any discussion or decision concerning the fire department. Herald reporter Bobby Cherry did not respond to e-mail and voice mail messages that sought to confirm this.

It should also be noted that the proposal to de-certify the fire department does not appear as an item on the council agenda for Sept. 20, as published on the borough website. Not under New Business, Other Business, or any other line item.

Was this the result of an error of omission, or an attempt at subterfuge?

I also received information that the vote to de-certify the department came near the very end of the council meeting, when most spectators and local media may have already left.

Our local media, while small and staffed only so much in uncertain times for their industry, must nonetheless focus some attention on those actions of government and other public entities, regardless of their size, that affect citizens in their coverage area.

Luckily, there is also something called citizen journalism. Hopefully there are more "netizens" willing and able to assist in monitoring these activities, and getting the word out when these kinds of decisions are made.

Observations and Thoughts

A fundamental tenet of effective human resources management (as I understand it) is that employees deserve to know when their performance is exceeding, or is below, the expectations of their employer.

There is also a principle of American law that establishes the doctrine of At-Will Employment, which in short means that absent a contract of some type either party in an employment relationship can end that relationship for any reason, or for no reason at all.

It seems as if Edgeworth Borough chose to treat an agency that served the borough for over 100 years as just a bunch of at-will employees. They took advantage of what sounds like no more than a gentleman's agreement between the two entities to accomplish this.

Borough council left this action off of their published agenda for the September 20th meeting, and acted upon it near the end of the meeting when most of the audience and media were no longer present. While this business was likely conducted within the letter of the law, it could be argued that an attempt was made to minimize debate and keep the action as quiet as possible for as long as possible.

However, the speed with which the borough's action was taken, combined with the same-day notification of the fire department and the unanimous consent of council, suggests the possibility that advance deliberations may have occurred among council members prior to September 20th.

One wonders if these deliberations may have been required to be public, in accordance with the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act. I don't know enough about the Act yet to make that assertion, but perhaps some concerned party will take that to a more logical conclusion.

What did the fire department do, or not do, to deserve this treatment? Regardless of the answer, there appears to be a clear disconnect between the borough and the fire department. That's not a healthy way to conduct business when public safety is the end product.

A working relationship, with some form of meaningful communication that respects the viewpoints of the participants, is essential not only for effective service provision, but to help assure accountability to citizens. I'm wondering who dropped the ball to create the situation that culminated in last week's action. It feels to me as if both sides share in some of that responsibility.

Having been a member of an area volunteer fire department, I also know that underneath the formal mutual aid agreements and cooperation in the face of emergency situations can be an unwritten, largely unspoken sense of identification with one organization over another. Add human nature to the mix, along with the kinds of personality conflicts that can arise in any organization, and you get ill will where it does not belong.

I should mention here that a good chunk of Edgeworth is closer to Leetsdale than it is to Sewickley. Hopefully that will be addressed at the dispatch level before something happens to force that consideration.

One of Mr. McDaniel's responses to Sewickley Patch raised a few more questions that I would have liked to ask:

McDaniel said Cochran Hose is just a few blocks away and response time comes down to a matter of one minute. “There’s no reason to have a fire department in Edgeworth,” he said.

I wonder if Mr. McDaniel's opinion would be different if there were still some residents of the borough serving vital roles on the fire department. Would that minute matter more if actual borough taxpayers and voters were the ones being handed their collective hat?

What are the operational advantages to maintaining a separate police force, dispatch center, public works department, administration, code enforcement..anything?

Why should Edgeworth Borough continue to exist?

The short answer is because its citizens apparently want it to, and can afford to do so.
They just can't or won't find the time to volunteer as firefighters anymore.

This is perhaps the biggest reason that Station 138, as it is known in Allegheny County, no longer provides services to a population that no longer saw fit to support it.

Marty McDaniel took slight offense to my characterizing their actions as "madness". As I said before, I agree that's a little inappropriate.

Malevolent? Perhaps. Machiavellian? That's more like it. But not "mad".

Edgeworth's firefighters got a raw deal.

Regardless of the eventual outcome, I hope that Chief Scott and his firefighters, along with those interested citizens of Edgeworth Borough, get more of the answers they are looking for, and that they can continue to depend upon a diligent local media to help them do just that.

Best wishes to them.

September Sunday Self-Reflection with Stephen

2011-09-25T12:40:00.001-04:00

- The Colbert Report

We know that Stephen Colbert is paid to make us laugh, and of course make money for himself and his employer.

He does his job very well, by making us think while we're laughing.

Here, he just makes you think. A lot. Hello, mirror..

Have a good Sunday.

Abundant Anniversaries

2011-09-20T12:10:00.007-04:00

Those who forget history may be doomed to repeat it, but how about those who wallow in history? Are they doomed to become trapped in it, like Bruce Springsteen's classmates in his song "Glory Days"?

Like so many other things, moderation is the message of the day. Keeping a firm eye and focus forward, while not forgetting how you got where you are, is to me a very healthy approach. Living up to those words can be something entirely different, however.

With this in mind, this past Sunday marked 5 years since I started this blog. A lot has changed in my life since that day, but it feels like surprisingly little has changed in the larger scheme of things. I'll elaborate a little further down the page.

In the meantime, here are some personally significant observances that might strike a chord with you as well. Or not. In no real particular order:

Sewickley Bridge

Yesterday marked the 100th Anniversary of the opening of the first Sewickley Bridge. Larissa Dudkiewicz of Sewickley Patch made me think about this when she posted a picture of one of the original bridge's finials on the Patch website. Curiosity and Wikipedia did the rest.

Having grown up in this area, and as the child of small businesspeople, I was aware but not fully cognizant as a teenager of the tumult surrounding the deterioration of the original bridge to the point where it was barely safe for any sort of traffic. The present span, along with the previous one, is a linchpin for the local economy, public safety, and transportation infrastructure.

This coming October 21 will mark 30 years of service for the current Sewickley Bridge. As is seemingly the case with so many issues related to transportation, some of the same issues that created the need for a new bridge in the 1970's are still with us today. These include present and future challenges related to the safe and efficient movement of traffic and its relationship to the vitality of the Quaker Valley area.

Some of these challenges include the impending closure of the nearby Ambridge-Aliquippa Bridge, and the impact up and downstream; the ramping up of drilling activity, and the increased presence of rig equipment and water trucks on our roadways; and the need to improve traffic movement through traffic signal synchronization on the Sewickley side in response to both factors.

9/12/11

Last week Leslie and I marked 6 months of marriage with a simple dinner at what seems to be our favorite restaurant. We are continuing to put things together in the face of multiple challenges, deadlines, and the pressures of work, including a new job for me that I'll have more to say about later.

In the snapshot of today, things are going well. This includes the fact that since I got here in March, there's about 35 pounds less of me. Feels good. Gonna try to keep it up.

The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

Those who have read my blog regularly know of how things have gone with me. Judging from the traffic stats I get, there's not many in that group. Since I moved to Pittsburgh, the number of hits on this blog site is about half of what it was in Grand Junction. Still, there are some individual posts that continue to generate traffic from all over the place.

This blog also has a presence on Sewickley Patch. I've no idea how many hits my posts get on that site, but it seems like people are reading. I promised myself to write for me and not anyone else, and it seems that my life now is taking me a little bit away from writing. A new family will do that to you. I'm fine with it.

I looked over the past year or so of traffic stats, and found some subjects and images that get consistent hit traffic in response to search engine queries. This is probably the best way that I know to give a thumbnail picture of the first 5 years:

In October 2006, a young reporter for Grand Junction TV station KJCT had the local media atwitter with a "gotcha" piece about how people and school administrators would respond to an unattended backpack inside Grand Junction High School. Jonathan Vigliotti left GJ (voluntarily) not long afterward.

Five years later, Mr. Vigliotti has worked his way through Milwaukee and Miami, and now works for WNBC in New York, the number 1 media market in the country. A nice transition upward from working in market number 187 back then. I get almost daily hits from searches of his name. Nice to see that he's doing well.

In May of 2009, I compared the pattern of annexation by the City of Grand Junction to the way a spider spins a web when it's exposed to stimulants or depressants. The illustration I used for Spiders on Caffeine still gets lots of image hits.

Other things that get lots of hits are memory quilts, Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass, Johnstown Flood dam pictures, and the Uniden Home Patrol scanning radio.

It's been an interesting but satisfying 5 years. I'm hopeful for many more.

September 11

One other thing that I wrote five years ago was a reflection on the events of September 11, 2001. I thought about this a lot - one reason it took until the week after to get it down - and even after that I found that the way I feel now really doesn't really differ from the way I felt then:

Things aren't as different for some people as perhaps they should be, but for me the 9/11 experience has been a decidedly mixed bag. Professionally, many things that I have believed in and worked for most of my career in public safety have come much closer to large-scale acceptance. Things like unified Incident Command and interoperable communications are big deals, and they're happening now. This is a good thing.

The price we've had to pay as a society for the loss of personal freedom, increased suspicion, lack of trust in one's fellow man and the nagging effect of fearmongering, hype, and conspicuous consumerism on our collective national psyche has at times been difficult for me to stomach. One must have a finely tuned B.S. filter nowadays, firmly placed inside the protective cocoon of faith, humility, and dedication to one another, regardless of our ideological differences.

Leslie and I went to the memorial observance in Leetsdale, which despite the rain was fairly well attended. The time was also used to honor and remember those served in the emergency services locally who had passed away since 9/11/01.
There were lots of familiar names and faces on that list.

The quiet procession from the Leetsdale Borough Hall to the Memorial site was perhaps the most poignant display for me. Public safety personnel from all disciplines, walking together. A good thing, and something we can all remember as necessary whenever we think of the past, present, and future of our society.

We are all in this together.

Have a good week ahead.

Photo credit: Sewickley Valley Historical Society (1911 Bridge Poster)

Drilling in Leetsdale - Outside The Box

2011-09-09T11:00:00.003-04:00

First things first - Remembering the victims of the crash of USAir Flight 427, 17 years ago yesterday. Aside from a photo in today's Beaver County Times, the local media seemed focused on other things.

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 is certainly getting its share of attention, but other local tragedies, regardless of their comparative size, are nonetheless significant to those who were touched in some way by these events.

Congratulations to Leetsdale Borough Council for moving quickly to establish some type of regulatory framework for gas drilling within the borough, by passing an ordinance last night that does these things.

However, the immediate potential threat to the borough and its citizens doesn't come from drilling within the borough, but the likelihood of drilling elsewhere.

Leetsdale residents receive their water service from the Edgeworth Water Authority, who gets their water from the Ambridge Water Authority. Ambridge Water's main reservoir is located in Raccoon and Independence Townships in southwest Beaver County. This reservoir property is surrounded by properties where the landowners have signed drilling leases.

The Beaver County Marcellus Shale Action Committee is circulating a petition to Gov. Corbett and State Sen. Elder Vogel, whose district includes the reservoir. The petition requests that drilling and/or water extraction for fracking be banned anywhere in the area of the reservoir and the Service Creek watershed.

The petition is available here.

Leetsdale residents, and other Ambridge Water customers who are concerned about the safety and integrity of their municipal water supply, may want to consider learning more about this effort, and communicate with their own State Senator, John Pippy, about the issue.

Remembering those who paid the ultimate price trying to save others - not only at the 9/11 event sites, but everywhere, every day.

Have a good weekend.

Acts of God..and Man

2011-09-01T13:37:00.007-04:00

Happy September.

Over the last week or so I've followed, and in one case been affected by, natural occurrences in or near to our area that fall under the legal definition of an Act of God:

An event that directly and exclusively results from the occurrence of natural causes that could not have been prevented by the exercise of foresight or caution; an inevitable accident.¹

I thought about the reaction of the general public and the media to the events that occurred, and what the factors might be that influence those reactions. I tried illustrating this on a graph:

In short, this graph illustrates a type of event, how long the event lasted, and how much "human actionability" is perceived to be directly involved in the duration or severity of that event. This is very rough and rudimentary; no demographic research went into this other than an hour or so in my own head.

It should also be noted that the graph refers to the duration of the event itself, not the lasting effects or the human response to mitigate those effects. For example, a hurricane may take a couple of hours to blow through an area; however, if you took into account the response to Hurricane Katrina, for example, the result would be on the opposite end of the graph. "Heckuva job, Brownie".

I included the 1889 Johnstown Flood on the graph to provide a local example of a contrast to events of short duration with no human actionablilty, and events with similar duration but with questionable contributions to its severity on the part of mankind.

An act of God, in this case torrential rainfall, was the root cause of the Johnstown Flood. The rain's impact on a structurally compromised and poorly maintained earthen dam contributed greatly to the event's duration, severity, and loss of life.

Here is a quick look at those three recent events with this thought process in mind:

Washington Boulevard Flash Flooding

During the Friday rush hour of August 19, a slow-moving thunderstorm filled the Negley Run basin in Pittsburgh to the tune of 9 feet of water. The storm sewers that carry this stream beneath Washington Boulevard were overwhelmed, and 4 people in vehicles on that roadway lost their lives.

There is an eerie coincidence in the circumstances of this incident, given the tragic flash flood that I wrote about in May; the locations of this flood and the Little Pine Creek tragedy of 1986 are but a mile so so from each other as the crow flies.

There is also historical perspective surrounding the Washington Boulevard flood that has many questioning the stewardship role of the government agencies involved.

The initial response from officials of ALCOSAN, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) and PennDOT was something akin to "well, we should talk about that". This angered a lot of people, including Post-Gazette cartoonist Rob Rogers. He painted a rather unflattering portrait of these stakeholders in the August 22 edition.

P-G columnist Brian O'Neill spoke with city officials and some private citizens with considerable expertise, and also did some nice detective work in his paper's archives, including a reference to the 1986 Pine Creek Flood that painted some North Hills municipalities in a not-so-nice light. Mr. O'Neill's August 25 and August 28 columns reflect both unconventional wisdom and common sense. A couple of his paragraphs sum it up:

I've often thought that Pittsburgh is luckier than the Sun Belt. Some of those cities are going dry. Our problem is too much water getting into the wrong places, which seems an easier problem to manage -- most of the time.

Then we get a flash flood and it becomes clear we're not managing our water. A crumbling, ill-designed system is kept out of sight and out of mind. When the all-too predictable catastrophe occurs, we look back to the precedents that were more than fair warning. Then we scramble to do something about it right up until the moment we don't.

I agree with Mr. O'Neill's assumption that the Washington Boulevard flood, while brought about by an act of God, was exacerbated by the inaction of man to adequately heed the warning signs. A new line was forming on my graph:

In terms of the severity of the events, there is a point at which the amount of human involvement in either the event itself, or its exacerbation, will bring about demands for redress and responsibility. This could take the form of lawsuits, or by other means available to citizens, such as the ballot box.

In the case of Washington Boulevard, aside from the planning and commitment that will be required on the part of all stakeholders to respond to this latest calamity, I'm wondering why ALCOSAN and PWSA exist as separate entities, when their missions appear to dovetail with each other. Maybe I'm uninformed, but if economic and political factors continue the push for more streamlined, regional governance, why not start with authorities like these?

Earthquake (!)

After 16 years in the mountain west, I had to come back east to feel one of these. I was having lunch at a favorite place in Oakland when the building began to pulsate at about three times a second. I looked up from my lunch, and felt the second floor dining room begin to sway slightly. It was over in about 10 seconds, and I was initially unsure as to what had happened. I did have the distinct impression that if the vibration had lasted longer or intensified, the building would have folded down like a house of cards.

It made big news in the media, especially given the broad area that the quake was felt and its relative proximity to Washington DC. Most people that I spoke with seemed to take it in stride, in keeping with the theory on the graph. Nothing could be done, it wasn't anyone's fault, so let's get on with things.

I get the feeling that even if the quake had been much worse, with significant structural damage or casualties, the attitude would have been about the same, so long as those charged with a duty to act in response to these types of events fulfilled their duties with a level of due diligence.

Some went as far as to try to pin the quake on fracking. In some areas, this is a possibility. Many of the earthquakes that occur in Mesa County are sourced to a federal desalination project for the Dolores River southwest of Grand Junction. Brine that is extracted from the river is pumped down a 3-mile deep well. This water can cause fractures in the rock strata, resulting in small earthquakes.

This was NOT the case with the Virginia quake - there is no fracking going on anywhere near the area of the epicenter. However, as with all other risk factors associated with drilling, this is one to be mindful of in areas of drilling activity. If such a quake did occur, its place on the graph would be further to the right, perhaps considerably.

Hurricane Irene

The hurricane had a nicer effect on the Pittsburgh area, at least for me. This past Sunday morning I took the dog out, and was greeted with a pleasant breeze from an unlikely direction. Low clouds were moving rapidly from the northeast to the southwest. A raptor, perhaps a hawk, hovered about 100 feet above my street, wings extended, just relaxing and riding the wind.

Irene was not so nice to some familiar and unexpected places. The preparatory hype and protestations of impending doom along the east coast, especially New York, didn't pan out as expected. This can be attributed to what one group of political writers called The Katrina Effect (the "Brownie" effect?).

In some places, protection against large-scale flooding and erosion may be better than others, but I believe it is all dependent on the "angle of attack", for lack of a better term. This comes from aviation, describing how the angle of a wing affects the flow of air above and below it, and thus its ability to create lift. With large-scale storms, I'm guessing it all depends on the direction, amount of moisture, and wind as to what will happen to a particular area in the storm's path.

To those affected in eastern Pennsylvania, the Outer Banks, and especially Vermont, my prayers go out to you and all others impacted by what may not have been an impressive storm by media standards, but wreaked havoc nonetheless.

This made me think of another line for my graph - one that illustrates what happens when uncontrollable events of increasing duration impact humanity:

Let's hope this isn't the beginning of a trend.

Have a great month ahead.

¹ - West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc.

The Notes in My Back Pocket

2011-08-17T14:10:00.003-04:00

Lately I've been collecting little snippets of news items and personal things that I find interesting or noteworthy. I write this stuff down on paper and tuck it into one of my back pockets, where they sit until I get the chance to sit down and write. While somewhat archaic in the age of smartphones, it's a system that seems to work, and gives me a sense of tactile nostalgia for things at a slower, more simple pace.

I pulled several pieces of paper out of my back pocket today. The items I wrote down all deserve some mention in a timely fashion, so without any more of a lead-up, here's some stuff that matters, at least to me:

Persistence, Humility, Vulnerability

The sermon at our church on August 7 has been on my mind ever since. Our pastor introduced us to Chapter 18 of Luke's Gospel. The virtues listed above are among the key points of this chapter, as illustrated through several parables.

I just found an excellent template and outline for a group bible study that encompasses, and has helped me make more sense of, what Luke 18 says about human behavior in contrast to the teachings of Christ. This particular chapter has some serious lessons about this. For example:

William Barclay states "(i) No man who is proud can pray; (ii) No man who despises his fellow men can pray; (iii) True prayer comes from setting our lives beside the life of God."

If you're so inclined, grab your Bible and follow along with the Lost Pine outline. Enjoy a little journey inward, maybe.

Memories of Growing Up in Sewickley

The link above is for a Facebook group started by Sewickley native William Gittins, who now resides in Jackson, Miss. I went to high school with a couple of his brothers. Since its start a few weeks ago, it has amassed over 1200 members and creates a tremendous online time warp if you spend too long reading the myriad recollections of many who called the Sewickley area home for some part of their lives.

Sewickley Patch picked up on the phenomenon earlier this week, and spoke with Mr. Gittins for a story they ran about the group. It's still going strong, and will hopefully also serve as a means to educate current residents about what it was like to grow up here.

A memory that popped into my head while writing this was the existence of at least 3 hardware stores (Hegner's, Sewickley Hardware, Sickeler's) in downtown Sewickley. There's something ironic to that, considering that I work for a big-box home improvement place now.

If you grew up here, and haven't checked this out yet, you should. Make sure you don't have to be anywhere for a couple of hours first, though. It's a true testament to the power (good or bad) of social media.

London Calling

The title of one of my favorite records from the early 80's, if not of all time. The Clash continued the activist tone of their previous two albums, but the album is also more polished and tempered somewhat to make their music and message more accessible. Perhaps this why my son likes this record and the band as well.

During the recent riots that tore into several London neighborhoods, songs from this record were going through my head, particularly The Guns of Brixton:

You can crush us, you can bruise us, but you'll have to answer to...

While on the surface the recent unrest in England may be similar to the anger and angst expressed by the punk movement of the 70's and 80's, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to some of the destruction. Young people burning down their own neighborhoods for sport, or because they are bored, disaffected, or the product of a dysfunctional society. London's burning with boredom now..

All kinds of little theories pop up in my head when I read about this, and then are quickly dismissed as nonsense. One theory sticks around, though - is there a correlation between lack of self-respect and and initiative and what we saw in London? Is that all part of the equation? Do we not see this as much in the US because we have these qualities in comparative abundance, or because we are better controlled?

BART!

Speaking of control, there has always been much discussion of the influence of wireless communications and social networks on the ability to rapidly mobilize people into action. From the Arab Spring to the G-20 protests right here in Pittsburgh, Twitter and other systems have been used to get people moving and taking direct action, whether for good or ill.

A recent action by San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system has raised the hackles of activists and regulators alike. Seems that as a part of preparations for protests over the shooting of a homeless man by BART police, BART administration shut down access to wireless networks through its subway tunnels.

Access to communication systems is important to life in these modern times, whether it be as part of an international commerce engine, or just a way for families to keep in touch. Arbitrarily shutting down these systems as a means of quelling dissent, or the lawful expression of ideas in a manner uncomfortable to some, is a 21st century affront to the First Amendment, and needs to be dealt with as such.

BART was wrong. This reminds me of a retail cashier rule, expressed as an acronym, with some Luke 18 and Simpson-esque connotations:

LISA - Look InSide Always.

'Gasland' Comes to Sewickley

A year ago last week, the acclaimed documentary 'Gasland' was shown in Grand Junction, Colorado. Josh Fox, the film's Director, was on hand for the screening to field comments and questions. I wrote about this at the time because I was living there, and also lamented the absence of a local media presence to publicize and report on the event. Granted, it's a much smaller media market over there.

Tonight at 6:30, the film gets a screening at the Sewickley Public Library, albeit without Mr. Fox in tow. The publicity has been fairly robust, at least online, and it's a good bet there will be an interested crowd at the library this evening.

Regardless on which side of the drilling debate you may fall, the film is worthwhile
because it helps to document the activities of the drilling industry would otherwise not see the light of day. I've seen enough of the effects to the environment, and on society and culture, to know that jobs and money are great but are not all sweetness and light. We have enough of an industrial past here to (hopefully) remind us of that.

Time to persist on some house projects. Have a great day.

The Roads Not Taken

2011-08-04T11:55:00.003-04:00

I've been a fan of driving older highways when traveling across the area or across the country. Like anything else, time has been a factor in determining when it's been possible to do this. My last trip across from Colorado is an example; I did have enough time to divert and see some really pretty countryside in Ohio. It made the conclusion of what up to that point had been a pretty tough drive much easier and somewhat uplifting as well.

I thought about this when the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission announced in late July that it was raising toll rates 10 percent for drivers paying cash, but not raising tolls for those using the E-Z Pass electronic toll collection system. Their justification for this was that it's more expensive to collect cash tolls, and they want to encourage Turnpike users to sign up for E-Z Pass.

Callers to local talk radio during the week that the news of the increase broke were concerned about their vehicle movements being tracked. Some also complained about some toll roads that have gone completely cashless, relying solely on transponder-based payment and license plate ID and billing of those vehicles not so equipped. Those bills, I should add, usually come with extra fees attached, especially if you are in a rental car. This is one reason why we should have just stayed on US-1 on our honeymoon in Florida, and also why I will not travel the E-470 beltway around Metro Denver.

I really don't have a problem with the E-Z Pass, but I don't have one because I don't have the need for one. I have relatives who use the Turnpike regularly for business; that and the large amounts of truck and other commercial traffic validate the Turnpike system's position as a major component in the engine of commerce. This includes the short spur between US-22 and I-376 at the Pittsburgh Airport, and I-376 itself between Chippewa and New Castle.

For those occasions when time is money, then the Turnpike system may likely be the only cost-effective alternative to get to where you or your goods and services need to be as quickly as possible over land. If, however, you are a tourist or traveling family without an E-Z Pass, it will make the Turnpike even more expensive.

There are viable alternatives.

This is not to say that I won't ever drive the Turnpike again. As a historic road, the Turnpike has features that I have yet to see, most notably the 13 miles of abandoned highway (including two tunnels) just east of Breezewood. My brother and I did once traverse the tunnel between the two service plazas at Midway, back in the 70's before they closed access to the public.

These are the fun things about traveling that are too often forgotten in the rush of life, and even the rush of vacations. For too many of us, the journey is not as important as the destination. It kind of mirrors the approach toward life that many have taken in the age of instant information, conspicuous consumption, and a preponderance toward self-gratification.

So when I plan to go somewhere, I try to make the time for a more leisurely and interesting drive than would otherwise be afforded by Interstate highways. Leslie and I experienced a little of this on US-1 south of West Palm Beach, which I thought would be more interesting than I-95. We went through many small business districts, eventually arriving at Lake Worth. The business district was very lively and attractive, with some beautiful old cypress trees around City Hall. We ate at Dave's Last Resort, and spoke at length with one of the proprietors, who grew up in Aliquippa.

In the Pittsburgh area, there are plenty of options. US-30, US-40, US-22, and US-19 all run through the general area, and while at times congested by local traffic are nevertheless much more interesting than any Interstate. I have a long-term affinity for US-6, and would love to take it from Meadville to at least Scranton someday.

Fortunately, there are online utilities such as Google Maps that give users the option of obtaining directions excluding highways and/or toll roads when possible.

Consider spending a little more time enjoying more of the journey, as well as the destination, the next time you decide to travel. As Robert Frost once said, it may make all the difference.

Have a good weekend ahead.

Reclaim Our Sensibilities

2011-08-01T16:00:00.003-04:00

I'm going to return to a Grand Junction issue, if only because it involves a topic that I'm very familiar with, in an area of town where I still have an interest.

The Sentinel's Amy Hamilton wrote an excellent story for the Sunday edition about the efforts of a new community organization to rally support for addressing what they perceive as undesirables behaving badly, particularly in Hawthorne Park. Ms. Hamilton deftly balanced her story with the inclusion of background information on both the challenges and services available to both the transient and chronically homeless in the GJ area.

This group, calling itself Reclaim Grand Junction, states as its mission:

1. Safety for our children;
2. Compassion for our neighbors who need it most;

3. Balanced policies from our city.

Additionally, the group makes a point of saying that they are not "anti-homeless". Well, most of us really aren't. As citizens and/or Christians, we give of our time and/or bounty to aid those in need. Maybe what they meant was that they're not anti-homeless; they just don't want to see it everyday.

As a property owner and former resident in the immediate vicinity of Hawthorne Park, I would like to comment further:

First, I believe that the group should add the following to their site's list of definitions:

Definition of RECLAIM
from http://www.merriam-webster.com

transitive verb
1. a : to recall from wrong or improper conduct : reform
b : tame, subdue
2. a : to rescue from an undesirable state; also : to restore to a previous natural state
b : to make available for human use by changing natural conditions
3. a: to obtain from a waste product or by-product : recover
4. a : to demand or obtain the return of
b : to regain possession of

It seems to me that the first and fourth definitions best describe the intent of Reclaim GJ's efforts. Whether that intent remains just underneath the emotionally-charged labels of "Safety" and "Children" remains to be seen. As with many of our homeless, there's more to the story than what's on the outside. Whether people can get past their disdain and look at each other as human beings and citizens is where real change will come from.

While I'm thinking about it, the photo on the home page of Reclaim GJ's website, depicting a small child standing next to a person laying on trash-strewn ground, bag-wrapped bottle in hand, is incredible, as in "lacks credibility". The Sentinel reported that the photo was staged...well, duh.

I lived in the Hawthorne Park neighborhood for 12 years, and still have family there. We used the park for many purposes, and never felt that our safety was compromised by the presence of someone sleeping on the grass or congregating in the shelter. In fact, I had some enlightening conversations with some who dwelled in the park by day and at a shelter, a tent, or a camper shell at night.

I spoke with my son yesterday; he said that he hasn't really noticed anything outside of what has been the norm at the park for the last several years. What really has changed?

The manner in which Reclaim GJ is putting their "campaign" before the public has generated some attention, and may even spur some action on the part of City Administration. However, Council has been down the "safety" road before, with mixed results.

I've also forwarded the Reclaim GJ site and the July 31 Sentinel story to the Colorado Chapter of the ACLU. Those concerned might want to read the letter that they wrote to City Council in 2009 regarding a proposed panhandling ordinance. That letter is available here.

Particular attention should be paid to the comments regarding officer discretion, due process of law, and the concept of safety. Quoting the letter from ACLU Colorado Legal Director Mark Silverstein:

"The council should question whether this ordinance is truly meant as a safety measure or whether, as in other communities, the safety rationale is a pretext for the proponents’ true motivation: to push the homeless and unemployed out of sight".

I also have questions about having compassion for those "who need it most". To me, that's definitely in the eye of the beholder. Is someone capable of pulling themselves up with a little help deserving of such "compassion", or is someone incapable of such action, as a consequence of their own infirmities, addictions, or choices, worthy of our attention? Can the law make a distinction, especially when, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless, "courts have found loitering and vagrancy laws unconstitutionally vague"?

I believe Reclaim GJ when they say they are not anti-homeless. Perhaps they'll join the many groups that are already stakeholders in trying to address what is a daunting and escalating issue in many areas of the City and Mesa County. However, I do not believe that their stated mission will complement that of many charged with rendering assistance to what Christ called "the least of these" (Matthew 25:45).

On its surface, Reclaim Grand Junction feels like just another attempt to address homelessness by moving it somewhere else where it can be conveniently ignored. I feel for those who have been affected by illicit activity near their private residences. I'm confident that government, working with the Coalition for the Homeless and other stakeholder groups, will continue to address those engaged in aberrant behavior, while respecting the rights of these less fortunate citizens accordingly.

"Safety" is not a euphemism for NIMBY; nor should it be camouflage for intolerance.

Have a great day.

They're Serious About Clean Streets

2011-07-27T11:45:00.001-04:00

Leetsdale Police Officer Ed Cross prepares to issue a ticket to the driver of a vehicle found parked on the west side of Broad St. near Spencer St. when street sweeping parking restrictions are in effect. The borough sweeper is seen in the background. 7/27/2011 9:08 AM

Today is a day off from work, so before I walked the dog I moved my car from in front of the house to the other side of Broad St. so that the street sweeper can proceed unimpeded and I don't get a parking ticket, as there are laws in place designed to guarantee the sweeper a clear path to perform it's function.

While out with the dog, I noticed that the sweeper was out on Broad St. promptly at 9:00, when the parking restriction begins. I also noticed that some cars had yet to move. On the way back home, the white car in the above picture was preparing to pull away (after the sweeper had passed) when Officer Cross pulled his cruiser up behind it, wrote the ticket, and handed it to the driver. The sweeper, whose operator could have alerted the officer to the vehicle's presence, continued his route in the area.

I appreciate it that local government is serious enough about maintaining the physical character of its residential streets that it owns a sweeper, employs someone to operate it, and assures through ordinance and enforcement that the streets can be cleaned to some acceptable standard.

As I walked home, the sweeper kept to his route, the officer returned to patrol, and I finished walking the dog, stopping only to clean up after her and at least two other dogs whose owners had permitted to defecate in our yard, and left it for someone else to clean.

There is an ordinance prohibiting this, but I don't know if the police are manned, ready, or willing to swoop in on a dog owner whose charge has just left a deposit on someone else's property like they did with the vehicle blocking the street sweeper. There are places that have taken enforcement of this problem to what is arguably an extreme, but that's for another post.

It would be nice if some citizens were as diligent in cleaning up after their animals as the borough is in keeping the streets clean. Thanks, Leetsdale.

Enjoy the day.

Green Spaces -Praise and Remembrance

2011-07-22T09:10:00.001-04:00

I know we've come a long way
We're changing day to day
But tell me, where do the children play?

- Cat Stevens

When the Sewickley He rald reported at the end of June that greater-than-expected use of Leetsdale's Henle Park Splash Pad was causing some to question the free use of the facility by non-residents, it started me thinking about the nature of the land our area has preserved for the common good as community park space.

Last week's reporting on Sew ickley Patch, which detailed an imminent imposition of a non-resident fee and the subsequent interv ention of a private citizen to keep the pad free for all, brought the point home even further. Even after speaking with Borough Manager Paul Scimio about the specific problems that were reported with the pad's popularity, I wasn't convinced that the fee proposal was anything other than a hastily conceived band-aid that didn't address many logistical concerns, and would probably have created more problems than solutions.

The largesse of Donald Mappin Jr. of Atlantic Precious Metal Resources is certainly appreciated in the short term, but doesn't address other issues related to the increased use of the splash pad, such as upkeep of facilities, impact on traffic and parking in the area, and so on. I hope that his commitment is one that will be sustained for a good while. Hopefully this will give the borough breathing room and time to plan.

I do find it ironic that the splash pad's future as a free community resource is now hinged not only to the cost of water, but the price of gold as well.

********

I grew up frequenting many of the area parks; it didn't seem to matter to anyone where I lived. I thought about the expense in equipment, materials, and man-hours necessary to assure that these parks and their associated facilities don't fall into disrepair, and how important something as deceptively complex, taken for granted, yet tranquil and uplifting, is to our well-being as a community. This has been embellished even further considering some of the storm damage that occurred this week.

Most of my favorite park spaces have this feature in common - water running through it. Henle Park has a small stream running beneath it, but the splash pad was what truly linked water with what has been a staple of the Leetsdale community for as long as I've known it. This is equally true of other parks in the Sewickley area:

War Memorial Park, Sewickley

"Memorial" lost the fountain that was a feature when I was growing up, but in its place has added Hoey's Hideaway, a large playground area with a cushy rubber walking surface. This is apparently named after Hoey's Run, the stream that runs through the park. This area and the surrounding park area were enjoying heavy use on the day I visited. The park shelter is still there, as is the green area that runs up to the beginning of a hiking trail.

Walker Park, Edgeworth

With four shelters and lots of green space that borders Little Sewickley Creek, Walker is one of three Edgeworth parks worth mention here. Growing up, the park was a perfect place for a Sunday picnic, family gathering, or quiet time with your sweetie. The park is owned by Edgeworth, but sits partially in Leet Township.

Way Park, Edgeworth

When I was young, my father was a small business owner in the area of the Edgeworth School. In the summers I would sometimes spend the day with him, and this invariably took me to this little gem of a park in the center of everything that is Edgeworth and Sewickley. My peers that lived in the area would hit golf balls in this park. I love the stream flowing through the stone-lined channel, around the island, and under the bridge.

This park is popular with newlyweds for photos, and we were no exception. The park is meticulously maintained and clean. In winter, the solitary pine near the Meadow Lane / Beaver Road intersection, fully lit with small lights, is a poignant and beautiful symbol of the holiday season.

Morrow Pontefract Park, Edgeworth

This is my favorite green space, period. That's saying a lot for someone who has been out west a long time, but there is something about this place that feels very special.

I mention the park by name to people and sometimes get a blank stare. There are no signs for the park, even at the entrance from Beaver Road - do you really need one with this inviting view? I usually need to follow up with "the park by Quaker Village".

If you enter the park from the shopping center, you'll see these majestic old trees. The park from this side feels like what it actually represents - the boundary between the pastoral, rarefied setting of Edgeworth and the busy commercial and industrial center that is Leetsdale.

When I was a teenager, I would enter the park via a dirt trail at the end of Maple Lane, which puts you on the south side of Little Sewickley Creek. The creek bisects the park, but is shallow enough here to wade across in most areas if it suits you. There is a footbridge and a couple of memorial benches alongside the creek, including one in memory of Edgeworth Police Chief James Creese, who I was privileged to work for in the 90's.

Despite its proximity to Route 65, the railroad, and the shopping center, "Morrow Park" offers a place for quiet reflection and to enjoy a beautifully balanced natural setting.

********

At the same time I am waxing nostalgically about green spaces, our family is remembering someone who loved parks, especially the splash pad. We said goodbye to Michaela a year ago this week; she now rests in another beautiful green space, and we know that she is smiling from Heaven at all who loved and cared for her.

The photo below, and the video at the top, were taken at ACORD Park about a month before she died. It was a nice diversion from what was the routine at the time, back and forth to Children's for radiation treatments. We took lunch there, and spent a little time in the large playground and alongside Lowries Run, throwing stones into the creek. Simple yet profound activities, especially now that she is gone. Michaela, we miss you.

Michaela's determination to ride a pony at the 4th of July celebration in Henle Park last year, less than 2 weeks before she passed away, is something that Leslie told me she will always carry with her as an example of strength and bravery in the face of tremendous hardship. At times like these, we all need a little space to breathe, to reflect, to play, to pray.

Thank God for the beauty present on this Earth, and for those of His children who put forth their labor to see it preserved for the rest of us.

Have a good weekend.

Photo Credit: McMillen Photography - Ed Hughes (wedding party)

Responding to Change -Consolidation Conversation

2011-07-11T17:25:00.001-04:00

Police agencies from three separate jurisdictions respond to a minor, two-car non-injury traffic accident on Ohio River Blvd. at Quaker Village Shopping Center last month. Leetsdale Fire Dept. also responded.

As I've said before, trying to compare the manner in which local government is structured and managed in Colorado and Pennsylvania is a true exercise in "apples and oranges". As a result, I won't waste time or energy trying to match them alongside each other. The philosophies, practices, and laws which govern the operations and existence of these entities are just too different. This extends to the manner in which public safety services are provided.

Still, a recent story in the Grand Junction (Colo.) Daily Sentinel brought two interesting points to bear for me. First, it seemed to mark the first time that a major public official has publicly leveled criticism of the manner of the expansion of Grand Junction's city limits through annexations under the Persigo Agreement of 1998:

This situation has drawn some complaints from residents who question why they were annexed into the city of Grand Junction only to receive services from Clifton (Fire District), (Grand Junction Fire Chief Ken) Watkins said.

“I’ll be honest, it’s a total mess,” he said during a recent presentation to Grand Junction City Council. “There’s problems with assessment payments. Is this truly what we want as a community?”

What Chief Watkins referred to as "a total mess" has been that way for upwards of a decade now. At least the story highlighted efforts by two fire agencies to find opportunities for collaboration that will help assure excellent service delivery while reducing duplication of resources at the expense of the taxpayer. For the benefit of Pennsylvania readers, these fire and EMS agencies are tax-supported through local sales tax, property tax, or both.

They're having conversations about these things - that's a big first step.

The second point was Sentinel reporter Amy Hamilton's lead for the story. It's a question that gets asked in a lot of places, especially in a tough economy with dwindling municipal budgets, and it's a question I've heard get asked several times since I returned to Pennsylvania:

Does it make sense for multiple fire departments to coexist in one area? Is it necessary for neighboring communities to invest in similar equipment, build extra fire stations or even to pay the salaries of multiple fire chiefs?

While most of the fire companies protecting Pennsylvania are predominantly volunteer in nature, there is considerable local capital expended toward the purchase and maintenance of equipment and training of personnel, as well as the social and cultural position that volunteer fire departments hold in many communities as the center of activity, community gathering place, social club, evacuation center, and the list goes on.

Across the 4 1/2 miles between Sewickley and the Fair Oaks section of Leet Township, there are four independent volunteer fire departments. These agencies admirably cooperate and coordinate their activities in response to all manner and complexity of emergencies across their respective jurisdictions. They exist with their own membership requirements, operating standards, management structures, and boards of directors. Is this mutually dependent, yet organizationally independent existence necessary to provide adequate protection to the residents of the communities that depend upon them? Have conversations taken place about this?

You can also substitute the word "police" for "fire" in the above quote, and the question remains valid for many areas.

An example is the above photograph, which shows patrol units from three Quaker Valley-area police agencies at the scene of a minor traffic collision. Traffic control and investigative needs probably required the presence of those officers. Could they all be from the same agency, instead of several?

Many Pittsburgh-area municipalities such as Aleppo, Ben Avon, Emsworth, Kilbuck, Neville, and Richland have had the conversation, and decided that contracting with a larger neighboring department, or joining a regional police agency, is the way to go. Still others maintain their need for a locally administered police presence. Those conversations have apparently taken place, and the status quo was the result. There are reasons for this.

During a recent conversation with Leetsdale Police Chief James Santucci, he stated that his department is the busiest in the Quaker Valley area in terms of call volume. I had not thought about this previously, but it made immediate sense to me. Leetsdale is much more than a 'bedroom community' - the presence of the Buncher Commerce Park, Leetsdale Industrial Park, and Hussey Copper make it a workplace destination with the largest weekday population in the Quaker Valley. Add in QV's High School, and the borough's emergency management footprint is complex, and public safety needs potentially daunting.

Those needs have come to light many times over the years, with traffic crashes, train derailments, industrial accidents, and river emergencies presenting the entire area with protection and management challenges that are met head-on by the municipal alphabet soup that is local government in Pennsylvania.

Some in Harrisburg see these voluminous, yet sometimes tiny government entities as flies in the ointment of either responsible, efficient governance or some ulterior motive that their campaigns have been financed on (drilling ordinance, anyone?). They have attempted to legislate them out of existence, but their efforts have not been successful, for reasons that I believe relate to legislators not having conversations with those constituents actually doing the work.

Still, if you want an example of what the future might look like, you need look no further than those branches of public safety that are the youngest - Emergency Medical Services and Public Safety Communications. In both cases, economies of scale drive the streamlined nature of the organizations involved.

In the Quaker Valley, the municipal EMS authority board has representation from all 11 municipalities, but is operated by the Valley Ambulance Authority across the river. QV is different from Valley in that it levies a per capita fee; this, along with insurance reimbursement, make up the lion's share of operating revenue. Both authorities are in the midst of a donation campaign. It's a good investment, just like the fire department fish fry.

One big change when I was out west was the provision of enhanced 9-1-1 service to all of Allegheny County, and the gradual consolidation of communications centers that went along with it. This was driven by a mandate for consolidation by the state agency that oversees 9-1-1 provision, and controls allocation of revenue from the 9-1-1 surcharge that is levied on all telephone bills. No consolidation, no surcharge money. Simple enough.

Several municipalities have chosen to maintain their own dispatchers and communications centers, and receive calls from the county 9-1-1 center on a "ring down" basis. If the community at large feels that they receive better service this way, and they can afford it, more power to them. It's just another set of eyes, ears, and hands through which information must pass before a call for help is met by a tangible response.

Leetsdale, which used to obtain these services from Beaver County 9-1-1, opted for Allegheny County several years ago. The reason, according to Chief Santucci; "It's free". The borough saves about $22,000 per year in fees previously paid to the neighboring county - fees that Leet Township and Bell Acres Borough still pay for services that they are apparently satisfied with.

Weighing heavy in my head through all of this learning has been the clarion call of conservative groups and anti-tax/anti-big government activists, peppered with the angry voices on local talk radio, decrying the size and complexity of government at all levels. It's easy to heave brickbats in this way, but entirely a different thing to volunteer one's time to engage in the sometimes messy business of governance in a structure as complex as Pennsylvania.

Those who engage in this rhetoric need to learn something. Stop being what the marquee at Marroni's last week referred to as "those who know nothing doing it the loudest". I learned this:

No honest conversation about the size and complexity of government can take place without all levels of government, including local government and especially public safety, being on the agenda and at the table.

Have a good week ahead.

Responding to Change -Non-Profit Nastiness

2011-06-30T21:26:00.002-04:00

As most of us realize at some point in our lives, change is the only thing that remains constant. As old and overused as that may sound, it is no less true.

People, and the groups and organizations that they affiliate with, respond to change in many different ways. I've been reading and collecting information about changes that are upon the Pittsburgh region, and how they've been responded to (or not) by those who stand to be impacted.

There's plenty of voices providing coverage out there, so I'll just limit myself to observations that (hopefully) haven't already been made elsewhere:

WYEP / WDUQ

As I write this, I'm listening to legendary WDUQ Jazz DJ and Pittsburgh Jazz Society founder Tony Mowod doing his last show before the format changes at about 11:00 PM.

There's been plenty of pleading, complaining, and yawning on the part of different Pittsburgh pundits and community leaders about the change. Links to it all are on the Save our WDUQ Facebook page.

There's also been talk about getting a new jazz radio station off the ground. As Tony said on his show tonight, "one door closes, another opens". I hope they can make it happen, and make it a sustainable venture. LPFM, anyone? Let's hope someone donates tower space on a nice, high hill somewhere.

Not much else to add that hasn't been said already. I'll miss you, Tony.

Highmark / WPAHS / UPMC

One thing I've learned from working in government, health care, and with volunteer non-profits is that "behaving like a business", which local health care giants Highmark and UPMC have recently been accused of, is kind of like accusing a person of eating when they're hungry.

My first wife Jan and I both worked for a hospital in the old Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation (AHERF) before it imploded under a mountain of debt in 1998 and was acquired by West Penn Hospital, becoming the West Penn Allegheny Health System (WPAHS).

25 years ago, Jan's father retired from West Penn Hospital as its Chief Financial Officer. He died in 1995, 3 months after I moved to Colorado. I would have loved to have asked him what he thought about AHERF's collapse and absorption by West Penn. Wayne was a very steady, intelligent person, and his insights would likely have been most valuable.

One thing that has been nearly palpable over those years has been the quiet acrimony between what is now UPMC, Highmark, and WPAHS. UPMC has helped to leverage its position in the market by offering its own insurance plan; now Highmark has seized an opportunity to help support an ailing but vital health care system, and perhaps optimize the efficiency and "surplus-ability" of both.

Many of the analysts and pundits that have commented on this have praised the opportunity for more competition in the health care marketplace, in an effort to keep costs and prices down. Still others have chided officials of both organizations for basically behaving like petulant schoolboys on the junior high school playground. For me, this is conduct unbecoming organizations that citizens depend upon to provide quality health services.

This is the way it's been in the Pittsburgh region for a long time, and it doesn't sound like there's a lot of room for improvement in this area. From what I've seen and heard, there may not be much chance of that unless people share their disdain with those who provide services, and insist upon displaying the same commitment to service first, and "surpluses" second.

Highmark/WPAHS and UPMC need to focus on not making things any harder for Pittsburgh area health care consumers than it already is.

Enjoy your Independence Day holiday.

Rediscovering Jazz

2011-06-21T10:55:00.003-04:00

The summer solstice is upon us. The longest day of the year will see me mowing the lawn and doing other things around the house amidst some typically warm and humid temperatures, while back in the high desert of Colorado they've set a record for rainfall, and there is snow forecast for above 10,000 feet. So it goes.

As the days wind down before the availability of jazz on Pittsburgh FM radio is slated to be drastically reduced, I've been thinking about jazz music in general. I really don't have a lot of favorite artists or instruments - I just know what I like. Jazz is an excellent background beat for the music of life, and that's the way I've enjoyed it most.

There are a couple of artists whose work is influenced by or considered part of the jazz repertoire that I've enjoyed over the years. This past weekend brought them back to mind.

Sade

Leslie and I had been looking forward to this concert for quite a while, and the show did not disappoint.

John Legend opened things up. He's an excellent performer. His outstanding singing voice, piano playing, and songwriting skills were very evident, but perhaps drowned out a little too much by the band and backing vocalists.

Sade's show was elegant, long, exquisitely crafted, and nearly flawless in its execution. Along with the lead singer of the same name, parts of the band have been together since the early 80's. The cohesion, the musicianship, and the feeling behind each of the songs they performed turned an otherwise ordinary concert venue into an intimate setting.

The production was something else - intricate lighting, a full video wall behind the stage, at times merged with video projected on a see-through fabric scrim that was lowered around the entire stage. The production represented what the music represents to me - a level of unexpected sophistication, and a meaning much deeper than just the soulful music and lyric.

Sade performed over 20 songs, including most if not all of their hits from the 80's and 90's. Sade herself is a performer whose talents lay somewhere beyond the striking beauty and unmistakable voice. You feel like she and her band have laid their souls out there in the music, much like many of the greatest jazz musicians. It's a rare thing for someone who has enjoyed such popular appeal.

Pittsburgh was one of the tour's first North American stops, having started earlier this year in Europe. There are plenty of clips from this show posted on YouTube, and the tour will have stops in Cleveland and Columbus in July. I will be keeping my eye out for a DVD of this concert down the road. It was that good.

Michael Franks

After the concert, Leslie and I walked back to the car and drove for a while with late night jazz on 90.5 helping to set the mood. We wound up at Ritter's for a late night bite, and talked about the show and the artists from that era. We came back to a familiar jazz artist that we discovered in different ways, but whose music we both appreciated a lot.

I was introduced to the music of Michael Franks via the radio, but not WDUQ. It was by none other than Jack Bogut, back in the 70's on KDKA. Jack was apparently fond of Mr. Franks' second album, The Art of Tea, and played several tracks from it on his show. Over 35 years later, I'm kind of amazed that he was able to play "Popsicle Toes" in the morning without getting a slew of raised eyebrows. Well, maybe he did..

You must have been Miss Pennsylvania
With all this pulchritude.
How come you always load your Pentax
When I'm in the nude?
We oughta have a birthday party,
And you can wear you birthday clothes
We can hit the floor
And go explore those
Popsicle toes.

There are many other Franks songs that I enjoy, but as with many other favorite artists, including Sade, other noise has gotten in the way of the music. Leslie sees this, and lets me know about it. That's one reason why I'm down to one post a week.

Too many other more important things to do, not just percolate in my head and not move on. There are lots of nice things to remember, including the 40th anniversary of the Pirates' 1971 World Series victory over the Orioles (who are in town this week). Enjoy the memory, and keep moving.

Anyway. it seems that Michael Franks has just released a new CD, with a track nicely suited for today. So enjoy your first day of summer, stay safe, and take time to listen to the music.

Tone Deaf Public Radio

2011-06-15T15:39:00.003-04:00

I grew up in the Pittsburgh area, and had a radio on a lot of the time. From early childhood through adolescence and into young adulthood (when the police scanner got a hold of me), my memories seem filled with what was on the radio. This included a LOT of time spent listening to the public and community radio stations at the lower end of the FM dial.

When I wrote in February about the impending merger of WDUQ with the parent of WYEP, I expressed relief that the license and ownership of the station would remain in the hands a community non-profit, already well-established and conducting themselves in a very competent manner. I also said at the time, "WDUQ's popular jazz music programming will likely remain one of the benchmarks of the station's presence in the area".

Essential Public Media, the folks behind the operation of the "new" WDUQ, would probably say that this promise has been fulfilled. Unfortunately, following what appears to be the trend elsewhere, a lot of the programming that made WDUQ and other stations a special place is being relegated to HD radio and Internet streaming. The prime spectrum - the analog FM signal on 90.5 - is being turned into essentially a full-time network affiliate of National Public Radio, save for Saturday nights.

The management of WYEP made a very comprehensive and eloquent case for the transition, going so far as to have a PR firm write the announcement to make sure their message was articulated properly. How corporate of them.

While WYEP's management is correct in their claim that Pittsburgh is one of the last major media markets without a full-time NPR news and information outlet, how they're going about accomplishing the feat of putting one in place feels awkward. It's almost as if they are Clarice Starling and their audience is Hannibal Lecter; the 'ham-handed segue' won't do.

As was expected, those who love jazz on the radio are not pleased, and I don't blame them. For me, the best place to listen to jazz is in the car on a late night drive from one place or another, holding the hand of your loved one as you cruise down the road. Unless you want to retrofit your vehicle with an HD set or stream it through your smartphone, that quiet joy is lost, especially when the music is part of a local music scene that you can plug yourself into as well.

HD Radio and Internet streaming does not equate to universal access. Until it does, jazz in Pittsburgh should remain free and widely accessible over the analog public airwaves.

If the online outcry is any indication, there will be a lengthy period of discord over the manner in which the removal of jazz from these free public airwaves is being accomplished. Those who have been most vocal have said that a healthy compromise somewhere between the 100 hours of jazz being aired on 90.5 now, and the 6 that is currently planned for, would be fine with them. Their plea does not appear to be intractable, even in spite of an effort to boycott membership in both stations. Why does WYEP's silence in response seem that way?

I haven't been living here full-time for that long, but in WYEP's actions I see similarities in how public and community radio has evolved in Colorado, where I came from. Colorado Public Radio maintains a statewide network, broadcasting two stations across most of the state; one with classical music, the other with NPR news and information, much like WDUQ is slated to become. This constitutes a sort of "top layer" of public radio coverage. The secondary layer is made up of smaller, community-based stations with a lot of volunteers helping to run things. Stations such as KAFM and KVNF keep the "Community" in Community Radio.

That was the idea behind WYEP back in the early 70's. The spartan confines of 4 Cable Place in Oakland were alive with off-the-wall music and ideas. I also spent some time as a volunteer at WDUQ in my late teens. I remember the sense of professionalism and pride, especially on the part of other volunteers.

Nearly 40 years after its inception, the evolved form of those early years in Oakland is now poised to assume control of the region's pioneer in public radio. Many critics have pointed out WYEP's tagline, "Where the Music Matters", and have tried to level accusations that the station is behaving to the contrary in its dealings with WDUQ.

From the sound of the rhetoric, the management of WYEP has made up its mind, and is not inclined to listen to the pleas of jazz fans around the area to keep more of this music on analog FM. The deaf ear they appear to have turned to the complaints is not in keeping with a community media resource, and has fueled too much speculation along with the bad feelings.

Perhaps they just think that the spectrum is too valuable to continue to commit so much airtime to what they may perceive as a "niche" audience. If that's the case, their approach is antithetical to their origins. Perhaps they have truly forgotten from whence they came. Too bad.

In an attempt to gain additional perspective on this, I tried to contact Larry Berger of the Saturday Light Brigade, which began on WYEP in 1978 and left the station in 2003. The program is now broadcast on a network of college radio stations anchored by Carnegie-Mellon's WRCT, as well as online. Larry did not reply to my request for comment about his program's departure from WYEP, and I don't blame him. He and his staff are moving forward very well.

Aside from the loss of jazz programming on WDUQ, it's also unclear whether the new ownership will continue to operate the Radio Information Service for the visually impaired, which transmits on the subcarrier of 90.5. Those answering the phone at both WDUQ and WYEP today seemed unable to commit to the future of this service, which for those using it is much more essential than other forms of public media. Let's hope for a smooth transition and seamless continuation of this vital resource.

My experience in Colorado showed me that the business model for non-profit media is changing. Survival in this climate of economic and technological change has required some fundamental altering of the way these organizations think and operate, and that did not sit well with some that had been involved at KAFM for many years.

So now with WYEP, WDUQ, and WQED forming the 'top layer' of public radio in the Pittsburgh region, one wonders where the smaller innovators in public radio are, to continue to make radio accessible to the varied communities and neighborhoods that make this area what it is. The presence of robust college stations such as WRCT and WPTS will certainly help, as may the recent enactment of the Local Community Radio Act and the potential for Low Power FM station development in places like the Pittsburgh radio market.

Let's hope for more understanding and compromise as the transition approaches, and for new opportunities to innovate and serve to become available.

Have a good rest of the week.

The Character(s) of Camp Horne Road

2011-06-06T11:40:00.007-04:00

For a week last month when Leslie and I were sharing one car, it became necessary for me to occasionally take the bus to work, or at least as close to work as it would take me. This required walking Camp Horne Road from the intersection with Route 65 to the intersection with Ben Avon Heights Road, a distance of about 2 1/4 miles. The walk was fine - I'm quite comfortable with the distance - and I observed some interesting things that made me think about the nature of our roadways and transportation systems.

Name Game

This photo always made me chuckle while driving past it, but I really didn't get a second thought from me until I stood in front of it. Why would the road be named one thing by local jurisdictions, and another by the County?

Fortunately, Allegheny County's Public Works Department appears to be an accessible and professionally operated agency. One call there got me my answer. Deputy Director Bernie Rossman told me that when roads are initially given an official name or designation, the county courts get involved, and once the court assigns a name, it's largely cut in stone. He mentioned at least one other road in the South Hills where the local and county names differ substantially.

Apparently, Horne Camp Road is the name the court approved as the official road name many moons ago. Despite the change by local jurisdictions, the county designation remains, perhaps as nothing more than an anachronistic reminder of the nature of government's many layers here.

Pedestrian Friendly...Well, not really.

My walks were conducted at two very disparate times in terms of the traffic flow the road experiences; early Sunday afternoon and late Friday afternoon, during the evening rush. The differences in traffic were obvious, as was the demeanor of the drivers. The berm of the road also fluctuates in width, narrowing almost down to nothing as the westbound lane curves around a hillside just before reaching the Willow restaurant, which sits on the former site of a little neighborhood bar called the Bantam.

I also found two full, unopened sports drink bottles, quart size, at different places along the roadway. I wondered why someone would toss these out of their cars, unless they were tossing them at somebody.

Seeking Shelter If Needed

Camp Horne still has a tenuously rural feel to it, even if it has become increasingly impacted by the development surrounding it. Should one get caught in the rain while walking (which I was concerned about on at least one occasion), there are ample places to stay dry along the route, along with some businesses and other locations that have been there quite a while.

Sunny Jim's, Custard's First Stand, and Mark's Tavern are all located in the small commercial area on the Emsworth side, all in proximity to the Carmel Office Suites, which occupies what was once the main building of the Otto Suburban Dairy.

Avonworth Community Park is centrally located on the route, and is very pretty with Lowries Run running right through it. If I had the time or need to stop and enjoy some scenery and quiet, this would have surely been the place.

Commercial Center

As I approached the commercial development near the I-279 interchange, I passed Animal Friends, and noted with more detail the nature of what had to be done to build that impressive facility, including the nicely designed bridge over Lowries Run. Other impressive buildings in the area is the complex that includes the Pittsburgh Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center.

As I started up Ben Avon Heights Road, I noted that the roadway into the Home Depot / Giant Eagle complex (built on the site of the former Camp Horne Drive-In) had little or no room for pedestrian access - curbing, about one foot of grass, and the large retaining wall on both sides. Fortunately, another direct route existed up a small ridge that led to the northeast corner of Home Depot's parking lot.

Walking this route was pleasant and uplifting, even if a little danger creeped in from the spectre of line-crossers in areas where there is little margin for error, or someone ready to chuck a full bottle of Gatorade at an unsuspecting suburban hiker. The most revelatory thoughts that came to mind occurred during my rush hour trek, and had little to do with the sights around me.

Where Have You Gone, Port Authority?

I knew from reading in numerous media outlets and blog posts that the Port Authority was going to be cutting services in the wake of a loss of state funding. In returning to the area, and having experienced numerous public transit systems in other cities, after my most recent experience I have to wonder out loud what is wrong with this organization.

If you're not a regular rider with a weekly or monthly pass, it's $3.25 each way across two zones between Emsworth and Leetsdale. My round trip commute is just under 20 miles, or about one gallon of gas. That makes driving my own car to work less expensive, since I don't have to pay for parking on either end.

I noticed Bus Stop signs in the area of Avonworth Park that indicated that at one point at least one bus route traversed Camp Horne to go somewhere. I did see at least 6 Port Authority buses traveling eastbound along my walking route - all with ROSS GARAGE as their destination. These were buses going out of service after the evening rush.

I wondered out loud why a loop-type route couldn't be established that would take passengers between Route 65 and the Camp Horne Interchange area. This could connect with the existing Park-N-Ride at the Perrysville interchange and serve as an express into town, and would perhaps generate some revenue while all those buses are using Camp Horne to get back to the Ross Garage.

I tried asking the Port Authority about this, through their Public Information department, which apparently didn't have the time to return my calls.

I did dig a little deeper on the Port Authority's somewhat informative website, and found that the routes that previously served this area, the 17B and 18B, weren't utilized enough (in a consultant's opinion) along the Camp Horne corridor to justify their continued existence in this area. Both routes seemed to anchor themselves in a routing pattern that included the North Boroughs, which led me to thinking along the lines of other routing options that would traverse major traffic corridors laterally, instead of always using Downtown as a focal point.

As was expected, I'm not alone in thinking about these things. In the Sunday Post-Gazette two weeks ago, long-time transit critic Bob Firth presented another in a series of annual articles detailing his take on the issues that make the Port Authority seemingly unable to provide the level of service required of a technology-savvy, growth-hungry urban center like Pittsburgh.

Seems that Mr. Firth hates what he calls "squiggly-line transit", and has presented several excellent examples of more efficient transit systems that use circulator routes in population centers to feed faster express routes on the major traffic arteries. His arguments are persuasive - hopefully they'll find a friendly ear amongst those that care about the viability of this region for all of its citizens.

In the meantime, as the summer continues to come in I might find it interesting to take some other walks in familiar places, if only to see what I've been missing. I know it will be worth the effort.

Have a great week ahead.

'Uncle Ed', 1940 - 2011

2011-06-04T14:25:00.002-04:00

When Ed Monahan married my cousin Sandee Rubino, I was just 8 years old.

Leslie and I were present with Sandee and the remainder of his family when 'Uncle Ed' departed this earth last Sunday after a sudden and unexpected illness. He was laid to rest yesterday.

There are no real bundles of words to put together to describe Ed Monahan. He himself was a man who used words in an economical fashion. When he needed to say something, those words were used in a manner that would stick with you.

Ed's reticence in many circumstances did not reflect the nature of his passions, especially for his wife and children, and even more in recent years for his grandson. Ed and Sandee lived in Center Township for many years, and had recently moved to Wexford to live with their daughter Carleen and her family.

Some of Ed's passions remained in Beaver County, where he grew up, made his living as a steelworker at the Aliquippa Works of J&L Steel until the day it closed for good, and where he connected with many friends as a long-time member of the Elks Lodge and the Aliquippa Bucktails.

Ed was also a passionate outdoorsman. Some of the more memorable conversations we had were talking about Nebraska, where he went hunting and where I would talk about what it was like to drive across (a fair spell better then either Kansas or South Dakota). Ed was also pleased when I would send him invitations to the Friends and Family weekend when I worked at Cabela's - it gave him a reason to head down to Wheeling and look for some bargains.

Through quiet strength and perseverance, Ed Monahan provided for his family through prosperity and adversity, and served them well. In trying to assess the worth of a man after he is gone, is there really any more that needs to be said?

I can only hope that just a little of Ed Monahan rubbed off on me.

Enjoy the weekend.

Memory Flood on Memorial Day

2011-05-30T22:14:00.001-04:00

While the majority of us are called upon on Memorial Day to reflect on those in our armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our nation and our freedom, events in the distant past are drawing me to reflect on loss in a different context as remembrance becomes the focus of this day.

Little Pine Creek Flood - May 30, 1986

Twenty-five years ago today, a frenetic Friday afternoon rush hour in the North Hills of Pittsburgh was complicated by the arrival of several thunderstorms. One of these slow-moving storms dumped an estimated 8 inches of rain over a one hour period in the area of Little Pine Creek, a normally small stream that winds along Saxonburg Boulevard through Indiana Township until it reaches Pa. Route 8 in Shaler Township, and turns south toward Etna.

This deluge resulted in one of the worst flash floods in local history. Eight people lost their lives when Little Pine Creek tore through the area, destroying homes, stacking cars at the Mae West Bend on Rt. 8 like a child's Hot Wheels collection, and putting 6 feet of water through the bulk of Etna proper. Medical helicopters helped to rescue and evacuate the injured, and the remaining emergency resources of the area became quickly overwhelmed.

This was the first major incident that I was directly involved in as a dispatcher in public safety. The agency I volunteered with was selected by Allegheny County's EMS Coordinator to assist in the coordination of multiple EMS agencies from across the county and region in responding to and providing EMS coverage for the area for the weekend that followed.

I was at the radio for the bulk of the next two days. When I got to actually see the devastation on Sunday afternoon, the memories I hold onto are varied and really kind of weird - the dried mud covering the intersection of Route 8 and Saxonburg; the parishoners of St. Mary's Church on Middle Road who spent the weekend serving spaghetti to responders and others affected; the command post at the Middle Road VFD, and the vehicle parked there with (gasp) a cellular phone mounted inside.

Several of the responders involved received recognition from the County for their efforts, myself included. The attaboy was nice, the experience valuable, the career capital worthwhile. In retrospect, I think more now about those who lost loved ones that fateful day, and the cumulative effect upon those responders and support personnel who have weathered this and many more smaller tragedies over their careers. It makes my contributions that weekend, however important in the larger scale of this particular event, seem small in the collective microscope of history.

Hope your Memorial Day was a pleasant one. Enjoy the week ahead.

File Under 'Cart Before the Horse'

2011-05-27T18:45:00.002-04:00

The Post-Gazette reported Wednesday that State Sen. Lisa Baker (R-Luzerne Co.) got a bill through her Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness committee (an interesting combination there) that would require energy companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale to:

Draft and file Emergency Operations Plans with local emergency response authorities
Post this and other emergency information at drilling sites, so as to be easily referenced by personnel when needed
Ascertain the Latitude/Longitude (GPS) coordinates of all drilling sites, and assure that wellsite personnel, responders, and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) are aware of them.

This is an excellent idea, although I'm wondering out loud how such a set of requirements did not exist previously via existing rulemaking or legislation. It's not as if drilling, mining, or other heavy industrial activities in rural areas haven't occurred here before. Something that Sen. Baker's office put in their press release may explain this a little better than I can:

"It is extremely important for the gas industry to coordinate emergency response plans with first responders and state and local officials," Baker said. "This issue is too important to leave up to voluntary compliance."

Is 'voluntary compliance' with rules and requirements that may change by municipality, the norm or the exception? Let's hope it's the latter, and that the full Senate, House, and Gov. Corbett will show the same enthusiasm for this bill. Something like this should have been in place before a single drill bit breached Pennsylvania soil in search of gas from the Marcellus Shale. It seems long overdue.

In a related matter, the Post-Gazette also committed much ink in this past Sunday's edition to the plight of rural Pennsylvanians without adequate mobile telephone service and broadband Internet connections.

The P-G's story focused on Sullivan County, where many components of public service delivery systems risk being overwhelmed with activity related to drilling, and things that 9-1-1 operators in many areas take for granted, such as GPS coordinates for calls received from mobile phones, are non-existent in the majority of circumstances.

The influx of personnel and capital from energy companies will likely help foment a more rapid deployment of these capabilities; the private sector seems more flexible and responsive to issues and opportunities than the public sector when it comes to these kinds of issues. That is the essence of capitalizing on what the Marcellus has to offer. However, without adequate safeguards and planning contingencies that Sen. Baker's legislation would likely help provide, what is the potential cost to the region's quality of life?

I should probably state here and now that I am not opposed to drilling - that is an unrealistic stance in a country, and a region, largely built on this type of activity. I am opposed to allowing it to proceed without a strong, responsive, efficient, and empowered system of checks, balances, and meaningful enforcement. These efforts too often seem to always be playing catch-up and politics with what is really going on in the field.

Speaking of what's going on in the field, Sewickley Patch reported yesterday that the drivers of at least two large trucks were cited recently for being overweight on municipal roadways. This may be just the beginning of a trend when there's frack water to be hauled to wellsites...

Let's hope that Senator Baker's bill is the first step in a better direction, and that those improvements in access to technology in rural areas that may be a consequence of energy development do not come at the price of the communities themselves.

Also, please remember those that have paid the ultimate price for our freedom while you're enjoying this Memorial Day weekend. I'll be working, but remembering as well, and not just about that.

Until next time...

Graduation 2011

2011-05-26T18:20:00.000-04:00

Gianna Micah Withrow, Quaker Valley High School Class of 2011

with her mother Leslie, QVHS Class of 1981

Congratulations, Gianna. You've had a rougher road than most of your peers, and have come through with distinction to reach yet another starting point. I know you're ready.

Too many commencement speakers have trod the same turf about opportunity and preparedness. I get the feeling that you know what you want, and have the tools and skills to seek it out and claim it as your own. You're very much like your mother in that respect.

Best wishes for continued success at Robert Morris, and in your life ahead. Your mother and I are looking forward to watching you go after that which calls you.

Return To/From the 'Sacrifice Zone'

2011-05-11T17:41:00.000-04:00

I recently moved back to the Sewickley area after a long stint in western Colorado. The 'Western Slope', as that region is known, is rich in many potential sources of energy. The local paper there dubbed the region "Energy Alley" in a series of articles last year.

Coal, Oil, Natural Gas, Uranium, and Oil Shale (not to mention lots of sunshine) exist in varying degrees of abundance across many areas of this region. Aiding those who would seek to profit from their extraction is the split estate concept - where surface landowners do not own the mineral rights underneath. One group of documentary filmmakers went so far as to dub the region a "National Sacrifice Zone", which usually refers to an area where the cost of cleanup, whether physical or economic, exceeds the perceived value of the area requiring such a restoration.

This moniker has been used to describe facilities and areas associated with the nuclear industry, particularly those involved in nuclear weapons development and testing, but also in the processing of uranium and the generation of civilian nuclear power. The test sites in Nevada, along with the area around a weapons plant in Hanford, WA are mentioned, but there are a great many towns and cities that have been touched by the nuclear industry; Grand Junction, CO and Canonsburg, PA have one thing in common (besides great candy stores); they've both had major cleanups of uranium mill tailings from within their boundaries.

Western Colorado is also where gas and oil drilling using hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" has been going on for several years, and where, as in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the Marcellus Shale region, community activism is on the rise in response to several accidents involving the use, transport, and disposal of fracking fluids.

Many of my posts over the last couple of years have dealt with energy, in particular the extraction of natural gas from areas in both states using the controversial fracking process. This has been of particular interest of late to Pennsylvanians, given the ramping up of drilling activity, revelations of additional potential threats to potable water supplies as a consequence of fracking, and significant changes in the state's regulatory posture by the new Republican governor, Tom Corbett.

Lots of questions are being asked, and new activity is always occurring while the debate rages on. Municipal governments seem hard-pressed to learn or remain current while landmen sniff around, and energy companies buy up or lease large swaths of acreage. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and other partners seem to be doing a great job of cataloging some of what's been happening in the area through their PIPELINE website, which is provided in the sidebar here as a feed.

People seem to be reacting along fairly predictable lines with regard to what appears an inevitable march into the area by energy companies, drilling contractors, and the additional economic and environmental impacts that accompany them. Having seen the sacrifices made both here and elsewhere, I have the following observations...

As a public safety professional in Colorado, I participated in the design, procurement, and implementation of several projects designed to improve emergency response capabilities in the areas I served. Nearly all of these projects were either partially or completely funded by grant programs that received their funding from state-imposed severance taxes and impact fees. Only those counties that were impacted by energy development were eligible for the grant funding.

Gov. Corbett's steadfast refusal to consider a severance tax on the gas taken from Pennsylvania wells defies logic, especially in lean economic times. As a "newcomer", my reaction may be too simplistic, but why would the Governor prefer to balance the budget on the backs of school districts, and thereby schoolchildren? Probably has something to do with the Governor's opinion of teacher's unions, but that's for another post, along with the simultaneous push for educational vouchers.

State Rep. Jesse White (D-Cecil), writing in March on beavercountian.com, outlined the problem rather well:

"In some places, nearly one-third of the municipal budget is going to these issues, there is no way under the law for these taxpayer monies to be recouped, and the gas industry has yet to step in and take a proactive role...As a result, local taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab, which is almost offensive considering the amount of money being made by the natural gas industry in our backyards. The message from local municipalities was clear: While local governments are not trying to kill the goose laying the golden egg that is Marcellus Shale, the taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for the nest."

Rep. White, along with several others in the legislature, have been lobbying for legislation to allow municipalities to levy impact fees, to help assure that the energy developers help to pay for the increased needs for infrastructure and government services brought about by their activities. Putting this in the hands of individual boroughs and townships seems to me a slippery slope, considering the sheer number of municipalities and the potential lack of consistency between them. Bell Acres got ahead of the curve this week with the adoption of an ordinance; what's next for their neighbors, and the rest of the area?

Should Gov. Corbett's reticence toward severance taxes prove insurmountable, perhaps all of those multiple little governments can learn something from some Pennsylvania landowners, and approach the issue cooperatively. That's something that industry, taxpayers, and citizens might all be able to agree on.

Most states where gas drilling has been going on for years have a solid means of generating revenue and enforcing regulations to protect workers and residents alike, even though it's comparatively more expensive to move gas from areas such as the west to where it is needed the most, like here in the east. That's what's driving the Marcellus boom - proximity to market.

The energy industry put a lot of money into Gov. Corbett's campaign. It's obvious that they want a sweetheart arrangement in the Marcellus Shale. Responsible citizens need to continue to stand up and tell the Governor that this is not acceptable. Vince Townley's editorial in the May 5 Sewickley Herald echoed similar sentiments.

I would also not place a great deal of credence in any noise made by the energy industry about shutting down or scaling back operations in response to efforts to levy taxes and/or fees in Pennsylvania. In other places it's chalked up to the cost of doing business; in as prime an area as the Marcellus Shale, where the supply is literally in the backyard of the demand, the same operating principle will likely apply.

Many of us, myself included, owe our existence and our well-being to many of our ancestors who toiled in mills, mines, factories, refineries, and other trappings of the Pittsburgh region's turbulent industrial past and subsequent reclamation. The working conditions, health effects, economic instabilities, and other byproducts of that history continue to manifest themselves in the present day, whether in heightened levels of infirmity among this area's significant older population, or clusters of cancer or other illnesses in populations that have settled in and around reclaimed industrial sites.

This region, this state, faces too many difficulties stemming from its fragile infrastructure - systems for moving vehicle traffic, delivering potable water, and safely treating and disposing of wastewater are aging, and are being retrofitted and improved constantly. The Marcellus Shale boom will impact all of these systems, from the water trucks that will traverse country roads to provide well sites with fracking fluid, to the treatment plants (and perhaps soon, disposal ponds) that the used fluid will travel to and through, to the downstream intakes where many towns draw their water supplies.

Many of my ancestors sacrificed themselves to the industries that sustained them - Quod me nutrit, me destruit - so that future generations might not have to. I've known two children from this area who have succumbed to cancer. Regardless of whether or not there is any connection to those lives lost and the environmental challenges facing the region where they were born and lived, for me that's two deaths too many.

These individual cases may constitute a quieter 'sacrifice' that does not match the physical devastation of an entire geographic area. Here and elsewhere, the devastation has been economic, and the restoration slow. Marcellus Shale gas development offers the possibility of revitalization of many areas, but without adequate government oversight, appropriate revenue generation and distribution, and a commitment to protecting the land and water, those who benefit will be few instead of many.

How much more will this region be asked to sacrifice now, without being able to reap some collective benefit, and without solid assurances that the process will be conducted in such a way that will protect future lives and land from potentially becoming part of another National Sacrifice Zone?

Hey, My Kid Goes to CMU

2011-05-02T19:00:00.002-04:00

Depending upon your life experience and/or geographical location, the title of this post can mean a lot of different things to different people. For me, last week's news of the Mesa State College Board of Trustees voting to change the name of the institution to Colorado Mesa University brought to me a decidedly mixed reaction, mainly because I focused on the new initials and associated them with the Pittsburgh institution that most readily came to mind. The resulting disconnect was kind of obvious.

Carnegie-Mellon University here in Pittsburgh already owns the "cmu.edu" Internet domain, and the recognition that comes with it. There is also Central Michigan University, but no others that pop up readily on a Google search.

Aside from the esoteric, yet overly-stressed-about-in-some-corners approach to this change, I seriously doubt that anyone will confuse the two institutions. One is a prestigious private university with many high-profile alumni. The other is part of the public higher education system in Colorado, with a reputation for a decent learning environment, recent significant growth in both size and coursework offered, and an administration with solid political connections.

My son goes to the "new" CMU in Colorado. He enjoys it there, and feels he is getting a very good education and access to other opportunities. As a parent, I can't help but be happy with that, no matter what they decide to plaster on the signs, business cards, and letterhead.

If one were going to compare Mesa State/Colorado Mesa to a college in the Pittsburgh area, a more appropriate choice would be Robert Morris University, across the Ohio River from us in Moon Township. RMU had it's own naming crisis, a dispute with similarly named institution in Chicago that seemed to be resolved in its favor.

As it happens, Leslie's daughter Gianna has been accepted to the Pennsylvania RMU, and plans to start in the fall.

As a child, I remember the suburban campus as Robert Morris Junior College, just as many in Grand Junction remember Mesa College as a 2-year institution. Both schools have experienced prodigious growth over recent years - while Robert Morris is a private school with a over 200 acres of land to grow on, Mesa State has used its status as an arm of the State of Colorado to grow where it can, as it is exempt from local zoning and development regulations, including fire codes as has been discussed here previously.

To be fair, Mesa State has been a willing partner with the City of Grand Junction in identifying areas for redevelopment. The City's recent efforts to gather public comment for a long-term blueprint of the North Avenue corridor echo this, but the one meeting I attended felt like the college was an 800-pound gorilla looming invisibly over the proceedings.

The Mesa State trustees' recent vote to expand west to Seventh Street emphasizes both the importance of a planning effort, and the City's otherwise anemic efforts at developing a plan without a binding agreement with the college as to how and where they will grow. Otherwise, this has the potential to be another example of development outstripping the City's ability to respond to it, especially when the culprit is an arm of the government, exempt from both local zoning and taxation.

Here's to a bright future for Colorado Mesa University, Robert Morris University, and my two favorite students. May they not grow too fast, too soon.

Have a great week ahead.

Air Medical Safety 'In Action'

2011-04-22T12:20:00.002-04:00

Wednesday afternoon I took Leslie some lunch at work, and then took Gianna and her friend Jaime to the Robinson Mall. Afterward, I turned on the scanner and made my way toward Steubenville Pike and Route 30. My plan was to take Rt. 30 to Clinton, then head back home from there.

While in the area, I heard North Fayette VFD being dispatched to establish a landing zone at their station on Steubenville Pike. Having not monitored an accident or other incident occurring, I was intrigued by this development, and headed over, arriving just after the STAT MedEvac helicopter did.

Upon arriving, I overheard an officer of the Fire Dept. explain to others that the aircraft was landing there to transfer a patient from the nearby Kindred Hospital, a Long Term Acute Care facility. Northwest EMS was staged at the landing zone to take the crew to the hospital and bring them back to the aircraft with the patient.

While I was taking pictures, I noticed the crew paying what seemed to me an inordinate amount of attention to the sliding aircraft door. It appeared that when a crew member opened the door, it would not close or slide properly. Eventually, all 3 of the aircraft crew became involved in evaluating the problem with the door. It was obvious as to why; if the door could not be restored to normal operating condition, it was an issue that could potentially ground the aircraft.

After a few minutes, the medical crew left with Northwest EMS for the hospital. The pilot, who normally remains with the aircraft, got on his phone. It looked to me like that "Hello, AAA?" posture that people can be seen assuming while they're sitting inside their disabled vehicle on the side of the road. Instead, the call was likely to the STAT MedEvac communications center to get a mechanic involved.

About 30 minutes later, the Northwest ambulance that was initially at the LZ drove past the fire station, and I overheard on the scanner that the ambulance was on its way to UPMC Mercy, with the aircraft medical crew and patient aboard. Additional scanner traffic, and a conversation with the fire official at the scene, confirmed that the aircraft was indeed grounded by the malfunctioning door, and that a mechanic was on the way to address the issue.

Voice mail messages left for STAT MedEvac media relations staff were not returned.

This kind of occurrence may seem trivial, but it's fortunate that this did not occur at an emergency scene flight. Even if it had, despite the heightened emotions and sense of urgency common to those kinds of calls, the decision making would likely not have changed.

That's a good thing. This was absolutely the right thing to do, in any circumstance.

Over the past several years, in response to numerous accidents and incidents involving EMS helicopters, many air medical operators, with the support of trade organizations and the FAA, have moved to alter their operational practices, and even the culture within the organization, through the implementation of Safety Management Systems. These efforts involve a combination of regulatory and organizational changes designed to accomplish the following:

Define how the organization is set up to manage risk.
Identify workplace risk and implement suitable controls.
Implement effective communications across all levels of the organization.
Implement a process to identify and correct non-conformities.
Implement a continual improvement process.

STAT MedEvac touts their commitment to SMS and safety practices on their website. As one who has worked in and followed the industry over the years, the accomplishments of STAT MedEvac with regard to the above bullet points appears to be fairly impressive, as it should when you are operating 17 helicopters across the region.

As the ambulance drove by on the way to Mercy, without lights or sirens, I wondered about the utilization of air transport in this instance. What were the patient's needs? Rapid transport? Specialized care not otherwise available? These are questions that have and will continue to be asked, especially as the debate over health care costs continues to heat up. That's for another post.

In the meantime, as an educated and experienced observer I was impressed with the level of professionalism, organization, and decorum on the part of the Fire and EMS agencies involved in the response. It's indicative of a general improvement in these areas that I've noticed since moving back.

Have a pleasant, blessed, and safe Easter weekend.

Adventures in Trunked Radio - Gary Harmon Edition

2011-04-11T22:08:00.001-04:00

First things first - this week is National Public Safety Telelcommunicators Week. These professionals are tasked with receiving often fragmented information from hysterical, delusional and often clueless people and turning it into a cohesive informational road map with which to deploy and coordinate the activities of our nation's public safety responders - Police, Fire AND Emergency Medical Services.

They work long, convoluted hours, and with a few noteworthy exceptions are largely taken for granted or marginalized by those whom they serve. Returning to the Pittsburgh area has brought this point home for me rather well. Catching up with the system online, and monitoring local activity, has shown me that there are some areas of the region where everything about the system and its practitioners has changed for the better, and also some pockets of resistance where the dispatch profession is still - still - regarded as something anemically clerical in nature.

If you know a professional Telecommunicator, thank them for their service and commitment this week. Grand Junction's group of professionals will have new digs to ply their trade pretty soon - something largely regarded as a once-in-a career occurrence for most in the profession. Good for them.

A short blurb on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website caught my immediate attention this afternoon. Under the headline "GJ awarded money for radios", Sentinel reporter Gary Harmon managed, in four short paragraphs, to put forward at least two inaccuracies, several statements that were unclear, and one old, blatant falsehood that for me made a mockery of a significant event that impacts the future of communications in the rural areas of Mesa County.

The announcement that "Grand Junction" will receive nearly a million dollars to purchase new radios for fire agencies across the county (that is, outside of Grand Junction) was the first head-scratcher for me. What Mr. Harmon probably meant was the Grand Junction Regional Communication Center (GJRCC), operated by the City but serving all county public safety agencies, and which has been coordinating much of the efforts to fund the complete transition of the county's public safety agencies to the Colorado Digital Trunked Radio System (DTRS).

The next whopper was particularly onerous, as it repeats false information reported by the Sentinel as far back as August 2009, which is the last time I wrote about this topic in detail.
Quoting the Sentinel story:

The 800 MHz radios should allow all public-safety agencies to communicate on one frequency with less interruption or loss of service, officials said.

(Note: I can find no press release on the City's website that corresponds with the story quoting these un-named "officials".)
The Federal Communications Commission has mandated all agencies switch to that bandwidth by 2012 and the grant will take care of all the fire-safety agencies in Mesa County as part of an $8.9 million project for public safety across the county.

There is no "mandate" by the FCC or anyone else that public safety agencies abandon their existing radio spectrum for frequencies in the 800 Mhz band. What the FCC did do was to require that all public safety radio users in what is known as the VHF and UHF radio spectrum re-configure both their operating licenses and equipment so that they operate with less space between channels. This known as Narrowbanding, and the deadline for agencies across the country to complete the process is indeed January 1, 2013.

The administration of GJRCC may have decided not to utilize their existing VHF spectrum after the 1/1/13 deadline. If true, this is unfortunate for those very rural fire departments that are benefiting from this latest grant. Many of these departments have their own radio licenses and frequencies that they use for tactical purposes. These agencies may choose to go through with the narrowbanding process for their own frequencies. Their reasons can be summed up in the final misleading statement reported by the Sentinel. To be fair, they are quoting Sen. Mark Udall, although there is no press release on the Senator's website regarding this topic:

“The last thing we want to see is Colorado firefighters losing their calls in an emergency or not being able to communicate with other emergency workers,” Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo. said. “The wildfire season this year has already shaped up to be an aggressive one, making it all the more important that our public-safety officers have the proper equipment to safely do their jobs.”

In most wildland fire scenarios on or near public lands, one of the most important communications links is between local fire responders and the vast, specialized resources of the federal interagency fire system. Responders in this system utilize frequencies and radios in the VHF spectrum that have already been narrowbanded for several years.

There are numerous frequencies, such as common "work" channels, air operations channels, and air-to ground coordination channels, that are standard across the system nationwide. This dovetails with efforts to create a national framework of interoperability channels in several frequency bands for use by any agency that may find itself situated at a major incident - anywhere.

In short, the very radios that Mesa County's rural fire departments are slated to "replace" with these new radios are the very ones they will likely be depending upon to communicate with federal wildland fire resources during a major incident. To be sure, connections will be established so that a VHF and 800 Mhz network can be connected in some way to assist with interoperability efforts on a wide-area basis, but any local engine crew that is supporting a team of federal hotshots in the middle of nowhere is going to need their VHF radio.

Contrary to the ministrations of Gary Harmon and whoever was feeding him this crap, reports of the demise of radio spectrum other than 800 Mhz for public safety have been highly exaggerated. In fact, a significant number of public safety agencies in Colorado that have transitioned to the State DTRS have re-licensed their old VHF or UHF frequencies for narrowband use. I wonder why...

Thanks to all the Dispatchers out there.

Have a good week ahead.

My Own Private Fallingwater

2011-04-08T11:00:00.000-04:00

This is the front entry to my house in Grand Junction, Colorado. The cantilevered overhang has been deteriorating due to what appears to be moisture penetration. My friend Jeff is a handyman of some repute, so I asked him to take a look to see what happened and what needs to be done to fix it.

Jeff found that water had penetrated the exterior soffit of the overhang, but most of the supporting structure was intact. This did not prevent the overhang from deflecting downward about 2 inches - hence the hydraulic jacks and temporary support beams.

Over the last few weeks Jeff has been gradually raising the jacks to level the overhang, and will use long lag bolts to secure it back to its intended position. He's already replaced the rotted soffit. He's done some great work so far.

I was immediately reminded of the difficulties that plagued Fallingwater a little over 10 years ago. This is not entirely without coincidence, as the houses and their respective cantilevers were both constructed in 1936. As with many flat-roofed Wright buildings, leaks were always a problem - a consequence of Wright's designs outstripping the capabilities of the sealant technologies of the day.

Fallingwater had the additional issue of it's builders not compensating for the effect of time on the large, cantilevered terraces. Instead of constructing the wooden framework for the reinforced concrete with a slight upward angle to account for deflection in future years, the forms were built level. When they were struck, the new terraces were doomed to sag at an increasing rate, until the amount of deflection threatened their structural integrity. An expensive tensioning technique was used to gradually pull the terraces back up into the large rock that serves as an anchor for the entire house.

Other restoration work and upgrades were performed on the house from 2001 to 2003, including the re-pointing of some of the exterior walls and replacement of original windows with ultraviolet-resistant glass, in order to help preserve the woodwork and original, Wright-designed furnishings inside.

The problems with my overhang don't appear to be rooted in the original construction, but ironically to an improvement effort. Roughly 10 years ago I had the gutters replaced around the entire house. According to Jeff, there appears to have been metal flashing across the top of the overhang that would deflect water into the gutters on either side. This flashing was inexplicably removed, subjecting the bare wood underneath to the elements. Over time, water seepage from this removal appears to be the cause for the damage that we're mitigating now.

So while I'm getting settled back in the Pittsburgh area, some unwelcome settling back in Colorado is being handled in a manner not that different from that which helped to save one of America's most famous and revered houses and architectural landmarks.

As it happens, both my house and Fallingwater will turn 75 this year. The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which maintains and operates Fallingwater as part of a large nature preserve entrusted to them by the Kaufmann family, is planning several different events to commemorate this anniversary. I hope to be able to make it out to the house sometime this spring or summer. One goal I have when I get my life and schedule better regulated is to volunteer there. I've always wanted to be a guide or docent, and now I may have my chance.

Have a great day.

Photo Credit: pittsburgh.about.com (Fallingwater)

The King's Speech

2011-04-06T11:40:00.001-04:00

Last weekend, Leslie and I had some excellent Chinese food from the House of Lee in Emsworth. They've been there since I was in high school, and even after a considerable absence from the area I still have not had a bad experience with the food there.

Afterward, we decided to take in the theatrical re-release of this year's Oscar winner for Best Picture, The King's Speech. The re-release included some editing of some profanities that resulted in the film getting an "R" rating. This new version is rated PG-13, which illustrates to me the hypocrisy of the provincial thinking that endangers the "traditional" entertainment industry. To quote Roger Ebert about the rating; "It is utterly inexplicable. This is an excellent film for teenagers."

Apparently, the studio and production company saw it that way as well. Along with the PG-13 theatrical version, they released an activity guide for students to go along with the film. Perhaps there's a method to their madness; if they take out some of the offensive language, perhaps the film will be made available in schools, and kids will learn from it. I still don't like the censorship aspects of this.

All the "F" words will be intact when the film comes to DVD, and that happens in less than two weeks. So what have they accomplished? Well, truth be told, they got $20 out of me to see it in the multiplex, which is most likely what they wanted to begin with.

It's easy for me to see why the film won the Oscar - it's classic movie-making at its best. Great writing accompanied by great acting, along with some innovative touches. There's one scene that follows Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter down a hallway and then down a winding staircase - all with what seems to be one Steadicam in a single shot. It reminded me a little of the grand opening scene of Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil, if not on the scale of that classic.

One other reason I think the film won is because it tells an uplifting story about an admirable set of characters who surmount daunting personal challenges in the face of much larger concerns. It resonated with the public, especially those with speech difficulties. I saw several other films nominated for Best Picture, among them 127 Hours, The Social Network, and Inception. While these are all outstanding films in many of the same ways, they are more modern in both their subject matter and their approach, perhaps so much so that those who vote for the Oscars, which include a number of traditionalists, saw the appeal, accessibility, and craftsmanship of this British effort and pronounced it worthy of their appreciation.

I don't think that the Academy took Inception as seriously as they should have - I think it seemed more of a novelty to them, which is why it won all of the major awards for technical achievements, just like The Matrix did. Enough about that.

Perhaps the additional appeal of The King's Speech comes from the manner in which it portrays historical events in a more personal context, and the way that convention is seemingly set aside for what works. You'll see what I mean if/when you see the film. Of particular interest to me was the portrayal of King Edward VIII as a disinterested party boy of sorts. Combined with his obsession over the American divorcee' Wallis Simpson - for whom he would seriously defy convention and give up his throne to marry - it seems to be the message of the film that not only was George VI a more capable, if reluctant leader, but that his older brother would have been a disaster in wartime.

Given her ability to captivate such a man, one wonders if Wallis Simpson can be considered the savior of Britain, if not the free world, for doing so.

The film is an excellent look at the power of thinking outside the box and leveraging technology for the betterment of humankind, as well as the dangers of looking at people only as credentials, and not for their inherent worth as individuals. Think about that when you watch it, which I hope you'll do.

Have a great day.

Things Found While Looking For Other Things 2

2011-04-04T11:30:00.006-04:00

"Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness."

In the midst of my travels across country almost a month ago, this phrase came to mind after a long day and night of driving and really not making the kind of progress that I wanted. I should have gotten a good night's sleep after a day of packing and loading and preparing. Instead, I struck out at about 10:00 PM and found myself making frequent rest stops, winding up in Kansas City at 8:00 the following evening, well behind schedule and plainly exhausted.

Leslie was justifiably concerned and upset on the phone. I thought of the above sentence and told her about it. I couldn't remember where it came from, but as I settled in for about 6 hours of sleep at a Motel 6 east of KC I knew I would be looking it up the next morning.

At about 4:00 AM I got my answer. After waking up, I remembered that this line is part of the Desiderata, which is a favorite poem that I haven't mentioned much here. Googling the phrase confirmed this, and also provided a link to information on the poem's author, Max Ehrmann. Included in the Wikipedia entry for the poem is the following:

On August 26, 2010, a bronze statue of Max Ehrmann sitting on a park bench was unveiled in Terre Haute, Indiana, his hometown, with the sculpture done by Bill Wolfe. On a nearby walkway, some lines of the poem are also available to be read by passersby.

Seeing that my planned journey on Interstate 70 would take me right past Terre Haute, I deviated slightly and entered the city on old U.S. 40 in the late morning hours, winding up at the intersection of 7th and Walnut, which is of some note itself to highway buffs as the former intersection of U.S. 40 and U.S. 41.

It is here, situated in the background of this photo, that the small plaza and the bronze likeness of Max Ehrmann has been placed.

Mr. Ehrmann's likeness is sitting on a park bench with pen and pad in hand, attired in clothing appropriate to the turn of the 20th century. I noticed at least one group of people come by and pose for pictures on the bench with the sculpture.

Born in 1872, Mr. Ehrmann studied English, Law and Philosophy at DePauw and Harvard, returning to Terre Haute in 1898 for a brief law career before devoting his time fully to writing. He died in 1945 at the age of 72. Much like Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin, Mr. Ehrmann was born in the Midwest just after the Civil War and lived through the enlightened period of the Industrial Revolution, the dawn of broadcast media, two World Wars, and the Great Depression.

Mr. Ehrmann's chronicles of that age tended toward the spiritual, but he did not achieve widespread notoriety until the Desiderata, which was 'discovered' about 20 years after Ehrmann's death. The poem is featured prominently in the small plaza, with snippets embedded amongst the brickwork.

The short deviation from my planned route of travel proved most worthwhile - I would have liked to travel more on U.S. 40 before it re-joined I-70 further into Indiana, but elected to try to make up some time. I did conclude my journey with an easy 60-mile drive through the hills of eastern Ohio, on U.S. 22 between Cambridge and Steubenville before it crossed the Ohio into West Virginia, turned into four lanes, and led me to a newer expressway spur past the Pittsburgh airport. I arrived at Leslie's work just as she was getting done for the day, and we followed each other home.

If you are not familiar with the Desiderata, by all means Google it and look at its myriad online representations, including the way I first heard it, in a spoken word recording by Les Crane when I was 11 years old. I found something else written by Max Ehrmann that seems appropriate to starting off a new life in familiar surroundings - hopefully you will get something out of it as well:

A Prayer by Max Ehrmann

Let me do my work each day; and if the darkened hours of despair overcome me, may I not forget the strength that comforted me in the desolation of other times.

May I still remember the bright hours that found me walking over the silent hills of my childhood, or dreaming on the margin of a quiet river, when a light glowed within me, and I promised my early God to have courage amid the tempests of the changing years. Spare me from bitterness and from the sharp passions of unguarded moments.

May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit. Though the world knows me not, may my thoughts and actions be such as shall keep me friendly with myself.

Lift up my eyes from the earth, and let me not forget the uses of the stars. Forbid that I should judge others lest I condemn myself. Let me not follow the clamor of the world, but walk calmly in my path.

Give me a few friends who will love me for what I am; and keep ever burning before my vagrant steps the kindly light of hope.

And though age and infirmity overtake me, and I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams, teach me still to be thankful for life, and for time's olden memories that are good and sweet; and may the evening's twilight find me gentle still.

Have a great week ahead.

Life Springs Forward

2011-04-01T17:50:00.002-04:00

McMillen Photography - Ed Hughes

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

Happy April!

Our wedding was hectic in the planning and execution (as I guess most weddings are) all the way up to the ceremony. That, and the reception, went off without a hitch. Two days of rain showers followed by two inches of snow on Thursday evening gave way to sunshine on Saturday, and a tenuous glimpse of what is sure to be warmer days ahead.

The high spirits and well-wishes of those in attendance, combined with the happiness that was almost palpable between Leslie and I, made the wedding and events afterward almost one big, frenetic, happy blur. I missed having some people there to celebrate with me, most notably my son, but with life translating itself back toward a more normal pace I think it won't be long before we can share some good times together again.

We left the following day for a short week in the Florida Keys, and are getting back into something that seems more difficult for me, regardless of my familiarity with Leslie's house - acclimating into a routine. I have never been a dog owner in adult life, and walking Lilah has been a change in responsibility for me that I find a challenging, yet welcome one.

I am trying to get some other tasks accomplished associated with moving, and hope to get these done before starting work at one of the area Home Depot stores next week. They're telling me I'll get close to 40 hours a week during their busy part of the year, which is rapidly approaching save for the cold temperatures that seem to represent one last great act of defiance on the part of winter.

I'm starting this next chapter of my life with little expectations other than to reinforce the already strong bond I have with my wife, try to make a decent living, and get back to doing what I know best. Perhaps after all that is done I will have more time to get involved in things that I always wanted to do when I lived here before, but never had time. I intend to take things slow to start. Writing helps keep these things clearer in my head.

Leslie and I would like to send some well-deserved recognition toward some Pittsburgh-area businesses that serve what has to be termed the wedding and special event "industry". These local small businesses did an excellent job in providing outstanding customer service at a reasonable price. Those in the Pittsburgh area planning a wedding or other special event should give the following your consideration:

A Party Place Rentals, Ross Township

Carol's Cakes, Center Township

Janice's Catering, Ambridge

McMillen Photography, Waynesburg

Ziggy's Tuxedos, Suits, and DJ Service, Center Township

Enjoy the springtime..no April Fool. I think that we will enjoy one of those Pittsburgh traditions that I missed this time of year in Colorado - the Lenten Fish Fry.

Have a great weekend.

On The Road

2011-03-06T12:30:00.000-05:00

My love is in league with the freeway

Its passion will ride, as the cities fly by

And the tail-lights dissolve, in the coming of night

And the questions in thousands take flight

My love is a-miles in the waiting

The eyes that just stare, and the glance at the clock

And the secret that burns, and the pain that grows dark

And it's you once again

Leading me on - leading me down the road

Driving beyond - driving me down the road

My love is exceedingly vivid

Red-eyed and fevered with the hum of the miles

Distance and longing, my thoughts do provide

Should I rest for a while at the side

Your love is cradled in knowing

Eyes in the mirror, still expecting they'll come

Sensing too well when the journey is done

There is no turning back - no

There is no turning back - on the run

My love is in league with the freeway

Oh the freeway, and the coming of night-time

My love is in league with the freeway

Initiate Shutdown Sequence

2011-03-02T09:30:00.018-05:00

Sounds awfully cold and technical for making a major change in one's life, doesn't it?
I think so too.

Sorting through things, packing, discarding, setting aside for the future - this always brings me face-to-face with the past, what was and what could have been. I spent a good deal of time on the phone with Leslie yesterday, but came away with unresolved feelings of remorse for things forgotten or unsaid. I'm filled with regret for being too divided, too splintered, too preoccupied with the trivialities that spew from our hasty lives and myriad devices to focus on what is truly important.

True, the Internet is a valid tool for many things. I spent time today finalizing our honeymoon. Does it really matter where we go and what we do, if we are both not fully present in those precious moments? This is my problem. How do I resolve it?

For years my bride-to-be has been talking to me and sending me letters and clippings about some of the things we are reading about more and more now; about the perils of technology and its potential ability to strip us of our humanity, even while it "connects" us in ways not imagined a flicker of memory ago.

While packing yesterday I came upon the manila envelope that contains Leslie's letters and clippings, and found a newspaper article - from July 10, 2005 - that is prescient in its assertions and painfully relevant to what is happening to us today.

Patricia Dalton, a clinical psychologist in Washington, DC, wrote then in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Ever since the first electric bulb shed artificial light, we have been detaching ourselves from our natural rhythms. Business travelers cross time zones and go right back to work; adults extend their hours by bringing work home with them; teenagers contact friends anywhere at any time of the day or night.
Until, that is, they end up in therapists' offices, stopped in their tracks by physical or psychological dysfunction. Many blame themselves when things go wrong. They minimize the impact of our supercharged environment on their psychological well-being.

The column goes into greater depth about the impact of technology on so many different parts of our lives. "I don't mean to underestimate the benefits of technology", Dr. Dalton writes. "We can stay in touch with relatives and friends who live at a distance. We can get work done more efficiently. Huge amounts of information are at our fingertips. But the angst and dysfunction I've described are real."

I have worked for many years in professions that seek to either leverage the latest technology for the benefit of moving and evaluating more information, or works hard to keep up with society's leveraging of it for the same purposes. The proliferation of the Internet, and of wireless information delivery, and it's slow, corkscrewing integration into our society, is having some really nasty effects on our abilities to slow down, and enjoy each other in the simplest ways.

This is coming too close to some real issues that I have in my life, and I don't really have enough time to expand upon them here. It's probably a good time to make an exit for a while, so that I can get the things done that are really important, and interface with those people who matter so much. Time to shut down.

Postscript, 3/2/11: Joe and Linda Skinner's column in the February 25 Free Press (not posted online yet), titled "Immortality or Immolation?", makes reference to more recent news stories that reinforce Dr. Dalton's warnings in 2005. Specifically, Time Magazine's recent coverage which reports that children, on average, spend 7 hours a day engaged in various online activities, and ponders the effects on their young, developing brains as a result.

One wonders what the effects could be on an aging brain that is trying to keep up, rather than ignore the revolution.

My friend Linda Skinner, writing in the "He Said/She Said" style that is the hallmark of her and her husband's online dialogue, said it simply and wisely:

"I cannot help but think I would not get the same thrill from a blinky light machine with a faultless memory as I get from talking with you. I don't care how many USB ports you might have, I prefer to be hugged by your warm arms. Although, a cyborg would know how to pile the dishes and load the dishwasher properly."

I'll close with something else that Leslie shared with me. Perhaps it speaks more about what we have left behind than what we have to look forward to. If that's the case, then I think that we, myself included, have left behind a critical part of humanity that may be as unrecoverable as it is possible to turn back the clock.

*******

The Man and the Child
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It is the man in us who works;

Who earns his daily bread and anxious scans
The evening skies to know tomorrow's plans;
It is the man who hurries as he walks;
Finds courage in a crowd; shouts as he talks;
Who shuts his eyes and burrows through his task;
Who doubts his neighbor and who wears a mask;
Who moves in armor and who hides his tears.
It is the man in us who fears.

It is the child in us who plays;
Who sees no happiness beyond today's;
Who sings for joy; who wonders, and who weeps;
It is the child in us at night who sleeps.
It is the child who silent turns his face,
Open and maskless, naked of defense,
Simple with trust, distilled of all pretense,
To sudden beauty in another's face -

It is the child in us who loves.

*******

Good-bye for now.

Focus on Felines

2011-02-27T09:12:00.007-05:00

"Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat."

- Mark Twain

I've been living with cats for over 25 years. I've written about some of them in the past, but I thought while I had a spare moment I'd introduce you to some others that I've been privileged to know , including one recent addition:

Meet Huxley

Evan had been looking for a kitten for a while, ever since Smokey left us. When a co-worker offered him one who had already been neutered and vaccinated, he jumped at the opportunity, and the brown tabby above has been residing with us for about a month now.

Huxley is pleasant and well-behaved for the most part. He and Bandit have had their moments, but nothing that we didn't expect. He is a kitten, right down to adventures with a laser pointer.

Huxley meets Bandit.

Huxley's favorite activity with me is to climb on top of the computer monitor when I'm working, then reach over and try to catch the cursor. I think that he represents my conscience when I'm on the computer too long. Lately he's discovered that my old CRT monitor gives off heat, and so he sleeps on top of it sometimes. He seems to want to be close to one of us most of his waking hours.

I like Huxley, but I will likely miss watching him grow up. Those priceless kitten videos need to be made..now.

In Memory: Miss Tilley

Tilley belonged to Leslie. She passed away on January 30 at roughly 15 years of age. Leslie had her from when she went to Vet school in Alabama. Tilley was small for an adult cat, with larger than usual ears and a very short, more demure and dignified stride.

Tilley and I got along, but it's Leslie's dog Lilah that seems to be missing her the most. Tilley would allow Lilah to play with her, and sit or lay next to her on the couch. The other cats are largely not of the disposition to be picking up that role, at least for now.

Surin

Surin belongs to one of my neighbors - I don't know which one. I don't even know his/her gender, just the name from the tag. Surin is some kind of Siamese mix, with a faint cream color and the signature blue eyes.

Surin is curious and friendly, and came into the house when invited once. Bandit sometimes chases Surin off, but he/she returns fairly often. We'll see how he/she reacts to Huxley.

Elle

Elle is another of Leslie's cats, is only about 2 or 3 years old, and while somewhat reminiscent of Huxley in appearance, can be friendly but is independent and mischievous. Lately Elle has grown quite a bit, which seems to have mellowed her out somewhat. This is a picture of Elle with Michaela a couple of years ago. Lilah is lonely without Tilley around, but Elle will have nothing to do with her.

Tommie

Tommie has been with Leslie for several years. He came to the clinic she was working at, and needed surgery for a blocked urethra. He's survived longer than most cats who have had that procedure, and seems to crave affection when he's not asserting his alpha male self with Elle or Lilah. He's a big boy, but not overweight. He can be a bit temperamental, but what guy wouldn't be in a houseful of girls? Just kidding...

"I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul."

- Jean Cocteau

One constant in my travels has been the presence of a cat. The only time that I haven't lived with one since 1984 was my first 5 months in Grand Junction. In this context I feel what Cocteau was feeling - a cat lends an elegantly sentient quality to what would otherwise be a lifeless space.

The Home Depot store in Grand Junction has a cat. Since I saw him, I don't think about the store the same way. His presence adds a unique quality to the corporate sameness of these kinds of places. It probably helps with the occasional bird or two that flies in as well.

Today begins a week of deliberation, sorting, discarding, cleaning, packing, and donating. I think about what I brought with me to Colorado nearly 16 years ago, and this time what will return east with me and what will remain behind until some undetermined time.

To go with the collection of inanimate objects on each end of the journey, there will be cats (and a dog or two) alongside the people that populate a space and give it life, meaning, and relevance.

Have a good week ahead.

Waxing about 'Words'

2011-02-23T15:15:00.014-05:00

Yesterday I finished up my final production and post-production work for the "Words" program at KAFM Community Radio. My co-producer, Linda Skinner, will be continuing to work with the program for a while until new producers are trained and ready, but with my imminent departure from the area she felt it was also time to move on.

For those unfamiliar, "Words" involves school-age children learning a word in the dictionary - it's spelling, definition, and usage - and recording a segment about that word, including using it in a sentence. Linda and I would then edit this recording with a musical selection appropriate to the word's definition or usage, into a short audio clip (usually around 2 minutes in length) that is aired three times each weekday on KAFM.

The logistics of the program can be daunting. After the recording, editing, and post-production are complete, we compile a CD of all of the children from a particular school, class, or group and provide copies to each participant. We encouraged the participation of home-schooled children, and even had an 'open mic' night last year.

Linda, as a professional educator, handles the recruitment of classes, doing an introduction to the concept in conjunction with the teachers involved, and working closely with students to choose a word or craft a sentence. Both of us handled recording and editing, and I specialized in post-production, programming the segments, generating a calendar, and completing the CDs for the month and for the participants.

Since taking over production duties in November of 2006, Linda and I have produced nearly 1,000 segments. I tried to calculate the amount of time required for everything, and came up with an average of something like 8 hours a week, every week.

I took on this project in the midst of my late wife's illness to give me something else to think about besides work, parenting, and making sure she was receiving proper care. Technology afforded me the ability to edit and do post-production on a laptop at home, which was absolutely essential then.

We're grateful for the support of KAFM station management, and for those local organizations who supported and continue to support "Words" as underwriters, especially in a tough economy. Enstrom Candies has been there throughout. We greatly appreciate their commitment.

I attached some examples of "Words" segments to illustrate what we tried to accomplish. The first is the most straightforward example - a word that may not lend itself to an immediate match in a database of song titles (thank God for Amazon and ITunes), but with a little imagination a pleasant, meaningful match is found. You'll hear what I mean.

We used varieties of music in keeping not only with the mission of KAFM, but also to reach out across generations and perhaps expose kids to musical styles they might otherwise miss. It doesn't matter what decade you're living in - one of the most incredible singing voices ever recorded belonged to Sarah Vaughan:

Listen!

We often use instrumental selections in "Words" segments. Often, a student would select a word in another language, or representative of a particular region or culture. We would usually accompany these with music from that region, often with what is known as "world music", popularized in places such as the Putamayo record label.

This next word, while seemingly easy to program (just find some violin music, right?), called for some additional attention to detail. I was drawn to one of my favorite films, The Red Violin, and selected a snippet from it's Oscar-winning original score. Combined with the voice of the student, which has an eerily calm, almost soothing quality to it, this remains my favorite segment:

Listen!

It's no coincidence that I programmed this to air on Valentine's Day. In fact, there were a few opportunities to engage in some recognition of holidays with an appropriate word awaiting editing and production. I always tried to program a word with a raucous theme and music for New Year's Eve; this past Valentine's Day the word aired was "Pheromone", with appropriate music and lyrics.

Some words have offered the opportunity for some impromptu and subtle social commentary.

One year during the second Bush administration I took a student's recording of the word "Anarchy", mixed it with The Clash's "Clampdown", and programmed it to air on President's Day. More recently, Linda and I were presented with a word selected by a middle school student in 2009 - "Dispensary" - and saw an opportunity to make it topical and current with the choice of music.

I saw the below clip as an opportunity to take a word that has applications across human history and personalize it for today, and even perhaps for the member of the generation that recorded it.

The music and lyric perhaps laments that very thing that we as volunteers in community media are trying to prevent from happening, by working with dedicated teachers who sense the value of such an activity to expand the horizons of students beyond the textbook or the classroom, and especially beyond the lure of what corporate media sees fit to provide them with:

Listen!

"Any escape might help to smooth
the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
the restless dreams of youth..."

I would have preferred to do more with the program, such as using the Internet to make current and previous recordings available, and draw interest to participation in the program, which had waxed and waned over the years as schedules, class sizes, and limited budgets for field trips to the station became factors for many educators.

We eventually leveraged technology to take the studio to some schools, with interesting results; the raw audio contained things like class bells, slamming locker doors, and giggles from other classmates that were at times difficult to deal with in editing. It was also interesting to note how the person being recorded would speed up their reading after the class bell rang. While this was easily handled in most cases with editing software, it was a potent illustration of how conditioned we all are to certain things.

My experience with "Words" as someone outside the educational community showed me one big thing as well; that the quality of education is truly a partnership between parent, student, and teacher, but the quality of leadership and dedication established by our teachers sets the foundation for the quality of our educational system.

That's one reason I'm sympathetic to the teachers and other public sector union members in Wisconsin and elsewhere, many of whom likely know that if government, like a corporation, can afford to cut corners somewhere, they will do it. Education is no place to be cutting corners. At the same time, people working in these professions should recognize their importance, strive to excel, and utilize what they do have in a manner that will benefit students and their community the most.

Take care.

The Crite Sees the (Red) Light

2011-02-20T09:30:00.007-05:00

For quite a while now, this blog has included in its sidebar a widget from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), indicating their rating of the status of student speech at Mesa State College. FIRE grades colleges and universities on a red, yellow, or green light scale that reflects the amount or nature of a school's commitment to the free expression of ideas and opinions.

Mesa State's red light rating is defined in part by FIRE as the rated school having "at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech". FIRE's rating was justified by what they saw as overly restrictive language in student handbooks and housing regulations. These are available for review here. I've written previously about some of these restrictions as they impact what would otherwise be lawful political speech. This came up at Mesa State during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

This past week, the college's rating caught the attention of the Mesa State Criterion. Their editorial in the February 15 edition laments the college's ability, through their policies, to "take anything it doesn't like and chalk up the offense to harassment".

The editorial went further to complain in print about what the paper saw as MSC administration's recent attempts to "(make) it incredibly hard for the newspaper to reach its goals of being a campus watchdog and covering controversial news". Administration apparently did this by routing all media inquiries (including the Crite's) through Dana Nunn, MSC Media Relations Director, and by instructing all other involved MSC staff not to talk to the media. The editorial cited, among other things, a recent outbreak of bedbugs in a dormitory as an example of this.

As much as I think that Dana Nunn has a somewhat legitimate job to do in today’s reputation-sensitive, message-management world, I really don't think that it's the MSC administration's job to provide the Criterion with access to whomever or whatever they want. I’m actually wondering what there is about the fact that Ms. Nunn is the point person for media inquiries that would prevent the Criterion from reporting on anything they wanted to.

If the Criterion staff is bent on being a "campus watchdog", they need to rely more on what they are hopefully learning in journalism school. This includes using multiple sources (sometimes off-the-record), and tools such as vigorous research and public records requests. In the case of the bedbugs in the dorms, I would be attempting contact with those students affected by the outbreak, and making requests under the Colorado Open Records Act for invoices or disbursements related to any expenses for professional pest control services at the dorm in question.

The Criterion has a somewhat lively history of run-ins with MSC administration, most recently in 2004 during the hiring process for current MSC President Tim Foster. To their credit, the Criterion staff is trying hard to meet the challenges presented by a complex institution, rife with equal measures of political correctness and chicanery. Going outside those lines so carefully drawn for them by professional spin doctors is how the Crite, like any other journalistic entity, becomes a watchdog with teeth that hopefully aren't missing every time a new semester begins.

The Crite's editorial concludes with a plea for transparency, and for a commitment from administration to work toward an environment where free speech rights are respected and protected. Making sure that infringements of those rights are properly investigated and reported, and enlisting the assistance of organizations such as FIRE, the ACLU, and others when necessary, is one way of assuring that the Criterion remains a dynamic and relevant "voice of the students" well into the future.

The Criterion staff will be hard at work later today putting together this week's edition for publication Tuesday. The commitment outlined above starts this week, and every week that they publish in the future.

Best of luck to them.

Bookstores - The Phoenix of Old Media

2011-02-18T04:24:00.011-05:00

I was in Pittsburgh with Leslie from Sunday afternoon until Wednesday evening. We had several things to do regarding the wedding, which included applying for our marriage license. We did this on Valentine's Day - I took her out to dinner that evening, and then to an Irish Pub (she likes those) in the Regent Square section of Pittsburgh.

We got most of what we needed to get done taken care of, and discovered a couple more things that need to be addressed. We're not having a sumptuous affair by any means, but where we've decided to have it, who is or isn't coming, and what is and isn't happening are complicating things slightly. I'm confident that it will all work out as it should. Add to this the fact that Leslie started a new job on Thursday, and things begin to approach a critical mass of sorts. I move in a little over two weeks. Enough said - onward..

I got back to Grand Junction early Thursday morning to find that the reported bankruptcy of Borders Books had claimed the chain's Grand Junction store as a casualty. This is personal - I love bookstores, and helped to set up and open this place almost seven years ago. I worked there part-time and on weekends for about a year. They encouraged people to "adopt" a section of the store and work on it until it was fully stocked and merchandised properly - Art and Architecture was my section.

Borders' demise was reportedly hastened by the softening of the book market in general as a result of online sellers such as Amazon undercutting full retail prices. The chain also seemed to take a somewhat ham-handed approach to the burgeoning e-reader marketplace. I can't fault them, as I have taken the same approach - I want nothing to do with them.

I can understand and embrace technology with the same deliberate speed as the rest of the world, if necessary. I rarely find it to be so. This is much the same when it comes to books. The tactile satisfaction that comes from the handling of a trade-size paperback is amplified by the wealth of ideas contained within it.

Even though I read fewer books at a quantitative level, I own a lot of them. The ones I enjoy and refer to the most will travel with me. A good portion of them have already been passed along to the next generation, as I expect all of them will someday. "To my children, I bequeath my early 20th century set of Dickens" seems more important and heartfelt than "my Kindle and all of its digital contents". I also seriously doubt the ability of any iPad to effectively duplicate a large photo of a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, resplendent on glossy, thick paper and bound in a large volume on a coffee table.

I felt some of that sentimentality in Emily Anderson's (paywalled) reporting on the local closing in the Sentinel. She interviewed several customers who seemed accustomed to browsing with a cup of coffee, enjoying the peacefulness and near solemnity of the place. The Grand Junction Borders, like many of their stores, is a well-designed, functional and comfortable space to be in. It will be missed.

In what seems to be an almost paradoxical turn of events in the Internet age, Ms. Anderson also deftly demonstrated the survival skills of independent and used booksellers in the Grand Valley. From those accounts, things like a focus on a niche subject, providing specialized or more personal customer service, and a quaint or otherwise special atmosphere have helped to cement the independent bookseller as a larger force in the industry than the sum of its' parts.

Many hours of my childhood were spent in the Penguin Bookshop in Sewickley, PA. The business has been in Sewickley since 1929. In 2007, both the business and the building that housed it were purchased, razed, and rebuilt into an impressive venue.

The owners have leveraged and embraced the power of the Internet, as well as tapped into the energy of a network of independent bookstores, to make their location uniquely positioned and collectively relevant. Just by surfing their website for this post, I found that a new volume of previously unpublished short stories by the late Kurt Vonnegut has just been released. I think I will ask Leslie to reserve it for me at the library, for after I get settled there.

In Ray Bradbury's science fiction masterpiece Fahrenheit 451, human beings literally "become" the books that were banned as part of what Wikipedia describes as "a hedonistic anti-intellectual America that has completely abandoned self-control". The book ends with a seemingly paradoxical but appropriate premise, given the occupation of the main character - a society raising itself from the ashes in part from the realization of what it was, and of the past it gave up.

Books are hardly headed for the ash can - I have hope that our society will avoid the temporary pitfalls of the latest, greatest, most hyped-up "next new thing", and embrace what really matters - what in many cases can be found in a book. That includes "The Good Book", regardless of what you may read on the web.

Have a great weekend.