The Blurgh

For the past eight months, my partner and I have been asking ourselves the question, “What if?” We wanted to imagine a world that exists on the other side of the problems in which our city is currently engulfed; we saw a Pittsburgh with a vibrant economy, a world-class transit system, a dynamic cultural scene, and opportunities anywhere and everywhere.To do this, we employed the services of two fictional characters, Frank Zielinski and Gretchen Parker, and we asked them to tell their stories first-hand. Frank was a student entering his senior year at the University of Pittsburgh, a young man full of potential but unclear about his path in life. Gretchen, a graduate of Carlow University, used the unique blend of past, present, and future that Pittsburgh oozes out of every pore as fuel for her fledgling career as a writer.

The intent was to be short on prescription but long on inspiration–we didn’t want to be fortune-tellers, but rather dreamers. In that way, we wanted to be part of the solution.

While that was the original goal, it quickly developed into something different. As our various storylines took shape, it became clear that there was, in fact, a certain degree of prescription happening. Pittsburgh, in the world of the Blurgh, becomes the way it is because individuals took action. Individuals. Not politicians, not developers…individuals. Some of these storylines include:

- Students for a Sustainable Pittsburgh - a group of law students banded together to advocate for women/minority/family friendly policies. As they entered the workforce, they took on the old boy’s club mentality head-on and began changing the fabric of power in Pittsburgh.

- Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation - two students, one out of Pitt and the other out of Carlow, created a foundation to promote sports for girls, childcare legislation, and after-school programs. Also where Gretchen works.

- Community Renewables and Recycling (CRR) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) - A company founded by two individuals who decided to combine community organizing, renewable energy, and home improvement. Also where Frank has his internship and starts his career after graduation.

- Breaking Down the Digital Divide (B3D) (1, 2) - an organization that Frank’s mom works for dedicated to bringing technology and technology education to kids and neighborhoods that were getting left behind. It was started by a few prominent bloggers who decided to take action to combat something they all felt strongly about.

- The Artists Marketplace Network - a group of artists coming together to transform some of Pittsburgh’s industrial past into a mecca for sustainable creativity.

From the big organizations to the small local bars and venues, the world of the Blurgh becomes the way it is because of individuals throwing caution to the wind and making it happen.

So, now what?

In addition to envisioning a better future, we wanted to start a conversation. Frank and Gretchen’s story is now over, and in all honesty, we don’t know when or if any other stories will appear here, but let’s keep that conversation going. What can we do, as individuals, to start taking small steps towards creating the world we want to live in?

Lasting change doesn’t come in one massive swoop. It happens when many people take small steps, and those steps are built upon by more people taking steps, and then by more people, and so on.

Please comment or email us with your thoughts. If you have an idea and are looking for other interested people, let us know. If you’re already doing something and want to get the word out, put up a comment. Maybe this site will evolve into something else, or maybe not, but as long as the conversation keeps going, it’s served its purpose.

And thank you to all of our readers and commenters–we appreciate your support.

In Solidarity,

Brett Wiewiora & Christina Cann
Founders of the Blurgh

I’ve been writing about my internship at CRR for a while now, and it’s really been a tremendous experience thus far. Just this morning, though, I got the big news–we got the go-ahead to move forward with the Polish Hill project!

As I mentioned earlier on, this project was different than other projects CRR has pursued in the past. Not only was this project meant to implement neighborhood-wide improvements, but it also was designed to galvanize the community. A lot of the work I’ve been doing has been in that area–canvassing, meeting with neighbors, and trying to build support–and apparently it’s actually worked! I was looking over the final details of the plan, and it’s pretty ambitious:

• Conduct a neighborhood wide energy audit on buildings to identify structures which need better insulation or can benefit from other energy saving improvements, and then implement those improvements.

• Install locally manufactured solar panels on the sides of buildings and roofs that receive the most light (approximately 40 structures).

• Work with 10-20 home-owners and businesses to install water-reclamation systems

• Secure a parcel of land to be used as a community compost collection and distribution center, (which may also be turned into a biogas collector down the line)

• Assess the possibility of also building a medium-scale wind generator on that piece of land.

• Partner with a local biodiesel manufacturer to collect used frying oil from local businesses and homes and use it to create biodiesel, which will then be sold back to the neighborhood at a discount

• Provide general consultation to home and business owners on how to improve the energy-efficiency of their buildings.

The project is getting paid for by a number of sources, including the Polish Hill Neighborhood Association, city, state, and federal grants, and also from the home and business owners themselves. After-all, these improvements will save them money in the long run!

But more importantly, this is a huge project that neighbors are doing with and for each other. It never ceases to amaze me how tremendous and seemingly impossible things can get done when people come together and decide to make it happen.

Has anyone noticed how much public art there is in Pittsburgh?  Even on some of the most random, out-of-the-way streets, I’ve managed to catch a glimpse of beautiful pieces done on the sides of buildings, intricate chalk-art on the sidewalk, or beautifully worked storefronts.  There’s been a lot of efforts in Pittsburgh throughout the years to sponsor public art, even graffiti art, but I have to admit that my favorites are the pieces that are on the verge of legality.  Some people call it vandalism, but I prefer the term guerrilla art.

It comes in many different varieties, but there’s just something about it that I find greatly inspiring, especially when there’s no ulterior motive other than to beautify an otherwise drab our downright ugly place.  Just think–there are people out there who are willing to risk prosecution just to make a place a little more beautiful.  It blows my mind.

Of course, a lot of guerrilla art is political, which, depending on which side you’re on, can either be really amazing or really annoying.  This brings me to the inspiration of today’s post: potholes.

As everyone in the city knows, tis’ pothole season.  I’m often amazed at how insanely huge some of them get, and also how slowly these obviously dangerous road hazards tend to get filled.  You’d think that after almost 3 centuries of existence, the city would have figured out a way to deal with them.  Yes…one would think that.

Well, on my way to the train stop this morning, I was surprised to see that someone had taken matters into their own hands.  There had been a crater-sized pothole on my street for months, and just the other day I had even pondered giving it a name since it was obviously going to be staying around for a while longer.  When I passed it today, however, in it’s place was a traffic cone, but not of the run-of-the-mill orange ones–instead, this one was a piece of art.  Full of abstract shapes and bright colors, it was truly a sight to see.  Further down the block I noticed a couple more, and the other people on the sidewalk were looking at them with similar interest.

What a fabulous idea!  Not only does it beautify an otherwise depressing site (streets so damaged that they are sometimes reminiscent of a war-zone), but it also brings these dangerous holes to the attention of drivers.

So, hats off to whoever put them up, and I hope it catches on!  And for the city workers who’ll eventually fill the holes, do everyone a favor and plop the cone on a hole that you know won’t be filled for a while.  Maybe we’ll even give it a name.

I attended a meeting of Students for a Sustainable Pittsburgh for the first time in a while last night, and I’ve missed a lot of stuff. The last thing I mentioned was how they were lobbying the city to enact the Open Doors Initiative, which is a program to make it easier for recent college grads to enter careers in city government. That did end up passing, so for those of you who are graduating and thinking about what the hell you’ll be doing with yourself in the coming months, contact SSP for details.

Given that it’s the end of the semester and a whole new batch of seniors is about to enter the “real world,” the topic of the meeting last night was how to stay involved with SSP and the university community after graduation. A lot of SSP alum have gone on to do amazing things, but I was surprised to find out that there was no official method being used to keep in touch with past members. Starting this year, though, there will be a new officer position created to do just that.

I think it’s a great idea, because I never really realized how important it is to keep in touch with people and maintain networks until just the past few months. The quality of the work you do is important, but the people who know the work you’re capable of doing is even more important. Or at least that was SSP’s pitch for the idea

So, in the spirit of helping those who will come later, I signed up for the SSP alum email list and to be a mentor for those who need one. Now I just have to get my shit together so I have something to mentor them about…

Given that today seems like a beautiful, if crisp, day, I think I’m going to see if I can get some folks together tonight to cut a rug at a bar/restaurant in Bloomfield called Manic Attic. It’s a small place (as all places in Bloomfield are), but they have a house band that plays music that’s not too in-your-face, but also not drowsy. The kind of place where it’ possible to sit at the bar and talk to friends or get down on the dance floor, and it’s all good.

One of my favorite parts about the place, though, is the welcoming atmosphere. Most dance places, especially in other towns, have a real “screw you” attitude towards their clientèle–if you’re not hot and/or a great dancer, you don’t belong. Those kinds of places feed a common perception people have that they have to be good at something before they even try it, lest they embarrass themselves.

What the hell kind of BS is that? Manic Attic doesn’t buy into that sort of self-defeating and elitist drivel, and the way they counter it is with leading by example.

Although I don’t know the folks personally, I heard that the place was started by a group of friend’s who were fed up with how the dance scene was so non-inclusive, so they started their own place. Some of them are there almost every night, and they just rock out with reckless abandon. It’s hard to see them having fun and not want to join in, and that’s usually what ends up happening, even for the hard nuts to crack. It also doesn’t hurt that the band is totally rockin–live music makes a HUGE difference!

I mentioned a few days ago how I was going with some other CRR folks to meet with a local biodiesel manufacturer.  As it turns out, we met with them at exactly the right time.

Unlike the ethanol craze in the late 2000s, biodiesel never saw a major spike in popularity, followed by a downturn–it’s always been on a steady uphill climb of acceptance. Mainstream biodiesel is still predominantly made from various vegetable oils, but it can be made from other types of fatty oils, including used vegetable oil and even animal fat.  When we were speaking with the owner of the plant, it became apparent that she first got into the biodiesel business because of this potential–at one point she told us, “If I could just find a group of businesses and consumers who weren’t afraid to go out on the ledge a little to organize themselves, we could build a very effective operation to take used frying oil, process it, and then sell it out on the market.” After we heard that, we knew we found an ally.

In the next week, we’re going to present a plan to the Polish Hill leaders to start a coordinated used frying oil collection service for both businesses and homes.  In return for the oil, the biodiesel plant will process it and sell it on the market and at a discount to any of the participating businesses and homes who have diesel vehicles (and to CRR, which has a lot of diesel vehicles).  I think people will be pretty excited about the plan, but I’m still a little nervous about the presentation!

For the past few months, I’ve been almost solely working on the community outreach portion of my internship at CRR. Last week I got a glimpse at another side, vendor outreach, and it’s a completely different animal.

The community side is a lot of canvasing, petitioning, meeting with people–things that any community organizer would be very familiar with. I’m not sure what to classify the vendor side as…maybe non-profit development work, or sales? In the scheme of things, it really is a very important part of the business. It involves meeting with businesses and manufacturers in the area, and sometimes outside, to pitch the mission of CRR and secure good prices on whatever it is that they sell and/or make, which can be anything from lumber to solar cells.

According to the folks that I’ve been working with, since CRR started 15 years ago there’s been a huge upswing of vendor’s and suppliers in Southwestern PA, especially for the more high-tech components. In the beginning, people were telling stories about how they were traveling across the country for the latest and greatest stuff to come out, but now it seems that the development of new ideas has caught up with the research in our own neck of the woods.

Today I’m going with some other CRR folks to see a local biodiesel producer who’s been around for almost 2 decades now. They’re someone that we’ve worked with before, so everyone is anticipating a smooth meeting, but I’m still a little nervous. I actually had to bust out some nice clothes, too, which also involved me having to remember how to tie a tie!

So there I am, hanging out at my favorite little café after work, waiting for Andi to show up so she can tell me all about her law school classmates’ drama and I can tell her the cute things my girls did today. I’m leafing though this magazine we got at the office this week and totally loving it. It’s called Femiyinz – awkward name, but awesome mag. It’s a new publication (this is the first issue ever) and it was started by three English/women’s studies majors at Chatham to highlight feminist issues with a bit of local flavor.

The barista walks by my table on her way back behind the counter, arms full of plates and coffee cups. She stops, backtracks a few steps, and stands right next to me. I look up to see her smiling broadly.

“You’re reading Femiyinz!” she cries. “My friends are going to be so psyched. They started that magazine. How did you get it?!”

I tell her about the PWF and how everyone was really impressed with it. She asks me what my favorite articles have been.

“I loved the piece about unions offering free childcare to mothers who are working to get off welfare and learn some trades,” I replied. “And the profile of the new president at the zoo was really cool.”

We talked for about twenty more minutes, long enough for Andi to come and join the conversation. It’s so cool having all these little outlets for feminism in Pittsburgh – from what my mom tells me, it was not exactly a feminist haven when she was my age. And how much do I love just randomly running into people who have a hand in all the cool stuff that’s going on around town?!

It’s that dreaded time of the semester again–midterms.  This time around it’s not too bad, but I am afraid that my biotech test is going to royally kick my butt.  There’s nothing like hoping everyone else in the class sucks at it as much as you do so that the curve will be enough to save you…it’s kind of like betting on who’ll lose a game instead of who’ll win it!

Otherwise, everything is going pretty well.  I had to tell CRR that I needed some extra time for studying last week, which they were cool about.  They’ve started hinting at some possibilities opening up after I graduate, which also makes me happy.  They’re good people and they do good work–it’s hard to get much better than that with an employer.

My directed study, though, has come to a bit of a roadblock.  We’ve done some interesting demographic research, which I’ll try to put up here sometime next week, and that shows some interesting trends.  What makes it hard, though, is trying to find a good measure of that nebulous thing we call “community.”  Some people have used things like fraternal organization membership and local sports clubs, but those plummet pretty much across the board nationally after the 1970s, even in places where there’s lots of “community,” so that doesn’t seem like it’ll provide a constant measure.

It’s also possible that what we call “community” has actually changed over the past hundred or so years.  Anyway, Dr. Lemley has a really good time thinking about this, but it’s starting to make my head spin.  Anyone out there have any ideas on the subject?  What does community mean to you?

This week, I’ve seen my first major triumph and first major defeat at CRR, and both of them happened within 24 hours of each other. If this is what life-after-school is really like, maybe I should start rethinking grad school…

A few days ago, I was out in Polish Hill with a couple CRR organizers, and we were making the rounds in the neighborhood trying to drum up support for the renovation project. Reaction has been mixed thus far, but we have been successful in getting a couple very enthusiastic supporters, so we were optimistic.

We came up to a door and rang the bell, and when the owner answered, we noticed that there were a dozen or so people in the living room. They were all home-owners who lived on that block, and they were having a meeting about different issues effecting them all like street conditions, snow plowing, etc. This was the perfect opportunity for us to make some good contacts, so went full-speed into talking about the project, and we were soon in the middle of the living room taking questions from a very engaged audience. By the time we left, we had a dozen names and numbers, commitments from several of them to speak with their neighbors, and a tremendously satisfying day. The next day, however, was nowhere near as smooth…

Besides canvassing, CRR does a lot of tabling and literature distribution. I’ve had some tabling experience before, and since everything’s been going so well, I was the lone person at a table setup outside one of the local businesses. We always get permission from the businesses before setting ourselves up, and often times businesses offer the space before we even ask because people tend to stop in the stores that we’re outside of.

Everything was going smoothly until a guy came up and started talking about how things would never change, and that a renovation project would never happen in Polish Hill. This was the first time I ever encountered any serious negativity, so I was a little taken aback. It seemed like this guy’s sole purpose in life was to be cynical and bring everyone else down with him, but I decided the best way to handle it was to counter any argument he came up with. He said it’ll never work, and I told him about neighborhoods where it did happen. He said that renewables will never be good enough, and I told him how solar cells these days are cheap and incredibly efficient, and so on.

This continued for over an hour.

At that point, the store owner came out and asked us both to leave. After the guy left, the owner apologized to me, but said that even though he supports us, he can’t allow incidents to happen outside his business. I packed up, and went back to the office.

Everyone there told me that this kind of stuff happens, and that you just have to get used to it. Although I know I shouldn’t have even tried to engage someone who was so obviously just a naysayer, I couldn’t help it. I really felt sorry for him. I personally feel like the definition of depression should be “the absence of hope,” and this guy made it obvious to everyone around him that he was majorly depressed. What he needed was some help; that kind of cynicism is a danger to himself and others.

I strongly feel that amazing things can happen when there’s hope, and when hope is coupled with ambition and opportunity, the world starts to change for the better. I’m just glad I work with people who feel the same way.