The Blurgh

This morning, as I was getting to the yellow line station, I was surprised to see a new face at the entrance.  For the past 10 years, the Post-Gazette has been printing a short Metro edition which was distributed free at most of the train stations around town every morning.  It’s been a big success for the PG, and has helped get the paper a lot more readers and advertisers.

As with all business, though, with success comes competition, and this morning I saw a small booth setup outside the station with a representative from the Pittsburgh City Paper distributing their new metro edition, along with some other freebies.  I grabbed both so I could compare the two, and I have to say that I’m pretty impressed.  The City Paper was a little more edgy and included some more off-the-wall content (for example, Alice Cooper turned 80 today), but the PG had more national and international headlines.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, but I’m guessing that both will get better as time goes on.  I’m also glad that PAT has so many paper recycling bins around…and that people actually use them!

Last night, I decided to be a patriotic Pittsburgher and meet my City Council member, Andrew Marsdale. He’s a relative newcomer - only elected a few years ago - but I like him a lot and he manages to do a lot of good for the Downtown area.

The meeting was held at a small café near my apartment and by the time I got there it was already full and Mr. Marsdale had already begun talking about the work he’s been doing on City Council. He’s particularly interested in the high-speed rail initiative that Students for a Sustainable Pittsburgh has been pushing for, so he talked about that a lot. Basically, he’s excited for it, and so are the mayor and a few other council members, but there are still some voices on the council who don’t see the importance of the tri-state rail system for Pittsburgh. They think that other cities in the area should take care of it.

But Marsdale disagrees. He thinks that the city of Pittsburgh is one of the foremost leaders in the region, and that while of course we need to reach out to other major cities, we should be taking the lead in developing this project. Most of the constituents who were there agreed.

Afterwards, he answered a few questions from people. I didn’t get a chance to ask him about anything, but I was pleasantly surprised that he praised the work the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation is doing with girls in the public school system. Not bad when your council person recognizes your organization for being so awesome!

This afternoon was one of the best times I’ve had in my life. Normally, at the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation, I work with girls who enjoy creative writing, but occasionally I’ll pitch in with the girls on sports teams as well. (I was pretty good at volleyball and soccer back in my day, though the girls who come to PWF for sports could have wiped the floor with my fifth grade self.) Anyway, this afternoon I, along with two of my colleagues, got to take 10 of the PWF girls to the North Side to meet the two new female coaches for the Steelers.

We all rode the blue line together to the North Side. Once we got off the subway, we walked the few blocks to Heinz Field. It was kind of slow going, because Samara’s still on crutches, but we arrived just in time to be greeted by some very chipper Steelers representatives, who escorted us up to one of the luxury boxes. The girls were enthralled with the box and took turns sitting on every piece of furniture in it. Then they started pretending that half of them were hot shot sports agents and the other half were star athletes being courted by the Steelers, so there was a lot of silly exchanges about trillion dollar offers and all the Faygo pop endorsements you could dream of.

A few minutes later, the two coaches entered the box and a hush fell over the girls. The special teams coach, Maddie Byers, spoke first about her experiences playing high school football in rural Texas and the prejudice she encountered in the community as a black girl who wanted to play football with the guys. She ended up breaking her school’s record for longest punt return during her sophomore year, and everyone in her town stopped complaining about her and started celebrating her. In college, she excelled once again on her school’s football team, but during her senior year she decided that what she really wanted to do was coach, so she started out as a coach for her own college’s team and worked her way up from there to her present position with the Steelers.

Next we heard from Elizabeth McGraw, the defensive backs coach. She is one tough woman. Like Maddie, she was a star athlete during her high school years, although Elizabeth was a kicker who comes from northern Ohio. She received an athletic scholarship to college and played on her school’s team until halfway through her junior year, when she was injured. She didn’t want to lose her scholarship, so her school offered her the opportunity to begin working with the team as a coach. She learned more about the defensive side of things in football and became really interested in it. After college, she coached a women’s football team in Ohio and then came to Pennsylvania to coach for the Pittsburgh Passion. A few years later, the Rooneys approached her about the defensive backs coaching position and she accepted it.

After the women spoke, lunch was served and the girls peppered the coaches with tons of questions. They were so excited to be sitting with women who were living out their dreams of one day making a living in the world of professional sports. The coaches were very gracious and patient with the girls. After lunch, we all trooped down to the field, where the coaches helped the girls with their techniques. We left to go back to the PWF around 4 and made our way to the subway, the girls chattering the whole way about what teams they want to coach for when they grow up.

One of the things that Gretchen’s fam asked us about when they were in town last weekend was what it’s like living downtown. When they lived in the area, the only people who lived downtown were uber-rich, and even for them it wasn’t all that livable. It was deserted after 5, there weren’t any grocery stores, and the activity-options weren’t so hot.

When they first asked us about it, though, we just looked at them like they were crazy. Although we don’t remember it ourselves, whoever planned the downtown living areas did a really good job. There’s lots of mixed income places, there’s no need for a car because there’s a couple nice grocery stores around the area, and if there was more to do at night we’d probably move out because it would be way too hip for us. It’s awesome to be right by Uptown, which is where most of the cool (and inexpensive) places are, and being that all of the train lines pass within a couple blocks from us we can get almost anywhere in the city. One of the best days we had last summer was when we took the red line out to Kennywood with a bunch of people and on the way back transferred to the blue and saw a movie at the Waterworks.

It also doesn’t hurt to be within easy walking distance of the stadiums, the arena, and the strip. We are saving up to buy a house though, so we won’t be living the dream forever, but for young people, it’s a pretty sweet option.

Over the weekend, Gretchen and I went to a Halloween costume party that some of her friends from work were throwing over in Squirrel Hill. I went as my usual “Werewolf in a business suit,” and Gretchen went as her usual “non-participating party-goer.” Fun was had by all.

My favorite part of the evening, though, was riding on the yellow line down there. Everyone was in costume, and since this is Pittsburgh, people had no problem striking up random conversations with total strangers. The driver de-activated the automated announcement system and proceeded to announce each stop using her best dracula impression, and each car had lights strung up on the inside and Halloween decorations throughout. They should have just stopped the trains, because every car was having a party of its own the whole way down. Nice touch, Port Authority!

The Forbes-Murray stop was also, for a lack of a better word, ridiculous. People were everywhere, even when we left to go home around 2:00 am, and there were performers, random people selling stuff…it felt a lot like the Strip. There’s so much new construction going up around there, too–it’s going to look totally different in a couple years.

Oh yeah…and the party was fun, too

Yesterday afternoon, I was just taking the first sips of my after-lunch decaf coffee when the door to the PWF flew open and Robin, one of my colleagues who works with girls in sports, burst in, her face extremely pale.

“Samara’s hurt,” she blurted out. “I think she broke her leg.”

I jumped up from my desk and followed Robin two blocks to the field that she and the girls had been using for baseball practice. A dozen girls surrounded Samara, her muscular frame on the ground, while Shalini, one of our high school student interns, knelt beside her. Her leg was bent at an odd angle and silent tears streamed down her cheeks.

I pulled out my cell phone and called an ambulance. It arrived less than two minutes later. The crew gently lifted Samara onto a stretcher and into the cab. I got in the front seat, while Shalini stayed in back. Robin stayed with the girls on the field. We went to UPMC Shadyside and the doctors worked quickly to take an x-ray of Samara’s leg - yup, broken - and then molded a cast. Her mother arrived as they were fitting the cast on her leg, and we stayed with her until the hospital released Samara. Shalini and I walked to the subway together, talking the whole way.

“I’m so glad Samara will be all right,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. “And I’m glad we didn’t have any hassles at the hospital.”

“Yeah, this national health care thing’s been working out pretty well,” she said.

I nodded. I can just barely remember the time before the U.S. had national health care - I was born in 2004, when millions of people in the country didn’t have health care. I can still remember the look on my mom’s face the day the U.S. decided to get with the program and consider health care a right, not a privilege. My mother worked as a nurse before she retired, and she used to come home with horror stories about her hospital not admitting people who needed medical attention because they lacked insurance to pay for what they needed. It took a toll on her every time, having to turn sick people away and tell them there was nothing she could do for them.

People predicted all sorts of horror stories - waiting months to see a general physician or having necessary surgeries postponed for weeks because of the wait. Nothing like that has happened. People are getting more preventive care, rather than letting medical conditions worsen until an emergency situation happens. It’s been more or less smooth sailing all along.

At 7 AM, I press the snooze button and crush a pillow onto my head. I am not ready for the day to begin. Today will be long and exhausting and yikes I don’t even want to think about it.

At 7:30 I grudgingly get up and shower, eat some scambled eggs for breakfast, down a glass of cranberry juice and walk a few blocks to the Wood Street station to catch the Yellow Line. I read an article about the mayor meeting with the current co-presidents of Students for a Sustainable Pittsburgh. I get off the train at Forbes & Murray.

At 9 AM I walk in the front doors of the small but welcoming office of the Pittsburgh Women’s Foundation and do paperwork until 3. It’s electronic paperwork (which never fails to crack me up), but boring and tedious as always. Why did I major in English again? Why not computer science so I could work for one of the dozens of software development or Internet behemoths in the city? Why not business so I could work for one of the companies here who are big into telecommuting and encouraging success among women and minorities and community development?

3 o’clock rolls around and the five students in my afterschool program arrive. Shante shows me the latest story she wrote for her fifth grade English class – it has a big “A+” on the top and she thanks me for helping her get her ideas out on paper so she could write the story she really wanted to write. Madison pulls her notebook out of her book bag and tells me, brown eyes wider than plates, that today at recess she thought of a great play she could write and perform with her schoolmates. I work with Maria for half an hour on a new poem she’s writing for her mother’s birthday and when I walk away she’s still scribbling down notes and ideas. I am reminded for the millionth time of why I decided to major in English.

I walk back to the Forbes and Murray stop, swept along by the crowd of workers eager to get home and spend time with the people they love. I notice the mural on the wall celebrating the history and future of Squirrel Hill, all bright colors and smiling faces. I listen to the melodies wafting through the air from the violinist on the next level down. I squeeze into a train car and actually read the advertisements for once – a neighborhood festival in Homewood, a new restaurant in Uptown, a new citywide field hockey league is forming. I get off the train at Wood Street again and ride the elevator up to our cozy apartment where I’m greeted by the cats. Frank’s already making dinner and it smells delicious. I can’t wait to dig in.

Now that Gretchen’s on board, we’re going to kick the posting up a notch, so make sure to check back regularly!

Classes are going well, and I made it through the first round of tests pretty much unscathed, so I can’t complain. My History of Pittsburgh class has definitely been the best so far. Dr. Lemley is a really fascinating person–he pretty much lived through every phase that this city has gone through during the past 40 years. He was born in the early seventies and remembers all the Superbowls and the closing of the mills. He went to college in the early nineties when the city was trying to find a new identity and kept spinning its wheels, which is around the time my parent’s left town for greener pastures. He stayed, though, and was on the ground floor when things really started picking up in the late 2000’s.

We’ve been going over the early history so far, which is fascinating. I didn’t realize how almost every street in the late 1800’s had a streetcar line down it– I thought the extensive train system was a new thing.

It’s crazy how things come full circle sometimes.

Like the first week really counts, anyway. Everything’s looking pretty good, except I totally had an “oh my god I’m old” moment during my first neuroscience class. It’s a class of about 80, so, of course, I went and sat in the back. The professor came out and said, “Alright, how many of you are freshmen?” 90% of the class raised their hand. I guess that’s what I get for saving my required courses for last. Holy crap.

Yesterday, Gretchen and I took the blue line up to the Arts Fair in Lawrenceville, which was wayyyy better than last year’s, and then we caught the red line to the South Side for a party at Paula’s house that night. Working at the Castle’s been going well, but I didn’t get the best shifts—Tuesday night, Thursday night, and Sunday afternoons (thank god for the Steelers). I’m pretty psyched that I’ll get to see the games and make some good money at the same time.