A couple weeks back there arrived in the mail with a thump Arts America, a 540-page tome offering a guide to the arts in 20 American cities. Among them is Pittsburgh.

"Steeltown, U.S.A" (as the book calls us) didn't make the editors' cut of "major" destinations (New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C.). But we do show up among 15 secondary towns, right there with Atlanta and Boston and Philadelphia.

Yeah, NYC gets 94 pages of entries and we get 12. But so do Houston and Baltimore. And Minneapolis/St. Paul only gets 16 ... but who's counting, anyway?

Indeed, books like this one, published by Las Vegas-based Huntington Press, always feel like occasions to see how your town stacks up. And of course it's gratifying to be included in what appears to be a labor of love for executive editor Jeffrey Compton (a businessman and arts afficionado with ties to Cleveland) and his crew of contributors. Their goal is to connect arts patrons to arts providers, especially on the road.

That said, few of the 16 picks representing Pittsburgh will be news to anyone who lives here: The Carnegie Museum of Art, The Warhol, the Public Theater, Symphony, Opera and Ballet eat up much of the space.

Less-canonical choices tend toward regional theater (City Theatre) and the family-friendly (Civic Light Opera, Pittsburgh Musical Theater).

Others on the roster: Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre, Mendelssohn Choir, Pittsburgh Jazz Society, MCG Jazz, and the Harris and Regent Square Theaters.

Meanwhile, some of the choices for including explanatory editors' notes are puzzling: Why annotate the Symphony and not explicate The Pittsburgh Camerata, whose function (professional chamber choir) even many Pittsburghers might be hard pressed to identify?

And annotaters should probably refrain from characterizing companies with productions from a decade ago, as they do in at least one case here.

One can rightly lament the general absence in Arts America's Pittsburgh chapter of smaller, more out-of-the-way venues and theater companies. (No Mattress Factory? No Quantum Theatre?) And what about Pittsburgh's modern-dance scene, which gets completely stuffed. (No Pittsburgh Dance Council, Dance Alloy Theatre or Attack Theatre? Geez.)

On the other hand, the guide expressly intends to cover "art museums [not galleries], theater, classical music, opera, jazz, dance, film and summer festivals." If you had only 16 entries to work with in those categories, who wouldn't include the CMOA, the Warhol, the PSO, the PBT, the Public Theatre, MCG Jazz and the Regent Square, at least?

The Arts America Web site is www.go-artsamerica.com.

As first noted here last week, when students heard about Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's tuition tax, they took to the Tweets rather than the streets. A few more Web sites have gone up since then, and these are more focused on political action than on bitching on someone's Facebook wall.

CMU students have assembled a "Stop the Tuition Tax" Web site, complete with city council phone numbers, sample letters, and an online petition. 

Over at the University of Pittsburgh, meanwhile, grad students -- who've been often overlooked in the debate so far -- have launched an online petition opposing the tax.

And if you're browsing the internet anyway, check out this story about how the higher-ed community is watching Pittsburgh grapple with the tuition tax. One takeaway here is that whatever you want to say about Ravenstahl's proposal, the city is on the cutting edge of something:

Other cities are trying to find some way of generating tax revenue from the thousands of students who study there each year. Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino launched a task force in January to standardize and increase voluntary payments coming from the city’s colleges and universities, as well as its hospitals. David N. Cicilline, mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, this spring proposed a $150 per semester tax on students at the city’s four private colleges.

The Association of American Universities (AAU) first warned its 62 member institutions of the coming wave of municipalities looking to tax higher education about 18 months ago, said M. Matthew Owens, an associate vice president for federal relations.

As for the student activism ... there will be a special council meeting about the tax at 1:30 p.m. today. It'll be interesting to see how many students log off and show up for it. 

While I'm on the subject ... how come nobody gets this worked up when their colleges jack up tuition by 6 or 7 percent a year? 

Maybe it was the rain, but it was hard to be optimistic about today's rally to save Braddock Hospital. I wasn't alone feeling that way, either. As I walked over to it, I saw a number of residents sitting on porches, just a block or two from the facility. 

"Not going to the hospital rally?" I called out to one resident.

"They're going to do whatever they're going to do," he shouted back, waving his hand dismissively.

UPMC's decision to shutter Braddock is really just the latest in a decades-long story of neglect and betrayal. Braddock is already on life support, and until now, the hospital was its lifeline. An upstart activist group, Save Our Community Hospitals, notes that Braddock didn't just provide jobs and medical care -- its cafeteria is the town's only restaurant. It also boasts Braddock's only ATM. 

I counted about 200 people gathered in front of the hospital on Braddock Avenue. The turnout was bumped up slightly by some single-payers and a couple folks holding "US out of Middle East" signs.

As you might expect, a lot of the signs on display took liberties with  UPMC's acronym and marketing campaigns.

"We are here to 'continue the conversation,'" one sign jeered. 

The woman holding that sign, Annette Baldwin, was like a lot of Braddock dwellers. She'd given birth to a child in that hospital, and worked there for a time. And she, like a lot of her neighbors, was angry that UPMC was shutting down the hosptial, even as it gears up to build a new facility in Monroeville, a more affluent community a few miles away.  

"It's not health care anymore," Baldwin said. "It's wealth care."

A number of activists and politicians made similar points. Braddock councilwoman Tina Doose told the crowd that UPMC was spuring the "poor, predominantly African-American members of this community."  In fact, council president Jesse Brown told the crowd, he had been in touch with the US Justice Department, and was seeking a civil-rights action against UPMC.

Standing off to the side throughout the rally was Braddock mayor John Fetterman. Brown and Fetterman are at odds, and Fetterman didn't seem terribly optimistic about the outcome of any civil-rights complaint.

"You have to hope the closing doesn't happen," Fetterman said, "but if it does, you need to start doing disaster contingency planning. We're talking about a building that is larger than a Wal-Mart on five floors, and with poor parking." 

Fetterman was also dismissive about UPMC's offer to donate the hospital to the community. "That just allows them to wash their hands of us," he says -- and saddles the community with a giant vacant building that is, he says "a midnight plumber's dream." Fetterman would prefer to have UPMC pledge a sum of money to help rehab the building should a new occupant be found. Braddock already has plenty of vacant structures, thanks. 

So far, though, Fetterman says no offers of money have been forthcoming. 

Fetterman recalled that almost exactly a year ago, there was an effort to save the House of Hope, a UPMC-operated clinic for pregnant mothers struggling with subtance abuse. "I defended UPMC at the time," Fetterman said. "In retrospect, I feel pretty foolish."

If you planned to just roll up to the door tomorrow and catch Minus the Bear at Mr. Small's Theatre, be forewarned: According to the venue's Web site, the show is sold out. Also performing are As Tall As Lions and Twin Tigers; the show is presented by WPTS 92.1 FM.

Apart from a new tour-only 7-inch, "Into the Mirror," the band's ostensibly still touring on Planet of Ice, an album that's now over two years old. It's a pretty kickass record though -- I wrote about it and interviewed the band when it first came out:

"On Planet of Ice, Minus the Bear proves itself a rare species indeed: a five-piece rock band that gets into your head and your pants simultaneously. Capable of dizzying complexity and -- especially in the two tapping hands of guitar hero David Knudson -- virtuosic flights of instrumental fancy, the songs retain sing-along musicality and almost physically blissful grooves, instead of veering into dork kingdoms of prog, art rock and nerd-metal." (read more).

According to MtB's Web site, they do have a new album ready to roll out early next year, produced by Joe Chiccarelli (My Morning Jacket, White Stripes), and you'll get to preview some of the material at the live shows.

As you may have heard by now, city council has introduced legislation that would require paying a prevailing wage to custodial, food-service, or other employees employed at projects that receive city tax-subsidies. 

The legislation has been talked about for months now, and is the first of a handful of initiatives designed to improve labor and environmental standards at city-backed developments. Presumably, the measure will be discussed more fully at next week's city council meeting. But for now, a few things are worth noting. 

First, the bill has seven co-sponsors. Among them are outgoing councilors Tonya Payne and Jim Motznik (who got a big attaboy from labor figures and other supporters outside council chambers yesterday). NOT among the sponsors are Patrick Dowd and Ricky Burgess. 

Payne and Motznik's support is notable because they are usually staunch allies of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl -- and the mayor opposes the bill. (You may recall a protest at the mayor's office concerning the legislation over the summer.)

Dowd and Burgess' opposition is notable, in part because Burgess is mounting a bid to be council's next president. Dowd, meanwhile, ran for mayor against Ravenstahl earlier this year ... strange to see him less committed to the bill than Payne and Motznik. 

Dowd cautions that while he didn't co-sponsor the bill, that doesn't mean he'll vote against it. Not being a sponsor, he says, "positions me to maybe bring people together in a conversation -- progressives, developers who are dead-set against it." 

But Dowd does strongly object to the bill's timing. "I find it unacceptable that they are introducing this so late. We're in the middle of budget season now, and we have pretty significant budget issues." That will prevent a meaningful discussion of the bill, he worries ... and the bill is too important to pass without  that conversation. 

"If this legislation is so great -- and I'm open to it being so -- let's not shoot it in the foot with some legal problem that results in its being overturned in court," Dowd says. "I'm definitiely receptive to the idea, but I've got a lot of questions. Can the city show us data on projects that we have funded that would meet [the bill's requirements]? Let's look at what percentage of jobs already meet those wages, and what percentage would benefit from the legislation." 

Dowd also objects that "they've talked about a whole package of changes -- and we're looking at just one part of that." The reform's environmental components shouldn't be left to the side, he says. That initiative is backed by the Sierra Club, which has backed Dowd in the past "and who I support. I'm not interested in supporting these reforms piecemeal."  

Dowd suspects the fact that the "folks introducing the legislation think they have votes now that they may not have in the future."

That may sound odd, given that Motznik -- the nominal mayoral ally -- is being replaced in just a couple months with Natalia Rudiak. During her council run, Rudiak enjoyed copious support from the SEIU, who are big supporters of the prevailing wage bill. Payne, meanwhile, is being replaced by Daniel Lavelle ... and city councilor Bill Peduto, who backs the prevailing wage legislation, campaigned actively on Lavelle's behalf.

I'm making calls to some bill sponsors, to give them a chance to address Dowd's concerns about the bill's timing. I'll post that here. 

But this much seems clear: This vote wouldn't be easy for Rudiak and Lavelle -- especially when they haven't even had a chance to adjust the height on their office chairs. As Chris Briem noted last spring, for example, even as Rudiak won her district 4 race, voters in that part of the city were also giving Luke Ravenstahl his widest margin of victory. Would it be smart to put Rudiak in such a tight spot between her backers and her constituents?

When a bill has seven co-sponsors -- a veto-proof majority -- you might think passage would be easy. But don't break out the champagne just yet.

It's no less fun than remarkable to see an established performance troupe that seems to get better almost every time out. But that's what it feels like is happening with Attack Theatre.

The group's latest combines the sophistication they've taught audiences to expect with a good deal of accessibility and humor. And it reaffirms Attack's position as surely the Pittsburgh performance group most committed to incorporating live music into its shows.

Last weekend's performances were notable for being the first in Attack's new space, in the Pittsburgh Opera's headquarters, in the Strip. The actual studio is on the second floor; the first-floor performance space (which the Opera has been renting out for shows and events) is splendid, big and high-ceilinged.

The work was set by Attack co-founders Peter Kope and Michele de la Reza on a company featuring them, Liz Chang, Dane Toney and Ashley Williams, with live original music performed by Dave Eggar, Charles Palmer and Tom Pirozzi.

Act one suggested a series of encounters, performed by various combinations of dancers, typically intense and affecting. Especially memorable was a trio featuring Kope, Toney and Williams, all in close, bodies folding over each other, with a surprising sequence of erotic pairings. The act was bracketed by a couple nice theatrical touches -- the skateboarder who weaved among the dancers to start things off, and the dancers' exit, through the doors they flung open, wordlessly inviting the audience back to the lobby while themselves disappearing into the dressing rooms beyond.

Act two was even more theatrical -- the first sign being that during intermission, all the chairs had been carried from the risers and lined up on the floor so we could watch the dancers turn the risers into the stage. Following a dream-narrative outline leavened with comedy, the troupe first cleverly mimicked an audience, then employed a series of devices including barred wooden dividers, a chair that rose into the rafters, and a good deal of nudity (discreetly tempered with the pages of One of America's Great Newspapers).

Just a bit more on the music. Eggars is an acclaimed cellist and pianist who's played solo at Carnegie Hall (the New York one) and the Kennedy Center, and performed and recorded with The Who, Wynton Marsalis, Evanescence and Yo-Yo Ma, to name a few. He's now done several shows with Attack (the first I recall is 2005's Games of Steel), composing original music for all of them, from drivingly artful rock to yearning cello solos.

In Incident[s], he also sings while fronting the combo of bassist Pirozzi and wizardly percussionist Palmer (who doubled as the skateboarder). Incorporating the Opera space's staircase, catwalk and risers, the musicians and their instruments dramatically expanded the possibilities for striking stage pictures. And Eggar even pitched in as comic relief, drawing his bow across the strings of the world's smallest cello, just for you.

Incident[s] in the Strip continues at 8 p.m. nightly Tue., Nov. 17., Fri., Nov. 20, and Sat., Nov. 21; 412-281-3305 or www.attacktheatre.com 

You oughtn't need a reason beyond Leonard Berstein's stunningly crafty and melodic score to see this stage musical based on Voltaire's classic.

The witty lyrics, by poet Richard Wilbur and others (including Stephen Sondheim) don't hurt, of course, nor does director Karla Boos' cheeky deployment of the venue, a former Bloomfield auto-body shop, for all sorts of sight gags. (A big laugh last Friday went to the toy-car-styled shopping cart in which Cunegonde, played by Nicole Kaplan, was pushed about the stage while singing the show-stopper "Glitter and Be Gay.")

And let's put in a word for the fine cast -- and for a theater company that cares enough about this broadly comic operetta's music to have it played live, in this case by a chamber orchestra led by music director Andres Cladera.

The show is good fun indeed. But all its scathingly playful piss-takes on religion, philosophy, warfare and commerce and the people who practice them made me ponder the connections between farce and satire.

Normally we assume the former to be devoid of content -- "just for laughs" -- while the other is busy getting to the root of society's ills.

But Candide is farce as satire, or vice versa, and I think where the two dovetail is in their ascription to humanity of our tendency to follow our basest instincts. Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss is an object of derision, in other words, not only because of his moony "best of all possible worlds" philosophy, nor because of his desire to hump the servant girl, but because he pretends the former justifies the latter.

Innocents Candide and Cunegonde, meanwhile, believe in their own coupling that they adhere to Panglossian dictums, when in fact they're merely following the impulses of young people everywhere. And the rest of the comedy is occasioned by soldiers dragooning the hapless Candide, or raping the hapless Cunegonde; various proper clergymen having their way with Cunegonde; and pretty much everyone else (except for our young protagonists and the boringly content denizens of El Dorado) abusing their power at every turn to satisfy lust, greed or, better still, both.

In farce, the lecher pursuing his lechery is funny; in satire, he's contempible. In Candide, at once broadly comic and witheringly satirical, he's both.

Also, a note on the ending. The musical's prescription for a happy life -- that one work, or "tend one's garden" -- strikes some as out of tune in part because it is sincere (while the rest of the show is broadly ironic) and in part because it is a prescription (whereas the rest of the show is content to tunefully lampoon and caricature folly). 

If that conclusion feels at all rocky, we can blame its originator, Voltaire. Alternately, it might simply prove that the entertainment possibilities of pretended virtue outstrip those of the real thing.

Candide continues through Sun., Nov. 22. www.quantumtheatre.com

No one knows what lies in store for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's 1 percent tuition tax. But one thing seems clear: It's going to be a test for the state-appointed financial oversight process. 

There's already been some attention given to a letter city councilor Bill Peduto sent to the Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority today. In that letter, Peduto notes that the ICA was formed in part because in 2003, then-Mayor Tom Murphy proposed a budget that relied on non-existent tax revenue. "We again find ourselves in the same position," Peduto wrote. Ravenstahl's tax is supposed to raise $15 million, but it's not clear whether his tax proposal is legal either. "City Council needs to have these revenues certified and approved by the ICA prior to considering the budget proposal," Peduto asserts.

In fact, there's word from Grant Street that the ICA is indeed trying to schedule a meeting for next week, perhaps as early as Tuesday. And Peduto's letter was actually the second such request made to the ICA this week. On Tuesday, City Council President Doug Shields sent a longer letter to ICA Chair Barbara McNees.

"Without the express and unconditional approval of the mayor's budget by the ICA, the Council cannot proceed with its budget deliberations," Shields writes. 

Shields predicts that educational institutions "will vigorously litigate the matter in the Courts," and complains that the city law department has not provided a legal analysis "that clearly indicates that the city has the ability to enact such a levy." Shields also notes that by state law, the city's budget "shall note include projected revenues that ... require the enactment by the General Assembly of new taxing powers or the approval of a court." 

Shields raises other concerns as well: For example, "How does [the tax] apply to for-profit institutions that already pay city payroll and property taxes?"

So far, the ICA has hedged on all these matters -- which strikes me as kinda interesting. After all, the board was created because city officials couldn't be trusted to make tough decisions. But the ICA hasn't had to make them either -- until now.

To date, the ICA has conditionally approved an earlier version of the city's budget. But that edition contained a vague line item pledging $16.2 million in revenue enhancements -- without saying where the money would come from. Since Ravenstahl proposed his tuition tax, ICA executive director Henry Sciortino has issued little more than boilerplate. According to the Post-Gazette, Sciortino muttered something about how the ICA "urge[s] the city to maximize its operating efficiencies ... before they go after new revenue."

In related developments, councilor Ricky Burgess has made a fiscal proposal of his own: Compile data about how much city services cost ... and about how much university tax-exemptions cost the city. Then use that data to leverage money from the schools.

As Burgess explained to me earlier today, he plans to put three related proposals on council's table next week.

First, Burgess wants to assess what it actually costs, per capita, to provide everyday services to residents. Burgess says that he'd ask the finance department to calculate the city's overall budget for services -- NOT including things like pension payments or debt -- and divide that by overall population. Second, he wants the city to carry out an assessment of the properties owned by tax-exempt universities and other educational institutions. With those numbers in hand, Burgess says, the city could begin negotiating with colleges about "Payments in Lieu of Taxes." 

"That's my approach," says Burgess. "Let's be systematic and data-driven." 

It might not be quite that simple. For one thing, it's notoriously hard to get reliable property valuations on tax-exempt property. Where, for example, do you find the "comparables" for the Cathedral of Learning? It's not like a lot of other skyscrapers in the university district have gone on the market lately. 

Then too, why only look at educational non-profits? There are numerous hospitals scattered around town, each depriving the city of a sizable chunk of property-tax revenue. Why not look at those? 

For two reasons, Burgess says. First, Ravenstahl's tuition tax is targeted at students, "And I want to compare apples to apples." Second, Burgess says, cities like Boston -- where schools like MIT and Harvard each contribute seven-digit sums to city operations -- have already established a precedent for treating universities differently from other big non-profits. Then too, he says, "UPMC already participates in the Pittsburgh Promise" -- a college scholarship program for city schoolkids.

"Pitt and Carnegie Mellon are sitting on billion-dollar endowments," Burgess says. "They have the wherewithal to solve the city's [pension] costs on their own. For them to not participate is unacceptable." 

There's a bit of a good-cop/bad-cop dynamic going on here. Ravenstahl has proposed a tax that goes right after students ... and Burgess has emerged with a proposal that gives schools a chance to assume some of the burden. It's not that he and the mayor were planning this, Burgess stresses. Still, he says, maybe schools will be a bit more responsive to the city's pleas than they've been before:

"In the past, there was no alternative if [the schools] didn't pay," he says. "But the mayor's plan gives us an alternative. If they won't participate on the front end, they leave us no choice."

If you're anything like me, the first reaction you had to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's tuition tax (or as I'm calling it, the "Get the Hell Off My Lawn" tax) was, "Well, that's all fine and good. But what are city Republicans going to think of it?"

Well, wonder no longer, my friends. For Bob Hillen, the ever-affable chair of the city GOP, has sent out the following missive late last night.

Text below, and italicized for your convenience. Two things strike me as interesting about it. 

1) Will union apprenticeship programs be subject to the tax? 

2) On the central issue at stake here -- the question of whether non-profits should be taxed -- Hillen and many local Democrats are in agreement. Too bad that state law makes it almost impossible to challenge non-profits, thanks to a 1990s-era law sponsored by a noted Republican, Melissa Hart.

At a time when the Community College of Allegheny County is offering classes to the unemployed and our elected officials say they are trying to keep our young people and attract new people. Our city administration comes up with this counter-productive new tax.

The mayor calls this tax "The Fair Share Tax. He compares the tax to the fees that colleges charge their students, and believes that makes the tax acceptable to the students and their families. Many of the students and their families already find some of the fees they pay as “questionable”. It seems as we are back to the old idea, that two wrongs do make a right.

The administration says it doesn’t matter who is paying the students tuition, whether its being paid by the student, a parent, the government, or a scholarship. It’s also said that all post secondary education would be subject to the tax, from Trade Schools to Graduate Schools to non-credit night classes. Does this mean that the Building Trade’s (Unions) Apprenticeship classes would be taxed, and if so what do the Unions have to say? The Mayor may find that he maybe taxing people that he didn’t think would come under this burden.

In the past, the city has made financial decisions based on politics, instead of long term solutions. It is time for financial reality to be the priority. Until the mayor can step up his efforts to join with more municipalities throughout the state, and persuade the General Assembly to tax these "Non-profits" (i.e. Hospitals and similar places) that enjoy yearly "surpluses" (instead of what they should be called, PROFITS), the city is going to have to learn that you can’t spend, it if you don’t have it.

By the way, wasn’t the Casino supposed to take care of the city's financial troubles? I guess that's another story for a later date.

Oh, you've done it now, Mayor Ravenstahl. You have awoken the sleeping -- or perhaps hungover -- giant. In response to the mayor's 1 percent tuition tax, students have launched their own Facebook page. 

The Facebook group -- called Pittsburgh College Students Against the Tax on College Students -- already has 137 members. Which ain't bad for starters. (UPDATE: By day's end, the number of members was nearly twice that. And there's another Facebook group -- Students Against the Proposed Pittsburgh Tuition Tax -- dedicated to the same cause.)

I'm a bit skeptical about internet activism, to be honest, and one wishes a Web site authored by college students didn't include verbage like "If thats there soul reasoning ..." But maybe there is potential for this to grow into something more. As Ravenstahl pointed out when he first proposed the tax, Pittsburgh is a city of just over 300,000 people -- with nearly 100,000 students enrolled in its institutions of higher-learning. That's a lot of potential activists. 

Plus, as I've written before, the Oakland area was the site of what could be the first crowd-sourced citizen-journalist project in Pittsburgh history. College students with digital cameras helped document G-20-related demonstrations, and the police reaction to them. Obviously tax policy is much less photogenic, but students really could create their own campaign here. And who knows where that might lead? The G-20 footage has spawned investigations into police conduct, and considerable public debate. 

Granted, Bram is probably right that were some folks happy to see students get pushed around during the G-20. And maybe people won't worry too much about a tax on students either. But I'm told that some city councilors have been hearing complaints about this tax from quarters you wouldn't necessarily expect -- including working-class areas where folks are going to night-school. Besides, as I tried to suggest at the end of my column this week ... if students feel like they're getting the shaft by intransigent non-profits and thoughtless city officials, well ... that's how their neighbors have felt for years. You are all Pittsburghers now. Solidarity! 

The students could use a snappier acronym, though. I mean, even highly contagious diseases get better acronyms than PCSATCS. How about Pittsburgh-Area Students Supporting Education and Denouncing Outrageous and Unfair Taxation?