I knew Donald L. Gibbon a little. In Pittsburgh it was hard not to, if you traveled in environmental circles or paid attention to the local-food movement.

Gibbon was active in both. I saw him most frequently at environmentally themed events, such as when he testified passionately at a public hearing last year about mountaintop-removal coal mining. The force of his testimony belied his thin frame and sometimes labored speaking voice, the result of the throat cancer he'd battled for years.

Don was very active with the Sierra Club's Allegheny Group. The last time I spent more than a few minutes with him was this past spring, when (at his invitation) I spoke at the group's monthly meeting about a wilderness canoe trip I'd taken. He even gave me a ride home afterward.

But I met Don through the Apple Fest, which he founded, and which will take place for the fifth straight year this Sat., Oct. 23, despite Don's death, on Oct. 13.

Don, 73, lived in Point Breeze with his wife, Linda Bazan. In his professional life, he had a multifaceted career in electron microscopy, teaching geology and more. He was an accomplished photographer. And he was as opinionated about apples as he was about preventing environmental degradation: He started the festival, he said, because you couldn't get a good apple pie in this town. The problem, he said, was largely the homogeneity of the commercial apple supply, exemplified by the ubiquitous red delicious.

One goal of the festival was to reintroduce people to older, lesser-known but much tastier varieties of apples, like the Stayman and the Connell Red. In fact, the last time I interviewed Don, just last month, it was about his initiative to bring to Pittsburgh 10 young Black Amish apple trees (www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A85932). 

The Apple Fest was never a one-man show. But Don's death definitely leaves big shoes to fill.

"He was one of a kind," says Virginia Phillips, a friend of Don's and a co-founder of Slow Food Pittsburgh, which co-sponsored the fest.

This past Wednesday, Phillips said that "an army of volunteers" was mobilizing to handle many of the details and errands Don would have managed. Folks like Claudia Kirkpatrick, she said, were picking up apples from 10 orchards to be sold at the event, held 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Union Project, 801 N. Negley Ave., Highland Park.

For a $5 entry fee ($2 for students and kids 12 and under), fest-goers can sample apples and cider from area growers.

As in years past, the event also includes live music and other entertainment; treats like locally sourced pulled-pork sandwiches and ice cream; and of course the famed apple-pie contest. (Winners will be announced at 12:30 p.m. There's still time to enter; see www.slowfoodpgh.org for details.)

"The only thing that's missing is Don," says Phillips.

"I was tired of explaining myself," says Jennifer Jajeh, discussing the origins of her one-woman tragicomedy I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I'm Afraid to Tell You.

The show's national tour visits the University of Pittsburgh's Frick Fine Art Auditorium on Sun., Oct. 24. 

Jajeh, a Palestinian-American born in San Francisco, had struggled with identity her entire life. 

Though she grew up in what she calls a very liberal home, she felt she didn't actually know which "home" to identify with.  

As a Palestinian, people would often treat her as a political correspondent -- always expected to offer her serious thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

"I get constantly asked about it and challenged and questioned, and people want to know my political beliefs in really inappropriate situations, like in job interviews," she says in a phone interview.

In 2000, she left New York for her parents' hometown, Ramallah. Perhaps there she would find answers, she thought.

What was planned as a three-month summer visit turned into a year-and-a-half stay, during which began the Second Intifada, a violent Palestinian uprising. Though her parents begged her to return to the U.S., Jajeh stayed and discovered what it's like to live in occupied Palestine. 

When she did return to the States, in 2001, she says, "I clearly had post-traumatic stress disorder from living in a war zone."

Ten days later, two hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers. 

"‘Why do these people hate us?' is what a lot of people were saying after September 11^th," Jajeh recalls. "There's such a misunderstanding of Arabs and Muslims in general....There was such a need of humanization of stories." 

But Jajeh kept her stories bottled; they emerged only periodically, in her acting workshops. It was under the encouragement of her workshop peers and W. Kamau Bell (who directs I Heart Hamas) that she began to write. 

"I had no vision for a show at all, and it kind of took on a life of its own," she says. "Once I started writing it, people started to book it before I even finished it."

On a whim, she submitted an unfinished version of I Heart Hamas to the New York Fringe Festival. The festival responded immediately, telling her to complete it as soon as possible and inviting her to perform.

She's been performing it ever since, in cities around the U.S., to general acclaim. Said a Chicago Tribune reviewer this past May, "[Jajeh's] discoveries of what life in Ramallah is like for Palestinians may be revelatory for most Americans."

The show is also refreshing to Jajeh as an actress used to being typecast as everything but Palestinian. "I was just frustrated with what I'd been getting...and I wanted a script that really meant something to me," she says. 

The 90-minute show is divided into two parts. Half deals with the stereotypes and assumptions that she hears as a Palestinian in America, and the other half deals with her tumultuous and life-changing experience in Ramallah.

As the controversial yet silly title suggests, the San Francisco-based Jajeh adds her own comedic twist. 

"I'm taking ownership of ideas and words and conflicts that people are very serious about...and I'm trying to kind of loosen it up and open up a conversation in a different way...take some fear away that you can be a little more playful with these ideas."

The show is her contribution to a conversation that she views as highly limited by the media. "It's a pretty small range of stories that are being told. There's not a diversity of Palestinian voices that are being heard," she says. "There's not room for the conversation and analysis of what is happening."

And Jajeh makes clear that although she's frequently prompted to speak for her entire ethnic group, her is only one voice amongst many. "I'm not representing the Palestinian perspective; I'm representing my Palestinian perspective."

 Jajeh performs at 2 p.m. Sun., Oct. 24, at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, Schenley Drive, Oakland. The show is free (www.ihearthamas.com).

It's taken me a few days to get to this, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, but NPR reporters visited Pittsburgh for a story aired last week on new trends in poiltical TV ads.

The story discusses a phenomenon noted previously here and a zillion other places: the rise of political ads taken out by shadowy groups with names like "Americans for Prosperity." Such groups avoid disclosing donors, making it hard to track who is trying to influence your vote. 

But NPR adds a new wrinkle: asking how much the broadcasters who air these ads can be counted on to police them. And WTAE and KDKA don't come off looking so great. 

You probably don't know it, but radio and TV stations are required to maintain what's called a "public file" -- open to inspection by anyone -- which keeps track of ads about politicians or issues of public importance. This is a decades-old requirement, recently updated in Section 504 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. According to the law, stations must compile a paper trail on any ad that

(a) is made by or on behalf of a legally qualified candidate for public office; or

(b) communicates a message relating to any political matter of national importance, including: a legally qualified candidate; any election to Federal office; or a national legislative issue of public importance.

The paperwork must include such details as the amount of money spent, the time the ads run, information about the people buying the time, and "the name of the candidate to which the communication
refers and the office to which the candidate is seeking election, the election to which the communication refers, or the issue to which the communication refers."

NPR found that at both KDKA and WTAE, that last field was left blank:

There are also many disclosure forms ... that give less than full disclosure; parts of the form are blank, and that's not atypical.

At KDKA, another TV station, there are more huge ad buys: On Sept. 7, the group Americans for Job Security booked a month worth of ads for which it paid $105,560 and left incomplete paperwork.

The group is required to fill in the name of the candidate that the ad is talking about, but it left the field blank

The NPR piece linked above includes an example of the Chamber of Commerce's filing with WTAE. And indeed, at the top of page 2, there's a blank space where the Chamber was supposed to identify the target of the ad. Partly becuase of that, it's not clear exactly which ad is at issue here. The Chamber of Commerce ads I've seen, however, have targeted Joe Sestak, claiming that he is but a lackey of House speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Based on such omissions, NPR concludes that "TV stations can't act as a watchdog of these groups."

I called up WTAE to see how they responded. Bob Bee, the sales director, told me that not every space on the form needed to be filled out, and directed me to Mark Prak, an attorney who represents WTAE's parent, the Hearst Corporation. 

I had phone and e-mail exchanges with Mr. Prak, who was a garrolous and likeable guy, but who nevertheless gave me the strong impression that in a deposition, he'd reduce me to a quivering mass of jelly. The discussion was for the most part pretty arcane, but I'll try to summarize the station's position.

First of all, we're really talking about a few blank spots on a form: The really key information -- the details of how much the ads cost and when they were placed, etc. -- was indeed in the public file. (That's why NPR reporters were able to see it.) And the distinction "any political matter of national importance," might be a little blurrier than you'd expect.

Things that are only of state or local relevance, see, would not be governed under the law. And issues like gun control or abortion can be state or federal, since both levels of government have a hand in shaping such policy.

OK, but what if the ad in question really were the "Sestak is Pelosi's whipping boy" spot? Isn't that ad about a federal candidate, since Sestak is a Congressman running for Senate? And couldn't the rules apply in that case?

Prak, though, questioned whether a spot faulting Sestak's voting record was a matter of national importance -- or just for the people in that candidate's state. It may also be worth noting that this particular doesn't actually tell people to vote against Sestak: It merely urges them to call him up and tell him he's an asshole. (Or more precisely, to "tell [him] Pelosi's agenda hurts Pennsylvania taxpayers.") If you wanted to vote against him too, well -- that's your business. But the ad, strictly speaking, isn't about a federal election. 

At the end of the day, I still think WTAE (and presumably KDKA and other stations) should have made sure the form was complete. I'm not sure how big a deal it is, but I'll bet the station made sure its $134,000 check was filled out properly. You know? 

I also think, though, that the real story isn't whether the stations complied with the law ... but about what is legal in the first place. 

First off, even if all the documentation had been complete, you still wouldn't know where the money for these ads is coming from. The people bankrolling these campaigns don't have to disclose their funding to the federal government -- they ain't gonna tell the TV stations either. 

Second, consider that to do this story, NPR had to go to the stations themselves to review the file. (There's some rather breathless reporting from the WTAE parking lot.) How many members of the public who don't work as reporters, or campaign workers, are going to drive out to Ardmore Boulevard and look at this stuff? 

In an internet age, it seems ridiculous to limit public inspection -- especially of records belonging to media oulets with strong web presences -- to those who come to the office. Maybe instead of worrying about whether all the boxes are checked, government officials ought to be trying to get this material out of the storage boxes -- putting it online where the public can actually see it. That would be a step, however small, for transparency and disclosure. 

Which is why I'm not holding my breath. 

Courtesy of the folks at Pittsburgh Urban Media comes word that former WPXI anchor Gina Redmond -- who ended up the subject of news stories after a 2002 barroom altercation -- is commenting on "What Really Happened in Pittsburgh" on her own website.

As Ms. Redmond tells the story:

Several years ago, I was accused of slapping a former producer across the face during a non-work related function. Now granted, as the main anchor of a top 30 television station, hanging out at a dive bar in the wee morning hours, is a decision that teeters on insanity, stupidity and pure ignorance. Lesson learned.

... However, let me set the record straight once and for all. My hand never made contact with her face. In layman terms, I did not slap her. No doctors were consulted, no criminal charges were filed, and no pictures were taken of a bruised and battered innocent face. Yet in this sue happy climate a trip to the magistrate’s office is all that is necessary to make a legal accusation against your enemy.

All of a sudden, I was on the defensive. For months I remained silent, while my accuser’s then boyfriend, spewed vile lies about me in the media. At the request of my employer, I kept my mouth shut and agreed to plead no contest to make this nightmare go away. It was then that I realized this battle had nothing to do with seeking the truth, it was solely about revenge. I am not good at revenge. So instead, I chose to forgive, forget and move on. Unfortunately, others were unable to do the same. That little white lie left me unemployed for two years.

The producer in question was Roberta Petterson; the boyfriend was John McIntire, former City Paper columnist and one-time host of Nighttalk, which airs on WPXI's cable-only sister station, PCNC. Redmond did indeed end up before a magistrate as a result of the incident, and pleaded no contest to the charges ... though by that point, she'd already gone before a magistrate to have a PFA taken out against Petterson. (For McIntire's take on the incident way back in 2003, click here.) 

In her blog post, Petterson likens her situation to that of Shirley Sherrod, who the Obama Administration prematurely fired because of an out-of-context snippet of video tape circulated by conservative muckrakers. "[N]egative controversy is far more appealing and easier for most Americans to believe," Redmond concludes.

In the meantime, Petterson left Pittsburgh for Cleveland, and is now apparently in Nashville, Tennessee. Redmond, it seems, was let go from a station in Birmingham, Alabama over the summer. The reasons remain unclear.

Hey all!

Sad news: the show tonight at Club Cafe featuring A.A. Bondy and Justin Andrew has been postponed, reportedly due to a hand injury. Been there. Feel better, Bondy dude! Stay tuned here for a reschedule update.

Other things that are going on tonight that might keep you busy: Juston Stens and the Get Real Gang play with Ursa Major at the Doo Wop Mansion, a house venue in North Oakland that you'll want to search around for a little because I probably shouldn't write much about it; River City Rebels are doing their thing at 31st Street Pub; Long Time Darlings frontman Brett Staggs throws down at Bloomfield Bridge Tavern; and David Daniell and Douglas McCombs (of Tortoise) play at Garfield Artworks.

Also, if you were stoked on seeing Smashmouth at the Think Pink event at Altar Bar on Tuesday, I'm sorry to say they've cancelled. Word has it they couldn't get up from underneath that huge pile of "All Star" royalty checks, so they had to back out. The event, which is sponsored by our sister media outlet Q 92.9, still features THE GIN BLOSSOMS, who rule. So adjust accordingly.

The year’s grittiest literary reading here will likely be one this Sat., Oct. 16. And by no accident, the event marking the publication of a new anthology of writing by and about work and workers takes place at the site of the infamous Homestead strike of 1892.

The Battle of Homestead Foundation sponsors this event marking the publication of Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams (Coffee House Press).

It is the only book published this year with a forward by someone nicknamed "Rivethead."

The editor of the feisty, 540-page anthology, meanwhile, is M.L. Liebler, a poet, literary activist and community organizer who teaches at Wayne State University, in Michigan.

Liebler has noted in interviews that literature representing the working class is, like the working class itself, typically discounted in academia and in the media. He built the anthology partly to have something to teach.

It’s a book of forthright, accessible writing, set in factories, kitchens, mill-town streets and shoeshine stands. The material, most of it from after World War II, doesn’t distinguish between high and low art. The poems-and-songs section, for instance, hires Bob Dylan and Emily Dickinson along with Philip Levine, Amiri Baraka and Eminem.

The short stories put Willa Cather (and her Pittsburgh-set "Paul’s Case") and Stephen Crane on the payroll alongside former veteran auto worker Lolita Hernandez, Clifford Odets and John Sayles (who’s a novelist as well as a filmmaker). A story by Hong Kong native Xu Xi follows a girl who works in a massage parlor.

And a section devoted to nonfiction calls on legendary activist Dorothy Day, Woody Guthrie and even Michael Moore.

No surprise given Liebler’s roots, the book’s got a decided Michigan and Detroit edge. Even one of the Pittsburghers represented, poet and novelist Jim Daniels, is originally from Detroit. (The book’s subtitle references the MC5.)

Other Pittsburghers with work in Working Words include protest singer-songwriter Anne Feeney and poet Jan Beatty.

Along with Beatty and Liebler, the Oct. 16 reading features poet, author and retired registered nurse Jeanne Bryner, who grew up in Ohio; and Ohio-based poet and performer Ray McNiece, whose "Grandfather’s Breath" begins:

You work. You work, Buddy. You work.
Word of immigrant get-ahead grind I hear
huffing through me, Grandfather’s breath,
when he’d come in from Saturday’s keep-busy chores,
fending up a calloused hand to stop
me from helping him, haggard cheeks puffing
out like t-shirts hunge between tenements,
doubled-over under thrity-five years a machine
repairman at the ball-bearing factory, ball-bearings
making everything run smoother --
especially torpedoes. ...

The free reading takes place at 1:30 p.m. Sat., Oct. 16. The Pump House is located at 880 East Waterfront Dr., Homestead, just upriver of the Waterfront shopping district, where work of a different kind is done.

Photo courtesy of Shelby Maidment

M.L. Leibler

So I've finally been bestirred from my blogging torpor by the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the apparent death of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's plan to lease city parking facilities. The plan, which would have raised $450 million in an effort to shore up the city's pension fund, was given a preliminary thumbs-down by council yesterday. 

I can't entirely disagree with those who say torpedoing the idea before having a solid alternative is premature, or a bit of dangerous gamesmanship. But I'm not sure the vote makes a big difference. While I thought the mayor made a pretty decent sales pitch, it's been clear for awhile now that council wasn't buying. And hey, it's not like council were the only ones to have prematurely foreclosed on other possibilities. As I pointed out awhile back, the legislature played that game itself, offering the city a chance to raise parking taxes only if it chose privatization.

Finally, let's be honest: Some of the chatter in favor of the lease plan suffered from a bit of cognitive dissonance. At times, the argument seemed to be that the parking lots suffered from inefficient management and overpaid employees -- and that parking rates were too cheap. It's a little like the restaurant customer who says the pork chops were dry, the vegetables tasteless, the dessert undigestible ... and on top of that, the portions were too small.

Still, I feel where foks at the Pittsburgh Comet are coming from. Council paid $250,000 for its own study of the lease proposal. Its consultants determined the present value of parking lot proceeds -- the value of tomorrow's cash if you had it today -- was $400 million. The city was being offered $450 million. 

Note to council: Next time you want to hire a consultant, give me a call. I'll give you advice you can ignore for half the price you piad. 

Because perhaps like the folks at the Comet, I feel a bit like a voice crying in the wilderness lately. Only the issue I'm concerned about is police accountability.  

Maybe you missed this disclosure last week: The city is facing a potential exodus of police officers in the years ahead, as more than half of its 886-member force will become eligible for retirment by 2015. 

For some of us older heads, this all seems very familiar, even if we have to go back more than a decade to remember why:

Some thought long and hard. Others didn't have to think about it at all.

Each arrived at his decision, 410 of the 453 Pittsburgh police officers eligible for an early retirement incentive in the mid-1990s took the offer. During that period, primarily 1994 and 1995, another 136 officers retired on disability or on a regular pension.

To replace those 546 officers -- half the force and representing more than 12,000 years of experience -- the bureau undertook a massive hiring program, resulting in the youngest and least experienced department in anyone's memory ...

[T]he new officers' inexperience led to numerous errors in judgment and performance. While mistakes by inexperienced officers are to be expected, they normally are mitigated by the guidance of veteran officers. But with so few of them left on the Pittsburgh force after the retirement exodus, that didn't happen and problems festered.

Among those young recruits were an officer who got busted for prostitution and Jeffrey Cooperstein, who became a poster child for police/community turmoil. 

That wave of retirements was induced by a cost-cutting measure implemented by Mayor Sophie Masloff in the early 1990s. But the infusion of new blood was just one of the problems the department faced. For example, efforts to fire officers could be be thwarted by arbitrators -- even when there were unsettling allegations of misconduct -- over the objections of the police chief.

Sound familiar?

Public frustration with the lack of police accountability led to a federal consent decree against the department. At the time, Pittsburgh's police bureau was the only one in the nation operating under federal oversight. The public's anger also led to a 1997 public referendum creating a police review board. 

In the years since, the consent decree was lifted. As for the review board? City officials have been taking steps whose impact, if not intent, would be to undermine the board's ability to do its job. 

So in the not-too-distant future, we may well have yet another crop of young, inexperienced cops taking the streets. And we've either dismantled or failed to improve many of the mechanisms for keeping their youthful exuberance in check.

On the bright side, though, at least there's still some hope we can fund their pensions.

Photo courtesy of Jim Judkis

Ron Desmett's "Prima Materia #1."

If there is such a thing as royalty on Pittsburgh's art-glass scene, it must include Mulcahy and Desmett.

The pair, who are married and live in Oakdale, are artists of long standing in these parts. Mulcahy is a former Pittsburgh Center for the Arts artist of the year who's had solo exhibitions in galleries around the U.S. Her work was featured in the new book Masters: Blown Glass (Lark Books). Desmett's work, meanwhile, was recently acquired both by the Corning Museum of Glass and the Smithsonian Institution.

Together, working in glass and other sculptural media, they've also created several prominent public artworks and other commissions, including: 2008's "The Spirit of Duquesne" sculpture on Duquesne University's campus; the "tree" outside American Eagle Outfitters' corporate HQ, on the South Side; and the fabulously cosmic fixtures in the lobby of the North Side's New Hazlett Theater.

Perhaps most importantly for the city's glass culture, Mulcahy and Desmett spent the 1990s working to create what became the Pittsburgh Glass Center. The architecturally striking Friendship facility is a school, gallery and glass studio that's helped put Pittsburgh on the national glass-art map, regularly hosting shows featuring the nation's top glass artists.

The PGC was also, it's easy to forget now, an early anchor (along with Garfield Artworks and Dance Alloy) for the remaking of that stretch of Penn as an arts corridor.

This Fri., Oct. 15, from 7-11 p.m., the aforementioned AEO hosts Art on Fire 10 Celebration & Auction, the PGC's 10^th anniversary fundraiser (www.pittsburghglasscenter.org).

Tickets for that chic blowout are $95. But if you just want to see some of Mulcahy's and Desmett's work, your best bet is Glass: A Decade and Change, at Borelli Edwards Gallery.

The new show is a duet. Desmett's contributions are some of his famous "lidded trunk vessels" -- black matte forms that reference ancient urns but incorporate the textures inside hollow trees. (One is pictured here.) Mulcahy, who's best known for her oversized, top-like "spinners," offers some of her new takes on blown-glass orbs.

Glass: A Decade and Change opens to the public at 10 a.m. Sat., Oct. 16, at Borelli Edwards, 3583 Butler St., in Lawrenceville (412-687-2606). A talk by the artists is scheduled for 1:30-2:30 p.m.

Then, from 3-4:30 p.m. that day, you can really see these two in their element, as Mulcahy and Desmett give a working demo at the Pittsburgh Glass Center, 5472 Penn Ave., in Friendship (412-365-2145).

Duhamel, nationally known crafter of poems that are playful, engaging and thought-provoking, visits Pittsburgh Friday for one of her occasional readings here.

Duhamel, who teaches at Florida International University, is published on University of Pittsburgh Press. The most recent of her numerous chapbooks and collections is 2009's Ka-Ching!.

Much, but not all of the book, is about money and wealth. Here's the first of her "eBay sonnets" from the collection.

The first time I moved to a warm climate
I only lasted four months, fated
to buy back the winter coat I'd donated
to the Combat Zone's Goodwill. I was upset
no one had snagged my coat in my absence.
Was my taste so bad that even the poor
clicked hangers right past my leopard fake fur?
I'd failed in Arizona, now the dense
Boston slush seeped into my plastic boots.
I'd junked a used Corvette in Tucson,
a car that could have been worth a fortune
If I'd only cared to fix it up. Loot
was not yet my forte. I overpaid.
I even got looks of pity from rough trade.

Duhamel's matter in Ka-Ching! ranges from Monopoly money to bra sizes; she can be cheeky and saucy, as in imagining a porno Da Vinci Code titled The DaVinci Poke, or poignant yet clear-eyed, as in recalling the aftermath of her parents' serious injury in a bizarre casino escalator accident.

Her free Oct. 15 reading is presented by the Madwomen in the Attic Reading Series (organized by Jan Beatty, who curates CP's "Chapter & Verse" feature.).

Duhamel reads at 7:30 p.m. this Fri., Oct. 15, at Carlow University's Kresge Theatre, in Oakland. A reception and signing follow. For more info, email [email protected].

I spent a nice week not being at work last week, and now I'm back at work, where I'm going to spend a nice week being at work. What does this mean for you? Not much, besides uninterrupted FFW>> offerings -- like today's MP3 Monday, courtesy local dancepop lady Ali Spagnola!

You may remember Ali from earlier this year, when I blogged about her album and esteemed colleague Margaret "Dolly Keane" Welsh reported on her "Power Hour" copyright issues.

The MP3 download is the single off her album, The Ego. The song is "I Want More." Download and enjoy!

In unrelated news, we just got word about the first shows taking place at the new Stage AE complex on the North Shore Side. Without getting all flowery about it, let's get down to business: the venue will open with performances on December 3 and 4 by Girl Talk, and host George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic on December 10, and "Black and Yellow" guy Wiz Khalifa on December 16. Tickets for all three shows go on sale this Saturday, October 16 through Ticketmaster. More updates when we get 'em.

Happy week!