Winged Migration
French director Jacques Perrin, whose previous outing — the extreme close-up of the insect world Microcosmos — elevated the travails of the dung beetle to mythic proportions, now casts his lens into the lives of migratory birds and declares: Birds gotta fly. North to south, and back again. Tens of thousands of miles, year after…
Photo ID
Every day, Deborah Starling-Pollard shows slides of Teenie Harris’s photographs in local senior citizen centers — scenes of Pittsburgh’s African-American community he shot for The Pittsburgh Courier from the 1920s through the 1960s. She flips through them until someone speaks up — and at least once or twice during her hour-long visits, someone usually does.…
Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
There’s much to like about They Might Be Giants, the 20-year-old Brooklyn band. They strap poignant lyrics into upbeat songs. They eschew rock-star pretension — dressing like Beaver Cleaver in plaid short-sleeve shirts and striped jerseys. Their songs are funny, but not cloying. Band founders and boyhood friends John Linnell and John Flansburgh are affably…
Money for Something
Heinz Endowments President Maxwell King says Heinz will probably resume funding the Pittsburgh Public Schools soon, provided some as-yet-unnamed conditions are met this year. “Once the recommendations come out from the mayor’s commission and it looks like some of the recommendations will be acted on, that funding will be restored,” King told the American Association…
White Man’s Burden
William Pierce moved to West Virginia in 1985; rumors followed. People said, for instance, that the founder of the National Alliance, a leading neo-Nazi group, was up in his 350-acre mountain compound making nuclear weapons that could fit in a briefcase. The rumors just made Jacob Young curious. Young, already known for his profiles of…
Re-enfranchisement
On one end: the county’s Democratic Committee, which lost credit with the black community for failing to endorse several black county office candidates in recent primaries. On the other: an estimated 88 percent of blacks, who turned out … to be no-shows in recent elections. While this tug of war plays on, several political groups have…
Not to be Fiddled With
South of Columbus, Ohio, the area around Highway 23 is a maze of rows of hand-scrawled signs, advertising small-farm vegetables and the occasional antique shop or ice-cream stand. But not long after you cross into Kentucky, Highway 23 becomes the Music Highway, and the signs change: Instead of locally grown tomatoes, it’s bluegrass and country…
A Cure for Drug Running
For George Risov, the Canadian border runs right down Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill. On June 23, Risov opened the first Pennsylvania outlet of Rx Depot, which fills U.S. prescriptions with Canadian drugs for people hoping to save the price of American pharmaceuticals — and a six-hour trip north as well. Most of Risov’s initial…
Janitors’ Health Costs Covered — For Now
Two months of demonstrations by union members protesting big jumps in health-care costs at the University of Pittsburgh (“Janitors Still Sweeping Through Downtown,” June 18) ended with a sort of compromise: Pitt’s employee health plan won’t be any cheaper, but janitors, groundskeepers and maintenance workers in Local 585 of the Service Employees International Union there…
Gays Celebrate Ruling
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum’s Station Square office was once again the target, this time of celebration, of local gay activists when the Supreme Court struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy laws, and effectively similar laws in 12 other states, on June 26. Although fewer than a dozen people stood with signs aimed at rush-hour Smithfield Street Bridge…
Woodland Hills Released from Oversight
Segregation in east suburban education is finally over, U.S. District Judge Maurice Cohill Jr. said in a June 24 opinion releasing the Woodland Hills School District from judicial oversight. The case, filed against the state in 1971, contended that the formation of several mostly white districts (Churchill Area, Edgewood, Turtle Creek and Swissvale) and a…
Mink Lungs
The members of Brooklyn freak collective Mink Lungs aren’t allowed back at that doctor’s office; nope, not after stealing all those pre-signed prescription pads and then slipping Viagra samples down the front of their pants. Shit, anybody could’ve listened to “Start From Scratch” on the band’s latest disc, I’ll Take It, and known that people…
Gary Pletsch
On June 26, Gary Pletsch, a potter and avid gardener, invited the public to his Wilkinsburg home for Toll Road, an artistic stunt in which he protested the proposed Mon-Fayette Expressway project by building a sidewalk through his garden. Pletsch’s buddies Tom Petrola (right) and Peter Kope immediately put shovel to dirt. As the morning…
Lazy Lane
Sometimes I’ve heard complaints that Pittsburgh rock doesn’t have a certain “sound” like Detroit or Seattle. But I think that’s great, because it makes standing out from the pack of generic pop-punk, college rock and hippie-jam so much easier. Morgantown-to-‘Burgh band Lazy Lane’s debut CD The Chills reminds me of the revelation I had upon…
A Conversation with Hartley Johnston
What was it like growing up here? I was born in Cheswick in 1932. It was Jan. 1, 15 minutes after midnight. I won all the prizes; there were newspaper stories about the first baby born in the New Year. My father had three daughters first, and when I came along, my father is reported…
You talked about the Mexican War Streets a few weeks ago. How about some information on the mansions that remain on Ridge and Lincoln avenues, also know as “Millionaires’ Row”?
If you’ve ever had a wealthy person move down the street, you’ve probably muttered, “There goes the neighborhood.” Because as we all know, when one rich person moves in, it won’t be long before other people just like him start moving nearby — causing drastic effects on local property values. Given the language and cultural…
Capturing the Friedmans
“Arnold liked pictures,” says Elaine Friedman of her former husband, Arnold Friedman, long after Arnold went to prison for allegedly molesting teen-age boys, and died there of a heart attack or a drug overdose, depending on whom you ask. “Let’s face it: He liked pictures.” She’s probably talking about the family’s Super-8 home movies and…
Whale Rider
Whale Rider is a film about the double-edged sword of tradition. Young Pai (Keisha Castle-Hughes) was practically born upon it: Her coastal New Zealand family prizes its Maori ancestry, and her newborn twin brother is destined to lead his people — just like the mythic “whale rider” himself, the Paikea of myth. But her brother…
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
Of the four powerful, independent, brainy, beautiful women in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle- — Natalie (Cameron Diaz), the high-school cheerleading Beaver (team mascot); Dylan (Drew Barrymore), the ex-punk with a taste for bad boys; Alex (Lucy Liu), the gymnast-cum-contortionist; and the raven-haired, Nobel Prize-winning former Angel and villainous villainess Madison (Demi Moore) — I think…
