Freedom Summer School
As “sister Sierra” Davis reads to the young boys and girls in her classroom the kids shuffle in their seats. The book is about Bessie Coleman, the first black licensed aviator. When Sierra is finished reading a passage, hands fly in the air, but when 10-year-old December Dixon is chosen to read the hands land…
Off the Skids
On April 25, four cyclists each spent 17 hours in jail after Pittsburgh Police arrested them on misdemeanor charges during a mass pro-bike ride in Oakland, organized as Critical Mass (“Wheels of Justice?” May 21). By the cyclists’ July 23 hearing, the judge looked bemused, their arresting officer was just trying to finish the case…
State’s Top Banker Looks to Harpoon Predators
Can a former mortgage company executive stop a rash of lending abuses that has nearly quadrupled foreclosure filings in Allegheny County since 1995? That was the question raised by a July 21 meeting at Albright Community United Methodist Church in Friendship, organized by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Most of the…
Afternoon Insight
How successful was the July 25 “Marketplace of Ideas” in Market Square? The collection of more than 30 social justice groups offering brochures, discussion and, in a few cases, games to passersby produced “a mixed bag,” said one participant, Maurene Roberts of Bethel Park, outreach director for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).…
Bus Funding on Thin Ice
As state legislators maintain their glassy-eyed focus on gambling, less lucrative concerns — the restoration of funds for public transit, libraries and social services — are being ignored. But don’t say Harrisburg is single-minded — besides gambling, they also took an interest in sports last week. On July 19, the state House of Representatives passed…
A Conversation with Denny Strauser
How did you start working sound?Back in the late ’70s, there weren’t too many soundmen out there, and not too many people had sound systems. So I bought a small system for my band, and learned how to do sound by miking up our U-Store-It rehearsal space. I’d mike it, record rehearsal every night, and…
Ms. Fat-so
I wake up and try to avoid mirrors. But when I pass one on my way to the closet, she’s there in my peripheral vision: a 5’6″ 200-pound woman, a woman considered obese by federal standards. My closet contains outfits in six sizes — over the last 20 years, I have worn every women’s size…
Not the Bush League
Twenty-five minutes of George W. Bush at the podium, George Bush on two giant video screens and George Bush’s rhetoric booming through the convention center’s over-amped PA system didn’t help the president win over Imani Bazzell. “I was very displeased,” said Bazzell, attending the National Urban League’s convention from Champaign, Ill., following the president’s July…
Diamond in the Bluff
Over the past few years, I’ve found myself mostly ignoring the Pirates unless they were losing. It wasn’t out of spite, even though their home, PNC Park, was built with public tax money over the public’s objections. At least it wasn’t only out of spite. It was also because teams are interesting both when they…
The Grass is Always Greener
How do you bring a little bit of California into Shadyside? If you are Eric Fisher, you start with a strip of grass. A Pittsburgh native who spent ten years working for some prominent Los Angeles architecture firms, including Richard Meier and Partners and Frederick Fisher and Partners (no relation), Fisher returned to town wanting…
The Man Without a Past
The Man is dead. At least, his heart monitor says so, and his dead body would seem to concur. So who are his emergency-room doctor and nurse to disagree? They cover his face with a sheet, then leave the room to go about their early morning routine, allowing the corpse of their unidentified beating victim…
Seabiscuit
Unabashedly, writer/director Gary Ross opens Seabiscuitas though it’s some edifying PBS documentary. Vintage black-and-white photos of people in hats? Check. Avuncular voiceover (by PBS-fave historian David McCullough), accented with valedictory brass? Check, check. The film’s barely out of the starting gate before you’re wondering whether Ken Burns should phone his lawyer. But so it goes…
Burnt By The Sun
One bite, two bites, three bites, gore! That’s probably how a scene for one of these tracks would read if Burnt By The Sun’s album was made into a movie. The title itself, Soundtrack to the Personal Revolution, recognizes the record’s potential to support a corporate-condemning war against the socially defined connection between consumption and…
Northfork
An image from reality: Seen from the perspective of his miniscule congregation, a priest named Father Harlan sermonizes with his back to a missing wall of his little church; behind him, mountain plains and a big sky fan out to be framed by the remaining walls, suggesting nothing so much as a picture from a…
Swimming Pool
The interesting young French director François Ozon repeats himself very slightly in Swimming Pool, a slim (if agreeable) trans-cultural character study, masquerading as a thriller, that combines the curious perversity of his Water Drops on Burning Rocks and the morose introspection of Under the Sand, his best film so far. Swimming Pool revolves around Sarah…
