Ask, Don’t Tell
Thanks to new “homeland security” measures taken after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government isn’t just gaining new power to discover your secrets; it is working harder to conceal secrets of its own. And that’s doubly dangerous, because “A democracy can’t work if the public doesn’t know what its government is up to.” So warned…
Follow That Story
Seventeen demonstrators arrested Downtown May 30 while protesting increased health-care costs for University of Pittsburgh employees pleaded guilty to obstructing traffic and were ordered to pay fines and court costs of $135 each. But the June 9 court appearance wasn’t the end for the protesters or for Local 585 of the Service Employees International Union,…
A Conversation with David and Helen Gesue
What got you into this? David: For the past 20 years, I was running hospital foundations that managed philanthropic dollars. I came to Pitt and was associate vice chancellor for the medical school in that same capacity. I found it to be a very unsettling and unsatisfying environment. It just wasn’t my style. But rather…
Broken Homes
“You’re risking your life,” Judith Ginyard calls from the road. Glass from a missing picture-window crunches on the front porch of 1372 Montezuma St. in Lincoln-Lemington. There’s a notice on the door from a locksmith warning that the locks of this house were changed sometime in 2002 — perhaps from a landlord shutting out a…
POLI’S
Poli’s still has that great feel of an old-time dining establishment, the sort of place where without even looking at the menu you can confidently order a Manhattan, a shrimp cocktail, and surf-and-turf. There’s plenty of shiny cherry woodwork, large mirrors framed in black and gold, brocade-backed chairs and booths. Each booth has its own…
“Robot Man” and World-Record Hitchhiker
“You thought DeVon would live forever,” says Rob Joswiak, near DeVon Smith’s out-in-the-sticks trailer, outside of Wampum, Pa. Rob and Michele Joswiak traded scrap with Smith, which the latter sold for cash or used in his found-object robot sculptures and other creations. After his memorial service June 4, they revisited Smith’s homestead with Alice Kichty,…
The Ice Man Bummeth
Chaos continues in Iraq, while unemployment reaches new highs at home. Pittsburgh teeters on the brink of financial crisis, and the Port Authority may cut evening and weekend bus service. And through it all, you’ve probably been wondering the same thing I have: How is all this affecting Mario Lemieux? The beloved Penguins legend is…
What’s the historical significance of the “Mexican War Streets” on the North Side?
The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, as you may recall from your history books, allowed the United States to seize California and Texas from Mexico. That alone raises the kind of “what if” question that historians love to pose: “If Texas is what we got for winning, how horrible would it have been to lose?” In…
Raising Victor Vargas
The film opens on the luscious lips of 16-year-old Victor Vargas and the suggestion that some Kids-style depravity is about to ensue. Not so — writer-director Peter Sollet’s debut feature follows the desperately tentative romantic travails of half-a-dozen teens over a few steamy days in New York’s Lower East Side: These kids can barely meet…
SPELLBOUND
The first thing you might notice about the spelling-bee documentary Spellbound is how carefully filmmaker Jeff Blitz chose the contestants he follows. There are eight of them, all ages 11 to 13, but otherwise they are perhaps as diverse as one could make a group of champion spellers. There’s a white boy from suburban New…
2 Fast 2 Furious
Miami customs agents need a street-racer to go undercover to bring down a drug kingpin. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but any dedicated action-flick enthusiast can extrapolate what’s really important: Gonna have to beat the cops and the kingpin. Double trouble! Twice as fast! Our hero and ex-cop, Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker), demands…
For the Rank Files
For months, Pittsburghers have been held in thrall by the activities of the “Image Gap Committee,” whose ongoing mission has been to offer up “brand promises” and other marketing tools to better sell the region. But perhaps we’ve been so busy deluding ourselves with buzzwords that we’ve forgotten to create a buzz for anyone else.…
Black and White And Read All Over
If the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal at The New York Times begs for an examination of how affirmative action has swung the door wide open for minority reporters regardless of qualifications — as conservative columnists suggest — newly released tallies of African American journalists say the “problem” is hardly widespread. An American Society of Newspaper…
Casualty of War
The most interesting piece chosen for the Society of Sculptors’ annual show, currently on display at PPG Place as part of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, may be the one you don’t see there. “God’s Door,” by sculptor Dennis Childers, was either banned, voluntarily removed, never accepted or never even seen by display space managers,…
