VOL. 1 ISSUE 8 â–¶ Nov. 6-19, 2018
TURNING THE PAGE CHOO JACKSON ON LIFE, LOSS, AND PAYING IT FORWARD.
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CONTENTS Vol. I Iss. VIII Nov. 6, 2018
NEWS
Publisher/Editor: Charlie Deitch
▶ Family History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Charlie@pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ When Tomorrow Comes . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Associate Publisher: Bethany Ruhe Bethany@pittsburghcurrent.com
ARTS
EDITORIAL
▶ Steel City Muse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Art Director: Emily McLaughlin, emily@
▶ Pittsburgh Public Theater . . . . . . . . . 14
pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Tayari Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Music Editor: Margaret Welsh, Margaret@ pittsburghcurrent.com Special Projects Editor: Rebecca Addison, Rebecca@ pittsburghcurrent.com Visuals Editor: Jake Mysliwczyk
NEIGHBORHOODS ▶ Millvale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 ▶ Neighborhood Q & A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
TREE OF LIFE TRAGEDY ▶ Stories covering the recent tragedy at
▶ Tracy K. Smith. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill
MUSIC
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
▶ Legacy Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
EXTRA
Staff Writer, Arts: Amanda Reed, Amanda@
▶ Jesse Flati. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Alan Sparhawk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
▶ News of the Weird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
FOOD
▶ Savage Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Staff Writer, News and Food: Haley Frederick, Haley@ pittsburghcurrent.com Columnists: Aryanna Berringer, Sue Kerr, Mike Wysocki, opinions@pittsburghcurrent.com
▶ Ag Tech Summit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Craft Beer Writer: Day Bracey, info@pittsburghcurrent.
▶ This Tastes Funny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
com
▶ Day Drinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
▶ Crossword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 CREDIT: Front Page Photo of Choo Jackson by Jake Mysliwczyk
Contributing Writers: Kim Lyons, Jody DiPerna, Mike Shanley, Ted Hoover, Mike Watt, Ian Thomas, Matt Petras, info@pittsburghcurrent.com Logo Design: Mark Adisson
ADVERTISING Vice President of Sales: Paul Klatzkin, Paul@ pittsburghcurrent.com Senior Account Executives: Andrea James, Andrea@pittsburghcurrent.com Jeremy Witherell, Jeremy@pittsburghcurrent.com Account Executive: Mackenna Donahue, Mackenna@pittsburghcurrent.com
ADMINISTRATION Operations Director: Thria Devlin, thria@ pittsburghcurrent.com Office Manager: Bonnie McConnell, Bonnie@ pittsburghcurrent.com 4 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
THE FINE PRINT The contents of the Pittsburgh Current are © 2018 by Pittsburgh Current, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this publication shall be duplicated or reprinted without the express-written consent of Pittsburgh Current LLC. The Pittsburgh Current is published twice monthly beginning August 2018. The opinions contained in columns and letters to the editors represent the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Pittsburgh Current ownership, management and staff. The Pittsburgh Current is an independently owned and operated print and online media company produced in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Beechview neighborhood, 1665 Broadway Ave., Pittsburgh, PA., 15216. 412-204-7248. Email us or don’t: info@pittsburghcurrent.com.
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NEWS COULD FAMILY HISTORY WITH ANTI-SEMITIC VIOLENCE EXPLAIN THE INTENSITY OF GRIEF OVER THE TREE OF LIFE ATTACK? BY: JORDANA ROSENFELD - FOR THE PITTSBURGH CURRENT VIA PUBLICSOURCE INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM MORE ON THE TREE OF LIFE SHOOTING BEGINS ON PAGE 38. FOR MORE COVERAGE FROM PUBLIC SOURCE: WWW.PUBLICSOURCE.ORG
The air around me felt thick as I raced to a television to turn on the news. At the sight of the familiar intersection of Shady and Wilkins, made strange by police tape and news cameras, I burst into tears. Dizzy, my limbs suddenly impossibly heavy, I collapsed into a chair in my Point Breeze living room and focused on my breath. My head has ached almost nonstop since the moment I heard the words, “active shooter situation” at Tree of Life. Every soft tissue of my body seems to articulate grief. The emotional and physical pain has persisted, even after I learned I wasn’t personally acquainted with any of the people murdered. At first, I was at a loss to explain the intensity of my grief. For the first 20 years of my life, I tried to avoid experiencing sadness, grief and anger, thinking I could push away or bury my pain. Once I realized this was a doomed errand and finally took a serious look at everything I was holding inside myself, I began to think it might not all be mine. I was 23 years old when I learned about my family’s history with anti-Semitic violence. Before last year, I had thought there was no significant 6 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
family history of experiencing anti-Semitic violence. There is, but no one in my family ever talks about it. Traumatic stress can produce lasting negative consequences. Survivors of trauma may endure protracted struggles with anxiety, memory disruption, insomnia, physical pain and substance abuse, sometimes as part of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] and sometimes not. A growing body of research shows the negative effects of traumatic stress can also be passed through the generations. The children of traumatized people have been shown to have higher rates of anxiety, mood and psychiatric disorders. Trauma can be passed through family networks in a variety of ways. Some are behavioral. For example, if a traumatized parent is cold and distant or uses drugs and alcohol, these behaviors impact their children. Retellings of a traumatic experience have the power to traumatize those who listen, but also, silence about a past trauma can be damaging. New research suggests that the negative effects of trauma may even be genetically heritable. Research published in 2016 in the journal
“Biological Psychiatry” offers the first documentation of the transmission of traumatic stress effects from parent to child through epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression, or which genes are active or inactive, that don’t impact underlying DNA structure. Epigenetic factors influence how cells interpret genes. Epigenetic modifications are naturally occurring but are also influenced by environmental factors like age, lifestyle and, we’re learning, trauma. So, if trauma produces epigenetic modifications to someone’s DNA (the most-studied example involves DNA methylation, a chemical change that alters the expression of genes involved in stress response), those modifications are passed on through reproduction. While intergenerational trauma operates within one family, whole communities that have been repeatedly victimized throughout history experience the negative effects of compounded, communal trauma. Jewish communities fall into this category, as do other groups that have been targets of genocide or genocidal violence. In America, Black and Native American communities
have been and continue to be constantly attacked by white supremacist violence. Vietnamese American, Korean American and Arab American communities, among others who came to the United States seeking refuge from war and other traumatic events, also grapple with a communal legacy of trauma. Between the Holocaust and Eastern European anti-Jewish pogroms (a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc or destroy violently”), anti-Semitic violence has claimed the lives of the vast majority of my ancestors. My direct ancestors were all living in the United States by 1943. Most of their respective family networks stayed in Europe and were, with one or two exceptions, all murdered in the Holocaust. My paternal great-great grandmother Rose, whose father was killed in a pogrom in 1919, lost her mother and five siblings, not to mention the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents whose names may be forever lost to me. My maternal great grandfather Martin had 11 siblings. Two survived the war. I think about my grandma Rose, my father’s mother’s mother’s mother, having already experienced
on some level the loss of her family through her transcontinental migration, then learning her entire family has been killed and that she is the sole survivor. The suddenness and totality of the loss is unimaginable to me, but I feel sure that its profound effects did not evaporate or die with her. My great grandfather Martin, great grandmothers Sarah and Leah, great-great grandparents Sonya and Nathan and possibly others experienced similar trauma. Partly because they didn’t talk about the violence in their past and partly because those with knowledge of it died before I got the chance to ask them, a full accounting of my familial exposure to anti-Semitic violence is impossible. Although my family doesn’t know all the details, I believe we do feel its burden. On my way to work on Wednesday, Oct. 31, I passed my childhood congregation, Beth Shalom. Starting a few blocks from the synagogue, I began to notice sharply dressed pedestrians in dark colors headed toward the synagogue. Approaching the corner of Beacon and Shady, I saw a cluster of photographers and realized Beth Shalom was hosting a funeral for one of the people
murdered in the Tree of Life shooting. I felt like I needed to attend to show my support for the bereaved and the rest of my community and to participate in Jewish mourning rituals. A general sentiment echoed at the funeral service of Joyce Fienberg, one of the victims, was, “She was my sister, mother, aunt, but she was yours, too.” This was in reference to Joyce’s overwhelming spirit of compassion and service, but I heard it also as an acknowledgement of our community’s collective trauma, a way of saying, “You, like me, also have family members who have been killed for being Jewish.” This is a searing grief, but not an unfamiliar one. Though we must never become complacent in the face of white supremacist violence, we can perhaps find some comfort and solidarity in the shared nature of our grief. Editor’s Note: Jordana Rosenfeld is a former editorial intern with PublicSource and now works as a community outreach specialist at the Mon Valley Initiative. This story was originally published at www. publicsource.org.
Jordana Rosenfeld, 24, realized that the intense emotions she often feels and felt upon learning of the synagogue shooting may be due to trauma passed on through generations, stemming from anti-Semitic violence. (Photo: Kat Procyk/PublicSource)
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WHEN TOMORROW COMES BY ARYANNA BERRINGER - PITTSBURGH CURRENT POLITICAL COLUMNIST ARYANNA@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
All eyes in the nation are squarely focused on today. This midterm Election Day has quite possibly generated the most attention and energy with voters (and probably non-voters) in the history of off-year elections. And the referendum that President Trump has taunted the media with and used as a motivational tool when addressing campaign rallies, well it looks like
he is getting it. But refrain from making any predictions on the outcome. It’s a waste of time. Instead, after you vote today, take a couple moments; pat yourself on the back for taking part in your civic duty, and begin to contemplate what you have to do next. After the last ballot is counted tonight, no matter who wins control of our federal and state legislative
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chambers, you are going to wake up tomorrow with the realization that your work isn’t over. So I am writing to you to make sure you are not caught off guard. Our nation still needs you to fix a few things that require additional work after you cast your ballot. Our democracy is an engine; requiring one form of energy to be turned into another. In this case, your work converts to change.
Voting is an important part of the equation. But the sum total of factors that are necessary to driving the republic is plentiful. Please also take seriously that fact that you don’t have to do everything yourself and that everyone of us has a role to play. And not everyone has to fight over control of just the sexy roles either. Again. Vote, then contemplate. Who are you and what are your
strengths? Dig deep within your personal story and how it can, if utilized, strengthen our democracy. Based on an actuarial understanding of those reading this column today, when you wake up tomorrow, democracy will continue to drive. The only question is will you have a hand in deciding its direction?
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ART
STEEL CITY MUSE
POETRY EVENT WILL HONOR 12 ‘PITTSBURGH WOMEN OF POETRY’ BY JIMMY CVETIC - PITTSBURGH CURRENT POET LAUREATE INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
Editor’s Note: The following is a story about 12 Pittsburgh poets taken from interviews by Jimmy Cvetic. Cvetic presents the story in the only way he knows how: through poetry.
It has been long overdue; so today, in a small way, I would like to honor the Pittsburgh Women of Poetry … I am woman hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore and I know too much to go back and pretend…. (Helen Reddy) JOAN BAUER
Pittsburgh is the Home of the National Muse. A long time ago the nine muses left Greece and relocated in Pittsburgh the City of Champions. I have seen the muses drinking Iron City Beer at Heinz Field and have seen them dress as Pierogies at PNC Park; I’ve watched them on the ice at the PPG Paints Area. The muses now reside in Lawrenceville, South Side and Polish Hill and can be seen walking in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. They have been seen at Primanti’s eating a french fry sandwich and a;sp eating a fish sandwich at Wholeys on a Friday afternoon during Lent. And I’ve been told they sometimes go to Shadyside and dress as old Hippies in memory of a Pizza Pub on Walnut street. The muses are here mostly because of the poets, and often frequent Hemingway’s Cafe during the Tuesday Summer-Time Readings….And I guess that I should tell you...the National Muse now has hill climbing legs and the backbone of steel as well, the soft touch and a left hook of a woman. It is now the time for the amazing women of Pittsburgh … and I will tell you true ….so help me and for all the Gods of Poetry…
Started writing poetry when she was sixteen years and her mother encouraged her, “Joan bless your little hobby.” receiving her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from UCLA. She has taught English, and her teaching falling into the ears of 7th to 12th graders. Shehas studied Chaucer and Milton and Shakespeare and knew of the change to free Angela Davis and to end a War in Vietnam and has tasted the bitter poison of racism and poverty. She has lyrics inside her heart like Joani Mitchell, Joan Baez. She is the the co-director at Hemmingway’s Summer Time Poetry for the last ten years and have written poems that will shake your very soul. Taken from her book Almost the Sound of Drowning” “Blind Date” In the ladies’ room, blink at the uncertain woman in the mirror, wonder … If you are free do do whatever you want, why are you doing this?
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MARIANNE TRALE Born in the Bronx and relocated in Pittsburgh. She earned her MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and wrote as a columnist for the Tribune Review. Teaches, and is the Department Head at Boyce Community College. She was taught by Pulitzer Winner Galway Kinnell and drank beer with Shamus Haney, He of the Nobel Prize. From her soon to be released .. her long awaited book, Whistling Home the Animal “SACRILEGE” They would only suspect what might have been known from the moment I first saw his soft color eyes that truly, he is God. LYNN EMANUEL City College NY Iowa University and has taught Creative Writing at the Universty of Pittsburgh. Published: Hotel Fiesta, Then Suddenly, Oblique Light, Noose and Hook, The Nerve of It, The Dig When asked …. “Why do you write?” She said, “Out of Pleasure.” “I write for all women.” “My father told me to follow my heart.” “A passion, painters must paint, I must write.”
“I love the sound of words and the color of words, the power of words …. I must follow my heart.” “THE DIG” She is standing here thinking she cannot hear the way this footmy foot-wants to step out of the earth. I don’t care I’m using her to step out of the grave. LESLIE ANNE McILROY She said, “I started to write poetry when I was 8 years old. I didn’t understand poetry, maybe it was my Irish Heritage or maybe the rough streets of Wilkinsburg that led me down the path of poetry. I didn’t have a nice childhood ...I have always hunted for social justice and had my hand on the pause on what is fair.” has published the magazine HeArt Human Equity Through Art (19952008). Published: Gravel, Rare Space, Liquid Like This, Slag Just In Case Just in case you don’t know, loneliness doesn’t see herself as a heartache, but more like an orphan forever. DANIELLA BUCCILLI Born in Mone Cassino Italy Teaches English at Upper St. Clair High Published: NOTE BOOKS IN ITALIAN, POEMS TO AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER “At 11 years old I was hissed at by an old woman in Italy when I told her that I was a poet.” Roaring of the ocean roaring of the sea roaring of a lion roaring of me … “I am proud of my heritage Italian.
When I write poetry my mind is on fire I was born to write. Poetry is a way of life and my teacher, and my mentor said, ‘We do not write cute little poems what we do is serious’ --Jan Beatty When I was a young girl I knew of the madness of men...once a man put a gun in my mouth and made me pray the Our Father. “WHAT CANNOT BE STOPPED HAS BEGUN” All the world has gone to war. If it wasn’t the bomb that lit the house, The what else has come to kill us? KAYLA SARGESON Writing poetry since she was 12 years old. “I learned much of life from my grandmother.” Creative Writing from Carlow College Columbia University Chicago MFA First Publish in 5 A.M. Published: FIRST RED, BLAZE, MINI LOVED GUN She decorates her body with Hundreds of Tattoos She said, “My body is a poem. Some people have babies I get Tattoos.” When asked, “Why do you write?” She said, “Why do I breathe.” “To stay alive.” She said her natural world is the city, the sounds keep me fully awake, like the sound of a PAT bus.” She said, “I color my hair to fit my mood swings,” Her hair was bright red like the color of fire. She said, “I want everything like Lady GaGa, I want the Little Monsters.” “DARK HORSE” You get too drunk pick a fight with the blond behind
us. after the Steelers lose I pay the bar tab, drag you out the door by the corner of your flannel shirt. SHIRLEY S. STEVENS Graduated from Indiana University “I’ve been writing for over fifty years.” “I have taught form, sonnets, dramatic monologue, free verse and rhyme.” “I’ve taught the haiku. Example. -Diaper in the wind.” “I emphasize the stern diction and imagery of words.” “I research ten times what I will use in a poem.” I asked her, “Why do you write” She said, “Because I have to. I have to.” “I take art in a small place and make it big. I always want to share the experience,’ maybe to touch other people’s pain.” “I once sat in Robert Frost’s chair and for my bucket list, I got a private tour of Emily Dickinson’s home.” “My influences, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove and Nikki Giovanni.”
Schools for 35 years. “I took the 76 Hamilton bus to a lady’s house that opened the door to my education. To this wonderful woman I will be forever grateful.” “I was so scared and I was given the opportunity to Attend Carnegie Mellon, a dream come true a full scholarship.” “In 1972 I had an Afro but I was not a militant, I was young. I taught at South High, the Principal at the time wrote me a bad report, and when I questioned him he grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the wall. He wrote me up on days when we didn’t even have school. He taught me how to look at life differently, it was tough for anyone and especially for a young black woman. It made me stronger, “My influences have been many, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman,
Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel, “I want people to feel the truth in my poetry.” “To feel the spirit of my poems.” Published: 3-BIRDS DEEP, BLACKBERRY COBBLER SONG “THE LIVER GOD” The boys clung to the girls in fear of staggering into enemy fire lost in dense vegetation of flashbacks that dangled duty and honor poor boys just wanted rum down the hatch for sanity and fun … JUDITH VOLLMER Level Green High School University of Pittsburgh MFA Journalist for the Pittsburgh Press. “My first awaking to poetry was Li Po.” “Sometimes I have my backyard in my Poem.”
Published: Pronouncing What We Wish to Keep Awards: 1st Place Westmoreland Art Festival Pittsburgh Poetry Society Annual Award St. Davis Christian Poetry Award “II POVERELLO” He blesses Brothers Wind and Fire, Sister Moon and Stars, Yes, he smiles, wood finds it way. DR. SHEILA CARTER JONES Hometown: Wilkinsburg PA High School: Fox Chapel High School Doctorate in English Education, Carnegie Mellon Taught in the Pittsburgh Public PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 11
“Poetry is some kind of magic.” “I love Pittsburgh, for me it’s a perfect place. A big little city and I get to see the human side.” “I’ve been to Switzerland, Italy and France, I have studied in these countries, but Pittsburgh will always be my home.” “As a journalist for the press I worked a night desk as a reporter for many tragedies. During the killings at the Pittsburgh Massage Parlors they killed a young woman at the Airport. She was a young prostitute and I tried to find the beauty in the worst.” “The reason That I write is to see a better and more beautiful world” “I want to hold the images, hold onto nature see the aura, loving and respecting life … the mystery aspect.” “In a way I write all love poems, yeah, I write love poems.”
Influences: Peter Oresdivk, Ed Ochester, Lynn Emanual, Patricia Dobler, Jan Beatty, Charles Baudelaire - The Moon’s Favor-Lullaby to Poets Published: Level Green, Door Opens to the Fire, Reactor, Water Book, The ApOllonia “Hole in the Sky” I hid under the cellar steps shredding the hem of my skirt, it calmed me to see colors in the weave. JAN BEATTY Adopted and lived in Pittsburgh Hill District St. Gabriel’s Whitehall PA West Virginia University University of Pittsburgh MFA “I wanted to be a journalist and do social work.”
“I worked as a waitress for many years. I worked many places and sometimes I talked too much and was asked to relocate.” “I had my bouts with alcohol and drugs and I guess it was more than a moment.” “I have always chased the meaning of life, and I’m sure it has a meaning.” “I write poems true, communicating hopefully something important, I disappear into my poems.” “I write to be alive.” “Everything is a poem.” “It is a way of life. The only way to be here.: “I try to do the best work I can with words.” Published: MAD RIVER, BONE SHAKER, RED SUGAR, THE SWITCHING YARD, JACKKNIFE “SHOOTER” I’m shooting the cook who grabbed me from behind in the restaurant
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kitchen/ the famous poet that said there are no great women writers/the boy who left his handprint in black and blue/the men who say we are too serious, prettier when we smile…. ROMELLA KITCHENS Wilkinsburg PA Associate ACC North Side University of Pittsburgh MBA “I studied all of my life and known of violence and racism.” “My father taught English and math at Westinghouse High School.” “I have studied poetry for over fifty years.” “Have known both war and peace with poetry.” “I express what I feel with poems.” “I write painful, beautiful, ugly and
spiritual.” “I have written thousands of poems, filled journals, filled the walls, with many poems.: “I have known dystopia and utopia through poetry, and poetry in negritude.” “I break the rules.” “I write for my freedom.” Influences: Gerald Stern, Judith Vollmer, Pat Dobler Published: HIP HOP WARRIOR, THE IMMORTALS, RED COVER BRIDGE, THE HEAVEN OF ELEPHANTS “BEYOND THE HORSEFLIES” My father came back to the car Without my sister’s soda water, without delicious hot dogs … Without, without, without … He rested his head on the steering wheel, my mother stroking his back, then wept, “Nothing has changed down here, not a fucking thing.” LORI JAKIELA
“Poetry just bubbles up and I have to let it out.” “You can write forever.” “Poetry gives my life meaning.”
Influences: James Wright, Ethridge Knight, Ed Ochester, Wishawa Szymborska Published: BIG FISH, RED EYE, THE MILL HUNKS DAUGHTER MEETS THE QUEEN OF THE SKY, THE REGULARS “I lived in New York and worked as a flight attendant. I’ve been all over the the world.” “I write so I don’t lose people. People that have died I want them always close.” “I write the many faces of life. I try to find the humor in life.” “Boys I dated, Toofy Peduzzi had a tooth missing.”
The power of poem and the power of women make Pittsburgh the Home of the National Muse. It has been my great honor to recognize some of those amazing women. …. I am woman I am invincible I am strong I am woman. (Helen Reddy) Info: Glorious Women Poets. A reading by a dozen of the region’s best poets. 7 p.m. Sat. November 10. Monroeville Mall, top level, 200 Mall Circle Drive, Monroeville. $20 or bring a new, unwrapped toy. Proceeds benefit the Police Athletic League. For tickets call 412-2987373 or see participating poets in story below.
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equalities, class inequalities, nationality inequality, social mobility how we define what it means to be an American, who gets an invitation into the American dream,” he says. “And then it also reveals a little bit of the nightmare that can sometimes sneak into the American dream.” With the city’s connection to steel and blue-collar life — both prevalent in “Sweat” — Emeka hopes that audiences will be able to make some connection to the play. “Part of the excitement is seeing how the audience sees this play in these current times,” he says, referencing the show’s opening comes right after midterm elections. After each performance, the theater’s bar will stay open for Second Round, giving theater-goers a chance to connect and tell their stories. “It’s less about doing a typical talk and more about letting people
Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk
PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER PREMIERES
LYNN NOTTAGE’S SWEAT IN THE STEEL CITY BY AMANDA REED - PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF WRITER AMANDA@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM For Patrick Cannon, who plays Jason in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s production of Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat,” the production feels like home in more ways than one. The second-year Point Park MFA student grew up in Sheridan and graduated from West Allegheny High School. Pittsburgh Public was where he made his professional debut after graduating from Columbia College of Chicago. “I got my Equity card through a production of [Thornton Wilder’s] ‘Our Town’ here,” he says. “And that production has stayed with me and in a lot of ways, but mainly through the network of people I was able to meet.” Running at the O’Reilly Theater
from Nov. 8 to Dec. 9, Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat,” which won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, takes place between 2000 to 2009. It explores the lives of nine friends, whose friendship is challenged by layoffs and lockouts at Olstead’s Steel Tubing in Reading, Pennsylvania. “Sweat” is Nottage’s second Pulitzer Prize-winning play. She also received the prize in 2009 for “Ruined,” about the plight of women in the civil war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. Nottage remains the first and only woman to win the prize twice. The Pittsburgh premiere of the play is director Justin Emeka’s second time helming the production. He last directed it in Philadelphia at
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the Philadelphia Theatre Company, which ends its run four days before the Pittsburgh premiere. Although the words on the page are the same, the new space and the people breath a different life into the performance, according to Emeka. “Really being able to dig into the play with two different casts, two different companies, has been a very rewarding and enlightening experience as a director,” he says. “I can read the character on page all day long but I really don’t know what that character is going to be until I meet the actor.” But, the themes of the play ring true wherever it’s performed. “It sort of addresses racial in-
SHOW INFO: SWEAT. PITTSBURGH PUBLIC THEATER.
O’Reilly Theater, 621 Penn Ave., Downtown. $30-$80.412-316-1600 or www.ppt.org for whom the play has a particular resonance a place to share those resonances,” Ned Moore, artistic engagement associate at the Public, says. Emeka says this informal postshow chat gives audience members a way to connect that is not possible online bringing personal connection back into real life. “So often in the culture we’re living in today, we experience art all by ourselves, a lot of the times on the Internet or at home in our living room,” he says. With its parallels to Pittsburgh history, Cannon says the audience will be taken aback about how much they know the people onstage. “I’ll go as far as saying that there are very few shows that I think encapsulate pockets of our community the way the show does,” he says.
Tayari Jones (Photo: Nina Subin)
TAYARI JONES’ NOVEL, ‘AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE’ IS DRIVEN BY RAW, HONEST EMOTION BY: JODY DIPERNA - PITTSBURGH CURRENT LIT WRITER JODY@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM “An American Marriage” (Algonquin Press, 2018) tells the story of a young, successful African-American couple whose lives and marriage are turned upside down when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit. The structure provides author Tayari Jones the opportunity to explore fully the interior life of this marriage, this family and these individuals. It is surprising (in good ways) and honest (in all the ways we need for literature to be honest). Jones spoke to the Pittsburgh
Current from her home in Brooklyn. (Answers have been edited for length.) Can you talk about the use of multiple narrators that runs through your work? Capturing voices is the thing I do best. I think writing is a kind of mimicry. You’re able to capture the essence of a character if you can master that voice. Particularly in a story like “An American Marriage”, the characters’ feelings drive the story as much as conventional plo-
tline. Using their first person voices, I feel I’m closer to their emotional space. What were you thinking about when writing Celestial’s testimony at trial? I wrote that when George Zimmerman was on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. His friend (Martin’s friend, Rachel Jeantal) was treated as not credible because she was, as Celestial says, not articulate and well-spoken. But Celestial was seen as not being real enough, not down to earth enough. For women of color, it’s this credibility tightrope. Celestial says, ‘I didn’t know how to be anything other than well-spoken in front of strangers.’ All her life, just as all my life, as a black woman, the way to be taken seriously is to be well-spoken, articulate, mannered. These things get you into the door. The person with the most privilege in the equation is the one who gets believed. So how believable you are depends on who else is in the conversation -- one person gets believed and one person doesn’t. It’s relative. Roy’s wrongful incarceration is a way for you to turn the heat up on this marriage. It was very important that I not cast them as an ideal marriage destroyed by the system. Then they would not be real people — they would be symbolic people. They have a marriage that is very young. Celestial was always told that as a black person, she has to work twice as hard for everything. The same thing applies to her personal life. The only way her marriage could survive would be for them to be like super-spouses, as opposed to just regular people trying to figure out what it means to join your life with another person. There’s an amazing exchange of letters in which you see the
INFO: TAYARI JONES WILL SPEAK AT THE CARNEGIE MUSIC HALL
in Oakland on Nov. 19th at 7:30 p.m.
burden that Celestial carries. “Dear Celestial, I am innocent. Dear Roy, I am innocent, too.” I think of myself as engaging with the “Odyssey.” Like Penelope, Celestial is a textile artist. Instead of weaving and unweaving her tapestries, she becomes a renowned artist. Like Odysseus, Roy wants his woman’s chastity to be a monument to his struggle. He wants this ancient standard of marriage. Because he is innocent, he feels entitled to special consideration from everyone in his life. But she, too, is innocent. There is this idea that Celestial’s social, professional and even sexual choices are somehow the determining factor as to whether or not justice is served. As though one woman’s sacrifice would be a greater factor than the larger, racist institutions that caused this. That is what happened to Roy. Celestial’s choices are not what happened to Roy. When I talk to people, there are a few people who say, ‘I thought that Celestial was the real villain.’ I got heckled. Whoever heard of a novelist getting heckled?! I was surprised when I flipped the page and saw Andre’s POV. I re-wrote this book three times. I wrote it all from Celestial. I wrote it all from Roy. Then I toggled Roy and Celestial and it was not quite there. I needed Andre to provide another point of view and just put some air in the room. It also freed Roy’s character from being symbolic as the black man. Once you have two, the symbolism is already shaken. I like Andre’s voice. He tickles me. On a bookclub site for “An American Marriage,” there is a suggested cocktail — a caramel apple mimosa. You should demand a better cocktail. There was a cocktail somewhere called a Celestial. It was really nice. It had champagne and St. Germain and something else. Something along the lines of a French 75. I do quite like a French 75.
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 15
U.S. POET LAUREATE TRACY K. SMITH
LOOKS FOR THE DEEP, OFTEN HARD, TRUTH IN HER WORK BY JODY DIPERNA - PITTSBURGH CURRENT LIT WRITER JODY@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
In the Jewish tradition of watching over the dead, the Shomrim (or guards) stay with the body and read the Psalms in order, one after another. The body is never left unattended. The Shomrim were still standing their vigil with the eleven murdered Pittsburghers, still reading the 150 poems which make up the Book of Psalms when the Pittsburgh Current spoke with U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. “Poems help us to form a vocabulary for loss, for rage, for hope. They do that in ways that aren’t pat. It’s not just about saying love, love, love, love, love. Poems are rigorous with our feelings,” Smith said just 48 hours after the massacre at Squirrel Hill’s Tree of Life Synagogue. “Poems say that the instant feeling, reaction, appetite is often not enough. That there’s something that sits beneath or beyond it that we need to find a way of recognizing. In my mind, this carries me to a place where I become more capable of acknowledging my own flaws, my own complicitness.” Smith’s poetry searches fearlessly for truth. Her poems can move you to tears or righteous anger. They are also unnerving, beautiful and audacious. They always make you think and feel unexpected things. “Most of my poems come from a feeling of unrest. There’s something that I’m itched by,” Smith said via telephone. “Even the poems that are about something beautiful, like motherhood, I’m hoping language can guide me to what else is really there. The nature of motherhood is complex and poems have helped
me put language to that. I always find even when I write a love poem, if it doesn’t have something under the surface that’s dangerous, it feels almost unresolved. A simple way of saying it is I am looking for dramatic conflict.” The poet laureate since 2017, Smith is the author of a brilliant memoir, “Ordinary Light” (Knopf, 2015) and has won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, as well as the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her latest collection, “Wade in the Water” (Graywolf Press, 2018) is a sprawling testimony to her skill and mastery of multiple forms of poetry. She uses her own voice and other documents — letters, testimony, political documents — to craft these poems. Like Walt Whitman, Smith’s work is large and contains multitudes. There are erasure poems created by erasing words from an existing text and framing the result on the page as a poem. Smith takes this technique to correspondence between family members regarding the sale of several slaves, and also to the Declaration of Independence in the poem “Declaration” which ends: “Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. — taken Captive on the high Seas to bear — “ Smith was, as many of us are, wrestling with some of the terrible things we are feeling right now in terms of race, love, difference, understanding and compassion. She
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Tracy K. Smith (Photo: Eliza Griffiths) sat down, not to write, but simply to read the Declaration of Independence, just to see what it had to say. “Then it just started talking to me. I heard these statements,” Smith said. “I understood that if I could take away the sense of England as the agent of suffering, I was hearing a really clear testimony about black life in this country from the beginning until now. That felt so, so unsettling that I couldn’t ignore it.” There are other instances where letters are used, but not as erasure. Smith allows those voices to speak through her. One of the longer and most gripping poems, “I Will Tell You the Truth about This, I Will Tell You All about It” is composed entirely of letters and statements of African-Americans enlisted in the Civil
War and of their wives, widows, parents and children. Some of these letters were sent to President Abraham Lincoln and the Freedmen’s Bureau. One of the things that emerges is the faith in and engagement with the very notion of democracy -- belief that government can actually tend to its people and faith that leaders want to help. It is both shocking and shaming in 2018. “I got captivated by these voices,” Smith said. “How beautifully compelling and persuasive and urgent and full of dignity and hope they were. I thought, my voice has no place here. I just want to gather these voices and ask other people to listen to them with me.”
OUR #INKTOBER WINNER IS Holly Erin, a Pittsburgh native and artist whose art reflects her love of the Wiccan community and her city.
Inktober is a world-wide celebration, where artists pen one ink drawing per day for the entire month of October. Thank you to Red Fish Bowl for being our partner in art.
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 17
MUSIC
LEGACY COSTS BY CHARLIE DEITCH - PUBLISHER/EDITOR CHARLIE@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
“If I want to see the rest of the dream, I got to go out and get it for myself.” A few weeks ago, hip-hop artist Choo Jackson released a new video. The song was called “Loner,” and the accompanying video was a tribute to his friend and mentor Mac Miller. It didn’t take long before the Internet did what it does best -- shit on happiness. He was accused by some of trying to use Mac’s name and image to “build a career,” or chase clout. Com-
ments like these were the exact reason that Jackson kept quiet publicly about Miller’s September 7 death. “Loner,” a song that was written before Miller’s death was a tribute to his friend and he no longer cared what other people thought about his relationship Mac Miller. “People are saying all of this stuff and it hurt because this man was my
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friend,” Jackson says. “He helped me grow as an artist. He would have me out to his house, he put money in my pocket. I miss my friend” The past few months have been tough for Jackson. He invited the Pittsburgh Current to his hometown of Chambersburg, a solid three hour drive from Downtown Pittsburgh known, apparently, for its peaches. He wanted
to talk about his relationship with Miller, and share what the man meant to him. In the aftermath of MIller’s death, testimonials and memorials came from everywhere. But Jackson kept his sentiments to himself. Why? An outsider looking in might surmise it’s because of the importance of the friendship. As you’ll learn in this story, Jackson cherishes his friendships.
Above and right: Choo Jackson (center) and Phresh Muney, Phil Wushu (left) and Swaine aka StaXX (Current Photos by Jake Mysliwczyk) Not just the one he had with Mac Miller, but all of the real-life, important, ride-or-die bonds in his life. It would honestly crush him if people thought he was friends with Mac Miller or anyone, for that matter, just to get himself ahead. It’s easy to see that Jackson is having a hard time reconciling Miller’s sudden death at the age of 26. On the day this story went to press, officials announced Miller’s official cause of death: an accidental overdose from a fatal mixture of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol. The report says he was found kneeling on his bed, his head resting on his knees. Not knowing exactly what happened had been bothering Jackson since Miller’s death. He knew Miller used drugs harder than booze and weed, but Jackson never saw it because he wasn’t into that scene. Sitting around his mom’s dining room table, he repeatedly mentions how knowing what happened would help give him closure and make the loss of a friend hurt less. When the news was an-
nounced Nov. 5, Jackson texted: “The cause of his passing just came out today,” Jackson wrote. I asked him if he felt a sense of closure. “I thought it would, but it didn’t at all. Only thing is time, I think.” Miller’s death sent shockwaves through the country’s musical scene, but nowhere was the pain more evident than in Pittsburgh. There was an outpouring of support from fans, friends and collaborators. The reason that Miller’s death affected so many people is that he truly was a good person who helped a lot of young artists, like Choo Jackson. “Mac had this thing where he could make you feel like he already knew you,” Jackson explains. “We had this artists’ bond and I think we also got along so well because I never overstepped his life. I loved when we’d hang out, but I was never one to blow his phone up because as big as he was, if I’m texting him like a million other motherfuckers are texting him too, or sending DM’s, meanwhile he’s trying
to chill out in Argentina or some shit. When he wanted to talk or get together, he’d find me. It was a good friendship and he was a great mentor.” “I ain’t made it yet. Mac and I collaborated and he took me on tour, but at the end of the day, I’ve gotta get there on my own. That’s what he did. Now, to honor him I have to complete the journey and help out other young artists out there just like he helped me. I fucking owe him that.” Long before Choo Jackson met Mac Miller and started touring the country, he and his boys were making a name for themselves. Jackson moved to Chambersburg from Florida when he was 15. That’s when he met his friend Swaine, aka StaXX. A year or so later, they got another member of their crew; a second Florida transplant, Phil Wushu. The three met playing football together at Chambersburg Senior High. The question about who was a better baller barely hit the room when Jackson chimed in that it was him.
“Shit,” Wushu says.”I was so good I quit so I didn’t have to show your ass up.” The lace-covered wooden dinettectable he sat at served in contrast to his bravado. The room erupts in laughter. The three have been friends for years. In fact, doing a photo shoot without StaXX and Wushu was out of the question. They have chemistry, love and adoration for one another. That’s probably why they clicked musically as well. “There’s not much to do around here but party, be a little reckless, but we were young,” Staxx says. “And the other thing to do was make music. We just started chillin’, vibin’ out and posting shit. Facebook wasn’t even really that big back then but we started getting a lot of hits. And honestly, back then, there weren’t a lot of folks putting stuff online. Us? We lived online.” Wushu called the three “trailblazers,” and he may be right. It was the late 2000s, early-2010s, and they were doing something not many, if any artists were doing. They were leading the way
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with DIY promotion and they were doing it from a city that was known more for its fucking peaches than its hip-hop. “I feel like we might have been a little bit ahead of our time,” Jackson says. “We started getting known through videos.” And what exactly was the name of this ahead-of-its-time group? “Phresh Muney,” says StaXX with a laugh. “Now, originally,” Wushu explains, “we spelled it regular like ‘Fresh Money.’ But there was another Fresh Money out there so we changed it up with the “PH” and dropped that ‘O.’” The guys started making music at Pittsburgh’s ID Labs, the studio that helped artists like Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller get on the map. Miller started hanging around the studio in 2009 and in 2010, the Phresh Muney crew began working out of the tiny studio. Phresh Muney would make a record there called “Regular Guy.” The song was so good that in 2012, Miller himself did a two-minute remix, complete with a Phresh Money shoutout. But in 2010, the group started having conversations about doing solo projects for a spell. “I got right to work immediately because at the time I had this shitty warehouse job, cleaning fucking toilets,”Jackson says. “I was working on this demo, parts of which would later become [mixtape] “Beer Flavored Pizza. But, honestly, I was still thinking about the group.” Jackson approached a former Phresh Muney producer who was now working with Miller and asked the producer to approach Miller about doing a feature on a future Phresh Muney project. Miller said, no. “But the guy told me Mac liked my stuff and wanted to work with me,” Jackson explained. Jackson wasn’t sure what to do at first. But he realized that the opportunity was too good to pass up. “It was awkward having the conversation, but they understood that nothing like this happens in Chambersburg.” “Hell yeah we understood,” Wushu says. “A foot in the door for one of us is a foot in the door for all of us.” At the time Jackson and Miller
was appreciative for a chance to see Miller up close every night doing his thing.
Choo Jackson and Mac Miller hooked up, Miller was launching his K.I.D.S. mixtape. “When this was all happening I did understand how big of a star he was going to be,” Jackson says. “But I had no idea it was going to be this Kurt Cobain-level stardom. And to even be part of something like that was wild.” Jackson remembers his first show with Miller. They played in front of 1,200 kids at Slippery Rock University. “I was so scared because he just put me out there during his set and I didn’t know if I could perform,” Jackson says. “Hell, he didn’t know if I could
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perform, but I got a shot and it was awesome. Before that, we made music, we didn’t really perform live. When we did, we spent most of our time trying to figure out what to do.” For the next 18 months or so, Jackson would play a few dates a year with Miller. He got his first chance to open for Miller in 2014, during a two-night Christmas show in Atlantic City. The following year he went on the road for Mac Miller as a bonafide opener on Miller’s Go:od AM tour. It was during this time that that the two became close and Jackson says he
When asked to describe where he thinks Miller derived his talent from, Jackson didn’t hesitate. “Did you listen to [Miller’s final record] “Swimming?” he asks. “What did you hear when you heard that first song? You know what I heard? A fucking angel singing. “I’ve seen him make music before. What he did on that record was unreal and it made me feel some kinda way. It’s a gift from God. Wait, he’s Jewish, they’re down with God though, right? All I know is someone laid that on him. For all I know he could have been John Lennon reincarnated. Mac was some kind of special.” Even as Choo Jackson continues his musical journey, his life’s journey from here, it seems like a lot of who he is will be formed by his time with Miller. Jackson learned from Miller the importance of not just taking advantage of a gift, but using it to help others get to where they want to be. Countless artists credit Miller with helping them get a shot in this business. But Miller didn’t just share knowledge, he collaborated with other artists like they were peers, his friends. Jackson surmises that there must be countless unheard Mac Miller recordings floating around the country. He loved working with others in an attempt to make something different, something new. Jackson says he has at least an album’s worth of material that he recorded with Miller that he plans to do something with some day. Right now though, he’s got his own music to make. “Mac experienced so much in life. Number one albums, he toured the world. And I’m glad he showed me a little part of that,” Jackson says. “And I think that he only showed me a little part of it because If I want to see the rest of the dream, I got to go out and get it for myself.” “And that’s my plan. I’m trying to get the right set of music so I can go out on a cool-ass tour, make hits and keep my man’s legacy alive.”
Jesse Flati and his wife, Steph Wolf made up punk band The Lopez. Flati dies Oct. 27 (Photo: Ryan Michael White)
JESSE FLATI OF PITTSBURGH PUNK BAND THE LOPEZ DIES AT 40
worked on various Lopez recording projects over the last five years, and who recorded the duo’s forthcoming LP, recalls one of the first times she met Steph and Jesse. They played a lunchtime set for campers at Girls Rock! Pittsburgh and, she says, “I remember Jesse Playing his noisy guitar leads, leaning his whole body into Steph with a wide-legged stance as she screamed into the microphone, then stepping back in silence as soon as they were finished so she could field questions. Their powerful chemistry and partnership were instantly recognizable to everyone who met them.” Joe Melba, who’s former band The Maxi Pads often played with the Lopez, first bonded with Jesse over a shared love of wrestling. But Melba also fondly remembers Jesse’s enthusiasm for live music, and willingness to actually go out and see touring bands. “The joke was always, ‘Are you ready to be the old guys at the basement show?” Melba remembers with a laugh.
BY MARGARET WELSH - PITTSBURGH CURRENT MUSIC EDITOR MARGARET@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM When people talk about Jesse Flati, there are several themes that come up over and over: his humor, his thoughtfulness, his wrestling fandom, his dedication to DIY and the Pittsburgh music scene and his willingness to help out. Flati’s sudden passing on October 27 sent breakers of shock and grief through the Pittsburgh music community. In the high-energy riot-grrrl punk band the Lopez -- easily one of Pittsburgh’s most active and hardworking bands -- he and his bandmate and wife Steph Flati served as musical ambassadors, always welcoming new people or bands into their orbit, always seeking out new music to share at their regular DJ nights.
In July, The Lopez played a record release show for their new single, “Like a Prayer.” A new full-length record was expected by year’s end. Emily Crossen, who’s band Blod Mod played a few shows with the Lopez, says that though she didn’t know Jesse well, what stands out is how easy it was to ask him for help. “I didn’t feel like I had to save face,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel like I had to pretend to know things I didn’t know, as a woman musician.” The duo was deeply invested in boosting and celebrating the work of non-male musical artists, and feminism was a theme that ran throughout the Lopez’s nearly decade-long span. Recording engineer Madeleine Campbell, who PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 21
A CONVERSATION
WITH ALAN SPARHAWK OF LOW BY MARGARET WELSH - PITTSBURGH CURRENT MUSIC EDITOR MARGARET@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker were already married when they started Low in 1993; By the time they had their first child, they’d put in a nearly a decade of touring. Now, 25 years and a dozen records later, the band — which includes longtime bassist Steve Garrington — has released what is easily their most adventurous and challenging album yet. Anyone familiar with
2015’s BJ Burton-produced Ones and Sixes won’t be shocked at the more dissonant direction that Low has taken, but Double Negative, which came out in September, pushes those boundaries even further. Also produced by Burton, the new record is immersively engaging, even just to the extent that you might occasionally wonder if the record is really supposed to sound like that,
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or if your stereo speakers are just busted. It’s far from the harshest or most perplexing stuff out there – ultimately, this is still a Low record, which is to say that even at its most shadowy or cacophonous, it’s measured and full of light and beauty. “It’s one thing to go and make a bunch of racket,” says Sparhawk over the phone from his and Parker’s home in Duluth, Minn. “Anyone
can do that, but how do you make it have a reason?” He pauses to consider whether that’s the word he wants. “Yeah,” he concludes. “A reason. A purpose.” Double Negative is such an interesting listening experience, because it’s gentle, but also kind of in-your-face. Was that what you were going for? I’ve always loved other artists
that have had that element, beautiful but also slightly disturbingly broken. There’s a tension there that I really enjoy. But I think doing the last record, Ones and Sixes, we kind of saw that a little bit … and sort of realized that we’d … arrived at this place where we were kind of wanting that. And we were also working with someone who saw that and wanted that as well. … And we said, “Well, for this next record let’s really go there.” And it took a long time to really find what “there” was. It’s one thing to set out to make something jarring, but this feels organic. I hope so. It was made with love, for sure. It was made with genuine desire to make something interesting and engaging, hopefully, in a positive way, but also recognizing that it might be difficult and maybe not a lot of people [would] really get it. But, you know how it is. … You know when there’s something there that has a real resonance with the universe. From what I’ve read, it sounds like the writing and recording process was really immersive. Looking back it really was kind of a chaotic time … right down to psychological well-being and this feeling of being a little untethered for one reason or another. But it’s interesting because the process really reflected that. I’d say it was 90% confusion and 10% transcendence. Hopefully! And hopefully we captured mostly transcendence and at least a shade of confusion. In many ways, as much as [making a record] is a reflection of life, it does shape your life, I think. When … you’ve kind of gambled so much of your soul on creativity and sort of the quest to create something that you feel is satisfying, depending on how that process is going I guess it would make sense that it would really affect your mind. [Laughs] Lately it seems like anything noisy or challenging musically gets categorized as apocalyptic. But, of course, this record is full of a lot of light, so I was wondering how you
LOW WITH IN/VIA. 8 P.M. TUESDAY, NOV. 13.
The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls, 400 Lincoln Ave., Millvale. $20. www. mrsmalls.com hold on to that, especially making a record in 2018? The act of trying to make a record is pretty hopeful. It’s the effort to try to make sense of what’s going on, or what you’re feeling. There’s probably going to be a slew of records that are really twisted and frustrated and everyone’s going to have their own way of reacting and it’s going to be really interesting to see how that goes. But, we didn’t intend to go in and make a political record, or a record that’s reacting, but we for sure made that record spread out during the time going up to the election, and it was definitely weighing on us. … We try to be aware, and we try to be conscientious and we’re definitely people who believe that people need to be treated with dignity and that leadership is a very important role and that … when people use it for their own selfish gain … it’s more than just people stealing things like money and power, its changing the psyche of the whole society, and its giving license to hate and violence and its shaking the foundations that the rest of the population count on to live from day to day. [This] record was made definitely in that time, and from experience of making records and writing, at the time you don’t feel like it’s directly reflecting what’s going on in your life, but time and time again you can look back and say, “Now I see where that song was coming from.”
FULL INTERVIEW ONLINE AT PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
IES R E S
This is the one that takes you on a journey
“A beautiful story, it is, And beautifully told.” —Teateravisen
ANDROCLES AND THE LION
Teatre Gruppe 38 and Carte Blanche
RECOMMENDED FOR AGES 7+
NOVEMBER 2-10
PART OF THE
4TH FLOOR STUDIO • TRUST ARTS EDUCATION CENTER B OX O F F I C E AT T H E AT E R S Q UA R E • 41 2- 4 5 6 - 6 6 6 6 G R O U P S 1 0 + T I C K E T S 41 2- 47 1 - 6 9 3 0
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FOOD AG TECH SUMMIT
WANTS TO SPUR INNOVATIVE THINKING ABOUT FOOD BY: HALEY FREDERICK - PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF WRITER HALEY@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM When you think of Pittsburgh technology, you first think of driverless cars and AI. One thing’s for sure, you probably weren’t thinking about agriculture technology. That’s part of a problem that the first ever Pittsburgh Ag Tech Summit is trying to solve. On Nov. 19, ag tech startups will mix with local chefs, and other food, agriculture and tech industry professionals to share ideas, build connections and generate interest in their projects. They’ll also focus on one important question: how do we build a better food system? The event is being presented by Idea Foundry and hosted at Tree Pittsburgh’s Heritage Nursery. It’s the work of Stefan Vantchev and Hank Wilde, co-founders of Greenhouses For Everyone and their own ag tech startup, Panacea. Panacea’s mission is to use sensory technology, robotics and automated controls to make hydroponic farming as efficient, and therefore as profitable, as it can be. “If you look at trend right now there is the local food, farm to table trend, but there is also the smart home automation trend,” says Wilde. Smart homes use cameras connected to doorbells, automated lights and thermostats to collect data and enable energy efficiency. Panacea has a similar idea, but for growing plants. They want to solve some of the problems farmers are facing, like labor shortages, high energy costs, and crop loss. Vantchev is uniquely positioned to see the potential of ag tech; he’s a software software architect that grew up in
Bulgaria working on family farms, and he still farms today. “Not only am I developing the technology, I’m living the problem,” Vantchev says. The end goal for Wilde and Vantchev is a big one. They want to find ways to enable farmers to grow more food right here, in our own region, and they want them to be able to do it in a sustainable, affordable way. The advantages of increasing local food production are numerous and include things like better tasting tomatoes, but some of the biggest are purely economic. “Definitely a lot [of food] is brought in from further away than benefits our local economy,” says the City of Pittsburgh’s Urban Agriculture and Food Policy Adviser Shelly Danko-Day. If our food is coming from across the country, than our money is going there, too. And increased local production could create job opportunities. But the problems that lead to food outsourcing aren’t easy to solve, and Vantchev and Wilde don’t expect to be able to solve them on their own. Another startup that will be at the summit is also focused on finding ways to solve the problem of labor shortages, but in harvesting. University of Pittsburgh alumni Brandon Contino and Dan Chi started Four Growers after they heard from greenhouse growers that labor was an issue. “Since I had a background in building robots, and Dan had spent
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Pittsburgh Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk time designing custom robot grippers for the packing industry, we realized we had the perfect skill set to develop a solution to the pressing need that these greenhouse growers had,” Contino says. He’s spent the summer in San Francisco after Four Growers was chosen to be one of the startups in Y Combinator’s prestigious accelerator program that has also supported big names like Dropbox, Reddit, and Airbnb. Contino is excited to come back to Pittsburgh and keep working on Four Growers’ tomato-harvesting technology. Though he can see why ag tech has flown under the radar here. “Agriculture isn’t always the sexiest field,” Contino says. “Would
you rather have a plant or have a car that’s going to drive itself?” He thinks that the Ag Tech Summit will help bring attention to food production problems, which should in turn get people interested in finding solutions. “It’s really hard to get interested if you don’t think there’s a problem, so by highlighting some of the problems it’ll help to engage more people,” says Contino. Though, not every ag tech startup is focused on the problems surrounding growing food. The Pittsburgh-based startup Farm Jenny is all about the animals. The founders of Farm Jenny, Tammy Crouthamel and her husband Rob, are also coming from backgrounds in both technology and ag-
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ANDREA SHOCKLING
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riculture. Crouthamel grew up on a farm, and for the past few decades, they’ve been working tech jobs during the day, and coming back to their farm at night. “We were seeing a lot of opportunities as we cared for our animals--ways that we thought technology could enable farmers to prevent or address problems faster,” Crouthamel says. “Just like us, most of those farmers have day jobs, so they can’t always be with their animals and they may miss those early warning signs of potential problems.” Farm Jenny makes behavior tracking wearable technology that is designed to help farmers detect illness, injuries, and potential problems with their animals before they become obvious through vital signs, and then sends the farmer an alert to their phone. They’re starting with horses, with plans to expand to other common farm animals in the future. Crouthamel believes that Pittsburgh is the perfect setting for an ag tech industry. She’s been able to live close enough to the city to have a thirty minute commute to her tech job, while still being able to own enough land for a small farm. “A lot of metropolitan areas wouldn’t allow for that because in order to get out far enough to have farmland, you would have to have a two hour commute to a tech job in the city but here in Pittsburgh it’s possible,” she says. Crouthamel also thinks that when it comes to ag tech, we’re in just the right time.
“People are scrambling for and eager for technology,” she says. “It’s to the point now where almost every professional has a smartphone and they almost expect to have apps and devices and solutions to meet their every need through that smartphone, and so it’s only natural that today’s farmers would start to look for those solutions there as well.” Coming from outside the tech industry, Danko-Day is less certain. She’s interested in creative solutions, but she knows that some farmers won’t have the resources to embrace ag tech. “I think there’s a place for all kinds of farming—there’s definitely a place in the landscape of urban food growing for ag tech and for the robotics,” she says. “But the barriers for that type of technology are pretty high for some communities.” The question is then: will it work in Pittsburgh? Panacea, Four Growers, and Farm Jenny all believe that they have solutions for farmers that will help them increase productivity and cut costs. And more than ten startups will be at the first ever Pittsburgh Ag Tech Summit, along with several other tech and food companies. And Crouthamel says that opportunity for collaboration and networking could make a difference in the field. “I think that there’s a lot happening in ag tech and it’s important that we collaborate and share what we’re doing so that everyone can gather that information and knowledge and we can move ahead a lot faster as an industry.”
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KRISH MOHAN GOES TO KI RAMEN BY: HALEY FREDERICK - PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF WRITER HALEY@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM I meet Krish Mohan at Ki Ramen in Lawrenceville for a bite to eat. The restaurant’s slogan, “soul in a bowl,” promises flavors both bold and comforting. A neon sign reading “take it easy” casts a red glow on the dining room. We’re having a late dinner, but Ki Ramen’s downstairs bar makes it a popular late night spot, so we’re not the only ones. Mohan is a busy guy. He’s squeezed in this dinner between touring stops. Just this month alone he’ll be doing stand up shows in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. And I feel a little bad for picking a ramen joint when he mentions that he often lives off of the packaged stuff when he’s on the road, but I’m hoping this ramen will be an entirely different experience. Ki Ramen offers six different styles of ramen, but with the lengthy list of possible add-ons, the options are nearly endless. Either because he can’t decide or because he’d already chosen it before I did, Mohan orders the same Spicy Miso Ramen as I do. The dish is typically vegan, coming with corn, rayu 30 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
cucumbers, cabbage, enoki mushrooms, nori, scallions, chili paste and inferno oil. I decide to add on the brisket to mine to make it a little heartier. I ask Mohan how he got into comedy and he calls it an accident, but as the story unfolds, it turns out it’s moreso a tale of a high school boy’s arrogance. His friend Derek Kryster—now a member of the Pittsburgh band Wreck Loose—suggested that since Mohan wasn’t in a band, he should enter their high school talent show as a standup comedian. With the unabashed confidence only a high school boy can have, Mohan went home and wrote eight note cards worth of jokes about his family and Benito Mussolini, auditioned for the show, got in, and ended up performing his first stand up set for more than 2,000 of his peers and teachers. “Later you learn how to be nervous, or you learn how things can go wrong,” Mohan says. But that blind arrogance carried him forward, and at seventeen he recorded an 80 minute comedy album. According to Mohan, it’s
about as good as you would expect 80 straight minutes of standup from a 17 year old to be. “There are like three or four jokes in there where I’m like ‘well, that’s cool that I said that when I was 17,” Mohan says. “Other than that, I listen back to it and I’m like ‘oh my god, I can’t believe this is something I thought I should do.’” It’s safe to say Mohan’s stand up has changed a lot in the last 13 years since his talent show debut. In the past five years, especially, his style has morphed into what he refers to as “socially conscious” comedy. “It kind of evolved from me just talking about my family or weird tv shows or making fun of ESPN to talking more about social issues,” he says. And while some may refer to what he does as “political comedy,” Mohan says that he doesn’t think that’s exactly it. “I think when you say ‘political comedian’ a lot of people think you’re going to go on stage and talk about Trump or Mitch Mcconnell and I don’t care about any of them because they don’t care about us,” Mohan says. “I think there are issues and systems in place that hurt us, so because I talk about that and general philosophy type stuff, issue type stuff, I don’t know if I fit into the political comedian category because I don’t really address what traditional political comedy would.” The server brings us our bowls of ramen and they’re so beautifully assembled that Mohan remarks that he almost feels bad eating it be-
cause he’s destroying someone’s artwork. I see what he means. Ramen is a dish that brings together several components, and at Ki Ramen you can tell that there is thought and care put into each one. The broth is spicy but not so spicy that it dwarfs the other flavors, like the sweetness of the corn and the sourness of the cucumbers. The brisket is tender and delicious and generously portioned. The tables at Ki Ramen are set with chopsticks, but the servers are willing and ready to bring you a fork without at all shaming you for your lack of dexterity. Mohan’s “socially conscious” style of comedy involves digging into the big issues that affect us all in our daily lives. He doesn’t just observe how things are, he looks into why they are that way. He knows that it doesn’t appeal to everyone. “Within the first 5 minutes [of a show] an entire table walked out,” he says. “Maybe the babysitter had an emergency, or maybe I was in a very small town in Maryland at a casino talking about being an immigrant, and they were like ‘well, this isn’t really going to be our cup of tea.’” To Mohan, it’s still worth it. His interest in stand up isn’t only about making people laugh, it’s about opening people up through comedy so that they can find ways to relate. “There’s big issues that I think we need to address and laughter is a way to drop your defenses,” Mohan says. “If we can have a conversation about it, maybe we can come up with some decent solutions.”
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DAY DRINKING:
KEEPING TABS ON PITTSBURGH’S CRAFT BEER SCENE BY: DAY BRACEY - PITTSBURGH CURRENT CURRENT CRAFT BEER WRITER INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM Before I begin, if you’re reading this, go vote. If you have already, dope. If you don’t plan to, I envy your faith in other people to guide this country. And if sarcasm doesn’t translate well via text, I want you to know that I think you’re an idiot. Oct. 26, 4pm: Burgh’ers Brewing makes a fried chicken sandwich brined in pickle juice. It’s like ChikFil-A, but with better ingredients and moral compass. It pairs well with hazy IPAs and pride parades. Maybe not so well with the Pittsburgh Marathon though. Oct. 26, 5pm: Speaking of hazy IPAs and gay-friendly establishments, Shubrew just released King Shuboo, the latest in their Pixelated series. This stuff is so good, people lined up in the rain for it. I’m allergic to pneumonia, so I show up after doors open to chat with Zach Shumaker and David Ieong about their creation, and return the keg tap I borrowed two months ago. There’s a fire going, tents, and Pittsburgh Po’Boy serving Cajun Creole. There’s supposed to be a costume contest tonight. I hope my “Black friend” outfit wins. I put a lot of work into it.
Me: Dafuq is a King Shuboo? Zach: This is the 11th release in our Pixilated IPA series, a series of New England hazy IPAs with a video game theme. For Halloween, we did King Shuboo, based off of the Nintendo character King Boo, Luigi’s nemesis. Nov. 2, 5:17pm: I just now got why they call it a Pixilated IPA. BECAUSE IT’S HAZY LIKE AN OLD VIDEO GAME! Ha! Maybe I’m the idiot. Ok back to the interview. Me: How does this differ from your other IPAs in the series? David: This is our answer to the Halloween beer. Me: Like a spooky beer? David: Like a pumpkin beer. Me: Oh… David: So, we’ve been doing pumpkin beers for years, and I think we both kind of hit the point where we don’t want to do pumpkin beers anymore. Me: I’m so goddamn sick of pumpkin beers. They drop them in July! David: Everyone is sick of them. So we wanted to honor the seasonal beer, but go a different direction.
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Zach wanted a lactose beer, for the milky mouth feel. And we threw 400-pounds of blood oranges in there. Zach: 420-pounds of blood oranges. Me: I see what you did there. Oct. 26, 8pm: I’m fairly smasty-faced after a couple of pints, and that Creole smells righteous. I grab a shrimp po’boy and it’s good enough to warrant a talk with the chef, Ben. Me: Tell me about your truck. Ben: When I was younger I spent some time in New Orleans, so I got a real love for… Me: Seasoning your food? Ben: Haha. Yes. I fell in love with Southern cuisine, Louisiana in particular. Pittsburgh’s my home. So, when I moved back, I really wanted to bring that food with me. My love is to feed people, so I like to make good southern comfort food. Me: Are po’boys all you make? Ben: We base it around po’boys, but we have other dishes like jambalaya, red beans and rice, gumbo. But the po’boy is our best seller. We get the bread shipped in from Gambino’s bakery in Louisiana to
make it as legit as possible. We care about the quality of our ingredients because it’s coming from the heart. Nov. 2, 8pm: A comedy show at Hitchhiker. Gary built a crazy stage made out of kegs, and Andy has brewed a bunch of new shit beers that are likely to make this evening get real sloppy real fast. One of the standouts was Element of Friction, an Omega Yeast labs DIPA collaboration, brewed with oats and fermented with Kveik cultures. Don’t ask me to describe the taste, because this ain’t that kind of column. That shit is just good. Go get it before it’s gone. Nov. 2, 10pm: I asked the men in the crowd if they’ve ever gotten the cotton swab in the peen, and they left me stranded. This leads me to believe there are a lot dirty dicks in Pittsburgh. This is unacceptable. They offer free dick tests at the Allegheny Health Department, 1908 Wylie Ave, 15219. And free condoms down at any Planned Parenthood. Because babies are a $300K chronic STD, you dirty-dick motherfuckers.
NEIGHBORHOODS
MILLVALE’S LONG STANDING BUSINESSES KEEPS THE COMMUNITY AFLOAT BY REBECCA ADDISON - PITTSBURGH CURRENT SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR REBECCA@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM Over the summer, a series of storms brought rising flood waters to several Pittsburgh-area neighborhoods. Among those hardest hit was Millvale, a borough along the Allegheny River that is no stranger to the adversity that comes with heavy rainfall. In September 2004, Hurricane Ivan dropped more than 10 inches of rain on the borough over the course of 36 hours. And in 2007 hundreds of businesses and homes were damaged when nearly three inches
of rain fell over a short two-hour period. “After the floods, we saw a lot of businesses being boarded up,” says Lisa Love, a Millvale business owner. “People’s personal property was damaged. Businesses owners who weren’t able to afford flood insurance had to move out.” Like many former steel towns, Millvale saw it’s population decline when the steel industry moved on. The intermittent flood devastation has also done little to bolster the
borough’s ailing economy. But like it’s former steel town brethren, Millvale is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. Citizens there credit local businesses that have stood the test of time with holding the community together through periods of strife. And they say these businesses must remain a key component of Millvale’s resurgence. “They’re the tapestry. They’re the ones that held it together for us when everyone moved away. They’re the rock. They’re essen-
tial,” says Love who also chairs the Business Association of Millvale. “Everyone always talks about the new businesses that come to town and although they’re great and wonderful, people forget the staple businesses that were there from the beginning. We want to combine the new and the old and have a strong business community so we can grow together and not push the old businesses out.” While Love grew up in Millvale, her salon is among the community’s
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new businesses. After a decade in Lawrenceville, she relocated her salon to Millvale four years ago and she says Millvale can learn much from what she witnessed on Butler Street. “I saw Lawrenceville’s resurgence but I also saw it become too crowded,” Love says. “When I moved my salon to Millvale, I loved coming back to the small town atmosphere and that’s what we’re trying to hold on to. The business association is working hard and we’ve tried to stay ahead of the development that’s coming to town to keep the small town community feel. Our hope is that as we progress and grow we still keep our tight knit community and listen to residents as we develop because they’re the ones that live there.” Love says flooding remains a problem for the borough. Her salon was impacted by the most recent storm over the summer when water rose up from the basement into her first floor. But she says the com-
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munity is working to take steps to protect residents and businesses in the future. “We’re resilient and we’re not going anywhere,” Love says. “We just started a watershed association to help with preventative care. We’re going to have a cleanup to get rid of any debris that would go into the sewers, back it up and cause future flooding. We’re also meeting with communities upstream to see what we can do before the flood waters hit Millvale. There’s definitely an interest in preventing it from happening in the future.” Efforts like these are key to ensuring Millvale continues to improve, Love says. Growing up, Love says Millvale had a thriving business district with bakeries, butchers and even clothing stores. Right now, she says the community seems to be coming full circle. “Over the last four years, we’ve seen a resurgence of people wanting to buy homes there, people wanting to open up businesses,” says Love. “And the businesses that
have been there the whole time are definitely expanding.” Among those businesses expanding is Mr. Smalls Funhouse, a Millvale entertainment venue converted from an old church, that has served as a staple in the neighborhood since it was opened in 2002. The venue recently opened a new cafe in the basement. “With the improvements to Millvale over the past few years, Mr. Smalls has undergone a kind of evolution as well,” says Mike Zickefoose, a manager at the new cafe. “The fact that we’ve been in Millvale for so long when other venues have fallen is definitely a testament to what Mr. Smalls has to offer.” And Mr. Smalls’ cafe is just one of the many new food offerings in the borough. Iron Born Pizza opened a shop there last month. Duncan Street Sandwich Shop opened the month before. And a food truck park along Millvale’s riverfront launched earlier this year. Zickefoose says the new businesses aren’t seen as competition.
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He’s worked at Mr. Smalls for eight years and during that time he says he’s seen how the venue has contributed to Millvale revitalization and benefitted from it. “There’s definitely a lot more attraction now,” says Zickefoose. “There’s a healthy parallel. When people come in from local or out of town, they help the nearby businesses. When people come to shows, they’ll ask what to do in town.” While Mr. Smalls has long served as a Millvale landmark, the longest standing business in the neighborhood is Ceney’s Electronics. The store is owned by Jack Ceney whose father opened it in 1968. A decade later, Ceney added onto the business by opening Jack’s Discount Videos next door. Today the two businesses continue to thrive. “I love Millvale,” says Ceney. “That’s why I’m still here. I think it’s getting better every year. I like all the new businesses opening. People in Millvale care about their town. They’d rather do their business here than go somewhere else.” In the era of digital streaming services, a video store feels like something from a bygone era. But the store is just like Millvale itself, an institution committed to tradition and family. And just like the town, Ceney says his stores are getting by just fine. “It’s funny, people say ‘Jack, is business slow?’ But I’ve never been busier, even with Netflix,” Ceney says. “My prices have never changed since the day I opened up. People come in and thank me for still being here. People will move out of town and then move back and even the ones who stay away come back and do business with us. I’m getting new people every week.” Ceney might not call the borough home, but since he says he spends 16 hours a day at his store, he might as well live there. “It’s not a business you’re going to get rich at; I just love doing it,” Ceney says. “I love the people here. I love the customers. They’re like my family.” 36 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
Business Association of Millvale. BAM. Millvale business owners here to help our community grow!
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Scott Wolovich (Pittsburgh Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
NEIGHBORHOOD CONVERSATION:
SCOTT WOLOVICH OF NEW SUN RISING BY REBECCA ADDISON - PITTSBURGH CURRENT SPECIAL PROJECT EDITOR REBECCA@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM In 2005, Scott Wolovich helped co-found New Sun Rising, a Millvale-based nonprofit organization that works to address social challenges and create economic opportunity. The organization was launched in the aftermath of hurricanes Ivan and Katrina which led to flooding in places like Millvale, damaging the neighborhood’s already struggling economy. More than a decade later Wolovich continues to serve as New Sun Rising’s executive director and from the organization’s Millvale hub, he’s had a first hand look at how the neighborhood has grown. Millvale has seen a lot of positive developments over the past decade, but what challenges are still present in the community? There are still the challenges that come with poverty and disinvestment. For a long time, Millvale was under resourced and disinvested so
there’s issues around educational attainment and unemployment. Like a lot of places in Western Pennsylvania, the opioid crisis has made an impact on Millvale as well. And now, like a lot of neighborhoods that get some attention, we’re dealing with maintaining housing and commercial real estate affordability. We want to bring more properties under local ownership and combat the displacement of residents by capping sale prices. In 2012, Millvale began developing an EcoDistrict plan that has served to guide economic redevelopment in the community. What projects have come out of that plan? We’ve joined with a few other pillar organizations to really be a driving force behind this EcoDistrict plan that’s really helped the community be more strategic about it’s growth and it’s development. It’s a
community planning process that looks at community development through the lens of sustainability. We did a lot of listening and educating with residents, business owners and stakeholders in the community to really understand what the development priorities were. Through that process the plan took on six focus areas: food, energy, water, air, mobility and equity. There’s a number of projects that have come out of that plan. There have been projects to address the challenge of food access. There are two buildings that have been repurposed for projects related to food systems. Tazza D’Oro offers fresh food options that weren’t there before. The Millvale Moose building is being repurposed by New Sun Rising to be a food hub, in partnership with
412 Food Rescue. There are soon to be three large solar installations in the community, so there’s a commitment to clean energy that’s taken root. There’s been a lot of work on bike and pedestrian right of ways and lanes. There’s a group of residents that lead growing efforts in community gardens and downtown Millvale. The plan has been really effective at bringing people together toward their goals. What makes Millvale a great place to live and work and how has it changed? There are a lot more resources in the community now that people are connected to through places like the library. There are more gathering spaces in the community where people are building relationships with their neighbors. But Millvale is still a very traditional Western Pennsylvania town. It definitely still has that blue collar mentality. People are very much themselves; no one is trying to be someone they’re not. So it’s a very authentic place. It’s walkable. So people are out, they’re connected, they’re talking. There’s a strong social fabric in Millvale that’s been there a long time. So the people and their connections is what makes Millvale such a great place. The business district now has such a great diversity of shops. It’s a great balance of a nostalgic, traditional Western Pennsylvania business district and new businesses, which gives it a really nice mix.
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A CITY IN MOURNING
THE TREE OF LIFE SYNAGOGUE SHOOTING
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VICTIMS REMEMBERED AS A COMMUNITY HEALS VIGILS, MEMORIALS AND KIND WORDS PART OF THE GRIEVING PROCESS BY AMANDA REED - PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF WRITER AMANDA@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM David DeFelice says Cecil Rosenthal was the kind of person who would stand up to someone shooting at an entire congregation of people. “He knew when somebody was doing something wrong and he wasn’t afraid to say something about it,” the senior political science major at Duquesne University said Sunday evening. Rosenthal and his brother, David, were among the 11 victims of Saturday’s mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill. But they were more than victims to those who knew them. They were friends, coworkers, dentists, researchers, doctors and much more. In the days since the shooting, an entire city has come together to to honor their lives and legacies by sharing their stories through vigils and memorials. The memorials have come in all forms, from flowers and signs in front of the synagogue to remembrances on social media. “Thank you Dr. [Jerry] Rabinowitiz for having always been there during the most terrifying and frightening time of my life. You will be remembered by me always,” Michael Kerr wrote on his Facebook page Sunday. Rabinowitz was known in the Pittsburgh community for his kindness while serving those with HIV/AIDS, often not wearing gloves when holding their hands. Daniel Stein was a past president of his congregation and, according to news accounts, died in the same room that his grandson’s bris was held. “Our lives now are going to
have to take a different path, one that we thought would not happen for a long time,” Joe Stein, son of Daniel Stein, wrote on his Facebook page. “My dad was a simple man and did not require much.” Local universities were also affected by the tragedies, with two of the victims having connections to the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Richard Gottfried graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and received his doctorate in dentistry from the School of Dental Medicine in 1980. His wife, Dr. Margaret “Peg” A. Durachko, graduated from the School of Dental Medicine in 1981. They shared a dental practice together, serving West View and the North Hills. Dr. Deborah Studen-Pavlovich, professor, chair, and residency program director of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, was Gottfried’s classmate. They became friends after joining the American Society of Dentistry for Children while in dental school and remained friends after, seeing each other at class reunions. “I am numb,” she said Sunday evening. “He was a good person; he gave back too; he was a good dentist and he was good to his family.” Joyce Fienberg worked in the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh from 1983 until her retirement in 2008. She specialized in researching the process of classroom teaching. Charles Perfetti, director of the LRDC, remembers Fienberg’s “nice,
A woman is consoled at a vigil Oct. 28 at Soldiers and Sailors Hall in Oakland. (Current Photo by John Altdorfer) quiet dignity” during their brief interactions in the office before he stepped into his current role. “I found her to be an engaging and warm person and she had a certain elegant style. Fienberg’s husband was the late Stephen E. Fienberg, a former professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon. He died in 2016 and his funeral was held at the Tree of Life Synagogue. At a vigil Monday evening at Carnegie Mellon University, President Farnam Jahanian said he saw Fienberg at a symposium at CMU the day before the attack, where they met and caught up. He says the shooting was an attack on the American way of life. “The Tree of Life is rooted in love, not in fear,” he said. In the days following the shooting, mourners passed by the Tree of Life Synagogue to honor those lost, placing flowers, pictures and candles at each of the 11 Star of David-shaped memorials bearing the name of each victim. Leanne Libert, 37, from Friendship, brought a bouquet to place at Dr. Rabinowitz’s marker Monday evening, but said she might spread it out for the other 10 people. Libert only met Rabinowitz once
at a party celebrating the wedding of her cousin Stacey, who had been with her partner for 20 years, but remembers his warm laugh and ability to turn an awkward silence into a jovial conversation. “He knew how to get a joke going to bring the room back together,” she said. Tracy Heath, a 63-year-old from Brentwood, says she was moved by the Rosenthal brothers. Her daughter works with people with intellectual disabilities — people much like Cecil and David. “I feel for the families. I really do. It really breaks my heart that somebody could be so cruel in this world,” she said. The tragedy especially hit close to home for some, losing longtime friends, community members and even family. Jill Smith, a 59-year-old resident from Squirrel Hill, knew Irving Younger for 25 years. He volunteered as a coach for a kid’s baseball team in the neighborhood and at Taylor Allderdice High School. He coached her son. Julianna Hawke, a 31-yearold resident from Crafton, was a distant relative of Irving Younger. Younger’s wife was cousins with Hawke’s father. When Hawke’s
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parents divorced, the Youngers helped Julianna, her mother and her siblings get back on their feet, with Irv a constant presence when the Youngers babysat them. “I remember being at their house often, I remember playing on their trampoline, I remember their beautiful furnished basement. I also remember my mom telling us we were going to have a home again, seeing it for the first time, helping them prepare it for us to move in...I remember how much I loved that house, how grateful we were for it,” she said in an email Monday. Jason Callen 35, from Irwin, knew two of the police officers who were wounded during the shooting. One officer was in the Air Force Reserves with Callen and the other’s partner was a friend of his. He expressed a sentiment many have repeated in the days after the shooting: that this is not something you expect to happen here. “This is a nice area and we all work together. I’m a nurse. I work with all denominations and we take care of everybody,” he said, holding back tears.
Mourners gather outside the Tree of Life Synagogue to lay memorials to the fallen. (Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk)
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Thousands of protesters gather in opposition to President Trump’s synagogue visit Tuesday. (Current Photo by Jake Mysliwczyk) 42 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
TRUMP VISIT TO TREE OF LIFE SYNAGOGUE MET WITH PROTESTS BY HALEY FREDERICK - PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF WRITER HALEY@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM As President Trump’s plane lands outside Pittsburgh on Tuesday afternoon, a crowd is already gathering at the intersection of Beechwood and Forbes in Squirrel Hill, just a few blocks away from the Tree of Life Synagogue where 11 Jewish people were murdered on Saturday. It’s a diverse crowd. There are seniors, college students and children. Some heads wear yarmulkes, some wear hijabs and others sport the pink cat-eared hats of the Women’s March. Some chat about the funerals they attended this morning. Some only know of the victims what they have read. All of them have two things in common. First, they are grieving. Pittsburgh has seen the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history. A vigil on Sunday night drew thousands of mourners. The funerals of brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal as well as Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz took place today. There are still eight more. “I’ll be going to two funerals tomorrow and one on Friday,” says Davida Fromm. One of the victims was the parent of a classmate of Fromm’s children. Another, the wife of a dear colleague. And another, the grandmother of her daughter’s friend. “We absolutely feel connected in this community, it’s one of the things we love about it,” says Fromm. “But as a result, if one synagogue, if one school, one anything is injured it feels like an attack on our home—on all of us.” The second thing they all have in common is that they do not want President Trump to come to Pittsburgh. But, he is here. And so are they.
The street rapidly fills with people. Many of them are holding homemade signs that express why they feel President Trump is unwelcome. “Neonazis are not ‘very fine people,’” one sign reads. “We do bridges not walls,” reads another. Fromm’s sign says, “words matter.” “It means that you have to be careful what you say so that you don’t insight violence and invite hate and divisiveness and use code words that signal bigotry and discrimination,” Fromm explains. Many of the people gathered at the Squirrel Hill protest feel that President Trump’s words have incited violence. Bend the Arc: Pittsburgh, the local affiliate of the national Jewish group, organized the peaceful event, which they called a “collective ritual to heal and to mourn.”. Tammy Hepps and Rachel Kranson took to the microphone to read Bend the Arc’s letter to President Trump. “For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” they read. “You yourself called the murderer evil, but [Saturday’s] violence is the direct culmination of your influence.” And the words the president hasn’t said, refuses to say, ring just as loud. “President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism,” their letter continues. Song sheets are distributed through the crowd so that all of the attendees can join together in song as they begin to march in the direction of the synagogue where
Trump is due to visit along with the First Lady, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. “I will build this world from love... And you must build this world from love...And if we build this world from love...Then God will build this world from love,” the people sing as they march through the streets, escorted by police. The leaders stop everyone to congregate at the corner of Shady Avenue and Northumberland Street. The Tree of Life Synagogue is now a block away, but the street is closed off to make room for the motorcade that carries President Trump to the scene. Small black squares of paper have been handed out to all of the attendees, who number in the thousands. The crowd is instructed to lift them up in unison, and then to tear them apart. This is Kriah, a Jewish tradition and a ritual of mourning. Kriah is a Hebrew word that means “tearing.” The tearing of one’s clothes is an expression of grief and anger that is traced back to the patriarch Jacob, who tore his garments when he believed his son Joseph was dead. Marchers are led in Kriah, a traditional Jewish mourning ceremony. (Pittsburgh Current Photos by Jake Mysliwczyk) Kriah is always performed while standing, because the act of standing represents strength in a time of grief. The march continues to Murray Avenue, past Squirrel Hill homes decorated for Halloween. The crowd is full of images. On signs and on shirts, there are Stars of David, Pride flag rainbows, cardigan-clad Mr. Rogers, yellow bridges and that
angry, orange face. The marchers reach their final destination at the Sixth Presbyterian Church. They converge on the stairs up to the building and overflow onto the intersection. They are still singing. Jaime Forrest of Bend the Arc: Pittsburgh welcomes everyone to the church and thanks them for their support of the Jewish community in Squirrel Hill “We started this event on Beechwood Boulevard which is where Mr. Rogers used to live, and now we’re ending this event at the church where Mr. Rogers used to pray,” Forrest says. “Pittsburgh is as so many people say, the friendliest city in the country, and we are all steadfastly determined to keep it that way. Love thy neighbor—no exceptions.” Several speakers address the crowd at Sixth Presbyterian, both members of the Jewish community and their allies. They condemn the actions of Trump and his administration at roughly the same time he is being escorted into the Tree of Life. They demand change. They call the crowd to action beyond thoughts and prayers. The crowd chants, “vote!” Two high school juniors, Simone and Anya, are co-leaders of the local chapter of Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, a national organization that works to bring Muslim and Jewish women together. “There is a before and there is an after. We are in the after,” Simone says. “Things won’t be the same. Things shouldn’t be the same.”
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 43
EVENTS
THE CAN’T MISS AMANDA REED AND MARGARET WELSH - PITTSBURGH CURRENT STAFF INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM
MUST SEE SHOWS IN AND AROUND THE PITTSBURGH AREA
Nov. 8
University of Pittsburgh Stages presents William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” beginning tonight at the Charity Randall Theater. The double-crossing, intriguing comedy follows the rocky romances of Hero, Claudio, Beatrice and Benedict as they explore what loyalty, trust, and love means to each of them. The classic play is filled with tricks, deceit and laughs, all tied up in a happy ending. 8 p.m. $25 ($12 for students; $15 for seniors and alumni, faculty and staff). 4301 Forbes Ave., Oakland. 412-624-7529 or www.play. pitt.edu
Nov. 9
Into supporting art and music created by POC? The Glow Up, a onenight only event at the Ace Hotel, is the event for you, showcasing 42 visual artists and eight musicians. The event is curated by local artists Max Gems Gonzales and Jerome Charles to show the stereotype-defying diversity among POC. Come by starting at 6 p.m. to look at art or at 8 p.m. to listen to the musicians. The best part? All proceeds from the night go to the artists and musicians themselves. 6 p.m. Free. 120 South Whitfield St., East Liberty. 412-36144 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
Sammus - Nov. 16
3300 or www.acehotel.com
Nov. 11
The University of Pittsburgh Nationality Rooms Programs celebrates Polish culture today with its annual Polish Festival in the Cathedral of Learning. The entire Hogwarts-esque common room is filled with Polish folk dance and music. Don’t miss the cooking demos, a Polish cultural exhibition and the craft and gift mart to take some Polish wares home. 12 p.m. - 5 p.m. Free. 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland. www.nationalityrooms.pitt. edu
Nov. 13
Head to Bar Marco tonight for Resonance Works: Songs of Travel as part of its chamber series. Resonance Works guest conductor and pianist Daniel Curtis and his brother, New York City-based singer-songwriter and classical vocalist Clinton Curtis collaborate for a night filled with American folk music and English folk ballads The two will be joined by Resonance Works cellist, and founder of Cello Fury, Simon Cummings. The program will also feature music from Bob Dylan, Mississippi John Hurt, as well as original songs written by Clinton Curtis. 7 p.m.- 9 p.m. $15. 2216 Penn Ave., Strip District. www.resonanceworks.org
Nov. 15
The Society for Contemporary Craft hosts its salon-style speaker series The Space Between tonight at its headquarters in the Strip District. Artists Robert Villamagna and Chris McGinnis speak at this particular event, discussing how to incorporate found materials into works of art. Melissa Rayworth, the Managing Editor of NEXTpittsburgh, moderates the talk. 6 p.m. Free (RSVP online for seat). 2100 Smallman St., Strip District. www.contemporarycraft.org
Respect forever to Portland, OR.’s extreme metal duo The Body for always keeping it fresh. The prolific, constantly touring outfit returns to Pittsburgh with New York-based industrial two-piece Uniform, comprised of Michael Berden of Drunkdriver and Ben Greenberg of the Men. Anyone who’s seen the Body – on its own, or with other collaborating bands, including Thou, Full of Hell and Krieg – knows that singer/ guitarist Chip King and drummer Lee Buford are ruthless in terms of sheer, physically engulfing volume and sonic force. With Uniform, they level up without pushing past the limits of listenability, combining two different ends of the abrasion spectrum to create something deeply cathartic. Check them out when they bring their collaboration to Spirit on Thursday, Nov. 15. Industrial doom act Author & Punisher opens along with Intensive Care. 9 p.m. 242 51st St., Lawrenceville. $12-14. www. spiritpgh.com
walk and Kowloon Corp also appear. 7:30 p.m. 120 S. Whitfield St., East Liberty. Door donation. 412-361-3300
Nov. 18
Relieve the 90s with Double Dare Live, tonight at the Benedum Center. Hosted by Marc Summers himself, the event features all the slime soaking and pie plastering you loved as a kid Get chosen to compete to win by answering brain-bending trivia questions, complete messy physical stunts and even run the legendary obstacle course. Seeing it live > watching reruns of the show on YouTube. 3 p.m. $45.25-$54.25. 237 Seventh St., Downtown. 412-4566666 or www.trustarts.org
Double Dare Live - Nov. 18
Nov. 16
Seeing an artist like Sammus perform feels like being given a gift. The upstate New York-born, Philly based rapper/producer (a.k.a. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo), has it all: magnetic and authoritative stage presence, serious smarts (she’s a PhD student in the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University), and a dynamic flow that keeps listeners hanging on her every word. By turns challenging, radical, empathetic, anthemic, fearlessly vulnerable, and wildly imaginative, Sammus invites you in without compromising her message or her experience. As she puts it in “Mighty Morphing,” “I’m not one thing/I’m not two things/I’m not three things/I’m not four things/I am more things than I’m reporting/lets not force it/I’m mighty morphing.” On Friday, Nov. 16 she performs at the Ace Hotel as part of a benefit for Gwen’s Girls, which works to empower girls throughout Allegheny County. Romance Nyogu, SwampPITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 45
EVENT LISTINGS Tues., Nov 6
Liberation: Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra featuring Sean Jones 8 p.m., Greer Cabaret Theater, Downtown trustarts.org
Wed., Nov 7
art 6 p.m., performances 9 p.m., Ace Hotel, East Liberty acehotel.com/pittsburgh MadFridays Reading Series: Susan Sailer, Lori Wilson and Anne Rashid 7 p.m., Delanie’s Coffee, South Side 412-927-4030
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Pre-K/Kindergarten Schooltime: “A Blue So Blue” 9:30 a.m., Heinz Hall, Downtown pittsburghsymphony.org
Screening of Andy Warhol’s “The Chelsea Girls” 7 p.m., The Andy Warhol Museum, North Side warhol.org, 412-237-8300
From Slavery to Freedom Film Series: “How They Got Over” 5:30 p.m., Frick Environmental Center, Squirrel Hill heinzhistorycenter.org
The Lawrence Theater Company presents “The Funeral” 7:30 p.m., August Wilson Center, Downtown aacc-awc.org
Young Washington: An Evening with Peter Stark 6 p.m., Heinz History Center, Downtown heinzhistorycenter.org
Sat., Nov 10
The Simon and Garfunkel Story 7:30 p.m., Byham Theater, Downtown trustarts.org
Thurs., Nov 8
Music 101: Victoria Luperi, Clarinet “A Musical Journey Across the World” 12:30 p.m., Heinz Hall, Downtown trustarts.org, 412-904-3288 League of Women Voters’ Election Recap + Civil Conversation 101 6 p.m., East End Brewing Company, Larimer eastendbrewing.com
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra presents “Heroes in our Neighborhood” 11:15 a.m., Heinz Hall, Downtown culturaldistrict.org
Fri., Nov 16
MUSIC LISTINGS Tues., Nov 6
Boz Scaggs: Out of the Blues Tour 2018 8 p.m., Carnegie Library Music Hall of Homestead, Munhall librarymusichall.com Mom Jeans 6:30 p.m., Cattivo, Strip District cattivopgh.com
Wed., Nov 7
Amigo the Devil with Harley Poe 8 p.m., The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls, Millvale mrsmalls.com Vinnie Caruana 7 p.m., The Smiling Moose, South Side smiling-moose.com Hoobastank with Secondhand Serenade 8 p.m.. The Rex Theater, South Side rextheater.com
Thur., Nov 8
6:30 p.m., Pepsi Roadhouse, Burgettstown pepsiroadhouse.net
Sun., Nov 11
The Alarm 7 p.m., Crafthouse Stage and Grill, Baldwin crafthousepgh.com
Tues., Nov 13
Alan Parsons Live Project 7:30 p.m., Carnegie Library Music Hall of Homestead, Munhall librarymusichall.com
Wed., Nov 14
Stacked Like Pancakes 10 p.m., The Smiling Moose, South Side smiling-moose.com
Thur., Nov 15
The Body with Intensive Care 9 p.m., Spirit, Lawrenceville spiritpgh.com
Tiny Talk with Jenna (Kay) Houston 5:00 p.m., Small Mall, Lawrenceville caseydroege.com/tinytalk
Mike Delguidice and Big Shot 7:30 p.m., The Palace Theatre, Greensburg thepalacetheatre.com
Abbie Gardner 7:30 p.m., The Roots Cellar, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Shadyside calliopehouse.org
Sat., Nov 17
Fri., Nov 9
Fri., Nov 16
Sat., Nov 10
Sat., Nov 17
GayC/DC 9:30 p.m., The Hard Rock Cafe, Station Square hardrock.com
Sun., Nov 18
The Global Switchboard’s second annual Hub + Spoke 6 p.m., Energy Innovation Center, Downtown theglobalswitchboard.org/hubspoke
TRUTHSayers: Nikki Giovanni 7 p.m., August Wilson Center, Downtown aacc-awc.org
Fri., Nov 9
The Glow Up: An All POC Art & Music Showcase 46 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
The Tina Daniels Band 7 p.m., Moondogs, Blawnox moondogs.us
Hot Rize 7:30 p.m., Carnegie Lecture Hall, Oakland www.calliopehouse.org, 412-361-1915
The Outlaws
Yonder Mountain String Band 8 p.m., The Rex Theater, South Side rextheater.com
Hollywood Nights, a Tribute to Bob Seger 8 p.m., The Lamp Theatre, Irwin lamptheatre.org
David Allen Coe 8 p.m., Jergel’s Rhythm Grille, Warrrendale jergels.com
SPORTS
Before he was a WWE Hall Of Famer, Bruno Sammartino got his start on Studio Wrestling (Photo: WWE.com)
PITTSBURGH’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH “STUDIO WRESTLING”
BEGAN 60 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH BY THOMAS LETURGEY - PITTSBURGH CURRENT CONTRIBUTING WRITER INFO@PITTSBURGHCURRENT.COM “Studio Wrestling,” which went on the air 60 years ago this month, wasn’t the first professional wrestling program on television in Pittsburgh. It wasn’t even the first local program to showcase the sport. “Wrestling at The Grotto” debuted in December, 1951 and ran on the Dumont Network’s WDTV, Channel 3. Matches were broadcast from the Northside’s Islam Grotto, where wrestlers had grappled for years. There were other Dumont Network wrestling programs that ran from July 1948 to 1955 and strutted “Gorgeous George” Wagner, Argentina Rocco, Mildred Burke and Pittsburgh’s own Rudy Shemuga, who wrestled as Steve Novak. Pittsburgh was a hot, Top 10 television market
back then, so showcasing the popular sport was important. A few years after WDTV went dark, WIIC TV Operations Manager Sheldon Weaver reportedly introduced the idea of professional wrestling to fellow Channel 11 programmers and they were hooked. Sponsors were signed and the project was set to launch. Promoters Toots Mondt and Vincent McMahon, Sr. would be involved later. On November 5, 1958 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced that professional wrestling was going to originate from the WIIC Channel 11 studios on Saturday nights beginning in 10 days. Some 200 fans were urged to write the station for tickets to gain admission to the matches.
Wrestlers such as Mr. Moto, The Great Scott, Killer Kowalski, Rocco and “Hillbilly” Calhoun were advertised as on their way. On Saturday, November 15, 1958, Studio Wrestling hit the airwaves. Metropolitan Pittsburgh viewers had a choice of seven television stations at 6 p.m. Among the offerings: KDKA Channel 2 featured a talk show called “Small World,” WTAE Channel 4 featured Championship Bowling, and WIIC Channel 11 was headlined by Johnny Valentine taking on Aldo Venturi. According to newspaper ads, Valentine would compete again in December against Frank Townsend. Tokyo Joe and Ted Lewin were on the undercard. The show’s theme song, John Philip Sousa’s “El Capitan” became iconic in many Western Pennsylvania homes. Contrary to popular belief, it was Mal Alberts and not Bill Cardille who manned the first Studio Wrestling broadcast. Although Cardille was a fellow staff announcer and the first voice heard on WIIC when it debuted on September 1, 1957, he was busy with other local shows (Chiller Theater was still nearly five years away). And while Cardille would later tout “90 Minutes of Mayhem,” Studio Wrestling originally ran for one hour. In late 1959, Studio Wrestling gained its biggest asset when 24-year-old Italian-born, Pittsburgh-raised strongman Bruno Sammartino was encouraged by promoters to enter the scene. Newly-married, the carpenter was wooed by the prospect of fame and fortune. He had just set a 535-pound bench press world record and began to train for a grappling career. Despite claims that his first victory was a 19-second folly against Dmitri Grabowski on December 17, Sammartino’s first recorded match was on November 21, 1959 against journeyman Miguel Torres. A win-loss record can’t be found; however, it’s quite certain that Sammartino was victorious in near-record time. Sometime in 1960, Studio Wrestling expanded from 60 to 90 min-
utes. In 1962, Mal Alberts moved on and Cardille moved ringside, where he would remain until the duration of the program. The Pittsburgh “Territory” and Studio Wrestling in particular were the launching pad to stardom for many legendary athletes, such as James J. Dillon and George “The Animal” Steele, among others. It also made household names of “Jumpin’” Johnny DeFazio, Chuck Martoni, Frank Durso, Joe Abby, Bobby “Hurricane” Hunt, “The Fighting Cop from Carnegie” Frank Holtz, Tony Marino “The Battman” and others. Even referees such Bucky Palermo, Andy “Kid” DePaul and Izzy Moidel were celebrities in their own right. The era of Studio Wrestling is still spoken of with the utmost reverence from those who watched the action and there active Facebook pages are dedicated to the subject. In the early 70s, management changed and WIIC took more interest in the 6:00 p.m. Saturday evening newscast, so Studio Wrestling was moved to 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. and reduced to an hour. In May, 1973, Studio Wrestling moved to 1 p.m. for an hour on Saturday afternoons. During the summer, Major League Baseball broadcasts often interfered in wrestling’s waning years. In June, 1974 the Pittsburgh Press signaled that Studio Wrestling was to be cancelled. A steady dip in ratings was the official reason. It had become syndicated to 10 markets, but alas (just like the Grotto program) almost nothing from the broadcasts were saved. Only a few clips, mostly misidentified from a similar program from Washington, D.C., remain. WPGH-53 saved the franchise and kept Cardille; however, that didn’t last long. Studio Wrestling ran for a total of 16 years on WIIC, which became WPXI, but it still resonates in many a Pittsburgher’s heart.
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 47
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NEWS OF THE
WEIRD
COMPILED BY THE EDITORS AT ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION WEIRDNEWSTIPS@AMUNIVERSAL.COM FINAL RESTING PLACE For some folks, Disneyland and Walt Disney World are more than amusement parks. Take Jodie Jackson Wells of Boca Raton, Florida. In 2009, after her mother died, Wells smuggled in some of her ashes to Disney World and spread them on a favorite spot of her mom’s along the It’s a Small World ride. Later, she leapt over a barricade at Cinderella’s Castle and flung ashes from both hands as she cavorted on the lawn. “Anyone who knew my mom knew Disney was her happy place,” Wells told The Wall Street Journal. However, for the theme parks, the spreading of ashes presents a constant cleanup challenge, referred to by the code “HEPA cleanup” among custodians. (Other secret signals are Code V for vomit and Code U for urine.) Alex Parone of Saratoga Springs, New York, sprinkled his mother’s ashes in a flowerbed, then boarded It’s a Small World. “I was still crying. That song is playing over and over again, and there are those happy little animatronic things. I remember thinking, ‘This is weird.’” But a Disney spokesperson said: “This type of behavior is strictly prohibited and unlawful,” and the Anaheim Police Department confirmed that spreading ashes without permission is a misdemeanor. To add insult to injury, when cremation residue is found on rides, they have to be shut down (riders are told there are “technical difficulties”) for cleaning. WHAT WOULD YOUR MOTHER THINK? In what can only be described as a “shaking my head” incident, an unnamed employee of the U.S. Geological Survey invited malware into the government agency’s computer system by visiting
more than 9,000 porn websites on his work computer, according to an inspector general’s report. The Washington Post reported on Oct. 30 that many of the websites were Russian, and the malware spread to the entire network at the USGS. The employee also saved images from the sites on a USB drive and personal cellphone, which also contained malware. The Office of the Inspector General made recommendations to the USGS about preventing future malware infections, and a spokesperson for the IG’s office said the employee no longer works at USGS. WHO’S CRYING NOW? After the package bomb scares in New York and Florida, things were tense in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the early morning hours of Oct. 30 when mailroom employees at Duke Energy discovered a suspicious incoming package. They welcomed the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police and the bomb squad with “Open Arms,” and the building and surrounding roads were evacuated as officials investigated. But WBTV “Faithfully” reported that the small, hand-addressed manila envelope was “Worlds Apart” from a mail bomb: It merely contained a cassette tape with songs from the band Journey. To which we say, “Don’t Stop Believin’” in your fellow ‘80s music-loving humans. RECURRING THEME Doctors at the Hai Duong Hospital in Hai Duong Province, Vietnam, treated a man who arrived complaining of pain in his ear. Using an endoscope to look inside his ear canal, they found the cause: a live cricket digging around in the duct. United Press International reported on Oct. 26 that the doctors were able to successfully remove the cricket.
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 49
SAVAGE LOVE BY: DAN SAVAGE MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about myself and my sexuality and my romantic self. I can log on and easily find someone to fuck. I’m a bear-built top guy. There are ladies in my life who choose to share their beds with me. I can find subs to tie up and torture. (I’m kinky and bi.) What I can’t find is a long-term partner. The problem is that after I fuck/sleep with/torture someone, my brain stops seeing them as sexual and moves them into the friend category. I have friends that I used to fuck regularly, that now it’s a chore to get it up for. Sure, the sex still feels good, but it’s not passionate. And when it’s all said and done, they’re still in the “friend” category in my brain. Some of them have suggested being more, but I’ve recoiled. There’s nothing wrong with them, but they’re friends, not potential partners. I’m 32, and my siblings are married and having kids, and the people I grew up with are married and having kids. And here I am not able to find a long-term significant other. Am I broken? Should I just accept that, at least for me, sexual partners and domestic/romantic partners will always be separate categories? -Always Alone What if you’re not like most everyone else? What if this is just how your sexuality works? What if you’re wired—emotionally, romantically, sexually—for intense but brief sexual connections that blossom into wonderful friendships? And what if you’ve been tricked into thinking you’re broken because the kind of successful long-term relationships your siblings and friends have are celebrated and the kind of successful short-term relationships you have 50 | NOV. 6, 2018 | PITTSBURGH CURRENT
are stigmatized? If your siblings and friends want to have the kinds of relationships they’re having—and its possible some do not—they will feel no inner conflict about their choices while simultaneously being showered with praise for their choices. But what are they really doing? They’re doing what they want, they’re doing what makes them happy, they’re doing what works for them romantically, emotionally, and sexually. And what are you doing? Maybe you’re doing what you want, AA, maybe you’re doing what could make you happy. So why doesn’t it make you happy? Maybe because you’ve been made to feel broken by a culture that holds up one relationship model— the partnered and preferably monogamous pair—and insists that this model is the only healthy and whole option, and that anyone who goes a different way, fucks a different way, or relates a different way is broken. Now, it’s possible you are broken, of course, but anyone could be broken. You could be broken, I could be broken, your married siblings and friends could be broken. (Regarding your siblings and friends: Not everyone who marries and has kids wanted marriage and kids. Some no doubt wanted it, AA, but others succumbed to what was expected of them.) But here’s a suggestion for something I want you to try, something that might make you feel better because it could very well be true: Try to accept that, for you, sexual partners and domestic/romantic partners might always be separate, and that doesn’t mean you’re broken. If that self-acceptance makes you feel whole, AA, then you have your answer. I might make a different suggestion if your brief-but-intense sexual
encounters left a lot of hurt feelings in their wake. But that’s not the case. You hook up with someone a few times, you share an intense sexual experience, and you feel a brief romantic connection to them. And when those sexual and romantic feelings subside, you’re not left with a string of bitter exes and enemies, but with a large and growing circle of good friends. Which leads me to believe that even if you aren’t doing what everyone else is doing, AA, you’re clearly doing something right. P.S. Another option if you do want to get married someday: a companionate marriage to one of your most intimate friends—someone like you, AA, who also sees potential life partners and potential sex partners as two distinct categories with no overlap—and all the Grindr hookups and BDSM sessions you like with one-offs who become good friends. I’m a 28-year-old straight man married to a 26-year-old straight woman. My wife and I were watching a video about sex and the female orgasm, and they were talking about how, unlike men, women don’t have a refractory period after orgasm. We were confused because we are almost the complete opposite. I have never experienced drowsiness, lessened sensitivity, or quickened loss of erection after orgasm. My wife, on the other hand, doesn’t even like me kissing her bits after orgasm. She says they feel tender and sore afterward, and this feeling can last for hours. Is this normal? -Newlywed’s Orgasms Rarely Multiply What you describe isn’t the norm, NORM, but it’s your norm. Most men temporarily lose interest in sex immediately after climaxing. It’s called the refractory period, and it can last anywhere from 15 minutes (for teenagers) to 24 hours (for old-timers). It’s a hormone thing: After a guy comes, his pituitary gland pumps prolactin into his bloodstream—and prolactin blocks dopamine, the hormone that makes a dude horny and keeps him horny.
But some men release very little prolactin and consequently have short refractory periods; a handful of men have no refractory period at all and are capable of multiple orgasms. You don’t mention the ability to come again and again, but you do sound exceptional in that you don’t lose your erection after you come. Your wife also sounds exceptional, NORM, since most orgasmic women are capable of having multiple orgasms—but most women ≠ all women. (I’ve always loved what groundbreaking sex researcher Mary Jane Sherfey wrote in 1966: “The more orgasms she has, the more she can have—for all intents and purposes, the human female is sexually insatiable.” Emphasis hers.) But again, NORM, there’s nothing wrong with either of you. It’s just that your norm isn’t the norm—and that’s only a problem if you choose to regard it as one. On the Lovecast, strap it on with Tristan Taormino!: savagelovecast. com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter ITMFA.org
PITTSBURGH CURRENT | NOV. 6, 2018 | 51
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