Water Under the Bridge: February 2019

Saturday, February 16, 2019

Poetic Waxing (and Waning) January 31, 2019

January 31, 2019

Poetic Waxing (and Waning)

A number of unrelated events have me thinking about poetry recently. Our Book Club recently read various works by Edgar Allen Poe, including his poem “The Raven”. This led to a discussion of poetry in general and complaints about the awarding of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan for his song lyrics.

Part of our extended family this Christmas was my granddaughter Lai An’s other grandfather, Grandpa Pan. He is a scholar of ancient Chinese poetry, specializing in interpreting poems written in archaic Chinese, for modern readers. I gave him a copy of Robert Frost poems for Christmas, accompanied by an explanation that I considered Frost to be the most representative of American poets.

Last week my daughter Elizabeth gave a talk on behalf of the Japan-America Society at City of Asylum on the North Side. Her subject was “Beyond Haiku: Japanese Poetry in Time and Art”. She did an excellent job of tracing the evolution of poetry in Japan from the “choka” of the eighth century to today’s interest in haiku.

Thinking about poetry, I have concluded that I enjoy it more than I realized. I certainly have always liked the long narrative poems of the Longfellow style, especially “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Song of Hiawatha”.

In my engineering classes at Pitt I often quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “The Deacon’s Masterpiece” as an example of balanced design. Upset that the failure of one component in a buggy destroyed the utility of the still serviceable parts, he designed a “wonderful one hoss shay”, with every part designed to last one hundred years. Sure enough, one hundred years to the day after it was built, its owner found himself sitting in a pile of dust when everything deteriorated at once.

How about “Casey at the Bat”? It was my choice to recite in high school when I tried out for the Dramatic Club. Unfortunately, my recitation failed to match the drama of the poem, and I was turned down. Another questionable, more recent, recitation was “A Visit from St. Nicholas” which I stumbled through with lots of help from prompters this past Christmas Eve.

Beyond that, I certainly like all of Frost’s poems. Each one is a classic; in total, they paint a myriad of images of Americana that are dear to all of us. And mixed throughout are memorable touches of philosophy, e. g., “promises to keep” in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. I am sure it helps that his poems follow a standard format, and that they rhyme.

The current definition of poetry focuses on the aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke non-prosaic meanings. Prose mimics the natural flow of speech, completely ignoring rhythm and meter. Rhyming is merely a characteristic of a special form of poems, one that I consider an enhancement.

I wonder if my general difficulty with poems is related to the concept of rhythm, a problem that always inhibited me on the dance floor. Certainly it is a common denominator between poetry and music, one that does not come naturally to me. Do you suppose good dancers are also good poets?

At some point in my graduate school career I took a course in Appreciation of Poetry at Carnegie Tech; the poems we read and discussed continue to be favorites of mine. “Pied Beauty”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins; “Dover Beach”, by Matthew Arnold; “anyone lived in a pretty how town”, by E. E. Cummings – I remember and enjoy re-reading each of them.

What a shame that I have to study a poem to enjoy it! My wife used to tease me about my inability to appreciate something without dissecting it into its tiniest constituents. She loved poetry without qualification, and, yes, she was an excellent dancer. Somewhere in our documents is an eloquent, poignant poem she wrote following her father’s untimely death.

One of the highlights of Elizabeth’s undergraduate days at Pitt was the evening she and her mother spent there listening to Maya Angelou. Apparently Elizabeth has inherited the her mother’s poetic genes.

In contradiction to the opinion of my colleagues I think awarding the Nobel Prize to Dylan was appropriate. I have long believed that popular songwriters were the poets of our society in the late twentieth century. Personally, the hillbilly in me prefers Kris Kristofferson, Townes van Zandt, and Jimmy Webb to Bob Dylan, but it is impossible to overlook his place in popular music.

Interestingly I counted forty-seven recipients of the Prize for Literature since 1901 who include poetry as one of the forms of literature they practice. However there were only two – William Butler Yeats and T. S Eliot – whom I recognized. Dylan makes three. Too bad the judges in the earlier years didn’t consider Ira Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, or Cole Porter --- they too were excellent poets.

As for haiku, my attitude toward it is colored by bad experiences in the past. On several occasions when Elizabeth was teaching Japanese literature, she sponsored haiku writing competitions for her students, and in parallel for her circle of friends and family. Invariably I came in dead last or nearly so, greatly embarrassed by her Maddy cousins.

Today haiku has been formalized, three lines (phrases) in a five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables sequence. References to nature and seasons is common. It is also typical for a haiku to include two dissimilar images and ideas with a transitional idea linking them.

The most famous haiku is by Matsuo Basho. Its first phase has been translated as “old pond”. Easy to imagine the image of a tranquil, never-changing small body of water somewhere in a forest. Then comes “frog leaps in” and “water’s sound”. Dramatically different image – impermanence, chaos.

I am comfortable with the concept of contrasting images that are well presented, but it is not clear to me where the idea of rhythm and meter applies. Recognizing rhythm in such a short poem is akin to clapping one hand. Perhaps if one understood the subtle meanings of the Japanese words and heard the haiku recited, one could appreciate its poeticism.

My “Appreciation of Poetry” textbook is by a distinguished scholar and teacher from Wesleyan University, Fred Millet. The introduction to his book states that its purpose “is to train young people in the intensive reading of literature”. The professor would be surprised to know this octogenarian is still referring to it six decades later.

George Washington's 1770 Expedition to the Ohio Country. January 24, 2019

January 24, 2019

George Washington’s 1770 Expedition to the Ohio Country

This month, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society’s workshop series on George Washington’s impact on Western Pennsylvania focused on his well-documented expedition to the Ohio Country in 1770. The Washington who made this trip was much different from the swashbuckling military hero who visited this area four times in the 1750s.

Now thirty-eight years old and a highly successful Virginia country gentleman, Washington had finally persuaded Virginia Governor Norborne Berkeley to make good on the promise Governor Dinwiddie had made sixteen years earlier to reimburse members of the Virginia Militia with land in the Ohio Country, in recognition of their service in the French and Indian War.

In 1768 the Treaty of Fort Stanwix opened up all of Virginia south and east of the Ohio River. A public announcement on December 16, 1769, reported that Washington had been appointed to administer the disposition of 200,000 acres of land “on the Great Kanhaway” to the deserving veterans, subject to their application for it by October 10, 1770.

Accordingly, Washington, accompanied by his personal physician and lifelong friend, Dr. James Craik, set out for the frontier on October 5, 1770. Fortunately details of this trip have been faithfully recorded in Washington’s Daily Journal and are available to the public.

Three days later they arrived at the plantation of Colonel Thomas Cresap, at Old Town, close to Fort Cumberland (now Cumberland, Maryland). Washington was quite familiar with this area because of Fort Cumberland’s significance in his 1754 Fort Necessity campaign and in Braddock’s Expedition the next year. He was eager to meet with Cresap, recently returned from London, and get an update on the efforts of Thomas Walpole and a group of Pennsylvanians led by Benjamin Franklin to obtain a grant from the Crown for the land Virginia claimed in what is now western Pennsylvania.

Next came the nostalgic trip up over Allegheny Mountain on “Braddock’s Road”, through the Great Meadows, terminating at the plantation of Captain William Crawford on the Youghiogheny River (now Connellsville, Pa.). Crawford had worked for Washington twenty years earlier during his surveying days and now served as his agent in land acquisition. They arrived there on October 13 and stayed three days before continuing on to Pittsburgh. On one of these days they visited property Crawford had acquired on behalf of Washington at what is now Perryopolis, Pa.

Arriving in Pittsburgh on October 17, Washington and his companions, Craik and Crawford, lodged at Semple’s Tavern, located roughly where Stanwix Street and Fort Pitt Boulevard intersect today. There they met George Croghan, a prominent local resident. Croghan served as Deputy (to Sir William Johnson) Indian Agent and laid claim to a significant amount of land in the Ohio Country, including the Perryopolis tract he had sold to Washington.

While Washington was in Pittsburgh Croghan facilitated a meeting with several Iroquois chiefs and obtained the services of two Indian guides and an experienced interpreter, Joseph Nicholson, to join the expedition. When they set out, on October 20, he accompanied them to their first encampment, probably at what is now Edgeworth. The next day he left them after breakfasting at Logstown (Ambridge).

According to Washington’s journal, Croghan wanted to sell him property in the Raccoon Creek watershed, “five pounds sterling for one hundred acres”. To help put this in perspective, five pounds was a good month’s wages twenty years earlier when Washington was a professional surveyor.

Travelling easily downstream in a large canoe, the expedition arrived at Mingo Town (now Mingo Junction, Oho) on the 22^nd. There they met sixty Iroquois heading west to make war on the Catawbas. By October 28 they were well beyond what is now Parkersburg, West Virginia, when they met an old friend and sometime enemy, Kiasutha.

Also known as Guyasuta, this Seneca chief had first met Washington in 1753 at Logstown and accompanied him part of the way north to Fort Le Boeuf. In 1758 he was an active participant in the defeat of Braddock’s Expedition. According to one folk legend Guyasuta claimed to have had two clear shots at Washington at the Battle of the Monongahela and that each time a “divine hand” had deflected them.

At any rate by now he and Washington were allies and had long discussions about cooperation between the Iroquois and the Virginians. He presented Washington with fresh meat – a quarter of a buffalo. The expedition reached its final destination, the confluence of the Kanhaway (Kanawha) River with the Ohio at what is now Point Pleasant, West Virginia, on October 31.

Point Pleasant, of course, is the location of the disastrous collapse of the Silver Bridge on December 15, 1967, killing forty six persons despite a warning by “the mothman”, as reported in the Richard Gere film, “The Mothman Prophecies”. Guyasuta would certainly have credited the mothman to more “divine” intervention.

Washington spent the next five days in that vicinity, evaluating the land as potential agricultural sites and establishing crude bench marks to facilitate land surveying in the future. His party ascended the Kanawha about fifteen miles. In addition to the Kanawha bottom land, the region being evaluated ran about fifteen miles to the northeast to a large bend in the Ohio. An interesting discovery in this area was a sycamore tree forty-five feet in diameter!

Heading back upstream the party encountered Guyasuta again, providing Washington an opportunity to inquire about land farther up the Kanawha. At this point there is a gap in Washington’s journal. We do know that they encountered a flood, with the water rising over twenty feet, and that they arrived at Mingo Town on November 17.

Having had his fill of paddling upstream, Washington hired two Indians to take the canoe back to Fort Pitt. On the 20^ththey acquired horses and set off overland toward Pittsburgh. Their camp that evening appears to have been near what is now Avella, Pa. The next day they proceeded on to Fort Pitt, following “branches of Raccoon Creek … and Shurtees Creek”, where they found “good meadow ground”. Shurtees, of course, is Chartiers, and we surmise the party followed Millers Run to the Catfish Path in what is now Bridgeville and then took the Path on to Pittsburgh.

This visit to Pittsburgh included a meeting with Croghan’s nephew, Dr. John Connolly, whom Washington described as “a very, intelligent, sensible man” with detailed knowledge of the western lands. Five years later Washington would welcome the arrest and imprisonment of this Loyalist for plotting against the colonists during the Revolutionary War.

Washington then retraced his steps back to Mount Vernon via Crawford’s estate on the Youghiogheny and Cresap’s on the Potomac. He encountered “knee deep” snow on Allegheny Mountain. On December 1 he reported “Reached home, having been absent nine weeks and one day.”

The next workshop in the Second Tuesdays series will discuss the Bridgeville High School classes of 1958 and 1959, on February 12 (formerly known as Lincoln’s Birthday), 2019. In March we will return to our study of Washington in western Pennsylvania with a workshop dealing with his trip to Millers Run in 1784 and his dispute with the “Seceders”, squatters on his property there.

Safe at Home. January 17, 2019

January 17, 2019

Safe at Home

I am finally back at home after sixteen exciting days with my extended family in California and Hawaii. Overall it was a very enjoyable experience, but I must admit I am feeling perfectly comfortable back sitting in my “easy chair” in my living room, alone with my reflections on the trip.

The excitement level began to decrease as each faction of our family left for home and we concentrated on getting in a last crack at our favorite activity. Mine was walking along the shoreline trail, marveling at the volcanic cliffs, the unique vegetation, and the ever-changing tide pools.

The origin of the Hawaiian Islands and their history as part of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount is fascinating, especially since the science behind its technology is only sixty or seventy years old. Today we believe that the surface of the earth is covered by six major and seven or eight smaller tectonic plates that move consistently but very slowly

We believe the largest plate, the Pacific Plate, is moving in a west-north western direction from the East Pacific Rise toward the Eurasian Plate, at a speed of about one mile per twenty-five thousand years. We also believe it is passing over a (probably) permanently located “hot spot” in the mantle, which regularly produces volcanic action, building mountains on the ocean floor. The Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount is a geologic record of this movement.

Today there are three active volcanoes on Hawai’i. “the Big Island”, and one still undersea southeast of it (Lo’ihi). Maui is dominated by a dormant volcano, Haleakala, whose last eruption was about four hundred years ago. It rises over ten thousand feet above sea level, over five miles above the sea floor. It was located directly over the hot spot three million years ago.

In these days with so much concern in Middle America about immigration and the diversification of our population it is encouraging to see how well major different ethnic groups co-exist on Maui. We “Whites” are a minority, less than twenty nine percent of the population. Polynesians (Pacific Islanders) make up about eleven percent; Asians, primarily Chinese and Japanese, account for thirty three percent. Over twenty two percent are “mixed race”. Maui is certainly a poster boy for successful ethnic diversity.

Our last day in Maui we went to Pai’a for lunch at Charley’s Restaurant and Saloon. Maui is well known for attracting celebrities, and Charley’s appears to be the epicenter of the attraction. It got its start when Willie Nelson began to hang out there and perform occasionally. It is worth a visit just to peruse the photos over the bar – Kris Kristofferson, Leon Russell, Neil Young, for example, in addition to Willie.

My son-in-law Jim got a Panama hat for Christmas; combining it with his dark sun glasses creates a minor resemblance to singer Leon Redbone (well-known for his record of “Christmas on Christmas Island”, among others). All we lacked was the black string tie. I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince our waiter that we were in the presence of a celebrity, hoping we’d get a free meal. I should have offered to have him sing “Christmas Island”, accompanied by his daughters on ukulele.

I broke up my trip both ways by spending a day in California between flights. John’s company has a major office in San Mateo; we visited it on the way back. Quite interesting for me to compare a modern Silicon Valley high tech office with the workspaces in an engineering company in Pittsburgh four or five decades ago.

Today’s office consists of cubicles seven feet square bounded by low walls and housing a computer workstation and several bookshelves. I kept looking for Dilbert, with no avail. The office was liberally supplied with video conference rooms, “phone booths” – enclosed rooms for telephone calls, and space for relaxing coffee breaks. A much more comfortable environment than the “bull pen” filled with drawing boards that I recall.

An interesting feature was a large gong, apparently a symbol of the company’s opening trading sessions at the Hong Kong Stock Market when they “went public” in Southeast Asia last year. I had a picture of John and me with it, labelled “the ultimate pie bell”, in recognition of our love of pie.

Indicative of the company’s global business, there were three clocks at the office entrance, recording time in Beijing, San Mateo, and Cambridge (Massachusetts). I accused John of paying homage to both Stanford and MIT, a accusation he denied.

We had lunch with one of John’s MIT fraternity brothers, Nick Stamos, who is CEO of Rakuten Intelligence, a subsidiary of a Japanese firm characterized as “Japan’s Amazon”. Nick’s company is focused on analyzing data from over five million customers of the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods!) industry to help retailers plan market strategy.

It was interesting to listen to two old friends who are major corporate executives “catch up” on their activities in the past several months. They spent about five minutes talking about their respective business problems and then shifted to talking about their families. Nick’s seven-year-old Sophia has just persuaded her mother to let her get her ears pierced. John’s five-year-old Lai An enjoys doing her (kindergarten) homework with her father. Very refreshing for me to realize these guys have their priorities straight.

I think sixteen days in the fast lane is sufficient for this octogenarian. I will be content to relax for a while and let younger, more energetic folks worry about the government shutdown, The Great Wall of 2019, and Antonio Brown’s misbehaviors.

Christmas on Christmas Island January 10, 2019

January 10, 2019

Christmas on Christmas Island

Seventy years ago the Andrews Sisters had a hit record that raise the question, “How’d You Like to Spend Christmas on Christmas Island?” This year I am living that fantasy. Our extended family, fifteen strong, spent the holidays in a resort hotel on Maui.

The real Christmas Island is somewhere in the Indian Ocean, but Maui certainly qualifies as an appropriate substitute. We gathered there from Pennsylvania, Colorado, California, and China.

I flew from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, where my son John met me. The flight was delayed four hours before taking off because of fog at is destination. A nuisance but still much better than circling for hours like we used to do.

The next day we flew on to Maui, a perfect flight until we landed and discovered one of my bags hadn’t made the plane. It showed up a day later, complete with apologies for the inconvenience.

Our hotel is on Kapalua Bay, on the extreme northwest corner of the island. We have two luxurious four bedroom suites, with covered balconies overlooking the ocean. To the northwest we can see the island Molokai; to the southwest, Lana’i. The grounds are well groomed with a curving path leading down to a picture-perfect beach on a cove between two promontories. Four large irregularly shaped swimming pools interconnected by waterfalls wind through the grounds between the hotel and the beach.

With the exception of the octogenarian in our group, everyone enjoyed the ocean. Our cove was ideal for snorkeling, full of a wide variety of exotic fish and several large sea turtles. Paddle boarding was also a very popular activity on this beach. On two occasions they all went down the coast for surfboarding lessons at a beach where the waves were just right for beginners.

The octogenarian joined them for a charter boat voyage out into the channel between Maui and Lana’i in search of whales. It was not a difficult search; we are at the peak of the mating season for humpback whales and the channel is full of them. We saw dozens of them breach, one close enough that it brushed our boat.

A few days later we realized that we could see whales breaching in the bay directly opposite the balcony at our suite, using binoculars. The big thrill, of course, was seeing their tails come high out of the water as they dove.

One day we took a sight-seeing drive along the north shore of the island. We stopped at a beach where the surf was frighteningly high. Very few of the surfers were able to negotiate it. Ironically it was at this beach where we saw a large number of sea turtles asleep on the sand. We also visited Twin Falls, a tropical forest with bamboo, banyan trees, Bird of Paradise blooms, etc.

A highlight of this drive was a stop at Iao Valley State Park. Maui is a double island, two volcanic peaks connected by an isthmus. Each peak has remnants of a crater with deep valleys radiating in each direction. Iao Valley leads from the isthmus up into the northwest peak and is the only valley which can be accessed. It is spectacular, with steep heavily wooded sides. It also is the site of a bloody battle during Prince Kamehameha’s conquest of Maui.

I greatly enjoyed a pair of lectures given at the hotel. The first dealt with Polynesian navigation; it was given by a woman whose father is a master navigator who regularly makes the 2500 mile journey from Maui to Tahiti in an authentic Polynesian twin hull vessel, navigating without modern instruments. Instead he relies on stars, clouds, ocean currents, and migrating birds.

The second lecture was on Hawaii’s history. The gentleman giving the talk started up rapidly reciting a pat presentation. He quickly realized we were interested in what he had to say and began to talk with us rather than at us. He was quite knowledgeable about his subject, especially when he got into the twentieth century. He was very pleased to show us a series of original Japanese documents relating to the years leading up to Pearl Harbor.

The grand-children were the focus of the holiday, especially five-and-a-half-year-old Lai An. She is always thrilled to spend time with her cousins; combining it with Christmas was almost too much for her. The older children have matured enough to get as much enjoyment from giving gifts as from receiving them.

Christmas Eve we were sitting on the balcony watching a storm out to the west when we suddenly saw a “moonbow”. This was a first-time occurrence for all of us, as it requires an early evening storm in the west and a full moon just after it has risen. When I googled “moonbow”, the website included a photo of one from Maui!

For Lai An’s grandparents and great aunt a traditional American Christmas was a new experience. They neither speak nor read English; John and Victoria and an Internet translator made it possible for them to be involved. Grandpa Pan is an expert on Chinese poetry written in traditional style; I wish I could communicate with him. I gave him a book of Robert Frost poems in English, hoping it would help him understand what I like about poetry.

Opening stockings and exchanging gifts on Christmas morning in this environment was a unique experience. We all sat out on the balcony overlooking the remarkable tropical view and were rewarded by a series of spectacular rainbows in the channel due west of us. “Christmas on Christmas Island” indeed!

The girls did a fine job of producing traditional Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners, a mean feat for such a large family in an unfamiliar environment. The turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, stuffing, etc. didn’t appear to have any complaints about being served in such an exotic environment.

One evening we had a chef and helper cater a fancy five course meal in our suite. It was impressive, culminating with Kobe top sirloin and molten lava cake, but no more impressive an accomplishment than what our girls produced. He returned a few nights later, this time bringing along a guitarist/singer who entertained us with a repertoire ranging from Willie Nelson to Neil Young.

Chef Jacob accompanied him on harmonica on several songs and then impressed all of us by playing the didgeridoo as well. He is a native of Australia who has mastered this unique aboriginal instrument, a long slightly tapering cylinder which produces a bagpipe-like drone. Son-in-law Jim quickly caught on to the concept and produced a few respectable notes.

Our family vacations always include board games; this year it was “Deal or Duel”, an interesting concept focused on the Alexander Hamilton historical era. I easily won the first game and was well on my way to a repeat victory when I was betrayed by Ian (alias Aaron Burr) and eliminated in a duel I was certain I would win.

Sara and the three older grand-daughters took ukulele lessons. Rachael’s musical background made them easy for her. Nora and Claire did well enough that Sara purchased a proper ukulele for them to take home with them.

We watched the end of the football season and the Steelers’ futile effort to make the NFL playoffs, as well as several successful Penguin hockey victories. Even here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean modern technology enabled us to retain contact with the world back home. Incidentally, Sara is officially on furlough, while our President and his Democratic foes behave like juveniles.

Our family has celebrated Christmas in nearly a dozen different locations in the past fifty-five years; the common factor that has made each of them special has been family. We hope this year’s rainbows are harbingers for a wonderful year ahead for all of us.

Senior Design. January 3, 2019

January 3, 2019

Senior Design

One of my favorite responsibilities during my academic career at Pitt has been coordinating the Civil Engineering Department’s Senior Design Project program. In this program each Senior, in his/her last semester, is required to participate as part of a multi-discipline team in a challenging “near-real-world” design project.

This semester two of our seven teams performed major projects relevant to the Bridgeville area – remediation of flash flooding in the McLaughlin Run watershed and expansion of the Bridgeville Area Historical Center History Center. The quality of their work on these two projects was impressive.

The June 20, 2018 McLaughlin Run flood, which covered Baldwin Street with eight feet of water, was the focus of the first team’s efforts. It is well known that flooding in this watershed has been aggravated in recent years by commercial and residential development; the key to understanding its consequences was the development of a mathematical hydrologic model of it.

This they did using the Army Corps of Engineers HEC-HMS software package. It provided them with the capability of predicting the volume of storm-water runoff in McLaughlin Run for any arbitrary combination of rainfall intensity and duration. Separately they were able to calculate the carrying capacity of the channel at any point, including the six places where it passes under bridges or through culverts in Bridgeville.

Their study confirmed that the high density short duration event (two and a half inches of rainfall in an hour in June) produces a more severe flood than the longer, bigger event (seven and a half inches in three days in September). It predicted a maximum flow rate of about 1,500 cfs (cubic feet per second), very close to the theoretical carrying capacity of the channel under the bridges if they were clear of debris. For comparison, flow in Chartiers Creek averages about 200 cfs between storms; it peaked at 8,000 cfs on June 20.

In recent years new developments have been required to make provision for temporary storage of surplus runoff to minimize the impact of heavy storms. This is typically done with retention ponds or buried storage tanks. Unfortunately, this occurred much too late for the McLaughlin Run watershed; South Hills Village and Upper St. Clair High School are two examples of unrestricted runoff that contribute greatly to the floods on Baldwin Street.

The team concluded that this is a watershed problem that is magnified on Baldwin Street. A proper long-term solution would be the installation of a series of retention ponds scattered along the length of McLaughlin Run. They estimated that the volume of water in the Baldwin Street neighborhood was about fifteen Acre-feet; half a dozen one acre retention ponds would be sufficient to contain that volume.

This would require cooperation by all three communities in the watershed, a highly unlikely event. Consequently the team decided that they should focus their efforts on solutions that were within the control of Bridgeville Borough.

These include improvement of the McLaughlin Run channel within the borough limits, the addition of trash racks to keep debris from plugging the passageway through the bridges and culverts, and the necessary modifications to make the baseball field in McLaughlin Run Park function as a detention pond.

In addition, they studied a different problem, the discharge of polluted AMD (abandoned mine drainage) water into the creek. Their recommendation was that it be piped separately to a passive remediation site in the old Chartiers Creek channel, much as a previous team had proposed for the Scrubgrass Run AMD site in Scott Township.

As part of their investigation of the problem, the team attended a meeting of the Bridgeville Planning Commission at which a representative of an environmental services company recommended condemning all the properties in the Baldwin Street neighborhood, demolishing them, and converting the area into a massive detention pond, a recommendation obviously unacceptable to a group of competent engineers.

The short-term plans to remediate the problem that were presented by Borough Manager Lori Collins were generally similar to the team’s recommendations. Her report of early discussions with Upper St. Clair and Bethel Park also suggested the proper long-term solutions might eventually be implemented, permitting the Baldwin Street neighborhood to survive and prosper.

Recently the Bridgeville Area Historical Society began preliminary discussions with a representative of a beneficial foundation regarding a proposed expansion of the History Center to house a permanent exhibit dedicated to George Washington’s seven visits to Western Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century.

The foundation’s response to a letter suggesting this possibility was the request that the Society prepare a formal proposal, complete with a tentative design, estimate of cost, and construction plan.

The preparation of this detailed information was a perfect project idea for one of our teams. The five students who formed the team attacked the problem enthusiastically and did a fine job of producing the necessary documents.

Their starting point was an architect’s concept drawing of an extension to the north wall of the existing Center. Their job was to convert this general concept into reality – “bricks and mortar” is the popular expression; “studs and nails” would be more appropriate for this case.

A conventional Senior Design project team would have confined its efforts to the detailed design of the new building – member sizes and locations, methods of connecting them, etc. – and estimating its cost. This the team did quite professionally.

However, they elected to function as an overall design and construction company and to modify the concept design to reflect the Society’s wishes and to explore a number of non-technical issues. They visited the Center on numerous occasions to interview Society members and even attended a meeting of the Society’s Expansion Committee and Board of Directors to obtain a first-hand knowledge of their aspirations.

The concept drawing included a basement under the expansion, with an external stairwell leading to it, providing well needed storage space for the Society. After hearing serious concerns about problems with transient vagrants, the design was changed to include an internal stairway.

ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) considerations and requirements to follow historical preservation guidelines (the Center is an Historical Landmark) also significantly affected the design. An unexpected discovery of a gasoline monitoring station that must be relocated added to the cost of the project.

Their final product was a full-fledged bid package containing sufficient information for a potential construction firm to provide a proper price for performing the necessary work. It includes a full set of design drawings, a bill of materials, and a description of the work to be performed. In addition, they provided the Society with a detailed estimate of the cost of the construction, including allowances for acquisition of property, relocating the monitoring station, and tying into storm sewer system.

As a result of their work the Expansion Committee is properly equipped to evaluate this proposal and make a recommendation to the Board of Directors. My personal opinion is that this is indeed a worthwhile project that would provide a meaningful asset to the historical community in Western Pennsylvania. It has a reasonable chance of being seriously considered by the foundation. Implementing the project requires a major commitment by the Society to maintain and staff it, a commitment of which we octogenarians cannot be a part.

This was my last term as coordinator of the Senior Design Project program; I was pleased with the performance of the seven teams and especially the two who implemented the Bridgeville projects.