Water Under the Bridge

Thursday, May 7, 2020

May Day, 1955. May 14, 2020

May 14, 2020

May Day, 1955

“On the first of May, it is moving day” is the beginning of the verse for Rodgers and Hart’s wonderful standard, “Mountain Greenery”. It typifies our general perception of May Day as a happy time, an opportunity to proceed to positive things. In the song a young couple is leaving the city for the joys of rural life, anticipating Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor in “Green Acres”.

This all changed with the onset of the Cold War with the worldwide Communist expansion following World War II. By 1955 the Iron Curtain had split Europe down the middle, and Communist sympathy was growing in France and Italy. The People’s Republic of China was firmly in control in Beijing and flexing its muscles in French Indo-China and threatening Taiwan. Fidel Castro was in exile in Mexico, anticipating his future takeover of Cuba.

May Day, 1955, found me in the 29^th Engineer Battalion, Base Topographic, in Oji, a neighborhood in northern Tokyo. I had just celebrated the first anniversary of my arrival in Japan; my countdown to freedom, on September 10, was 131 days.

Our battalion was responsible for providing mapping support for all of our military units in the Far East as well as for our allies. A major program supporting the French in their effort to quell the rebellion in French Indo-China had come to an abrupt halt the previous year when it failed.

In addition to this “day” job we also had to spend time on our primary reason for being there, defending democracy against its enemies. This included getting up at 5:30 each morning for roll call, calisthenics, and military drill; spending one weekend a month on maneuvers; and miscellaneous soldierly duties like guard duty.

When I reported for guard duty that particular morning, the fact that it was May Day didn’t register on me at all. Guard duty consisted of two hours on, followed by four off, manning a guard shack at one of the gates. I was assigned “second trick”, beginning at 10:00 am.

This put me on duty during a very slow time, with very few persons passing through the gate. I shared the shack with a Japanese national security guard whose primary function was to communicate to non-English speaking visitors. After my two-hour shift was over, I ate lunch, then stretched out on a bunk in the Guard House. A few minutes before 4:00 I got up and prepared to go on duty.

Changing the guard required the Officer of the Day to march us to our respective gates and pick up the guards going off-duty. When I reached the guard shack I noticed a small group of people milling around outside the gate. When I looked puzzled, my Japanese compatriot suddenly broke into English, “May Day”. Sure enough, some of them were waving red handkerchiefs.

For the next few minutes the mob grew slowly, but not enough to really worry me. At 5:00, when our Japanese workers left to come home, things began to get a little dicey. The crowd began to become much more active, shouting, stamping their feet, and waving their red flags.

I began to worry about the safety of our employees. Eventually I spotted Mr. Kono, whom i later noted we had categorized as “mild-mannered”. I was quite concerned about his ability to navigate his way through the mob.

Mild, courteous Mr. Kono was always immaculately dressed. I was surprised to see him pull off his necktie and jam it into his jacket pocket. By the time he had passed through the gate he had pulled out a red handkerchief and was waving it. His mien had changed from polite obedience to aggressive antagonism. Suddenly he looked exactly like the caricature of the evil enemy we faced in the Pacific ten years earlier.

I watched him merge into the mob and become indistinguishable from the rest of them. At this point I realized that my Japanese security guard had somehow disappeared. I was all alone, defending democracy against the Red Horde. I had my rifle but, like Barney Fife, I had no bullets. I did have a bayonet, but had been brainwashed to do nothing rash without being commanded. If only some sergeant had been there to shout, “Fix Bayonets”.

Panicked, I telephoned the Guard House and notified the Officer of the Day that I needed reinforcement. “Not to worry”, he replied. “I have called out the First Provisional Infantry Platoon”. In addition to being organized by our day job assignments, we also were organized into military fighting units.

Soon I saw the impressive sight of the platoon, led by Second Lieutenant Reynolds and Sergeant McCartney marching toward me. Thank Heavens there were some real soldiers in our battalion! Suddenly the Lieutenant stopped and gave the command, “Deploy as Skirmishers”. Soon there were three eight-man squads spread out across the parade ground. Especially impressive were the three Browning Automatic Rifles with their distinctive inverted-vee supports, aimed right at the mob.

Unimpressive, to me, was the fact that they were deployed about fifty yards behind me. I was, indeed, in “no-man’s-land”, poised to be the first American casualty in World War III. I felt like the hero in a Jerry Lewis movie. What would Jerry do? Probably scream and run for safety. I was too disciplined for that. Eventually things began to die down; nonetheless, I was quite happy to see Darrell Renzelman show up at 6:00 and relieve me.

In retrospect I remember this as a humorous incident; I didn’t think it was funny at the time. Farris Farha thought I should be considered for at least a Bronze Star in recognition of my bravery. I suspect my friends and neighbors back home who were responsible for my being there would have been a little uneasy had they known I was the Dutch Boy with his finger in the dike holding back the spread of international Communism.

The Trillium Recurvatum. May 7, 2020

May 7, 2020

The Trillium Recurvatum

When my children were small we enjoyed participating in the YMCA parent-child programs, Indian Guides and Indian Princesses. I particularly enjoyed “playing Indian” and soon found my niche as story teller. Most of the traditional Indian stories for children were of the “Why the ….” Genre, such as “Why the chipmunk’s back is striped”, etc.

Typically in these stories some animal performs some beneficial action which is rewarded by the Great Spirit by being awarded some admirable feature or characteristic. Once my daughter Elizabeth and I got into the routine of telling such tales, we began to write our own.

The great Spirit rewarded the deer for alerting a peaceful tribe of Indians of the approach of an enemy by being granted a flag (its white tail) that it displays vividly each time it runs away. The redbird (cardinal) was awarded its distinctive crown in recognition of its helping a group of thirsty Indians find a spring of fresh water.

Our pride and joy was the story of the trillium. One spring we found a meadow full of trilliums (or is it trillia, or simply trillium?) while on a short hike at the Y camp at Deer Valley. The trillium is a distinctive spring flower, displaying three leaves, three sepals, and three petals in a very attractive arrangement. The common variety in this area is trillium grandiflorum.

Technically the three leaves aren’t leaves at all; their proper designation is bract. The bract is a leaf-like component which is associated with the reproductive function of the plant, rather than its vegetative function. It still looks like a leaf to me.

The typical common trillium has a sturdy stalk perhaps six inches long on which are symmetrically arranged three large green bracts. From the center of the bracts a stem several inches long then supports three attractive petals (white in this case), with three small leaf-like green sepals, spaced between the petals.

The combination of three bracts, three sepals, and three petals suggested a story that practically composed itself. It seems there were three Indian boys who were best friends. Each boy had a loyal dog, and each dog had a flea. One day the three boys disobeyed their parents and went wandering in the forest, accompanied by the three faithful dogs and their three fleas.

Sure enough a thunderstorm, a lightning strike, and the resulting forest fire trapped the wanderers, leading to their sad demise. When the Great Spirit learned of this tragedy He (She?) created the trillium in their memory. Consequently today whenever we encounter a trillium with its three petals, three sepals, and three bracts, we are reminded of the three Indian boys, their three dogs, and their three fleas.

Being a parent with young children at the time the story was composed, it seemed appropriate for it to be a gentle sermon on children listening to their parents. In retrospect I wonder if it would have been better if the creation of the trillium had been a reward for some positive action instead. Perhaps the three triplets gave their lives to save a larger group of their tribe.

Once we had learned about the trillium it was a real treat to find several colonies of them in the woods in our neighborhood. There is a portion of a south-facing hill, about fifty yards long, in which there are several dozen clumps of trillium that bloom in mid-April every year, an event that we anticipate eage.

About ten years ago, in the midst of one of the clumps we were surprised to see an interloper, potentially an undocumented alien! It was definitely a trillium, but one with significantly different characteristics. Instead of being solid green, the bracts were mottled with two contrasting shades. The petals grew right out of the bracts, without a separate stem. And they were maroon-colored, and curled inward rather than outward.

After considerable research I concluded that we were favored with a rare (for this area) variety, trillium sessile. It turns out that the term sessile refers to the absence of the stem between the bracts and petals. Several years later I learned that were other varieties with this characteristic and ours that probably was a trillium recurvatum, distinctive for the curling-in of its petals.

We followed this straggler for a number of years until a large tree fell right where the recurvatum usually showed up each April. Since then we have been able to find it. This Spring I found a note in my mailbox, informing me that the trillium were blooming but that she could not find “the maroon one”.

Being an octogenarian I am automatically “at risk”, and consequentially have been quarantined to my house and neighborhood, depending upon my daughter to do my grocery shopping for me. On the days she brings my groceries, she and I enjoy walking in our woods.

On such a walk two weeks ago we decided to make one final effort to locate the straggler. Elizabeth very quickly announced that she had found it. Sure enough, hidden behind a branch of a downed tree, is a small colony of our beloved recurvatum. I can’t imagine its having been there in previous years, although that is certainly possible.

I prefer, instead, to believe that the Great Spirit is aware of our current travails and that He/She has led us to this colony and provided us with a sign that better days are ahead. If indeed this undocumented alien has found a way to come back after all this time, surely we can survive today’s problems.

Senior Design Projects April 30, 2020

April 30, 2020

Senior Design Projects

This past week has been particularly busy for me. Despite losing a full week of school and being forced to function remotely, the graduating Seniors in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Pitt were required to complete all their final assignments this week and take their final exams next week.

The most significant of these challenges is the completion of their Senior Design Projects. In their final semester our students are required to participate in a significant “near-real-world” team design project. Before my retirement it was my responsibility to coordinate this program. This term I volunteered to mentor one team; I greatly enjoyed my involvement with them.

Normally the program ends with an impressive, day-long colloquium before a large audience in the O’Hara Student Center Ballroom. It indeed is a “big deal”, the culmination of our students’ academic career. Once it became obvious this could not occur, we decided to have each team make its presentation remotely via teleconference with a handful of interested faculty members as its audience.

Consequently I participated in seven one-hour-long teleconferences last week, plus a handful of preliminary dry-runs. I was not surprised to see this group of students make the transition to remote communication so flawlessly. I was, however,

pleasantly surprised that the quality of their design work was not compromised.

Three of the seven projects this term were based on actual projects in the University’s Master Campus Plan. Part of the Plan for the sports complex on the Upper Campus is the design and construction of a 3,500 seat arena for wrestling, volleyball, and gymnastics, to be located adjacent to the Peterson Event Center.

This location is at the east end of the bowl left when Pitt Stadium was demolished. The team I mentored was given the assignment of performing a preliminary design for such a facility, accompanied by an estimate of its cost and a construction plan to confirm its constructability. This was an ambitious challenge, even for one of the strongest teams in the program.

Before the disruption I was sure the team was capable of meeting this challenge; my confidence was confirmed by their presentation. Even though each student was communicating remotely from a different location, their explanation of the results of their work went seamlessly, just as if they were all together in O’Hara Student Center.

Another Master Plan project is the renovation of Crawford Hall, a five-story building that is the home of the University’s neuroscience department. Filled with laboratories, it is imperative that this work be done in logical stages, without significantly disrupting the department’s operations.

This project was particularly interesting to me, as I had experienced a similar staged renovation in Benedum Hall about ten years ago. The team implementing this Senior Design Project was made up of Construction Management students; the plan they produced was highly professional and completely credible.

Stormwater management and Allegheny County’s combined sewer overflow problems are major infrastructure subjects for Civil and Environmental Engineers. One of our teams, composed of Environmental Engineering students, elected to evaluate stormwater mitigation efforts for two projects in the Master Plan – the Redevelopment of Bouquet Gardens and the conversion of O’Hara Street into a pedestrian-friendly “Complete Street”.

A combination of ‘green roofs” and underground storage was shown to significantly reduce peak stormwater runoff at Bouquet Gardens. A similar effect was found for the addition of infiltration planters between sidewalks and bike lanes on O’Hara Street. Though both are relatively small projects, they clearly quantify the effectiveness of “green solutions” to the combined sewer overflow problem.

In the same vein, another team studied the frequent flash flooding problem in downtown Springdale. Their solution is to capture stormwater before it enters the combined sewer system and store it in large underground containers, to be released after the peak of the storm has passed. In this case, a “grey” solution turned out to be more effective than the alternative “green solution”, an extensive rain garden.

When the new terminal is constructed at the Pittsburgh International Airport, the existing landside terminal is scheduled for demolition. Some folks at the Allegheny County Airport Authority are interested in alternative uses for the facility. One of our teams elected to take on this challenge; they came up with a credible recommendation.

Their plan is to convert the landside terminal into a transportation hub linking busy corridors in all four directions. This they would do by retaining the central core of the existing building while demolishing its wings. Attractive glass curtain walls would be installed at both ends. This is a clever solution, including a pair of environmentally friendly alternatives --rain gardens to handle stormwater runoff, and a geothermal heating system as an energy source.

Another innovative project is the development of an urban agriculture system in an empty industrial building in Sharpsburg. A team composed of Environmental Engineers conceived an impressive facility including fish tanks, hydroponics, and a conventional greenhouse. Collecting rainwater for process water, generating electricity with solar panels, and capturing nutrients from waste in a closed system produce a cost-effective solution while providing the community with fresh food.

The final project is an excellent solution to the problem of providing rapidly deployable multi-family housing units for communities hit by natural disasters. This team designed a three-story modular housing unit that could be constructed in large assemblies in a manufacturing facility environment, transported to the construction site by trucks, and final-assembled in a minimum of time. Their design utilizes engineered forest products – Glulam columns and girders, and cross-laminated timber floors and ceilings.

The combination of the use of sophisticated technology, the social relevance of each of these projects, and the professionalism shown by the presentations is extremely impressive. When you realize that this was achieved despite the biggest disruption any academic program has seen in years, you realize that this group of students is indeed “the cream of the crop”. And kudos to program coordinator John Sebastian!

Sunday, April 19, 2020

So many books, So Little Time. April 23, 2020

April 23, 2020

So Many Books, So Little Time

One positive consequence of being sequestered is the fact that it has provided me with a few more hours each week to devote to reading. My love of reading has always placed high on my list of blessings.

An inventory of the pile of books within reach of my favorite chair in the living room would be a good guide to my current interests. The first one I reach for each day is “Jack Frake”, which is the first book in the “Sparrowhawk” series. It was a gift from my former student and dear friend Kevin Abt.

There are six novels in this series by Edward Cline that bring “a radically new perspective to the events leading up to the American Revolution”. The first book begins in England in 1744 with a ten-year-old boy who has run away from home and joined a band of free-traders, a courteous name for smugglers making a living circumventing King George II’s tariffs.

Isn’t it remarkable that we are still struggling with the question of free trade versus protective tariffs over two and a half centuries later! This gang played Robin Hood by providing the common folk with affordable goods, much to the dismay of the government.

Next down in the pile is Erik Larson’s current best-seller, “The Splendid and the Vile”. It deals with the first year of Winston Churchill’s role as Prime Minister, beginning in May, 1940, with the Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain. This is the fifth of his books I have read, and is as entertaining as the others. Larson’s style is to overlay irrelevant details about the daily lives of participants in a momentous event upon the event itself.

Because of my intense interest in this specific time in history I have decided to supplement my reading of Larson’s interpretation of it by rereading Churchill’s wonderful “Their Finest Hour”, the second of his six-book series of recollections of the years leading up to World War II and the war itself.

Comparing and contrasting the two books is fascinating. One wonders which paints a more accurate picture of the times. Larson has the advantage of objectivity and access to related writings by other people undergoing the same experience as Churchill. Nonetheless my interest in the subject drives me to dig deep into “Their Finest Hour”, which reads like the communiques from a war correspondent, which Churchill actually early in his career.

“The Splendid and the Vile” is this month’s selection for Book Club, a group of seven chronologically (mostly) disadvantaged gentlemen who get together once a month, ostensibly to review a book we have all read. Actually our monthly meetings are often more social than academic. We have been together long enough that we have read slightly over three hundred books.

Last month was our first virtual meeting, which I hosted using my University Zoom license. After a lot of octogenarian fumbling I was finally able to get the five of us available together in a teleconference. We missed Norm, a physician with his hands full these days, and Larry, unable to participate because of family problems. The rest of us carried it off successfully, though it was a poor substitute for wine and snacks in someone’s living room.

The book we reviewed was Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”. Surprisingly none of us had read it previously, though we were all familiar with Bela Lugosi and the well-known movie. Equally surprising was the fact that the novel is so well written. Its epistolary style, presented as a series of documents written by the various characters, works quite well as a vehicle for telling this complicated story.

Our choice of books to read comes from many sources. The previous month we had read “Mind and Matter”, the story of John Urschel, a professional football player who gave up a lucrative athletic career to pursue a doctorate in mathematics at MIT. Urschel reported that he was heavily influenced by his mother. Somehow we learned that “Dracula” was her favorite book; it turned out to be a good choice for us as well.

Prior to “Mind and Matter” we read Tim O’Brien’s memoir of the War in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried”. It was preceded by “The Meaning of a Poem”, an anthology of poems arranged by form. We each were assigned one form – I got a quick education in the villanelle, a form with which I had no previous experience.

Other books last year included “Overstory” by Richard Powers; “Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind” by Yuval Noah; the play “Inherit the Wind”; Larson’s “Dead Wake”, the story of the sinking of Lusitania; “Battle Songs, Paul Zolbroyd’s Korean War novel; Paul Greenberg”s “Four Fish”; and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci. An impressive, eclectic list.

Back to my favorite chair pile – next comes “The Liberator” by Alex Kershaw. It is the subject of the second of six workshops Glenn Flickinger is presenting at the Mt. Lebanon Library on World War II. The story of maverick Army officer, Alex Sparks, it will be presented via teleconference.

Next comes Brian Greene’s “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos”. It has resided in my pile for quite a while. Reading it is “one step forward and two back” – an amalgam of cutting-edge physics and philosophy. I am too stubborn to give up on it.

At the bottom is “Singing in the Saddle” by Douglas Green, a member of “Riders in the Sky”, a prominent western singing group. My brother loaned it to me, knowing my love of cowboy music. So far it has prompted me to watch one old Gene Autry movie and one featuring Roy Rogers.

Needless to say there is no danger of my getting bored during sequestration; I have enough books on my “must read” list to last for quite a while.

A Look Back at 1954. April 16, 2020

April 16, 2020

A Look Back at 1954

An expression heard frequently these days is that “things will never be the same again”. It’s easy to believe that, and indeed it does appear that major catastrophes like our current pandemic do have long ranging effects on many aspects of our lives.

However it is also true that gradual evolutionary changes have a similar effect and perhaps an even greater one. Every time our Octogenarian Brunch Club gets together someone brings up incidents from our youth that demonstrate how much things have changed since then.

In an effort to shift our intention away from today’s problems, we have decided to roll the calendar backwards sixty-six years and attempt to recall what everyday life was like in this area in 1954. Thanks to the Bridgeville Area Historical Society we have access to a few archived issues of the “Bridgeville News”, including one dated April 15, 1954.

On that date I had just arrived in Japan and been assigned to the 64^th Engineer Battalion Base Topographic in the Oji neighborhood in northern Tokyo. That is just about the extreme of social distancing – nine thousand miles from Bridgeville.

The Bridgeville News was an eight-page weekly paper in those days, published by John L. McCracken and Ralph E. Hennon at News Square, which I remember as a small concrete block print shop on Jane Way.

The paper cost seven cents a copy, but could be supplied by mail for an annual fee of three dollars. The equivalent cost today would be thirty dollars a year. I wonder how many families today would be willing to pay that amount for a weekly newspaper of this quality? Similarly, the paper had forty-five advertisements from local businesses. How much support of this type would a paper get today? Seventeen word classified ads cost fifty cents (equivalent to five dollars today).

The front page had twenty-three different news items plus a strange cartoon addressing society’s concern about the behavior of the younger generation. The featured article was headlined “Little League Sets Tryouts”. Methodist minister Reverend Kerr was the commissioner of the four-team league with teams sponsored by the Kwanis, the Rotary, American Legion Post 54, and the Reliable Fraternal Association. I remember playing softball against the Reverend in a church league – he was highly competitive!

Sticking with baseball, another article reported that third baseman Marvin McCormick had been named captain of the BHS baseball team. My high school classmate John Mechtel, a U. S. Navy hospitalman, was reported to be serving on the cruiser USS Salem. Post 54 had honored Past Commander Angelo Pennetti for his service that netted the post a loving cup from the State Legion.

The Chamber of Commerce was about to honor C. Godwin, A. A. Pepe, J. H Rankin, J. H. Lutz, and Dr. W. C. Thompson for their fifty years of being in business in Bridgeville at a dinner at Bethany Presbyterian Church. Organizers of the dinner were William McDivitt (Bridgeville Trust Company), Cyrus Holman (Bridgeville National Bank), Ralph Weise (Weises’s), and Samuel Fryer (Fryer’s Funeral Home).

Frank Cherry had been discharged from the Navy after forty months on the U. S. S. Blackwood. A graduate of Bridgeville High School (1948) and of barber school, he planned to join his father as a local barber.

A long article by Civil Defense Director Ed Giuliani had the headline, “Local CD Director Urges Calm Thought”. Tests of the hydrogen bomb had just been completed, magnifying the panic associated with the atomic bomb. Director Giuliani promised to publish recommendations for preparedness in future issues of the paper.

Pages two and three were a combination of a few news items, some local ads, and a lot of “boilerplate” filler. Capelli’s ad reported live entertainment – the Tune Toppers on Fridays and Perry Vincent’s Orchestra on Saturdays. Isaly’s advertised “candy eggs, peeps, and rabbits” for next week’s Easter baskets.

Sergio Bernardi’s “Belltown News” reported complaints about folks burning rubbish on wash day. Congressman Jimmy Fulton’s “Congressional Newsletter” discussed planning for the new Air Force Academy. My favorite bit of boilerplate in this issue is “Solve a Crime” by A. C. Gordon, a simple logic puzzle much like today’s “Slylock Fox” in the comic strips, with the solution printed upside down at the end of the article.

Page four is a full-page ad announcing Louis Russo’s new Bar and Grill at 615 Washington Avenue, “the most modern bar in town”, supplemented by support ads by both local banks, Silhol Lumber and Supply Company, Dreon Building Supplies, Heating and Roofer Dave Nervo, and bar/restaurant equipment supplier William Delp.

The fifth page is dominated by sports – an ad for fishing gear by Kay’s Sporting Goods store, standings of the County Industrial League, and a column “Sportsmen Outdoors” by Outdoor Editor (?) Frank Floss. Floss mentions fishing at Lake Jo Ann, so it must be a local column. These are supplemented by local news columns for Oakdale and Cuddy/Gladden, and church news. Bethany Church announced Easter Sunrise services at 6:30 am with Reverend Yount, Mayview State Hospital Chaplain presiding.

The final three pages are an amalgam of loosely related items. Bridgeville Borough legal announcements included Ordinance 443, requiring a permit for solicitation for charitable causes; Ordinance 444, regulating truck traffic on residential streets; and the Borough Auditors’ Report for the Previous year. According to Auditors Keith Bee, Guy Russell, and Virgil Dal Bon, receipts and expenditures balanced at $288,251.46. My favorite classified ad was placed by a lady wanting to swap a ten-acre farm in Hickory for “a house near Bridgeville”.

This has been an interesting trip back six and a half decades to a time when our concerns ranged from the hydrogen bomb to soot on clothes hanging outside to dry, and we still were buoyed up by the prospect of attending the grand opening of Russo’s Bar and Grill on Saturday night followed by an Easter sunrise service at Bethany Church the next morning.

Internet Buskers April 9, 2020

April 9, 2020

Internet Buskers

A few days before social distancing turned into sequestering I saw an item in the paper regarding a virtual swing dance party to be held by the Boilermaker Jazz Band that evening. I decided to investigate it and was rewarded royally for my curiosity.

I have been aware of the Boilermakers since their earliest days, three decades ago. More recently we saw a current version of the band at one of Pitt’s lunch time concerts. Founder and (antique) Albert system clarinetist Paul Cosentino is its leader; trombonist Jeff Bush shares the front line with him these days.

We know Bush well and are major fans of his. He has been a member of the faculty at the University of Duquesne Jazz Camp that my grandson Ian attended the past two years. In addition, we hired him and a rhythm section to entertain at my retirement banquet last year.

The dance party was streamed live from Cosentino’s Facebook page. Sure enough, promptly at 9:00 pm my laptop screen presented a view of five musicians in what turned out to be Cosentino’s living room. In addition to Paul and Jeff the band included string bass player Tony DePaolis, pianist Antonio Croes, and drummer Thomas Wendt. Wendt is another familiar face from Jazz Camp. In addition to being a fine musician, he is an intellectual and an accomplished jazz historian.

My original intention was to watch a few minutes just to get the flavor of it and then move on to other things. They opened with a rousing version of “Esquire Bounce” and proceeded through a wonderful series of standards, and suddenly it was 10:00 pm and time for their break. By now I was hooked and eagerly anticipating the second set, which turned out to be equally enjoyable.

By the time they reached the end of that set, I found myself wishing they would go on and on. And I wasn’t alone in my wishes. Facebook was running a chat room in a window on the right-hand side of the screen, with running, equally appreciative comments from the other folks watching. The audience peaked at twelve hundred, generally averaged about nine hundred.

I was impressed at the obvious enthusiasm of all the members of the band, even though they were playing in a living room, with a camera as their only audience. One must assume they were enjoying greatly what probably is their last opportunity to play together for the foreseeable future.

I was well aware of the talent of Cosentino, Bush, and Wendt, having seen them perform previously. DePaolis and Croes proved to be perfect partners for them. Together they made up an outstanding quintet.

At the start of the concert the audience was advised that the musicians would accept tips via Venmo or PayPal. The longer I watched, the more convinced I became that my enjoyment was sufficient that I really should send them a token of my appreciation. If even a fraction of the viewers felt the way I did, the band must have had a good payday.

All of which leads me to wonder if this might be an appropriate venue for buskers, entertainers who perform in public places in the hope of being reimbursed by gratuities. A good example of successful buskers is “Tuba Skinny”, a seven piece New Orleans style band that started out playing in the street in the Latin Quarter for tips. Today their YouTube videos include a suggestion that viewers support them via Venmo.

There are all manner of excellent musicians struggling to make a living and lacking a reputation big enough to permit them to survive from gigs in clubs and concerts. One wonders if an Internet venue like the Boilermakers used might generate sufficient income from voluntary tips to make performing pay off for them.

I certainly prefer to support Tom Roberts and/or the Allegheny City Ragtime Orchestra, or (ragtime pianist) Mark Spitznagel, or Warren Davidson and the folks who perform in “Chamber Music at Old St. Luke’s” series in live performances, but virtual concerts with voluntary tipping would be an acceptable alternative.

This might be a mechanism for local performers in niche areas to reach broader audiences. There aren’t enough ragtime fans, for example, in the Pittsburgh area to support an outstanding performer, but there probably are nationally.

Violinist Ray Chen has a YouTube site with over one hundred thousand subscribers; we suspect that is quite lucrative for him. My granddaughter Rachael and her clique of teeny-bopper groupies follow it religiously. One wonders how many subscribers/viewers an artist would need to make a living that way.

In a slightly different, but self-isolation related vein we were thrilled at the Pittsburgh Symphony telecast of their 2016 concert in Berlin, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Sixth (Pathetique) Symphony. It too was a delight to watch and also left me wishing for more.

In addition to the orchestra’s performance being superb, the camera work greatly enhanced viewing it. The cameramen were able to focus on the appropriate soloist or section throughout the rendition, making it easy for the casual viewer to know exactly who was playing.

The cameras also did a fine job of following Maestro Manfred Honeck and his conducting. In a live concert we see his back; this gave us the view the musicians see. It certainly demonstrated the way he communicated with the orchestra.

It was a treat to see close-ups of so many performers we recognize, particularly when they were being featured. Especially impressive were the four principal reed players – Cynthis Koledo DeAlmeida (oboe), Lorna McGhee (flute), Nancy Goeres (bassoon), and Michael Rusinek (clarinet). It is hard to imagine any orchestra with a better quartet than these.

We enjoyed seeing my granddaughter Rachael’s violin teacher, Irene Cheng, close-up numerous times, as well as Associate Concertmaster Mark Huggins, cellists Anne Martindale Williams and David Premo, horn players William Caballero and Zach Smith, etc., etc., etc. I am surprised I now so many more of the individuals in the Symphony than I do in the Steelers, Pirates, or Penguins these days.

The concertmaster for this performance was Noah Bendix-Bagley, who since has left for a similar position with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. I didn’t realize how much his departure and the failure of the Symphony to find a suitable replacement meant until I watched the concert.

Apparently the Symphony plans to stream video of an old concert every Friday evening. If so, I will certainly look forward to that opportunity each week.

The 2020 Iditarod April 2, 2020

April 2, 2020

The 2020 Iditarod

Long time readers of this column will be aware of my obsession with dogsled racing and especially the Iditarod. It started fifteen years ago, when my wife and I had a memorable vacation in Alaska, during which we visited five different kennels.

This year, of course, the Iditarod was the last major sporting event before the corona virus chased us all into sequestration. When asked if he thought the event should be stopped in favor of “social distancing”, one musher suggested that camping out with a dozen dogs in sub-zero weather in the Alaska wilderness was probably the extreme of that concept.

This year’s winner was an apparent ringer, a Norwegian musher named Thomas Waerner. Although this only his second Iditarod, in retrospect we should have realized that he was a serious competitor. In 2015 he placed seventeenth. Since then he has observed the race closely while building up a powerful team.

In 2019 Waerner won Europe’s most prestigious dogsled race, the 1000 kilometers Finnmarkslopet, run in northern Norway, above the Arctic Circle. His team of carefully bred huskies took over control of the race at its midpoint, checkpoint Ruby on the Yukon River, and put everyone else in their rear-view mirrors. The dogs with which he finished had identical white faces with a dark stripe running down their muzzles to the tip of their noses.

Second place went to sexagenarian (barely) and three time Iditarod champion, Mitch Seavey. His team also came on strong once they reached the Yukon. Seavey attributed this to the fact that he needed longer rests than his younger competitors, and that his team benefitted from the additional thirty minutes each time they stopped.

Jessie Royer repeated her strong 2019 third place finish, once again the fastest female musher. She was first into Ruby, winning her a gourmet catered five course meal, which she promptly shared with her nearest competitors at the time – Waerner, Brent Sass (ended in fourth place), and Aaron Burmeister (fifth). More evidence that the mushers’ close friendships take precedence over their being competitors.

A month earlier Sass had won the Yukon Quest; its one thousand miles are probably even more demanding than the Iditarod. He and his team have logged two thousand miles in the past two months. The same is true of Michelle Phillips and her team. She was second in the Quest and gained her second thirteenth place in the Iditarod this year.

Sass was the first musher to reach Cripple (milepost 425). This earned him his choice of two prizes -- $3,000 in gold nuggets (actually one the size of a sugar cube) or an equal value in cell phone service from GCI, the local provider. He said it was an easy choice, since there was no cell phone service where he lived, but did thank GCI sincerely for its sponsorship. He will get the nugget(s?) at the banquet in Nome.

Paige Drobny was the second woman to finish, placing seventh with a team her husband Cody Strathe had driven to third place in the Quest. Similarly Ally Zirkle came in eighteenth with the team that brought her husband Allan Moore in fourth in the Quest.

This was Burmeister’s twenty-sixth Iditarod; his highest finish was third in 2015. He lives in Nome, close to the finish line, where he is a teacher and part owner of a construction firm. Probably had no difficulty motivating his team when they got close to the finish.

Last year’s winner, Peter Kaiser, came in fourteenth; 2018 Champion Joar Ulsom (another Norwegian) placed sixth. Neither appeared disappointed at not repeating; the general attitude of all the mushers is that the important reward is participating and that winning is just “icing on the cake”.

Laura Neese is the youngest musher in this year’s race, at twenty-three. Jim Lanier, 79!, is the oldest. Originally his application was rejected because of his age. He proceeded to run two 300 miles qualifying races to show them he was still capable. Unfortunately he changed his mind about competing when he reached the top of the Alaska Range at Rainy Pass, and scratched.

Another interesting scratch was Jeremy Keller, at Nikolai, 263 miles into the race. Rather than being airlifted back to civilization, he just turned around and mushed back to Willow, the starting point, about twenty miles from his home in Knit. It was interesting following him on the GPS map, apparently going backwards.

Coverage of the Iditarod was excellent for the “Insiders”, those of us willing to pay a modest fee. Lots of videos of mushers at the checkpoints. My favorite is one of Mitch Seavey trying to answer a question about sleep deprivation and being drowned out by his entire team howling at the top of their voices.

I am disappointed that our sports media ignores the Iditarod. Especially this year, when there is literally nothing happening in sports, it would have been interesting for someone to pick up on the Iditarod and take advantage of its drama and all the intriguing individual stories.

Alaska has had heavier snow and colder temperatures than normal this year. The race started in Willow, in a blizzard and encountered deep snow and thirty below temperatures all the way to the Yukon. A couple of days later it was above freezing and many of the teams were resting in the afternoon to avoid the heat.

Without exception, whenever a musher was asked to comment on the difficult trail conditions or the severe weather, the answer, invariably, was “It is what it is.” This expression is famous for being the only two-time winner in Gene Collier’s annual competition for the year’s most overused sports trite expression. The Alaskans are just a little slow catching up.

The magnificent scenery certainly adds to my appreciation of the event. Aaron Burmeister reported that his biggest thrill was coming out of an “ice fog” into a crystal clear night and the brightest Northern Lights he had ever seen. Similarly, Michelle Phillips was thrilled by four consecutive moonrises.

Comments like these remind me that part of my fascination with the Iditarod is the fact that the competitors are simple, down-to-earth folks, completely unlike the prima donnas in other sports. It would be hard not to root for each one of them.

The analysts talked a lot about the strategy associated with the decision regarding timing of the mandatory twenty-four-hour rest stop. The two most popular spots were Takotna (milepost 329) and Cripple (milepost 425). At what point in the race is it best to give your dogs a long rest?

Six of the top nine finishers rested at Takotna; three (finishers 2, 4, and 7) elected to push on to Cripple. Difficult to draw any conclusions from that data. The same can be said about the other arbitrary rest stop – eight hours at one of the checkpoints on the Yukon. Waerner (first) and Burmeister (fifth) stopped at the first opportunity, Ruby; Royer (third) and Sass (fourth) at Kaltag, the last possibility. Three others chose intermediate stops.

This was the third year we had a prognostication competition for our family and close friends. We each predicted the first five finishers, not very successfully. None of us had Waerner or Burmeiseter, and only one had Seavey. My son John edged me out by one point. We both had Royer in third, but he beat me on Sass being closer to his prediction than Seavey was to mine. Sic Transit Gloria!

Once again, the 2020 Iditarod was a pleasure to follow. Where else does a twenty-three-year-old woman compete on an equal basis with a sixty-year-old man in a major event? Where else does weather play such a significant role? Where else do a group of superb four legged athletes have the chance to display their speed and stamina?