This painting was completed as a portrait project for Ryan McCormick’s Drawing & Painting class at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. It’s based on a portrait by Teenie Harris: “Portrait of Lucille Cuthbert” c. 1940-1950, Charles Teenie Harris, gelatin silver print, Carnegie Museum of Art 1996.69.48
You can see the original portrait at Historic Pittsburgh.
Lately the mornings in Pittsburgh have been chilly and lovely with fog. Seeing the nearby hills obscured by fog makes me wonder what it must have been like to live here when things were instead obscured by smoke from industry and coal burning. Luckily, my favorite of digital collections, Historic Pittsburgh, has digitized images of Smoke Control Lantern Slides from the 1940’s and 1950’s, before and after smoke control ordinances were passed in Pittsburgh:
And nowadays…
The Post-Gazette has a great interactive site where you can see photos of Pittsburgh past right next to those from Pittsburgh present: http://multimedia.post-gazette.com/ThenNow/.
Please forgive the title of this post; I couldn’t resist. 🙂
This blog has died because I got a new job. I guess I have bigger fish to fry now but I do miss having the time to blog some nonsense now and then. I’ve.migrated from the world of libraries to that of
information and referral.
And I work in the Strip now so when I walk to and from work I see things like trombone playing older gentlemen and trains overhead. And fountains.
(post title from this song)
I’ve been answering an abnormal number of reference questions about Pittsburgh history lately, especially regarding photographs of old Pittsburgh. I think there’s a class that has to find an old photo and then go to the same place in the city and take a new one. Much like what Walter C. Kidney did in his thoroughly enjoyable book, Pittsburgh Then and Now. The lovely and forever engaging (to me, at least) Historic Pittsburgh image collection is still growing, with many images having been added to the Pittsburgh City Photographer collection this year.
And then, today, I found out about how the Dallmeyer Building downtown has been restored to it’s original facade from the 1800s. There’s an interesting thread about it, and about historic building restoration in Pittsburgh, on city-data.
See also:
Pittsburgh Photographic Archive – Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania Photographic Archives
Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation
Historic Photos of Pittsburgh by Miriam Meislik
Photos & Scenes of Pittsburgh recommended by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Winter is here, and once I’m done with the required seasonal illnesses, I’m going to be a sledding, skiing, hiking, snowshoeing, ice skating maniac. I would even snowmobile if it was possible. Okay maybe not. But I really wish we could still ice skate on the various ponds and “lakes” in Pittsburgh’s parks…
Highland Park’s Carnegie Lake: summer / winter
Schenley Park’s Panther Hollow Lake: summer / winter
At least we have an extra place to skate this year because of the Winter Classic. Not that I’m even a habitual ice skater! I do like the romance of it, though. Which is why I can’t NOT post this video, even though I will probably regret it later. (Do you ever find videos and feel compelled to post them just because someone took the insane amount of time to make them?)
[Youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDGJfJ1wP8k”%5D
So I’m hoping this year will be the year that I try ice skating one more time, and succeed in staying on the ice for longer than 15 minutes before giving up! If that doesn’t work, at least it’s still fun to drink hot chocolate and watch other people fall down.
In my search for historic ice skating images, I stumbled across this article about the Schenley Park Casino, which is one of those Pittsburgh things that aren’t there anymore (as Sebak would say…yet he never featured anything this cool in his movies). It burned down within 2 years of opening. It seems, though, that this may have been the site of Pittsburgh’s introduction to hockey!
The following day The Pittsburgh Press had this account: “Between 2,500 and 3,000 (despite bad weather) showed how hockey and ice polo should be played when business is meant. Before 9 o’clock the boys lined up and gave an exhibition of hockey. This game has never before been seen in Pittsburgh, and it was a revelation. The Casino players, in truth, didn’t know just what to do with that little flat “puck” used in hockey. They didn’t know whether it was good to eat or whether it was a holiday toy. No account was kept of the hockey score, but the crowd marveled at the work of the visitors.”
Happy holidays, and GO PENS
dream project!
http://retrographer.org/ – “Dane, a senior at Carnegie Mellon University studying design and human-computer interaction, has created the Retrographer Project designed to geotag historical images of Pittsburgh. “Geotagging” adds latitude and longitude data to an historical image so that its geographic location can be identified on a map.” It does seem like it still needs work, but I’m glad someone is doing this.
Not only am I mildly obsessed with Pittsburgh history, I also recently started geocaching. Ever since I read this book I’ve been wishing that someone would make an online version that would juxtapose Pittsburgh of today with Pittsburgh of the 1970s and the 1800s. Well, “Retrographer” seems like just the sort of thing I was imagining.
I’ve never done any “geotagging”, but I have recently become hooked on geocaching. I think it’s fun because it gives you extra incentive to explore your city and its surroundings, and finding the caches can be tricky, and thus rewarding. I already liked walking in the woods, now I can just find hidden treasure while I do it. And right when my bff and I started doing this, I was reading about the history of Schenley Park, my favorite park in Pittsburgh. I immediately started imagining caches I could create that would share some of the history of the locale where the cache was hidden. I like the thought of creating collages out of historical photographs and text, so the contents of the cache would be like a mini-artistic homage to what was.
Another recently publicized project that combines Pittsburgh history with archival material and geography is Public Record, a “multimedia documentary project that Justin Hopper [turned] into a [walking tour of downtown] you can take with your iPhone, cell phone or MP3 player” (Post-Gazette).
While I’m really into these geo-projects that make use of technology like mp3s and digital maps, I also really like the simplicity, slowness, and tactility (yes that is a word, i just found out) involved in creating a physical cache and finding a physical cache using only a GPS reader as your technology. While it’s cool to use digital media to experience the history of places, there’s something ironic about using a form as intangibile as digital media to recapture the most ephemeral thing of all – history! I’m not implying that the creators of the aforementioned digital projects are unaware of this tension or that they’re not exploiting it (in the positive artistic sense). I think, though, that when I create homages to history I want them to be graspable (apparently this too is a word). I want people to be able to stand with something – even if it’s just an image – in their mittens and say “This was here, but now it’s not anymore.”
So much global positioning to do, so little time.
Last night my pardner and I saw Rush play the album “Moving Pictures” (and more) in its entirety at Pittsburgh’s jaw-dropping (and vertigo-inducing) new arena. I can’t believe those guys have been killing it like that for so many years. WHAT A SHOW.
[Youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4ivxKpQuwI%5D
“Musically, do we even have to bother saying that it was epic and tight? Or do you already know that Mr. Lee, underrated guitar hero Alex Lifeson and drum god Neil Peart are a Swiss watch of a machine? […]
From “Moving Pictures” Rush moved toward a third hour with Mr. Peart’s funtastic drum exhibition and, at last, ’70s show-stoppers like “Closer to the Heart,” the “2112 Overture” and a reggae-fied “Working Man.”
It was so generous that at the end it was hard to imagine any of the 13 shows the band played at the old arena topping this one. Thirty years from now people will wish they had a time machine to go back to Thursday night.”
ASIS&T 2010‘s conference theme is “Navigating Streams in an Information
Ecosystem”. The full-day SIG CR workshop detailed below will “give participants a chance to reflect on essential questions related to information classification, representation and organization while exploring the future of the field.”
The morning session will include papers from theoreticians and practitioners
in the field, including:
Molly Tighe, Time Capsules Project Cataloguer, the Warhol Museum,
Pittsburgh, PA. Ms. Tighe will describe her work at the Warhol Museum, where
she is involved with a project to arrange and describe over 600 boxes of
items contained in the Andy Warhol Time Capsules.
Grant Campbell, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media
Studies at the University of Western Ontario. Professor Campbell will
present a paper “New Life for an Old Theory: Italo Calvino, the Future of
the Web, and the Theory of Integrative Levels” This presentation will use
Italo Calvino’s analysis of creativity and cybernetics to suggest that the
growth of sophisticated semantic networks in the Web of the future depends
on a process that Feibleman identified years ago with his theory of
integrative levels.
Joe Tennis, Assistant Professor at the School of Information at the
University of Washington. His paper “Form, Intention, and Indexing: The
Liminal and Integrated Conceptions Work in Knowledge Organization” will
propose a dual conception of “the work” in knowledge organization.
Tim Spalding, Founder of LibraryThing. In this presentation, Mr. Spalding
will discuss the intersection of traditional and social cataloging,
specifically how LibraryThing for Libraries allows librarians to harness the
“wisdom of the crowd” in unprecedented ways. Traditional library OPACs
currently lack the mechanisms for collecting the knowledge and preferences
of library patrons. Although the traditional cataloging and classification
model – where a small group of specialists describe materials for the
general public – works well enough for the job for which it was designed,
the expectations of users have changed with the advent of web 2.0
technologies like Wikipedia, flickr, and Amazon recommendation systems.
(*Note: this is a change from the original speaker from LibraryThing)
The afternoon session will build on the ideas presented in the morning
session and will be devoted to small group and general discussion regarding
the limits of classification research.
Specific questions include:
– Where is classification research headed?
– How can we best communicate our ideas and theories to researchers,
students, and practitioners?
– What are some of the strengths of our current research methods, and what
are our weaknesses?
– Are we working under any unexplored assumptions or biases?
– What are the goals of classification research?
Attendees will be asked to break into small groups in the afternoon to
discuss these questions, then return for general discussion towards the end
of the workshop.
Important Information:
EARLY REGISTRATION ENDS: September 17, 2010 (register and make hotel
reservations by this date)
( http://www.asis.org/asist2010/index.html )
For more information:
One more time. Summer 1982. The weather in Pittsburgh is unbearably hot. Two weeks of high temperatures and high humidity. Nights not much better than the days. Nights too hot for sleeping, days sapping what’s left of the strength the sleepless nights don’t replenish. You get sopping wet climbing in or out of a car. Especially if your car’s little and not air-conditioned, like my mother’s Chevette. Nobody remembers the last time they felt a cool breeze, nobody remembers pulling on clothes and not sweating through them in five minutes. “Unbearable” is my mother’s word. She uses it often but never lightly. In her language it means the heat is something you can’t escape. The sticky heat’s a burden you wake up to every morning and carry till you’re too exhausted to toss and turn anymore in your wet sheets. Unbearable doesn’t mean a weight that gets things over with, that crushes you one and for all, but a burden that exerts relentless pressure. Whether you’re lifting a bag of groceries from a shopping cart into the furnace your car becomes after sitting closed for twenty minutes in the Giant Eagle parking lot, or celebrating the birth of a new baby in the family, the heat is there. A burden touching, flawing everything. Unbearable is not that which can’t be borne, but what must be endured forever.
Of course the July dog days can’t last forever. Sooner or later they’ll end. Abruptly. Swept away by one of those violent lightning-and-thunder storms peculiar to Pittsburgh summers. The kind signaled by a sudden disappearance of air, air sucked away so quickly you feel you’re falling. Then nothing. A vast emptiness rubbing your skin. The air’s gone. You’re in a vacuum, a calm, still, vacated space waiting for the storm to rush in. You know the weather must turn, but part of the discomfort of being in the grip of a heat wave or any grave trouble is the fear that maybe it won’t end. Maybe things will stay as miserable as they are.
-from Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
I found out about the following collaboration between Jasiri X, Cynik Lethal, and Paradise on the anti-racism blog Stuff White People Do. I first saw Cynik Lethal perform a couple years ago in East Liberty. His music is awesome.
There was recently a conference on race in America held at the University of Pittsburgh. The first part of the video below appears to be from that event. You can find out more about it at www.race.pitt.edu.
[Youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtH7vH4yRcY”%5D
Now about this video:
(from YouTube)
A few months ago, Tim Wise wrote a widely circulated article called, “Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black ” which challenged America to take a close look at the hypocrisy of the Right Wing. Now, a Pittsburgh rapper is accepting his challenge in true Hip Hop form. Jasiri X has released a video called “What if the Tea Party was Black.” The Hip Hop artist says that he got the idea when Paradise,a member of the pro-black rap group X-Clan, forwarded him a copy of Wise’s article. “I saw the article and I liked the concept,” says the rapper. So Jasiri hit the studio with producer Cynik Lethal while Paradise grabbed his video camera and they went on their mission to defeat the Right Wing propaganda machine.LYRICS
What if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would they harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Soaljah
Would they leave it with the votes or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attackWhat if Michael Baisden was on ya FM dial
For 3 hours every day calling the president foul
Would they say free speech or find evidence how
To charge him with treason like see he’s unamerican now
What if Minister Farrakhan prayed for the death
Of the commander in chief that he be laid to rest
Would they treat it as the gravest threat or never make an arrest
Even today he’s still hated for less
What if President Obama would have lost the election
Quit his job so he could go talk to the left and
Bash the government for being off of direction
Fraught with deception
And told black people they want all of our weapons
And we want our own country and called for secession
Would he be arrested and tossed in corrections
For trying to foster aggression
Against the people’s lawful selection
Our questionsWhat if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would they harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Soaljah
Would they leave it with the votes or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attackWhat If black people went on Facebook and made a page
That for the death if the president elect we prayed
Would the creators be tazed and thrown in a cage
We know the page wouldn’t have been displayed all these days
What if Jeremiah Wright said that everybody white
Wasn’t a real America would you feel scared of him
If he had a militia with pictures that depict the president as Hitler
They would kill and bury that
Wait
What if Cynthia McKinney lamented the winning of the new president
And hinted he wasn’t really a true resident
With no proof or evidence
Would the media treat it like a huge press event
They would have attacked whatever group she represents
They would have called her a kook on precedent
And any network that gave her due preference
Would be the laughing stock of the news so our question isWhat if the tea party was black
Holding guns like the Black Panther Party was back
If Al was Rush Limbaugh and Jesse was Sean Hannity
And Tavis was Glenn Beck would they harm they families
If Sarah Palin was suddenly Sistah Soaljah
Would they leave it with the votes or go and get the soldiers
Yall know if the tea party was black
The government would have been had the army attack