A break from vacation

This blog is on vacation, officially.

Unofficially, this blog would be remiss in not taking note of the best holiday display in the neighborhood, which on a clear day (at least in Pittsburgh) after Christmas, put all puny yard-light displays to shame.

I'm in a rare position of, for a short week at least, having no dog-walking responsibilities. So it was a real treat to take a "me" walk around the block on Dec. 26. The crescent moon floated low in the western sky, resting elegantly behind branches of bare trees, in a deep blue-black dusk.
There was a star or planet to the moon's left. I can't describe how lovely this sky was, except to say, lamely, that it took my breath away.

All Christmas decorations ... go away. You cannot compete.

Monday's clear skies gave way to a soggy Tuesday of unrelenting rain. I went out at around 1 p.m. to run errands, umbrella in hand. Here's what the world looked like, with Mount Washington (way in the background, seen from Stanwix Street) fogged in.

Noisy world

Since about 2009, my cell phone has been my alarm clock. I've set it to a nice, chime-y wake up jingle that is infinitely preferable to the high-decibel beep-beep-beep of my alarm clock.

Unfortunately for me, no matter what the alarm sound, my drowsy brain is in enough command to order fingers to smash the snooze button.

What can I say? I am not a morning person.

That said, if I am forced to be out and about in the early hours, I truly enjoy the experience: the early morning light, the birdsong, the water dripping off leaves in the park, my dog trotting nicely beside me.

At this time of year, morning or evening (though it seems mostly to be evening) one of the loveliest sounds is of wind, acting like a bow, sliding across tree branches, acting like strings. The effect is most certainly not that of a violin, or cello, or violincello. But it is definitely the effect of an instrument, trees, being played, by the wind. The music is a long, deeply sighing and swiftly moving rush.

It is a large sound, confident yet hurried. You can hear it, sitting inside, in bed. So persistent, but there is no message, except that of presence.

Presence of the wind through the boughs.

One of my favorite books of all time is Ray Bradbury's "The October Country," a short story collection. One tale is titled "The Wind." It is, like most of Bradbury's tales, richly written, bursting with the sense of an age fading farther and farther away in our collective rear-view mirror. The illustrations by Joe Mugnaini in the original make a perfect match of art and story.
There is a cool left-to-right scrolling gallery here.

Meanwhile, the image is of a nearby park, altered to look sort of October Country-ish. Because at this time of year, it does feel that lonely.

Thinking our way out

The headlines these days are so depressing.

Congress is dysfunctional.

Here in Pennsylvania, a lump of a governor sits and waits for bills on issues like school vouchers and English-as-the-official-language, abortion clinic limitations because of one crazed lunatic in Philadelphia, voter ID cards, to sign. Solutions in search of problems.

The people we elect to represent us are in the pockets of lobbyists and and an energy industry drooling at the prospect of profits from the Marcellus Shale.

Disposing of the fracking fluid, providing clean drinking water for communities with fouled wells, decimating aquifers, well, that's someone else's problem. After all, the industry is creating jobs – the mantra, the be-all and end-all. Somehow, it never matters that the jobs are ruining other people's lives, and that there are never any jobs, except at taxpayer expense, to clean up the mess once those other jobs have gone away.

And that's where the power lies, but it should be used proactively.

We need a new way of thinking. Energy is a problem. Here is a thought for a solution:
Feet, pedals and zoning.

Our communities are built for the last century. For cars.

We can't afford that anymore. My idea is to start thinking differently about where we live.

Zoning laws can be changed to allow a little corner shop with milk and veggies, so neighbors don't have to get in the car for one thing.

We can reconfigure our communities to be pedestrian and bike friendly. Pittsburgh isn't the most conducive city to biking, but that can be addressed here and elsewhere with a commitment dedicated funding for public transportation. In Pennsylvania, a lot of legislators from the middle of the state don't like this idea. But they are looking at it parochially.

Mass transit cuts down on gasoline consumption and keeps air (relatively) cleaner and reduces wear and tear on roads, saving money for repairs.

It's not just about helping one group at the expense of another. It's about using what we have and about what we can do to help reduce our dependence on foreign AND domestic energy. Sun and wind are free. Foot power is free. Bikes aren't free, but pretty friendly in terms of sustainability, not to mention fitness.

If we find ways to lessen our dependence on, let's face it, Big Energy (which is global, not just Middle Eastern), we the Average Joes and Janes who just want to get on with our lives, will win.

Big time.

Cities of stone

I like graveyards.

They are so quiet and contemplation inducing, to use a really inelegant turn of phrase.

A very long time ago, when I worked for the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, I wrote a feature story on Allegheny Cemetery, which has its main entrance on Butler Street in Lawrenceville. It is a lovely place to wander. Stephen Foster is buried there, among many other luminaries and not-so-much luminaries, like Harry K. Thaw, murderer of Stanford White, architect and hmmm, ladies man.

Anyway. A few years ago in Paris, I visited with friends the Cimetiere Montparnasse, final resting place of Susan Sontag, Serge Gainsbourg and I can't even remember how many others.

In at least these two places I have visited, I am struck by the age of so many monuments and gravestones. They are so worn by time and elements; I wonder, does anyone remember these people, their lives reduced to "born" and "died" and, if you were a widow, "Relict of."

In Downtown Pittsburgh, between two very old churches on 6th Avenue, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, there is a graveyard dating to the early 18th century. So many slabs are broken and unreadable, but it is a lovely place, above the sidewalk, for a short wander during a busy day. Many of the graves are of children.

The picture is of the cemetery

Misc.

Christmas makes me melancholy, because I miss my family.

Today I walked through Market Square, which is coolly decorated and has Christmas music piped in. It was lunchtime and not too many people were out, but it was nice enough that some folks sat down at the few tables still left. I went in to Starbucks and Charlie Brown music was playing, the instrumental version of "Christmas Time is Here." It's solemn and bluesy all at once and it really sent me off into a reverie of Christmases past.

I walked past the ice skaters at PPG Place ice rink and back on to the office, wishing I had time to just wander, look and listen.

The picture is the rink on Monday night, Dec. 13, 2011.

Walkabout

On Sunday, I was in Marshall's and overheard a cashier telling a customer she knew about her upcoming Christmas trip to Paris. The customer asked what the weather was like and it was all I could do to blurt out "It's just like here!" which was what the cashier told her friend a split second later.

Paris (48 degrees, 48 minutes north of the equator) sits at nearly the same latitude as Pittsburgh (48 degrees, 27 minutes north of the equator) in the northern hemisphere, so it's not surprising that the weather would be similar. Which means Paris must be having a mild winter so far. We've had barely any snow, and it has been unseasonably warm (with a few exceptions), with temperatures in the 40s and 50s fairly consistently.

I'm sure another shoe is waiting to drop and we'll have two or three months of pure snowy, icy, grey sky misery after Christmas, but for now I am enjoying the sunshine and dry days. The light is so pretty at this time of year; the sun is so low in the sky that when the light reflects up against bare trees, the contrast between brown branch and blue sky is astounding.

As much as I dislike winter for making me hunch my shoulders, making my feet cold and making me hole up in a hot, dry house, I love the light; it has a slanting horizontal quality that really changes how the world around me looks.

Anyway, today was nice enough to take a late lunch walk around town. I went past some of my favorite buildings: The old (1953!) Alcoa building, the old Union Trust building and the tiny HYP Club, the only remaining 18th-century tenement structure in the city. It is tucked away along William Penn Place, not far from another neat building the very early 20th century William Penn Hotel with the very cool mid 20th century Mellon Square across from it.

I love the HYP's tiny courtyard and fountain. It is so quiet and shady amid the surrounding skyscrapers. The Union Trust, for reasons that I am unaware of, has lost or kicked out all of its street level tenants over the past couple years and limited access through its Grant Street-to-William Penn Place lobby. The building has a street-level to top-of-the-building atrium, so you can stand it the lobby and see glimpses people on any floor at that floor's balcony and there is a beautiful arched glass window way at the top of the atrium. It is, or was, an exhilarating experience to stand in that space.

The picture is of the HYP Club's sheltered courtyard. The entrance is between the garlanded columns on the right.

Meeting hijackers

So.

There are always Luddites out there, in various forms. In fact, I think almost everyone on the planet has a Luddite tendency toward something.

Why, oh why, does there always, ALWAYS, have to be one in whatever tech meeting I am in?

The meetings usually start with the trainer talking about what he or she will be training the group on, followed by slides, goodies for folks who ask pertinent questions or offer pertinent observations, more explanations interrupted often by intelligent questions but also often by questions such as "I don't know what the heck you are talking about!"

These interruptions are always voiced belligerently, as if the trainer was imposing some impossible technology on the meetees. There is an expectation, almost, of a chorus of "Yeah! What are you talkin' about!?" Expectation is usually never met, because interruptor is a MORON, who wants to hijack the meeting and use it as a lesson for everything he doesn't know about email, or Google, or whatever.

The good trainer, and most of them are, say with a big smile, "Hey, I am teaching you about options. Use however many of them you want." In other words, (I'm interpreting, because I so would not want this job) Use your brain and figure it out. Not hard.

As a total technology aside, I really miss my pink Motorola Razr phone, which I lost on the morning bus in January. I think in 10 or 20 years it will be a collectible. Did I mention it was pink?

Quotidian music

Parked on the Mon Wharf this morning, for $8. The going rate at the lot across the street from the office, because the Steelers play the Browns across the Point tonight, was $20.

So.

The wharf has a sort of nice trail along the river that someday will connect to something, but for now, it is just a trapped expanse of Pennsylvania blue stone that gets flooded frequently and covered with goose poop even more often. Still, if you have to park on the wharf, the trail is a much nicer stroll to the steps up to Fort Pitt Boulevard than the lot's dirty drive lanes.

I walked west toward the office and on the other side of the Mon, a coal train, its warning horn blasting on, off, on, then off again in long and short bursts chugged past Station Square heading east.

Not a very long train, but quite loud. I wonder what it would be like to be an engineer, sounding notes of the symphony of a day?

I love the music of trains. One of my favorite songs, from a favorite album from long ago, is "City of New Orleans" by Arlo Guthrie. I still have this vinyl LP.

My dogs are awesome

My dogs are awesome, although, right now, I can only say "My dog is awesome."

We have been down to just on greyhound now for a bit more than a year, since losing Holli the Honey Hound in August 2010. I miss her. She was my heart dog, so sweet and loving. Twist is a goofy kick (and so smart!) and Anni was fascinating and regal, but Holli was a special love. Truly, though, they've all been great and have taught me so much. Like patience, and the need to be unselfish and to remember to regard the world with wonder.

They also have and continue to make me laugh; getting spooked by turtles and snakes, being scared of hardwood floors and, in Twist's case, cameras, and snoozing in completely ridiculous fashion on their backs, legs splayed in the air and heads lolled back. Totally undignified for such regal hounds.

When Anni was still alive, she escaped my Mom's backyard one summer day because the lawn crew had left the fence gate open. She flew into the big field next to the garage, but the little training that she had had up to that point somehow stuck. When we finally realized where she was, it only took two "Anni! Come!" commands for her to zoom back to me. My heart was in my mouth. She could have been in the next county, or ruined under a truck, but it didn't happen.

That's when she got the nickname "Adventure Girl." So I used that to create a poster about her for a design class I took. Truthfully, they have all been Adventure Girls.

A propos de ... rien

Not to be overly original, but, summed up, "le weekend, trop breve."

I'm in a French mood, thanks to two of the three movies I saw this weekend.
"Mozart's Sister" and "Sarah's Key"

The former got good reviews for its cinematography, but really, the editing was strange and the lead actress, Marie Feret, passionless. That might be the script's fault. It meandered. All over the place. The movie was more a series of vignettes than a story. But I loved the one that showed Nannerl in Paris, teaching music, and bending down at the end of a lesson so her young pupil could give her a "baiser" before leaving. That scene, so French, in the closeness and distance described in one moment.

The latter suffered from the same fault as the book: halfway through, the heroine, Sarah Starzynski disappears; and at the end she is a cipher. I love Paris, and to think of what happened to the French Jews there during World War II, as described in "Sarah's Key" is past awful. Credit to Tatiana de Rosnay for bringing this story to light. But the film fails on the same level as the book, Kristin Scott Thomas notwithstanding.

Bien. Pour ce soir, c'est tout.

L'image est de le Metro de Pittsburgh, une piece de Romare Bearden.

To Russia with ... love? and Kate's peepshow confessions!

Hi everybody! All you readers in Russia! How are ya tonight!? Feeling good? All right!
So let me just say thank you! No really, thank you!

If it wasn't for your spambots, this blog would have no readership! None. Nada. Niente. Rien. And however you say "none" in Russian. (I'm not looking it up.)

Seriously though, this is a tiny blog. Only four followers (one day we hope to have five!). Let us go. We really can't do you much good.

To my four faithful readers, it appears that spambots, originating in Russia, like this one http://domar.ru (DON'T CLICK) hijack blog traffic, for reasons they can fathom, but I can't.
Here's my Russian readership, that pale green area stretching across a big part of the upper northern hemisphere.
Who knew? So if for some reason you get anything Russian related, or with a .ru in the address, add an "n" and run. Do not click on anything. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Rien.
Capiscono?

OK. I could explain in greater detail, but, bottom line is spammers. And I'm not special, that's why spambots do the hijacking.

Onward

My peepshow tonight revealed a young man in a house up the street, playing his violin. I confess with no guilt that I love to look in my neighbors' windows (from the street, of course. My nose never, ever meets glass!)

A lot of homeowners in my neighborhood have converted open-air porches to indoor rooms and these spaces generally have lots of glass real estate. One of my favorite windows looks into a living room that has a huge piece of modern art on one wall, a silhouette of a cool sofa and nothing else visible. The painting is in colors of red and yellow-green and is striking, all the more so for flying solo in that room.

Anyway, the dog and I were wandering up the street, her nose to the ground, mine up in the air, when I heard some really lovely music.

In a home on the uphill side of the street, a young man in a blue and white sweater was practicing his violin, on one of those closed in porches.

His music was really lovely; thankfully Twist was totally absorbed in some moist, earthy scent, so I could pause to listen.

I wished for a hundred-thousandth time that I had kept up with piano, but I also was reminded of how it is really good to get out of your shell once in a while, and take the time to appreciate the passions of the other souls who occupy our earth.

Topics

A few years ago, I bought my husband a DVD compilation of SCTV shows for his birthday.

I think I watch them more than he does. One of my many favorites is a sketch involving the McKenzie Brothers, played by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. They are trying to come up with a topic for their show, which usually is just about beer and grilled meat. They worry that their show will be cancelled if they don't come up with better "topics." Enter slimy Johnny La Rue, played by the late, great John Candy, and wry hilarity ensues.

There are YouTube posts on the sketch, but I am not going to link to them because the quality is poor. And oddly, the SCTV site has no video clips.

Anyway, the point (besides the fact that Second City has graduated a ton of tremendous comedians and actors including, wow! Peter Boyle, Joan Rivers, John Belushi and Ann Meara)? I needed a topic.

The picture is totally unrelated to the topic. I had brunch with friends in the Strip District last Saturday. Because I was early, I walked for a bit, including halfway over the 16th Street Bridge, which crosses the Allegheny. These bronze sculptures are paired at either end. I think they are tremendous.

Julie Andrews sang for my family

So.

Bookends notwithstanding, Katy's professional Monday wasn't too hot. Result? Blues.

Add in a husband sick with a cold, rainy weather and everything seems really ... bleah.

Solution? Retail therapy! I took a break and walked to Macy's, formerly Kaufmann's. I bought a wallet and a pair of stockings. And came close to tears.

The store Muzak was spooling Christmas music, of course. The piece playing as I browsed purses was Julie Andrews "Joy to the World," from her 1969 Christmas album made with Andre Previn.

In 1969, I was 14 and living at home, the oldest of 7 kids. We listened to LPs back then and one of them, every Christmas for many years, was the Julie/Andre album. Julie's voice and the powerful joyful orchestrations, surrounded my noisy family. I will never forget those sounds. Especially because my family was intact. Mom, Dad, sibs 1 through 7. All there.

I miss my Dad so very, very much; I would love to be able to talk to him about work, life and just generally what's going on. And my brother Chris, so quiet, so stubborn and such a pillar.

Julie sang for all of us. When I heard her today in Macy's, it was all I could do to keep from crying.

Monday bookends

The middle of my Monday can be summed up thusly:

F
Three letters follow.
Do the spelling.

Now that that's out of the way, let me just say the beginning and end, for a Monday, were pretty darned good.

Not in order of importance: First, I broke my rule and ran for public transit and made it morning and evening. Thank you to the driver of the morning train, who waited. Thanks to luck for letting me make the evening train.

Second, a very light blanket of fog greeted the dog and I this morning on our walk, offering a lovely backdrop to the black bones of bare trees in my neighborhood and its park. It was so beautifully quiet, just the clicking of Twist's nails on the pavement. I love the starkness and stillness of mornings like these; the whole is made even more beautiful by the last golden leaves still hanging and the warm greens of pines and hemlocks.

Seedpods, dried goldenrod, moss on logs and water dripping from eaves and over stones. I'm such a crank that none of those are nearly enough to carry me through the winter. For one day, though, they will more than do and thanks to whoever is in charge of creating the scenery that makes me happy.

The picture is of a creation that's totally artificial: The Christmas tree in the street level lobby of the really lovely Fairmont Pittsburgh hotel, taken on the way to a good Monday bookend. The hotel has really pretty public spaces, including a museum-quality display of medicine bottles, porcelain doll heads and other early 20th century detritus unearthed during construction.

The blank page

Imagine a blank sheet of paper in front of you, or a blank screen. It's yours to fill, but with what? In the pantheon of scary imaginings, this scenario ranks maybe a 1. Or less. But it's still scary.

My writing career, such as it is, could be called Katy Interrupted. I go for long stretches with nothing to say. That's because I'm thinking. I'm also reading, admiring some writers and being exasperated by others. Yet they birth words, sentences, essays articles daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. My words gestate.

Despite my erratic output, I've learned the important skill of editing. Here's how I work: I pour everything out, onto paper or screen. Then I read it; maybe keep some or none. Tinkering and more tinkering come next. Then usually a walk, preferably with a dog. Thinking ensues, then maybe a break for coffee or napping, or work. Then comes wholesale revision or reconsideration of concept. B often ends up looking nothing like A.

What else have I learned? A pretty package of words is usually just pebbles in a sieve. Not intrinsically worthless, but not gold, either. Coming up with something precious takes a lot of panning. (Sorry for the labored metaphor.)

I've worked with writers who think their every keystroke is golden. Who think breaking all rules, instead of just one, for effect, makes them fearless and therefore brilliant.

No.

To write when you have nothing to say, to write and be unafraid to discard, that's fearless and approaching brilliant. To write and have a great editor, that's gold.

The photo is from one of my many diaries.

Across Ohio, west and east

This past weekend, my husband and I drove from Pittsburgh to Ohio for a visit with my family.

Over the past 27 years, we've made the journey hundreds of times, the miles dropping past familiar landmarks along two turnpikes. Cornfields, silos, marshes and reservoirs, barns and in more recent years, condos and McMansions.

Along the way on Friday, heading towards the setting sun, we put in a CD that had been sitting in the car for ages, John Mellencamp's 1978-88 retrospective "The Best That I Could Do." I am not the biggest Mellencamp fan in the world, but as we listened, the lyrics sent me soul searching. Because every song, from "I Need a Lover..." to "Paper and Fire"  to "Check it Out" is about dreams realized and frustrated, about desire, and about mortality ever present.  They are the arc of a life, from youthful hopes to the wistfulness of the middle years  and finally on to the solid embrace of a life with deep Indiana roots. The embrace is not always strong, or even welcome, but it lasts.

My Midwestern roots are shallow, having been planted only decades, not centuries ago. But flying by the Ohio Turnpike's flanks for maybe the thousandth time, taking in the umbers, rusts and charcoals of the fall landscape, felt in an oddly solid way, like home.

The picture is dried yarrow in my Mom's garden.

The aftermath of a compliment

Last week at a coffee shop, a total stranger paid me a lovely compliment. He was an average looking person, sitting in a corner, a laptop propped before him on the table. Past that,  I scarcely noticed him and, later, found it hard to believe he had noticed me, in my safe Ann Taylor-ish workday issue.
The most interesting people in the shop to me were two little boys, trying to find the best table for sitting and having their hot chocolate. Fussing, like little old men.

The barista handed me my coffee and as I fumbled with the sugar packet at the bar, these words flowed into my ear: "You are an extraordinarily beautiful woman." I turned and the man at the laptop was there, I hadn't even heard him approach. I thanked him for the compliment, it made my day, and, really what an extraordinary thing to say, touched his arm and left.

Here is what it has made me think about, though. If that man knew me, would he still hold that opinion? If he knew I could be cruel, if he knew how I procrastinate and how lazy I can be, would that observation still hold or would it be tempered?

I know all of those things about me, and more, and they crowd out the nurture I can offer to my good points. There must be a constant guard up against the pests and demons we live with, so that we can maintain a civil and social appearance to the world.

The thing is, though, as I grow older, I am more accepting of my flaws, and more in control of them, as simply part of the sum of me.

I don't think that makes me extraordinary, but maybe it makes me beautiful inside.

From June to July

It seems defeatist to consider summer over in mid-July, but by my mark, the season is winding down.

That mark is the onset of cicada buzz, turning the quiet, firefly-lit nights of June to sleepy-hum earlier sunsets of July.

The daylight changes, too, as the sun slants down lower in the sky. But I love what the lower light does: it highlights colors in the garden and deepens shadows, making lingering outside an experience as lush in its own right as those bright spring days are exhilarating in their own.

This July day in Pittsburgh passed with cerulean blue skies and temperatures in the 90s. The Dormont Pool was packed and I'm sure the movie theaters were, too. Watermelon from a farmer's market chilled in my fridge.

In the evening, fireflies flashed and a bit of a breeze cooled the night air.

In the depths of winter, these days keep me warm.

Little bird

The building that I work in is old. A modernization attempt sometime in the 1950s or 60s resulted in its yellow brick facade being layered over with a metal grid.

Ugly to humans, irresistible to birds.

So, every spring, tiny nestlings fall from their precarious nests and squawk on the sidewalk. And sadly become little fledgling corpses.

Tonight, however, I witnessed one brave little avian soul survive the worst of all odds: Rush hour traffic.

I am waiting for the bus, and hearing a persistent chitter. Yes, it is a baby bird on the sidewalk. It hops toward the curb, away from the building, underneath the sandaled feet of a young man, who slows briefly to ponder this noisy little creature.

It hops further toward the curb and into the street.

It hops, squawking away, all the way across Boulevard of the Allies, pausing briefly under a Jeep, as if under a mother's protective wing.

I dart out briefly in a pause in traffic, trying to redirect it back to the closest point of safety. Fellow patrons of the Port Authority look on in sympathy and mild amusement.

Silly. Little bird is intent on the other side and ignores my directions.

Hop and hop. All the way across, making racket to ward off death by SUV.

All the way to safety and the green grass of the other side.

Little bird, you are a hero!

Really short

OK.
I like print.

I read long articles in Wired. In the Sunday NYT. I also really like the new short form Newsweek. I can zip through all of my favorite columnists there, plus CW, letters, My Turn, in one bus ride.

But can I be excused, seriously, from the New Yorker's profiles that go on an on and on and seem all to adhere to a style of including personal details about the profile-ees, that add nothing?

A recent issue profiled Guillermo del Toro. Interesting, but too, too long and with too many dead-end references to the subject's fluctuating weight at various meetings with the author. Pointless.

Latest NY'er has a long article (26 pages) about Paul Haggis and Scientology. Interesting. And endless. I am at my second night of reading it and contemplating concluding it in a third (I won't). Interesting and boring at the same time. Quite a feat.

Please, get to the point. I love you, New Yorker, but get some editors. Seriously.

Thank you very much.

Katy Buchanan Remensky

Hoopin' it

Many years ago, when we were not exactly starving, but young, Carl worked as a stringer for the wire services in P'burgh, covering the Penguins and the Duquesne basketball team.

Both were abysmal.

I used to go with him and sit behind the press table for the basketball games at Mellon Arena, then known as the Civic Arena. I always froze, thanks to the ice under the basketball parquet.

So here in the 21st century, the Dukes finally are a semblance of a good team and have all the accoutrements required: a mascot, a student cheering section with rituals (turning backs when the visiting team is announced, waving wildly when visiting team tries free throws, etc., etc., etc.), dancing girls, cheerleaders, pick-your-song for halftime, etc., etc., etc., They even play in a bigger box than Palumbo Center when a nice crowd is expected.

So today, we went. Big Consol Energy Arena crowd, the architecturally bland replacement for the Civic Arena. (Real estate tip: Buy now in Uptown Pittsburgh. Duquesne is crowding the neighborhood and I bet it will be a showdown between it and UPMC creeping down from Oakland.) Oh, and years later, there's still no warm way to enjoy a basketball game played over a hockey rink.

Dukes lost, though not without a nice first half rally to go into halftime leading Xavier. Bad second half: No rebounding, too many turnovers, lousy free-throw percentage, and ice-cold shooting.

That ice-cold part I definitely get.

Pretty on 2/2

It was a beautiful morning here in my corner of Pittsburgh on the second day of February.

After day upon day of gray, cloudy skies, early morning sunlight beamed through, painting clouds pink against blue sky.

Twist and I had a lovely walk; it seemed like spring the air was so warm and full of birds singing.

As the day waned, though, so did the weather and by about two, the slab of gray overhead had returned, snowflakes were flying and the air was freezing. I watched misery return from my office window Downtown, where I had hung up my short coat nowhere near long enough to cover me for the trip home.

Despite the change in barometric pressure and precipitation, Twist and I had another lovely walk at dusk.

The wind wasn't gusting too hard and swirls of flakes slipped back and forth across the black asphalt, changing in formation from flame to tail to spiral, then vanishing altogether before gathering together again under the wind's direction.

It's not easy to appreciate this beauty; I usually take the easy way out and take it for granted, or take it not at all.

But February really forces your hand. You can be totally cranky-bitter till the end of March, or soldier on, like the valiant Northerner you are, poured into and forged from the same mold mold Calvin's crazy bike-riding Dad.

I tend to fall into to the cranky-bitter mold, myself, but, hey, had an off day today.

So, beautiful today and I'll live with tomorrow, tomorrow.

January in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is a generally polite town, select Steelers fanatics aside, perhaps.

People often give way on the sidewalk. Men and women frequently open doors to buildings for other pedestrians and are often polite about giving way to others when climbing aboard public transportation.

Pedestrians tend to be helpful about giving out-of-towners help navigating our labyrinthine grid of streets and alleys. (Not that the out-of-towners always understand our tendency to give directions by landmarks that only locals know.)

In lines, mostly, there are not cuts.

You really can go out on the streets and expect to be acknowledged.

I like that and I like that, in public greetings, so many of us seem to have the same perspective (in that I'm sure we are not unique).

Two nodding acquaintances paused to chat today while I was out on an errand. It was a gloomy, gray, slushy afternoon. Our common wish in our short conversations was for sunshine and warmth. We laughed, acknowledging the heaviness of January weather, shrugged and went on our ways.

Of course these days weather is big broadcast and cable bucks. What the hell? It's winter. It's cold. Can we move on?

The better acknowledgment would be that it is part of the warp and weft of our lives and if we can share and help each other through it, that's a good thing.

Meantime, dreaming of warmer days, the picture is of the swimming pool at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood. I visited it this past summer with my friend Kim Narisetti and her daughters.

It's a lovely place.

Strong people

On Saturday, I watched a woman in crutches, the very severe kind that wrap themselves around the user's arms, negotiate her way painfully around the small indoor mall where I sat under large skylights enjoying a light breakfast with my husband.

A man, her husband (?) followed this woman, reading from a book he held upright and keeping a good pace with her. Her hips swung exaggeratedly back and forth, moving her legs step by step. The couple moved in rhythm, determined in their own way.

Around them, women with small children chatted; white-haired senior citizens moved slowly and people sat in lounge chairs, engrossed in their cell phone screens or in the Sunday paper.

After a half hour, we went into the mall's movie theater and watched "The King's Speech."

George VI had a great many problems to manage, stuttering being not the least among them. What a time to have lived in! The end of the world seemed so near!

In the film, after his father has died, Bertie tells Lionel Logue that, on his deathbed, his father said Bertie (despite his impediment) was the strongest of all his sons.

After the movie, I thought about the woman in crutches, about Bertie the stutterer.

At least on Sunday, it seemed to me that the strongest among us are those who have the heaviest burdens to bear.

On a daily basis, why shouldn't that be more obvious?

A la rentree!

January and February are the hardest months of the year.

The holidays are over and the fuzzy glow of wonder over snow for Christmas has surrendered quickly to the inescapable irritation at having to: shovel snow and more snow, salt sidewalks, slide, slip, spend 30 minutes preparing to go outside, spend days in grey gloom and listen to radio, broadcast and cable news reports of impending dire weather. And aren't those piles of dirty snow, covered with ice, salt and road rubble lovely?

We need some post-holiday holidays.

Not Valentine's Day and not St. Patrick's Day. We need holidays that celebrate some time away from daily cares, that mark enjoying ourselves and our families, that recognize that everyone just needs a break when our world is so grim. No organized events, no sports, no airport lines or traffic jams, no artificial romance or gaiety. Just time to sit back and go skating or spend a day or two with a good book and some tea or meet friends for wine and cheese. And not have to feel you are squeezing pleasure and chores into the weekend.

The French have a mid-summer greeting for each other, "A la rentree," which roughly translated, means see you after August, when most French take vacation. "La rentree" is the return to the quotidian routine of work, school and family life.

I love the idea of an August-long break, but I love the idea of a mid-winter breather even better. I don't know what we would call it, but here's to the American "rentree."

The sooner the better. (Corporations and individuals: Feel free to implement. No need to thank me.)

January sky

Unsurprisingly, the days have been so cold since Christmas.

So why, since in the grand scheme of things winter is cold and snowy, do we have newspapers and television urging us to panic at the first sighting of a snowflake? Wouldn't it be nice if they just told us to have a nice day?

This Sunday morning was lovely; a slight drifting of snow under a pale grey sky brushed through the air. Twist and I walked through the park at around 11 a.m. and the sun broke through as we strolled; the snow on the ground seemed almost blue in the brightness, but so very lovely.

My friend Sharon and I caught up to "Black Swan" today, after weeks of dueling date suggestions. As I've had time to think about it, except for the fabulous scene in which Nina becomes the black swan at the end, too dreary of a film. I did love Nina's shrugs, grey sweaters and especially her pink coat. My coarse taste may be showing here, but I have to say I was totally spoiled by the Jim Carrey skit/riff on the movie a couple of weeks ago on Saturday Night Live. The movie felt like too much of Natalie Portman looking frightened and breathing in nervous gasps, with no explanation of why she was such a mess.

I remember my first pair of toe shoes when I was a ballet student. I wish I had kept them, it was such a huge step to go up from slippers to "en pointe." I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to be a dancer. At this stage of my life, I'm glad I didn't go in that direction. Still, some nights I walk past the Point Park dance studio along Boulevard of the Allies on my way to the light rail and see the students practicing. So pretty and so graceful. And so young.

We went for coffee after. On our way from the theater to the Caribou coffee shop at South Side works, we saw this courtyard fountain, iced over and running in the early dusk.

So opposite of what should be in January. And so pretty in a young year.

Play dates

C & I had homeowner business to attend to on Saturday, and we took it very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that we slept on it till noon.

However, having fully contemplated through morning drowsing what we were about to do, once up, we grabbed the weekend with a vengeance.

New refrigerator to buy? Check.

Really nice dinner at Eleven in The Strip? Check and check!

Cramming in to a small bar performance space in Lawrenceville to hear a co-worker's band? Check!

Oh, and the band? A bunch of dads (i.e. old guys) but awesome in their joy at rocking on a Saturday night.

I thought about play on Sunday, dumping off newspapers and catalogs at the local Abitibi drop boxes by the library. There was a group of kids in the parking lot, 3 or 4 tween boys, a couple tween girls, flipping a Frisbee among themselves, laughing and yelling.

The girls were so cute, headbands and ponytails; one wore shorts, socks and tennies, the other leggings and tennies. So cold outside, but they were oblivious, the skin they hadn't covered bright red.

A long time ago, in France when I was a little girl, I remember watching boys bicycling to school in the coldest of temps, wearing shorts. Their skins was the same bright red. And they seemed oblivious, too.

For older people, play is hard work. But when you watch kids at it, you recognize how worthwhile it is.

Best line from the band audience on Saturday? The 60-something bald bass player went to the bar to get water for the 50-something drummer with the cramping finger and here is what I heard:

"That is, like, the coolest old dude ever, man!"

Play on!