i remember 100 percent

memory. distinct. sexual harassment.

yes, i remember certain things distinctly.

and not just about being harrassed, which is just a condition of being female.

i remember my beloved dog coming out, finally after weeks of hesitation, from a tunnel during an obedience training class and looking up at me with trust.

Best dog ever. (Katy Buchanan)

i remember sharing a brief moment with a stranger asking for directions on penn avenue in pittsburgh and laughing when we both realized her destination was about 10 feet away and in plain sight.

i remember being angry during a winter drive in massachusetts with my sister suzanne and her two kids in a scary snowstorm.

i remember a man walking past me on a Cleveland street in the early 1980s and saying at me "nice bouncing boobs." i remember what I was wearing (knee length, pink knit dress, quarter length sleeves), but not what he looked like, just his words.

i remember a mainstream television network science reporter, also in the early 1980s, at a press conference at the University of Pittsburgh, telling me he would like to "take a nap" with me.

i remember a man named Peter who was in my Ohio State karate class helping me 'caress' his private parts in a corner of the natatorium. he told me he was teaching me certain blocks (me, very young, inexperienced and without knowledge to convey my ... discomfort?) .

i remember parts of lots of things. being in NYC as a young woman in the late 1970s with a college friend who wanted to sample a dish at a restaurant in Chinatown ... really rude, she just helped herself to my plate.

i remember being rude myself, when a roommate was smoking in our dorm and i told her to "put it out, it offends me." (this was also in the late 1970s when people still smoked everywhere, freely.)

i remember the taste of ripe tomatoes and crusty french bread at summer camp in the French Alps in the early 1960s.

i remember many years ago, also early 1960s, when our young family was traveling, sitting at a motel pool somewhere in North or South Carolina ... or maybe Virginia, and being hit in one eye with a hot pepper.  painful and blinding. someone did that to me. i remember that distinctly.


i don't remember all the specific details of any of these life events, i just remember those moments. and isn't it interesting that these memories were formed when i was very young.

  
my point is, that I think certain things sear themselves in our brains. maybe we don't capture everything about events, but the important, memory-making details, never go away.  maybe the brain just captures what's most important (how does brain know? i have no idea. brain has it's own secrets). i'd be willing to bet combat veterans have a lot to say on this subject.

so, yes. i believe dr. ford.

Blue thoughts

Mom and me in 1995 at what was then known as The Jake. We had season tickets then so it was a nice confluence of events that the Cleveland baseball team made it to the World Series that year. Can’t afford it now.
Anyway.
This is a picture of a picture but what strikes me is how the color skews toward blue. Admittedly this is a more than 20-year-old photograph but what is it about either the film’s composition or the development process that makes blue the color that survives? Not just this photo, but if you look back on old pix, old advertisements, everything fades except the blue. I’m sure there is chemistry involved too.
Perhaps Kodak has the answers.

Pittsburgh and G-20

The Group of 20 will meet here in September. I guess the buzz-o-sphere has been all a-twitter about it. There were letters to the editor in the Post-Gazette shortly after the announcement from local readers complaining about the snickering in the Washington press corps after the announcement was made.

How boring.

When I first moved to Pittsburgh in the early 1980s, and then moved back in the mid 1980s, the city was exiting its first Renaissance. It was much more beautiful than it had been 20 years previously. The air was cleaner, new buildings had gone up (unfortunately at the expense of some beautiful old ones) the sports teams (except for the Penguins) were winning.

Cleveland, on the other hand, was just starting to see a boost in development in the Flats, but Downtown was dying. Higbees, Halles, May Co. were dying and/or about to disappear. The Browns and Indians were losers and played in drafty Municipal Stadium, which at least had the cachet of having been built as an Olympic venue, rather than an ugly cookie cutter multi-use stadium like Three Rivers here or Riverfront in Cincinnati.

Cleveland had the Rapid. Pittsburgh still had creaky trolleys. Cleveland had a dirty river, Pittsburgh had three of them.

For all the similarities, there was a lot of snide comparison in Pittsburgh about the Mistake on the Lake, and then, in the mid to late 80s, Pittsburgh was named one of America's most livable cities, which prompted tons of provincial crowing. Cleveland, feeling inferior, began a thankfully brief, and incredibly embarrassing PR campaign that had this slogan to offer:

"If New York's the Big Apple, Cleveland's a Plum."

Why? There was and is no basis for comparison. Why would you put yourself in that ridiculous position? Pittsburgh is the same, provincial and insecure and hence all the crowing, and indignation about being dissed, over G-20.

I like it here. I've lived in a lot of places and I think the near-Midwest, I guess you could call it, really has a lot going for it. Low cost of living, proximity to the East Coast. Good pro and college sports for the most part. Museums, bike trails, lots of great state and local parks. Nice, if underused, airports. If we had good inter-city train service, we'd be set. And Pittsburgh really needs light rail transit from the airport to downtown and from Downtown to the university center in Oakland. That's been talked about for at least as long as I've lived here, if not longer.

Still though, pretty here and pretty in Cleveland. We should support each other, not snicker. We both have a lot of great amenities and truthfully, it's a lot nicer living in a smaller city than a larger one. People are friendly and mostly more laid back than those who live amid the crowds of New York, Washington and Boston. Mostly.

I think the world and the Washington press corps will be impressed with Pittsburgh. If we did have a light rail from the airport to Downtown, the Romare Bearden mural at the top of this post is the first thing they would see once they got off the train Downtown.

I never fail to be absorbed by how it shows history, the passage of time and beautifully uses the repetition of shapes and patterns to make its point.

This station will be closed soon for two years as construction continues on a light-rail spur to the North Side and the mural will be taken down for repairs. I'll be looking forward to seeing it again in its old spot. And hoping that new eyes will see it, too.