Cut the chatter

One thing I like about public transportation is the simultaneous sense of community and solitude.

We board, stow bags, adjust devices or open reading materials. We chat with or nod to fellow passengers, watch from the windows or drowse after a long work day.

On buses, planes, trains or ships, we are connected by vehicle, by departure and destination.

In sports stadiums, once upon a time, there was only the sound of the crowd murmuring or the crack of a bat. The whoosh of a football perfectly thrown or a puck perfectly passed. A punch perfectly aimed.

On the bus, plane or train, there is still the settling in murmur and buzz. In the sports stadiums, all sense of community has been abandoned in favor of obedience to the scoreboard messages and sideline performances of manic cheer kids, racing mascots and flying T-shirts and hot dogs.

I like the quiet murmurs of going home because it means the constant chatter of the brain -- the hum and buzz of the mind guiding us through the day -- goes briefly quiet.

Getting outside is another way to quiet the chatter inside.

I snapped this picture of the Mellon Square fountain steps today (Omni William Penn in the background) on the way to buying bus tickets at Port Authority's Smithfield Street center. If proposed cuts go through, I'll have one less vehicle on which to savor community and solitude.

But the daily walk will still be there, and I am looking forward to seeing this space restored. A truly great mid-century design in Pittsburgh, Mellon Square, is getting a face-lift. At the one-minute mark of this video, you can see the steps as they appeared in the 1950s, when the park opened. The narration notes that little remains of original plantings. That's true of other Pittsburgh Renaissance projects, including some of the Gateway Center spaces. (That's fodder for another day.)

My mom & I stayed at this hotel way back in 1980 or so, when I had been hired for my first job in Pittsburgh. Mom came with me to help me look for an apartment.

We both remember there was a lot of chatter in the room next door.

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.