On Third Avenue in Pittsburgh

Katy Buchanan

Among the contributions that immigrants created in Pittsburgh is this. Many years ago, a former co-worker from China, in a lovely gesture, invited his Pittsburgh Post-Gazette coworkers to a reception here that followed his child's wedding. The people he worked with at the time were his family, far from home. He and his wife were so nice at the party, and so gracious. I think it speaks a lot to how welcoming America can be that my former colleague felt comfortable enough to allow coworkers to stand in for family and friends far away. (In the background is Duquesne University, on what is known as The Bluff). 

Happy Thanksgiving

                                                     Tucker Good/Unsplash

 I am grateful for many things, and wish I remembered that fact more often. Today, Thanksgiving Day in the United States, I took a short walk around my neighborhood before heading off to visit with friends and family. There is a church tucked into my hilly, suburban Pittsburgh neighborhood and during my walk this morning, it's bells were ringing out quiet music. Despite the gray skies (which seem to be a permanent fixture these days), the music made for a lovely atmosphere.
Happy Thanksgiving, to friends and family present and absent.

The Lottery (with no apologies to Shirley Jackson)

 Each week, I fritter a few dollars away on the lottery. I'll never win. But here's the thing. I already have. We none of us get to pick our parents, but wow, in the lottery of birth, I hit the jackpot. Born to  parents who read to me. That shaped my life. Thinking back, here are some of the authors and illustrators who rocked my world.

C.S Lewis and Pauline Baynes (The Chronicles of Narnia)
Dr. Seuss (everything, but especially the Northgoing Zaks with Stars upon Thars)
James Thurber (he wrote and drew hilariously)
Chas Addams (macabre made wonderful)
Lewis Carroll and Arthur Tenniel (Alice in Wonderland. I will go down the rabbit hole with you any time)
Charles Schulz (he drew Good ol' Charlie Brown and wrote his story, too. Bonus: Vince Guaraldi's music)
Frank Tashlin ("The Bear That Wasn't" https://vimeo.com/138897532Th
A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard (Winnie the Pooh & The Wind in the Willows)
Ray Bradbury & Joe Mugnani (The October Country)
Chuck Jones (Looney Tunes)
E.B. White  & Garth Williams (Charlotte's Web)
plus Babar, Curious George, Calvin & Hobbes, Matt Groenig's "Life in Hell" series and "Nade" a graphic novel heroine from my childhood in France.
And former colleague Stacy Innerst, a wonderful illustrator who reminded me that I won the reading parents lottery. Here is one of his works.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ruth-bader-ginsburg-jonah-winter/1125674822#/

Lucky lucky lucky. Thanks Mom & Dad

Friends and Neighbors

A bit of planning and a bit of serendipity this weekend.

Visited former Post-Gazette colleagues whom I've kept in touch with via Facebook. We chatted for more than an hour, catching up and sharing news.  Margi and Rick. Thank you for letting me borrow the drill and for the coffee and conversation.

Later in the day, during my walk through the neighborhood and off my usual course because of road construction, I came upon another set of colleagues – one current and one former. Anita and Bob, outside and enjoying the late fall sun. We had such a nice chat; Anita brought down a couple of glasses of red wine while Bob tended to the weeding.

There is something special about community. Kind of like family ... you are born to it, but you can find it and make it as well.

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.

Wisdom

My friend Sharon and I went out for wine and appetizers after work today, talking, along the way to the bar, about family, work, life.

Sharon and I have known each other for more than 20 years. And have been working together for the same amount of time.

So we share a history, reference points that need no explaining. We each know what the other is talking about.

In that way we are like family, which is nothing more than groups of people who share a history, except it's on the basis of blood relation, not life circumstance.

It's interesting to think about that kind of relationship in the context of the where Sharon and I work. A newspaper called the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

A newspaper, more than most businesses, relies on the institutional wisdom, the family wisdom, if you will, that is shared among the reporters, editors and photographers who tell the stories for it each day.

As you tell stories about a place over the years, you acquire a knowledge of people. People who have influence, people who simply know things, people who are empathetic enough or opinionated enough that they can talk about many things.

This is good and it is bad. Good, because this knowledge gives your reporting breadth, bad, because after a time, you begin to rely on the same people. You end up with boilerplate.

No matter. If you live in a community and read a newspaper, in print or online, think about the work of the people whose names are attached to the stories, the photographs, the videos. They are repositories of received, conventional and family wisdom. And they have value because they are associated with a newspaper, something that has a cachet as a place for information.

A place where people call people. Ask questions. Call more people. Ask more questions. Sit. Think. Talk to others face to face. Condense information. Write. Re-write. Make more phone calls. Answer an editor's questions.

Then, and only then. Tell a story.

And then:

Think about it overnight. Come up with a follow up story idea asking all the questions you missed the first time.

If newspapers could download their reporters' and photographers' brains, that would be so much more valuable than keeping their contacts.

A contact to a new person is just a phone number or an e-mail address. Not a relationship.

And relationships are formed in families, of blood or circumstance, whose essential component is the rich medium of human contact.

Eyes, mouths, ears, noses, fingers, sharing contact, has got to be the finest technology of all. Because, pretty much, there's not much room for miscommunication.