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.