Inside: This is a short edition with a little announcement at the end
Welcome back! My book events are done and my major research project for this semester of grad school has been submitted and I have a few weeks to relax and get caught up and I just realized I haven’t registered for my classes for next term and holy shit that is not good.
I am chaos; hear me flail.
That’s either my future memoir title or my gravestone epitaph.
One of the things I’ve been bugging you about for the last month or so was my final book event of 2023 (and for a while) at the Carnegie Library Squirrel Hill branch. This event had stressed me the hell out since it was planned because there is no registration, meaning I didn’t know if I would be showing up to five people or 55 people. I’ve heard enough horror stories from established authors about them showing up for an event only to have LITERALLY NO ONE show up. So the whole day of the event, I was a ball of stress, wondering what I would do if five people showed up and four of them were my friends. I felt like I’ve spoken to so many rooms and book clubs that surely by now I had saturated the local market of people who cared to hear me speak about my book, right? I need not have worried.
When I tell you they had 25 chairs or so set up and then over 60 people arrived. One reader, Deb, brought me a gift … a 1939 copy of the Arterial Plan for Pittsburgh that includes so many cool maps of city plans. Love it! The photo of me holding what looks to be a pile of old letters held together by string is actually a copy of my book that the reader’s dog ate. I signed a fresh copy for the reader and then signed that destroyed copy for the good good dog who loved my book so much she literally tore into it and couldn’t put it down. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. A book so good, your dog will eat it. Print the posters. Thank you so much to everyone who came out and to Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh for hosting me and supporting my book.
This event wrapped up my big big year, but actually, I feel like my year began with the Artemis launch last year. It really was a launch for me in every sense of the word. I’ll be writing an essay soon on the lessons I learned from this year of bravery and will share that here in early January.
For now, let’s talk!
1. NOT MY SHRUBBERY!*
There is a menace terrorizing a Butler County housing development and, surprisingly, it is not an alligator!
So what has happened is a nearby farmer’s fence was damaged, leaving a gap, and his herd of cows saw this and said, “We are udderly out of here,” and they left that farm life for the suburbs to engage in a good ole Rumspringa.
A herd of cattle has found its way into a Mars neighborhood and those who live there say it's been an ongoing problem for months.
Months! I am cackling.
There's a farm just over the hillside off Abigail Drive, and apparently, there are several fences down, giving cows and bulls access to stroll down the streets, damaging yards, Christmas lights and even scaring some residents.
Cows and bulls and baby Jesus oh my!
“My mulch beds were all torn up and the shrubbery, they were sampling them to see what they could eat there and there was dirt and mulch all over the porch and so forth. And as you might imagine there are quite a few piles of poop out there too.”
If your mind doesn’t immediately go to Monty Python when you hear shrubbery, why are we even friends? But I love the image of a cow sampling different suburban shrubberies to see which they like. Like a charcuterie of greenery.
Meanwhile, those who live in the Brookhaven Housing Development say they just want to feel safe in their own neighborhood again. “We have a lot of children in the neighborhood and I have my parents living with me and my mom loves to be outside and so forth. So I'm always concerned for her safety because they are to be treated like wild animals and they can be unpredictable.”
Okay, are cows as dangerous as deer? I’m really asking. Like deer? Those m’fers are unpredictable. I will be walking my dogs at night and I swear the neighborhood deer like to tear past me as fast as they can all, “LET’S SEE HOW CLOSE WE CAN RUN TO THE DEAF GIRL BEFORE SHE HEARS OUR HOOFBEATS AND FALLS TO THE STREET SCREAMING HER STUPID HEAD OFF.”
I have become engaged in a staring contest with deer before, where they see me coming down the hill and instead of running away like they should, stand their ground in the middle of the road and stare at me, just daring me to come closer, much like pigeons do. I then U-turn because I don’t need that drama in my life, right? And my dogs, who stand a full foot tall? Lose their minds trying to break free from their leashes to chase the deer, and I always have to say to them as they snarl and snap ferociously, “What the hell do you think you’ll do if you catch that deer, you Keebler Elves? Have you seen that your legs are literally six inches tall and that you are shaped like a Victorian footstool?”
Deer will knock your whole ass right down if they feel like it, but cows? COWS? Unpredictable? Wild animals? Eh. I guess I have a lot to learn about cows because I thought they just kind of stood there and munched on a shrubbery.
Anyway, here’s hoping the fence gets fixed and the cows return safely home after their bovine Rumspringa in the Brookhaven Housing Development which can then return to their idyllic living without fear of being threatened by the bored stare of a grazing cow.
Heck yes, Bovine Rumspringa is my new band name. We play polka music at yinzer firehall weddings and we are amazing at it.
*not a euphemism
2. Pittsburgh history at your fingertips!
The City of Pittsburgh recently launched a new archive that includes the digitization of a whole slew of historical records and images dating from as far back as the early 19th century. I will warn you that, like many archival websites from museums and libraries, it is slow to load, so you’ll need patience to browse. Here are just a few of the fun items I’ve found so far:
The state of the Point area in 1941 with an overlay showing the 1761 plan for Fort Pitt created by Ratzer and which is housed in the Darlington collection at Pitt.
This was created as excavation plans were being considered by the city.
A rare photo of the upper station of the Penn Incline in the Hill District from 1951:
This is the first I’ve ever seen of that part of the incline station, so I geeked out about it. Here’s City Council canceling their scheduled meeting in commemoration of World War I armistice …
I plan to hunt these archives for lots of 1918 pandemic stuff too.
This 1928 snap of S. 18th Street taken from Gable St. near the Slopes should be in a museum:
I mean …
Iconic.
Have fun browsing and let me know if you find anything cool. I’ll be in there hunting for images for my Remains to be Seen project for sure.
3. “She’s a brick … haus”
I’ve never sang karaoke because I’d rather have my eyelashes individually plucked out than sing in front of others, and if I did get drunk enough to get up and sing, after three notes, people hearing me would say, “I’d rather have my eyelashes individually plucked out than listen to this.” Either way, someone is losing all of their eyelashes. Not sexy.
That said, a recent viral TikTok of what karaoke sounds like when yinzers sing it had me in tears …
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Perfection. If I ever have to sing karaoke (assume there is a gun to my head), I will just do it like that—deadpan yinzer.
“Sugar, we’re goin’ dahn swingin’.”
Should Deadpan Yinzer be my new band name instead?? We’d obviously be pop-punk.
4. Random n’at
Hey there, short stuff! (Somewhere my dogs just perked up all, “You called? Is there a deer?? Let me at him! I’ll tear his ankle hair off!”) None of this is ads:
There’s a new museum coming to town! The Museum of Illusions. I was able to steal a sneak peek of it during construction and it looks like a fun addition to Pittsburgh’s museum scene.
Pittsburgh has a space-themed bar now! I haven’t yet checked it out but will do so soon.
Wholesaler Leona’s Ice Cream is going brick-and-mortar!
And Jim Leyland is going to the Hall of Fame.
Don’t forget to shop my Yinzer gift guide for some holiday gifts. Some stuff is already sold out, but there are still lots of cool items you can grab for your loved ones. One item not on my list but that would make a great gift for the Burgh lover in your life is the new Growing Up Yinzer book.
It looks like a very cool read, so I’m planning to buy a copy. I love that they put a WQED tag on Rick Sebak as if he wouldn’t be 100% immediately recognizable.
5. It’s a short one!
Yes, this is short. I’m burnt out out out and I don’t have much to give by way of my brain and wit. Next week I’m going to publish a year-end wrap up of the best things that happened in Pittsburgh in 2023, which will be followed in early January with the essay I already mentioned.
Beyond that, I am planning to take a break from this newsletter in early 2024. I have grad school, I’m teaching an OLLI course at Pitt in the spring, and I’d like to see if I have another book or a screenplay in me. So I’m going to step back and focus on those things. I’ll be continuing my history column for Pittsburgh Magazine and I continue to say yes to book club invites, so feel free to reach out to me on that front.
Otherwise, I’m going to get a bit quieter, and I don’t know how often I will publish here over the next six months, maybe just monthly. If I have something to say, this is where you’ll find it. I am absolutely in need of some recharge time, so I’m going to get on that.
I’ll see you all next week!