Welcome to the 9th day of the 14th week of the 42nd month of 2020!
Here we are, standing at the Chambers of Fire, having spent the last month (what is time?) scaling the heights of Mount Doom, fighting that ominous feeling that we’re about to be sucked into the Eye of Sauron at any moment.
This is the part where you want to email me about how the Eye of Sauron doesn’t suck people in and that it’s not located on Mount Doom and I want you to look me in the eyes and decide if you think I want you to email me.
Good choice.
But that’s where we are. Right? Some of us are doing pretty good. Got that job that’s still paying us our usual salary. Some of us are doing pretty badly. Income is gone. Waiting for stimulus checks or unemployment to kick in. Wondering just how long until the bottom drops out. The trick to getting through this? Those people in the first group need to be doing everything they can for those people in the second group.
It’s still surreal. It still sucks. And there’s not much we can do about it but sit and wait and clean our kitchen for the 84th time that day after our kids had their 8th meal and you’ve said to your teenage son, “Listen. I’m aware there’s a chance your arms will escape the suction of their shoulder sockets if you place your cereal bowl in the dishwasher, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Let’s get to it!
Since I started this newsletter, I’ve shared quite a bit about My Parents’ Puzzling Adventures (coming soon to “Netflex”), but I’ve never shared an action shot with you. Behold, my father:
Are you screamlaughing right now? The intensity. The determination. The weaponry. Deftly wielding that magnifying glass/flashlight combo like Rambo laying down cover fire with an M-60 while launching a shoulder-fired missile.
They proudly finished that Van Gogh, but only after a brief panic of one missing piece they eventually found wedged in a kitchen baseboard. If they had not found that piece, they would have made the nightly news when they accidentally on purpose burned their house down by setting fire to their kitchen table.
BUT! BUT! BUT!
Brace yourselves:
After all that wailing and ranting and teeth-gnashing and seeking scriptural comfort from the Psalms, my parents found the missing piece from their first quarantine puzzle. The missing piece they accused all of their children of taking, even the ones who live out-of-state. The missing piece they accused my grandmother’s howling silver-haired ghost of stealing in the night. The missing piece they had my son recreate.
It was in their house all along. Specifically, it was in the pocket of my mother’s bathrobe.
My dad joked she can only puzzle naked from now on and I ended that conversation RIGHT THERE THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
UNPRECEDENTED TIMES! You keep hearing that, right? It’s so easy to get depressed because we feel like we are living in some new nightmare that’s never happened before. One of the reasons I’ve managed to stay pretty positive through this whole ordeal is that I study history. And what we are going through? Not new. And I can show you via the epidemics and quarantines in Pittsburgh history!
Fighting between doctors and politicians over quarantines and business shutdowns? Yeah, that happened when Allegheny City was quarantined during a smallpox outbreak in 1903 as seen by this multi-subhead headline in The Pittsburgh Post:
Make your “Mayor Wyman aroused” jokes now before we move on.
Done?
Surely, surely there was no argument about the effectiveness of face masks, right? Wrong. The Pittsburgh Post, October 11, 1918:
People pitching in to supply hospitals? For sure. The Pittsburgh Post, October 9, 1918:
Okay, but surely there was never the insinuation that the numbers of cases were being exaggerated? Boom. The Pittsburgh Press, October 28, 1903:
Some Pittsburghers not taking the quarantine seriously enough because they weren’t hit as hard as, say, Philly? Yep. Infant paralysis quarantine of 1916 as seen in the August 31 edition of The Post-Gazette:
Flexible reopening dates? Yep. Same article as above:
Health officials using data to determine when the peak would hit? October 14, 1918, The Pittsburgh Post:
Sports and conventions and events canceled? Of course. October 5, 1918:
Government officials giving both sound and, perhaps, unsound (hello, hydrochloroquine) advice? The Pittsburgh Post, October 5, 1918:
They call this a list of “Don’ts” and then say “smother your coughs and sneezes” so it sounds like they want people to just cough and sneeze their virus-y guts into the air.
But also, some weird advice. Chew your food well. Make yourself poop as ASAP as possible after you eat. Don’t wear tight clothes. BREATHE THE AIR. BREATHE IT. IT WILL HEAL YOU. AIR.
I particularly like how they called out mouth-breathers.
My point is this. It’s all there. In the past. The prohibiting of hospital visitations. The shuttering of businesses. The canceling of funerals. Cities and states and federal entities fighting about supplies and money. Blame being placed and shifted and deflected. We are, in some respects, living through history right now, but really? We are just repeating it. All of it. And therefore, we will come out of it just like Pittsburghers of the past did. Bit by bit. Slowly returning to normal. Quarantines lifted. Life moving on.
Just stay home and excessively chew your food while wearing tight clothes and force-pooping with your Squatty Potty as much as you can until we are all safe.
Here’s an interesting thought exercise. Who gets to call themselves a Pittsburgher?
What’s the litmus test for someone qualifying as a Pittsburgher? Birth? A number of years of residency? Contribution to the ‘Burgh? Jim’s got enough boxes checked in my opinion. What about Mario? Or Troy? Or Ben?? https://t.co/U4OoRMMgzxas per the "Pittsburgher" question @colin_dunlap & @THEChrisMack asked on @FanMorningShow I added it up - in my 64.5 yrs I've lived in NH (2x) 27.5 yrs Pgh (2x) 26 Boston 6 Vermont (2x) 4.5 SC 7 months but in Pgh last 20 yrs so we consider ourselves PittsburghersJim Colony @JColony13Please allow me to put this to rest.
It isn’t about where you currently live. Most of those famous people we like to brag are “Pittsburghers” — Michael Keaton. Jeff Goldblum. Current and former Pirates and Penguins and Steelers. They don’t even live in the city. Haven’t for decades. But they even so much as breathe a mist of praise for “their city” and we are all ecstatically ready to load Terrible Towels into t-shirt cannons and shoot them from the upper deck of the Fort Pitt Bridge while dumping straight Heinz Ketchup down our throats in celebration.
It isn’t about how long you may have once lived here, otherwise we’ve got to toss Nellie Bly out. She only lived here for 7 years. What’s the cutoff? 5? 10? Doesn’t work.
It doesn’t matter where you were born, or you can kiss Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby goodbye. And Roberto Clemente. And countless others.
It doesn’t matter if you were born and raised in Westmoreland County or Beaver County. Otherwise, you’ve got to say goodbye to Arnold Palmer and Christina Aguilera.
Nearly every person you want to put on your Yinzer Mount Rushmore would not qualify by any number of “Pittsburgher” litmus tests.
The only thing that matters is this — you. Do you care about the city? Do you want to make it better for everyone? Do you WANT the title of Pittsburgher? Congratulations. It’s yours. You’re a Pittsburgher.
The title of Pittsburgher is not something bestowed by others; it is something claimed for yourself.
Claim it and it is so and don’t let anyone argue it’s not.
Unfortunately, this magic only works for this kind of intangible self-appointed title. I tried claiming “Thin Hot Young Astronaut” and literally nothing has happened.
You recall from our last edition that when Pittsburgh finally chose its colors, the committee came up with some pretty sweet streamers and pennants in addition to the city flag. A cool thing happened:
Maybe, just maybe, in the near future we’ll see those streamers and pennants flying in Pittsburgh again.
And some jags will be all, “Can you even call yourself a Pittsburgher if you don’t own an official City of Pittsburgh pennant?”
Further support for my idea that the Pirates 2020 theme should be “Who the hell is that?!”
The Pirates put together some neat phone wallpapers and well …
I recognize one. That’s Chris Archer, right?
The Pirates really gotta start putting the players’ names on these pictures so we might learn Who The Hell They Are before the Who The Hell Is That season starts.
This virus is so serious, even asteroids passing within 3,908,791 miles of Earth are all, “Bitch, I ain’t gettin’ the ‘rona on this trip.”
The best part of the article is that it says the asteroid is “not expected” to hit Earth as it passes by 4 MILLION MILES AWAY.
In much the same way, it is not expected that I’ll lose twenty pounds overnight because I ate a salad before my duo of Swiss Rolls, but … FINGERS CROSSED.
That said, why is there never a new virus that makes you lose weight and has no other symptoms? Where is that virus, huh, Earth? We gotta live our whole lives with broccoli not tasting like cookies, so the least you can do is smite us with a highly contagious weight-loss virus on occassion.
I’m going to end this one here. Let’s keep helping each other. Be generous if you’ve got the money and time. Tip well. Order from your favorite local restaurants. Shop online from local small retailers. Donate to the food banks. Prank call the PLCB and whisper, “You’re why we can’t have nice things.”
What?
Stay home, jags.