Is it really a newsletter if it keeps no schedule and each time I publish it I have to make a dramatic entrance and declare I’m back, bitches?
I’m back, bitches.
Let’s see. What has been going on since last we talked at the start of summer? Oddly cold temperatures were immediately followed by the heat of a million suns and the rains of a thousand storms. And the Pirates are … playing well. No, wait, they suck again. They’re playing well again! No, they super suck the suck of a trillion black holes. Someone check the book of Revelations for me and let me know what this all means, thanks. Maybe Aaron Rodgers’ presence here caused a hellmouth to open in his honor?
I defended my master’s history thesis on Pittsburgh during the 1918 pandemic, so I can now say I’m officially done with grad school. But as soon as I finished my thesis, my work with PastFinders (formerly Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen) ramped up (more on that below!), plus my Pittsburgh History to WWII class at Pitt-Osher began in early July. I truly love teaching this class, but it does require lots of prep work. The final class is tomorrow when I’ll be teaching them about pollution, politics, the 1918 pandemic, Prohibition, and philanthropy. This edition of Breathing Space is definitely brought to you by the letter ...
So that’s what my life is like right now. But it’s okay. As soon as the class ends, life will slow down and I can breathe and be a normal human being again.
Maybe.
Let’s talk!
1. Looking for the adult in the room
One thing I did recently in an effort to live as much of my life in the real world as possible versus the time-sucking virtual, was subscribe to a print newspaper. Since I committed to not supporting the P-G until the labor dispute ends, I chose to subscribe to the Tribune-Review.
When my 22-year-old son saw the fresh newspaper on the kitchen island one morning, he rolled his eyes as if I’d hired a personal scribe to chisel the news into a stone tablet for me each morning. He said, “You’re wasting paper and trees and you can read all of this online,” to which I said, “Yes, but there’s no fighting in the comments. There’s no pop-up ads. There’s no random page reloading. There’s no oh, this reminds me of something I wanted to Google and so let me close out of this and go Google that thing and here we are at Google and what the hell was I going to Google again? Might as well scroll Instagram where 74% of suggested posts are shitty AI-generated uncanny valley garbage where hands look like feet and faces look like Temu versions of that doll from the M3GAN movies.”
A plus side of reading the news quietly each morning is I get treated to the Trib’s letter to the editor selections and my goodness gracious (apparently reading an old timey print newspaper makes you say things like “my goodness gracious” and “for heaven’s sake.” Can’t wait until I have a reason to exclaim “What in the Sam Hill!”). There have been a bunch of these letters that make me sit and stare into the distance for a while, my brain liquifying, my face straight up melting off Lost Ark style. For instance, first please read this level-headed letter from a political science student at Pitt-Greensburg who wrote in defense of students’ right to protest. A snippet:
Let’s be clear: Peaceful protest is real, and it matters. It’s not chaos. It’s not a threat. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have in a democracy. It’s how civil rights were won. It’s how injustice is exposed. And it’s happening right now across in this country — by people demanding change, not destruction.
…
We must defend the right to protest, especially when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it challenges power. Because that’s exactly when it matters most.
There is nothing more American than standing up and saying, “Enough.”
Regardless of your opinion as to the content of his letter, you must admit he stated his case with maturity. Days later, the paper posted a response to the student’s letter. The writer? Don Liddick, a criminal justice professor at Penn State-Fayette. Thy butts. Find them. Hold them. Ready?
A student letter-writer recently lamented the sending of federal troops to Los Angeles and the brief detention of Sen. Alex Padilla (“Defending our right to protest,” June 20, TribLive). While I support his right to express his opinion, I feel the need to exercise my own right and call his view a contemptible load of horse manure.
I’m sorry, but who in the Sam Hill (hey-o!) is the adult in this exchange? It sure as hell isn’t Professor Don Liddick of Penn State-Fayette who elevates anger and insult above using fact and reason to support his arguments and displays a startling lack of maturity. He also sounds like he needs a vacation, a Valium, or some vitamins. Maybe this newsletter is actually brought to you by the letter V?
At any rate, Don Liddick of Penn State-Fayette is absolutely the kind of person who is going to email me something ridiculous and angry, and I honestly can’t wait because I plan to respond with, “This email is brought to you by the letter L,” followed by this gif.
Grow up. And that’s not directed at the student in this scenario, but the teacher. We are living in the stupidest of times, as additionally evidenced by this letter to the editor ranting that public school teachers … you still got your butts? … make way too much money.
Sorry if that just made your face melt off. Try Neosporin.
2. Pat McAfee apologizes
I’ve not hid on my social media accounts my opinion that locally grown Pat McAfee has become problematic and that much of Pittsburgh maintains a parasocial, adoring relationship with him simply because he’s from here. This is what the yutes might refer to a “hot take” and “unpopular opinion.” I’m aware I’m in the minority on this.
I had already begun to be irked by him well before his February platforming and amplification of the dumbest, most pointless rumor to ever be spoken on a major media outlet. In this case, it was only amplified by Pat because the rumor involved the sex life of a random sorority member. Hear me; not that it would have made it right if she was, but this young lady, Mary Kate Cornett, a student at the University of Mississippi, was not a college athlete whose life was being publicly picked apart by a sport bro. She was just a girl, just a student, just a person living what should be some of the best years of her life—the college years—when Pat McAfee temporarily ruined it by repeating a rumor about her which then exploded further within the weird sportsbro/Barstool universe, except now with additional validity because of Pat. The weirdest part is that he spoke the dumb rumor to his panel members with such a serious tone that it sounded like he was reporting on the technical skill behind landing a triple axle in the winter Olympics.
Now, five months later, he has finally apologized and it’s not great:
I have since learned that the story was not true, and that my show played a role in the anguish caused to a great family, and especially to a young woman, Mary Kate Cornett. I think you all know from tuning into this program that I never want to be a source of negativity or contribute to another human’s suffering.*
I can now happily share with you that I recently got to meet Mary Kate and her family, and I got a chance to sincerely apologize to them and acknowledge that what I said about Mary Kate was based solely on what others were saying on the internet or what had previously been reported by others, and that we had no personal knowledge about Mary Kate or her personal life.
As a girl dad**, I also was very thankful for the opportunity to let Mr. Cornett know that I was wildly regretful for the part that our show, our program, played in his daughter Mary Kate's pain.***
I can now say that I had the opportunity to meet (Cornett’s family), chat with them, and they’re wonderful people, and I’m very thankful that they gave me the opportunity to tell them how sorry I was that this all happened, and that our program was a part of this. I deeply regret all the pain that this caused. I hated watching what our show was a part of, in her interviews and reading about it. And my hope is that this can be something that we all learn from going forward.****
* Pat, what in tarnation was positive about your original remarks? What, in the spreading of this rumor, would NOT contribute to someone’s suffering? You were specifically seeking to create negativity and to further suffering by commenting on a random person’s rumored sex life. Please be for real.
** Why didn’t being a “girl dad” stop you in your tracks from repeating the rumor in the first place? You’re just pandering.
*** It wasn’t “the show.” It wasn’t “our program.” It was you and only you and nothing but the you.
**** Please allow me to correct this for you, free of charge. “I’m very thankful that they gave me the opportunity to tell them how sorry I was that this all happened I did this, and that our my program was a part of this. I deeply regret all the pain that this I caused. I hated watching what our my show was a part of, in her interviews and reading about it. And my hope is that this can be something that we all I learn from going forward.”
You’re welcome; and also …
Hope you handed her a big fat check.
Reader, I TOLD YOU IT WAS AN UNPOPULAR OPINION; you don’t have to email me to defend him. You can continue to adore him; I’ll continue to be wary of his problematic schtick and hope he actually does learn something from this because he is nearly 40 and should have known better by now.
3. Pretty much ready for prime time
As you know, I launched Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen in 2023 to bring visible remnants of our city’s past to life. We forget history happened in color and in 3D, and my map was a way to try to bridge that gap. Last summer, Pittsburgh historian David Jardini, who wears many industrial, investment and academic hats, learned about my project and offered to partner up to turn the map into a mobile app, something I had wanted to do, but didn’t have the time, knowledge or money to make happen. He then pulled in Penn State engineering grad Harlan Shober to build the app. More recently, we snagged his daughter, college student Rinnie Jardini, to join us to help with the user interface. The four of us have become fast friends and a small, but mighty team that has been hard at work for nearly a year now.
What started as a project to allow you to take a walking tour of 50 historical remnants in the City of Pittsburgh has been transformed into a mobile app that allows you to take a walking tour of history in pretty much any city or town in America, Puerto Rico, the UK, as well as spots like Prague and Vienna (Harlan loves to use far-off places as virtual testing grounds, so you never know what city will pop up next).
The free app is on the Apple platform and Harlan is busy building the Android version. Our logo/branding was designed by local illustrator Rachel Sager, who has long been my go-to for these projects of mine, from That’s Church to Make Room for Kids to Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen and now PastFinders (not an ad, but she’s great!). We have some exciting partnerships in the works with local and state organizations to offer curated collections and tours. The Duquesne Club already has a collection of spots around downtown that correlate to their history that you can tour.
We have created an extensive walking tour that loops along our rivers to give you a visual and spoken history of every bridge that ever spanned the Golden Triangle from the old Monongahela Bridge (our first bridge) to the Fort Duquesne Bridge. This is a great walk if you have an out-of-town guest who wants to see the whole city, because it stops at the Point and showcases all three rivers plus the stadiums. Our tour of the Hill District was a labor of love for me to create, so please check that one out too.
If the city you are visiting doesn’t yet have a curated, thematic tour, you can simply use our tour guide Gideon to build your own walking tour. You can tell Gideon how far you want to walk, how much time you have, if you want to walk to a specific place and see cool stuff along the way, or if you want to simply take a loop tour from your current spot. He’ll craft a walking tour for you and then guide you along the way while reading you the histories of the stops and showing you historical pictures, if available.
We also have a map that is so fun to explore. It not only features all of our spots with extensive histories/photos in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (check out our Birth of a Nation tour) and Harrisburg (we have two tours there), but it also contains hundreds of thousands of historical markers, plaques, and statues, allowing you to explore the buildings, spaces, and memorials that correlate to history regardless of where you are. You can also search the map for anything! Like “Where did Abraham Lincoln die?” or “How was the Statue of Liberty built?” and it will take you to the location and provide you with historical information.
The app is free! So download it and let us know what you think as we continue to make improvements and build out cities with artifacts and photos. My local media peeps reading this, I’m going to be bugging you soon about covering the app, but if you want to get a jump on it, just email me (virginia.montanez@historyremains.com is the best email for app stuff) and please don’t send me a loser gif when you do.
Egads, that’s my trick.
4. So very PittGirl-coded
You know I’m loving something when I pull out the PittGirl name that I’ve been trying to shed for years on account of I’m 51 (did THAT make your face melt off?) and it sounds so exceedingly stupid. But seriously, have you ever seen anything more PittGirl-coded than this collab between Penn Brewery and Kennywood?
I’m not a huge beer drinker (except sours; I will drink any sour beer at least once, get an immediate headache because my body seemingly no longer knows what to do when alcohol enters the chat, and then live with regrets for the next 18 hours) but every part of my soul is craving these. Here’s the full lineup:
Love them all! This isn’t an ad. It’s never an ad.
5. Random n’at
Here’s the big little stuff that is still important stuff, so don’t skip it!
My latest column at Pittsburgh Magazine uncovers the lost voices of the child laborers, many of whom toiled 12-hour days in our steel and iron mills and our streets. Historians have traditionally focused on the children of the glasshouses, but I wanted to show children were engaged as laborers in dangerous industrial environments by employers who forced them to straddle a confusing space between adulthood and childhood. I’ve received lots of lovely emails in response to this particular piece, so be sure to give it a read. As a look-ahead, my next column tells the tale of some of Pittsburgh’s more obscure historical disasters. After that, you can expect a column that is going to get me so much hate mail, I’m currently girding my loins and preparing a list of phrases like heavens to Betsy! and my stars! No, it’s not about Pat McAfee. A snippet of the current column:
Hear the whispers of John Jones, a hoist boy at Andrew Carnegie’s Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, who was instantly killed in 1877, when a cupola laden with pig iron fell on him after a rope snapped. When Superintendent Bill Jones sent Carnegie word of the accident (which he said crushed John “to a jelly”), he blamed the “boy’s carelessness and disobedience of order.” Jones went on to assure Carnegie that the horrific death only “delayed works slightly. Damage slight.”
Jones, an orphan, was only 14 years old. He built Pittsburgh.
One of my biggest finds doing child labor research was a Technical World magazine article in 1912 about the children who struck from Oliver Steel. The pictures are truly amazing.
After a long hiatus from talking about my debut novel (which, if you haven’t read yet, please let me know so I can email you a loser gif. It has 4.53 stars on over 260 Goodreads reviews and not a single one of them is paid or is an ARC copy), but I’ll be doing a short reading from its pages on Tuesday, August 12 at 7 p.m. at Hop Farm Brewing in Lawrenceville for the 51st anniversary season of the Hemingway Series (archives are here). So swing by and say hello!
I love this video that shows groceries being rung up in a 1965 cashier training video because we get a look at Alcoa Wrap and cans of Heinz Spaghetti. I’m such a sucker for this stuff. Start at 6:58 (the link should take you to that timestamp).
My friend Jonathan Wander sent me a link to this absolutely delightful colorized video of Etna in the 1930s. So much good stuff to see like Burghy beer brands, Etna students, and Isaly’s. Enjoy!
I’m sure you’re aware by now that public broadcasting has seen its federal funding gutted. In light of this development, I recently subscribed to WQED to support their work. You can do the same for them or Pittsburgh’s other public stations like WESA and WYEP. This isn’t an ad and I have no relationship with WQED. I simply can’t allow the home of Fred Rogers to fade away, and I’ll do everything I can to help ensure its survival. Feel free to let me know if you decide to support them so I can give you a virtual email hug!
6. That’s all!
Have a fantastic week or six because lol what am I even doing here anymore. Be kind! Stay cool! Buy my book! Come chat with me at the Hemingway series! Download the PastFinders app! Donate to WQED!
And be sure to get out to see my new jazz band Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat. We are old and, at all times, aghast.
PittGirl out!