Pittsburgh, let me tell you about a game my family played on Christmas Day.
You’ve likely seen it on social media. You create a row of 18-inch squares on the floor with some sort of visible tape. You blindfold some people and have them stand in the squares. You put on a song and tell them to do a high-step march while staying in the square. That’s it; that’s the game.
A trio of our youths (damn yutes!) went first, and did a pretty admirable job, but I was sure to trash-talk my teen nephew for ending up a full foot outside of his square. Like, tighten it up, loser!
Next up: me and two of my sisters (long-time readers know them as Pens Fan and Tina Fey). I’m especially terrible at balance and hearing when I’m blindfolded so I expected to be terrible at this game.
The music plays. I start marching, my knees coming up to my waist. I work out; I’m physically strong, so I was impressively able to wrest control of my balance. As I marched in place, I thought, “Self, you are KILLING it! What in the world!? You must have some sort of natural talent at this, or you’re in such incredible shape that you can put your foot down right next to the other one!” At this point, I could hear the dozen or so spectators in the room guffawing and I was like, wow, my sisters must suck at this. Just keep marching in place, girl. You got this. Defy the odds. Show them damn yutes their old auntie is a blindfolded-march-in-place deaf badass.
Then the music stopped and the three of us removed our blindfolds to see how we did. Internet, I had embarked on a full-scale wilderness hike. I was inches from my aunt who sat on a couch pointing and laughing at our inept butts. Tina Fey had, incredibly, managed to round a corner, so I assume one of her legs is shorter than the other. Only Pens Fan, who clearly cheated, managed to stay within spitting distance of her square. The music-keepers didn’t stop the song because it was time; they stopped the song because Tina Fey and I were about to march right into furniture and walls.
So that’s the story of how I was humbled into ruin on Christmas Day—the true meaning of the season.
Enough chit-chat! Let’s recap the best things that happened in Pittsburgh in 2024, in no particular order:
1. A beautifully executed failure; Astrobotic soars in defeat
It’s not often we can point to failure as one of the highlights of our year, but that is indeed the case when it comes to Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, launched aboard the maiden flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket on January 8. An hour after launch, a propulsion system leak ruptured the oxidizer tank, a catastrophic anomaly that meant it would not be able to land on the Moon. Rather than collapse in on themselves and go silent after years of hard work didn’t pay off, Astrobotic grabbed hold of the reins of science and shared daily detailed information on what they were learning and how they were fighting to extend Peregrine’s life. And thus, a failure that would normally have generated public finger-pointing and ridicule, was transformed by the Astrobotic attitude into a growing sense of community and hope. The public followed along each day, encouraging the team as they struggled to execute what they could of the science experiments traveling on the lander. After 10 days of control and 535,000 miles of travel, Peregrine’s mission was terminated via controlled re-entry over the South Pacific. In the aftermath, Astrobotic wasn’t weaker, but remarkably stronger from a failure that turned out to be anything but.
2. Jaromir Jagr comes home to open arms and a whole lot of mullets
Pittsburgh said her goodbyes (and certainly some said, “Good riddance, ya dying-alive jag”) to #68 over two decades ago, but the legend of Jaromir Jagr never departed the soul of this hockey town for even a moment. A door left ajar never stops begging to be flung wide open, and that’s just what the Penguins did thanks to the leadership of Kevin Acklin. Jagr’s long-overdue visit home last year snowballed, thanks to Acklin’s encouragement and doggedness, into an official jersey retirement ceremony at PPG Arena on February 18. Departed the city as a brash, youthful hockey god, he returned a graying, life-loving hockey god with an easy laugh and gentle demeanor. In an emotional, heartfelt and moving speech in front of his mother, a dozen former teammates, including Mario, and a sold-out crowd, Jagr called his years in Pittsburgh the best of his life. After watching his banner raised to the rafters, he took to the ice for warmups with the Penguins who paid tribute via lush mullet wigs. The prodigal hockey son has come home, and no matter where he goes in the world, he’ll never leave again. (Let’s not talk about the stolen bobblehead fiasco, because I still haven’t figured out what really happened there.)
3. The first class graduates from Freedom House EMT Academy
The Freedom House EMT Academy was created by the city in February in tribute to the original Freedom House Ambulance Service—a groundbreaking program that catalyzed the modern ambulance service by mobilizing trained medical professionals with skills beyond basic first aid. The original 1967 program, started in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, involved training a crew of Black residents of the Hill, and then sending them throughout the city to respond to calls and save lives. By 1970, they’d already transported 10,000 patients. The modern iteration of the program, operated by the Bureau of Emergency Medical Services as a 12-week paid training course, graduated its first class of 9 new EMTs in August. Apply here to join a new class of trainees!
4. Paul Skenes injects life into another disappointing season
After another hot start, the Pittsburgh Pirates went and Pittsburgh Pirates-ed themselves face-first into last place as only the Pittsburgh Pirates can do. But amidst the stink of decay arose one fragrant, beautiful bloom via pitcher Paul Skenes who took the mound for the first time in the majors on May 11. Despite the dismal performance of management and team over the season, Pirates fans latched onto the Skenes train and rode it joyfully, thrilling turn after thrilling turn, as the young pitcher navigated his way through a glorious rookie season that saw him named the starting NL pitcher for the All-Star game. Throughout the season, Eat’n Park introduced a Skenes Smiley Cookie, Pittsburghers delighted in the regular injection of celebrity via his girlfriend, gymnast Livvy Dunne, and fans marveled at his ability to put K after K on the board while maintaining a maturity far beyond his 22 years. By the end of his 1.96 ERA season, his selection as the NL Rookie of the Year was a given. Who knows what next season will bring for the team (lol yes we know; we actually know very much), but Skenes himself is destined to pitch himself to greatness. Pittsburgh should enjoy his time in the black and gold and be grateful that we at least had his bright star shining over the 2024 season of putrescence.
5. The Northern Lights put on a Steel City show, and then give two encores
In addition to a near-complete solar eclipse, 2024 was the year Pittsburghers saw something they would usually need to travel far north to see once in a lifetime—except they got to do it three times from their backyards! Solar storms brought the aurora to the Golden Triangle in May, August and October this year, wowing yinzers as they saw eye-popping hues of greens, pinks and purples painting the night sky (often only visible through their camera lenses). Social media streams filled with thousands of colorful photos, no two alike, and a whole lot of bucket lists got new checkmarks next to See the Northern Lights. And we didn’t even have to go to Canada to make it happen.
6. CMU announces free tuition for undergrad families earning under $75,000
Carnegie Mellon University is one of those storied institutions that is far out of reach for middle- and low-income pocketbooks unless scads of scholarship, grant and loan dollars are obtained. Following the lead of other schools, this year Carnegie Mellon announced that starting in 2025, free tuition will be offered to all current and incoming students whose families earn less than $75,000 annually. This CMU Pathway Program is designed to remove barriers for promising students who have much to contribute to science and the arts, but who lack the opportunity to do so due to financial constraints. Additionally, CMU’s commitment to relieving the debt burden for its students led them to promise that undergraduates whose families earn less than $100,000 will be offered institutional grants that will fully relieve their families of the need for federal loans. This commitment to making higher education more accessible is desperately needed and the school is setting an example that other well-endowed institutions should and will hopefully follow.
7. The City of Pittsburgh puts down the red tape and embraces the pun
It’s such a small thing, but a true injection of delightful lightheartedness into the otherwise staid red-tape world of local government deserves to be revisited as a high point of 2024. When the Senator John Heinz History Center decided to follow the “ask forgiveness, not permission” adage by installing the giant Heinz ketchup bottle removed from Acrisure Stadium, they did so in defiance of the city’s permit rules for outdoor signage. Installed on a corner of the museum, the bottle, viewed as an artifact by the museum but as a sign by the city, earned the museum a violation notice from the Department of City Planning. Rather than do the thing that local governments do—be dumb and boring and unwilling to bend even a skoosh, the City issued a pun-filled ruling on the violation in which they used every possible reference to condiments and pickles they could while granting the museum an exception, allowing the bottle to remain. Filled with dozens of punny phrases like “laid it on thick,” “passed legal mustard,” “legal bottlenecks” and “a big dill,” the ruling was pitch-perfect and worthy of being framed in the museum itself so visitors can read it in 50 years for a chuckle before teleporting themselves to a booth in Primantis.
8. Pitt tests the first vaccine targeting pre-invasive breast cancer
In hopeful medical news, University of Pittsburgh and UPMC researchers embarked this year on the first-of-its-kind test of a vaccine designed to target pre-cancerous cells in the breast before they develop into invasive Stage 1 breast cancer. Led by School of Medicine professor Olivera Finn, the trial is the result of her decades of work as well as the contributions of a full team of researchers. The team administered to patients in the trial three courses of a vaccine that will hopefully generate an immune response to the pre-cancerous cells and thus mark an important step in the broader field of cancer treatment. Seeded by a $100,000 grant from local A Glimmer of Hope Foundation and a $2.1 million gift from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the first phase of the trial was rolled out to 50 patients this year. If you have a DCIS diagnosis and are interested in the vaccine, find more info on applying to the trial here.
9. PPS completes the filtering of lead from school drinking water
It took eight years of work, but in May the Pittsburgh Public Schools met their goal of filtering lead from the drinking water in all school buildings. In 2016, recognizing replacing lead-lined piping would not be feasible, the school district instead committed to “systematically replacing every single antiquated drinking fountain with lead filtering water bottle filling stations and lead filtering drinking fountains in every school building across the district.” All told, that meant replacing nearly 1,300 fountains across 70 school buildings—a huge undertaking. The district announced the completion of this Filter First campaign in May during National Drinking Water week, and celebrated the milestone by giving free water bottles to all students for use at the new lead-filtered fill-up stations. The school sees this as just the first step in improving the safety of their students’ drinking water, with their sights set on next filtering out “forever chemicals.”
10. After 87 years, a butterfly returns home to Pittsburgh
This is a seemingly small thing, but as the butterfly effect can show, there are few small things that lack the capacity to generate ripples that can lead to big things, and that’s exactly what happened in Pittsburgh this year thanks to concerted efforts by local naturalists to plant pawpaws to increase the foliage frequented by certain butterfly species. In this case, nearly 90 years after its last sighting in Pittsburgh, the gorgeous and unmistakable zebra swallowtail butterfly has returned, a biodiversity win that illustrates how small, intentional human actions can positively impact the environment in big ways. A few pawpaws, the host plant of this butterfly species, planted locally several years ago finally generated enough of a ripple that the stunning butterfly was spotted here for the first time in 87 years, leaving behind eggs that were carefully collected and nurtured through every stage of metamorphosis. This story serves as a reminder that we in Pittsburgh should consider ourselves not just beings existing within nature, but powerful change-agents capable of using our minds, bodies, and surroundings to improve the natural world around us for ourselves and our descendants. This means refraining from littering, cleaning up litter, recycling, choosing to limit your usage of single-use plastics, planting with pollinators in mind, and supporting the organizations who are on the ground doing the clean-up work every day so that more environmental wins can be celebrated next year and onward.
That’s it for 2024! What I’ll be watching in 2025: the Black business incubator coming to the former Pitt building downtown, the recently announced first NVIDIA AI Tech Community coming to Pitt and CMU further cementing Pittsburgh as a leading tech city, the Esplanade coming to the North Shore complete with long overdue Ferris Wheel, the first impacts of the $600 million investment in revitalizing downtown Pittsburgh, and the opening of the new terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport slated for late 2025.
Happy New Year, loves!