So apparently I published this newsletter on Tuesday last week instead of Wednesday, and there’s a reason for that — I spent nearly all of Tuesday thinking it was Wednesday because time isn’t real and everything is made up.
It was a good week though. I did my first-ever reading on Sunday at the Free Association Reading Series at City of Asylum*. I’ve written a bit here about my cratered self-esteem and how I’ve been slowly rebuilding it with therapy. The reading gave me a chance to see that it is working. Normally when I speak, I’m incredibly nervous, I shake, my mouth goes dry, and then I go home and run it all through and tell myself how awful I was.
None of that happened. No nerves. No shaking. No dry mouth. It was a full house and my family and amazing friends came to support me and we had drinks after and laughed and then I left it all in that room and went home and went to bed. The end. Here’s a pic:
This is how I wave to an audience. I am a dork. And look at my crooked finger from the time I fell down the stairs at home three years ago and it flipped inside out and I just snapped it back in place and never went to the doctor. I’m a messy person.
Let’s talk!
* For those asking, I don’t have any plans to publish the essay I read. It was deeply personal and not something I think I want to have out there for anyone to read any time they want.
1. “It’s not a silencing; it’s merely a shush-ening.”
Well, hell.
The company that owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is buying the Pittsburgh City Paper from the company that owns the Butler Eagle.
Cars Holding, Inc., a subsidiary of Block Communications Inc., announced in a press release today that it would acquire the City Paper from Eagle Media, with the sale being finalized this month.
I say this as an occasional contributor to the Post-Gazette (not while they are on strike though) — I don’t like this news at all. The City Paper has historically served as a check on the owners of the P-G. They covered, among other P-G-focused stories:
So the P-G basically buying the paper, while presenting it as them saving the paper from closing (which may certainly be the case), very much feels instead like they’re starting the long game of silencing a critical voice.
The release says the City Paper will keep all of its employees and operate independently.
If you think anyone on this earth is spending a bunch of their money to SAVE the platform one of their fiercest critics uses to draw attention to their faults, rather than just letting the platform die, have I got a fat-free low-cal Primanti sandwich to sell you.
I hope I’m wrong; I doubt I am. Pittsburgh’s powerful circles need checks as much as the government does and if the City Paper stops being an independent voice (we can argue that the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Lisa Cunningham prove that it already happened), Pittsburgh will suffer for it. Luckily we still have WESA and Public Source turning their critical eye toward P-G ownership.
Somewhere J.R. Block just said, “Ooooh. Should I buy them? Also, who the hell is Virginia Montanez and how about instead of paying her occasionally, we pay her never?”
I’m about to get canceled, aren’t I?
2. Speaking of getting canceled
UNPOPULAR OPINION TIME.
If you aren’t aware, the Immaculate Reception football has been in the hands of one fan, Jim Baker, since he snagged the ball while attending the game at Three Rivers Stadium in 1972. Franco Harris and Jim have long been thrown together at events when Jim would bring the ball for viewing, etc. The press event I attended at the History Center prior to Franco’s death featured Jim and Franco, along with the ball. Here’s a photo I snapped:
It’s an important piece of Pittsburgh history that Jim has not parted with for the last 50 years. Until Joe Hardy, founder of 84 Lumber, turned 100 and his daughter, Maggie Hardy, current CEO of 84 Lumber, wanted to give him the actual Immaculate Reception football as a 100th birthday gift.
What do you get a guy who had everything?
Joe was always a Pittsburgh sports fan and when Maggie saw an interview recently with Jim Baker, she thought of the perfect gift for Joe the sports fan.
Yinz. Why do I keep getting on the bad side of powerful people? Why can’t I just keep my mouth shut? I don’t know. But I’ll explode if I don’t purge myself of this opinion. But here goes.
IMAGINE BEING LIKE, MY DAD IS TURNING 100 SO I WANT TO GIVE HIM ONE OF MISTER ROGERS’ ORIGINAL SWEATERS HAND-CROCHETED BY FRED’S MOM, and then MAKING IT HAPPEN. That’s what this feels like to me.
And this isn’t unusual for the Hardys, these bonkers gifts. When Joe turned 84 or 85, his birthday party featured Bette Midler, Robin Williams, and one of his gifts was … a baby hyena.
You aren’t having a stroke. A. BABY. HYENA.
IMAGINE BEING LIKE, MY DAD IS TURNING 85 SO I WANT TO GIVE HIM A JUVENILE TASMANIAN DEVIL.
Once the deal was made between Hardy and Baker, the plan for Joe’s 100th birthday bash was for Baker to hand the ball to Franco who would then give it to Joe, and this is a weird sentence I have to write now: both Joe and Franco passed away before the ball handoff could take place. Man, life is just brutally ironic. Joe passed away ON his 100th birthday.
Now the Hardys own the ball and are deciding what to do with it. It belongs in a museum. That’s my opinion. It belongs with Franco’s other cherished possessions on display at the Heinz History Center/Western PA Sports Museum. It belongs somewhere that the people of Pittsburgh can easily view it whenever they want to gaze in awe at a ball that meant so much to a city for half-a-century.
Let’s hope the Hardys donate it thusly. If they don’t, I will steal it for the city. It’s okay. I’ll replace it with a baby bandicoot and a spice jar of dirt from PNC Park.
3. “My superpower is self-destruction”
I’m just making enemies left and right today! Here’s another controversial one. LOCAL POLITI—
Wait! Come back! I’ll make it worth your while.
Back when I was PittGirl and writing regularly about Mayor Lukey, his young press secretary’s name would occasionally pop up. Joanna Huss/Doven. I hadn’t thought of her in like a decade and then …
Well that’s a lot to take in all at once. Doven recently announced her candidacy for Allegheny County Council At Large as a Democrat, seeking Bethany Hallam’s seat, and the poop hit the fan at 75 miles an hour.
Doven has come out of the gate EXTREMELY negative. Like, nearly to the point of bullying, which is crazy because she’s trying to paint herself as the anti-bullying candidate, and when former city staffer and long-time LGBTQ+ advocate Jim Sheppard replied to her with receipts on Twitter, she claimed it was “bullying.” You can read her tweet thread in which she defends her record, attacks Hallam, questions Hallam’s drug-addiction recovery process and choices, and brings up some of Hallam’s past behaviors while she was in the throes of addiction (Hallam has never shied away from this part of her past, by the way). It’s extremely gross and heavy-handed. Doven tries to both-sides it by explaining that she has loved ones who also had addiction issues, but then weirdly goes on bashing Hallam’s recovery in the very next tweet. Just super odd.
I can’t express the disconnect that thread goes through. Plus she calls it a “chain,” so I can’t even take her seriously.
Now, I was once a Republican, so I am aware that personal politics can change. I’m also aware that a person can educate themselves. For instance, I educated myself about gender identity, gender expression, biological sex, etc. I know lots of people who have done the same. It’s called progress. It’s what activists are fighting for.
But, whoo boy! Calling Donald Trump “refreshing” and worshiping Marco Rubio as near as 2015 and then running as a Democrat in the year of our Doom 2023 and not expecting it to be an issue and not bothering to scrub your Twitter feed of the evidence? You should expect to be called out on it and when it happens, my gosh, it isn’t bullying; it’s consequences. If you aren’t willing to face those head-on without attacking your opponent’s recovery (real bullying), then don’t enter the political field. It’s literally that simple.
After QBurgh, the local LGBTQ site led by Sheppard, called Doven out for her past views, Doven did the worst thing. Actually two of the worst things. The “I have a gay best friend” thing was the first worst thing. The second worst thing?
Oh my gosh. It will only take a quick Google for you to understand why using Van Horn as a character reference in relation to Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ+ community is a BAD BAD BAD idea. It’s like saying, “My record regarding angels is great. Look at what Lucifer has to say about me!” Some endorsements, you just don’t want.
Needless to say, the statement by Van Horn did nothing to help her and only further assisted in what will be the destruction of her campaign before it ever fully gets off the ground. It’s almost impressive.
4. “I’m flying to DOO-boys today”
Okay, enough heavy stuff. Let’s lighten it up here. Here’s a tweet of mind I’d like to chat about, especially after we talked about ka-bawssy last week:
Have you ever considered this? Like why do we get Duquesne correct (mostly) by French pronunciation rules, but mangle Versailles so badly as if there isn’t a Treaty of Versailles and a Palace of Versailles that should inform our pronunciation?
Then be sure to take a look at the replies to the tweet to see all the other Frenchy names we’ve thrown in our Pittsburghese blender and then just didn’t question what flavor of linguistic casserole came out.
Dubois. DOO-boys. Every time my pilot kid would tell me he was flying to Doo-boys, I’d say to myself, “I bet we’re pronouncing that wrong.”
Charleroi. SHAR-lr-oy. Here’s how it should be pronounced.
Ligonier. I bet you didn’t know that was a French name because it was a British fort. Here’s how it should sound if we followed the same rules we do when we say Duquesne.
Not only that, but Chartiers and Fayette have French names as well, but we pronounce them as they are spelled so it sounds like we’re chewing on rocks. Then we get to Duquesne and suddenly we’re all:
I love our chaos, Pittsburgh. And hell yes, Linguistic Casserole is my new band name. It was either that or …
Straight-Up Intentional Chaos, indeed. We’d play folk covers WHILE biting the heads off of bats WHILE doing K-pop boy-band dance moves.
5. My first history column!
I quit writing my column for Pittsburgh Magazine several years ago because it became difficult for me to come up with monthly topics that would remain timely by the time they were published, usually a month and a half after my deadline date. That’s just the nature of magazine publishing, but it became a chore for me and I wanted to work on my novel. When the magazine approached me late last year to see about contributing again in a way that worked for me, a quarterly history column seemed perfect, so I jumped back in. I’m so glad I did.
My first column is here! And look! They put my name on the cover with Rich Fitzgerald:
My column is about the time Pittsburghers came to Mister Rogers’ defense so fiercely, the national news picked up the story. Like, people were PISSED at both Burger King and the Post-Gazette. Here’s the lede:
There are certain Pittsburghers you just don’t go after.
I’d rather ford the Mon in a sinking Anything That Floats failure made of Styrofoam, duct tape and prayer than write a negative word about Sally Wiggin or Bill Mazeroski. Roberto Clemente? Sidney Crosby? August Wilson? Whoever first decided to throw a thousand calories of french fries on top of lettuce and call it “salad?”
Never.
Give it a read! You’ll learn something!
6. Today is Wednesday. I checked.
Just wanted to be sure I’m publishing this on the correct day. Let’s have a great week! Be kind! Don’t be a bully! Scrub your Twitter feeds on the regular! And donate any Immaculate Reception footballs in your possession to a museum!