If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
I sounded so peculiar, what with the references to cawfee and my bawss, the long Philadelphia oooo's in "you knoooooow," my hodgepodge Berks County/Philly/Jewish mother affect. Who else tawks like that?
Bobby Rogers of the Miracles died recently at the age of 73. As lyrics from 'Shop Around,' 'Tracks of My Tears,' 'You've Really Got a Hold on Me' and 'I Second That Emotion' reverberate in my head, I'm reminded of a different emotion that I'd shared with Rogers and the fellow Miracles in 1967.
TEDx is an independently organized TED event that focuses on the community it is organized in. At Carnegie Mellon University, we have our own TEDxCMU, only four years old on Sunday March 3rd, and organized entirely by a student board.
There's nothing new in the need for places to grow their appeal and maintain it. Throughout history, attractive locations have acted as a magnet for people, economic activity and cultural life, which all boosted their power and attractiveness.
With the crucial NFC East battle between Washington and Dallas taking place next week, Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh is the most critical game between two teams with legitimate divisional and Wild Card aspirations this week.
Ghost signs are nearly the equivalent of what cave drawings were to our early modern day explorers: signifiers of how previous lives lived, worked and maybe the kind of beer they drank or the cigarettes they smoked. While these ghost signs populate many towns in our country, they are in the process of leaving us. As the wrecking ball flies and mundane urban renewal efforts commence, we're losing more relics every day.
Determined by popular vote and now in its fifth year, the Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year is not a "best mustache" contest, but is awarded to the person who is deemed to best representing the sexually dynamic Mustached American lifestyle.
Philanthropy and public-private partnerships should not be faulted but encouraged, especially following Hurricane Sandy's damage to the parks when it's most needed.
The city of Pittsburgh, at one time, was so choked by coal pollution that Boston writer James Parton dubbed it "hell with the lid off." A series of vintage photos recently published in The Atlantic show city streets so dim with smog that you'd think a massive fire was smoldering nearby.
It's one thing when documentaries like Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for 'Superman and Madeleine Sackler's much better The Lottery look at problems in public education and offer some solutions (such as charter schools).
As autumn sets in to the Rust Belt, I'm always reminded of the lines written by James Wright, a poet, who was raised around the factories in Martins Ferry, Ohio. Yes, many of the mills are long gone, but the ritual is largely the same.
Beets are the triple homicides of the vegetable kingdom: Everyone avoids them because of the messy red stains. But beets are my almost-favorite vegetable, trailing only Brussels sprouts (the Elephant Men of the vegetable kingdom) and a spinachy green known as pigweed.
The old shot and beer joints were a mainstay in nearly all the Rust Belt mill towns. These places were the yang to the factories' yin and a big part of many a mill worker's daily routine.
Every city is either vibrant these days or is working on a plan to attain vibrancy soon. The reason is simple: a city isn't successful -- isn't even a city, really -- unless it can lay claim to being "vibrant."
The Hill, or "Little Harlem" as it was referred to from the '30s thru the '50s, was one of the elite African-American neighborhoods in America. It was home to one of the most vibrant jazz scenes in the country, as well as one of its hottest clubs, The Crawford Grill, which was owned by Gus Greenlee.
Artists working at a restaurant to support their art may be cliché. But artists creating a restaurant as a type of performance art in itself? That's original.
