Category: default || By jt3y

One of the nice things about moving (actually, the only thing) has been finding a boatload of stuff that I forgot I had. Living in tiny spaces means that a lot of my things have been packed away in storage, and sitting in my new dining room, opening the boxes, is like opening time capsules.

Let me be clear: There has been nothing of value in any of the boxes so far. (Well, OK, so I did find some pennies in the bottom of one of the boxes, and some 34-cent stamps.)

Anyway, it's truly a mishmash of stuff, and much of it is composed of newspaper clippings and photocopies of items related to local history. There's information about the volunteer fire companies in North Versailles Township. A story about the Army Corps of Engineers rerouting the channel of Turtle Creek as part of a flood control project.

There are several folders of clips about radio broadcasting; the oldest is a photocopy of an announcement that Joseph Horne department store placed in the Pittsburgh Sun in 1920. It advertises "Wireless Sets for Sale" that readers could use to pick up the "air concerts" from the amateur radio station that was about to become KDKA.

I pulled that off of the microfilm at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh years ago, and forgot that I had it until this week.

Of course, there's all kinds of memorabilia from Our Fair City, including credit card statements from Jaison's and Cox's (recovered from an old file cabinet I found years ago), cancelled checks from the First National Bank of McKeesport (merged into Western Pennsylvania National Bank in 1959 or '60) and other detritus.

Once I get the scanner plugged in, I'll have all kinds of new stuff for the Web page. It's odd to think that I was collecting this stuff years ago, without ever realizing there would be such a thing as the "Internet" that I could use to inflict it on other people.

There is also a fair amount of wreckage from my newspaper career: Memos to and from editors, letters of praise from readers (and some hate mail), and a bunch of newsroom phone lists that are now useless, because 90 percent of the people named no longer work for the papers in question. I also found a sheaf of company newsletters, which are amusing in a sick way.

Besides newsletters from the companies for which I've worked, I also have some old company newsletters from the failed Penn Central railroad, Westinghouse Air Brake Co., and U.S. Steel. I'm convinced that company newsletters can serve the same purpose to students of corporate politics as Pravda and Izvestia served to Kremlinologists during the Cold War. By studying who gets praised, who gets slammed and who just gets ignored, you start to see patterns in who is about to get promoted --- and who's about to be transferred to the Level Green office. (The people who get ignored are probably going to stay in their positions forever.)

Ironically, I'll probably keep the railroad and steel company newsletters, but not the ones that I received personally. Why? Eh. I lived it. I don't need to read about it.

Have I mentioned there's a built-in barbecue grill at the side of the new house? No? Well, except for a few mementos, I think I'm gonna pile all of the newspaper leftovers --- including the newsletters --- into the grill and set a torch to them. Maybe I'll invite all of the other newsroom refugees I know over, and we can all drink beer and complain as we watch this stuff burn.

...

It's always nice to see a local institution in the news, but this is not the kind of publicity that UPMC McKeesport hospital needed:

Investigators are again trying to solve the mystery of who was behind the deadly anthrax attacks following 9-11; and their latest efforts are focusing on a doctor with ties to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Ken Berry works in the emergency room at UPMC McKeesport. He was arrested Thursday, accused of assaulting four family members in New Jersey just hours after authorities raided his parents' summer home.

Berry's Website hasn't been updated since 1998, but includes a testimonial that claims to be signed by former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. According to a transcript on the Georgia Tech Web site, Berry apparently testified at a hearing Nunn held on biosecurity back in 1997.

He's been a licensed physician since 1986, according to the New York State Education Department.

...

In happier news, International Village starts next Tuesday, Carol Frazier reports in The Daily News. My arteries are hardening just thinking about it.

Carol's story also has a complete schedule of entertainment events, beginning at 3 p.m. Tuesday and running through fireworks and polka dancing Thursday night.

...

More road work is underway at the Hays end of the Glenwood Bridge, reports Joe Grata in the Post-Gazette, in a story that's most notable because Joe was able to work the word "umpteen" into it.

...

Slate is running profiles of the so-called crucial "swing" states in the upcoming presidential election. So far Western Pennsylvania's neighbors West Virginia and Ohio have been covered, but Slate hasn't come to Pennsylvania yet.

...

Finally, who's the funniest U.S. senator? The Website zug.com set out to find out. A prankster posing as a 10-year-old boy wrote to all 100 senators and asked them to respond with their favorite joke.

Of Pennsylvania's senators, Rick Santorum responded, but Arlen Specter (who zug.com rates as "one of America's unfunniest senators") didn't.

Both U.S. Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, who's recently been in the news stumping for President Bush, and Bush's rival, U.S. Senator Yawn Kerry, D-Monotonous, also responded.

None of the jokes are laugh riots, and some are just laughably bad, but at least they took the time to write back, right?