Major Donor to CMU, Pledges 125 Million to University Of Pittsburgh

Pitt fans shouldn't feel too jealous, of the huge 265 million dollar donation CMU recently got, since the same local steel executive just promised 125 million to Pitt.

The 73-year-old Dietrich said in a statement that he made the pledge for a number of reasons.

"As a graduate who personally benefited from my own studies at Pitt, I want to ensure that the university can continue to provide educational opportunities of the highest quality to its undergraduate and graduate students," he said.

Cleveburgh College List

I'm trying to show on the sidebar a somewhat complete list of the colleges in or very near the "Cleveburgh region" I mentally mapped earlier. It's far from complete, in that I won't list every small branch campus or community college, however vital they may be.

This rich regional asset base, few areas in the entire country can match puts lie to the image of us as a dumb poor area ill suited to the new high skill age. It also, raises the questions--why are we not getting more bang for the buck from these institutions and are they even socially relevant to the "average Joe"? If not, why not?

It's not a joke or something that can be avoided for any school that wants to survive and thrive or for the communities they are in and near.

Antioch College was a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. It was the founder and the flagship institution of the six-campus Antioch University system. Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1853 with the distinguished scholar Horace Mann as its first president. The college's educational approach blended practical work experience with classroom learning, and participatory community governance. Students received narrative evaluations instead of academic letter grades. The college's enrollment during the last academic year that it was open for classes (2007-08) was fewer than 200 students.

Not surprisingly, major Venture Capital Firms don't consider either Pittsburgh or Cleveland to be worthy of massive interest. But clear mental maps of the wider region could change that. Pull back a little further and there is The Washington megaplex and the emerging Toronto super region.

By, the way-- Sharon, Youngstown, Warren and Akron form the center of the map, right on or near I 80.

Blog Not Dead: I'll Be Back

Hope your dealing with the Madness better than Hitler is. Best not to tell him about Syracuse. He might be suicidal.

More Pittsburgh Envy

With more and more people aware of Pittsburgh's relative (not absolute) economic strength, more and more are casting envious eyes at our cities deep stock of assets. Yes, we had slums and relatively poor neighborhoods and towns, but we also had a deep middle to wealthy housing stock and an array of majestic parks, museums, libraries, theaters and assets rare for a city of it's size. Pittsburgh in many ways was built to last.

Null Space has a link to an article in Arizona bemoaning the small number college choices in the Phoenix area and in the state as a whole. While, the state grew and grew and grew, few noticed or cared but now some (like me) wonder just how hollow that growth was. It's a slight exaggeration to say Florida, Arizona and Nevada have shell economies but the number of people in those states who built houses, or sold lumber, or made loans, or built stores or paved new roads based on the needs of new residents is pretty staggering. That's the nature of a bubble--no one thinks it will stop. Why look for alternative investments or different businesses to be in when it's so easy to concentrate on what's booming? Why build communities and wonder if your area is "sustainable'? It must be cause people keep comming.

"That doesn't sit well with Mayor Scott Smith, who is working to lure a major medical school or other college to the nation's 38th-largest city.

"We could put five colleges in here and we wouldn't even begin to match what cities our size in other areas of the country have," Smith said.

He cited Pittsburgh, which boasts a population of slightly more than 300,000 - 160,000 fewer than Mesa - but which is home to prestigious schools such as Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as several smaller schools."

This is the comment I left on Null Space.

"I think shows that our much maligned "robber barons" and early Pittsburgh leaders made some pretty sound investments in Pittsburgh's colleges, museums, parks and other city assets. (They also left us some very profitable companies)

Say what you will about Carnegie, He didn't skimp on leading edge technology and efficiency upgrades in his plants and he left a flawed but fairly wise legacy."

What's happened since is very much another story.

Welcome Students

Off-Campus Oakland Primer from Pitt News Multimedia on Vimeo.

We all know that Pittsburgh is now kind of a college town, with an economy tilted towards "Eds and Meds", and an energy level can be measured by the number of cups and vomit pools on Carson Street.

Welcome Freshmen! I found this video to help orient you to Oakland, assuming you are not from Pittsburgh which may also be helpful to yinz types that never crossed the river to see it.

Angels in America at Pitt

This weekend marks the last two performances of Angels in America Part 1: Millennium Approaches. University of Pittsburgh Repertory Theater, directed by Holly Thuma, made the commitment to Angels. They've assembled a wholly original staging.

Ted Hoover's review in the City Paper covers the historic nature & inherent difficulties of staging Angels. All the necessary Kushner details. I'm more interested in this particular staging, how its compact format and strategic transitions allowed the group to create a series of striking images for the audience.

The stage inside Stephen Foster Memorial Theatre (Forbes Avenue at Bigelow) is pretty damn small. If this were an apartment, it would be "charming" or "cozy". Monochromatic beige stone masonry in three layers, shallow levels that create zones for small set-pieces. The walls flip to become urinals. Stagehands bring out simple beds, couches, chairs, easily flipping the audiences attention from one stage 'zone' to another. Simple misdirection allows characters to appear magically.

Lighting, from strong color 'looks' to image projections over the entirety of the stage allow the set and the actors upon it to become the screen upon which we the audience projected the play. Moments like Ethyl Rosenberg's appearance, the dance of the diseased Prior and his fleeing lover in a tux, the shifting snows of the antarctic, all created indelible images that could become painting.

All in one intimate space. Of course the angel makes her appearance, in the way we are expecting her to. But the series of spells cast by the environments, the capable acting, draw one in. I was surprised to burst into tears when she fell from the cieling in her harness.

This group has overcome the difficulty of audience familiarity which poses a particular challenge in Millennium. Still, take advantage of the last two nights. That way you'll be prepared for Perestroika when they stage it this spring.



city paper review

university of pittsburgh information

for tickets call 412-624-PLAY

Preservation Fair @Carnegie Museum

As if you didn't need a reason to visit the Carnegie Museum, here's another one! There will be a Preservation Fair at the Carnegie Museum this Saturday --

Over 30 individual conservators and vendors of conservation supplies and services will be on hand to address your conservation issues. Bring books, photographs, film, letters and other documents, paintings, textiles and family treasures for free conservation advice. No appraisals or valuations will be given.

The featured speakers will be Rick Prelinger, of the Prelinger Film Archive, speaking on the value of preserving film as a cultural artifact and Tom Clareson, of PALINET, with advice on preserving your family treasures in times of disaster. These talks will be held in the Museum’s Earth Theater, from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM.

The fair has a broad appeal, with an emphasis on family treasures. But that covers a lot of ground, with exhibitors from local museums, galleries and universities. Here is a list of the exhibitors that will be on hand to discuss art conservation issues --

* Carnegie Museum of Art
Ellen Baxter (paintings)
Michael Belman (objects)
Carnegie Museum of Art, Conservation Dept.
* Christine Daulton (paintings)
* Concept Art Gallery (paintings, photographs, art on paper)
Charles Biddle
* Rikke Foulke (paintings)
* Rhonda Wozniak (fine and decorative art, ethnographic and archaeological materials)

In addition to art conservation, exhibitors will also be on hand to discuss film preservation, photography and furniture restoration. Check here for a full list of exhibitors. All in all it sounds like a really full day.

Preservation Fair
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh.
Saturday, February 28, 2009, 10 AM – 4 PM

Co-sponsored by Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh

More Japan in Pittsburgh

This just in: New York author and debut novelist, Ellis Avery, will be reading from The Teahouse Fire in Pittsburgh on March 13th. Her novel is set in late 19th century Japan, and is based in part on her five years spent studying the tea ceremony, both in New York and Kyoto. The book is getting rave reviews, from the LA Times, Publisher's Weekly, and everyone inbetween. “Beneath the beautiful surface of Avery's artfully controlled prose...the novel's essential question is that of desire: By what ceremonies, through what pains and past what obstacles must we endure in order to have not just any life but the one we most want to claim as our own?” --Buffalo Artvoice; and “Ellis Avery's research included a stay in Kyoto where she studied the tea ceremony, but that alone doesn't account for her perceptiveness about Japan; she's simply a keen cultural observer.” --Japundit

See more at Ellis' website

This reading, reception and book signing will be on March 13th, 6:30pm, at University of Pittsburgh--Room 501 of the Cathedral of Learning. Free and open to the public.

STACY WAITE READ FROM HER NEW BOOK OF POEMS, 11/17/06

Friday, November 17th, Stacey Waite read to a full room on the University of Pittsburgh campus at a book party for her latest chapbook of poetry, love poem to androgyny. I’d had the pleasure of having lunch with Waite, once, and asked her if she liked to read her work. (I was selfishly looking for good, local writers that I might pair up in readings with my writer friends from out of town, should any of them dare to brave the Pennsylvania Turnpike.) Waite’s reply (essentially,“not very often”) led me to believe that she would perhaps be an adequate reader of her poems but perhaps also best enjoyed on the page.

Not so. Waite blew me away with her powerful, powerful reading by which I mean every cell of her being knew exactly what she had written, knew exactly how to read it, and even if she was nervous (you often have to look at the hands holding the book or the papers to find this out), she was the diametrical opposite of shy.

In my former stomping grounds, Stacey Waite (who is a native of Brooklyn/Long Island but a resident of Pittsburgh for eight years) would be by now a superstar of the downtown New York lesbian performance art scene, working at WOW Theatre or sharing a stage with the Backdoor Boys or being introduced by drag king variety show host, Murray Hill. Or she’d be a cross-country spoken-word favorite, touring with Michelle Tea and her troupe of outraged women writers, Sister Spit. I will admit that Stacey Waite and her insights about gender and feminism and identity, and her top-notch writing, and her absolutely contemporary poetic voice, are not what I expected to come to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and find hidden in a PhD program on the 5th floor of the “Cathedral of Learning.” (But don’t ask me, I knew nothing of what might be found in Pittsburgh.)

I shouldn’t forget to tell you that Waite’s poems are daring and accomplished; they are never boring and they’re not trying to swallow their own meaning as too many poems are. She writes indeed, about androgyny, about being mistaken for a boy by an umpire; for a delivery boy by two high school girls; for a man by a gay man, a waiter, and a security guard at Newark Airport. She has titles like “Dear Gender,” “XY,” “Butch Defines Feminism Under the Following Conditions,” and“On the Occassion of Being Mistaken for a Man by the Cashier in the Drive-Thru Window at a Wendy’s in Madison, Wisconsin.”

You should read Waite’s work not just because she writes so well about the masculinity of her womanhood, but because we’re all part yin and part yang, and Waite so deftly traces the roots of each of these in herself. Along the way, she draws a map of her longings and heartaches, she introduces us to the characters who validated or violated her developing sense of self, and she finds an eroticism that bridges the gaps.

Stacey Waite knows herself well, as a person who has lived in (the contradictions of) her body and as a writer who has learned to excavate and articulate; if I suspected this from reading her writing on the page, I know it for sure after seeing her show up with her work, after hearing her poems in her strong, sure voice.

In the acknowledgements for love poem to androgyny, Waite thanks the “gender warriors” who came before her, and I wonder if anyone outside the politics-of-gender community will ever thank Waite as a writer for being a gender warrior who came before us, who wrote to us so that we could know the history of lost parts of ourselves. Not because we are all oppressed butch lesbians but because we are many of us repressed human beings fitted into productive human citizens; because it is scary to delve into our own histories, alone; because our daily distractions bury the developing selves we were and are and perhaps have no words to lead us back or into the who and the why and the how. Until the right writer comes along.

I wish Stacey Waite a long and prolific writing career, a wide audience, and many more books.

Some of Waite’s poems are available for reading on the web:
http://mainstreetrag.com/S_Waite.html#anchor41939
http://www.poetserv.org/SRR6/waite.html
http://www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu/activities/ppp/current2.html

Friday afternoon, poet Stacey Waite will read at the University of Pittsburgh from her second book of poetry, "Love Poem to Androgyny." Stacey is a native of Brooklyn who has lived in Pittsburgh for eight years now. Her work has one of the strongest, most contemporary voices I've read in an emerging poet in some time.

Read Stacey's poem, "Dear Gender":
http://www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu/activities/ppp/current2.html

Friday, November 17; 4:00-5:30pm; 501 Cathedral of Learning, corner of 5th Avenue and Bigelow, Oakland. Stacey Waite reads from her new collection of poems, "Love Poem to Androgyny"(Winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Competition). Reception and Book signing to follow.