Capstone Readings, Pendulum Launch, Guest Author Dave Newman -- All Next Week!

Warhol on Warhol: Some Quotes to Ponder

Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody.
Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.
from "What Is Pop Art?" Art News, November 1963

**********

From: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again) (1975) ISBN 978-0156717205

* The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet.
o Ch. 4 : Beauty, p. 71

* I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of "work" because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.
o Ch. 6 : Work

* What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it...........
o Ch. 6 : Work, p. 100

* They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
o Ch. 7 : Time, p. 113


(Photo: Andy Warhol and Tennessee Williams talking on the S.S. France, 1967, World Journal Tribune Photo by James Kavallines.)

Finals Checklist for Travel Writing

Your final requirement for our class is a portfolio. Your portfolio should include the writing you've done about our travels. As a reminder, you'll have one piece for each of the following experiences:

* The Max Vanka Murals in Millvale
* Pittsburgh's City of Asylum and the Northside/Randyland
* Pittsburgh's Strip District and Wholey's Fish Market
* Back to the Source: Judith Vollmer's Level Green and the Turtle Creek Watershed
* Andy Warhol's Pittsburgh
* The Writers Festival

Please polish each piece, revising with attention to things like audience and possible publication/markets, and compile them in a binder or folder. Please also include your Travel Journal as part of your portfolio (you may type your entries, if that's easier).

In addition to your individual pieces, please write a one-page, single-spaced statement about the effect the trips this term had on your personally and on your writing. (This is assuming they've had some effect. If they didn't affect you, write about that and why.) Consider things like which trip was the most important to you, which offered you the most opportunity for insight/reflection, which resonated with your own experiences and which were completely outside of your experiences, and more.

In order to receive an A, your portfolios must be complete, professional, and show the kind of luminous insights you've seen in the other travel writing we've covered this term.

The deadline for all materials is 5 p.m. on Friday, April 30. There will be a drop box outside of my office.

If you'd like to meet in conference before or during finals week, please let me know. I'm available on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. and then after 5:30 p.m.

Happy revising/revisiting your journeys!

More Warhol, As You Like It

Visit Moon Travel Guides' site for a complete Warhol tour -- including stops at Schenley High School, Carnegie Mellon University and more. http://www.moon.com/destinations/pittsburgh/discover-pittsburgh/explore-pittsburgh/tour-andy-warhol-s-pittsburgh

Googlism for Andy Warhol -- A Poem by Peter Oresick

(From Peter Oresick's book Warhol-o-Rama-- for details and to order, visit www.warholorama.com or www.amazon.com )


*****************************************
Googlism for Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is a dialect of Ukrainian
Andy Warhol is lost in my lava lamp
Andy Warhol is lurking at his own party like Gatsby
Andy Warhol is loathe to say how much he's raking in
Andy Warhol is appropriating images
Andy Warhol is the first chapter in an old American story
Andy Warhol is to culture what strip mining is to West Virginia
Andy Warhol is famous for creating the character Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol is slowly beginning to recall his past life
Andy Warhol is short on words

Andy Warhol is Pope of Pop
Andy Warhol is expressing his fascination with capitalist commodity fetishism with wit and camp good humor
Andy Warhol is too nice a man to be president
Andy Warhol is a chip off the old Dada
Andy Warhol is the Bill of Rights for inanimate objects
Andy Warhol is a painter whose works do not call for interpretation
Andy Warhol is pronounced clinically dead
Andy Warhol is one of many American celebrities at Tokyo Wax Museum
Andy Warhol is seduced by the idea he could have a soul of his own
Andy Warhol is Art minus the art

Andy Warhol is New York City's smallest borough
Andy Warhol is just one example of how a star is born
Andy Warhol is deviating from slavish copying of inherited Byzantine forms
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60
Andy Warhol is based on a true story set mainly in the '60s
Andy Warhol is a spunky teenager who with pal Philip Pearlstein sets out to find
Andy Warhol is offering rebates when you purchase any 5 cans of Campbell's Soup
Andy Warhol is not responsible for the actions of third parties
Andy Warhol is one of our private jokes—shorthand to goof on obsessive behavior
Andy Warhol is the lunatic with only one idea

Andy Warhol is the Carpathians' highest peak at 2,061 m
Andy Warhol is where the peasants truly believe in vampires
Andy Warhol is Napoleon in rags in Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"
Andy Warhol is a robot yet puts his painterly mark on his mechanical process
Andy Warhol is true to ambiguity
Andy Warhol is almost certainly why I always wanted to be in show business
Andy Warhol is the international gesture for *%&#!
Andy Warhol is suppressing the personal in a marathon essay on boredom
Andy Warhol is a swell costume for theme parties and masquerade
Andy Warhol is asking me to take him home

Andy Warhol is as good as the genre gets
Andy Warhol is prince among the dead celebrity moneymakers
Andy Warhol is available for sale or resale to any and all
Andy Warhol is a blue-collar town of steel mills & rabid football fans
Andy Warhol is just another weird manifestation of the American mania to absorb all into the soft, pulpy wad of pop culture
Andy Warhol is having a near-life experience
Andy Warhol is reality's mirror so try drawing something banal
Andy Warhol is a sphinx without a riddle
Andy Warhol is played in blond by the dead funny Tony Curtis
Andy Warhol is a rich subject to talk about

Andy Warhol is struck by lightning up to 50 times each year
Andy Warhol is my guardian angel severely tweaked
Andy Warhol is the cradle of these folk tales
Andy Warhol is a lovely dog but he is just not himself these days
Andy Warhol is bound to give assent to all that the Church teaches
Andy Warhol is beyond amazing, as is his wife Jan
Andy Warhol is a Slavic racial type from Pittsburgh
Andy Warhol is an exception to that rule
Andy Warhol is full of surprises for the uninitiated
Andy Warhol is making you dreamy

Andy Warhol is not often recognized as a key asset to Washington
Andy Warhol is canoodling with Capote in a corner banquette
Andy Warhol is to Norman Rockwell what Judas is to Jesus
Andy Warhol is boy king of mythic Ruthenia
Andy Warhol is the beneficiary of some seriously low expectations
Andy Warhol is owned and ultimately managed by its shareholders
Andy Warhol is a hammer—everything's a nail to him
Andy Warhol is just one of many stars to leave hand and footprints in cement
Andy Warhol is more is better
Andy Warhol is a hoot as an Asian

Andy Warhol is the idea of the collapse of grand narratives
Andy Warhol is the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela
Andy Warhol is tomato-soup-can-boy in I Shot Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol is uncapping an ad blitz for loyal ketchup customers to pour out
Andy Warhol is vivid in its historical reality but forces yawns
Andy Warhol is an idiot savant well I don't know about the savant part
Andy Warhol is voluptuously amusing as a girl on a husband hunt
Andy Warhol is most often explained by the masochism of diva worship
Andy Warhol is famously famous for being famous

Andy Warhol is the vapor trail of the American experience
Andy Warhol is the hub of East Slovakia & Transcarpathian Ukraine
Andy Warhol is viewed as something of a spent force in certain circles
Andy Warhol is a sucker for Sandra Dee in Tammy Tell Me True
Andy Warhol is one of the more profitable purveyors of distraction owned by media goliath Viacom
Andy Warhol is dramatized in all his brilliance on this quartz movement wall clock
Andy Warhol is within a day's drive of half of the United States
Andy Warhol is why the terrorists hate us
Andy Warhol is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without consent
Andy Warhol is a way of thinking that so far has eluded precise definition

Andy Warhol is no soup can
Andy Warhol is never mentioned in scripture
Andy Warhol is not enjoying a post-game beer and masculine camaraderie
Andy Warhol is ignoring what they write just measuring it in inches
Andy Warhol is a major player in minor things
Andy Warhol is one of many artists we can deliver at a discount
Andy Warhol is more American Dream than historical figure
Andy Warhol is an optimist—he believes that citizens, given equal opportunity, earn the right to fame
Andy Warhol is one of those people in my life I would love to give something back to
Andy Warhol is a hospital where the beds must remain empty

Andy Warhol is the only reason anyone heard of them in the first place
Andy Warhol is not going to be at the party

Warhol and the Vision of Pop Art

Our travels this week will take us to the roots of one of Pittsburgh's most famous sons. We'll trace Andy Warhol's life in three stops. The first will take us to Paul Warhola Scrap Metals on Pittsburgh's North Side, where Andy's nephew Marty Warhola (that's him, left) offers his own art amid the backdrop of a salvage yard. (For background, here's a recent story about Marty and his art: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/s_675497.html.) Then it's on to the Warhol Museum, where we'll get up close with Andy's own work and vision. Be sure to bring your Pitt I.D. with you -- admission is free with i.d. After the museum, we'll cross the Andy Warhol Bridge and swing by Andy's childhood home -- 3252 Dawson Street in South Oakland, a rowhouse with a green and white striped awning and a collection of hedges. The Warholas were a family of especially modest means — Andy’s father Andrei toiled as a construction worker during the Depression and was often without gainful employment. We'll talk a bit about how Andy's working-class Pittsburgh background may have played out in his art. And we'll read some poems by Pittsburgh's own Peter Oresick, whose latest book Warhol-o-rama, will bring all this home.

Ideas for writing:

How does your own background play out in your writing, in your life? Where do you connect with Warhol, and where do you feel distance? What class do you consider yourself to be -- working, middle, upper, none of the above? How do class issues affect the way you see the world? How conscious are you of your place in the world? Where does beauty fit into your life?

Travel Class Schedule for the Next Two Weeks

Hi Everyone -- Hope you all had a lovely (and inspiring) break!

Please e-mail me your Susan Orlean-inspired pieces by 5 p.m. on Friday. Due to next week's Writer's Festival, we won't meet in class this Saturday, March 20, but I will send you comments on your pieces via e-mail.

Instead of meeting in class, I ask that you read Stern's New and Selected Poems and attend the festival events next week.

The schedule again is:
* Monday, March 22 -- Faculty/alumni reading/festival kick-off, 7 p.m.
* Tuesday, March 23 -- Fiction writer/poet Kim Chinquee, craft talk at noon and reading at 7 p.m.
* Wednesday, March 24 -- Fiction writer Sherrie Flick, reading at 7 p.m.
* Thursday, March 25 -- Poets Gerry Stern and Anne Marie Macari, reading at 7 p.m.
* Friday, March 26 -- Fiction writer/poet Joseph Bathanti, craft talk at noon and reading at 7 p.m.

All events are free and open to the public. All events are in the Village Hall Coffeehouse. Village credit is available.

In order to receive a passing Participation grade for the week, you must attend at least two events. More is much better. Please be sure that one of those events is Stern's reading on Thursday, since we're reading his book for class. Sign-up sheets will be available at all events.

Your writing assignment for the week will be to write about one of the festival events. Approach it as a travel writing piece. This is an annual event, so keep that in mind as you write.

Let's plan to meet in class on Saturday, March 27. Pending his health, we may have a Pittsburgh tour with Gerry Stern. If that doesn't work, we'll visit the Carnegie Museums as a back-up.

Assignment: Wholey's Via Susan Orlean

Using Susan Orlean's "All Mixed Up" (p. 55 in MY KIND OF PLACE) as a model, write a piece about your tour of Wholey's and The Strip. Length: Approx. 4 pages. Due next class. Make copies to share.

This Weekend in Travel: Back to the Strip

Hi Everyone -- This weekend, we'll hope for no snow and plan a make-up visit to the Strip District. Please review all the previous posts on this site and in the Toker book. We'll also discuss Susan Orlean's book and how it relates to the art of finding a story everywhere.

Our tour of Wholey's begins at 1:30 p.m. We'll meet in class for workshop and lecture, then leave campus by 12:45 or earlier.

Please remember to post your blog addresses. Also, review the schedule for the Writers Festival. Two of our class members -- Liz and Joy -- will be reading during the festival, so be sure to come out and cheer them on.

National Book Award Winner Gerald Stern Headlines Writers Festival March 22-26

(Please note: As part of your class requirements, plan to attend at least two Writers Festival events. More is always better!)

Poet and Essayist Gerald Stern, winner of the National Book Award, headlines this year’s Writers Festival at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg.

The week-long festival begins Monday, March 22 and continues through Friday, March 26. The festival features readings, lectures and book signings from nationally known poets and writers. All events will be in the Village Hall Coffeehouse and are free and open to the public.

Stern, the author of sixteen poetry collections and a memoir, reads at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 25 with poet Anne Marie Macari.

The full festival schedules kicks off with a reading from Pitt-Greensburg faculty authors and alumni on Monday, March 22 at 7 p.m. Faculty authors include Judith Vollmer, Stephen Murabito, Richard Blevins and Lori Jakiela. Alumni readers for Monday’s event include Tim Gebadlo, Shane Duschack, Meghan Tutolo, Joseph Reed and Adam Matcho.

On Tuesday, Kim Chinquee, fiction writer and prose poet, will give a craft lecture at noon and a reading/book signing at 7 p.m. Chinquee is the author of two books of fictions/prose poems – Oh Baby (Ravenna Press) and Pretty (White Pine Press). Opening readers will be Kelly Scarff and Joy Pinkney.

On Wednesday, Sherrie Flick, author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness (University of Nebraska Press) and a flash-fiction collection I Call This Flirting (Flume Press), will read at 7 p.m. Opening readers will be Brian Cummins and Ashleigh Chicko.

Thursday features Stern and poet Anne Marie Macari. Stern is the author of 16 poetry collections and a memoir. In addition to the National Book Award, he’s received the National Jewish Book Award, The Ruth Lilly Prize and the Wallace Stevens Award. Macari is the author of three poetry collections, most recently She Heads Into the Wilderness (Autumn House Press). Opening readers will be Liz Russell and Jeff Sharon. They’ll read at 7 p.m.

The festival wraps up on Friday with Joseph Bathanti, who will give a craft talk at noon and a reading at 7 p.m. Bathanti is the author of 10 books of fiction, poetry and nonfiction. His latest is Restoring Sacred Art (poems from Star Cloud Press). Opening reader will be David Humbertson.

The Writers Festival is supported by funds from Pitt-Greensburg’s Student Government Association, Office of Academic Affairs and The Humanities Villages. It’s co-sponsored by Pendulum, the campus’ twice-yearly student literary magazine; the Written/Spoken series; and the Pitt-Greensburg Writing Program. For more information, contact Lori Jakiela, associate professor of English and festival director, at 724-836-7481 or loj@pitt.edu.

Today in Travel Writing: Saturday, Feb. 20

Lecture: Travel Writing as a Career Part 1
Pre-Trip Discussion: Judith Vollmer's Reactor, AWP Chronicle interview
Workshop exercises 2-6

Trip to Turtle Creek Watershed, Trafford, Westinghouse

During today's trip, you'll do a modified version of exercise #12. Collect in your notebook: bits of dialogue; luminous details for development of scene and character; sensory descriptions; aha! moments.

At home: Do exercise #16 (present and past tense). Write one piece based on today's trip and bring for workshop during our next class. Set up your own travel blog (using Blogger/www.blogspot.com) and post your pieces, thoughts, notes. Send me your blog address and I'll link your blog to the class blog.

Read: Susan Orlean's My Kind of Place. Review Toker/Strip District.
Next trip: Strip District

Prosody Interview with Judith Vollmer

Be sure to listen to this interview with Judith Vollmer on WYEP's Prosody: http://radiotime.com/WebTuner.aspx?ProgramId=38935&TopicId=32169673& The interview features Vollmer reading new poems and discussing place, family, stories, voices, water and more. A wonderful way to prepare for this Saturday's class.

NPR Story Featuring Robert DiRinaldo, Master Shoemaker

For background on shoe (and more) repair and craftsmanship in America, check out this NPR story. It features Robert DiRinaldo of Trafford, PA, who we'll try to visit on Saturday. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4802146

Turtle Creek Watershed Facts

Watershed Facts from The Turtle Creek Watershed Association http://tcwa.org

* The term watershed has two definitions. For many years, “watershed” meant the dividing line boundary where a raindrop falling on one side went towards one body of water and a drop on the other flowed to a different body. For example, the Continental Divide is the line where precipitation on one side heads to the Pacific Ocean and on the other side to the Atlantic Ocean.

* More commonly nowadays, “watershed” is defined not just as that boundary, but as the area of land within it draining into a specified body of water – in our case into Turtle Creek.

* The Turtle Creek watershed is a part of the larger Monongahela River watershed, then the Ohio River watershed, and then the Mississippi River watershed.

* The Turtle Creek watershed starts at the eastern edges of Murrysville and Hempfield Township, the middle of Delmont, and the western edges of Salem and Washington Townships and Greensburg then moves downstream to the Edgar Thompson Works on the Monongahela River – a total of 147 square miles.

* The highest elevation in the watershed is 1,520.0 feet above sea level in Hempfield Township. The lowest is 718.8 feet where Turtle Creek enters the Monongahela River. Most high points of the watershed boundary are between 1,200 and 1,400 feet.

* Included in the watershed are all or parts of 33 communities in Allegheny and Westmoreland Counties.

* Turtle Creek has ten major tributaries for a combined total of 315 stream miles.

* For the purposes of study, our watershed is divided into fourteen sub-watershed units. Upper, Middle, and Lower Turtle Creek form three. Upper and Lower Brush Creek form two more. The other nine tributaries form the rest.

* Our two greatest economic, environmental, and health & safety problems come under the umbrella headings of Abandoned Mine Drainage (AMD) and Stormwater.

* AMD is formed when ground water, which was pumped out during active mine operations, pools in abandoned mine tunnels or when precipitation flows through mine spoil piles. Mine-related materials, such as pyrite (an iron and sulfur compound formed at similar geologic times to coal), dissolve in the water.

* The only two sub-watershed units unaffected by AMD are Haymaker Run and Steels Run.

* Excessive stormwater runoff is the source of numerous problems including: combined sewer overflows, drinking water source contamination, erosion, flooding, habitat destruction, lowered water tables, sanitary sewer overflows, sedimentation, and streambank destabilization.

All parts of the watershed are impacted by excess stormwater runoff problems.

Historical Footage: Trafford Westinghouse Plant

If you're interested in the kinds of work that used to be done at the Trafford Westinghouse Plant, you can find historical video footage at The Open Video Project here: http://www.open-video.org/details.php?videoid=4718 (This particular film, Tapping the Furnace, was shot in Trafford in 1904 and shows, even in black-and-white/silent footage, how dangerous steelwork would have been.)

Backgrounding: The Turtle Creek Watershed Association

Find out more about the Turtle Creek Watershed reclamation here: http://tcwa.org/B/index.htm

This Saturday's Trip: Judith Vollmer Gives Us a Tour of Lost, Ruined, and Reclaimed Spaces

This Saturday, we'll be with Judith Vollmer, whose book Reactor has given you a preview of the kinds of spaces we'll be inhabiting on this trip. Please be sure you've read Reactor and have questions ready.

Also, be sure to wear warm clothes and boots. We'll be spending time in nature. I'll bring hot chocolate!

Our trip will feature these highlights, per Professor Vollmer's description:

"We will do a tour of the reclamation project of Brush Creek (aka Sulphur Creek) on the border between Level Green and Monroeville. It serves as an apt metaphorical site for damaged places that look, to the naked eye, otherwise innocuous, unlike the Sulfur Creek of the past.

"Interestingly, while children were swimming in Sulphur/Sulfur Creek, very high-level white-collar experiments in nuclear testing were being conducted at Monroeville Research and Development (my dad's later years w/Westinghouse). I'll talk about water
reclamation at Sulfur (now called Brush Creek and part of the Turtle Creek Watershed, an interesting contract to, say, the Sewickley Creek Watershed, the much cleaner water source that runs through UPG's Slate Run, for example).

"We will also visit the site of the Trafford plant, since both it and Sulfur Creek have been definitively linked to mesothelioma. I'll talk about low-level and high-level nuclear waste from there, with comments about how Pgh. area workers traveled around the country and into Western Europe to do refuel and repair, based on their experiences at places like Yukon. Those workers, because many of them were children of slaves of the coalfields, were considered to be fearless, I've come to conclude, the way our grandparents from Eastern Europe were sent into the mines because they too were fearless, would work for low wages, etc."

You might be able to link some of what we cover on this trip with what you saw in the Vanka murals.

Time-permitting, we will follow this trip with a visit to Mr. DiRinaldo, one of the last master shoemakers in the country, and stop by Sherm Edwards, a family-run chocolate shop and the birthplace of the chocolate-covered pickle.

Writing Awards Deadline Extended to Thursday, Feb. 18

If you'd like to enter work in the 2010 Writing Awards Competition, you have until Thursday, Feb. 18 at 5 p.m. to submit. See full guidelines on the earlier post. (Remember -- you have to play to win. Prizes are $100 + fame. And, in the event of blizzard, $100 will buy a lot of milk and toilet paper.)

UPG Writing Awards: Deadline is Valentine's Day

Love words more than overpriced roses? Could use $100 to cover that Valentine's Day dinner? Then don't forget to enter UPG's 2009-10 Writing Awards competition.

UPG Writing majors can enter in one category -- creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, or journalism. Here are the quick guidelines:

* Enter 3-5 poems OR 1-2 pieces of creative nonfiction, fiction or journalism. Be sure your name does not appear on your entries.
* Include a cover sheet with your name, full contact information, and the titles of your entries.
* Submit your entry to either Prof. Vollmer or Prof. Jakiela. You can also drop you entry at Prof. Jakiela's office (208 Powers Hall).
* Deadline is 5 p.m. Valentine's Day, Feb. 14 2010.

Entries will be judged anonymously. Awards will be given in all four categories. Prize is $100. For more information, see Prof. Jakiela, e-mail lljakiela@gmail.com, or call 724-836-7481.

Roses. Who needs 'em?

Interview with Franklin Toker on Saturday Light Brigade

Listen to this terrific interview with Franklin Toker about why and how he wrote Pittsburgh: A New Portrait. http://neighborhoodvoices.org/franklin-toker-previews-pittsburgh-a-new-portrait

Neighbors in The Strip

More pre-trip prep:

Visit Neighbors in the Strip (http://www.neighborsinthestrip.com/)-- the official website of the Strip District. You'll find more history, a walking tour, travel tips and more.

Strip Facts

Pittsburgh's Strip District has come a long way since its days of marauding gangs and election-day riots.

The Toker book gives extensive background, but here are some quick facts (for these and more, visit http://www.pittsburghneighborhoodtours.com/pr13/neighborhoods/default.asp?nHood=7: ):

# The Strip was home to a “Shantytown” during the Great Depression. Nearly 300 unemployed people lived in makeshift housing constructed from scrap lumber and other found materials.

# Heavy industry has also had a home in the Strip. Andrew Carnegie started his career in the Strip’s iron mills, George Westinghouse produced his revolutionary air brakes here, and the Pittsburgh Reduction Company (now ALCOA) began its commercial production of aluminum here.

# St. Patrick's, located at 17th Street and Liberty Avenue, is Pittsburgh's first Roman Catholic parish, established in 1808. St. Patrick's contains the famous Holy Stairs, representing the 28 steps between Christ and Pilate, replicated from the original Holy Stairs in Rome.

# The Strip District begins just across the street from the new David L. Lawrence Convention Center

# The Strip District is a special event on any given Saturday. Although it’s lively on any day of the week, Saturday is when the shopping district is humming with crowds—and a highly festive atmosphere.

# The Lisdoonvarna at Mullaney’s Harp & Fiddle is a matchmaking event based on Irish tradition. They claim great success at pairing happily married couples.

# The Strip District’s neighborhood roots were planted in 1814 as a plan of lots known as the “Northern Liberties of Pittsburgh.” The neighborhood’s location -- a flood plain along the banks of the Allegheny River -- made it ideally situated to become part of Pittsburgh’s growing industrial economy. By the 1820s and 30s, the neighborhood was home to iron mills, foundries, and glass factories -- as well as the immigrants who worked there. Polish, Irish, and German populations were the ethnicities with the strongest representation in this growing neighborhood.

# Although it has one of the smallest residential populations among city neighborhoods, many Pittsburghers associate the Strip with a taste of home. Shopping in the Strip is a way for many families to preserve their ethnic traditions through the purchasing and cooking of traditional foods.

# Pittsburghers come to this neighborhood to celebrate life and that festive spirit is palpable to those who visit as well. National Geographic sung the Strip's praises; Jane and Michael Stern feature several Strip District eateries on their Roadfood website and several airline travel magazines tout the Strip as a foodies paradise.

Wholey's: Since 1912

Stop by Wholey's online to learn more about its history before we visit on Saturday. http://www.wholey.com/aboutus.html

A Grammary Way to Start the Day: Repost from Asylum.com

5 Grammar Rules People Break Most

The English language is a tricky devil to wrap your head around sometimes. It's a hard language to learn for non-native speakers, and it has more irregularities than an old-folks home. With that in mind, we're here to help by giving you a handy guide for those nagging issues and confusing rules (or exceptions) that arise from time to time to help make sure you're using your language correctly.

Affect vs. Effect
What a silly pair of words. Will you be affected by the effect? Not if you're not sure what you're talking about. So here's a handy tip for remembering which is the verb and which is the noun:

Lady Gaga affects the brain stem, leading to bleeding ears and other painful effects.

Who vs. Whom
Smarty threw a party and no one came -- remember that. A lot of people toss "whom" about willy nilly because they think it makes them sound smart like Frasier, but there's a time and a place for all whoms, which we're not even sure can be pluralized. Anyway, you want "who" when it's the subject and "whom" when it's the object of the sentence.

Who kicked whom in the groin?

Why is this correct and the reverse not? Replace who with "he" and whom with "him" and if the sentence makes sense, then Bob's your uncle.

Which vs. That
Most people won't give you trouble for this as grammar rules have loosened over the years, but if you want to be a stickler, "that" is important and "which" is not. Which is to say "that" is for essential parts of the sentence which, if they were removed, would change its meaning (and no commas are needed). "Which," on the other hand, is for use in sentences that have extra, non-essential information added.

The thing that bit me was a zombie.

The bite, which later turned me into a zombie, was oozing pus.

Notice in the second sentence that you can remove the whole part about the zombie and still appreciate the pus-oozing bite. If you remove anything in the first sentence you lose all kinds of meaning.

Me vs. I
This is another case where often people want to sound smart and for some reason "I" sounds smarter than "me." Saying "Jerry watched me and Billy Joe eat fudge all afternoon" just seems wrong to some people, when in fact it's perfectly fine, although that much fudge is not healthy.

Basically, in order to figure this out, take out any reference to other people and see if the sentence makes sense.

Billy and I drank Thunderbird and he passed out on me in the dumpster.

"Me drank Thunderbird" and "passed out on I" just don't sound right, now do they?

Its vs. It's
This one seems easy but it sneaks in all the time, and the reason is because it's just weird. We're used to the possessive of any word ending in an apostrophe-s, so we want to use "it's" to mean that something belongs to it. Unfortunately, "it's" was stolen by the contraction for "it is" and we can't have two contractions that look the same but mean different things; all hell would break loose.

It's not our fault its apostrophe is missing.

Assignments: Week 2

In Lonely Planet Part 1, do exercises #2,3,4,5 and 6. Use our trip to the North Side or our trip to the Vanka murals as your subject/subjects.

Read: In Toker, The Strip District
In Lonely Planet -- Part II
Brian O'Neill's The Paris of Appalachia


Write: In the comments section of this blog post, please leave comments for Joy and Liz on their pieces from class. Your comments should focus on the elements of good travel writing as outlined in Part 1 of the Lonely Planet text. Comment on such things as voice, vividness of description, intimate recounting of place, accuracy, clarity, and more.

Complete the exercises above. Bring copies of your exercises to our next class.

North Side Trivia

* Historians proclaim that the Felix Brunot mansion on Stockton Avenue was once a station on the underground railway, where fugitive slaves from the South stopped for food and shelter.
* The first World Series was played at Exposition Park by the Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston (now known as the Boston Red Sox) in 1903.
* Charles Taze Russell organized what is now known as Jehovah's Witnesses at a house in the old city of Allegheny.
* The North Side has seven hills (Observatory, Monument, Troy, Spring, Seminary, Fineview, and Mt. Troy).
* Gus & Yia-Yia's Iceball Stand, selling fresh popcorn, peanuts, and old-fashioned iceballs (sort-of like a snow cone) hand-scraped from a block of ice, has been in West Park since 1934. The "orange concession stand with a brightly-colored umbrella" is something of an unofficial Pittsburgh landmark during the summer months.
* Mary Cassatt was born on Rebecca Street in 1844. Today Rebecca Street has become Reedsdale Street. If the house had not been torn down for Highway Route 65, it would be facing Heinz Field, the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
* The Allegheny regional branch of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, located at 5 Allegheny Square was the first tax-supported library in the United States. It is now closed to the public following a lightning strike. A new building is being planned at 1210 Federal Street.
* George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. lived in Pittsburgh's present North Side when he invented the Ferris wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in an attempt to create something as impressive as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France.

Randyland

See Diana Nelson Jones' great piece on Randy Gilson and Randyland here: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10016/1028575-51.stm

Then watch The Today Show's feature on Randy here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/34630224#34630224

The Mattress Factory

Find out more at www.mattress.org

The Mattress Factory is a museum of contemporary art
that exhibits room-sized works called installations. Created
on site by artists from across the country and around the
world, our unique exhibitions feature a variety of media that engage all of the senses.

The Museum's unusual galleries are located in two creatively reused buildings on Pittsburgh’s historic North Side. Both buildings house a growing-and distinctive- permanent collection, featuring
artists James Turrell, Yayoi Kusama, Winifred Lutz and Rolf Julius, as well as innovative exhibitions that change throughout the year.

Since 1977, the Mattress Factory has supported over 300 artists through our world-renowned residency program. Each year artists come to Pittsburgh, live at the museum, and create new work. During their time here, the museum supports them
completely while they experiment, take risks, and explore the
creative process.

Each exhibition is paired with a variety of engaging and
inventive educational programs including hands-on art projects,
workshops, lectures, and tours. The Mattress Factory
encourages all viewers, regardless of their background, to
discover connections between art, creativity and their
everyday lives.

Khet Mar at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh

From The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Exiled Burmese writer relishes 'respite from fear'

By Angela Disipio
POINT PARK NEWS SERVICE
Saturday, December 12, 2009

Although the colorful mural isn't finished and its writing is indecipherable to most Pittsburghers, the house on Sampsonia Way has helped transform a drab alley into a unique sanctuary for exiled writers.

Khet Mar, a fiction writer and journalist from Burma whose prose tells about the struggles of ordinary people, lives there. She is the third writer hosted by the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, a nonprofit organization that keeps three North Side houses for writers forced from their homelands under threat of death or imprisonment.

Mar wrote the short story painted on her house after coming to Pittsburgh in March. The words, in Burmese, recount her feelings when she arrived: "Although anxious in Pittsburgh, I look forward to a respite from fear and persecution."

Threatened with death in Burma, Mar said she and her family feel safer here.

"In Burma there is a military government," she said. "There is no clear-cut guidelines, no security. People get arrested for anything. ... Pittsburgh is great for me because I can live and write safely here."

According to Henry Reese, who co-founded City of Asylum/Pittsburgh with his wife, Diane Samuels, the "House Publications" project, in which each writer paints art on their North Side home, became a tradition after the arrival of the first writer.

Huang Xiang "celebrated his free speech by putting it on his home," Reese said. "It was the first time he spoke in public without being locked up."

The Sampsonia Way houses are one way the organization brings awareness to and engages people in the mission of protecting free speech. Primarily funded by individual donations, with some support from foundations, City of Asylum/Pittsburgh provides a furnished house, living expenses of about $30,000 a year and medical care, and legal or language support that a writer may need for up to two years.

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh began in 1997 after a talk Salman Rushdie gave in Pittsburgh about a program that offered refuge to exiled writers in Strasbourg.

"At one point during the speech, Diane kicked me and we thought this was something we could do," Reese said.

The couple and Schuyler Foerster, who this month stepped down as president of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, put together the grassroots plan.

"It's an example of civic leadership," Foerster said. "It wasn't set up by a university, not a town or a government. It was two common people, who happen to be uncommon, getting together and setting this up."

Program participants must comply with legal requirements necessary to live in the United States. The goal of the program, Reese said, is to help exiled writers get on their feet.

"We provide sanctuary for the writer to continue to write," Reese said. "We lose if these voices are silenced."

Supporters of the program said as long as the asylum-seekers are writing, even from thousands of miles away, their words have power in their countries through conduits such as the Internet and publications in expatriate communities.

Of the 10 or so cities Mar visited before joining the program, she said Pittsburgh was her favorite.

"It is beautiful and peaceful here," she said. "I especially like the people."

She intended to return to Burma but is thinking of making Pittsburgh her home.

Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization, ranked Burma the third worst country in terms of freedom of the press and conditions for journalists this year, behind Turkmenistan and North Korea.

"We always have to worry because police and soldiers can come to my home and can take me anytime," said Mar, who was a political prisoner in her homeland. Humanitarian work she did there increased the government's suspicion about her, she said.

"As a mother, I have to think about what is best for my sons, their education and their safety," Mar said. "It is very good to be here to write without fear of persecution, but I still need to think about (how) to avoid censorship, as I still want to print my stories in Burma."

City of Asylum

Reposted from Ode Magazine:

Homes away from home
Katy Rank Lev | October 2008 issue

Huang Xiang covered City of Asylum's poet's house with the verse that made him have to flee Chinese authorities.
Photo: Henry Reese
On Sampsonia Way, a street of monotonous row homes in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Writer’s House stands out. Wooden wings carved by sculptor Thaddeus Mosley seem to fly from the brick facade. A passage by Nobel Laureate and exiled Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka is etched above the door. “I DESTROYED time.” The words of Soyinka, who spent 22 months in prison for speaking out against his country’s civil war, remind passersby that the mind, even in the solitude of a jail cell, can overcome any barrier. That’s a comforting thought to the novelist who lives in the house, Horacio Castellanos Moya.
Moya fled his native El Salvador when death threats followed the publication of his 1997 book Revulsion, a retelling of the assassination of San Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero that sparked violence in El Salvador. After the country’s 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992, El Salvador was plagued by a gang crisis, abject poverty and a government with no policy to stop crime. Moya’s book annoyed the conservative ruling party, still partially aligned with the death squads of the civil-war crisis. So Moya went into exile after publishing the book, living in various countries until Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum offered him a safe, creative space to write.
The organization is part of Cities of Refuge North America, which helps persecuted writers by giving them the ability to write free from censorship. Moya is the second exiled writer to find a new home in Pittsburgh. City of Asylum co-founder and president, Henry Reese, got the idea for the inscription on Moya’s house from exiled Chinese poet Huang Xiang, who lives in the nearby Poet’s House. Huang covered the exterior walls with his own poetry, written in white Chinese characters, some six feet tall. It was the first time, Huang said, he could express himself without fearing imprisonment. A third home is in the works, and City of Asylum expects to welcome a new writer this winter. During the dedication ceremony for Moya’s house, local writers and musicians were asked to respond to the question, “What is home?” For Moya, the answer isn’t a fixed place but “a state of being in which you feel a kind of safety, and a good energy for doing your work.”

Welcome to UPG's Travel Writing Course

Our first trip will be to the Maxo Vanka murals in Millvale. Please be sure to research the murals in advance and bring along a notebook and a good pen. A camera is optional.
Your assignment for our next class meeting is as follows:

Using your travel notebook, your research and more, write about your visit to the murals. Bring a copy of what you’ve made to our class in two weeks.

Read: In Travel Writing (How To) – pp. 6-54 and “Las Vegas,” by Simon Calder
Read: Pittsburgh a New Portrait by Toker
Prepare: For our next trip to The North Side -- City of Asylum and The Mattress Factory. Research. Add any interesting findings to this blog site to share.