Dear Neighbor

Is this a face only a mother could love?  Apparently it comes with a voice that's not so lovable...

To My Anonymous Neighbor,

Whoever you may be, you are a coward.  I can't really say it any kinder than that.  So let me just tell you what your cowardice has cost me so far.  First of all, I had a policeman come to my door unexpectedly a few days ago.  Do you know the last time a uniformed official came to my door unexpectedly?  It was in the mountains of West Virginia in the early morning hours of June 21, 2009 to bring me the news that my daughter was dead.  So, chew on that for a moment and imagine what that moment was like for me.  You ass.

Notwithstanding the deep trauma he unleashed in me, he couldn't have been nicer, this bearer of bad news that I am being cited for being a public nuisance.  Or rather, I am being cited because my dog is the nuisance.  He proceeds to tell me, just as gently and politely as he could, that there was an "anonymous" complaint the night before about my dog barking.  He came over and indeed my collie Ripley was outside and she barked at him.  Of COURSE she did.  A strange man walks into my back yard and that's sort of what I expect my dog to do.  Apparently the whole time he was there, which he states was about 15 minutes (and isn't that irony for you:  I have no doubt she would not have been barking for 15 minutes straight had he not been baiting her by lurking around my house - hope you had fun listening to that).  I confess, I never heard her or him; I was watching the Pens game in the basement.  But, I've got to tell you, having a police officer come up to my door before the sun sets was traumatic enough, had I seen him lurking in my back yard, well, that would have been far worse.

But, here's the thing, I work from home, and I am home at night (unless I'm at a game, in which case Ripley is in).  She's not out for extended periods of time and not out but very rarely after 11 PM, so the fact that, as he tells it, police have been called about her several times really flummoxes me.  He admits that they've never been able to verify the complaint before that night when, it seems to me, she was entrapped.  I also could not get times and dates for those earlier complaints.  So, I'm left wondering when she's problematic and why.  Is it just because you're a hyper sensitive anti-dog individual who flinches every time she yips at all?  Or are you a day sleeper maybe and she's keeping you awake now that I was trying to let her have some freedom after a long, harsh winter?  She sleeps with me every night, so I know it's not because she's out in the middle of the night.  I know, I know:  all dogs owners think their dogs are angels and they never are bothered by their sounds, smells and behaviors, but I truly am not far from mine much of the time at all.  So therefore, here I sit, not really knowing what about her behavior troubles you to the point you'd like to see me hauled into court (because that's what is happening) like a common criminal and have to try and fight a $675.00 fine.  And I still won't know when I do go to court because you won't be there because you won't go on record as to who you are, and that is allowable by the township where I live apparently.

I would like to resolve the issue, not for your sake at this point and under these circumstances, but because I love my dog and don't want her to be at risk in any way.  I've been told I could risk losing her if the complaints keep coming.  I can tell you, whoever you are, that won't happen.

Had you come to me, I get that it would have been uncomfortable.  Not that I would have been mad at you under those circumstances, but I would have been embarrassed that you felt like you had to.  But, then I would have known what about her behavior upsets you, and I could have taken steps to fix it right away.  I could have baked you cookies, or brought over a bottle of wine as small recompense and followed-up to make sure she was doing better.  We could have opened up a dialog so I would know if she and I relapsed.  But, as it stands I ask you to consider that all you've done here is make me ashamed, embarrassed and extremely angry.  I look at everyone with suspicion now and wonder if that's the one who is so callous as to not face me.  I am uncomfortable and unhappy in my own home.  I don't let any of the dogs out without escorting them and they're confined indoors now except for brief little breaks, even though it's finally spring and I would like them to be able to enjoy the outdoors.  That's not fair to them, but the alternative of having to fight to even keep them isn't a risk worth taking.

I have made a sincere effort to be a good neighbor.  I shovel the walks and drives for the two widows next to me and take their newspapers to their doors when the weather's bad.  Even when I had the flu.  I try to clean up after the dogs, I try not to let them do their business on the lawns where I know people don't want them (I admit, that's not always been successful), I let people ask me what's wrong with my Penguins and laugh like it's not a painful question.  But my guess is, being only a flawed human with hurt feelings, I'll think twice before exerting myself to do any of that, and that's just sad.  I can also tell you, I'm not likely to turn the other cheek when the guy across the street decides to work on his motorcycle at 2 in the morning, or the couple next door have a drunken party that extends past midnight when I've got to get up at 6 the next morning.  Ideally, I would like to be gone from this neighborhood before any of that happens again, but I looked into that, I reacted that strongly to all of this, and economically I think we're stuck together for a couple more years, sort of like the original plan was.  Of course, then it was about getting me a kitchen larger than a postage stamp.  Now it'll be about putting my neighbors in my rear view mirror.  Again, which is sad, because it's not them collectively.  And before all this, my little family and I liked it here.  No, it's you.  Whoever "you" happens to be.

I would like to work past the anger, not for your sake, but because it's just a rot that does nothing but eat away at me.  So, I'll work on not hating you for my own sake.  I'll keep Ripley under lock and key for hers.  But, the fact remains, you are a coward, and I felt you should know what the price of that is.

Sincerely,

Your Neighbor

Because It's the Cup

I'm tired of talking about weighty subjects.  Primarily, I'm just tired.  It's taking most of my energy just to breathe, for one thing.  Whatever is wrong with me being still wrong with me, now with the addition of a rather alarming rash that has so far spared my face, but that's about it, which I assume is a side effect of one of the medications I'm taking.  But, what can one do?  Persevere, that's what.  But I'd love a break from the kinds of issues that I've been pondering lately and just relax, but there's something looming in the way.  Something that is causing me to lose sleep and become anxious.  Something that makes me want to crawl in a hole and hide for the next eight weeks.  It's the NHL playoffs.

Most hockey fans live for this time of the year.  But not me.  Truth be told, I hate the playoffs.  There's just way too much pressure in this town and on this team.  I have my own reasons why I desperately want the Pens to win - over and above just wanting them to do well and vicariously inflate my ego when they do because I can say I'm so wonderfully smart to have chosen such a winning team.  Those haven't changed since I wrote about them last year.  But, it's more than that.  It's this obscene level of expectation that we have around here and how nasty it can become when the team doesn't live up to the level the fans expect.

I get it to a degree.  We've got the greatest player on ice right now, backed up by the rest of the team that's loaded with talent.  We should dominate.  Or that's the prevailing thought anyway.  But, my point of view is that if it was so easy to win a professional sports championship, then everyone would have multiples of them.  It's not.  It's a lot of things combined:  talent, coaching, the opposing team, how healthy the team is, how tired they are (notably in an Olympic year), and a little bit of luck.  Hockey is a streaky sport.  We all know that.  You get hot in the playoffs and sometimes it's you raising the cup when no one else expected it.  Ask the Kings.  Sometimes your luck runs out and you fizzle when you're expected to go deep.  Ask the President's Trophy Capitals from the 2009/2010 season.  But I know the potential is there for the Penguins every year, and I've been as guilty as anybody in expecting too much.  I turned to my husband at one point during the season two years ago and actually said out loud, "You might as well hand us the Cup right now."  He just looked at me.  I assume his thought at the time was along the lines of, "Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I've thought that about the Cowboys and the playoffs since 1995."  Then the Flyers happened and we were out in six ugly games in the first round.

Then Boston happened last year.  It was heartbreaking, true, but you'd have thought the team lost to a bunch of 80-year old widows, not a highly elite hockey club, who actually are the odds on favorite to win the Cup this year.  I was painfully disappointed, I'm not going to deny it.  Many, however, were just plain mad.  They wanted heads to roll.  They didn't.  So, this year the verbal and written vitriol started early.  The Pens have been up and down since the Olympic break and every rough outing - heck, every rough period - brought out the boo birds.  Fire Blysma.  Trade Fleury.  This is the worst Penguins team ever (and even I know that's so far from the truth as to be patently absurd).  And so on.  I think the only player I didn't see attached to a negative Tweet is Sidney Crosby, and that's probably just because anyone inclined to write one knows the rest of us would hunt them down and force them to take it back.

It's the maternal instinct in me, I'm sure, but I hate all of that negativity with a passion.  It's hurtful on an oddly personal level.  I like my team.  They've given me so much joy that I feel protective of them.  More to the point:  I don't want them to be so psyched out on the pressure of the expectations that their heads do a number on them that the opposing team cannot.  I want them focused.  I want them relaxed.  I want them ready.  And I want us to support them.  But as it is I'm as nervous as a cat in a dog pound.  My nails are all chewed down to nothing.  My muscles are tense.  I am no in way looking forward to this.  And that's not the way it's supposed to be.  It's supposed a time of celebration and excitement.

So, here's what I want all of us to do:  I want us to realize this is our city, this is our team.  Come what may.  If the Penguins lose, on the morning after, we will still get up like we always do.  The sun will rise like it always does.  Our day will go on.  Our families will love us; we will love them. Or not.  As the case may be for some of us.  We will have joys, we will have sorrows.  Our lives will proceed.  As scheduled.  This will not end us.  So, let's relax, all of us, and let's go out there and support our team.

 Because it's the Cup, dammit!

Day Trippin'

http://cfbarchitects.com/

Finally.  I could log out for the weekend.  Wow, what a long week.  I remember the days twenty years ago when Friday night meant being in the office until midnight at the earliest, but now, at 7:30 PM, I felt sort of worn down like a stubby pencil ready for the trash.  I don't know if it's the age or the mileage, or if it's just because I don't want to do the 80-plus hour weeks anymore so my mind won't let me go there anymore, even if my body could.  Those long hours cost me too much all those years ago and I'm done paying.  But this week's been a little more arduous than most, so that final logout seemed like an especially long time coming.  For one thing, I'm battling sinusitis and something with a complicated name that I was too busy coughing to catch that is essentially like asthma, but not asthma.  Whatever it's called, it scared me enough to cause me to go to the doctor for the first time in 14 years, and that took a lot.  And that's all on top of the whirlwind trip my daughter and I took to Harrisburg that stirred up old memories all for a cause that I'm not sure we did much to help win.  But, we did it and we were the only two from the whole entire western part of the state who did, so bully for us.  But, now, come Friday night, there wasn't much left in my tank, so I could do one of two things:  sit here and tell you about it or fold the laundry I washed a week ago.  Guess what I opted for?

But first I have to set the stage for the Legislative Action Day by taking you all the way back to the previous Tuesday.  There was so much stuff floating in the air during the day that I actually had a moment when I thought it was snowing.  It wasn't, it was actually a rather pleasant spring day, hovering in the 50's.  So it was cool and a little crisp when Marissa and I went to our first baseball game of the season and sat out in the coolish air breathing in whatever that was floating around for the next five hours.  By Wednesday, I was struggling a bit to breathe.  By Thursday, I wondered if I was getting sick.  By Friday, I had stopped wondering.  By Saturday, I wondered just how sick I was, and by Sunday, when we had tickets again, I was really hurting.   Come Monday, every ounce of me hurt, I was cold, tired, achy, and exhausted constantly because I couldn't really get my breath.  Ever.  Walking up my stairs had become an arduous experience.

The game plan was I would get up Tuesday morning at 5:00 AM, get ready for the trip to Harrisburg, pick Marissa up at 6:30 when she got off work and we'd take off from there.  I slept straight through the alarm until the regular 6:00 AM alarm.  Yikes!!  I had a half hour to shower, do my hair, make-up, take care of the dogs, cats and pull all my stuff together.  All while running a fever and not able to breathe.  Believe it or not, I did it in 35 minutes.  All of that.  But it's a good thing I didn't see a photo of myself until the next day or I would  have had a meltdown of some kind.  I did NOT look good.  So, there I was, advocating for the most important thing I can think to advocate for and looking like I could barely dress myself.  It's no wonder we weren't swaying our audiences like I thought we might.  But, anyway, we had a tight window to get to our first meeting, which was with my local representative, Hal English, so running late at all was not a good thing, and we're women so there's no way we were going to make a 3 and a half hour drive without a rest stop.  We had to have two.  Therefore, by the time we pulled up to the massive capitol complex, it was pretty much time for our first meeting.  I threw the car in a space on the street, fed the meter, and we hustled up the very long, long walk to the very long stairs to the front of the building, all the while my lungs refusing to cooperate and let in air.  I can't even imagine what poor Marissa must have felt like, after finishing up an eight hour overnight shift all on her feet and now hustling along with me on no sleep at all.  What a pair we must have looked as we burst into that mad, bustling building, which is really a gilded city within a city.  But we were there.  Which is more than I can say for Representative English, who was late to the meeting.  And the other team members who were supposed to be with us who never showed up at all. In fairness, he was caught at another event, where he had a photo op, I'm sure, and he gave us a fair amount of time to make our case, even though we could tell we weren't convincing him about the importance of the legislation we were there to pitch.  And what was that, you ask?

We had put ourselves through all of that for HB1959 and SB 1248, concurrent bills pertaining to the dissemination of materials to Pennsylvania parents annually from the school districts about eating disorders.  The bills also allow for guidelines to be developed for screenings and staff education.  That's a harder row to hoe in a state like this one, but they are optional, so they should not be large roadblocks to passage of something both so simple and inexpensive, yet so important.  Yet, as we went through the day, meeting with various staffers of various legislators from various parts of the state, it was easy to see that not everyone sees it with quite the same clarity as we seem to.  We touched some people, that was clear.  Others were barely polite, merely taking the meeting because we are voters and it's part of the gig.  In the meantime, the massive building was literally alive with all manner of other groups, lobbyists, school kids, staff and politicians.  It's a crazy quilt of humanity all vying for attention under the silent watchful eyes of beautiful art and statutes.  I can imagine it's hard to filter all that out to focus on the things that are truly important to your voters, when sometimes they don't even know what that it themselves.

And I also get why it's hard to make your voice heard above the din:  it's hard to get there.  The only way to drive it is on the tollway.  Forty-five dollars in tolls, thank you very much.  I looked at the train, but the times weren't right.  If I go there again, that's the way to do it, I've decided though.  But flying is out.  I looked at a little hopper and the cheapest flight I found was literally $875.00, and would have taken three times longer than driving.  Free access to our government is not free it would seem.

If I can do all of that as sick as I was and Marissa could do all of that as tired as she was, it should tell you it's important, so take a moment to write your local representative and tell them to please add their support.  Contact me if you need to know why.  Or just consider what we lost that made us willing to take such a hard road to try and see it through.

Living with Our Ghosts (or how Pittsburgh Saved Me)

I declared myself "cured" (for lack of a better word) not long ago and decided to make a break from the long established blog I had been writing about the journey of grief recovery and began this one to try and finally take myself in a new direction.  But, it didn't take long before some of the same old issues tugged on my heart strings, so after considering for a day or two, I figured I might as well get them out there and discuss them because trying to focus on the beginning of baseball season or hockey playoffs just seemed sort of hollow in comparison.  And that's all fine.  No one's life is sunshine and butterflies all the time (particularly right now - there has been slim to none in the way of sunshine in the area for days).  For me, a couple of events collided to create my current state of mind, which really is not helped by the dreary and rainy spring weather.  First, I tripped across an old blog post I wrote on the day I buried my mother, on April Fool's Day exactly four years ago.  And, second, I'm trying to do some homework on eating disorders so we can travel over to Harrisburg early next week in support of legislation pertaining to educational material for the disease.  It's brought back all the early years for us when I was fighting with my kids' school as first one, then the other of them became ill.

I remember so well when I wrote the blog post a few hours after burying my mom.  I was sitting in the lobby of our hotel, curled up in a overstuffed chair next to the large picture window with a cup of coffee from the quaint little coffee shop adjacent to the lobby while my daughter slept upstairs.  My relatives had invited us to have dinner with them, but Marissa begged off.  We were just both so tired, I think.  This was the first quiet moment we'd had in ten years.  Finally, no elderly mother with Alzheimer's and a myriad of other issues to care for.  No older sister struggling with an eating disorder and raging at the world because it wouldn't set her free because she had died just a few months before.  She had finally finding a way to get the disease to let her go.  Marissa had fought her own demons, and would have a few more battles to face before she was done, but she was recovering from her own eating disorder and cross addictions.  We were battle weary.  There really was no other way to describe it.

Fast forward four years and our lives are very different.  My daughter is a college graduate, sober and recovered from her eating disorder.  We volunteer for OFA, we go to hockey games and have a baseball ticket package.  We go to Steelers games when we can, but watch the rest from our sports cave in my little post war cottage less than 10 miles from the stadium.  There is the zoo, and the symphony, the ballet, theater and museums.  There are arts fairs and quaint little shops along the Strip.  There is so much to do and see here, that it was just too hard to continue to stay curled up in a chair next to a window and watching the world go by.  We've learned, in short, to live again.   Our problem these days is that there is more to do than there is time (and sometimes money).  Many of my friends were dubious when we chose to move, warning me that we couldn't run from our problems.  That is true.  I can tell you that all the ghosts that live within our memories just move along with you, but Pittsburgh (despite our radon mitigation device downstairs) was like a breath of fresh air.  I am just so grateful to be here that, for once, good words fail me.

The thing I've been thinking about over the last few days, as a result of all this soul searching, is that we never forget the ones we lost, but it serves no one and nothing to stop living as a result.  Kelsey never got to see Pittsburgh, but I've often thought she would have loved it here.  Rather than feeling a crushing guilt over that, I can only try and carry her in my heart wherever I go and whatever I do.  And we can try to honor her memory by risking the stirring up of old memories  in support of a first small step in eating disorder awareness in the state.  My first small step toward trying to pay back what we've been given.  More to come.

The Steel City Legacy

Steel Mill at Work
http://www.prweb.com/

I received an email a couple of weeks back from someone I didn't know with the subject line Your Blog.  She was asking if I would use my forum here to help spread the word about mesothelioma, a form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.  I hesitated, didn't reply, but didn't delete the email either.  Because, I thought to myself at the time, I have a lot of causes that are important to me that I have touted over the years:  animal rights, women's issues, addiction and mental health issues and, of course, eating disorder awareness, because that's the one that ripped through my family like a buzz saw.  But, really, because of those very weighty issues, I started this blog to be a little more upbeat and give myself a separation from all of that, if I'm just being totally honest.  Plus, this is a new venture and my readership is tiny, I'm not sure what I could bring to the table for any cause right now anyway.  Besides, I can't spell mesothelioma without looking it up, and my tongue ties around it.  I thought to myself initially that if I can't even pronounce it, how can I advocate against it?  Yet, as we were at the St. Patrick's Day parade, and I glanced back at my daughter's boyfriend, engaged in an emotional conversation with his cousin, both life-long Pittsburghers, I realized that it is part of my world now, because these are my people and this disease is a large part of their world.

The reason the conversation between the two cousins was so emotional was because the boyfriend's uncle is in the late stages of the cancer.  He was in the hospital at the time and the odds were he was not going to be coming back home (he since has shown some improvement, I'm told, and actually is home at the moment).  That's hard for the family because Boyfriend's father passed away from the same disease only a couple of years before.  Boyfriend is still deeply mourning his dad, whom neither my daughter nor I ever met.  Facing his uncle's cancer is a really heart-wrenching struggle for him so soon after watching his father succumb to it.  The thing is:  Boyfriend's father worked in the steel mills.  Asbestos was used routinely to protect the workers and equipment from the high heat of the liquid steel. His uncle never even worked in the mills, but their father before them did.  And that's where he was exposed to it.  All those workers brought asbestos dust home on their clothing every night.  It coated their washing machines, their showers, anyplace or anyone they touched.  The boys were breathing it in every time they greeted their dad with a big hug at the door.  Boyfriend (he prefers we not use his name), in addition to mourning two men he loves who seem to have been doomed since childhood, has the shadow of doubt about his own fate as well because he also ran up to his dad every night as he came home from a long shift and hugged him.  He's breathed it in as well.

And that's just part of the legacy of steel in this area.  You may not realize it if you've never been here, but this town helped build your town by providing the steel for your buildings and infrastructure.  It helped win the wars that have kept us free with the steel for ships, tanks, planes and more.  This is a proud city with a proud history.  But it's a complicated one.  The thing I didn't tell you when I outlined why it was I moved here was why I didn't move here in the first place.  There are a couple of reasons:  a rebellious teenage desire to really piss my parents off by moving to Texas with my best friend, whom they didn't like, but also the memory of a morning several years before when we drove into the Pittsburgh metro area from the surrounding area where my aunt lived.  It was a beautiful morning in the rolling hills outside of the city.  The sun was rising in a crystal blue sky, tainting the clouds with pinks and yellows, the hills were green and lush, and then it was like a curtain fell as we neared the city.  It went black.  Literally.  You could see the blinking lights on the steel mill towers cutting through the darkness, but not much more.  I was just a girl, so I've often wondered what highway we were driving along, but I remember one of the rivers, so maybe Route 28?  I don't know, but hitting that sudden wall of air pollution left an impression on me.  A deep one.  And, as much as I loved the Steelers for all my life, I wasn't really looking forward to living in that level of dirt and grit to be near them.   Can you imagine what it was like living and working in that every day?

Coke mill in Hazelwood about the time of my Pittsburgh experience, but after the Clean Air Act of 1970

 That’s not the town we live in today.  Pittsburgh has reinvented itself and done wonders to clean itself up in a relatively short amount of time given where it came from.  As I look outside now, I see the blue of the sky, only marred by white wispy clouds floating by, and the green of the fir trees in my neighbor’s yard.  But downstairs I have a radon mitigation device quietly whirring away.  I didn’t even know what radon was until I started the process to buy this little house and the inspection showed a high level of it.  I’ve never before been in the “sensitive” groups to have to worry about air quality alerts, having only smoked once in my life, fueled by two Long Island ice teas (whereupon I went home and threw up in the bathroom sink and that was the end of my smoking and drinking that particular beverage), but I’m painfully aware of bad air quality days here because I struggle to breath on those days and climbing the stairs to my office is painful.  Steel is no longer the leading employer in the area, but its effects stay with us.  And so, I look at a young man who walks around not knowing what time bomb might be ticking away of inside of him just because he loved his dad so much he hugged him every night, and I think I should indeed ask that people be aware of mesothelioma.  And so, tipping my hat to the beautiful young woman who emailed and made me think about this, here is the link to her website:  http://www.mesothelioma.com/heather.  You may be surprised at some of the information she has on there.  I was.  She was asking now because next week is Mesothelioma Awareness Week and as she stated in her email, awareness may help save lives.  Maybe even yours.

 University of Pittsburgh Archives above, circa 1950

and my archives below, circa 2012

Sticks, Stones and Little Tweets

Rashard Mendenhall
Huffington Post

In my old blog, I would often begin my posts centered around sports by saying, "This one's not really about sports."  In this case, I'm not sure what this one is about.  Whether it's sports, the power and psychology of social media, or just that people can be real jerks if they think there are no consequences.  Maybe all of the above.  But, whatever it truly is about, I believe social media is at the heart of it.  And I'm not sure if I'm damning it or in awe of it.  Maybe you decide.

As you may have gathered, I love the people here.  They have a unique way about them.  It's a mix of extreme bluntness and kind heartedness.  You'd think the two don't go together, but, oddly, they do.  At first it was off-putting: having someone tell you exactly what they thought in such a forthright manner.  I thought of myself as a straight shooter for the most part, but I didn't lay it out there anywhere close to how Pittsburghers seem to.  But, at the same time, they generally seemed to mean it well.  That was confusing at first.  Finally, I just kind of got it:  this is a town built on the backs of hard workers who didn't have time for word games and intrigue, so they say what they mean and mean what they say.  But at the same time, they seem genuinely kind.  They just want you to know if you're doing something dumb, because that's really what's best for you.  And, trust me, at first I was doing lots of dumb stuff.  Of course, that's a gross generalization of a diverse population, but I've seen it over and over.  And it wasn't too long before I began to respect how people are here.  You know where you stand.  But, add sports and a computer or smartphone to the mix and it's a different story.

I've been thinking about how social media has changed all our lives a lot recently, ever since former Steeler running back Rashard Mendenhall retired at the ripe old age of 26.  My initial thought when the alert came across my phone was, "Well, there's a career brought down by Twitter."  I'm sure his ill-fated Tweet about the death of Osama bin Laden wasn't the only reason he threw in the towel, but I think it was the beginning of the end.  I remember it:

What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side...
— Rashard Mendenhall (@R_Mendenhall) May 2, 2011

I was actually on Twitter when it came across, and I immediately thought he'd end up regretting sending it.  I also thought I knew what he was trying to say, but he was choosing the wrong format in which to try and say it.  He had Gandhi as his Twitter avatar at one point for crying out loud.  He is a thoughtful, intelligent young man, so I thought that he was just bothered by the collective blood lust we were all showing.  But you can't adequately express a complicated sentiment like that in 140 characters.  Granted, he would later go on and write some things that I am dubious about, including some conspiracy theory stuff about 9/11 that doesn't sit well with a city so close to where Flight 93 went down, but just because he's intelligent doesn't protect him from his own youth and maybe being overly impressionable and naive.  But, it was that Tweet in particular that created such a stir, even invoking a reaction from Dan Rooney that was clearly meant to distance the team from his player's unwise words.  Maybe had the Steelers and Mendenhall had a great next season, Steelers fans would have forgotten about it over time.  They've forgiven much in their elite athletes.  But, the simple fact is, they didn't, and so it just added to a festering wound and things got bad for him here.  I'm sorry for that, but I've often thought about that fateful quote and pondered that no one has ever been made by Twitter, but they sure have been brought down by it.

So Mr. Mendenhall, at the tender age of 23 learned the hard lesson that free speech isn't really free.  Unfortunately, some of the same people that were so quick to condemn him aren't in the limelight and don't have the same stakes, so they are a little more at liberty to say hateful, mean spirited things out on the Internet with impunity.  Generally about our sports teams.  The Pirates organization better buckle up.  They've gotten a pass for the last two decades by being perennial losers.  Now that they've broken that streak, the expectations are higher and the critiques will be too.  Face it, Pittsburgh Nation, we're spoiled.  We're so used to winning that any time we don't, we go a little nuts.  But it gets out of hand and becomes ugly, personal and, frankly, wrong.

Take last weekend for example.  It was a rough one for the Penguins.  And I get that we all hated that.  Not only did they lose back-to-back games, and look pretty rough doing it, but they lost to the hated Flyers.  I mean we HATE that team.  And they always seem to have our number.  But the Twitter-sphere made it seem like we were on the Titanic without a life boat.  The cries to fire the coach and the goalie were flying!  I know, I know:  all sports fan get that way.  I used to sit in the student section at UT games and marvel at all the little frat boys trying to out coach Mack Brown because they used to play high school ball.  "Really?" I would always think to myself, "If you're so spectacular of a football mind, then why are you sitting up here with me?"  I know we pay the money and support the advertisers that make big sports go round.  We've got a right to demand a good product.  But we've got one.  And that's what kills me.

You can't have it both ways.  You can't call where we live the City of Champions to the rest of the world, but then tell the goalie with the highest number of wins in the NHL that he sucks and that we should get rid of him. (Which he doesn't, by the way - if your defense let's enough shots through, he can't stop them all.  Ask Marty Brodeur about that, and he'll probably tell you, if it was just about the goalie stopping the puck the Devils would win the Stanley Cup every year, but it's a team sport.  And sometimes the team has a rough night.)

The chatter got so bad that my husband, all the way down there in Texas, emailed to ask me why the Pens were doing so badly the following Monday, confessing he hadn't seen any hockey, he was just hearing things.  I shut that opinion down in no uncertain terms and haven't really spoken to him since.

I think it's a combination of the ease of spewing whatever comes to your mind when it comes on Twitter and Facebook, fueled by adrenaline and alcohol that has caused people like Rashard Mendenhall to hate what they are doing so much they literally walk away from it in the prime of their life.  He said it was because he didn't want to put his body at risk anymore, but then he also wrote, "Imagine having a job where you're always on duty, and can never fully relax or you just may drown.  Having to fight through waves and currents of praise and criticism, but most hate.  I can't even count how many times I've been called a 'dumb n-----.'"  

That's just sad.  And it's beneath us.  We all want to win.  But we're better than this.  So, think before you Tweet.  It's such a powerful tool with the ability to cut.  Use it wisely.

Irish Eyes

A little over three years ago now I packed up my car and headed East with just my 10-year Husky mix Cheyenne.  The intent was for the two of us to be on our own for a few weeks, get the house set up while the husband stayed behind in Texas and got the old house ready to sell without a lifetime worth of collective stuff in the way.  My daughter would be the last to leave, by the original plan, after she finished the spring semester.  In the end, Cheyenne and I were up here on our own for over four months, with some visits from friends and family here and there to break the routine.  I think at the time that was the longest I'd ever lived by myself.  I had short periods of time between roommates when I was young, but even then my future husband was usually around.  Now in Pittsburgh, I knew no one really and was truly on my own.  My mother's family lives in the area, but most of them are about 50 miles south of me in Washington, PA.  They invited me to everything they could and treated like one of their own, but it's an hour each way, so the time I could go down there was limited.  And my Lovely Philly Friend made the trek across the state several times to show me the city she had grown up in, helping me discover such wonders as Trader Joe's (granted, it's not local, but it was new to me), Lawrenceville, and Vento's Pizza, which was where we met Pittsburgh legend Al Vento, co-founder of Franco's Italian Army (who is one of the nicest men I think I've ever bumped into casually on a Sunday afternoon in my life).  But, for a lot of the time, it was Cheyenne and me being strangers in a strange land.  I am uniquely suited to being alone, however, despite not having a lot of practice at it.  Raised an only child by older parents in a sparsely populated state, I learned early on how to amuse myself, and I was busy unpacking, getting lost, and watching hockey.  There wasn't a whole lot of time to worry about who was or wasn't around.  Really I was only truly, achingly lonely one time, and that was over St. Patrick's Day weekend because there was the sense of community and celebration happening all around me, that sense of camaraderie and family that I was excluded from.  But one of the best things about Pittsburgh is that, if you put your own foot out the door, the city will rise up and greet you.  I didn't really know that then, but I've been fortunate to learn it since.

Maybe it's strange that on a day which, for most of the country, is no more than an excuse to let your hair down a bit and drink green colored beer, I would be made to feel the most alone, but it's because you have to understand how big a thing St. Patrick's Day is here.  For one thing, there is a large Irish-American population in Pittsburgh.  My neighborhood is predominantly Irish Catholic, centered as it is around a large Catholic church and school.  And, you may remember me telling you how rooted people are here?  The unintended consequence of that is the city is strangely non-integrated.  It's not that I've found a lot of rampant prejudice (more than any where else, that is), but it's just a way of life that people are born, live and die in the same little areas  Therefore, the Irish population of a given neighborhood not only all know one another, they all tend to hang onto that sense of ethnicity and pride because it's never diluted by a transient population.  I began to get a sense of it even before the "holiday" when I would walk Cheyenne around the neighborhood and notice the Irish-themed bumper stickers on people's cars, or notice the Irish colors flying, including one house where they've got a huge Irish flag dwarfing their American flag (they display them in the proper hierarchy, it's just that the Irish one is noticeably larger).  And then there's the parade.  I didn't know anything about it until I was watching the news the night before and they spent a notably large part of the broadcast giving people reports not only just about the parade itself, but how the weather was supposed to be, how to park, when spectators should get there and so on.  They touted it as the second largest in the country.  I had a hair appointment the next morning and asked my hair newly found hair dresser about it.  I could tell it was when the few years when she wasn't going herself, but she explained that by the time I was done with the appointment, there'd be no shot at getting down there, as there would literally be thousands of people there.   So I realized, sitting at home alone on what was a beautiful early spring day, that I had really blown a great chance to see a big part of what makes Pittsburgh tick.  I vowed not to miss it again.  And maybe that would have been the end of it, but for the fact that the neighborhood was alive with celebrations that made it clear this was no small holiday.  As I took Cheyenne for a walk that afternoon, house after house had multiple cars parked around it.  I could hear the sounds of revelers coming from backyards and suddenly our little house with just the two of us seemed awful small and lonely.  I remember sitting in my basement that night watching The Boondock Saints painfully aware of how isolated I truly was.

Only in Pittsburgh do you tailgate for a parade!

Now, with a couple of parades under my belt, what I can tell you is this:  Pittsburghers may tend to keep to their own comfort zones, but they will welcome you in like you're one of their own if you meet them half way.  The downside to growing up an only child of older parents is that you miss that big sense of family and of belonging that others take for granted.  I've looked for it and envied it in a variety of venues, both consciously and sub-consciously, all my life:  when I go to pow-wows, when I would go with friends to their church, at ballparks and hockey arenas, and at festivals and concerts.  Where you find it the most is when you're with a group of people who are all passionate about the same thing.  I occasionally bemoan the convenience of buying concert tickets online because some of the best conversations I've ever had was standing inline for hours waiting for Rush or U2 tickets to go on sale with other fans.  We shared a common bond that gave us a built in topic of conversation.  Well Pittsburgh is much the same way.  Whether you're talking Steelers, Penguins, Pirates, or the state of potholes along Fifth Avenue, there's lots of people willing to talk with you about it.  And at a huge city-wide party like the Saturday before St. Patrick's Day, with a little Guinness loosening the tongues, means that we're all one big, happy Irish family, no matter what part of world you truly hail from.  I don't feel alone anymore on St. Patrick's Day.  I have the biggest family in the world.

Joe Biden stopped by in 2012

And don't forget the after party!