Election Day 2011: Remember Before You Vote

Don't forget to vote today!  And always bring your photo ID with you.

Remember Before You Vote

LAURIE D. T. MANN

Many politicians make it clear they don't care who dies,

so long as the wealthy and corporations pay less in taxes.

They don't care when people die from lack of medical care.

They don't care when women die from backroom abortions.

They don't care when soldiers die in pointless wars.

They don't care when citizens die in war,

or industrial hazard,

or from a failure to plan well,

or from poor infrastructure,

or from a lack of education,

or from bad water, food or air.

They don't care when the harassed die from murder or suicide.

Don't elect the ignorant who make it perfectly clear they don't care about

"Government of the people

by the people

for the people."

It's still your choice.

Vote smart!

Investors Should (Dis)Occupy Wall Street - Dump Bank of America, Citigroup (et.c.) Stock

The average investor who profited from stock market roller coaster of 2008 and 2009 in no way caused it - we're investors, we have 401ks, we have diversified portfolios and we have a home that we bought with a 20% down payment.  We were doing the things every rational investment advisor had been telling small investors to do for years.

And many of us who invest reasonably in the stock market do believe we should be taxed more, even though we aren't millionaires.  Most investors hate the way America is becoming a third world country, and understand the only way to fix that now is to increase taxation for people making above, say $100,000.  We want a stable, educated America.

So many millions of investors agree with most of the the Occupy Wall Streeters.  But the way investors should act is to Dis-Occupy Wall Street.

Now is the time is to take the power from financial companies by refusing to invest in their financial products.  If you hold stock in BankAmerica, Citi, etc., dump the stock.  Invest in small companies rather than in financial firms.  The financial firms have been bringing this country down for years, and we can fight that by selling all of their stock.  Review the companies your 401k is invested in and shift your funds away from financial companies.

The Blog for Equity Blog

Of course any consenting adults who want to get married should be able to get married! What's so hard about that?

It should be obvious. Why is any rational person still fighting about it now?

Remember Before You Vote

Laurie D. T. Mann

Many politicians make it clear they don't care who dies,

so long as the wealthy and corporations pay less in taxes.

They don't care when people die from lack of medical care.

They don't care when women die from backroom abortions.

They don't care when soldiers die in pointless wars.

They don't care when citizens die in war,

or industrial hazard,

or from a failure to plan well,

or from poor infrastructure,

or from a lack of education,

or from bad water, food or air.

They don't care when the harassed die from murder or suicide.

Don't elect the ignorant who make it perfectly clear they don't care about

"Government of the people

by the people

for the people."

It's still your choice.

Vote smart!

Annual Look at the Oscars 2011

I saw and liked most of the movies nominated for Oscars for last year (of the major flicks, haven't seen True Grit, 127 Hours or Black Swan). If anything, last year was a better year for movies in a few years. It seemed like there were a few more movies for grown-ups out there.

I liked Social Network very much, but I liked The King's Speech a little bit more. Both are classics.

Best Picture: The King's Speech [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Actor: Colin Firth [so owed, especially for last year] [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale [Geoffrey Rush is a definite possibility; he and Firth were terrific together] [[[WON!!! - I was so surprised when he wasn't nominated years ago for Empire of the Sun]]]
Best Actress: Natalie Portman [the so-owed Annette Benning could win for a terrific performance in The Kids Are Alright] [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo [though she may be hit by some backlash due to some badly-timed promotional advertising, so Hailee Steinfeld is still a possibility] [[[WON! - I'm sure the producers are reminding potential winners not to swear onstage]]]
Best Animated Feature: The Illusionist [I know, it's not Toy Story 3 - it's so much better!] [[[Toy story 3 won]]]
Best Art Direction: Inception [[[Alice in Wonderland won - thought it was a bit too weird]]]
Best Cinemetography: Inception [[[WON!]]]
Best Costume Design: The King's Speech [[[Alice in Wonderland won - still think Alice was too over-the-top in its costume design, too]]]
Best Directing: Tom Hooper [The King's Speech] [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Documentary Feature: Gasland [[[Inside Job won]]]
Best Documentary Short Subject: Strangers No More [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Film Editing: 127 Hours [I found the editing for Social Network sloppy] [The Social Network won]
Best Foreign Language Film: Outside the Law [Algeria] [[[In a Better World - Denmark - won]]]
Best Makeup: The Wolfman [[[WON!!! - always nice to see Rick Baker win an award]]]
Best Original Score: The Social Network [though I didn't really care for any of the music this year - loved the scoare for Up last year] [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Original Song: If I Rise [haven't heard that one, but the other songs were pretty bad] [Whatever Randy Newman wrote for Toy Story won...]
Best Short Film (Animated): The Lost Thing [go Shaun Tan! 2nd year in a row, I'll get to cheer an Oscar nominee I've met!] [[[WON!!! - Absolutely delighted about this one]]]
Best Short Film (Live Action): The Crush [[[God of Love won]]]
Best Sound Editing: Inception [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Sound Mixing: The Social Network [Inception won (so that's fine - it had amazing sound work all the way around)]
Best Visual Effects: Inception [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Writing (Adapted): The Social Network [[[WON!!!]]]
Best Writing (Original): The King's Speech [[[WON!!!]]]

The Long, Slow Suicide of Borders

I'm a longtime book fan and I married a serious book collector back in 1977. Even when we had little money, we usually found a way to buy books. When other people might visit fine restaurants when they went to a new place, we'd look for bookstores.

During a trip to Ann Arbor in the late '70s, we made our first trip to Borders. It was the single best bookstore I'd ever been to, except for The Strand in New York City. Eventually, we did get to Powell's in Portland, which is the bookstore Mecca for readers. But Borders had an amazing selection of books and cozy chairs for reading, which wasn't anything you ever saw in a Waldens.

At some point in the early '80s, Borders started to expand. We were living in Massachusetts at the time, and Jim made a trip to Pittsburgh to visit relatives without me. He enthusiastically reported that a Borders had opened just outside of Pittsburgh. While it wasn't quite as overwhelming as Ann Arbor Borders, it had great variety.

A few years later, a Borders opened in Framingham, Massachusetts, not far from where we lived. While we were big fans of the various independent bookstores in Cambridge (especially WordsWorth), it was great having a bookstore nearby with free parking.

In 1993, we moved to Pittsburgh. Not deliberately, we wound up buying a house that was 2 1/2 miles away from Borders. Just after we moved, the deal on our Massachusetts house fell through. I couldn't take months to look for the right job--I needed to get a job quickly so we could make two mortgage payments a month. I went to the Borders, applied, and had to take a test showing that I had a few clues about books. I was hired quickly and went to work.

One of the things that made Borders great in the '80s and '90s was it had a book database that was quite intelligent for its time. Stores were able to rapidly show their inventories and sales trends to headquarters. So Borders management could more easily react to sales trends than many other bookstores could.

But another thing that made Borders great was it demanded expertise from its clerks. Each clerk was responsible for a section of books. You had to shelve them and know about them. In my case, it was the computer book section (for the 10 years before I wound up as a sales clerk, I'd worked with computers). In the mid-90s, the number of books about computers, especially the number of books about this new tool, the Internet, grew rapidly. While an up-to-date online book database was certainly helpful, having people in the stores who really knew certain sections meant customers could get advice from knowledgeable salespeople.

In those days, Borders stressed Community involvement. Each store had a person whose sole job was to coordinate events at the store, both big events (in one year, we had Anne Rice and Oliver North) and small events (book clubs, readings for kids, local author promotions). These events were a great way to attract people who might not ordinarily come into Borders. And, it being the '90s, Borders added coffee bars and music/video sections to their stores.

I worked at Borders for a little over a year full time, then worked a little over the holidays once I got a job with computers again. During the mid-90s, two more Borders opened in the Pittsburgh area. Borders did start to get a bad reputation from independent booksellers in those days. When Borders came into an area, independent booksellers tended to go out of business. Pittsburgh lost many independent booksellers at that time because they could no longer compete. Luckily, some niche sellers, like Mystery Lovers, Bradley Books, and the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon bookstores are still around.

Borders changed hands. Several times. I think it was owned by K-Mart at one point. That was when the notion that the sales management and sales staff really knowing books flew out the window. People were hired to run cash registers and not much else. Instead of individuals being responsible for a section, the books were stocked overnight. During sales hours, all clerks floated, so no one really knew the details of any of the sections. Managers were hired who, in theory understood retail, but didn't necessarily understand books. Borders management had had excellent relationships with its vendors, but started playing games with vendors, beginning with the small presses.

And during the '90s, Borders met up with its own giant-killer - Amazon, which made them even more conscious about costs. A brick and mortar operation like Borders can't sell everything as cheaply as an online operation like Amazon can. But, even now, Amazon can't give you advice about which book to get, it can only give you a list of books by a particular person or about a certain topic.

The one thing Borders lost track of was the idea that a good bookstore was more than just a collection of books: it was populated by people who understood books. Buyers wanted to browse. They wanted to talk to sales people who understood books. While many of us love Amazon, we still would like a place to browse and be surprised by books, the way were often were at Borders in the old days.

Also, Borders made it clear that community relations no longer mattered. People who ran community relations were fired. About the only events at Borders stores these days seem to be storytelling hour. Now, granted, book publishers don't tend to send out many authors on book tours, and they focus tours more on primary markets like New York and Chicago. But, even without the big-name author tours, there are many ways to get the community engaged with the store, and Borders stopped doing most of them.

By 2001, my local Borders didn't feel quite the same, but as I was looking for a part-time job, I went back to work there for a few hours a week. There was a new manager who didn't seem to read much. There were fewer clerks. It was hard to find things as no one really knew any of the sections anymore. I eventually quit.

So bad trends that Borders started engaging in in the late '90s have been exacerbated. Borders started playing games with all of their vendors, not just the small ones. Borders wants to blame all of its problems on outside forces. I won't say that the publishing industry, which has also been rather slow to change, is completely blameless in the Borders (and Joe Beth's) bankruptcy. But if Borders had had the kind of steady, forward-thinking management it had during its early expansion in the year 2000, I don't think Borders would have declared bankruptcy now. Borders has no one to blame but its own ostrich-headed management.

If you're curious, here are Border's biggest creditors as if its bankruptcy filing. It's disgusting when individuals lose their houses over a few thousand dollars that businesses can conintue to run without paying hundreds of millions of dollars of debt in a timely fashion. I hope Borders' mostly underpaid employees are paid as long as they have jobs.

---

One thing that may save Barnes and Noble for now are eBooks. I prefer the Nook to the Kindle, so that's what our family bought when we decided to get e-Readers. However, we still tend to buy books - mostly from Amazon, some from Barnes and Noble, some at science fiction conventions and some from other stores we run into. But, I never liked Barnes and Noble as much as I liked Borders for nearly 15 years.

---

Pittsburgh area note: It looks like the Borders in South Hills (my old store), Monroeville and Penn Circle are closing, but that the North Hills store is staying open. The South Hills store hasn't been doing well recently and has always had parking problems, especially over the holidays.

---

9/17/2011  Borders is really and completely dead.



9/30/2011:  Some employees at Borders 20 (in Illinois) posted a letter about how they felt about Borders.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52724641@N03/5988917121
 I probably never made this clear in my essay, but I do not blame the failure of Borders on the type of employees who worked there in the '80s and the '90s.  Borders failure can only be laid at its upper management since the mid-'90s.  

Anger, Revisionism and Terrorism

People who know me, either in real life or maybe just online, know I have a bad temper.

In response to a particularly egregious court verdict in 1995, I wrote the following:

In response to my anger, I won't go out and get a gun. I won't bomb a building. I won't hack my parents or husband or child to death. I'll just write, talk and keep writing and talking until this passes.

The mass shooting by a domestic terrorist in Arizona on January 8 makes me very angry for a number of reasons. Its chilling effect on societal freedoms. Its sheer waste. Its reason for happening.

I do not believe the Tea Party is completely culpable for this event, but they are partially responsible. Ultimate, the shooter himself is responsible for buying a legal semi-automatic weapon (with help from the NRA and the Republican party for keeping gun laws so loose), taking it to a public event, trying to kill Gabreille Giffords, a moderate Democratic Representative, then spraying the audience with the gun, killing at least six and wounding a total of 19. A Federal judge (ironically, who'd ruled against background checks for gun buyers), a 9-year-old child (ironically, born on 9/11/01) and four others were murdered in cold blood - but seem to have been "collateral damage."

So how is this not a terrorist act? If an Islamic man did this, Americans wouldn't hesitate to call this an act of terrorism. They'd scream for vengence.

But if people point out:

that the Arizona shooter was an anti-government type [[who praised Palin -- the Palin comment may be a rumor; I was wrong to have included an unverified rumor]]

that Sarah Palin had marked 20 Democratic Congressional
representatives for electoral removal - by using the
cross-hairs symbol (this graphic was, of course,
removed from Palin's Website by late in day on 1/8,
but we should never forget that it was up for many
months and was seen by many thousands if not
millions of people) [[her later "surveyor's symbols" comments have been generally denied by surveyors]]

that Jesse Kelly, Gabrielle's opponent in the 2010 election,
held a campaign event that was advertised with
this line: "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office
Shoot a fully automatic F16 with Jesse Kelly." This
archival calendar item was removed on 1/8.

that the atmosphere in Arizon is so poisonous that even the
sheriff of Pima county has said that political vitriol
was partially responsible for the shooter's rampage.

We're accused of politicizing a tragedy.

I don't believe that. The same people who think America should be run by the Tea Partiers also don't hesitate to blame Obama for every problem this country's had over the last two years, seeming to forget that the wars and the economic catastrophe started in the Bush administration.

[[Added later]] And, frankly, I think many Tea Partiers would love to see a revolution in this country - but don't have the legitimate political clout to do anything more than be obstructionists and cause problems locally.

So should we thank them for the reassurance that the attempted murder of Congressional Representative who'd been "targeted" by Palin and the Tea Partiers and shot by an anti-government white guy who then kept shooting is in no way political and is in no way terroristic?

I have a bad temper, and another thing that brings it out is revisionism. Usually, if I've gotten mad or been wrong about the wrong person/thing online/in real life, I've never gone back and re-edited my Website or my life. When real people are involved, I've often had to apologize. Sometimes, I've said, "I was wrong about X." Sometimes, I've changed my behavior about X. But I will always admit to and own my anger - I might have been wrong, but I won't lie about it. But it's amazing how quickly the Tea Partiers have been scrubbing their old publicity to make it seem that they never tried to equate guns with removing people from office.

I don't hear or see the Tea Partiers apologizing for any of the inciting speech they've been engaged in. Because they will never take any responsibility for their part in this act of domestic terrorism. [[Added later]] The one good thing about this horrific event was the way that Sarah Palin has finally demonstrated that she is completely unelectable, and most Republicans may finally realize this. Her attempts to make herself a victim in all this is simply appalling. She's done nothing but demonstrate she has no grasp of history. Eight years of Bush should have proven that it's dangerous to have an ignorant person as president.

A few months ago, I attended the Rally 4 Sanity in Washington. It was a great day for people who want to try to find solutions to our country's problems rather than encourage constant vitriol.

After an event like the Arizona terrorism incident, we do have every right to be angry. But I don't think we should be eterally angry. We should try to channel our anger in rational ways, not in terroristic ways.

[[Added later]] I was relieved to see the rational way many Arizonans welcomed President Obama to Arizona when he attended a service in honor of the shooting victims. I hope many of them become more politically active so Arizona has more balanced leadership.

Allegheny County Follies: Christmas Tree Recycling Centers

The government in Allegheny county often has good ideas - then mars the good ideas with lousy implmementation.

Take Christmas tree recycling. A good idea. Many of us don't want years of dead Christmas trees in our backyard, but thought leaving them out on the curb each January for trash pick-up was a little weird.

So when I saw the announcement of Christmas Tree Recycling Centers, I thought "Great!" I packed up our dying tree, loaded it in the trunk, and headed for the Settlers Park Pool parking lot, to have our Christmas tree mulched.

Of course, when I got there, well before the 3:30pm close time, the gate to the Settlers Park Pool lot was closed. No signs, no nothing.

I drove off in the direction of the park office. Along the way, I saw an area off to the side where about ten discarded Christmas trees lay, along with mulch nearby. As it was snowing and the road was getting iffy, I turned around in the first safe location and dumped my tree along with the others. I may have left my tree in the right place, but would posting a sign have killed somebody?

Beer in Pittsburgh

Back in about 1994 (or maybe it was 1995), my husband Jim started to note where to get decent beer in Pittsburgh in a site called Jim's Beer in Pittsburgh. Believe me, if you didn't like to drink crap national brands in a restaurant, you didn't have many choices in those days, beyond one variety of Sam Adams, or maybe Yuengling. Luckily, friends introduced us to the Sharp Edge and Fat Heads so we felt like we had some selection. Jim and I maintained the site for a long time, but as good beer got easier to find, we didn't update it so much. But, it's been up, and despite its lack of updates, it gets about 700 visitors a month.

To be honest, I hadn't really looked at the site in a couple of years.

So, today, I got a note from a person at a bar I'd been to and liked in the last year. I went back and made some site updates. I'll share them with you here, but I liked to go back to the mostly archival Beer in Pittsburgh site and see a little bit about the way things were.

2011: It's been interesting that the number of good beer bars in the Pittsburgh area continues to grow even after restaurant smoking ban (yay!-remember the people who said that would ruin the industry?), the drink tax (boo, but ditto) and during a major recession (double boo). Kudos to the Sharp Edge for opening the best beer bar in downtown Pittsburgh (on Penn, near the pretty decent August Henry's). We've also made a few trips into the Southside to visit places like the DoubleWide Grill, Piper's Pub, and Fathead's. We have made one trip out to Rivertowne, in Monroeville, but haven't gotten to the ones closer to Pittsburgh yet. We thought the beer selection at Jerome Bettis' Grille 36 was much better than
we would have expected.

When you travel Pennsylvania in search of interesting beer, be sure to bring along Lew Bryson's newly updated Pennsylvania Breweries, an engaging look at the places in Pennsylvania that are brewing their own beer.

East End continues to supply craft beer locally.

Probably the most welcome addition to the beer scene has been the Steel City Big Pour, a huge beer and food festival held in early September to benefit Construction Junction. Absolutely worth trying to get tickets for it, but it sells out very rapidly. They've shown they understand how to put a beer festival together and make money at it at the same time.

The main failure over the last few years has been of the Penn Brewery. It closed for a while, and re-opened with a so-so menu, so-so beer, and the single worst beer festival we've ever been to in 2010. They continue to have problems, which is sad. Penn Brewery is a shell of its former self.

Oh, and while I know this is a religious argument to some, I tried and hated-hated-hated Harris Bar's bacon night. Sorry. Bad bacon, bad atmosphere, what's the point?

Fixing the ******* Smart Defragmenter Virus

My system was hacked by the Smart Defragmenter virus sometime during the early evening of 10/29/10. I'm not sure how that happened, but here's how to save yourself a lot of hassle if a program called Smart Defragmenter suddenly shows up on your PC.

I started getting disk error and RAM messages from Smart Defragmenter. As I'd been doing a lot of graphic work, and file transfer that day, I thought all I needed to do was to reboot.

After rebooting, I got the same error messages again. I'd never seen Smart Defragmenter before, but thought maybe it was a Dell or Microsoft product that was added during an update.

So I stupidly ran Smart Defragmenter. It said it had fixed 5 problems, but to fix another 5 problems, which would, of course, cost me money,

This looked like a virus, so I ran my free version of AVG.

My laptop crashed.

Rebooted. Did some quick searches on "Smart Defragmenter," on late 10/29, but except for one comment by one guy, people made it sound like it was a real program.

My husband, who is more technical than I am, thought I was having a disk failure. Since I was away on Saturday, he said he'd get a better external backup drive and back-up my laptop before the disk failed completely.

When I got back Saturday night, he said he'd bought the new external drive, but my laptop kept failing during the backup.

This morning, I logged in again and still got disk failure and ram messages. I foolishly decided to pay for the "Smart Defragmenter" update. Huge mistake. I ran the program and still had the same error messages.

I called my credit card company to dispute the bill. While the invoice for "Smart Defragmenter" claims the name of its company is: SecurityLabSoftware, LLC (SLS, LLC), Professional Circle, Suite 110, CA 10345, clearly that's a bogus address. The phone number isn't findable associated with a company online (877-282-0139 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              877-282-0139      end_of_the_skype_highlighting). My credit card company says they'll note my dispute of the bill but I'll have to call again when it's posted in two days. The credit card company says the name they have for the company was "www.trd-app.com" which is a non-existent URL and their phone number is 888-490-4755 which appears to be a non-existent phone number.

To make a long story short, let me tell you what to look for to dump Smart Defragmenter from your system, without having to pay for some other program.

The problem executable is "winsp2up.exe."

On my system, Windows 7 Professional, this file was in [User]>AppData>Local>Temp
You have to do a Control-Alt-Delete and stop this process. Once you stop this process,
you can go to your temp directory and delete the file.

Another problem file in the same location is 48262185 (I think that had an exe too). This file was installed at the same time as winsp2up.exe, so I deleted that as well.

After rebooting, everything seems to be OK. I'd like to know how I got this virus, but now I know that AVG freeware is unreliable, I'll be installing a much more robust security system and I'll be changing all my passwords.

Weird Year, Great Trip to Australia and Going To Rally to Restore Sanity

I've been very quiet in the blog this year. I was hopelessly exhausted for over the first half of the year, but still managed to keep up with a part time job and an increasingly busy volunteer project.

The good thing that happened this year was Jim and I were able to go to Australia. We had a stupendous time. I survived jet lag, and took 1450 photos (nearly half of which I've edited).

This is my favorite photo from Australia:

September 11, 2010, the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Harbor Bridge, Laurie and Jim Mann, photo by John Maizels

We were in Melbourne for nearly two weeks, and Sydney for five nights. We went to Aussiecon 4 (World Science Fiction Convention), saw great sights, ate great meals and just had a terrific time. The only disappointment was we were going to New Zealand for a few days. To Christchurch. Sadly, our timing was off and the earthquake hit a few days before we were due to go. After dithering (I was eager to see Christchurch, and our B+B escaped unscathed) we decided to stay in Melbourne. Otherwise, we had a spectacular trip.

Also, being in Sydney the day that Oprah announced she was going to bring about 300 Americans to visit later this year was kind of a trip in itself - this was the top news story in Australia that day.

After a very busy two months of traveling, I decided at almost the last minute to go to Washington tomorrow for the "Rally to Restore Sanity."


So I have to go and meet a friend early tomorrow morning.

Atomic Gingerbread

This is a modification of a recipe from The Joy of Cooking - Applesauce Gingerbread. I like more ginger in my gingerbread. Also, since it doesn't have any butter and has only a little oil, it's better for you than most baked goods.
Recipe to print
Preheat oven to 325.

Boil
1 cup of applesauce

Remove from heat and stir in:
1/2 cup molasses
1 tsp baking soda

The mixture will foam and bubble vigorously. Cool slightly.

Sift together:
1 1/2 cup flour
4 tsp ground ginger
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt

In a large bowl, beat on high speed until
thick and pale yellow, 3-4 minutes:
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sugar

Gradually beat in
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tbl ginger paste

Fold in flour mixture in three parts,
alternating with the applesauce/molasses
mixture in two parts.

Fold in
1/3 cup raisins

Scrape the batter into a 9" x 9" pan. Bake until
a toothpick inserted into the center comes
out clean, 40-45 minutes. Let cool in the
pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Slide a thin
knife around the cake to detach it from the
pan. Invert the cake, let cool right side
up on the rack.

Decorate with some crystal ginger.

You can add any kind of ginger in any amount to this recipe, though sushi-style ginger doesn't work, due to the vinegar.

In Honor of a New Polio Documentary ("The Shot Felt 'Round the World") - Short Notes on Dr. Jessie Wright

Two years ago, I took a documentary course at the University of Pittsburgh. Back in 2005, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the release of the polio vaccine, some folks at Pitt led by Carl Kurlander started to collect a video record about the cure for polio.

When I took the course in early 2008, Carl suggested someone in the class might want to research Jessie Wright. I volunteered, and I'm glad I did. Jessie Wright was the unsung hero of polio treatment in the Pittsburgh area. I hope a little of my research made the cut, but I know they wound up with a shorter documentary than they were planning two years ago.

Here's a short look at Dr. Jessie Wright:


Born in England, Jessie Wright immigrated to the Pittsburgh area with her parents in 1906. Jessie was interested in medicine, partially due to having a friend handicapped by polio. Jessie learned about physiotherapy by observing the patients and helping with their therapy at the D. T. Watson home. She spent the next few years learning and practicing physiotherapy, while saving the money to attend college.

Even before attending college, Jessie studied skeletons and observed a dissection. She started taking premedical courses part time at the University of Pittsburgh in about 1921, and took several special courses in physiotherapy at the Harvard Medical School. Since Jessie was working, it took her many years to earn her Bachelor of Science (awarded in 1932) and her Doctor of Medicine (awarded in 1934).

Dr. Wright was later named the director of the D. T. Watson Home and taught orthopedics at the University of Pittsburgh. In addition to her medical, administrative and teaching duties, Dr. Wright developed several orthopedic devices and refined several others. While she worked on braces and splints, and she also adapted an existing device for especially for polio patients―the “fast-rocking” bed. This bed helped many polio patients to breathe on their own and freed them from the iron lung.

By 1947, she was the Chairman of the Joint Orthopedic Nursing Advisory Council and was active in the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. She worked with leaders in the polio field, including Jonas Salk and Basil O’Connor and built a reputation for herself and the D. T. Watson Home that went far beyond Pittsburgh. When he needed to test the vaccine on people who had already had polio, he tested patients at D. T. Watson.

But even while the vaccine was being tested and appeared to be working, Dr. Wright had to return her focus to rehabilitating polio patients. “The year 1952 was the worst polio year on record, with more than 57,000 cases nationwide.” Hundreds of children from across Pennsylvania arrived at the D. T. Watson Home for therapy. The therapy was surprisingly creative and patient-led. The important thing was to get the patient to the highest-level of self-sufficiency possible.

After forty-five years of near tireless work in the cause of improving the lives of people with orthopedic diseases, Dr. Wright suffered a coronary in 1966 that required her to retire from her professional activities, including running the D. T. Watson Home. She retired to seaside Maryland, where she enjoyed swimming, fishing and boating. Dr. Jessie Wright died September 6, 1970. A tree was planted in her honor at the D. T. Watson Home, and an annual award for Physical Therapy was named for her at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School. Both were extremely appropriate honors for a woman who worked so hard to professionalize physical therapy and loved the outdoors.

Rewriting History and Science, Texas Style

Texas has always had a strong, centralized system for buying textbooks. Unfortunately, the Texans are continuing to dumb down and rewrite history and science. Next, we'll probably learn that Pi=3, because the Bible says it does.

Roger Ebert wrote an excellent piece on how bad this siutation has gotten:
Texas School Book Repository.

So I guess the question many of us have is - how can we convince publishers to publish fact-based science and history books? If Texans want to rewrite science and history based on the ravings of the lunatic fringe, shouldn't these books be self-published rather most lunatic fringe books are?

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Well, it's not Quite the Republican's Waterloo...But It's Close!

I was raised to be a Republican. Heck, I even voted, when I was 19, for Gerry Ford. I worked for Republican candidates in the '70s and '80s.

But while I've spent most of my adult life as a registered Independent, I became a registered Democrat in 2004.

I believe we need a multiple party system in this country. But any rational Republican let the far right co-opt their own party somewhat during the Reagan administration, but whole-heartedly during the Clinton administration.

I'm not fond of big government. But, more important than its size is, is it a progressive, forward-thinking government? Does it try to treat people fairly? Does the government respect the Constitution? We didn't have that from early 2001 until early 2009. And yet, health care reform is somehow more unconstitutional than holding prisoners for years without charging them? What's wrong with this picture?

While my husband and I make under $250,000 (well under), I expect we will be paying higher taxes in the future. And I will not bitch about it. Not only will we be helping to pay for more American's health care (which is fine by me), we will also be helping to pay off the debts incurred during the Bush wars and tax cuts (which never were fine by me). But we won't bitch about it.

Thanks, again, President Obama and the Democratic party, for helping to bring American into the late 20th century with your health care reform plan. We will always remember who voted for it, and who voted against it.

HCR 2010: Better care for people, not for insurance companies!

Congratulations to Obama and the Democrats for dragging our country, kicking and screaming in some cases, into the late 20th century healtcare reform wise. Maybe we can stop spending as much of our GDP on healthcare, and get the better care most of the rest of the civilized world gets. Better care for people, not for insurance companies!

Pittsburgh's Blog for Equity Day

I'm busy today, so I'll get right to the point:

Consenting, taxpaying adults have the right to live with whomever they want without fear of state-sanctioned prejudice. There will always be bigots out there (that's life), but the law should not practice prejudice, like denying gay folks the right to marry should they so choose.

Annual Oscar Predictions - 2010

Stop on by; I'll be updating this during the Oscars.
2010 Oscars (comments on movies made in 2009).

William Tenn/Phil Klass and the Meaning of Chutzpah

I'm not sure when, exactly, was the first time I met Phil Klass (aka William Tenn). I think we met at one or two cons in the '70s or '80s. I was familiar with some of his writing, especially "Child's Play" and "On Venus, Have We got a Rabbi!" But, by 1993, I turned out to have a fairly close connection to Phil and Fruma -- my husband Jim and I bought a house about a half mile away from theirs in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Lebanon. And their daughter, Adina, was only about four years older than our daughter Leslie. Over the next few years, we'd run into each other at various science fiction club events and at Confluence, the local SF con.

I'd often run into people who'd had Phil as a teacher at Penn State. Many of these people were in fandom, but I've probably met a dozen people at various companies in the Pittsburgh area who weren't SF fans but still remembered Professor Klass very fondly.

By the late '90s, Jim had an idea -- NESFA Press should reprint all of Phil's fiction. Since most of his fiction hadn't been reprinted in years, this would help expose more of his writing to more readers. It took a few months to develop the contract to Phil's exacting specifications, but the results by the early '00s were two terrific volumes of all of William Tenn's fiction: Immodest Proposals and Here Comes Civilization.

So we started working with Phil and Fruma a little more closely. He'd greet me with "Hello, Laurie. And why do they say all those terrible things about you?" The first time he did that, I wasn't sure how to react. I'd just laugh nervously and we'd go on from there. But, gradually, I noticed he only said that to people he liked, so that was fine by me!

When the Nebula Awards Weekend was in sudden search of a new site, I suggested bringing it to Pittsburgh, and SFWA took me up on that. SFWA also made William Tenn the Author Emeritus for the 1999 Nebula Awards Weekend. So there was Phil, resplendent in a tux, speaking to all the assembled writers, signing autographs for many of them.

Late 2003 and early 2004 I was consumed by work, collecting of Phil's non-fiction writing in a GoH book for Noreascon IV. Phil's non-fiction was full of little gems, especially a wonderful piece about his parents "Constantinople," and a long and fascinating piece on electronic surveillance in the '60s, "The Bugmaster." While we agreed on almost everything, we had two disagreements over the production of this book.

There were two interview transcriptions -- one long and the other very long. I wanted to edit out about 10% of the short interview, and maybe 25% of the longer interview to cut down on the repetitions (there are at least three stories told three different ways in the course of his non-fiction collection). Phil was adamant that nothing be edited, except to correct egregious errors. I finally got him to agree to some minimal editing, mostly removing side comments between Phil and the videographer.

We couldn't agree on the title.

For years, instead of saying "Thank-you very much," Phil would say, "For that, I'll dance naked on a table for you." I loved that phrase from him, and, felt it would be a good title for his collection of non-fiction. Because his non-fiction is quite honest. Also, Deb Geisler, the chair of Noreascon IV, loved it too.

Perhaps Phil and Fruma felt the title was too undignified or something so they resisted it. I'm not sure they ever came up with an alternative suggestion. Finally, after about a year of back and forth, they agreed to the title. The artist Bob Eggleton did a wonderfully comic take on the title for the cover. Undignified or not, Dancing Naked brought Phil his first Hugo nomination.

Noreascon IV chose William Tenn as one of their GoHs for 2004. With a lot of help from their old State College friends Kathy and Jim Morrow, and their daughter Adina, Phil and Fruma were able to go everywhere and do everything at the Worldcon.

In the late '00s, they were not able to travel as much. They still came out to Confluence every year, and sometimes drove to eastern Pennsylvania to visit Adina. By the fall of '09, Phil was in and out of several hospitals. He really enjoyed getting cards from people. He was particularly pleased to have heard from a fan from Norway. By late November, Fruma was able to bring him home. While very weak, he appreciated people's visits, and he was fairly alert.

Phil (and William Tenn) died on February 7, 2010, at home of congestive heart failure.

My favorite Phil Klass story took place 12 years before I was even born, at the end of World War II. Phil could exaggerate, but I'm sure this story is close to 100% true.

Phil was a short man, maybe about 5'2" or so. But what he failed to have in height, he more than made up for in bravado and chutzpah.

Phil was in the Army for most of World War II. He scored a very high rating on language aptitude. He was sent to the Univesity of Pittsburgh with 24 other soldiers for intensive training in Serbo-Croation. The plan was, they'd be sent to help liberate Yugoslavia.

It turned out, Phil never got to Yugoslavia, despite having learned Serbo-Croation. And most of the rest of his classmates were sent to the Pacific, where no one spoke Serbo-Croation.

But Phil was sent back to Europe. Since he spoke several languages (in addition to English and Serbo-Cration), he was eventually assigned to be a translator. One of his jobs was to translate for the former concentration camp guards.

So, picture this -- a short, Jewish American army soldier from New York City translating for tall, Aryan Nazi guards who'd spent years facilitating the slaughter of Jewish prisoners.

One of the guards finally asked him, "You speak an unusual kind of German. What is it?"

Phil looked the guard in the eye and said, "It's Yiddish."

Surviving the Snowpocalypse

A few weeks ago, Jim discovered we could attend five Pittsburgh Symphony concerts for the price of four. Since we didn't get to any PSO concerts last year, we'd never seen the new conductor, Manfred Honeck, at work. The concert I particularly wanted to see was Anne-Sophie Mutter playing a Brahams violin concerto.

So, Jim bought tickets for Friday, February 5.

Yes, the snowstorm was predicted, but we didn't expect more than five inches or so by Friday night.

I had a suggestion - why don't we use some of our Marriott points and just stay in town.

Jim tought this was a bad idea. However, in case we got seriously stuck somewhere, I packed the essentials - pajamas, change of clothes, toilet articles, my camera and my laptop.

4:30: We left very early, expecting road problems. But while we had 1"-2" of snow by then, the roads had been pretty well treated and there wasn't much traffic.

5:30: We had a very nice dinner, my belated birthday dinner, at the Braddock's American Brassiere (site of the former Opus at the Rennaisance). One of the chefs from the Inn at Little Washington is a chef there. Highly recommend it.

8:00: The concert was great, Mutter was wonderful playing Brahms' Violin Concerto. She sounded fabulous (of course!) and was wearing a striking gold gown. I'm very glad we went.

9:15: Odd bit at the concert for the Mahler Symphony #1. For a symphony orchestra, all the musicians are onstage when the concert starts, and stay all the way through, even the guy who clangs the cymbals one time. One trumpet player wandered onstage about five minutes after the Mahler started, and two more showed
up a bit later. Is this the orchestral version of a job action? [[Nope, it turns out it's a traditional part of this piece.]]

10:15: When we went to get our car, the roads weren't too bad. There was, maybe 4"-5" of snow.

We figured driving home would be slow but doable. By 10:30, we were out of the garage and headed for the Fort Pitt Bridge and tunnel.

The Fort Pitt Bridge is a double-decker, four lane bridge that goes over the Monongehela River, just before it joins with the Allegheny to form the Ohio. Two of the lanes go into the tunnel under Mt. Washington, and the other two go down to West Carson St. The Fort Pitt Tunnel is usually the most convenient way to travel if you're going south or west of Pittsburgh.

Mt. Washington is a fairly steep ridge south of downtown Pittsburgh. You really don't want to drive over it in the snow. And there are some other pretty big ridges south of that.

As we approached the bridge, the traffic stopped. At that point, we couldn't turn around and had to stay on the bridge.

And so, we crept across the bridge. It looked like the tunnel might be closed, but there was no way to tell for sure.

11:00: We were still on the bridge, and listened to the news. As with the flash flooding back in June, the "news station KDKA" was useless in providing local weather and traffic information during a potentially dangerous situation. KDKA reported that the tunnel and the Parkway West "had restrictions."

After a few more minutes, we found that the tunnel was completely closed, and all the traffic was routed down to West Carson St. It had been closed for over a half hour at that point.

If we thought the traffic was slow on the bridge, at least it moved a little. At one point on West Carson St., we moved 1/10th of a mile in a half hour.

As we were sitting on West Carson, I was dreading the trip through the West End. In retrospect, at the West End, I should have taken the back way to the Parkway West past the tunnel. But, there were fewer miles to home if I went along Stueben St., so that's the way I drove. And, unlike Carson Street, there wasn't much traffic. But there are some very steep hills on twisty streets. Luckily, there was no one in front of me by the time I got through to Stueben St.

But what I didn't expect since it wasn't at all windy - fallen branches and downed wires. The snow was heavy enough that it tore down branches all over the place, especially along Stueben St. There were intermittent power failures. The branches were mostly over in the other lane.

I burned rubber going up and over the hill, but I made it to Route 60, which would get me west of the city. I figured it should be slow but clear sailing from there.

12:15: There was a police roadblock after the bridge on the western side of Crafton. A few semis had jacknifed on Route 60 near Interstate 79. That part of the road was closed. The only alternate route was up and down hills so twisty I don't drive them in good weather. We pulled into a
closed gas station near the roadblock to consider our options.

I promised Jim I would limit saying "I told you so" to once an hour.

12:45: After about a half an hour and no progress (also, no snowplows on this fairly
major road), we consdered taking another back way we knew slightly. Jim had his GPS, so we
couldn't get that lost. The police thought that way had been plowed and would be pretty clear.

We got back onto Route 60 going back towards Pittsburgh, and turned to Ingram. We followed the most plowed road.

Turned out, the most plowed road for about two miles was the road to the massive Giant Eagle distribution center. *sigh*

We turned around and headed back to Ingram Rd. We turned onto West Prospect, which, while hilly, showed some signs of being plowed.

Big mistake. As we went over the top of a hill, we realized the plowing abruptly stopped. And a car was off the road. Yikes.

Very carefully, I was able to get us turned around. but it took what seemed like a very long time to get the car moving back up the hill again. Burning rubber and then some. But, I got back up to the top of the hill, got back to Route 60 and went back to the relative safety of the gas station.

While there was a motel about a quarter mile past the roadblock, it had no electricity (and the police didn't recommend it when there was electricity). Hard to tell how much snow. Maybe eight
inches. Oh, and did I mention the freezing rain? But, we still had plenty of gas.

The police said even after they got the trucks cleared off of Route 60, Route 22, which took us most of the rest of the way home, was a major mess.

Last report I heard said maybe up to 14" of snow our way... We were only supposed to get about 10" at the most.

2:15-2:45: Started writing this. I'm glad I had my laptop with a good battery!

2:45-5:00: Dozed on and off.

5:00: The snowplow for the gas station arrived. I moved a bit so I wouldn't get plowed in. Got out and cleaned off about 2 more inches of snow.

5:30: More stuck cars on Route 60, no snowplows for 60 yet. Road still closed west of here after nearly 6 hours. Now, people in 4x4s are waiting it out in the gas station lot.

6:10: Plows FINALLY plowed 60! The police left the gas station!

6:20: We got about a mile and a half further west...and see a newly jack-knifed truck
about three trucks in front of us. We're stopped on the hill near the 79 interchange. I hope
we can get moving again before the wet road turns to ice.

7:00: Still on the hill. There's been all kinds of equipment around the jacknifed truck, but
nothing is moving. Scarily, there's now a long line of traffic going westbound in the eastbound
lane.

7:10: Looks like the jacknifed truck is FINALLY out of the way! The Robinson township cops did amazing work all night long. I think the same guy we saw from midnight until 6 staffing the roadblock was the same guy stopping traffic around the jackknifed truck.

7:40: The plowing crew did a very thorough job around the jackknifed trailer. We actually got from Route 60 to Route 22 in Robinson without trouble - it was slow but not scarey and there were no unexpected stops. The 79-60 interchange was a nightmere - completely impassible from 79.

8:00: 22 was snowcovered and passable. However, the exits hadn't been plowed. Since our usual exit was very long, we got off in Imperial, so I could hit the bathroom (for the first time in 11 hours!) and get a drink. The roads were snowcovered but passible the whole rest of the way. To our surprise, our street had been plowed. But, that meant the first thing we had to do was to clear away enough snow so we could park our car in the driveway.

9:00: Finally IN THE HOUSE. I'm finishing up this epic tale of snowpocalypse survival. Jim is going to bed. We don't have to leave the house until Monday. Except for lots more shoveling (and, I hope, some snowblowing) we won't have to. Looks like we got nearly 14" in McDonald, but it's hard to tell because of the snowdrifts.

NYT: "What a Difference a Year Makes" - Was 1957 Really a Lucky Year in Which to Be Born?

There was a piece in The New York Times that tried to make the point that 1957 was an exceptionally lucky year in which to be born, based on the experiences of one white male Republican who lives in upstate New York named Harry MacAvoy.

Speaking as a person who was also born in 1957, I don't completely disagree with him, but it's amazing how much he's missed. It's like this man has been sleepwalking for 52 years (or, say, 47 years, since most of us don't remember that much of the first five years of our lives).

On the one hand, he's certainly right that people who were in college between about 1973 and 1982 had it easy in so many ways. We had most of the advantages of the sexual revolution and almost none of its disadvantages. But MacAvoy managed to miss the whole spectre of AIDS that later hit many of our generation, and certainly impacted those who were in college after us.

MacAvoy said, “We completely missed the upheaval of the 60s, the Vietnam protests on campus, the draft...and (I consider myself) lucky to have been young in the 1960s, so as not to have been traumatized by the Kennedy and King assassinations." Did he live in a household without television or newspapers in the '60s and '70s? Many of us were very much impacted by the civil rights revolution, the feminist revolution, the frequent assasination of leaders. Many of us who had secure lives suburbs still felt some of that upheaval even if we were children at the time. Not everyone born in 1957 was so completely lacking in empathy.

It wasn't always an easy thing to buy a house in the '80s. After years of so-so jobs, my husband and I both got decent jobs, part of the great high tech boom in Massachusetts. We couldn't afford our first house until 1987. And as there was a housing recession in the early '90s, we lost money when we sold our first house when my husband took a new job in Pittsburgh. For that matter, we lost a little money when we sold our second house in 2006, and our current home is worth less than it was in 2006. Luckily, my husband's job is reasonably secure, and the Pittsburgh housing market hasn't collapsed the way it has in many other places in the country.

Unlike a man long employed at the public trough like Harry MacAvoy, our retirement certainly won't happen in our 50s.
But unlike many people in their 50s now, we still have the likelihood of a reasonably comfortable retirement when we're in our 60s. We have always invested in 401ks, and didn't panic last year when the markets collapsed. But I know people around my age who were wiped out by the market collapse, some of whom are unemployed on top of that. For them, being born in 1957 has hardly been lucky. They may remember good-paying jobs and employer-paid insurance as a memory. They may be hoping to stay reasonbly healthy until they're old enough for Medicare. Given the Republican-driven misinformation about government-run health care over the last 30 years, that's all they can hope for.

So, sure, it was great to be a kid when we had a space program that was regularly breaking new ground, and when the GE ride at the 1964-65 World's Fair (later copied at the Disney parks) promised us "A great big beautiful tomorrow." While many things have improved over time, we have to be realistic that as some parts of society has witnessed continued improvement, many groups in society are still being left behind.

My Modest Disclaimer

The FTC has decided people should be up front when they are being paid to chat things up on the Web. Frankly, I think that's a good idea.

Yes, like many people who write for the Web, I have sometimes been paid or gotten freebies. However, since I generally don't review items, it doesn't happen very often.

As an independent contractor, I'm currently being paid to help support the All Things Human and Institute of Green Science Web sites. Most of the work I do is behind-the-scenes - research, testing, coding, revising material. Sometimes, I do post about these sites in my Facebook page or blog.

Earlier this year, I got two free tickets to see Up, which I loved and reviewed informally online. If I hadn't liked it, I would have said so anyway, despite the free tickets.

So, for this year, that's what I've been paid to write about. The vast majority of the writing I've done about movies, conventions, politics, Pittsburgh, travel, et.c. have all been as a person who's interested in these things, and not as a person who's been paid to help promote them.

G-20 - Early Morning Joggers and Some Flicks from "Fortress Pittsburgh"

I'd volunteered a few months ago to help out at the G-20, during a time when I was mostly unemployed. I'd hoped to work in the press center during the week, but I didn't get one of those jobs. I was beginning to think I wouldn't get any job with the G-20, then I got an E-mail to work the 6am-10am shift on 9/25 at the information table at one of the west suburban hotels. At about the same time, I got a really neat part-time contract job, doing various Web work for Chip Walter. So doing a day's volunteering for the G-20 turned out to work well.

I got up very early this morning, and was at the hotel just before 6am. The lobby was still fairly dark, but there a few state troopers and suited men walking around. I quickly found the info table, replenished the freebies from Visit Pittsburgh (mostly maps and local visits guides). There was a binder of various information, including which groups were blocked in each hotel. While I assumed a distant hotel would have the journalists from Wyoming staying at it, this hotel had the delegation from South Africa.

As you might expect, it was pretty dead in the lobby for the first hour. Mostly just security and hotel personnel of various stripes. The first person I greeted turned out to be plain-clothes security and not a South African attache. The next person I tried to talk to spoke to me in Spanish. Luckily, I could say, "Yo hablo muy pecano Espanol" (probably sic - "I speak very little Spanish"), and he laughed and said he didn't speak much English either.

But that meant we probably didn't just have the South African delegation in the hotel. So I went through the binder again, and found we also had the Spanish delegation. I'd had about three years of Spanish in high school, but that was a very long time ago now.

After about an hour, the lobby got very busy very suddenly. About eight Spanish men in jogging clothes and another few in suites came through the lobby and went out the side door. I wasn't sure who was jogging, but I knew typical joggers don't have plainsclothes security.

Some of the South African delegation came into the lobby. I mostly directed people over to the hotel restaurant.

At about 8pm, a woman with a VisitPittsburgh button came over to the desk. Her name was Mina, and she was a Spanish teacher, who'd been providing translation work for the Mexican delegation on Wednesday. I was relieved she was going to be around the rest of the morning. She knew all about Spanish culture and politics. I described what I'd seen earlier, and she said, "Oh that's because President Zapatero is staying here."

A few minutes later, the joggers returned. Mina smiled and said, "Yes, that's the president."

Not long after Mina arrived, another info booth worker, Subash, joined us. Subash worked for the Allegheny Conference, the group that did most of the local coordination for the G-20. We chatted and Subash was sure we'd met before. We concluded that since we live a few miles apart, we've probably seen each other in the local groceries stores.

Very suddenly, the South African delegation was through the lobby so quickly they were practically outside before we saw them, followed by the state troopers. The Spanish delegation came through a few minutes later, and we had enough time to say "Buenos dias," to which the president of Spain said "Gracias." The first ladies of each country left separately a little later with much smaller entourages.

Once it got to be closer to 10, I said goodbye, ran an errand, then went to Ikea to wait for the bus to Pittsburgh. I was curious to see what downtown Pittsburgh was like today. It was a unique experience.

A storefront in downtown opened up a "grafitti zone." After walking all through downtown, I left the "Welcome to Fortress Pittsburgh" note.

A view of Mellon Park through the 8' tall crowd fence.

AlphaGraphics welcomes the world...even though it's closed and boarded up. There were very few businesses in downtown that boarded-up. Maybe only 50 windows were broken, mostly in Bloomfield, Oakland and Shadyside. I don't think there was any damage in downtown itself.

A view of the David Lawrence Convention Center from the Sixth Street Bridge. Many news outlets reported from the balcony.

Another irony alert - Travelers Aid also closed down during the G-20

It was pretty quiet in most of downtown between 11:30 and 1:30. Lots of cops and blocked streets. While I certainly understand why we needed the security, it was a pretty massive show of force (in fact, as I type at 11:05 on Friday night, there's a minor demonstration going on in the college area (Oakland) of Pittsburgh surrounded by about 200 cops).

About the only attaches I saw "outside the secure zone" were some of the Chinese delegates, who had some shopping bags with them as they walked back to their hotel.

I'll probably put up more photos tomorrow or Sunday.

Take a Deep Breath, Pittsburgh...

So the G-20 starts tomorrow and some of the folks in Pittsburgh are already getting hot and bothered. I mean both some of the anti-G20 protesters and some of the law enforcement agencies. If half of what the City Paper reported on yesterday, about the police harassing protesters who were just buying lunch(!), it bodes badly for the next few days.

Law enforcement certainly has the right to keep the delegates to the G-20 reasonably safe. Blocking off the area around the Convention Center makes sense, and, we know, we're going to have rolling roadblocks in from the airport area. Just stay off the Parkway West and avoid driving into town over the next couple of days.

Protesters have the right for peaceable assembly. So far, word is there's no real problem. Most protesters have quickly made their points and gotten out of the way.

I was in Oakland yesterday, and saw many more police than usual. Now, part of that might have had more to do with Bill Gates making an address up at CMU than "showing presence." But there were all kinds of peaceful protests going on in Oakland, mostly small, but still visible. For the most part, law enforcement just let people be.

I've been to about a dozen protests in Washington over the years and a few here in Pittsburgh. I was also at the Inauguration in January, and saw an amazing show of law enforcement. Well over 1,000,000 people came into Washington, and the vast majority were there to celebrate Obama's inauguration. The 300-500 counter-demonstrators were certainly there, they tried to be loud, and they had their little corner to protest in. Law enforcement pretty much left them alone, so long as they stayed in their designated area. Only a couple of people were arrested that day, of over 1,000,000 people who went to Washington. Damage to the city was minor, and mostly to the grass on the Mall.

It is usually a good thing for people in positions of power to get together to talk directly. Yes, I hope they do talk about the Darfur and poverty and climate change and environmental issues and establishing stronger laws over the banking and investment industries. Just let them talk.

Everyone - residents, protesters, law enforcement, just need to take a deep breath before doing anything over-the-top per the next few days. The eyes of the world are watching. We can try to be reasonable adults or reactionary children. If we are truly trying to reinvent Pittsburgh for a new generation, then showing a rational approach to the G-20 is the best thing to do.

There Is Also Something So Unamerican...

...about calling your president "a liar" from the floor the the Congress.

Democrats had MANY more reasons to do that during the Bush administration, and refrained from doing so.

As the latest viral Obama poster says, "Sush.../let the grown-ups talk!"

There Is Something So UnAmerican...

...about refusing to let your child hear the President speak.

We are being taken over by the Marching Morons. It's completely disgusting.

I think Reagan spoke on closed circuit TV at least once when Leslie was in grade school. While he was far from my favorite president, no one complained about that he spoke to the kids. He was the elected president, after all.

Dead People Server Turns Fifteen

Dead People Server was invented at some point in the late summer of 1994 by Richard Holmes. I'm not 100% sure of the date, as I didn't become the curator until March 1997. So this is, roughly, the 15th anniversary of Dead People Server. That makes DPS something of a senior citizen among Web sites, but what-the-hell; neither retired nor expired!

Laurie Mann, curator

Battling Polluting Waste Coal Plants In Western Pennsylvania

Politicians at the state and local level in Pennsylvania believe the residents should roll over and play dead when companies push for waste coal power plants. Some politicians take it for granted that we already have. However, waste coal power plants increase the amount of fly ash and other particulates in the air and the amount of mercury and arsenic the water. We, the people, must care about what happens to the environment, to the air we breathe and the water we drink. People living in Pennsylvania need to paraphrase John Paul Jones and need to constantly remind our elected and appointed officials...

We Have Not Begun to Fight:

Battling Polluting Waste Coal Plants In Western Pennsylvania

Many years of mining in Pennsylvania created large areas of waste coal, called gob piles. This is the Beech Hollow gob pile, just outside of McDonald, as seen from the western side (photo taken winter 2008):



Here's what the Beech Hollow gob pile looks like from space, courtesy of Google Earth (photo taken late summer 2005):



The large glob of gray to the west of 980 (Robinson Highway) is the largest gob pile east of the Mississippi. It's in our backyard. Granted, it's an ugly mess, but in its current state, it isn't adding to the particulate problem in Southwestern Pennsylvania. However, if you live in places like North Fayette Towship, Oakdale, Carnegie, and Mount Lebanon, you live downwind of a proposed coal waste power plant for Beech Hollow, that will make electricity from the waste coal in this gob pile while spewing fly ash into the air.

For many years, Pittsburgh has been at or near the top of cities with the most particulate-polluted air. Yet our local politicians are giving permission for a waste coal power plant to be built just west of the area? This type of plant will only make a bad air quality situation worse, as anyone with asthma or other lung problems in our region already knows.

If you live in the Pittsburgh area, especially in the western and southern suburbs, you should be mad as hell and let your local officials know that you aren't going to take it.

To learn more about this proposed waste coal power plant, attend a public meeting in Mount Lebanon on Thursday, August 27, 7:30pm at the Mt. Lebanon Public Library.

NetRoots Nation Saturday

I left NetRoots Nation Thursday (even missing Bill Clinton's speech, which I would have loved to have heard) completely exhausted. After working my three hour airport shift, I went home and collapsed and missed Friday's events (including my cousin Alice's good friend Howard Dean).

So I returned to NetRoots today, and worked three hours at Registration, went to the Keynote Lunch, spent the afternoon videotaping a couple of panels, and am now at the evening Keynote.

The lunchtime keynote was OK, but not quite as forward-looking as I'd hoped. Most of the discussion was "it's better in Europe" and "we need more unionization." While these things are certainly true, they aren't making any new suggestions about how to handle the situation. Where are Paul Krugman and Charlie Stross, who spoke very interestingly on this very topic at Worldcon, when we need them?

After lunch, I was the videographer for a fascinating panel on DOJ extremes during the Bush years (that the Obama folks haven't fixed yet...*sigh*) and a very interesting panel on getting parents more involved in political organizing. I kept having to ask for help, but, luckily, my room was next door to the video office, so it was pretty easy to run next door and ask another stupid question.

At the evening keynote, State Senator Jim Ferlo gave a good speech, reminding us that peacefui assembly during the upcoming G20 meeting in Pittsburgh is Constitutionally protected - "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin. The city is way overreacting, saying that protests A MILE AWAY from the Convention Center during the G20 are forbidden. Much as I do believe that the G209 should continue unimpeded by disruptions, peaceful assembly is not disruptive. I'm very much opposed to muzzling peaceful protest.

Thursday, August 13 - Live from NetRoots Nation in the 'Burgh!

After spending some time helping run my Dad's 80th birthday, vacationing in Canada, then helping run the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, I'm back in Pittsburgh. My next "I'm underemployed and I'm bored!" project is working as a local volunteer for NetRoots Nation, which is here in Pittsburgh through Saturday. I've already linked up with "Drinking Liberally" and told them where they should go to drink.

I worked with another woman delivering today's tent cards to various panel rooms this morning, then helped out with Registration for a few hours. I'm now on a break, testing out the Acer WebBook in the exshibit hall.

While I have been fairly inactive on this blog for the last few weeks, due to doing work for Worldcon, I'm a proud liberal blogger and was delighted to hear that NetRoots was coming to Pittsburgh. I hope to make some contacts (beyond the "Drinking Liberally" folks!)

Visitors to dpsinfo.com, June 2009

My Web domain, dpsinfo.com, has been around for years. While the site that gets the most traffic is Dead People Server, I have about a dozen other sites.

The traffic pattern this month was interesting:



It's kind of ironic now that, just over a week ago on alt.obituaries, a number of us were complaining about how quiet "the world of celebrity death" had been. As I said at the time, "Good for celebrities, bad for people tracking deaths."

June 25 was a very busy day in celebrity death, with the long expected death of Farrah Fawcett, and the sudden (but not completely unexpected) death of Michael Jackson, which was a rumor for about two hours before it was confirmed at about 6:15pm that day. dpsinfo.com got nearly 3X as many visitors on that day as it had on its quietest day (on June 13).

That wasn't dpsinfo.com's busiest day ever though.

The busiest day ever was the day in September 2006 when Steve Irwin (aka the Crocodile Hunter) was killed by a stingray. Nearly twice as many people visited that day as visited on June 25.

Remembering Local Boy Billy Mays

At first, I thought the announcement of his death was another hoax. I first saw it on Wikipedia's death page, where hoax deaths can still creep through. It sounded like the recent fake death announcements of Jeff Goldblum (fell off a cliff!) or the one of pitchman John Basedow (Killed in the tsunami!).

Alas, I'm wrong on this one.

Billy was kind of annoying, but kind of enjoyable. I couldn't hate Billy Mays. Pitchmen normally make my skin crawl. His whole undertone always seemed to be "I'm having a good time with this, and I'm making a pile of money." And, heck, that's American. You can't hate making a pile of money. Well, OK, most of us can't.

Billy Mays was from the same very small, very poor town that my husband called his hometown (and boxer Paul Spadafora, former "hair colorist to the stars" Bradley Johns, politician John Kasich, and footballer Chuck Fusina) - McKees Rocks, PA. Billy was two years older than one brother-in-law, and lived near my other brother-in-law (well, where "near" was "the same part of Florida").

Billy Mays was like Farrah Fawcett in that he made the best with what he had, which probably added up to millions of dollars before he died.

In many ways, his death is the most shocking celebrity death of a week filled with celebrity deaths. Ed was old. Farrah was sick. There was something sadly inevitable about Michael Jackson's sudden death at a middle age. But, Billy Mays? So full of life? So into promoting whatever he was selling? This one seems wrong. Is he selling some new product, that a fake death might help promote?

Probably not.

So, after about six weeks of making almost no updates to my Dead People Server site, I've gone and made another one for this week. Kind of sadly. I may not miss him that much, but there's something especially sad about this death.

Brainstorming for the G-20 in Pittsburgh

The local organization leading the organization for the G-20 in Pittsburgh this September is a group called the Allegheny Conference. They decided to have a series of brainstorming sessions and invite the public to them, to generate ideas for further discussion.

On paper, this is a great idea. And, to a degree, it was. There were some incredibly good ideas proposed, including:

• Student ambassadors to observe and report on the proceedings (this from a high school student)


• Welcome banners and audio greetings in all of the languages spoken by members of the G-20


• A whole month of activities around the countries of the G-20, focusing on each of the countries and stressing educational programs


• Various ways to present the arts and music of Pittsburgh


• Stressing Pittsburgh's leadership as a green city


• Name badges for Pittsburghers with the flags representing the country of whatever foreign language the person speaks


• An event featuring foods prepared by foreign-born chefs who cook at Pittsburgh-area restaurants

But, an awful lot of the ideas started off with, "Hi, I'm X my company is Y, we make Z and here's how we can offer Z to the people coming to Pittsburgh for the G-20."

As a result, there was very little actual brainstorming. Almost no one's ideas seemed to spark other people's ideas, and that was somewhat disappointing. During the first brainstorming session at Point Park last week, 57 ideas were generated. At ours, I'm sure it was less than that because it was more about selling than idea generation.

I came up with some ideas, and presented them this way: "Hi, I'm Laurie Mann, I'm a blogger and I have nothing to sell. I just have a couple of ideas." My suggestions were to make sure that the G-20 uses the lovely rooftop terrace at the Convention Center. I'd been going to events there for years before I stumbled over the terrace at one event, which was being used informally that day. It has a great view of the city, the Allegheny River and the bridges. It's basically an unappreciated gem of the city. My other suggestion was to use some of the empty storefronts along Penn and Liberty as art galleries for students, robot makers and filmmakers.

There will be one last public brainstorming at the University of Pittsburgh, Alumni Hall in the Connolly Ballroom from 5:30-7:00 tonight (Tuesday, June 23).

Why You Should Vote Out Bigots Like State Senator John Eichelberger (R-Blair)

One of the people currently reviving the "no gay marriage" fight is John Eichelberger, R (naturally) of Blair county. Recently, he said something particularly heinous in a hearing:



They’re not being punished. We’re allowing them to exist, and do what every American can do. We’re just not rewarding them with any special designation.



I've written the following to Eichelberger to take him to task for his bigotry:




I understand you said the following in reference to homosexuals in a hearing the other day:


They’re not being punished. We’re allowing them to exist, and do what every American can do. We’re just not rewarding them with any special designation.


Thank-you for living out that famous cliche about Pennsylvania: "It's Philadelphia in the East, Pittsburgh in the West and Alabama in the middle."

If anyone ever said "We're allowing them to exist" in reference to, say, white men or fundamentalist Christians, would you have agreed with THAT ATTITUDE too?

I thought Pennsylvanians got rid of that level of state-sanctioned bigotry when we voted out Rick Santorum.

I know people like you will never change your minds about bigotry. I can only hope to help educate your constituency that bigotry in a modern society is unacceptable.

Laurie Mann
McDonald, PA

Hey KDKA Radio - Why Can't You Cover Local News Competently Anymore??

We usually go over to Bocktown Beer and Grill for dinner and the Wednesday beer tasting. After that, the plan was to go out to Friendship to attend a planning meeting for Confluence.

When we got to Bocktown, it was threatening but not raining. By the time we got our beer, we could hear the loud thunder overhead. As we sat in the back, we couldn't see the storm, but it had gotten very dark outside in a hurry.

By about 6:15, we were done eating and went to the front of the bar to try some Abita beer. It was raining so hard that that we couldn't see the parking lot from the front windows. The rain was coming in sideways, and the wind whipped up for a while. Lots of lightning and thunder. The rain and lightning were so heavy that we didn't dare go to our car.

Unfortunately, some of the Bocktown staff were out on the partially covered patio. By the time they got in, they were completely drenched.

We watched the rain for a while. Then, it lightened up slightly and the torrents calmed to mere rain. Even though the storm was going east, and we were going to be following it, we figured it was probably safe to drive to Friendship. According to KDKA radio, there were severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings for our area. While the severe thunderstorms were obvious, the tornadoes weren't as the wind wasn't too bad and we hadn't seen any hail. But, following the standard news/weather check, KDKA went back to its regular talk shows. So KDKA did not view the situation as particularly dangerous. We changed the channel and listened to classical WQED instead of listening what passes for talk.

As we approached the city, we were back in the heavy rain again. Usually, we take Bigelow Blvd. to go to Friendship, but there's a tendency for rockslides in the heavy rain. I chose to go through Oakland. After all, most of the students were gone - how bad could the traffic be?

Oakland had a horrible traffic jam. It took us nearly a half hour to go about a mile. And we couldn't figure out why. We kept switching between "news radio" KDKA and WQED, the classical music station. KDKA had no specifics - their 7:30 "news" show lasted about 30 second before it went back to standard talk radio bloviation.

As we got through the Forbes/Bigelow intersection, we suddenly saw why the traffic was so horrible in Oakland - street flooding in front of Carnegie Hall. I thought I could get through it. Jim insisted that I could not. So, I pulled a U-turn (highly illegal) and got back to the road between the parking lot and the library (going the wrong way briefly; luckily, the PAT bus let me go by). Many cars were stopping, and the sounds of police sirens were louder than the thunder.

There was street flooding on that street too. However, it didn't look as bad, and past that bit of flooding was higher ground. I slowly drove through the flooding and turned left past the library to make the relative safety of Schenley Park. We drove up the hill and parked by Baker Hall at Carnegie Mellon so we could hit a bathroom and consider our options. Running the 50 yards from our car to the hall made us both completely wet.

Several people were standing by the door of Baker Hall, trying to figure out the best thing to do. We visited the bathrooms and waited for the rain/lightning to calm down. After about another ten minutes, it did. The woman who was left said she'd parked her car in Schenley Park and wasn't looking forward to walking to her car. We offered her a ride. There were branches down but it was not as bad as after the tornado in 1998. There was also minor street flooding in Schenley Park - maybe 1-2 inches rather than the 6 inches we saw in Oakland. We dropped the professor off at her car, and decided it was safer to skip the meeting and go home. We drove through Squirrel Hill to get to the parkway.

While KDKA continued favoring talk show crap over actually reporting the news, we felt lucky to find that Squirrel Hill didn't have the flooding of Oakland. The only street flooding we saw was near the parkway entrance. The rest of our trip was uneventful, and we finally got home a little before 9.

KDKA ought to be ashamed of itself for the way its "local breaking news" was so completely useless during this storm. I remember back in 1998, the same station focused on the local wind and rain damage following the Mt. Washington tornado. This time, "news" station KDKA provided almost no local news. So much for helping the public. If stations like KDKA were still reporting local news rather than blathering on, it would have been much more helpful. Luckily, it sounds like no one was seriously injured last night, but there were apparently dozens of cars stuck in flooded areas all over eastern Allegheny county.

The Pew News Survey of Current Events

This is a really fast survey on your current news knowledge.

I scored 12 out of 12, which put me in the 94th percentile.

When you're underemployed, you tend to read the news...a lot!

Tracking Your Medicines

A few years ago, I realized I was already taking a variety of supplements and some prescription drugs. I started tracking what I was taking, so I would always have a quick record for my doctor. Also, I'd always know what drugs did work and what didn't work for me.

I found it easiest to track this information in an Access database. However, I thought I'd share the list with others, and many people don't have Access. So I also created an .rtf table, that can be read in Word and other word processors. You can download the files from the links below and adapt the database or word processing table any way you want.

The drug history, if you maintained this information in Access, would have this general format:

Drug History (pdf)

Tracking Your Medicines in Access

This is a pretty simple Access database. It's written in Access 2003, but uses only tables, queries and reports, so it could probably be read in older versions of Access. The database does not have a forms-based data-entry screen, enter the drug information directly in the data table.

mydruglist.sample.mdb (Access file)

When you open up the database, click on the tables option to display the data tables:

o druglistblank
o druglistsample

druglistblank is an empty database table. You can open it and just start entering drug data. druglistsample is a database table with sample data. The tables are the same; one has sample data and one does not.

Here are the fields in these tables:

ID - an auto-numbered identifier field. You can ignore it.
Date Added - a date field that defaults to the current date
Drug Name - the name of the drug
Type - prescription drug, over the counter drug, supplement
Dose - recommended dosage
How Often You Take It - the possible values are Daily, Occasionally, Post-op, Stopped Taking It. Record how frequently you take the drug.
Date Started Taking It - when you first took the drug
Prescribing Doctor - who prescribed it for you.
Notes - What you're taking the drug for, if you had any side effects, why you stopped taking it (if appropriate)

I think it's best to sort this information so that the drugs you are currently taking always sort to the top of the report. So I've written a query to sort the information in this way. Display the queries:

o drugblank
o drugsample

drugblank is the query that sorts your information from the druglistblank table. drugsample is the query that sorts the sample data in the druglistsample table. The default sort field is the "How Often You Take It" field. When you run the query, the drugs you take every day will sort to the top of the query table, followed by the drugs you take occasionally, followed by the drugs you've taken after surgery or hospitalization, followed by the drugs you've taken in the past but do not take anymore.

Finally, display the reports:

o drugblankreport
o drugsamplereport

drugblankreport creates a report based on your information in the druglistblank table.
drugsamplereport creates a report based on the sample information in the druglistsample table.

Open the drugblankreport to see your information. At the top of the page, you'll see YOUR NAME, BIRTHDATE. Delete those strings and enter your name and your birthdate.

Tracking Your Medicines in a Word Table

Download mydruglist.blank.rtf. After you've downloaded it, you can enter information directly into the table. You should save the modified table under a new name, so you'll always have a blank table available online. Be sure to add your name and your birthdate to the top of the file.

There's a government site with a recommended text file for collecting medical information. AARP also has information on collecting drug and medical information.

On Not Closing Guantanamo - The Fear-Mongering of Republicans Never Ceases to Amaze Me

We have all kinds of dangerous Americans in prison.

And yet...

Republicans have brainwashed people (including, sadly, a bunch of Democrats) into believing that about 200 terrorism suspects can't be housed in American prisons.

These terrorism suspects don't have super-powers. They've not going to jump over the fences, mind-control all the guards or create an atomic bomb out of their tea. So why not house them in American military jails? Didn't we manage Germans and Japanese in American military jails without having them invade America? Maybe Americans were just smarter and braver during World War II.

I suspect the majority of the people remaining in Guantanamo probably do have ties to terrorism. We've released nearly 500 "terrorists" from Guantanamo over the last seven years because there was inadequate evidence (even by Bush administration "standards") to hold them.

What should happen is that the remaining terrorism suspects should be moved to at least two American military prisons and they should be tried. If they're innocent, they should be returned to their countries. If they're guilty, they should serve out their term in an American military prison. Obama has forcefully stated that America won't continue the heinous practices of the Bush administration, including terrorism. But holding terrorism suspects indefinitely in a third-party country has seemed, frankly, as un-American as engaging in torture.

Some Signs of Life in the Pittsburgh Housing Market

The Pittsburgh housing market had a massive crash in the late '70s and early '80s when manufacturing jobs went abroad. I remember coming in from Ohio to visit Jim's family and seeing literally half the houses in some neighborhoods with For Sale signs. As a result of that massive crash, the Pittsburgh housing market has been on the cheap side ever since. So, while parts of the rest of the national housing market have been crashing, Pittsburgh's housing market hasn't lost too much value, though it has been on the quiet side.

We live in the country not too far from Pittsburgh International Airport, in a development of new houses. The oldest house in our development is about six years old, and most of them are in the three-four year range. I generally like it, except for the need to drive everywhere to get anything (*sigh*). But, it's quiet and we finally have the space to shelve all of our books.

When we moved out here three years ago, there were about 100 houses built, in an area where, maybe, something like 220 houses could be built total. While there was a fair amount of building activity for the first year, the last two years have only seen one or two houses being built at a time.

I took a longer walk than usual today, and walked up into the newest street. Where about six weeks ago, there were, maybe, two houses being built, there are five new houses framed-in and two cellars. A surprising increase in activity.

The builder builds big but not "luxury" homes, so they are fairly affordable. And there's maybe only about 10 existing houses in the neighborhood that are on the market. But that upswing in new construction is interesting and is probably some good economic news.