Today’s biggest excitement in information technology is “artificial intelligence” and its application to a range of widely diverse fields – autonomous vehicles (Waymo), strategy games (Chess and Go), Internet search engines (Google), recommendation systems (YouTube), speech recognition (Alexa and Siri), and generative tools (ChatGBT). Generative tools “learn the patterns and structure of their input test data and then generate new data that has similar characteristics”. One of the popular uses for ChatGBT is as an alternative to “Googling” as a method for searching for information on the Internet. An interesting side-note is the fact that the spell-checker on the Microsoft Word…

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Last week I reflected on the similarity between Bridgeville in 1942 and River City, Iowa (site of the Broadway musical “The Music Man”) in 1912. At the same time my current interest in reading William Faulkner turned up numerous parallels between Yoknapatawpha County (the mythical locale for many of his novels and short stories) and our local area (which I will call Tingooqua Township). Both regions were settled in the early days of our country and evolved and transformed dramatically into the middle of the twentieth century. I found myself wondering what body of literature he would have produced had…

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Last week I reported that one of my many birthday treasures was a visit to the Benedum Theater for a live performance of “The Music Man”. I have been a fan of the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (CLO) since 1948, the third year it was in existence. I fondly remember going to Pitt Stadium that summer to see “Hit the Deck”, starring Gil Lamb. At that time the classical era of Broadway musicals, beginning in 1943 with “Oklahoma”, had just begun its two decades long run and the CLO featured instead earlier classics – “Show Boat”, “Rose Marie”, and “Naughty…

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By the time you are reading this, I will have successfully navigated one more milestone (the ninety-third anniversary of my birth) and will be well into my ninety-fourth year. According to the Social Security actuarial tables, my life expectancy is 3.14 years, which calculates to September 6, 2027. I will be happy with that, and will no longer worry about the Social Security/Medicare accounts going “belly-up” in 2030.   My birthday has been full of highlights. Beth took me to the Benedum for a delightful live performance of “The Music Man”. She and Sara gave me a new patio swing which…

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When I was growing up in Bridgeville, I knew that fraternal/social clubs – the Owls Club and the Italian Club, for example – were an important part of the community’s culture. Initially I thought their prime purpose was to provide a place for thirsty men to get around the Blue Laws and enjoy a glass of wine or a shot and a beer on Sundays. Later I realized that they truly were fraternal organizations that existed so men with similar interests could socialize comfortably. It is not clear when the first lodge or club was organized in Bridgeville. The photograph…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society ended a very impressive 2023/2024 program series with Glenn Flickinger’s presentation of “The Air War over Europe”. This general subject is a familiar one to regular attendees of this series. We have had presentations (by my brother Joe) on his book “Almost Forgotten”, chronicling servicemen from this area who lost their lives while in the service, including World War II airmen Samuel Allender, Wayne Carson, and Joseph Kasprzak; on the remarkable tale of airmen George Shady, George Abood, and Peter Calabro, childhood friends repatriated from the same POW camp; and on Santo Magliocca, who survived…

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Our attendance at the final Pittsburgh Symphony concert of the 2023/2024 season was filled with mixed feelings. It is always sad to see a season end, particularly when you wonder how many more seasons you will be privileged to enjoy. I came late to classical music and found it to be an interesting alternative to my first love, mainstream jazz. In the spring of 1963 I learned that a lovely young lady I had just met enjoyed the Pittsburgh Symphony concerts; I promptly obtained two tickets to a concert in the Syria Mosque and squired her there one Friday evening….

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Each year the Mt. Lebanon Library hosts a Garden Tour as a fundraising activity. For a modest fee, mere mortals are given the opportunity to tour half a dozen or so of the finest local gardens and “ooh and aah” at their splendor. On two occasions, gardens in our neighborhood made the cut; their owners promptly imported professional landscapers to enhance their already immaculate grounds. I’m sure that our garden will never even make “also ran”, but I really don’t care. On a classic (“what is so rare as a day in …”) June afternoon, I feel like Freddy Eynsford-Hill,…

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I have been a fan of graphic art, paintings and drawings, most of my life; I suspect that is true of most of us. My exposure has been primarily to reproductions, photographs in magazines, etc., an experience that is generally sufficient to permit me to sort out the ones I like from the rest. Occasionally, however, I have had the opportunity to see originals of famous paintings in museums or special exhibitions. These have been memorable occasions. The collections I have seen at the great museums – the Louvre, the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, the National Gallery of…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society continued its program series in May with a special treat, a discussion entitled “An Insight into the Relationships of Presidents and Their Wives” by Layla Asbury, a Sophomore at Chartiers Valley High School. Layla and her grandfather are regular attendees at programs in this series. Her presentation was outstanding and very well received by everyone in the audience. As impressive as her extemporaneous presentation was, her overall knowledge of her subject, as demonstrated in the extensive question and answer session following it, was even more impressive. She began her talk with John Tyler, our tenth…

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