I have just returned from a long weekend in California, and continue to be astounded at our capability to travel long distances these days. John and I have been negotiating for an appropriate weekend for me to visit him and his family, and last weekend worked out well for us. His business obligations take them all over the world; they spent the summer in Europe and China, but are currently in northern California. And they are not the only globe-trotting members of our extended family – Beth is in Japan this month and Sara has just returned from a conference…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society kicked off its 2024/2025 program series with an interesting talk by Robert Stakeley, Coordinator of the Heinz History Center Affiliates Program. His subject was A Woman’s Place: How Women Shaped Pittsburgh, which, by coincidence, is the subject of the current special exhibit at the Heinz History Center. Mr. Stakeley is an excellent extemporaneous speaker, well versed in his subject. Unfortunately, his slides left a lot to be desired. I continue to be surprised how much more competent our students in the Civil Engineering Department are in putting together a Power Point presentation than many of the…

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It is easyto accuse us nonagenarians of “living in the past”. Whenever a group of us get together, we invariably end up rehashing memories from years gone by, and agreeing that we grew up in the best of times and that we feel sorry for young people today. A number of unrelated things have combined recently to force me to focus on this subject — the closing of the Bob Evans Restaurant in Kirwan Heights and the potential demise of our High School Brunch Club, the Book Club selection of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Romance with its focus on the…

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My former Pitt colleague and dear friend Mark Magalotti recently gave me an old magazine full of things he knew would interest me. It was the September 1956 edition of Greater Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh’s Business Magazine, published monthly by the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, a “focal point for action in government, transportation, and education”. I remember the magazine as an excellent source of business information and was sorry to see the Chamber cease its publication in 1991. Mark knew I would be interested in a special feature article by Sun-Telegraph Editor William Lampe discussing the newly announced Interstate Highway System, authorized by…

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I have been aware of Fort Henry Days for quite a while, but was never able to attend until this year. When Beth asked me what I wanted to do on Labor Day, I realized this was my opportunity to remedy that deficiency. Once I had her agreement to drive me all the way to Wheeling on a holiday weekend, I immediately began to expand the proposed expedition. Steubenville’s not that far from Wheeling; why not detour that small amount and check out the cable-stayed bridge at Weirton? Consequently, we began our odyssey by heading for Route 22. Today’s 22…

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The advent of clement weather since we returned from our vacation has enabled me to “get out and about” a little. Before Sara returned to Colorado, we spent a very pleasant Sunday afternoon at South Park. Our initial purpose was to check out the bison in the Game Reserve there. Sara is heavily involved in the Department of Interior (DOI) Bison Working Group, a task force dedicated to implementing a meta-population management plan to establish genetic connections among the isolated herds of wild bison on DOI land. We were able to find the ten bison, including two calves, close to the fence…

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As I reported last week, Sara and I had a delightful experience taking a short course on Hollywood Film Musicals at Chautauqua. The instructor was Phil Atteberry, a recently retired English teacher at Pitt’s Regional campuses in Titusville and Bradford. I first encountered Phil thirty years ago at Allegheny Jazz Society events in Meadville and at Conneaut Lake, where he was helping Bill Garts sell records at the society booth. At that time Bill hosted a Saturday evening radio program on WQLN (Erie) called “Saturday Swing Session”, which we enjoyed each summer weekend when we were at our cottage at…

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We have just returned from a very enjoyable family vacation. Sara flew in from Denver early on Saturday. She, Beth’s family, and I drove to the Chautauqua Institution in western New York State in a three-vehicle caravan. Mike carefully loaded two kayaks and our Mini-fish sailboat into my van; Sara and I with a load of luggage set off in one car; and Beth and Rachael followed in another car filled with groceries and luggage (and their blue tick hound Gunnar). We felt at home immediately once we checked into the same house we rented last year, at 8 Judson…

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My beloved Bridgeville High School Class of 1949 has lost another distinguished alumnus. This time it is Joe Stalma, an honored high school athlete and a legendary high school basketball coach in Ohio. Joe grew up on Fryer’s Hill; when I reported his passing to my friends at Brunch last week, Tom Grossi remembered the Stalmas’ living on the corner of Ella Street and Ridge Road. I remember Joe and Ernie Skvartz walking to high school, probably down Ridge to McLaughlin Run Road, then up the steps to Gregg Avenue in Greenwood Place. Joe was the tallest boy in our…

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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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