I am an enthusiastic fan of Hugh Henry Brackenridge because of his role as a founding father of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. He shared the vision of his Princeton classmate and close friend James Madison; a new nation whose leaders would be selected by “the people”, with the caveat that the selectors be educated and well informed. To promote education, he founded the Pittsburgh Academy, whose direct descendant is the University of Pittsburgh, a world class educational institution. For information, he imported John Scull and a printing press from Philadelphia and founded the Pittsburgh Gazette. It spawned a number of newspapers, including…

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I suspect the primary reason for this event was my wife’s inherent enjoyment of holidays, celebrations, and parties – especially when they involved our children. At any rate, at some time in the 1970s our family took advantage of a minor holiday, Valentine’s Day, to initiate a major festival – the Oyler Family Annual Traditional Celebration Of Valentine’s (Day), in honor of which we invented the acronym OFATCOV. I have a faint recollection of this beginning with the family’s concern about Nan’s Aunt Gladys Powell. Following the death of her sister (Nan’s mother), Gladys had moved into a neat little…

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When Larry Kennedy’s children cleaned out his apartment, they found, among his memorabilia, his long-hand record of the books that his beloved book review club had read, dating back to March 10, 2000, when we kicked off with William Least Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways”. Impressed by the pleasure his wife Marie enjoyed from her book club, he decided to take a crack at one with a group of his literate friends. We began at his house; five Irishmen, one free spirit (Wilson Todd), and me. Remarkably, despite massive attrition from the Grim Reaper, the club has managed to survive and prosper. It…

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The sky is falling! Region under alert! Pittsburgh braces for massive winter storm! Winter’s wrath! Giant Eagle’s parking lot is full, but their toilet paper shelves are empty. The news of the past week has been dominated by the prediction of a serious winter storm coming this weekend. Originally hitting inches of snow, the prediction a day before the arrival of the storm modified to perhaps a dozen. The potential consequences of the storm are still severe. To quote the storm warning, “Travel could be very difficult to impossible!” All manner of events have already been postponed or cancelled. Today’s…

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On a recent visit to the Bridgeville Area Historical Society, I found the volunteers deep in a discussion with a gentleman who was introduced to me as Eric Chabassol.  He had just delivered a package of memorabilia from the Bridgeville High School Class of 1953 that became available following the recent death of his mother. Before she was married, I knew her as Laura Pruner, a precocious eighth-grader the year I graduated. Many years later she was a very popular hairdresser; someone whom my mother liked very much. I suspect that old-fashioned hairdressers were as effective therapists for women as old-fashioned…

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Last week I mentioned, in passing, an event that occurred very late in the life of the current drainage system in southwestern Pennsylvania – the development of Lake Monongahela – and glossed over its influence on the Chartiers Valley, while promising myself to discuss it in detail this week. This remarkable event occurred in recent (geologically speaking) time, yet long before the arrival of the human species. Scientists believe that the drainage system here one million years ago was strictly to the north, into a predecessor of the St. Lawrence River. An early version of the Monongahela River began in…

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One of my favorite gifts this Christmas was a copy of Robert Macfarlane’s new book, “Is a River Alive? Macfarlane is a remarkably gifted English writer who has made his reputation as a nature and travel writer. His newest book deals with our stewardship of our creeks and rivers, a subject dear to my heart. Philosophically, it addresses the concept that “rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law”. Dr. Seuss invented the Lorax and Hollywood supplied the voice of Danny DeVito to “speak for the trees”; perhaps Macfarlane speaks for the rivers. Mr. Macfarlane currently…

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When I attempt to review the year that has just finished, I am struck by the contrast between the comfortable little world I occupy and the chaotic real world of which my tiny piece is a part. I realize that I am fortunate to live in a wealthy neighborhood in a wealthy community, surrounded by other communities that are comfortable economically and stable socially, and that that environment clouds my perception of reality. I am astonished by the things that dominate the national news – masked storm troopers with assault weapons patrolling the streets of major cities; air raids on…

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Thanks to our parents, Joe and I enjoyed memorable Christmases when we were children. Fortunately we both found wives with that same tradition and worked hard to see that our children had Christmas experiences to match ours. The tradition has survived at least one more generation. Last night Sara sent us a photograph of their beautiful Christmas village, overseen by a gaily decorated tree they had cut in the Rockies. In no time John and Beth reciprocated with photos of their trees. Their grandparents would be proud of them! When Nan and I were first married, she wrote individual letters…

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I have been involved with the University of Pittsburgh Department of Civil Engineering Senior Design program for thirty years, including many serving as its coordinator. Offered in their last semester, Senior Design is the capstone course for our graduating Civil and Environmental Engineers, an opportunity for them to synthesize their academic learning into implementation of a significant “near-real-world” team design project and demonstrate their readiness to function as engineers-in-training in the real world.  This Fall’s program was abnormally small, only nineteen students (next semester we have over sixty students registered!). As a consequence, they fielded five small teams, each of…

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