When we studied world history in high school, we learned that the evolution of civilization had a major setback in the fifth century AD when the Barbarians overthrew the Roman Empire and Europe entered the Dark Ages. All attempts at learning and science were suspended and massive amounts of knowledge were lost forever. It took a millennium and the arrival of the Renaissance for it to get back on track. Recently I have learned that this perception may have been grossly exaggerated. This realization began with watching “The Dig”, an excellent recent British movie. It documents an important archaeological excavation…

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Long time readers of these pages are aware of my fascination with the Iditarod and my insistence on dedicating a column to it each year. This year’s running finished last week, and I am in my annual slough of despond and withdrawal, realizing I must wait eleven months for next year’s race. After several years of warmer temperatures and a disappointing snow pack, Mother Nature provided us with old-fashioned conditions this year. The temperature seldom got much above zero during the day and several times was as cold as minus fifty in the mornings. Last year’s race had a makeshift…

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Last Saturday (March 14, aka National π Day), when I randomly pulled a pair of socks out of my sock drawer, I was astonished at the coincidence that it was my “π Day” pair. I suspect that not all of our readers are sufficiently esoteric to celebrate this popular holiday, so I will briefly bring you up to date. In 1988 an eccentric physicist (Larry Shaw) at the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco, initiated a celebration honoring π, the Greek letter representing the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. We amateur mathematicians know that…

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It is easy to accuse me of having mixed up priorities. While the rest of the world was grappling with major issues – war with Iran, climate change, the effectiveness of vaccines, etc. – last week I found myself in a knock-down, drag-out argument with a group of serious glass collectors debating the significance of the “bumblebee” trademark for verifying the authenticity of JB Higbee glasswork. A year or so ago I realized that the Facebook page for the Early American Pattern Glass Society was a possible source of information regarding collecting Higbee pieces manufactured in Bridgeville between 1906 and…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society presented the final program in its Winter schedule on the last Sunday of February. This month the program series will return to its traditional “last Tuesday evening of the month” schedule. The speaker for February was Tim Ragaller, representing the Woodville House Associates where he is a member of the Board of Directors and an extremely active volunteer. We know Tim as the son of Dolores DeBlander (Ragaller), Bridgeville High School (BHS) May Queen in 1947, and Dick Ragaller, BHS class of 1945. I had the privilege of working as a soda jerk at McMillen’s…

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Last week’s column lamenting the demise of the Post-Gazette generated more feedback than usual, mostly from old fogies with fond memories of being paperboys. The more I read about the subject, the more depressing it becomes. It appears that the only cities still served by print papers seven days a week are New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and even those holdouts are experiencing dramatically reduced circulations. My initial intention was to produce a follow-up column discussing the apparently still successful newspapers in near-by county seats, with the Washington Observer-Reporter as a principal case study. It is an excellent candidate for me, being…

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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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