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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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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