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Dear Pittsburgh,
I have been watching you. I see you pushing strollers, pushing shopping carts, driving one by one by one on the busy roads near my house. I see you pulling kids behind you, pulling the last light out of the day as you let your dogs romp in Frick Park. I hear you talking to each other, one going on and on and one bent forward a little, listening, helping you bear your load. I see you with coffee cups, stumbling into coffee shops, carrying water bottles, waiting for a table. I saw a school bus full of a bachelor party, the soon to be groom pissing off the back tire, glad to see you not attempting to drive your drunken selves around our kids on skateboards in parking lots and in allies. I see you waiting in long lines at the dollar store and the grocery store and the markets in the strip district. I see you plugged into your tiny and strong ear buds, listening to your own personal background music. I am the one smiling at you. I am the one behind these eyeballs hoping to connect for a glance and a nod.
Last January, around a conference table four of us sat down to talk about the creation of a mosaic mural to hang at The Pittsburgh International Airport. I proposed we do two, one that not only admitted our smoggy past but also broke open the heart of the backs upon which the industry bent and broke. It was going to be a question, “You think Pittsburgh is this polluted smoky and industrial town?” You think your going to enter the tunnel and come out at mid day and not be able to see 10 feet in front of your face? Come on. Look at this, this is the brown and fetid river, these are the mill workers, huffing and puffing up and down all of those steps. Breathed and sighed and groaned up to home and down to the 16 hour days and risk of life or limb and up again to their little house, next to their work partners little house piled up two hundred little houses of mill workers with their lungs dirty and hearts weary and wives teary and children needy and hungry and many and all over, running up and down those steps and playing in the dirty streets and crying wet tears which cleared paths on their soot stained cheeks. And the handkerchiefs that were gray from blowing black filled noses and white gloves, sooty and grimy, and the river brown and stagnant and fetid and everywhere, barges and trains taking away what was made here and plundered from here and drained and squeezed from here and sent down the Ohio leaving only what filth and grime could not be sold for profit. And strikes and scabs and Pinkertons and greed and money and waste. And sickness that remained and passed down for future generations to finger and remember and wonder, “Was that for me?” You did that for me?’ Wanting your kids to have a better life then you did; leaving us, present day parents, dry and breathing clean air and clocking 8 hours a day and seeing blue sky and loving the little houses on the hills while we turn factories into lofts where concrete is polished and shined. 50 gallon drums become “urban casual” sinks. The noise of the city can be filtered and hushed through double pane glass and there is good wine and martini’s to take the edge off of a day that was, never-the-less, stressful, because that is our nature, but really, only self-induced stress that can go away at a gym or behind a belt of gin.
The idea was to put it all out there, here is the Pittsburgh you think you know from all you’ve heard about it. Here is how you pictured it. Here is how it was. We admit it.
Then the other mosaic, present day Pittsburgh, the way it really feels to come through the tunnel and have your breath taken away by the water and the way it fills with reflected lights. The alive feeling of the fountain.
The arc and curve and gracious welcome that expand in the chest as you come out of the confines of the tunnel, the swell of pride and new found delight of our city. This is the feeling that we had hoped the new Pittsburgh would illicit. Personal landmarks, Oakland, Pamela’s restaurant, trees, Highland Park and the way one trip around the reservoir, can call forth memories of my life from any age and era that I have circled that water. My family lived in Highland Park for three generations. I have an intimate and I believe genetic relationship with the cracks in the sidewalk on the well worn path from school to home and back again.
After studying and making mosaic renditions of the downtown buildings, I feel so happy to see the real buildings swell up as we fly down the Parkway East heading west. It’s such a beautiful and sweet city. Yes, the Mon is really green and you can see where it bleeds into the Ohio, that the Allegheny River is a different shade of River. People row in crews of rowers here, people hike the area, and water and stagnation are being encouraged to flow. Things are moving! The question we face here is, “What do we do with a post-plundered city?” When the economy and natural resources have been sucked dry, swallowed, choked up and spit out, what do we do? What to do when there is nothing left to do to a place…leave? I don’t want to. If you are still here or have returned, welcome home. Let’s kick our feet up while the day is still ours and imagine all of the possibilities. The heart of human being pumps with ingenuity, creativity, the desire to make the city a little better then the way we left it. There is no stopping the imagination and the creative urge to explore, and see color and light in the changing seasons. Even the gloomiest winter still sports the moonstone glow of filtered light. Look around, the hills and valleys have a place for you, the changing seasons offer their own flavor and spice to our years as we continue on and climb the many steps to the future. Look around. Notice each other. Here we are.
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