Ornoth

Now that I’m 18 months removed from it, I’d like to reflect on my seven years in Pittsburgh.

Let me apologize in advance; this’ll be more negative than positive, because I want to talk about why I left. My intention isn’t to shit on anyone’s chosen hometown. There really is a lot to like about Pittsburgh and Western PA, many good reasons to live there, and lots of genuinely awesome people. But I also want to be forthright about why I was eager to leave.

By far the biggest reason actually had nothing to do with Pittsburgh itself; it’s just that I never intended to stay. When I left Boston in 2015, my #1 desire was to finally move somewhere warm, after enduring 50+ New England winters. Pittsburgh’s weather wasn’t much of an improvement, so I always knew Pittsburgh was a temporary stop on my way to something else. Even before I arrived, moving away was a foregone conclusion, though it did become more urgent as the years ticked by and my patience ebbed.

Before I moved to Pittsburgh, my impressions of Western PA were informed by two or three trips to the SCA’s Pennsic War, one DargonZine Summit, several trips to visit Inna, plus some trips to do database work with the local hospitals. Based on that, my pre-move image of Pennsylvania was of beautifully scenic wooded rolling hills and farmland, with Pittsburgh as a leading center of medical excellence.

After living there for seven years, I left with a very different impression: that of an exploited and poisoned environment, with more openly mean-spirited people than I was used to.

But let’s start with what I thought were some of Pittsburgh’s best features:

• The countryside really is strikingly beautiful, when seen from a safe distance.
• Pittsburgh has a compact, attractive downtown with a beautiful skyline that’s shown off well from its dramatic gateway entrance and numerous surrounding hilltop overlooks.
• There’s lots of noteworthy architecture and cultural institutions, thanks largely to the philanthropic legacy of Pittsburgh’s oil, steel, and industrial magnates.
• There is an easily-accessible and uncrowded casino whose state-stipulated blackjack rules are more advantageous for the player than nearly anywhere else.
• The airport pipes in music from local classical radio station WQED.

Yes, citing a casino and crowd control music as top features is an instance of damning with faint praise, and I have a lot more negative things to say. But before I dig into those, I’d like to mention a few things about Pittsburgh that were both good… and bad. Let me show you what I mean:

• Land and housing are extremely affordable. That would be delightful, except it’s due to the fact that Pittsburgh’s population has not grown in any 10-year census period since 1950, shrinking by 55% in that span, leaving a lot of underutilized, vacant, and/or abandoned properties.
• The winters are slightly better than Boston, with considerably less cold and snow than Maine. Being further south, winter days have more daylight hours, and should have more sunshine and less oppressive darkness. But you actually see less sun during the winter. Although thankfully not inside the Great Lakes snow belt, Pittsburgh is close enough that there’s perpetual overcast skies and sporadic light flurries all winter long, and that lack of sun can be just as depressing as the shortened days up in Maine.
• Pittsburgh’s airport is spacious and quick to get through… But that’s because it was built as a major USAir hub just before that airline’s insolvency. Today PIT handles a minuscule fraction of the volume it was designed for. You can’t escape the cognitive dissonance when the loudspeakers proudly announce “Welcome to Pittsburgh!” and it echoes down the vast corridors of an empty airport.
• Pittsburgh is arguably the hilliest city in the US. As a cyclist, the upsides are intense physical workouts and memorable events like the infamous Dirty Dozen hillclimb; while the downside is a dearth of calm, relaxing routes, because all the flat land has been claimed by highways, railroads, warehouses, and industry. And if you’re a driver, those hills can be treacherous in winter.
• There’s a very friendly cycling community and loads of interesting cycling events. On the other hand, it can be difficult to get around on a bike, as there aren’t many good options heading east or south or west of the city.

And now we get to the heart of the matter: the things about Pittsburgh that turned me off. I tried to whittle this down to major points while still making myself clear.

It’s dirty.

To be fair, there’s been a ton of progress in the 150 years since Atlantic Monthly described Pittsburgh at the height of its industrial output as “hell with the lid taken off.” But a lot of damage done to the land, water, and air by the coal, oil, gas, iron, and steel industries still remains. Western PA is the only area outside California that consistently receives all ‘F’ grades in the American Lung Association’s air quality reports, and often records the worst air quality in the US. Even today, the culture of fouling the environment still lingers, as can be seen in the preponderance of roadside litter and illegal garbage dumping. Having grown up in the Maine woods, the lack of respect for the natural environment disturbed me.

It’s blighted.

I’ve already mentioned the population decline and abundance of abandoned and condemned buildings, so I won’t belabor it, save to say that the amount of urban decay and blight is off-putting. I’m sure it didn’t help that Pittsburgh was in receivership for 14 years (from 2004-2018), despite residents paying an extra 1.5% city income tax!

Collapsing infrastructure.

Pittsburgh has some unique challenges that other cities don’t. The steep topography means that parts of the city get flash floods (Washington Blvd, Mon Wharf, the Bathtub, Millvale, Glass Run). And there are seasonal landslides that can close roads for months (Greenleaf, Commercial, Pittview, Route 30). But then there’s also numerous avoidable, man-made infrastructure failures. For example, during my brief years in Pittburgh:

• The Fern Hollow Bridge carrying Forbes Ave over Frick Park collapsed.
• Concrete slabs from the Swindell Bridge fell onto the Parkway North, forcing closures on I-279.
• More concrete fell from the Greenfield Bridge over the Parkway East (I-376) , so the state built a semipermanent “bridge” underneath the main bridge just to catch the falling debris.
• Several building facades collapsed in the Southside, Lawrenceville, and the Strip, including Kraynick’s bike shop.
• A Pittsburgh city transit bus was driving along Liberty Ave in the heart of downtown when a huge sinkhole opened up and swallowed it whole.
• An entire parking deck collapsed in the Penn Hills.
• Repeated train derailments in the South Side, Harmar, and a dramatic moving conflagration as a burning train rolled on obliviously for twenty miles through Freedom and Harmony, PA.

So much anger.

I don’t want to overemphasize this, because I made a lot of wonderful friendships in Pittsburgh. But in comparison to New England, many Western PA locals seemed eager to take opportunities to be rude or mean toward one another, while hiding behind the anonymity of the internet or ensconced in their self-propelled rolling fortresses. Pittsburgh has a lot of schadenfreude, which was unpleasant.

A culture of unlawfulness.

A lot of cities found themselves at odds with their own police forces following the Black Lives Matter protests and de-funding rumors, but Pittsburgh already had a head start. Speeding has historically never been enforced; in fact, it’s still illegal today for county and local law enforcement to use radar guns to enforce speed limits! In seven years living (and riding) there, I don’t think I ever saw a state trooper, and saw only one or two traffic stops by local police.

The Covid pandemic provided another disincentive to conduct minor traffic stops. And the police reacted hostilely to BLM and de-funding protests. Then both the city council and even bike advocates asked the cops to stop traffic enforcement! All this made it much more dangerous to be a pedestrian, cyclist, or motor vehicle operator in Pittsburgh. Tho sadly, I now realize this is a much broader problem than just Western PA.

Monopolies in healthcare and groceries.

Healthcare in Pittsburgh is dominated by UPMC. Because it’s loosely affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, this immense hospital chain does everything it can to take full advantage of its categorization as a non-profit. No one I talked to had a positive experience with them, whether as a patient or an employee.

Pittsburgh also suffers from a near-monopoly in grocery stores. You would think that when I lived in downtown Boston’s tony Back Bay, my groceries would have been extremely costly; but my food bill actually jumped 25% higher after I moved to Pittsburgh.

Misplaced regional pride.

I get it: every place needs to have a sense of regional pride. But it’s kind of lame that the “Paris of Appalachia” bases its sense of identity on things that are ubiquitous throughout urban America, such as putting a chair out to reserve a parking space, or trying to jump the green when turning left at a traffic light. Or rabid loyalty to a company like Heinz, which left Pittsburgh 20 years ago. Or mindlessly hating all the other cities in the region (Philadelphia, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit). Sure, take pride in your city, but make some effort to identify the things that genuinely make Pittsburgh special; the “Pittsburgh Left” ain’t it.

The food.

I just don’t know how Pittsburgh gained its reputation as a city for foodies.

Let’s consider the foods Pittsburghers take pride in: Beer. Ketchup. Pickles. Lenten fish frys. Pierogies. And sticking french fries into literally everything. None of these qualify as “cuisine”. If I were a Pittsburgher, I’d be ashamed.

And while I’m admittedly a culinary philistine myself, I didn’t find any places that impressed me in my preferred food zones, like burgers, Indian, and Mexican food. Thai was a wasteland except for Thai & Noodle Outlet. Pizza wasn’t “all that” but Aiello’s was tolerable… tho they (and their arch-rival Mineo’s) still refuse to deliver and require payment in cash. And the best Pittsburgh could offer for ice cream was Bruster’s (no, don’t talk to me about Page’s or Dave and Andy’s).

Toxic redneck culture.

I grew up among rednecks. A lot of my family were rednecks. Almost everywhere I’ve lived, there have been a lot of rednecks. And outside of Pittsburgh’s city limits, Western PA is infested with rednecks.

I just don’t fit into – or get along well with – that culture anymore. The rabid devotion to the local sportball teams (The Stillers, The Pens). The preoccupation with beer and alcohol. The gun fetish (open and concealed carry are both legal). The mindless nationalism. The constant othering and barefaced xenophobia. The utter absence of compassion or open-mindedness.

Several Western-PA wing-nuts played leading roles in the 2021 Trump-inspired attempt to overthrow the United States government. And in 2018, less than a mile from our apartment, the deadliest massacre of Jews in United States history took place. I hope I don’t need to tell you how offensive those are.

In closing:

Pittsburgh was a city of contradictions and trade-offs. Western PA was beautiful, if you looked past the pollution and decay. The cycling was great, but also quite challenging. It was inexpensive (housing), except where it wasn’t (groceries). I met plenty of wonderful people (undoubtedly including the Pittsburghers who are reading this), and about as many that were truly hateful.

Although the winters, as the natives say, “weren’t all that”, it was a fine place to spend a half-dozen years. I have a lot of very fond memories of Pittsburgh. Those include the many valued friends I made; the heart-warming meditation communities that welcomed me and nurtured my growth as a teacher; plus the people and landscapes and rides that I enjoyed while cycling. These will stay with me forever.

But from the very beginning, I always planned to move farther south, beyond the clutches of the Snow Miser. And as the years passed, I needed to move on to a warmer, sunnier place.

It goes without saying that Austin, our new home, came with its own set of pleasures and challenges… But that’s a story for another post.

I must admit, I’ve always been kinda confused by vegetarians.

Many, if not most, vegetarians avoid meat out of compassion for other living beings. This is, of course, a laudable sentiment that I personally agree with and support. If I were a vegetarian, this would be my primary motivation.

On the other hand, vegetarianism that’s based on the sanctity of life doesn’t make much sense if you agree that plants are just as much “living beings” as animals. Is killing and eating a plant really any less violent than killing a cow or a lamb? Why? Is it because we feel more “kinship” with that cow than we do, say, a turnip?

The history of human ethical development can be viewed as a glacially slow progression of extending respect to other life forms. We began back in the caveman days, when Grog came up with the revolutionary idea that he shouldn’t cross the river and kill Kracken’s whole family, since they were kinda the same as his family.

Tens of thousands of years later, mankind is still struggling with the idea that people from the neighboring country are kinda the same as we are, even though they talk funny; that people are still people, even if they worship ridiculous pagan gods (or, heaven forbid, some blasphemous variation of our own); and that we are all one, even if our skin color isn’t.

Here’s where I give vegetarians credit: they’ve extended that idea of kinship, and the compassion that comes with it, to other mammals. You don’t eat cows and pigs and dogs and lambs because, dammit, there’s something about them that we can identify with and care about. We don’t want them to suffer and die just for our convenience. Well done, Captain Vegetable!

But that’s just one more incremental step along a long path of ethical development: one more case of us realizing that just because something is different doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of our honor, respect, and compassion.

The next steps in our ethical development are obvious: extend that same degree of compassion to birds, fish, shellfish, and insects. Giving mammals preferential treatment over other members of the animal kingdom makes about as much sense as giving Jews preferential treatment over Muslims.

Oh. Right. We’re not quite there yet, are we? Maybe someday.

Objectively, fish and insects are life forms just like you and I, and the more we respect life, the more we must care about their suffering, too. There are already people who, instead of swatting them, escort their household bugs outside, being careful not to harm them.

Assuming we finally manage to extend our compassion beyond our fellow humans and other mammals, to fish and insects, it’s only a matter of time before we finally admit that plants are living beings, too.

And here is where I must ask of my vegetarian friends: why is the life of one stink bug more precious than our annual destruction of millions upon millions of tomato plants, or corn stalks, or Christmas trees?

The precedent has already been set of humans taking action to save an individual redwood or a swath of forest from being clear-cut. That action makes no sense unless the idea has begun to take root that all life—even vegetables!—is worthy of our respect and compassion.

Of course, I’m not arguing that vegetarians should stop eating vegetables, or ethically regress by resuming eating meat. It’s an unfortunate and unavoidable fact that right now, humans must eat formerly living beings in order to survive.

That’s an interesting realization, because it establishes an ethical dilemma for us: our survival requires us to kill living beings. Since most religions say that killing is one of the worst actions one can perform, doesn’t that mean that mankind is inherently evil?

That’s an interesting contrast to what we normally hear, which is that humans have a favored position in the universe. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all assert that man was created in God’s image, and Buddhism says that a human rebirth is a rare and precious opportunity to attain enlightenment. A good example is this quote, attributed to Anagarika Darmapala at the 1892 World Parliament of Religions:

To be born as a human being is a glorious privilege. Man’s dignity consists in his capability to reason and think and to live up to the highest ideal of pure life, of calm thought, of wisdom without extraneous intervention.

But how do we reconcile this self-congratulatory view of ourselves with the gory fact that every day of our lives we must kill and eat our fellow living beings?

Now let me set the question aside and take a bit of a side track, because that idea dovetails nicely with some of my own feelings concerning the sanctity of nature, and particularly trees.

Since childhood, when my summers were spent along wooded lakes in Maine, I’ve felt a deep spiritual respect for trees. In college, there was a particular pine tree deep in the woods behind campus that was “my tree”, where I’d go to commune with nature, and more recently I have similarly rooted myself to a particular spot near the Arnold Arboretum’s “Conifer Path”.

Combining this with my previous train of thought has given me a better reason to admire trees from a spiritual standpoint. Think about it: unlike us, trees don’t need to kill anything in order to survive. In fact, trees do zero harm at all, yet they have the longest lifespans of any complex living organism on our planet.

From a Buddhist perspective, trees are the epitome of equanimity, stoically accepting life as it is, with no need to control it or change it. They are equally connected to the air, the earth, and to water.

As a result, it is no surprise that euphemisms like “the Tree of Life” fill our language, and that trees play a central and symbolic role in all major religions, be it the bodhi tree that the Buddha reached enlightenment beneath, or the Judeo-Christian images of the olive branch and Tree of Knowledge.

I seem to be in implausibly diverse company in my respect for trees’ spiritual nature:

• Willa Cather: I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
   
• George Bernard Shaw: Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
   
• Friedrich Nietzsche: The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait, and both without impatience. They give no thought to the little people beneath them devoured by their impatience and their curiosity.
   
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: The wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more.
   
• Mikhail Gorbachev: To me, nature is sacred; trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.
   
• Ronald Reagan: A tree is a tree—how many more do you need to look at?

Trees give us a model of simplicity, acceptance, and meditative silence. If you searched the world over for the best master meditation guru alive, you could do no better than to follow the example of a tall, strong tree, standing silently while the world flows and transpires all around him.

If I was to be reincarnated after this life is over, I think, contrary to most people’s belief, that coming back as a tree might well be the wisest choice one could make.

And if you were looking for evidence of divinity in our world, I think this is where you should look. Surely the pattern of growth rings in a tree are the literal fingerprints of whatever force—personified or otherwise—created us.

Today Barack Hussein Obama II was sworn in as PotUS. I took a couple quick notes throughout the day that I would like to record.

The most obvious is the historic occasion of the first African American President. For many it’s a dream they never thought would come true. It is poetic that this year, Barack Obama’s inauguration took place the day after the observance of the Martin Luther King holiday.

For some, it’s a day they hoped would never come. My father, for one. I’m sure if he were here today he’d say something derogatory and mean-spirited. Fortunately, times change, and an astonishing amount of progress has been made since his generation led the nation.

Personally, I find it equally poetic that George W. Bush is the person who had to shake hands and turn power over to the nation’s first Black President. I wonder what that felt like for him. It reminded me of the famous episode of “All in the Family” when Sammy Davis Jr. kissed Archie Bunker.

However, what matters about Obama isn’t his color but his politics. He is a liberal, and hopefully he’ll be able to undo the innumerable wrongs of the Bush administration. As Dubya leaves public life with an approval rating below 25 percent, Obama has inspired the American people with his eloquence, wisdom, and humility. What I heard today from everyone I talked to was a renewed sense of trust, faith, and hope for the future. Yes, we can.

Even before his unfortunate medical misadventure, I had written in my notes that I was deeply glad that Ted Kennedy was present and witness to today’s inauguration. Ted has held the office of Senator from Massachusetts since before I was born, having inheriting it from his brother, John F. Kennedy, when he was elected President in 1960. He has been an icon of the liberal cause for half a century. May he make a speedy recovery and continue in good health.

I was also glad that John Kerry was in attendance. Would Obama be President today if Kerry had won in 2004? I don’t think so. After Kerry’s loss, Bush’s second term of gross incompetence made November’s choice obvious; you couldn’t find a starker contrast in Obama’s unselfrighteous candor and hopefulness. It almost makes Kerry’s loss worth enduring… almost.

And so today we observed a moment in history: the elevation of America’s first Black President. What remains to be seen is whether today was also a sea change in the direction of the country. The rhetoric is there. The hope is there. And by all indications, the political unity and will are there. But now it’s time for us to deliver, to epitomize these values in our everyday lives and interactions.

Now, finally and at long last, the call has gone out. I eagerly await your answer.