Hi,
Tomorrow night is a new moon and there’s a total solar eclipse that will be visible in the south Pacific around Australia, if anyone’s traveling there. 🙂 It is the 85 anniversary of the Holland Tunnel, India’s Diwali (Deeppavali) – their festival of lights. It is the birth anniversary of Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish author 1850), associate justice Louis Brandeis (1856), British physicist James Maxwell (1831) and English traveler and writer Edward Trelawney (1792).
Sorry, I was a bit busy last week. I went to the Western PA Bed and Breakfast Association Meeting at the House at the End of the Road in Summerville on Tuesday. I love that organization, it is such a grass roots and no one has an attitude. And then Wednesday and Thursday I went to the first PA Bed and Breakfast Association’s conference. Saw some Innkeepers I’ve met in the past and met some new ones. And as at most conferences, I walked away with some new insights.
Today is Veterans Day, please thank a vet for his/her service to this great country. Many just quietly did their duty and you don’t realize what they gave up. Many served and carried away a larger price and are just relegated to be a statistic in the newspaper so many troops were “injured”. These valiant citizens are now walking around with missing limbs and worse. This may be worse than the troops lost in action, they have these scars that we, as a country, we don’t seem to be stepping up to the plate for them. Did you know that Western Pennsylvania has one of the highest concentrations of Veterans? There’s an estimate
The fifteenth annual Greater Pittsburgh Arts and Crafts Spectacular will be held this weekend at the Monroeville Convention Center, at 209 Mall Blvd. Friday hours will be 10 am until 9 pm, Saturday, 10 am until 6 pm and Sunday, 10 am until 5 pm. Admission is $6 for adults. They anticipate 260 arts and crafts booth filling two of the convention center rooms.
The ninth annual Handmade Arcade will be held at the David L Lawrence Convention Center on Saturday, December 8 from 11 am until 7 pm. That’s where I found the really cool monster hoodies I got for my nieces and nephews last year. They are a regular hoodie with horns and other scary things sewn on them. They were a hit. This is a very grassroots show for independent crafters to show and sell. Their web site doesn’t give the cost of admission nor a contact phone number. You can go there and there’s a link to send them an e-mail.
Ben Mankiewic and Eva Marie Saint will be at the Byham Theater on tomorrow to host the TCM’s Classic Film Festival Road to Hollywood showing the classic On The Waterfront staring Marlon Brando and Ms Saint. It is part of this year’s Film Festival. Free tickets are available on line or by calling 412.456.6666. I would direct you to the schedule of movies playing during the film festival, but apparently PGH Film Makers don’t seem to worry too much about letting us see the schedules. More info at their web site
Single named Pittsburgh artist (actually, Mt Lebanon) is having a showing of his works at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild. There will be abut 55 of Wayno’s work. Flat Files, the name of the exhibit run through January 4, 2013. Wayno’s work has been featured in The New Yorker, Nickelodeon and is a frequent guest artist in the Bizzaro comic strip. He has a lot of fun light hearted creations.
Through next Sunday, there’s a free exhibit at the 790 Penn Gallery called Book. The curator of the show’s father had an extensive collection of books that were lost in a fire. So she pulled together four Pittsburgh artists we called together to give their interpretation of the importance/value of hard copy books (as opposed to e-books). Seth Clark’s installation “T” (no, not our light rail) 🙂 is a collage of 107 interpretations of the NY Times famous logo T. Randie Snow used actual books and “accessorized” them as did Dana Ingham. For his take on books, Brett Yasko made two book shelves to hold four books appease. The books were blank with no writing on the covers and he wrote the male part of a break up/being dumped or profession their love and on the other shelf is the female side of this drama. They are taken from famous books or movies, but he doesn’t disclose what book/movie they are taken from. That’s up to you. 🙂 More info at their web site or by calling 412.456.6666.
Don ‘t forget this weekend is Light Up Night. Friday will host fireworks off the Roberto Clemente bridge, the lighting of Highmark’s Unity Tree (formerly the Horne’s tree that was on that location for about 50 years) that has been up dated to LED lighting and now uses just over 6,000 watts as compared to the old tree that used over 47,000 watts. A new tradition in Market Square will be the Winter Garden modeled after a German tradition going back centuries and Steel Plaza’s Creche will be installed for it’s 13th season (it is the only authorized replica of St Peter’s creche outside the Vatican). Much more is planned and much more info at the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s web site.
Well, I got all my delicate plants dug up and in the basement for the winter. I have most of the vegetation cut out and in piles I will work into my good friend Jeff from Peppi’s cheese stakes’ dumpster. I still have to cut down and then cup up those huge Arondo donex that line the front of my “Beach” along the sidewalk. I emptied my summer’s collection of organic compost and the strangest thing. The compost was fabulously processed, but there was some kind of root system all through it, I had to really fight to get it out. I think the honey locust tree that it sits under found a new source of nourshment. I’m not sure what I can do about that.
Have a great night and Go Steelers,
ed
