Hi,

Tomorrow is the birth anniversaries of artist Pablo Picasso (1881), Grand Ole Opry star Minnie Pearl (1912) and English poet and writer Geoffrey Chaucer (1400).  It is the anniversary of the first female FBI agents (1972), Grenada was invaded by the U.S. (1983) and Taiwan was expelled from the UN so mainland China could be admitted (1971).

My blog is again posting on Facebook, and you may notice I’ve changed the heading.  🙂  Morgan, from morganHDcreative says I should do that so it picks up on Twitter better.  She had some other suggestions that makes a lot of sense.  The world keeps pushing me into social media and I’m not going easily.  Some may say kicking and screaming.  🙂

ALCOSAN is taking public comments on it’s $2B to $3.6B plan to meet mandated upgrades by the EPA.  As I’m sure you are aware, ALCOSAN is planning on totally meeting this standard by creating a grey system (hard construction) without any green solutions included.  They claim they have no authority to force surrounding municipalities to comply with any green solution (although Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald is in support of at least including some green in the process).  You can leave a comment on their web site or if you want to leave a more detailed message, snail mail one to ALCOSAN 3300 Preble Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15233.

A 14 year old boy stole a Jeep in Churchhill in August and police started chasing him because of erratic driving down I376 until he rolled the Jeep.  The kid’s mother is blaming the owner of the Jeep because she left her keys in the car, the police had no right to chase her son because maybe he just wanted to take a joy ride, or possibly wanted to go further than he felt like walking.  What is wrong with people?  Follow this link if you want to see the details.

Kraynick’s Bike Shop at 5003 Penn Avenue in Garfield is very cool.  Jerry Kraynick runs the shop kind of like a hybrid between a school and co-op.  If you’re bike’s broken, you can bring it in, he has several work stations and you can borrow tools and if you don’t know how to make the repairs, Jerry or one of the volunteers working there will give you pointers on what to do.  Jerry sells bike parts and does a lot of bartering (he got roof repairs done this way, even anesthesia for a hernia surgery).  Starting around now, Jerry and a group of volunteers start repairing donated bike to donate to kids at Christmas time.  If you happen to have an old bike laying around, not a bad idea for a new use for it.  🙂

Amy Garbark, aka Garbella was an art teacher and started selling handmade goods in 2006 and in 2010 left her teaching career and started doing this full time.  One of her best sellers is a dumpling with the words “p is for pierogi” under it.  Surprisingly, it’s quite popular in Canada.  In addition to her T-shirts, scarves, skirts, aprons, even clocks.  Other themes are bike parts, typewriters and many other whimsical  things.

Governor Corbett just gave four of his inner staff raises hovering around $10k to “level the playing field and bring senior staff into the same pay grade”.  $10K is the yearly salary of many of his constituents make who he’s cutting the social safety nets from under.  How can our elected officials be so clueless?  Governor Corbett blasted Governor Rendell repeatedly for over spending for staff positions and questioned his yet Rendell’s average senior staffer was paid $116,440 as compared to Corbett’s $129,303.

Extreme Tree Service did a massive trim on the honey locust tree in the Courtyard.  It desperately needed manicured.  So the tree’s going to be healthier next year, less seeds in the spring, less leaves clogging the loft’s gutter in the fall.  And it looks so much neater.  Very nice people to work with, very professional and cleaned up nicely when done.

Enjoy this beautiful day, are we going to make a record high today and go over 80?

ed