The Three Rivers Arts Festival runs Jun 2 through 11 and I went to the extended forecast to see if rain was predicted for the first day of the festival. The forecast is for no rain, are these weatherpersons inept? 🙂 It rains the first day of the festival every year. There’s a ton of activities something to peak everyone’s interest. Many forms of music, art, dance and other activities. For details, follow the link to their site.
Speaking of free entertainment, Citipark’s free film schedule was released. Sunday night films has moved from Flagstaff Hill to Schenley Plaza this year. Schenley Plaza has 26 films between the two nights (Sundays & Wednesdays), Highland Park Resvoir has 3 (Mondays), West End Elliot 13 (Tuesdays), Brookline 13 (Thursdays), Arsenal Park 12 (Fridays), Grandview Park 12 (Saturdays), Riverview Park 12 ( Saturdays). Allegheny County has a series of free movies and concerts in South Park, Deer Lakes Park and North Park. Follow the link for movies scheduled which nights and go out and meet your neighbors.
Not free, but for just $10 for live music, who can complain? The city of Monongahela is hosting Rockin on the Mon at the Monongahela Aquarium for my southern friends. There’s a concert schedule on their website. Mon City is one of the Valley cities that seem to be “holding it’s own” in the Valley misery caused by the closing of the steel mills. Though I’m seldom involved in that area anymore, I did grow up in Finleyville and had ties to the Valley and my dad worked in the steel mill in Hazelwood.
Speaking of concerts, Allegheny County announced their Summer Concert Series schedule in both South Park and Hartwood Acres. Concerts are listed on their website and are free. If you go, particularly to one at Hartwood Acres bring a book, cards or board game for after the concert, it can be challenging getting out. I sit on my front porch after Steeler home games when it’s warm and traffic sits for periods of time. 75,000 people just left the stadium and some drivers start honking their horns. What are you stupid? You just left with 75,000 others and traffic is going to be heavy. It only last for just over an hour. Park on the street and come over and sit on my porch with me and we can talk, maybe solve all the problems of the world.
Speaking of solving the problems of the world, I want to add a couple of planks to my 2020 campaign. I want to abolish the death penalty. Besides it’s just wrong, the money we spend defending the sentence, the money spent in special jail housing, the salaries of judges, convicted’s defense is just too much. I propose life without the possibility of parole as an alternative. I alos propose creating a huge tax on robo marketing. I guess we can’t just ban it because of free speech, so let’s tax it. Not sure how to value the value (like the value of a new car is easily appraised at say $24,000) how do you value the marketing value to marketing companies. Maybe create a new kind of tax, the annoyance tax? Put a value on my time and possible lost revenue because my phone was busy and couldn’t take a reservation? I also want to tax non profits, OK calm down. 🙂 I very much support non profits and the wonderful work most of them do. But when you get to these mega corporations like UPMC that each year barely meet the minimum free indignant medical care required to meet their “non profit” status. Close to 1/3 of the land in the city that could be taxed are in the hands of non profits. My thoughts are on speculation. Why should UPMC be able to hold on to property that isn’t used in their “mission” on speculation only that they might use it in the future. Either develop and use it or pay taxes. My next item on the non profits is figure out a new formula for indignant care. Just barely making 4% free care with executiveS earning multi million dollar salaries. If they are making that much money to pay their elite that much, they could be more compassionate.
Anyone that knows me, knows how crazy I am. The better you know me, the crazier you think I am, just ask Dee. 🙂 I have very specific tastes. When I opened, I wanted coffee service in my guest rooms. My opinion is people that want coffee don’t normally want a big pot, they are looking for that first jolt in the morning while getting dressed. So I bought small coffee makers (4 cups). I had to look around to find a roaster that could package one ounce packets and lucked out. I found Iron Star Roasters in West Mifflin that can handle my needs. They also own Coffee Tree coffee shops. My guests seem to enjoy the coffee I serve at breakfast, Costa Rica El Indio brand and that I am able to have the same in my guest rooms, because Iron Star is able to package smaller packages for me. Tim if you are reading this, join the 21st century and update your website so people can order coffee from it. I can’t tell you how many guests have asked about purchasing it.
I hate “new and improved”. I need several clocks in my kitchens so I can keep track of time for breakfast. The Boston Accustic radio in the hot kitchen has a radio and clock and has worked great for 10 years. I had one on the coffee maker in the cold kitchen, that the coffee pot still worked fine, but the clock stopped working. So I tried to buy a new one off the shelf, I couldn’t find a coffee maker with a clock so I bought one from their website. Six months later the clock stopped working. So I bought an electric clock I found on the Internet. Somehow, last fall, the time automatically went back an hour when the time changed and then this spring it sprung forward. It runs about 4 minutes fast and I’ve set it back to the correct time twice and it keeps moving forward four minutes. It doesn’t keep adding time, it just thinks the time should be four minutes earlier that it its. So I’ve resigned myself to accepting that the time is wrong and there’s nothing I can do but remember it’s four minutes fast. I didn’t see anything on the site that they controlled the time on my clock.
I try hard not to have similarities to a Marriott. The tumblers in my guest bathrooms I have used Stolzle Weinland, they have always been hard to find. I prefer the 9 ounce tumbler and twice had to accept 10 ounces or more. This year, after months of fighting with the company that normally carries them, they had them on order (the larger ones) that were late being delivered and then the order was totally cancelled. So I had settle on a Libbey tumbler, I feel so much like a boring Hilton.
My latest battle is the motion sensor on the side porch. There’s a lot I need to keep track of and like to keep life as simple as possible. I already own LED outdoor spot lights, I don’t want to have to carry another specialty bulb which were the only ceiling mounted lights I could find at Ace, Home Depot and Lowes. So I looked at their wall mounted motion censor lights and it seemed I could mount it on the porch ceiling and move the sensor so it would sense motion on the porch. Not so. After hours of trying to adjust it, I went on line looking for a spot light ceiling mounted motion sensor light fixture, after three hours, I’ve given up and going to buy a stupid new bulb ceiling mounted motion sensor.
Something that’s bothered me for years is why is Walmart such a success, are Americans getting cheap and only concerned about the cheapest price? I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s our rebellion to corporate greed. Trump was on a close path to the dissatisfaction of the working middle class, but not quite on the mark. We are all tired of corporate greed. We are still paying for the coal barons that made their fortunes extracting coal from the earth and we are now paying, what they should have to clean up their mess with acid mine drainage and we will be pay for years on that and the new travesty of long wall extraction. They take the coal out and the homes above face mine subsidence as the old mines collapse. Home owners can buy “Mine Subsidence Insurance” through the state, which we are subsidizing. I’ve started my day with Tetley tea all my adult life. I’m old enough to remember when they took the paper dividers out of the box to save money on packaging (I’m OK with saving money by shaving waste). I’m also old enough to remember when they reduced the amount of tea in each bag, it the taste was similar, but not the same. Most recently, the financial crisis we had to bail them out. The corporate executives still got their multi million dollar paychecks. I don’t believe people go into Walmart thinking of hedge fund managers, but it’s a subtle dissatisfaction with the status quo.
I took da kidz down to the Humane Society to weigh them. Da gerl is still down 10# and da boi has gained 10#, so he’s going on a diet. I tried today and green beans are not acceptable to him. I will have start with two or three at a time until he’s used to it. Sorry RJ, fat is not on the program. 🙂
The Three Rivers Regatta has moved back to August this year, August 4 -6 to be exact. Too much debris in the water with the earlier dates. Not much on their website yet.
Observatory Hill is having their house tour June 4 from noon to 5 pm. Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 the day of the tour. If you go to the tour, give yourself some time to go over to River View Park, it has spectacular views of the river and city. And there isn’t any tour scheduled for the Observatory, but it’s cool to look at from the outside and the park is beautiful. In 1859, Lewis Bradley, a lens pioneer built one of the first observatories in the world there, it is now owned and operated by Pitt.
That’s it for today, keep dry and happy,
ed
