Hi,
Tomorrow is the anniversary of Columbine High School shooting (1999), Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Explosion (2010), it is the birth anniversary of Lionel Hampton (1908) and Adolph Hitler (1889).
The Butler Home Show runs this weekend, April 20, 21 & 22 at the Family Sports Center, Route 68, Connoquenessing. They have about 100 vendors with seminars and demonstrations on how to DIY projects. The Pennsylvania Resources Council will celebrate Earth Day by collecting and recycling unwanted cell phones and they will be giving advice on “green” home and lawn care. Hours are Friday from 4 – 9 pm, Saturday, 10 am until 9 pm and Sunday from 10 am until 5 pm. Info at their web site.
The Pittsburgh Observatory up in Riverview Park is getting noticed again with a documentary created by local scientist Dan Handley. This is the debut film by Mr. Handley who has a master’s degree in logic and computation from CMU, a Ph.D in human genetics from Pitt and has studied play writing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and documentary film making at the Pittsburgh Filmmakers where he is an Artist Member. Quite the pedigree. 🙂 Pittsburgh actor David Conrad narrates the film and Pittsburgh City Councilman Bill Peduto was the executive producer. Quite the hometown production on a hometown significant institution. The Observatory was initially conceive after the Donati comet of 1858 was seen over Allegheny City by John Brashear and Samuel P Langley. (Not coincidentally, two of our high schools were named after these men.) It was built in 1859 and was taken over by Pitt in 1867, who still runs the Observatory.
Dave Sevick is up for the regional Volunteer of the Year award today. The winner from Western PA will go to Washington, DC for the national Jefferson Award for Public Service. Dave, a retired nurse from the operating room at Children’s Hospital started ComputeReach in 2001 to take old computers, refurbish them and give them to disadvantaged kids and schools. Overall, he and his volunteers has refurbished 3,272 computers. Google recently awarded ComputeReach a $36,000 grant for operations. 70 year old Ms Bizic, a retired librarian from the elementary school his daughters attended nominated him for this award. Typically, Dave deferred praise to the 160 volunteers that work with him.
Tucked away at William Penn Place and Strawberry Way is the Allegheny Harvard, Yale, Princeton Club. Built in 1894 as fairly spartan housing for workers, local architect Edward B Lee converted the building into a Georgian Revival in the 1930s (the same time the Knights of Columbus bought The Parador and made my Ballroom). In 1980, the club started accepting women and in 1987 the eliminated the requirement that you be an alumni from Harvard, Yale or Princeton to join. The four levels of membership are premium at $1,440, golden triangle at $1,380, suburban at $900 or nonresident $480. Very cool looking building and very refined service and food inside.
It used to be referred to as “domestic violence”, the CDC has redefined it to “intimate partner violence” to be more inclusive. It is estimated the thirty percent of women and twenty-five percent of men were subjected to being slapped, pushed or shoved by an intimate partner. Woman are by far, subjected to the more serious abuses than men. An Oakland based non profit, Standing Firm has taken on the challenge of educating the work place on signs of abuse and how to handle it. Employers are frequently the third party able to notice something amiss and in the past the attitude was to “mind one’s own business”. That is changing, not only is it the right thing to do, but you may save a person’s life. Working with someone forty hours a week, you become intimate with their habits. If some habits suddenly change, the person starts changing the way they dress maybe to cover up bruises, etc, if the employee all of a sudden starts having personal phone conversations away from everyone else, these are all warning signs. Coordinators Susan Nitzberg and Barbara Penner give classes to the 131 member companies and offer managers a free thirty minute phone consultation.
Did you see where Citibank shareholders rebelled against the CEO’s compensation package? Someone may have read the fine print, the compensation listed on their agenda was an “estimated” $14M where he is actually eligable for up to $55M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And EQT shareholders threw a fit yesterday. Maybe the 99% are finally making themselves heard. Here’s a new twist on corporate greed. Chesapeake Energy’s shares dropped 5% the other day after Reuters announced that CE Aubrey McClendon has taken $1.1BILLION loan against his stake in thousands of company wells. What, he needs a new car? Or maybe country.
Baldwin Borough is still fighting with Port Authority to take down signs still posted for bus routes that don’t exist. And I’m not talking about the slashed routes recently cut. There are signs still up that are so old and rusted you can’t read them. There’s also posts still in the ground with nothing on them. Baldwin has been trying for months to get Port Authority to take these signs down. They are now talking about having their public works department take them down and then bill Port Authority.
April 21, the PA Resource Council will be holding an e-waste collection in the VIP parking lot on Corrigan Drive (for those of you not familiar, the VIP is the old swimming pool and the parking lot is the one between that catering venue and the ice rink). Hours are from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. There’s a small fee for fluorescent lights, ink cartriges, batteries, etc. More info at their web site or by calling 412.488.7490 ext 236. The next collection will be May 12 at Steel City Harley-Davidson, 1375 Washington Road, Little Washington, same hours.
That’s about it for today. Enjoy tomorrow, because Saturday’s supposed to be pretty rainy,
ed
