Pittsburgh News
I know you're all wondering if, here in Pittsburgh, we're all right.
Yes, we are.
I was driving home last night, in a ferocious drizzle, when I heard on the news a list of school closings for today. It's very exciting, living in Pittsburgh, since we're so deeply affected by things that happen hundreds of miles away. Best send-up of Pittsburgh coverage of the hurricane? Jason, over at Tube City, provides it, with his PrecisionDopplerTrackerAccuStormCast WeatherCenter.
This morning, the power's on, the basement's unflooded, the school bus arrived on time to pick up the child, and I'm going to work. All of which I expected. It turns out that Sam did indeed do a little hurricane preparation -- he folded up the deck umbrella and he moved the potted plants off the deck rail. Thank God, that's all I can say, cause who knows what horrible damage we might have had if he'd forgotten those simple yet necessary preparedness actions. (It's hard to get a couple of people born on the Texas Gulf and in the Carolinas to get really exercised about a hurricane that's happening over on the other side of the Alleghenies. Our kinfolk live in houses on stilts. In our minds, a hurricane is what you're having if you board up the windows and join a long line of people driving off an island. It's not what 's happening if you have a thunderstorm.)
The truth is that Pittsburgh news is always a hoot, as the entire world revolves around Pittsburgh. I know the rest of you, out there in the hinterlands of New York and San Francisco, were unaware of this, but you had to find out sometime. I tell you, if a Truly Horrible Disaster of Global Importance happened -- oh, for instance, let's say Germany accidentally nuked Paris -- the Pittsburgh news stations would spend five minutes on the Parisian details, and then skip over to some guy in downtown Pittsburgh who had been to Paris once, and was "really upset," since the Eiffel Tower was "pretty darn impressive."
Once one of our Canadian friends was visiting from Vancouver, and we were watching the local news, having explained to her how amusing the news coverage tended to be, and she thought we were exaggerating (as one of us sorta tends to, bet you can't guess which one) and then, when we got to the "World News In a Minute" section -- one of my favorites, as it really is ALL the world news, ALL of it, in ONE minute -- we were given the news -- in its entirety -- I'm not making this up -- "7 people dead in Canada!" That was it. Where in Canada? Dead from what? No further info.
If it hadn't been "World News in a Minute," and we'd had more time, we'd have had an interview with someone from Pittsburgh who had once read a book about Canada.
One day there was a fire on top of the Lazarus building, where they were doing some renovations. Now, that's actually Pittsburgh news, as it happened in downtown Pittsburgh. But the news was set up the same way. Five minutes of the fire, and how thank goodness no one was hurt and the workmen got off the building safely, and what sort of electrical problems might have caused it, and then another five minutes of an interview with a woman on the street below whose husband had once been a fire fighter. "Joe would have been pretty upset about this," she told us.
From one point of view this is all egocentricity -- there's a world out there! What does it mean to ME, a Pittsburgher? -- but in my more charitable moments (and I'm glad to be in one today) I can read it, more charmingly, as empathy. We FEEL your pain, Virginia, we really do. So we went and bought a lot of bottled water, in solidarity.
Yes, we are.
I was driving home last night, in a ferocious drizzle, when I heard on the news a list of school closings for today. It's very exciting, living in Pittsburgh, since we're so deeply affected by things that happen hundreds of miles away. Best send-up of Pittsburgh coverage of the hurricane? Jason, over at Tube City, provides it, with his PrecisionDopplerTrackerAccuStormCast WeatherCenter.
This morning, the power's on, the basement's unflooded, the school bus arrived on time to pick up the child, and I'm going to work. All of which I expected. It turns out that Sam did indeed do a little hurricane preparation -- he folded up the deck umbrella and he moved the potted plants off the deck rail. Thank God, that's all I can say, cause who knows what horrible damage we might have had if he'd forgotten those simple yet necessary preparedness actions. (It's hard to get a couple of people born on the Texas Gulf and in the Carolinas to get really exercised about a hurricane that's happening over on the other side of the Alleghenies. Our kinfolk live in houses on stilts. In our minds, a hurricane is what you're having if you board up the windows and join a long line of people driving off an island. It's not what 's happening if you have a thunderstorm.)
The truth is that Pittsburgh news is always a hoot, as the entire world revolves around Pittsburgh. I know the rest of you, out there in the hinterlands of New York and San Francisco, were unaware of this, but you had to find out sometime. I tell you, if a Truly Horrible Disaster of Global Importance happened -- oh, for instance, let's say Germany accidentally nuked Paris -- the Pittsburgh news stations would spend five minutes on the Parisian details, and then skip over to some guy in downtown Pittsburgh who had been to Paris once, and was "really upset," since the Eiffel Tower was "pretty darn impressive."
Once one of our Canadian friends was visiting from Vancouver, and we were watching the local news, having explained to her how amusing the news coverage tended to be, and she thought we were exaggerating (as one of us sorta tends to, bet you can't guess which one) and then, when we got to the "World News In a Minute" section -- one of my favorites, as it really is ALL the world news, ALL of it, in ONE minute -- we were given the news -- in its entirety -- I'm not making this up -- "7 people dead in Canada!" That was it. Where in Canada? Dead from what? No further info.
If it hadn't been "World News in a Minute," and we'd had more time, we'd have had an interview with someone from Pittsburgh who had once read a book about Canada.
One day there was a fire on top of the Lazarus building, where they were doing some renovations. Now, that's actually Pittsburgh news, as it happened in downtown Pittsburgh. But the news was set up the same way. Five minutes of the fire, and how thank goodness no one was hurt and the workmen got off the building safely, and what sort of electrical problems might have caused it, and then another five minutes of an interview with a woman on the street below whose husband had once been a fire fighter. "Joe would have been pretty upset about this," she told us.
From one point of view this is all egocentricity -- there's a world out there! What does it mean to ME, a Pittsburgher? -- but in my more charitable moments (and I'm glad to be in one today) I can read it, more charmingly, as empathy. We FEEL your pain, Virginia, we really do. So we went and bought a lot of bottled water, in solidarity.
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