News Around the Neighborhood
Thank You, Greenspace Volunteers & Sponsors!
We’re grateful to all neighbors who help keep Allegheny West neat, tidy and—now that we’ve begun planting—beautiful! A few special shout-outs:
Dr. Dan Strinkoski deserves huge applause for his daily sweeping and delittering. Dr. Dan also has been attacking the alleys and keeping the ever-elusive street sweeping machine as much on track as possible.
My Parklet team has worked many hours on what seemed like the hottest days of spring to weed, transplant perennials, buy and plant annuals and then spread about 40 bags of mulch at the corner of Brighton and Western Please thank Holly Pultz, Sally Graubarth, Nonie Knaus, Penny Martin, and Bonnie Fordenbacher when you see them (and consider joining us. Beers at the Modern are part of the gig!))
Frank and Sue Remcheck continue to pick up litter around the park along West Ohio Street, and so much of the fast-food detritus along Allegheny Avenue down to the T Station. Thanks for continuing to make that effort!
Finally, our hanging baskets on Western will be hung soon. Please thank (& patronize) our sponsors this year.
Allegheny City Realty
Allegheny Sandwich
AWCC
BIRGO Realty
Burton Family
Eugene Beck Co.
Gilligan’s Sorbet
Giorgio’s Place
A Good Neighbor
H Gallery
Helmreich Family
William Hodgdon (in memory of)
Knaus Family
LeClaire, Griewahn
Mistick Family
Modern Cafe
Donna Otto (in memory of)
Parador Inn
Peppi’s
Pittsburgh Home & Garden
Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
Q Development
Refucilo Winery
Robert Family
Patricia Rooney (in memory of)
R. Ashley Webb/Wealth Mngt Partners
Zoufalik Family
Calvary United Methodist Church Pie Sale
This is a first for Calvary! We are taking orders for pies and other goodies from The Pie Shoppe in Laughlintown, near Ligonier. The pies are made from the finest ingredients and will be baked right before they are delivered to us for pick-up and are individually boxed. They DO NOT arrive unbaked or frozen. This will be a great addition to a Father’s Day dinner! All proceeds will go to the Calvary United Methodist Church (CUMC) Pastor’s Discretionary Fund which has been depleted during the past year.
Please print and submit the form on the last page of this month’s paper Gazette.
Reel Q: Regional Premiere of Sous La Peau
Sous La Peau
Wednesday, May 26
7:00 pm
Join us for the regional premier and unreleased screening of Sous La Peau, a film by Robin Harsch hosted by ReelQ. This program includes an exclusive interview with the director and some of the documentary’s subjects.
“If my son ever told me he’d like to change his sex, I think that the ground would collapse under my feet. Understanding it could save me. But how? For 2 years, I followed 3 trans teenagers going through this battlefield where clashes gender, and essentially, identity issues.” – Robin Harsch
Film synopsis: A film about the transition of three trans teenagers, the upheaval it causes in them and their loved ones, as well as the quest for identity buried deep within them.
ReelQ: Pittsburgh’s International LGBTQ Film Festival
The Pittsburgh Lesbian and Gay Film Society serves the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in Pittsburgh and the surrounding tri-state region. In addition, PLGFS provides a crucial service to the cultural vitality of Pittsburgh, designed to support lesbian and gay artists, and to provide a much-needed cultural outlet for the lesbian and gay communities in Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas.
Pulitzer Prize Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Live Reading & Discussion
Wednesday, May 19
7:00 pm
“One of our great chroniclers of displacement…All Nguyen’s fiction is pervaded by a shared intensity of vision, by stinging perceptions that drift like windblown ashes.”
— Joyce Carol Oates, New Yorker
Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen continues to receive praise and attention for his witty, arresting, and masterful storytelling. His interviews are thoughtful and entertaining and you are invited to join him virtually, live from his home, as he discusses The Committed, the much-anticipated sequel to his Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Sympathizer. This newest novel is fierce in tone, capacious, witty, sharp, and deeply researched. The Committed marks not just a sequel to a groundbreaking predecessor, but a sum total accumulation of a life devoted to Vietnamese American history and scholarship. It asks questions central to Vietnamese everywhere—and to our very species: How do we live in the wake of seismic loss and betrayal?
Language: English
Format: Live conversation; viewed virtually
PHLF: Lecture – Opening Up, Beyond the Porch
Thursday, May 20
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Fee: $5.00
This lecture will be held via Zoom Conference. Click here to purchase a ticket and RSVP.
(You will receive an e-mail with a link to Zoom at on the day of the lecture. Don’t see the e-mail? Please be sure to check your spam or junk folders. Log in at 5:45 pm to allow us enough time to let you in to the lecture.)
The story of the public realm is not just of streets and sidewalks and parks. It is also about the buildings that border public space, from shops and offices to homes and restaurants. Before air conditioning and the rise of the automobile, the structures that lined public spaces opened to the street in multiple ways, from covered second-story porches so familiar to many Pittsburgh neighborhoods to the fronts of workshops and wide-doored storefronts.
As we reopen our business districts and neighborhoods, yet at the same time design for a new normal, the places where the private realm opens up to the public are more important than ever. They have been and may continue to be seen as a kind of “safer” space for social interaction and exchange. The practice of earlier generations can contribute to designing future urbanism that opens up buildings to the public realm in new and historic ways, from industrial legacy structures to neighborhood main streets and beyond.
About the presenter: Ray Gastil is the Director of the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where he holds the David Lewis/Heinz Endowments Directorship of Urban Design and Regional Engagement. A former Director of Planning for the City of Pittsburgh, Gastil led neighborhood planning, resilient community, affordable housing, waterfront, preservation, and mobility initiatives. He previously served as a director in the planning departments of Seattle and New York City and was also a founding director of the Van Alen Institute.
Rwandan Author Scholastique Mukasonga
Presented in Partnership with Archipelago Books
Scholastique Mukasonga
Sunday, May 16
2:00 pm
Award-winning Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga welcomes us virtually into her home in Paris to answer your questions, share her collection of autobiographical stories, and discuss the challenges and creative opportunities of writing memoir in exile.
Her gut-wrenching stories are honest, yet restrained, and move us through the simple joys of her early life to the horrific atrocities of displacement, genocide, and loneliness. What better way to learn more about them and her than the intimate setting of your own home?
Featured novels include Igufu and A Barefoot Woman, translated from French by Jordan Stump. Scholastique is joined by Johns Hopkins professor of world literatures, Jeanne-Marie Jackson.
Later this month, also in Paris, Scholastique accepts the honor of being the first African woman to be awarded with the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom, an international human rights prize for women’s freedom, awarded since 2008 to individuals or groups fighting for gender equality and opposing breaches of human rights. Upon receiving the news, she responded “It’s a pleasant surprise that arrives just as I’m in the process of writing my most feminist novel.”
Language: French
Format: Artist live from France with English interpretation; viewed virtually
PHLF: Lecture – History, Design and Architecture of Heinz Memorial Chapel
Tuesday, May 18
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Fee: $5.00
This lecture will be held via Zoom Conference. Click here to purchase a ticket and RSVP.
(You will receive an e-mail with a link to Zoom at on the day of the lecture. Don’t see the e-mail? Please be sure to check your spam or junk folders. Log in at 5:45 pm to allow us enough time to let you in to the lecture.)
The Heinz Memorial Chapel is one of the iconic landmarks on the grounds of the University of Pittsburgh campus in Oakland. It is celebrated as much for its location, beauty, and history. Constructed between 1933 and 1938, the chapel was built to honor the memory of the mother of H.J. Heinz an American entrepreneur. In this lecture, Frank Kurtik will share insights into the history, design, and architecture of the Gothic building designed by Philadelphia architect Charles Klauder.
About the presenter: Frank J. Kurtik is a long-time researcher, writer, and lecturer on the history of Western Pennsylvania. A former Research Fellow with the Heinz Family Foundation in Washington D.C., he currently works at the University of Pittsburgh where he serves on the staff of the staff Heinz Memorial Chapel, for which he is a docent and an event coordinator. Frank’s articles have appeared in many publications including the Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Carnegie Magazine, and Western Pennsylvania History. He has lectured on topics ranging from Western Pennsylvania iron furnaces to H. J. Heinz’s role in the Sunday School movement to Monongahela rye whiskey.
PHLF: Live Virtual Tour – Market Square and Point Park
Thursday, May 13
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Fee: $7.50
This live virtual tour will be held via Zoom Conference. Click here to purchase a ticket and RSVP.
(You will receive an e-mail with a link to Zoom at on the day of the tour. Don’t see the e-mail? Please be sure to check your spam or junk folders. Log in at 5:45 pm to allow us enough time to let you in to the tour.)
Join Tracy Myers and Sarah Greenwald co-directors of education, on a virtual tour of the preservation efforts that helped revitalize the Market Square area and Point Park University campus over the last fifteen years. In this area where the historic architecture meets ground-up construction, we will see how a full range of preservation strategies helped to create a vibrant, dynamic Downtown core.
This tour will focus on our organization’s role in helping defeat a 1990s proposal to gut the Fifth-and-Forbes corridor and take deep dives into our ongoing efforts in and near Market Square and on Wood Street.
Letter from the President – May 2021
The sun is bright, — the air is clear,
The darting swallows soar and sing.
And from the stately elms I hear
The bluebird prophesying Spring.
So blue yon winding river flows,
It seems an outlet from the sky,
Where waiting till the west-wind blows,
The freighted clouds at anchor lie.
All things are new; — the buds, the leaves,
That gild the elm-tree’s nodding crest,
And even the nest beneath the eaves; —
There are no birds in last year’s nest!
All things rejoice in youth and love,
The fullness of their first delight!
And learn from the soft heavens above
The melting tenderness of night.
Maiden, that read’st this simple rhyme,
Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay;
Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime,
For oh, it is not always May!
Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth,
To some good angel leave the rest;
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year’s nest
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ballads and Other Poems (1842)
No hay pájaros en los nidos de antaño.
Spanish proverb
Ah, the lusty month of May, when a young person’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of voting.
Tuesday, May 18, is Election Day in Pennsylvania. It’s a primary, which normally means just choosing the various parties’ candidates for the November general election. And, there are in fact, many of those choices on the ballot. There are races for Pittsburgh mayor and Allegheny county sheriff, as well as the ever-perplexing races for judge. There may be additional races in your voting district.
However, there are also several important questions on the ballot for all voters, not just party members:
- Three (count ’em) proposed amendments to Pennsylvania’s constitution
- A state-wide referendum on emergency medical services companies
- An Allegheny County ordinance referendum on standards for the county jail
- A proposed Pittsburgh Home Rule Charter amendment on no-knock warrants
So, even independent voters have good reasons to go to the polls this month.
You can find sample ballots, your voter registration status, a polling place locator, and more at the following county website: www.alleghenycounty.us/elections/index.aspx. It’s also not too late to request a mail-in ballot (assuming you receive this by May 11).
You can find information on the candidates by checking the spam folder in your email program. Better yet, go to the following website, run by the venerable League of Women Voters, which has been helping voters make informed choices for over 100 years: www.vote411.org.
Well, that’s about all I have for May. Remember that we will have an informational AWCC Membership Meeting on Tuesday, May 11. Come for the information, stay for the virtual refreshments provided by our sergeant-at-arms, Colleen Storm. We’ll be sending the Zoom link for the meeting in an upcoming eNewsletter. I hope to see you then.
Bob Griewahn
President, AWCC
AWCC Informational Meeting – May 11, 2021
Via Zoom (details)
Tuesday, May 11 at 7:30 pm
- 7:30 – Gather, Say Hello, Meet New Neighbors
- 7:35 – Update: City of Pittsburgh Zone 1 Police (Officer Burford)
- 7:40 – Update: City of Pittsburgh, Mayor’s Office (Leah Friedman)
- 7:45 – Update: Councilman Wilson’s Office (sdfMohammed Burny/Faith Mudd)
- 7:50 – Update: Representative Wheatley’s Office (Thomas Graham)
- 7:55 – Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy (Erin Tobin)
- 8:00 – Treasurer’s Report (Aaron Bryan)
- 8:05 – Executive Committee Reports
- Future In-Person Meetings
- “Pours and Plates” Possible Autumn Event
- Neighbor-of-the-Year Nominations
- 8:25 – Conclude