Fighting Clean
Think it doesn’t matter who cleans up after Downtown office workers? The Service Employees International Union disagrees: They want to make a federal case of it. On Jan. 14, at noon, the SEIU plans to announce its filing of a complaint with the federal National Labor Relations Board. They’re objecting to the sudden dismissal…
Chalk One Up
What would you do with an unexpected $1 million? On Jan. 7, the Pittsburgh Public Schools board voted to devote almost $1 million in unexpectedly available federal money — plus about $250,000 in local and state general-fund money — to its most centralized, broad-scale tutoring program to date, which will pay up to 445…
Got MLK?
Mary Frances Berry headlines a grand buffet of lectures, classes, candlelight vigils, art exhibits and service projects marking America’s first holiday post-New Year’s, Martin Luther King Day. Speaking as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s day-long MLK event Jan. 19, Berry is chairperson of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, an independent bipartisan fact-finding…
Religious Writes
Sixteen-year-old Intisar Bakri Abdulgader will bear the punishment of 100 lashes for breaking a Sudanese law rooted in Islam. The crime: sexual intercourse without being married. Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly faces a 15-year sentence for practicing Roman Catholicism and holding mass in his native Vietnam. Because of his strongly entrenched spiritual convictions, he’s…
Bush League
“Wrong Axe, Mr. President.” Maybe budget deficits do grow on trees: On Dec. 23, the Department of Agriculture exempted 300,000 acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from a federal rule limiting taxpayer subsidies for the building of private logging roads in national forests (the action was announced at the tail end of a press release…
A Conversation With Randy Gilson
How’d you get started putting gardens in the North Side?In about 1979 I moved here from Homestead. I was trying to protect my family, because I was bad. A lot of my friends were starting to go down the road of the mob, of guns, the trafficking of miscellaneous things. I was always…
Blessed Be the Bus Riders
Martie Hall’s been up since 4:30 a.m., and checked into the Port Authority’s East Liberty garage at 5:18. This week is his 14th anniversary as a bus driver. But when it comes to the early hours, he says, “Oh, you never get used to it!” His long legs fold like a very sturdy piece of…
Paul Maul
An out-of-town friend e-mails: “Why don’t the Democrats just nominate Paul O’Neill for president?” Having seen O’Neill’s performance on 60 Minutes Sunday night, I know where my friend is coming from. The former head of Pittsburgh-based Alcoa said just about everything angry Democrats have longed to believe about President Bush, whom O’Neill served as…
Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
The snow lion was a mythic creature said to protect the people of Tibet, and as such, had a place of honor on that region’s flag. Today, under Chinese rule, the Tibetan flag has been outlawed — and with it went the noble beast’s oversight, leaving Tibet a collection of displaced and oppressed people, flailing…
Various Artists
In the annals of Jamaican musical history, rocksteady is often touted as the formative step between the jump-up dance crazy of ska and the eventually dominating riddims of early roots reggae, which remains the foundation of seemingly half of all pop and dance music made today. Rocksteady — ska’s slower, more grooving cousin that erupted…
Bart Davenport
Northern Californian scenester Bart Davenport’s musical career reads like a history of groovy-white-boy pop. In his early days, the Bay Area crooner donned suit and harmonica in The Loved Ones, a garage-mod revival that would have to fend off major labels and major ladies if it existed in today’s post-Stripes environ. Next, with The Kinetics,…
The Cooler
For maybe 30 minutes or so, The Cooler is one of those sharp, interesting, well-acted little independent movies that allow you to relax with a low-keyed job well done. It opens in the neon gloaming of Las Vegas, then quickly introduces us to Bernie (William H. Macy), the titular character, so called because, when…
This Thing of Ours
Danny Provenzano — star, director and co-writer of This Thing of Ours — has a new angle on the mob film: He’s one of them. His great-uncle, “Tony Pro,” allegedly disappeared Jimmy Hoffa; Provenzano himself was busted recently for racketeering and extortion, and after sentencing next month he’ll be enjoying whatever press clippings his debut…
