Pittsburgh Public Schools board candidate Lynda Wrenn commits to closing opportunity gap
Lynda Wrenn, who has an education background and 15 years of experience in Pittsburgh Public Schools, is running for a seat on the school board.
UPDATE: Few weeks remain on Allegheny County Health Department public-comment period for Lawrenceville facility
The Allegheny County Health Department is accepting input from the public until mid-April regarding an operating permit it will issue to the McConway & Torley LLC steel foundry in Lawrenceville.
Concert updates: Van Halen and MORE
Did you miss concert announcements yesterday? Sorry! I was hurrying back from the West Coast, and that airplane wi-fi is pretty much useless, am i right? Here are just a few of the many fine shows coming to a venue near you (many of which beg the question, “what year is it?”: +Van Halen is…
Allegheny County Jail healthcare provider responds to ACLU claim on inconsistent delivery of HIV medication
Corizon Health responds to the ACLU’s claim that it isn’t consistently providing access to HIV medication to inmates at Allegheny County Jail.
Listen Up! March 25
Listen Up!
Anti-Death-Penalty Activist Henderson Hill Speaks Tomorrow at University of Pittsburgh
The executive director of The 8th Amendment Project speaks on Pitt’s campus tomorrow night.
Jeanne Theoharis speaks about Rosa Parks book today at Carnegie Mellon
Jeanne Theoharis challenges the image of Parks in her new book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, which received a 2014 NAACP Image Award.
“American Revolutionary” Screening Today at Carlow University on Activist Grace Lee Boggs
Filmmaker to attend Carlow University event for Women’s History Month
MP3 Monday: The Jakob’s Ferry Stragglers
This week’s MP3 Monday (“on a Tuesday”) comes from local bluegrass outfit The Jakob’s Ferry Stragglers. On the heels of its latest LP, Lane Change, Gary Antol’s project plays Thunderbird Cafe this Friday, March 27. Take a listen to “Scattered Pieces” below. To download, right-click here and choose “save link as.”
ACLU investigating Allegheny County Jail for not providing consistent HIV medications to inmates
The ACLU claims inmates are not regularly receiving appropriate HIV/AIDS medication.
On the Record with David Matthews: New film, Aspie Seeks Love, documents a 20-year quest for romance
Dating is full of unstated conventions that mystify even the most socially adept among us. But what if your neurobiology kept you from fully appreciating all of the subtle social cues that can be critical to finding love? That’s the question local documentary filmmaker Julie Sokolow explores in her latest project, Aspie Seeks Love. The…
Grassroots Urban Garden and Farm Open Space Showcase Tomorrow
Program includes exhibitors, talks
Trailer for Sale or Rent: The Gunman
This film was not screened for critics locally, so we took a look at the trailer.
Conflict-Zone Blogger Judith Torrea at City of Asylum
Mexico-based journalist speaks on drug trafficking
Residents give ‘Closed-Window Award’ to Neville Island’s Shenango coke plant
To mark the first day of spring, residents from northern borough neighborhoods, including Avalon, Brighton Heights and Ben Avon, presented a “Closed-Window Award” to the gates of DTE Energy’s Shenango coke plant on Neville Island — in the form of an actual closed window.
Persad LGBT counseling center moving to Lawrenceville, expanding programs
Persad Center will get a new home and expand programs starting March 23.
Party with Pagans Tonight at All Snakes Day
Here’s a post-St. Patrick’s Day party you maybe weren’t aware of.
Lynn Cullen Live 3/20/15
Video Archive You can listen to the audio archive here. Op Ed from a German parent about American parenting culture. Netanyahu re-elected. Boehner plans a celebratory tour. Know thine enemies. Audio Only Archive Listen to the Audio Archives on with our new Apple and Android Apps or the computer audio player.
CP Weekend podcast for March 20-22: Mister Rogers, Bach and Robert Frost
CP Weekend podcast
Port Authority changes will make funding your ConnectCard a whole lot easier
Port Authority riders will soon be able to load virtual cash and passes on their ConnectCards through a web portal.
Lynn Cullen Live 3/19/15
Video Archive You can listen to the audio archive here. Sally Wiggin and Lynn Cullen. Dolce and Gabbana makes statements against gay adoption, see major backlash. Addressing anoxeria in the fashion world. Audio Only Archive Listen to the Audio Archives on with our new Apple and Android Apps or the computer audio player.
CP Weekend Podcast – Mar. 20 – 22, 2015
This week on the CP Weekend Podcast: Enjoy a beautiful day in the neighborhood, attend Bach’s b-day bash, and don’t fear the reaper.
Run All Night
The best scene in this movie has Ed Harris and Liam Neeson, vets of the New York City criminal milieu, reminiscing over drinks, while trying not to kill each other. (“I am the only one who ever cared about you, and all that ended when you shot my son.”) Unfortunately, most of Jaume Collet-Serra’s thriller…
The Salvation
Westerns are rare these days, so fans might want to pony up for this Danish-produced, South African-shot revenge drama that tips its hat to the bleaker revisionist Westerns of the late 1960s and early ’70s. Set in frontier America in 1871, Kristian Levring’s Salvation doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s wholly serviceable for those…
With its new record, Ivy Tripp, Waxahachee shifts from the heart to the head
WAXAHATCHEE with SWEARIN’, NAKED SPIRIT 8 p.m. Fri., March 27 William Pitt Union 3959 Fifth Ave. Oakland $5-8 wptsradio.org Though it won’t officially be released until April, Waxahatchee’s Ivy Tripp comes across like a memory just out of reach, evoking that feeling that sometimes washes over one after waking up from a long nap. The…
Clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg looks to past teachers for musical inspiration
BEN GOLDBERG TRIO 8 p.m. Sun., March 22 Thunderbird Café 4023 Butler St. Lawrenceville $16-20 412-682-0177 or thunderbird cafe.net A good teacher presents ideas or disciplines that stay with students for years. Ben Goldberg understands this. Laying claim to a diverse set of recordings and projects, the clarinetist has blended traditional klezmer music with avant-garde…
Hip-hop artist Kai Roberts offers a message of hope for those struggling with mental-health issues
Hip-hop artist Kai Roberts has been interested in music since childhood. But it wasn’t until he was faced with personal mental-health issues that he discovered how valuable music can be. The Beltzhoover native majored in engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 2010, quickly switching to business administration, which better suited his growing desire to pursue…
Critics’ Picks for March 19-25
[BENEFIT CONCERT] + FRI., MARCH 20 Today, Pittsburgh Musicians for Hunger Relief puts on two events to promote its new song and video, “The Lights on Grant.” And, by extension, it will help promote the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and national anti-poverty organization WhyHunger. The video — which features scenic shots of the city,…
Questionable premise aside, Absence of Self offers some intriguing work
ABSENCE OF SELF continues through April 5 Wood Street Galleries 601 Wood St. Downtown 412-471-5605 or woodstreet galleries.org Absence of Self collects four works in differing media that, according to the mission of this Wood Street Galleries exhibition, share a common element: their creation or existence was accompanied by removal of the “immediate self.” Viewing…
New Releases
David Bavas Lions & Lambs (Self-released) www.davidbavas.com An Oil City native, singer-songwriter David Bavas spent his formative years in the Appalachian foothills. These days, he lives in Nashville. For this record, he draws on romantic elements of both places, resulting in stripped-down Americana that feels familiar while specific to no place in particular. Sometimes it’s…
Reviews of the first 50 pages of two new novels by local authors
Steven Sherrill’s Joy, PA (Louisiana State University Press, 238 pp., $22.50) is a novel about a supremely dysfunctional family. Burns Augenbaugh, a veteran of the first Iraq War, has PTSD and a prescription-drug addiction and has barely left his basement in years. His wife, Abigail, is a fundamentalist Christian whom a radio preacher has convinced…
With a permit renewal around the corner, activists say it’s time for Allegheny County to clamp down on emissions at the Cheswick power plant
Video by Ashley Murray On the first warm and sunny day this March, cooped-up residents of Springdale emerged from their homes, ready for spring. In the otherwise unremarkable small town, two power-plant smoke stacks loom above, the defining characteristic of the place. You can hardly avoid seeing them against the clear, blue sky. Likewise, the…
How I Learned What I Learned at Pittsburgh Public Theater
HOW I LEARNED WHAT I LEARNED continues through April 5 Pittsburgh Public Theater at the O’Reilly Theater 621 Penn Ave. Downtown $15-62 412-316-1600 or ppt.org Perhaps a more accurate title would be August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned. Originally a one-man autobiographical show starring Pittsburgh’s most famous playwright himself, the current production at…
A lauded green-art initiative hits a roadblock in Schenley Plaza
Once, it seemed like a promising opportunity for Pittsburgh to get an avantgarde piece of public art that generates clean energy. Instead, a proposal by the Land Art Generator initiative has gotten bogged down in city-government approvals. LAGI is the brainchild of Lawrencevillebased artist-and-architect couple Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry. (See a profile of the…
Dinah at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Co.
DINAH continues through April 5 937 Liberty Ave. Downtown $22.50-35 412-687-4686 or pghplay wrights.com In 1982, director Paul Mazursky filmed a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest called, you’ll never guess, Tempest. Susan Sarandon was in it, and I’m a fan, so I went. I don’t remember much about it, but I vividly recall a…
Local firm goes global promoting art and sustainability
The Land Art Generator Initiative is a Pittsburgh-based organization with a proposal for a conspicuous local project. “Wind Nest” (designed by Philadelphia-based firm SUPRAFUTURES at LAGI’s direction) is a clean energy-producing structure combining wind turbines and thin-film solar cells and intended for a spot in Schenley Plaza. Yet the organization and its work are truly…
Lovecraft’s Monsters at 12 Peers Theater
LOVECRAFT’S MONSTERS continues through Sat., March 21 12 Peers Theater at Maker Theater 5950 Ellsworth Ave. Shadyside $17 412-496-2194 or 12peerstheater.org Lovecraft’s Monsters, a one-man show written and performed by David Crawford, is a trip through the life of H.P. Lovecraft, the early 20th-century writer of cosmic horror popular among people who find Poe kind…
Savage Love
I’m a straight guy in my 30s dating a woman in her mid-20s. We’ve been together for a year, and I’m crazy about her. In love, even. She’s gorgeous, sweet, kind, loving and very sexual. She’s perfect. In her late teens and early 20s, she had a wild sex life. She attended sex parties, had…
CorningWorks revisits an audience favorite with notable guests
CorningWorks presents AT ONCE THERE WAS A HOUSE Wed., March 25-Sun., March 29 New Hazlett Theater 6 Allegheny Square East North Side $25-50 (March 29 show is pay-what-you-can) 888-718-4253 or newhazlett theater.org Of all Beth Corning’s dance-theater works, none in recent memory has been remounted more often than At Once There Was a House. Choreographed…
Short List: March 20 -25
Spotlight: Fri., March 20 — Dance Texture Contemporary Ballet wraps up its fourth season with Unleashed Emotion. The program in three acts at the New Hazlett Theater features five ballets that run the gamut of emotions, including the premiere of Texture associate artistic director Kelsey Bartman’s “Old Skin.” The 25-minute “earthy” ballet for five dancers,…
The ninth annual Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival opens with Jonathan Demme’s Ibsen adaption A Master Builder
The Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival: Faces of Work runs Thu., March 19, through April 11, with more than a dozen feature films and documentaries. Unless noted, films screen at McConomy Auditorium, on the CMU campus, and are $10 ($5 students/seniors). A complete schedule, including guest speakers and specials events, is at www.cmu.edu/faces. Some recent…
Stuff We Like
Theft Deterrent at Amazing Books. You’ve been warned. 929 Liberty Ave., Downtown Street Art Throwdown. Reality-TV show about competing graffiti artists. Part of the fun is seeing how the show finds legal ways to let these spray-can warriors do their thing. 9 p.m. Tuesdays, on Oxygen Mortified Podcast. A blush-inducing live show turned weekly podcast…
Mommy
A troubled — and occasionally giddy — relationship between a harried single mom, her angry teenage son and a shy neighbor is the focus of Mommy, the latest drama from the young Canadian writer-director Xavier Dolan (I Killed My Mother). In suburban Montreal, Die (Anne Dorval) brings 15-year-old Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) home from a juvenile…
Gus’s Cafe
Don’t let the lack of curb appeal fool you. Gus’s Cafe, a low-slung, concrete block building with glass-block windows of the type that usually portend a dive bar, is so much more than it seems. The vibe inside is a little bit basement, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll. An online music station surfs from…
Cinderella
Kenneth Branagh directs this straightforward but lush adaptation of the classic fairy tale about the overworked girl granted a magical night at the ball. Downton Abbey’s Lily James (a.k.a. Lady Rose) plays Cinderella, and she’s perfectly sweet (and teeny-waisted) in this lightly written, passive role. Stealing every scene she’s in is Cate Blanchett, as the…
Easy-to-grow fresh herbs can really complement your liquor cabinet
The sun is sticking around longer and the ground is getting softer, so it must nearly be time to return to the garden. Though your home garden might not be large enough to feed the family, it can certainly yield enough herbs and garnishes to enhance any liquor cabinet. Whether you’ve got several acres or…
The Gett: The Trial of Viviane Ansalem
This Israeli film from Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz is the very essence of a courtroom drama: It takes place only in a bare municipal room, and is comprised only of testimony. The case: A woman, Viviane (Ronit Elkabetz), seeks a divorce (gett), a release from her loveless marriage, which can be granted only with the…
New juice bar Delicious Raw offers healthful options for the Downtown crowd
DELICIOUS RAW 280 Forbes Ave. Downtown 412-281-1473 or delraw.com The struggle for healthful work-day nourishment is eternal, but Delicious Raw offers an alternative to bagels and protein bars. The Eat n’ Park Hospitality Group opened the juice-and-smoothie bar earlier this month, in partnership with a Florida-based company of the same name. Eat n’ Park’s Mark…
Hear residents’ takes on Cheswick power plant permit – CP TV
Video by Ashley Murray
