August 30 Run/Walk: North Side discovery! Meet at Gretchen's house 10090 Oakridge Dr., Wexford

Next week's special plan from Beth:  

"Gretchen and I will cohost the run next Sunday, starting from her house at 10090 Oakridge Drive. (map.)We’ll explore a lovely stream side trail in Vestal Park. The walkers can then make their way back to Gretchen’s back patio, and the runners can do the same, or the more ambitious can visit a second nearby park, Potter Park. Or maybe we will go and see the neighbors’ house with the gigantic Steelers emblem on the side."

Last week around Homestead, walkers found some kind of forest patio (see photo - would be great for a coffee hour!) and runners went to investigate possibilities for making a circuit:  Costco parking lot-Glenwood Bridge-Duck Hollow Trail-Homestead Grays Bridge-back to Costco.  Answer: maybe.  We only got partway, but a railroad agent we ran into said it was possible. It's a little grungy on the Homestead side, and would take more than an hour.  A challenge!

Endorsements:

• Chatting with our Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and also his extraordinary wife Gisele, who remembered RG's visit to their house a long time ago!  (November 8, 2015 to be exact.)
• The word Verblunget.
• Carnegie Library COVID outdoor book delivery and dropoff.  It works!
• Related:  reading in bathtubs.
• Elementary school: film strips, and incidences of escaped bodily fluids, not related.
• How are we going to vote?  So many possibilities and questions and stress!  The group will have a mind meld to determine this soon.  In the meantime, the League of Women Voters has these flyers (1 and 2).
• The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books - remembered fondly but then I read this.
• podcast:  Nice White Parents (some of us were, maybe not so nice?)

August 23 Run: One more time - meet at the Waterfront Starbucks!

What's not to like?  Giant chairs, shade, easy access to coffee and napkins, our Lieutenant Governor and his family, and a pristine bathroom.  So we'll return yet again to the yard of the Waterfront Starbucks, showing that this bizarre time is another episode of Groundhog Day.  We also may resolve once and for all the Glenwood Bridge/Duck Hollow trail access mystery.

Reporting on the last two weeks (photos below), we toured Homestead and its amazing churches, visited the riverside trail where goats are employed in landscaping (no leafblowers!), and crossed the Hi-Level Bridge for a foray into Summerset, Duck Hollow and beyond.  Someday we'll follow that beyond to the Carrie Furnace, per Lainy.  

More election anxiety.  We discussed some more things to do:  

• Join the Pittsburgh League of Women Voters 
• Show up at rallies (i.e. Civil Saturdays org. by Young Black & Educated, this Sat. at 3 at Penn and E. Liberty Blvd, wear purple, Support the Post Office - org. by 14th Ward Indep. Dems. tomorrow at 5 at Squirrel Hill Post Office - bring a sign. 
• Get a Biden sign - contact Gretchen at gjezerc@gmail.com. Then put out an American flag next to it.
• Laura suggests the Order of the Phoenix (request to join the private group)
• Another good list to get on:  Partners for Progress SWPA (they have a letter-writing campaign if you hate making phone calls.)
• If you think of anything else, send it in!

OK - back to needed distractions:

• RG scientists enjoy abbreviating the follow-up of something - FU whenever.
• Going gray, no longer scary.
• Zoom enhancement:  get decent lighting and camera placement. And no unmade beds in the background.
• COVID vaccine trials here are starting this week.  Please let them work.
• Drive-in at the Carrie Furnace - films every weekend, but sign up before they sell out.
• Watch Stateless on Netflix, Offspring (oy vey, again?) on Hulu
• Lainy has a paid opportunity to be on an online stakeholder panel - need to be family member or caregiver of a person in assisted living - email emormer@pitt.edu
• Lieut. Governor John Fetterman is actually in this photo right above Max's blonde head.

August 9 Run: Ditto Last Week: Waterfront Starbucks, bring a chair just in case.

                                                    

     

We'll meet at the Waterfront Starbucks again because the locale was, although admittedly an example of our national consumerist mania, perfect.  There were ample chairs out on the lawn, lots of space, coffee aplenty.  As always, the rain held off.  We had runners and walkers, the lovely refreshing Monongahela alongside, a labyrinth to negotiate, some goats, and the adorable Alex to keep us company.  So... a repeat this Sunday.    

For a long time, RG has officially tried to keep politics more or less at bay, but that ship has sailed. We are now endlessly fretting about what we can do to help end this societal and governmental nightmare.  Resulting endorsements:

• Getting people registered to vote, to request their mail-in ballots, to actually FILL THEM OUT AND SEND THEM IN - if anyone has a good idea on the best way to promote winning this election, email me back and I'll share with the group.  And Joanne - please come and tell us!
• What can you attend or do to elect Democrats and work for justice in general? Send an email to Debra Fyock - debra.fyock@gmail.com - and tell her you want to receive the Indivisible Grassroots Pittsburgh Calendar - for up-to-the-minute listings.
• If you can't remember if you signed up for a mail-in ballot for November, check here.
• Revel in our misery with gut-punching political ads from the Lincoln Project
• How does Elizabeth Warren look so terrific?  I researched:  Skincare; long walks.
• Movie: Idiocracy - not a great film but unbelievably prescient.
• Podcasts:  Nice White Parents - remember standing in line for a Magnet School?  Radiolab piece on 1918 Pandemic, brilliant, unexpected.
• Putting vodka in your pie crust. There are hundreds of recipes, so it must be great.  How about putting vodka in anything - chocolate pudding, banana bread, tacos, salad dressing - it's getting a little desperate out here.
• Because several people asked about The Butterlab last week - there's more on Instagram.
• Check out Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever on Netflix. Wendy is obsessed with the main character played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan..

August 2 Run: Meet at the Waterfront, in front of Starbucks

 

In these plague times the weeks seem to be speeding up and I'm getting later and later in getting this out.  Sorry!  I just read that time is "a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future" so hopefully that won't matter too much.

Tomorrow we're going a little farther afield, venturing across a river!  We'll meet at the Starbucks at the Waterfront (map) (the one in the "Town Center" , now that's retail!)  Bring a chair just in case.  The Steel Valley Trail beckons, and Homestead, and the Hays Bald Eagle Cam (have they fled?), and the Great Allegheny Passage, and Duck Hollow, and the Costco parking lot - somebody pick something.

Last week walkers and runners went in different directions, and I'll be damned if can remember where anyone went, but Virginia sent me this image of climbing the new stairs behind the Frick Arts Center, so that must have been part of it.

As we sat peacefully under the trees (except for the ominously frequent Life Flight helicopters) there were tons of endorsements though:

• Becoming a Flight Nurse
• New Balance shoes with The Cushion.
• Circles organization in East Liberty that connects people across socioeconomic lines to make a more equal society.
• Places to go that are not too far:  Deer Valley Family Camp, usually booked forever, has openings now because of COVID, Ditto Chatauqua, and the fabulous Skytop Lodge. 
• Books: A Woman of No Importance, Circe, May the Road Rise Up to Meet You.
• Entertainment value of the comments any time Sen. Toomey posts on FB.
• All the stuff you can pick up on South Oakland streets because the rentals are turning over - example:  a new unopened Amazon kitchen set that someone's Mom clearly thought would be used.
• More details on the story of Gretchen's Dad as a Pitt freshman band member in the 60's on a trip to Jim Crow Louisiana with star linebacker Bobby Grier. This needs to be a movie, but at least on Story Corps.
• Radiolab (always terrific) but especially this one on the Cheerleader and the Mississippi flag.
• Movies:  Spike Lee's Da Five Bloods, Greyhound (Tom Hanks very different from Mr. Rogers in this one.)
• The Butterlab - photos & recipes from culinary heaven (by my son's partner Tamara)