Archive for September 1st, 2023
Goodly Hue
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Riding on a double decker tourist bus in Pittsburgh, and which turned off the highway, and into the crowded and very urban area of Oakland. This is where the big universities are found – Carnegie Mellon and UPITT, and a bunch of smaller learning institutions and religious centers like Rodef Shalom Synagogue. This area looks a great deal more like a ‘city’ than most of Pittsburgh does. Dense, heavy traffic, lots of pedestrians and bike riders, street level retail – that sort of thing.
As mentioned earlier in the week, I was ‘shooting fast,’ meaning that I was using the sort of ISO sensitivity I’d normally use at night, with shutter speeds of 1/5000th to 1/8000th of a second to freeze the exposure and compensate for being onboard a moving vehicle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The bus rode past the Frick (oops) Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park, and negotiated a roundabout to ultimately head back towards its home base at the South Side Works development, on the other side of the Monongahela River. To be honest, I was glad that the trip was ending after spending about two hours baking in sunlight.
The bus routed back through Oakland, where I spotted a few things that I’d like to further explore when I come back on foot.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of them is the Soldiers and Sailors monument, which is just down the block from the Hospital in which Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for Polio. Man, imagine that happening today. You’d have Republican Senators lining up to blame Polio on immigrants, or to intone that the viral disease was a sign of moral turpitude and societal decay. On the other hand, you’d have Democrat Senators decrying the need for a cure as it is perfectly ok to have Polio and it doesn’t make you a bad person.
One of my favorite dark aphorisms, which I often throw out to make people uncomfortable, follows :
That which does not kill you only makes you stronger… excepting Polio.
Back next week with something different – at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
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