Archive for September 2023
Frustration Friday
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was not at all happy, when as that lovely Wheeling and Lake Erie freight train appeared, a personal hullabaloo occurred. While acquiring focus, and before I had pointed the camera in a direction conducive to a pleasing composition – my body suddenly lurched sideways and then forward. My left arm began flinging about, with a sharp pain at the wrist.
An ear splitting, high pitched whine followed by a percussive basso shout penetrated my skull, and then I was pulled forward and back again as my left arm flung about uncontrollably. Was it an ischemic event? No, it was a canine one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It seems that Moe the Dog had spotted another dog during the roughly 15 seconds during which I had looked away from him, and he tranced out into a manner best described as “losing his god damned mind.” He sure told that other dog ‘what for.’ The cheek of it, walking past Moe.
Afterwards, Moe seemed to think this was exactly what I’d like him to do and he was happy as a little clam. I missed the train shot, so I took one of a quite pleased with himself dog instead.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We walked back to the car, where I discovered that a bug had vomited on the engine hood. I’ve got a special seatbelt for Moe which attaches to his harness, so I put him in the back seat (where he likes to vomit) and then set about cleaning the bug puke off the car. Good thing I did, as I later learned that bug puke is basically acid and would have eaten away at the paint’s finish. Puppy puke, on the other hand, has yellow bile in it and smells the same way that licking a battery’s terminal tastes.
Everything’s great, all the time. Just another day in Paradise, that’s me.
Back next week with something else, at this – your insane Puppy and Bug Puke Pentacle.
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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Nightsburgh beckons
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Yessir, I went back to my ‘drink beer and photograph trains’ bar again, and got that swell looking CSX shot above. I’m playing around with crops a bunch for some reason, as in the square one above. The normal proportion I use is literally the size and shape of the camera sensor, but it’s been brought to my attention that social media sites like Instagram ‘like’ 1 to 1 or square formatted images as opposed to the usual rectangular ones.
Before you ask, I’ve been populating several websites with images in the last year. Lots going on at the moment. If you’re an Instagram user, maybe give me a follow? I’m trying to build up a presence there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I timed my visit fairly well, with a 7 pm arrival at the bar, and sunset occurring at 8. I got busy, tripod and all that, as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself began its descent behind Ohio. Afterwards, I walked over to T station for a light rail ride back home.
That’s the less interesting side of the concrete factory along the Monongahela River I’ve mentioned a few times. I’m starting to feel the urge to do some night shooting soon, hence “Nightsburgh.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some sort of hullabaloo up the line had occurred shortly before I arrived at the T light rail station, one which affected the service that I use.
Ended up having to call a Lyft to get back home, but there you go. Price of living in a medium sized city, I guess.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Monongahela Boat
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The last boat trip which I had bought tickets for here in Pittsburgh back in the early spring, as far as the 2023 season goes at least, was a Monongahela River one offered by the Doors Open Pittsburgh outfit. It was pretty sedate, and a nice afternoon’s diversion. That’s the Birmingham Bridge pictured above, spanning the waterway between the Golden Triangle section and the so called South Side Works development. It pops up a lot, that bridge, during the various explorations that I’ve been engaged in. It’s a convenient landmark for a ‘turnaround point,’ in relation to the titular center of the city at the convergence of the Three Rivers. I plan on walking over it fairly soon.
If you’re in town, definitely check out the Doors Open Pittsburgh site for interesting stuff to do. I’ve learned a bunch of stuff from them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Saying that, my Freshman year here in Pittsburgh continues on, but from this point out – nothing organized or mainstream for a humble narrator (although I might ride that double decker tourist bus again).
I’m planning on bringing all of you along for the ride, so buckle your seat belts just the pilots of a B-25 bomber did in 1956 before it crashed into the Monongahela River late on a January afternoon. I’m getting started on Pittsburgh, as seen through my own filters, now. I’m learning about, and reading up on, what might be found just under the surface hereabouts.
The Appalachian Plateau which cradles Pittsburgh holds many secrets. Its origin lies in the dim past of Ordovician Period – some 480 million years ago – when the first land plants appear in the fossil record, and the seas were swarming with nasty little Trilobites and Crinoids.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be hidden in the deep valleys and hollows, along the muddy rivers, and up on the sharp ridges of Appalachia?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In NYC, it’s customary for a boat tour to join a conga line of other tour boats at the Statue of Liberty. We would always joke on the microphone with our audience attending a Working Harbor Committee tour, that there was a Coast Guard rule that you had to visit Liberty. The same sort of customary thing happens in Pittsburgh, but it’s the fountain at Point State Park. There’s lots of private boating action going on as well, and the Coppers slide about in their own boat, to keep everything nice and civil.
I have no idea what branch of the Government that boat belongs to, nor whom that Police Officer works for. I don’t recognize the uniform code amongst law enforcement here yet. There’s State Troopers, whom you recognize immediately because they wear the sort of hat you’d associate with Smokey the Bear, but as you’d imagine there’s multiple layers of law enforcement and they’ve all got their own ‘flair.’
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
St. Bernard’s RC Church
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator was craving a pint of Guinness, which isn’t as commonly found on tap in Pittsburgh’s bars as it is in NYC. That instituted a short walk from HQ in the Dormont section to an Irish joint in the neighboring town of Mt. Lebanon. One has been passing the Roman Catholic Church pictured above, dubbed St. Bernard’s, and curiosity about the grand structure of the place has been growing.
To start, St. Bernard was known in life as Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153AD), and amongst other accomplishments he was a co founder of the Knights Templar. He was a Benedictine in Norman France, and was involved in the war of succession between Pope Innocent II and the Antipope Anacletus II. Bernard was the hype man for the Second Crusade, as well. You can read all about him here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
St. Bernard’s, in modernity, is home to the St. Michael the Archangel Parish outfit. As I understand it, the local Catholic Diocese was founded in 1843, although the Frenchers had brought Catholic priests along with them during the French and Indian war in 1754, so that predates the modern setup.
The number of congregants served by the Diocese declined in the late 20th century, part of the demographic collapse experienced by Pittsburgh when the steel industry began abandoning the place. The Bishops found themselves maintaining hundreds of empty churches and other buildings, which led them into financial hard times. The Diocese reacted by combining and compressing its congregations and parish structures together, and they sold off many of the churches and other real estate holdings which it had acquired in the first half of the 20th century. You can read all about that, right here. Currently, there’s 61 parishes under their administration.
I’ve observed several old churches with ‘For Sale’ signs out front, and many of these facilities have been taken over by other flavors of god worshippers – Evangelicals, Charismatics, etc. – whereas others have passed into secular usage.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The St. Bernard’s church is actually a complex of several buildings, with a school and offices. After quaffing a couple of pints of the Guinness draft I was craving, a homeward bound humble narrator noticed that the doors of St. Bernard’s were open, and thereby I decided to peek inside the chapel building…
Hey, I’m not the first guy to drink a couple of Guinness Pints and then stop off at a church on his way home to the missus, Y’know…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Built between 1933 and 1947, the Gothic Revival style St. Bernard’s RC Chuch was designed by architect William Richard Perry, of the firm Comes, Perry and McMullen. Jan Henryk de Rosen provided the murals, and the stained glass is by Alfred Fisher and A. Leo Pitassi.
It was completely and utterly unoccupied except for myself, so I whipped a little tabletop tripod I always carry with me and got busy. Magnificent sacred space, this one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One of the things I’ve learned about Pittsburgh is that its religious buildings are built like battleships. If the enemy is invading, or the storm winds are blowing, the point of retreat seems to be – by design – the local church. Within, there’s splendor.
I don’t know why this church isn’t called a cathedral. It’s easily the size of Old St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. What qualifies something as a Cathedral, versus a church?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pretty magnificent, huh?
Research on this post revealed that the Bishop at the top of the Diocese organization here in Pittsburgh allows the old Tridentine Latin mass to be conducted at St. Bernard’s, much to the chagrin of the current Papal orthodoxy in Rome. There’s a schism forming over this practice in the Catholic universe, I’ve read, and that the current Pope is at odds with several extremely conservative and “old guard” members of the American Synod, including those here in Pittsburgh.
Back tomorrow with something different.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Very trusting
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I actually couldn’t believe what I was looking at, and knew that none of my friends from NYC would accept the story, so I took a picture of it. Some guy on my block left his car running, and driver’s side door hanging open, and then went inside his house for some reason. I stood there watching the car idle for a good five minutes, tamping down my innate desire to steal it, just to teach him a lesson. Brooklyn.
People in one of the Facebook groups for my Town/Borough here in Pittsburgh (Dormont) have been complaining of late about people breaking into their cars in the dead of night. The ‘break in’ they describe incorporates no broken windows or jimmied locks, instead their car doors are simply left unlocked. It’s inconvenient to lock them, they say…
The fuck? The stupidest thing in the world is an unlocked door. They apparently do this with their houses too. As in go to sleep at night with the doors open. Brooklyn? Wowza.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Compared to the real life ‘Batman movie’ which I grew up and spent most of my adult life in back in NYC, Pittsburgh is comparatively ‘safe.’ The City of Pittsburgh is more or less entirely contained within Allegheny County, but the county also encompasses several other satellite communities as well. As of 2022, there were about 1.2 million residents who live in about 546,000 households here in Allegheny County. Also in 2022, there were 129 Homicides, as so reported by the cops. The vast majority of those homicides were ‘kid stuff,’ with gangland and drug trade motivations. That’s a murder rate of 0.01075%, statistically speaking.
“People walk around like they’re safe or something.” That’s something we used to say a lot back in the 1980’s. NYC has a 2022 population of about 8.5 million, and there were 433 murders during that interval, which creates a rate of 0.00509411765%. Thereby, believe it or not, Pittsburgh has a higher murder rate than New York. Saying that, the unlocked door thing contributes to a staggeringly high level of burglary and home invasion which no New Yorker would tolerate. Saying all that, statistics don’t really tell the whole story, and I wonder what those numbers would say if we were to superimpose Pittsburgh’s footprint over part of the NY/NJ metro area (say, I dunno, Western Queens), an area whose population represented just 1.2 million citizens, and then do a 1 for 1 comparison.
As I’ll often point out – Y’know who has most of the world’s lightbulbs, or toilet seat covers, or pencils… China, followed by India. Know why? Lots and lots of Chinese and Indian people who live in cities. Want to light up a Republican’s cloister? Tell them that China has more or something than America does.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As I’ve mentioned a few times, I find the criminals and street people of Pittsburgh absolutely adorable. They’re so obvious. Saying that, there’s rough customers here whom you definitively don’t want to deal with, and this part of the country is extremely well armed. I recently saw a news report about the Cops holding a fair to make it easier to get a concealed carry permit for the pistoleer crowd. The Cops!
Me? I carry a camera, not a gun, at least not yet. I lock my car doors, and the last thing I’ll do before going to bed is to methodically visit all the doors and windows in the house to ensure that they are securely locked up. I don’t leave my car door open with the engine running, and whereas I hate the phrase ‘keep your head on a swivel,’ that’s the way I learned to live my life back in NYC.
Back tomorrow with something else, at this – your Paranoid Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 