Posts Tagged ‘South Hills’
Silver, blue, or red?
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As described yesterday, your humble narrator attended a ‘PT’ or Physical Therapy appointment to facilitate the continuing medical recovery period after breaking my ankle back in September.
This week’s photos were captured during an actual photowalk, which is the first true scuttle I’ve taken in four months. After my assignation with the PT people, during which I was put through several paces, one limped over to the T light rail stop and headed into town. Along the way, I was shooting out of the windows on the light rail, as it was an unfamiliar line. I normally use the Red Line service, and I think that I was riding on the Silver Line but I’m not entirely sure. From where I boarded, nearby one of the service’s terminal yards, it could be any of them, and since they all go to where I planned on debarking – win.
A few disturbing things began to occur on the earliest part of the scuttle, notably a clicking sensation in the bad ankle, when transiting through a stride. It didn’t hurt, at first, but the sensation was disconcerting and persistent. I also noticed that the length of my stride had noticeably shortened. Normal, for me, is each step spans a sidewalk box line on every step.
By the time my day ended, it was three steps for every sidewalk box and the last mile took me 45 minutes to walk.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve frequently driven through the section of Pittsburgh that this T line travels along, and that’s Saw Mill Run/Route 51 pictured above, as seen from the altitude of the cantilevered tracks that the T rides on in this section.
$3, if you’re curious. That’s the fare. I’m thinking that at some point in the next few weeks I might just buy a ‘hop on/hop off’ (about $20, if memory serves) day pass to the T and spend some time at these elevated stations with a zoom lens. It’s neat, along this corridor.
The ankle was singing its song by this point. I’m normally quite sore after the PT sessions, and that was a consideration when I had resolved to ‘walk three miles’ on this particular day. It ended up being just under four miles, but that’s a subject for subsequent posts to explore.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My original plan was to take the T to the other side of the Monongahela River and walk back across on the Smithfield Street Bridge prior to heading down towards a nearby set of rail tracks, but amendment occurred due to the ankle’s operatics, and I shaved a mile off the walk by debarking the T at the Station Square stop instead.
It was in the high thirties, temperature wise, and two weeks worth of snow and ice were releasing away from the ground. It wasn’t icy, but it was wet, and as I keep on reminding myself that ‘discretion is the better part of valor’ and to error on the side of caution as I get back to speed.
Scuttle. Ow! Scuttle, ow! Ow! Ow! It was like that.
Back tomorrow.
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The day, finally, comes
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last Friday, Pittsburgh warmed up past the freezing mark.
Unfortunately, I had a ‘PT’ or ‘Physical Therapy’ appointment mid afternoon, but I also had a plan. The car was left back home in my driveway, and a cab ride took me to my appointment. After an hour of getting the actual heck beaten out of me by trained professionals, the camera bag was affixed over the filthy black raincoat and your humble narrator embarked on the first actual scuttle he’s been capable of in a very long time.
The plan involved me walking the better part of a mile, to find the terminal stop for all three of Pittsburgh’s light rail ‘T’ lines at the South Hills Village station and then catch an inbound train set. Good news is that most of that distance was accomplished by walking through a heated and evenly floored shopping mall. Part of the plan which I didn’t count on is how incredibly diminished my physicality is, after this whole broken ankle experience.
That first mile was agonizing, despite it taking place mostly on those polished mall floors. Made it though. You have to ignore pain, and then lean into it, otherwise you’re a wuss. Brooklyn!
This is the way.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One was quite glad to to see the Pittsburgh bound ‘T’ arrive. It’s immaterial which line you pick up here (there’s three – silver, blue, and red. I normally use the red line from HQ in Dormont), as they’re all -ultimately- heading towards the same place and this is one of the terminal stops. I think the one I boarded, pictured above, was the Silver but I could be wrong. At any rate, I was happy to just be sitting down. I’ve also really missed having this service available to me during all of this disability time.
Since this line was traveling on a set of tracks unfamiliar, I decided to shoot out the windows as we moved along. The ankle was angry.
The PT session had involved a stationary bicycle, weight machine leg presses, and several odd exercises (one of which sees an elastic belt strung twixt the ankles and you ‘crab walk’ sideways with it on and stretch it out laterally. This is harder than it sounds). What emerged during this walk, however, is that my stride length has greatly diminished. Something else I need to work on, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s suburban in character, the South Hills Village area, and the T runs on a dedicated track which travels past the back yards of mostly one family houses, the odd medical building or warehouse, and then past apartment houses as population density grades higher and higher, and eventually The T runs onto a cantilevered elevated track which is set into the side of a very steep hill as it nears the center of all things in the City of Pittsburgh. It’s all very complicated.
Back tomorrow, with more from this return to a scuttling form of life.
“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.
Mister Icicles
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When I prophesied that ‘just as soon as the Docs tell me that it would be ok to resume normal but attenuated activities, the weather would turn to ice and snow’ – well – four easy words to learn are ‘Mitch is always right.’ Most of a humble narrator’s last week was spent dodging the weather while maintaining a bullish schedule of Doctor’s and Physical Therapy appointments.
Annoyingly, it’s Christmas, and the ‘PT’ office where I’m receiving my treatments is literally found within a shopping mall. Good news is that there’s abundant parking. Bad news is that seemingly everybody in Pittsburgh is converging on this area for holiday shopping. Automobile traffic in the shot above is stacked up behind a series of signal lights managing the vehicular flow towards the South Hills Village Mall. It’s a ‘biggun.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This ‘zone’ near the mall is fairly weird to me. In addition to the shopping center, interwoven around it are hotels, residential apartment buildings, and several ‘senior living’ facilities ranging in typology from old age homes to assisted living condos. Apparently, there’s a substantial number of people hereabouts who actually live within a shopping mall. In many ways, it’s the culmination of everything that the 1980’s strove for.
There’s also a plethora of seemingly out of place and eclectic structures scattered about the complex, like the St. Thomas More RC church pictured above. It’s directly across the street from my orthopedic Surgeon’s office, which is housed within a rather banal six story office building directly across the street. I’ve got an ophthalmologist office which I use on the sixth floor and the ankle guy is downstairs on two. Disappointingly, the various medical offices aren’t arranged to correspond with the body, i.e. there isn’t a knee and hip guy on three, internist on four, cardiologist on five, and so on.
Despite a heavy snow, a quite recent visit to the surgeon involved having an X-Ray or three of the busted ankle taken. Good news is that my surgeon pointed out that the three broken bones had rejoined without any sort of visible seam.
Saying that, I’ve got a bunch of screws and a metal bracket in my leg now, and that’s basically forever. We talked about airline security screening during my appointment, in addition to other matters. PT will continue for a while. Normalcy is on the horizon.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My prophetic visions of ‘Snowmageddon’ interfering with my happiness came true. It was only a couple of inches of snow, accompanied by some pretty cold weather with atmospherics down in the twenty degrees range, but I couldn’t risk harming the ankle. One needs to be quite conservative in terms of such risk at the moment. I’m just now back on my feet. It also seems that I’ve got a touch of PTSD from this experience, and that’s something which I’ve got to get a grip on. Every time I approach a set of steps…
Those two months in a wheelchair were scarring and brutal. One step in front of the other, as the song says, but a mean and despicable creature like myself’s footsteps can best be described as timorous, currently. Back tomorrow, and have yourself a great Festivus.
“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.
Corrumpere meum braccas
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Latin title above roughly translates to ‘crapping my pants,’ which is what I was doing while on my way to an eye doctor’s appointment.
Last time around with this particular doc, the conversation included him saying ‘well, you’re lucky that it’s not affecting your vision yet.’
Between the first appointment and this one which Pittsburgh’s Blue Line T light rail was carrying me towards, I had described the diagnosis to another doctor – a Cardiologist – during a checkup earlier in the month. A rather amiable and cheery guy, as far as heart specialists go, he said ‘oh, no problem, I’m just going to adjust your prescriptions’ so just let me know what happens.
A word of advice that I can offer any of you – lords and ladies – regarding the medical establishment, is that you need to transmit your tales to them in some excruciating detail. You are the only connective thread and there is no master file which they refer to. When you are sitting in the paper robe on the bench, the ‘must’ is to transmit the totality of everything you’ve got going on – from the Dentist to the Podiatrist – and you need to do it quick.
I’ve got a 5-7 minute sum up of everything that’s ever happened to me, going back to a tonsillectomy inflicted when I was a six year old, but already quite humble, narrator.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As an aside, the tonsil thing still stays with me, in dreams.
Back in 1973 Brooklyn, it was still common for Doctors to operate out of a private house, and to maintain operating theaters therein for minor procedures. I cannot ever forget having my child head strapped down to a gurney on Farragut Road. A wire meshed mask, with a layer of cotton fitted onto it, was placed over my nose and mouth. Next, Ether was poured from a brown bottle into the cotton, and the world went away until I woke up in the back of the old man’s Plymouth.
I complained about my sore throat in the car on the way home. I was told to suck it up, and that it was stupid for me to think that surgery wouldn’t hurt, and that I should get used to pain because ‘you were put on this earth to suffer.’ Oh, that Mother of mine… so nurturing…
At Waxhaus, my grandmother soon arrived and mixed up some ‘banana mush’ for me – since she knew that’s what Magilla Gorilla would want in such circumstance, and that I kind of had a Magilla Gorilla ‘thing’ going on at the time. (…I later learned the ‘mush’ was milk, sugar, and a banana that she had squished up with a fork…)
The medical condition in question is something which I’m keeping the specifics of to myself, but the worst case scenario stemming from it involves the retina in my right eye being damaged – beyond repair – and blindness springing up in the organ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Speaking strictly as a visual artist – ARGGHHHHH. The only good news would be having a reason to wear an eye patch – which I could definitely pull off mind you – but I really enjoy binocular vision, and the eye I squish the camera against is the one in question, so… ARGGHHHHH.
I was early, as is my habit. Needing a place to sit down for a few minutes before crossing the breech, I spotted a park bench. It just so happened to be on the property of St. Thomas More RC church, but that’s just a coincidence, it was just directly across the street from the medical office building. I wasn’t praying or anything, as a note, just trespassing.
In the end, the Ophthalmologist told me that the condition had lessened in severity since our last meeting, thought to be in no doubt due to the intervening changes in medication which my Cardiologist had instituted. See what I mean about cogently reporting your story to the Docs? It helps in keeping people from sticking hypodermic needles in your eyes.
Back tomorrow, and back to the usual folderol.
“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.
Runtime
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found a humble narrator again staring into the cataract of Saw Mill Run, here in Pittsburgh. I’ve mentioned this spot before, and the waterway several times. Occasion had carried me back here – there’s a nearby thrift store which Our Lady of the Pentacle enjoys browsing through – and since ‘shopping’ is an activity which I detest…
When I do find myself in need of a manufactured item that can only be acquired in the ‘brick and mortar’ retail sphere, I approach the purchase in the manner of a military mission. Success is judged on how quickly it was accomplished, and how few people I needed to talk to. A humble narrator does not browse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Those two abandoned houses are still there, seemingly untouched by the interval of roughly a year, since I had described their situation in April of last year – a post (link above) which I was allowed to include a wonderful bit of detective work as offered by one of my Flickr followers, named Lucien Van Elsen.
Our Lady was inside the busy thrift store for a while, purchasing items to be offered as gifts for family and friends she’d be seeing on an upcoming trip to her ancestral nest in England. It seems a gently used Steelers jersey is a prized item amongst the British fans of ‘American Football’ who dwell in Albion, like my brother in law.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We’ve experienced nearly record levels of rainfall here in the Pittsburgh area this year, and the run itself was swollen and moving swiftly. Based on smell, Saw Mill Run receives residential sewer runoff. After all those years on Newtown Creek, I can distinguish between residential and business sewage based on its scent alone.
Back tomorrow with something different – at your Newtown 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 