Got a lucky spot and parked by the Main Carnegie Library in Oakland.
I was picking up some family members of my own.
And there was this little lost sloth stuffie lying on the sidewalk. Looking forlorn. Rain threatened.
My friend Vincie suggested I’d best turn it in at the library cause it would get wet and maybe a family was looking for a little lost sloth.
Someone was probably sad he got lost.
So I took him in to the library, turned him in and I hope he got reunited with his person.
Save Maxo Vanka Murals – on the walls of the first Croatian church in Pittsburgh area St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Millvale PA.
I signed on to attend a tour with four friends at ten in the morning. Our tour time got changed to 12:30 as the church had a funeral at the ten o’clock time. Our tour guide Susan was knowledgeable and it was a wonderful experience to learn about how Maxo Vanka built his own scaffolding and painted the walls and ceiling of the church. He finished the paintings one week before Pearl Harbor in 1941.
You can see the scaffolding where conservators preserve and clean the murals.
Gospel writer Matthew
There’s a tag on my blog from blogposts past:
Paper Street You can’t drive on them.
“In Pittsburgh the term “paper street” takes on a unique dual meaning. It covers both the standard legal definition of an unbuilt road and a famous piece of local infrastructure: the city’s public staircases”
Pittsburgh is know for its bridges, hills, rivers and valleys. The topography has lots of steep inclines. And City Steps!
The book I first mentioned was Bob Regan’s book with photos by Tim Fabian.
The Steps of Pittsburgh:The Story of the City’s Public Stairways. Published March 2004
Here’s a link to Pittsburgh Steps with a different cover
A new book 2024 (Link here) by Laura Zurowski Charles Succop and Matthew Jacob includes a forward by Professor Bob Regan. Check out her instagram Mis.Steps and StoryBurgh
Some photos from my archives
Do you want it tidy?
Do you feel that leaves are litter?
Are you afraid of what the neighbors will think if you don’t rake up the leaves?
Is your yard waste brownbagged and taken to the curb? Or are you using leaves to mulch your garden?
Most people are leaf blowing (loudly) and raking up the fallen leaves on their lawn and garden
but here’s another point of view-
“When you don’t rake or leaf-blow in the fall, this affects the soil and the biological life in your yard, lawn and garden in a positive way.”
Another discussion here in this article
And an article from the University of Maine
By Rebecca Long, Coordinator of Horticulture Training Programs, UMaine Cooperative Extension
“The aesthetic preference for a clean lawn, either your own or your neighbors’ (especially if you live in an HOA community), may also dictate your fall cleanup.”
My guess this is in the 1960s I’ve posted this photo before. Those slipcovers!!
I admit it.
I follow a young woman Katipederson on TikTok who puts together meals for a family of four for $15, shopping at Aldi or Trader Joe’s or Costco.
I’ve not been inspired to actually prepare any of the meals to feed my family but I like her enthusiasm and energy and the taste testing portion with her teenage son. Here’s her link to her dip. She’s got almost 600 thousand followers.
The other day she shared a dip recipe from Trader Joe’s ingredients. Here’s the total cost of this 13×9 dish of hot dip. Using ingredients from Trader Joe’s. The Steelers vs. Browns (rivals) were playing Sunday afternoon. I had a plan. This is not one of the just under $15 total posts.
I can tell you it’s pretty rich with the cheese and heavy cream in the queso. Don’t over consume.!! And I can tell you that everyone who eats chicken in the house, loved it!!!
Here’s what you need. I added a can of black beans, rinsed and drained. Got that idea from the comments. That would add $1.49 to the total.
“The inspiration came from a real encounter Robert Lamm (keyboardist of Chicago) had as a teenager in Brooklyn. When he asked a movie theater usher for the time, the usher cryptically replied, “Does anybody really know what time it is?” This quirky response evolved into a multi-layered existential exploration.”
Oh I wish I were there in person but my son Matthew and granddaughter Prema were in Washington DC. He filmed a short video and I captured a few screenshots from it. Here’s a link to the National Museum of American History Fact Sheet about the exhibition. She donated her Cambridge Massachusetts kitchen to the museum in 2001.
If you’d like to see a few closeups of the objects (a Pyrex measuring cup, the “Forkery”, a ceramic fig, cat and fish prints from the walls etc) in her kitchen you can click the museum’s search pages here