Croatian Murals in Millvale PA

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.

Lighting the murals

The murals include secular and religious symbolism Painted by Croatian immigrant artist
**Maximilian Vanka** (Maxo Vanko) across two intense phases in 1937 and 1941.

Angel playing Traditional Croatian Instrument

You can see the scaffolding where conservators preserve and clean the murals.

See comparison before and after cleaning.
Find the area that was left untouched by the conservator

Immigrant killed in the mills lying on newspapers

Gospel writer Matthew

November 7, 2026 by Ruth Categories: PhotographyTags: art, Croatia, Maxo Vanko, Millvale, murals, painting, photography, Pittsburgh PA, postaday 1 Comment

Paper Streets City Steps

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

“Pittsburgh features **739 individual sets of public steps** (accounting for 44,645 risers and 24,108 vertical feet), famously documented by geophysicist and University of Pittsburgh professor **Bob Regan** in his book ***Pittsburgh Steps: The Story of the City’s Public Stairways*** *(and his earlier work* ***The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a City”***

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

November 6, 2026 by Ruth Categories: PhotographyTags: Bob Regan, Charles Succop, city scene, city steps, Laura Zurowoski, Matthew Jacob, neighborhood, paper street, photography, Pittsburgh PA, postaday, stairs, steps 7 Comments

Raking Or Leaving the Fallen Leaves?

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.”

“Raking Leaves Is Pointless—and Bad for Your Yard Scouring your yard clean is a waste of time and deprives your soil of valuable nutrients”

Another discussion here in this article

Drop Your Rake

And an article from the University of Maine

To Rake or Not to Rake

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.”

A team of leaf blowers at the neighbors
-the leaves are sucked into a machine and the chopped bits blown into a truck to be hauled away

November 5, 2026 by Ruth Categories: PhotographyTags: Autum, garden, lawn, leaf blower, leaf removal, leaves, neighborhood, photography, postaday 4 Comments

Throwback Thursday

My guess this is in the 1960s I’ve posted this photo before. Those slipcovers!!

**My mother holding my sister’s cat Morgan Le Fay**

November 4, 2026 by Ruth Categories: PhotographyTags: Cat, family, food, mother, photography, postaday, sister, Throwback Thursday, travel 4 Comments

Wordless Wednesday

November 3, 2026 by Ruth Categories: PhotographyTags: autumn, clouds, fall, leaves, neighborhood, photography, Pittsburgh PA, postaday, weather 1 Comment

So I was influenced…

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!!!

Just under $28 for the dip ingredients. If I’d purchased a couple of the bags of the organic corn chips it would have been an additional ten dollars.
I already had a bag of Tostitos scoops at home in the pantry

It’s not too spicy but is flavorful with jalapeños in the queso

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.

This pic is from the Tik Tok video. The corn chips aren’t shown. I used this screenshot to find the exact products in the store. I’ve not bought them previously.

November 2, 2026 by Ruth Categories: food, PhotographyTags: dip, food, photography, Pittsburgh PA, postaday, Trader Joe’s 1 Comment

One Week Comparison of the Playground Trees

November 1, 2026 by Ruth Categories: Photography, treesTags: autumn, leaves, neighborhood, photography, Pittsburgh PA, playground, postaday, season, trees, weather 8 Comments

“Does anyone really know what time it is?”

“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.”

Song by Chicago

October 31, 2026 by Ruth Categories: Music, PhotographyTags: archives, Chicago, clocks, daylight savings time, photography, postaday, time 11 Comments

Julia Child’s Kitchen Guest Blog

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.

The **Garland** stove, details in the Fact Sheet.

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