NIcholas Karam leads the team at Karam Restoration of Natrona Heights. They can definitely take pride in their excellent work.
You can see from the photo below how bright and clean looking the brick is now that it’s been restored and new mortar has been put in. They are good at Brick Pointing for sure.
They would arrive before the sun was up and worked in cold temperatures, long dark days.
Today they came and took all the equipment and cleaned up the place. Rinsed the brick again. It’s a pleasure to pull up to the house and see it looking rejuvenated. Plus the porch roof won’t fall down from the missing mortar in the columns. I was thinking the house was built in 1920 but went and looked again and it says 1900.
(Now if only my carpenter would finish the wood that needs to be replaced)
Thanks to Nick and the team for a job well done. See below for the Before and After comparison photographs Before photo/
Sunday afternoon was the official dedication of the Gary and Nancy Tuckfelt Keeping Tabs- A Holocaust Sculpture at the Community Day School at the corner of Beechwood Boulevard and Forward Ave. The sculpture is a maze in the shape of the Star of David, created with glass blocks which are filled with six million pop tabs which took almost five years to collect , each tab representing a human life lost in the Holocaust. Many people contributed time, money and effort to the creation of the sculpture and the beautiful surrounding park. Walking into the maze, one is struck by the magnitude of the horror of genocide, the number of victims is hard to fathom but the pop tabs in the glass blocks are a reminder of the millions killed.
The resident artist, Elena Hiatt Houlihan has been with this project since 2002. Pop tabs were being collected since 1996 and Mr. Walter the History Teacher at Community Day School had aquariums filled with them when Elena arrived to help the student teams design the sculpture. Their original artist statement was read by her at the dedication ceremony today.
Elena had been a resident artist at Greenfield Elementary when I was the art teacher there and I remember her talking about the ongoing work of this sculpture and then funding and other circumstances delayed the completion.
It was a beautiful Autumn afternoon and there were speeches and prayers and an 8th grader played the violin. A chill wind and shadows gave one a shudder and reminded those present of the significance of the memorial sculpture. Never Forget.
I went up earlier in the day to photograph the memorial sculpture before all the people arrived.
Receiving a standing ovation, Mr. Walter comes to the podium to speakArtist in Residence Elena Hiatt Houlihan and Social Studies Teacher Mr. Bill Walter who started the collection of the pop tabs when he was teaching the Holocaust to middle school students at Community Day School.
One of the many many, memorial stones and engraved bricks. each representing the accumulation of many donations, small, medium and large. I chose this one to photograph because for the inscribed words about “generations never born”- that message struck me.
This block will be used for educational presentations. I put a tab in and then asked the next woman if I might photograph her doing so and she agreed.
My sister and I had just walked the High Line Sunday morning.
I’d not seen the development of Hudson Yards. We were headed to the subway to go to Grand Central.
In order to climb this structure you have to get a ticket (free)
“The Vessel is composed of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs, with almost 2,500 individual steps and 80 landings.” Footwear News It’s billed as a ‘Tourist Attraction” and everyone had a cell phone out, myself included.
Tons of people were milling about, waiting for it to open up so they could climb up the stairs. The Vessel cost than $150 million to build.
Multiple critics have given it pretty creative names ( not flattering) in the article. See what you can come up with as you stare at it’s shape. Wonder how designer Thomas Heatherwick feels reading all the criticism.
But of course I saw the opportunity to take another sister selfie in the metal. And here we are, reflected.
Your body gets skinny or wide depending on where you stand. I read the surrounding condos being built start at 2 million if you are in the market. Not.
Wednesday my sister and were walking to Grand Central Terminal Market to purchase LiLac chocolate as a hostess gift. We were headed to dinner at our cousin’s. Here’s the Daily News Building built in 1929 in the Art Deco style. Here’s the giant rotating globe in the lobby. Two photos of Christopher Reeve from filming the Superman movies are shown below.
Mural Art by Dom Browne, artist from Kildare Ireland. This is a LOT of mural painting, Dom.
Click here to see a gallery of the details of Mr. Browne’s Happy Go Lucky Hearts painting. You will find lots of recognizable iconic images- Bruce Lee,Rich Uncle Pennybags, Mary Poppins, Jack Nicholson, Curt Kobain, minions, emojis, Batman, to name a few
The colorful Happy Go Lucky Hotel really stands out- right next door are regular buildings.
The Knitting Cruise ended Thursday morning and we took a bus to the Kirkenes Airport, dispersing to various destinations. I’m headed to Reykjavík via one night in Oslo. After supper I walked and walked around the city, realizing my time in Oslo is short.
”Pittsburgh has more public staircases (800+) than any city in the United States. The City’s steps connect communities and provide residents access to transit and other amenities” http://pittsburghpa.gov/
Before photo/
Artist in Residence Elena Hiatt Houlihan and Social Studies Teacher Mr. Bill Walter who started the collection of the pop tabs when he was teaching the Holocaust to middle school students at Community Day School.
Garfield The Steps to Ft. Pitt School
