Monthly Reminder About Investing in Our Work

Monthly Reminder About Investing in Our Work

A few readers asked me to post gentle reminders about donations and other opportunities to invest in our work. You will find the donation links here. After a winter hiatus of sorts due to surgery, we are gearing up for exciting work in the coming months. This will include a coffee-house tour in the outlying […]

Q&A with Summer Lee, Candidate for PA State House District 34

Summer Lee for PA

The first encounter I had with Summer Lee was when she reached out to me in 2017, asking to meet with me to discuss LGBTQ issues that were on her radar. I learned she is an attorney and children’s advocate, she’s been deeply involved in the efforts to push back against police and staff brutality against students in […]

Q&A with Aerion Andrew Abney, Candidate for PA State House District 19

A few years ago, I answered a knock on my door in Manchester and met this energetic young man who was running for a committee seat. His enthusiasm was contagious and we became Facebook friends. I’ve followed his career and continue to admire his enthusiasm, his leadership in Manchester, and his passion for service. Aerion […]

Sasha Wall is the 8th Transgender Person Murdered in 2018 in the US

Sasha Wall was 29 years old when she died from gunshot wounds on Sunday, April 1, 2018 on a rural road in South Carolina. She was found at 8 AM on Easter morning after cars had passed her parked-but-running vehicle for two hours. Sasha was a Black trans woman. That’s a horrifying metaphor for American […]

Confessions of a Rick Santorum Intern

Rick Santorum internship

Yes, I was an intern in then-Congressman Rick Santorum’s DC offices for six months during 1991. Me. Most of you know this. Some of you don’t. This internship and the photo it generated are perhaps one of the most enduring legacies of this blog. 27 years after the fact, it is still a salient and […]

Amia Tyrae Berryman is 7th Trans Person Killed in 2018 #SayHerName

Amia Tyrae

  Tragic news from Monica Roberts at Transgriot. 28-year-old Amia Tyrae Berryman is the 7th trans person to be murdered in 2018. She died at 1:15 AM this morning, March 26 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. According to her Facebook page, Amia was a native of New Orleans who had finished high school in Baton Rouge […]

Q&A with a March for Our Lives Pittsburgh Student Organizer #MarchForOurLivesPGH

March for our lives Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh is one of more than 800 cities hosting sister marches with the National March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, March 24. Pittsburgh’s march will kick-off at 11:30 AM at the City County Building on Grant Street. The march route will take you down Grant Street to Fifth, then Fifth to Liberty […]

IUP Assigns ‘First Amendment’ Hawk to Female Led Religious Studies Class

A recent academic situation at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) in Western PA is raising  my concerns about academic capitulation to right-wing proponents who deliberately conflate free speech with bullying behavior. Here’s what happened. On February 28, Lake Ingle, 23, a senior religious studies major from Tyrone, Blair County, attended the class “Self, Sin and Salvation.” The […]

Fish Fry Friday Special Report: Church of the Assumption Launches Recycling Team

This is probably one of the most awesome blogging outcomes I’ve ever discovered. The folks at the Church of the Assumption in Bellevue have regularly followed my reviews and always taken time to thank me for constructive feedback. Recently, I learned that the volunteers met sometime after the first Friday in Lent and decided to […]

Pittsburgh Wildlife Strategy & Urban Residents: Q&A with Scrap the Trap

In the past week, we’ve seen a groundhog in our yard, a raccoon on our back porch, and our regular opossum visitor. None of this is new. But it is early and as we are in the process of trapping, neutering/spaying & releasing feral cats, so this creates some challenges. Some of our neighbors have […]