Chilly scenes of Pittsburgh #1: Have a seat

While winter still trudges onward in my little corner of the world, I hope to share with you a few random images and observations about life in the snow-capped hills and vales of our fair burg(h).

Here's the first, a little composition I've entitled "Have a Seat," which I snapped on my walk to work earlier this week, after our last "major snowstorm." More about that in a sec.

The story behind the picture is that parking is at a premium in most inner Pittsburgh neighborhoods, with most residents and visitors parking on the street, rather than in driveways (what are those?) or garages. Despite the initial allure of housing choices when I first moved to Pittsburgh last summer--a dirty, third-floor walk-up in Bloomfield or a recently mortgage-flipped rowhouse along a crack alley in Brighton Heights--yours truly counts himself lucky that he was able to find a nice-if-small apartment with an egregiously pink-tiled bathroom close to work that also has a detached garage. Must keep that 12-year-old, 150,000-mile, teal-colored Subaru safe at all costs, of course.

Thus, many people in urban Pittsburgh value the spaces in front of their homes, even if they don't actually pay directly for them. So they will do their civic duty and shovel snow out of the space--but with a catch: They'll put a chair in the space, which means don't you dare try to park there; it's reserved for the now-exhausted homeowner who shoveled the snow, not for some upstart drive-by visitor who might try to claim it as his or her own.

I have one friend in town who, whenever he sees the ol' chair-in-the-parking-space routine, is instantly annoyed. "Oh whatever! Like they can claim the space as their own! It's public property!" goes the lament.

I just find it amusing. I mean, this may be a socially binding contract--I clean the space in front of my house, thus you don't park there--one I am willing to go along with, as long as everyone doesn't do it and as long as the Citizen Shoveler also bothered to scrape the sidewalk in front of the homestead as well.

However, I can just as easily envision driving a Hummer (well, no I can't actually envision myself doing this, but for the sake of argument . . .) down the street, seeing a snow-free space occupied by only a rusted-out folding chair or a little, handmade, wooden bench (see picture), and without further thought, riding over the top of the "obstructions" to claim the space, resting my multi-ton, 12-miles-to-the-gallon-downhill vehicle comfortably over the now-flattened pancake symbols of proprietorship.

Ha. I'm older and I have more insurance, as the saying goes.

***

Ah, if the local news and the Weather Channel have taught us anything, it's that even the most mundane of climatic events can be, well, climactic. The case in point here is that this past week, we had maybe 5 inches of snow in town, then some melt, then maybe an inch or two more a couple of days later. I had *thought* this was no biggie for you Northerners out there--you and your "Well, in Chicago, we don't ever close the schools because of snow" and your "In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we don't stop playing outside until the windchills get down to -50F"--but, unfortunately, every moment in American life, at least those portions validated by television, has to be full of drama--or at least enough noise to fill the chasm-like (chasmatic?) void of our existence.

So now we get "severe" weather reports on the local news, even though its the same ol', same ol' daily forecast. It might rain, it could snow, the sun may shine (which would be something of a newsworthy surprise during a Pittsburgh winter), but these events do not necessarily qualify as "severe," at least according to me, Life's Great Deskchair Arbiter of Reason.

The Weather Channel, of course, does this, too, so much so that my mother, Vivien Leigh, and I both noted sometime in January that we had to make ourselves stop listening to their reports because we had grown anxious to leave the house and head to the store for groceries, take a walk around the neighborhood, or go to work (and we get paid to do that). Really, sometimes the sidewalks in Kansas and Pennsylvania can be a mess, but the streets and highways are normally safe. Maybe a plague of flying monkeys, a rain of blood, or a few old Russian spy satellites might keep us indoors, but some sprinkles or a snow shower elevated to "severe weather" status? Pish-posh.

Nowadays, the Weather Channel has added sound effects to its "local on the 8's" forecasts, so no longer do you merely read the daily forecast or hear it intoned by a generic male voice, you also get to hear rain! And wind! And thunder! Just in case you've forgotten what they sound like!

I'm not sure they've figured out a sound effect for snow or sunshine yet, but give them time, give them time.

It's not just the Weather Channel that has added sound effects, however. Again, one of the local weathercasts now features this annoying, electronic, emergency-infused dee-dee-dee, dee-dee-dee sound when the weather is about to be acted out. ('Cause let's face it, it ain't read or reported anymore; it's played out more like an overcaffeinated, pantomime version of the Genesis story.)

My personal favorite "sound fills the emptiness in our souls" moment happens on CNN Headline News during the "Morning Express with Robin Meade" program--formerly, a perfectly simple, news report for the bleary-eyed with a charming, if somewhat cheerleader-esque host, which now has been repackaged as information for the Harried Generation. Whenever there is a "breaking news" item--which as best as I can tell involves anything from a bad road accident in Ohio to an "ooh snap! oh no you din't!" moment between presidential candidates--you hear this drum rat-a-tat-tat, which means you're supposed to stop what you're doing--eating, breathing, sharing a quality moment with loved ones--and snap to attention. It's all very Winston Smith, if you ask me.

What makes me giggle, though, is that rat-a-tat-tat. It's like that children's wind-up toy where the monkey bangs on a drum or crashes cymbals together. After the tattoo, I half-expect Robin Meade to appear on camera, bare her teeth, and do that slow eeeeek-eeeeek-eeeeek that the toy monkey always does.

If only. Then and only then might the broadcasters get my undivided attention.