A Walk in the Woods

For most of my life, I lived and worked in the City of Pittsburgh.  My wife and I bought a house in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Carrick.  I worked in office towers downtown; my wife taught in a public school in one of the city’s East End neighborhoods.  We enjoyed what the city had to offer. We subscribed to several theater companies, and I was a frequent attendee of Pirate games, especially after PNC Park was built.

Despite my appreciation of the amenities the city has to offer, I never lost my love of a quiet walk in the woods.  As a young boy eager to escape the heat of a midsummer day, the woods offered cool shade.  There were several patches of woods near my suburban home.  One had a well-worn path on which we could ride our bicycles.  Another had a small pond fed by a spring that we tried to dam to make a swimming hole.  But someone always broke the dam before the pond could fill up. In any case, the pond mostly flowed freely down the hill to a small stream where we caught tadpoles and crayfish. 

Besides the shade provided by the green canopy, I savored the musty aroma of the forest soil enriched by years of leaves dropped each autumn.  I learned to identify various trees and enjoyed the root beer-like flavor I tasted when chewing on the stem of a sassafras leaf.  When I grew up and moved to the city, I would make it a point to take an occasional day off from work and escape to the woods of one of the region’s parks.  Now, as a retired person, I don’t seem to find enough time to spend rambling about in the woods.

So, when I recently visited my son in Pittsburgh, I was intrigued when he suggested that I take an hour or so to explore the Seldom Seen Greenway in the Beechview section of the city.  The entrance to the Greenway is just off Route 51, about a mile north of the Liberty Tubes, and near the south entrance to the Wabash Tunnel.  I parked my car in the small parking area near the sign that identified the Greenway. 

Beyond the sign, a wide, asphalt path leads to a somewhat spooky tunnel that guards the entrance to the Greenway.  The path shares the inside of the tunnel with fast-flowing Saw Mill Run.  Upon exiting the tunnel, I looked up to the right and saw that someone had painted the words to a poem on a concrete abutment.  There were several blank spots in the verse, perhaps left by the poet to allow the reader latitude to supply the missing words. 

Moving further into the Greenway, the main path travels through a peaceful, verdant stretch, accented by the occasional bird chirp and the burbling sound of the nearby stream.  The path seemed to end at the bank of Saw Mill Run at a place that looked like I could proceed further by walking in the stream bed.  Unsure of where that would lead, I decided to turn around.  A short distance before I returned to the tunnel, I noticed a path leading up the hill to my right.  I followed that path for a few hundred yards, and it led me out of the Greenway to a graffiti covered building near a set of railroad tracks.  So, I walked down the offshoot trail back to the main path and followed that out of the Seldom Seen Greenway.

I enjoyed discovering the Seldom Seen Greenway, which certainly lives up to its name.  Though it is located near a major urban artery, I believe very few drivers stop and spend time to take pleasure in what it has to offer.  Its relatively small size allowed me to enjoy a dose of nature before getting in my car to drive across the state to where I now live near Philadelphia.  And for that day, it was just enough to satisfy my need for a quiet walk in the woods.

Freedom

 

Freedom, keep tryin'
People stay alive and people keep dyin' for
Freedom, so don't lose it
Ya gotta understand, ya just can't abuse it* 

They are calling this the fourth surge.  Thousands of Americans are once again getting sick from COVID-19, and too many are dying.  The latest uptick in cases is largely a pandemic of the unvaccinated as over 99% of people requiring hospitalization are those that refused to get shots.  Breakthrough cases are occurring among the vaccinated population, but they are relatively rare, and their symptoms tend to be mild.

In any case, the country and the world have been suffering through the COVID pandemic for nearly a year and a half.  How much longer will we have to endure it?  That remains to be seen.  The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 lasted about two years before life began to return to normal.  That was without a vaccine, but with far fewer people.  The U.S. population in 1918 was approximately 103 million versus 330 million today.  More people logically means more potential hosts for a virus that continues to mutate.  And the unvaccinated are the most receptive hosts.  They provide the virus with its best opportunity to spread and evolve into new, more dangerous variants.

That is why I sought a vaccination at the earliest possible opportunity. Not only did I want to protect myself from getting sick, and possibly dying.  I wanted to protect others from being infected by me, especially my grandchildren who are not yet eligible to get vaccinated.  Earlier this year, it was difficult to find a location offering the vaccine.  My daughter relentlessly searched online to find a place where my wife and I might get vaccinations.  We ultimately had to drive over 100 miles to Wilkes Barre to get our shots.  Two weeks after our second shots, we felt a sense of relief – a sense that we hoped the whole country would feel as the percentage of vaccinated citizens climbed.  At its peak on April 10, 2021, 4.6 million people received a COVID shot.  Then, the number of doses began to decline as many Americans chose to not seek a shot. 

News articles about “vaccine hesitancy” began to appear as federal, state, local governments and private employers offered incentives to encourage people to get vaccinated.  Those choosing to not be vaccinated cited various reasons for their hesitancy or outright refusal – from distrust of all vaccines, to distrust of the government, to wild conspiracy theories that the vaccine contained a microchip that enabled the government to track your movements.

Despite former President Trump’s role in speeding the development of the vaccine and the fact that he received a vaccination in January, outright hostility to getting vaccinated has become a political marker of the far right.  To be fair, some Republican leaders have encouraged people to get the vaccine, but their voices have been weak and largely ineffective.  Freedom to choose has become the battle cry of many refusing to vaccinated.  Likewise, many of these same people want the freedom to not wear a mask in situations where medical experts recommend masks to slow the spread of the virus.

Sadly, this freedom is the reason this country is in the throes of the fourth surge in cases of COVID, aided by the highly infectious delta variant.  Regions of the country with low vaccination rates have been the hardest hit, their hospitals filling beyond their capacity with sick people who chose to ignore pleas to get vaccinated.  Many now suffering from COVID have come to realize that the freedom they sought was false – not a freedom worth dying for.  Some arrive at the hospital begging for the vaccine they had shunned, only to be told by hospital staff that it is too late for them to be vaccinated once they are sick with the virus. 

Freedom is a funny thing.  For some individuals, it means the power to ignore the measures scientists recommend even though ignoring those measures may cause real harm to themselves and others.  To those, like me, who have done our best to follow those recommendations, freedom means crushing the virus so we can begin to do those things we enjoyed before this pandemic, like dining in restaurants, attending live theater, and shopping inside stores without the fear of contracting a deadly virus.

Recently, my son’s family, my wife and I visited New York City’s newest park, called The Little Island. This man-made island in the Hudson River is constructed with flower-like, concrete piers and is beautifully landscaped with trees, shrubs and flowers.  A curved pathway rises and falls over artificially created hills offering spectacular views of the city’s skyscrapers.  It opened in May 2021 and can be accessed via timed tickets to regulate the number of visitors while COVID concerns remain. It features several performance areas including a 687-seat amphitheater and has food trucks with a variety of offerings that include beer, wine and cocktails.

We all took masks even though it is outdoors and all of us, excepting my 3-year-old grandson, are vaccinated.  We walked paths covering the entire island, listened to music performed by a guitarist and flautist, and ate a filling lunch.  Between our vaccinations, and masks that we put on whenever approaching a crowd of people, we felt safe from potential COVID infections.  As we left the park and headed to the subway, my son remarked that the experience had felt like the freedom we had craved for the past year and a half.

I hope those that speak of freedom will consider freedom to move about without fear of contracting COVID as a better alternative than freedom to ignore the recommendations of health experts.  To paraphrase the lyrics of the 1970s song by Bread, freedom is something you have to understand; you just can’t abuse it.

* Lyrics from the song, “Mother Freedom" by David Gates, performed by Bread.

Listen to the Music

 

Don't you feel it growin' day by day?
People gettin' ready for the news
Some are happy some are sad...
Oh... we got to let the music play* 

I’ve enjoyed listening to music as long as I can remember.  As a young boy, I yearned for one of those small, battery-powered transistor radios that you could carry around without having to plug it in.  I had a little black cuff link box that I would hold to my ear, pretending it played music.  When my godparents gave me a transistor radio as a first communion present, I was in seventh heaven.  I carriedthat radio with me constantly, usually tuned to KQV in Pittsburgh. I listened to Hal Murray in the morning and Chuck Brinkman through the evening.  I learned the lyrics to all my favorite songs and sang along with The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Beach Boys and Four Seasons when their tunes blasted from my little radio.

When I got a little older, I abandoned KQV and its top forty format for the soul sounds being played on WAMO by Brother Matt and Sir Walter.  I grooved to tunes by The Temptations, Four Tops, The Dells, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.  In the early evening, WAMO featured Porky Chedwick spinning dusty discs containing songs I was too young to hear when they were new.  Late at night, I enjoyed Terry Lee’s Music for Young Lovers on WMCK.

My musical tastes changed again in the late sixties as single 45s gave way to album rock and FM radio.  WDVE became my radio station of choice.  They played obscure cuts from albums, and often they would play an album in its entirety.  If I couldn’t find an FM radio, I listened to progressive rock on AM 1590, WZUM.  One of my best friends joined the Columbia record club, initially getting something like 13 records for $1.99, and then being forced to buy another 13 at “regular club prices.”  We’d gather around an old stereo in his basement and listen to Déjà Vu, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tarkus by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Cruisin’ with Ruben and the Jets by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and The Gilded Palace of Sin by The Flying Burrito Brothers.

It was around the time I was in high school that I finally earned enough extra money from my paper route to buy tickets for a live concert.  So, two like-minded friends and I purchased tickets to see The Band at the Syria Mosque in Oakland.  To this day, The Band’s music counts among my favorite.  Having experienced one live concert, I knew I had to attend more.

So, to the best of my recollection, the following list includes the acts I was able to see in live concert over the next 40 years:

• Argent and The Kinks, together at the Syria Mosque in the early 1970s;
• Traffic and Edgar Winter’s White Trash at the Civic Arena – we had floor seats; they frisked all attendees and made one of my party empty the wineskin he tried to smuggle in under his shirt; despite those precautions, a young girl sitting in front of us threw up, perhaps from what she had been drinking before entering the Arena.
• I saw The Beach Boys, Boz Scaggs and The Rascals during my freshman year at IUP (1971-72).  It may have been one concert or three – I honestly don’t remember;
• Sha Na Na at Clarion College – a great time was had by all;
• Michael Franks, most famous for his “Popsicle Toes,” at IUP with my future wife around 1976;
• Blood, Sweat & Tears at Duquesne University with my wife, Susan.
• Neil Diamond at the Civic Arena with Susan;
• Barry Manilow at the Civic Arena shortly after the release of his 2:00 AM Paradise Café album with Susan.
• Many years passed between the Manilow concert and the next one I saw with The Mavericks and BR549 at the Byham Theatre in Pittsburgh.  I attended that concert with my son Samuel who was in high school.
• More years passed before I attended the Rodriguez concert at Barclays Center in Brooklyn with my son Michael a year or two after the film “Searching for Sugar Man” received an Academy Award for best documentary in early 2013.  Since then, I saw:
• Three Dog Night at the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA with my brother Bob;
• The Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show at the Petersen Event Center at the University of Pittsburgh with Samuel;
• Jason Mraz at The Mann Center in Philadelphia, the summer of 2018 with Susan, my daughter Anna and our friend, Kirsten;
• Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden in January 2019 with Susan;
• The Outlaws Concert featuring Willie Nelson, The Avett Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show, Allison Krauss and Dawes at the Key Bank Pavilion in Pittsburgh in June 2019 with Samuel.
• I saw several big name acts in concerts at PNC Park after Pirates games including Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Steve Miller Band, The Clarks, and Huey Lewis and the News.

Since moving to West Chester, I’ve attended several concerts featuring local bands.  I listen to WMGK (102.9 FM) when I want to hear Classic Rock and WXPN (88.5 FM) when I want to hear something new.  I still love listening to the music and hope to never stop attending live concerts. 

Even when I’m not near a radio, there is always a song playing in my brain.   Like The Doobie Brothers sing, “Whoa oh, listen to the music, all the time.”* 

 

* Listen to the Music, by Tom Johnston, as performed by The Doobie Brothers.