Friday, January 02, 2009

Explaining the Pittsburgh dialectic

Who am I? Why am I here? Points for those who remember hearing live that quote from a far greater American than I. Mike is on to something and has again asked me to contribute. I assume the long introduction isn’t necessary for most readers here. I have some more regular ramblings over on Null Space which I think will continue much as before. There is a method to Mike’s madness and he has a vision for Pittsblog 2.0. Along with others I hope, I will add my own musings from a self-admitted reactionary Yunzer. I think we will all share a vision of improving the greater community. Feel free to define that community as you wish. Improvement means both highlighting the positive, and let’s just call it constructive criticism of the negative.

Always judge the source and from me you will get thoughts admittedly biased as coming from someone born here, raised here and honestly expect the obituary to be written here as well. Hopefully not too soon for the latter. Taking the good, the bad and everything in between I believe in Pittsburgh’s future. Mike had no idea when he wrote the previous post that I am the owner of the domain Pittsburgh251.com, unused as it is for the moment and looking for suggestions. How to get to that future remains an ever changing mystery. It's a mystery because few places have such tensions between old and new, big and small, young and old, or just about any other division you care to make amongst us. Some of those tensions are, others more perceived. My take: Pittsburgh’s past is actually prologue in more ways than are obvious, but the path forward will have more than its fair share of chaos theory embedded in it along the way.

Chris Briem

2 comments:

Burgher Jon said...

So you've got Bird and Magic, who else is going to be on the dream team?

What's the court look like?

Mark Rauterkus said...

251.

One thing that sums up Pittsburgh is creativity. If you don't know what to do with it -- and you lack the creativity -- we might just pull your yinzer status for a day or two.

How about 251 lists of 251 items. Start with potholes. Go to pay-to-play firms. Then sports stars. Then little league diamonds.