12.31.06
Posted in General at 1:23 pm by brmeyer
In perusing my blog entries from the past few months, I have observed that I didn’t post much about myself or what I’ve been doing this year. Rather, I’ve focused on more on news items and issues in which I have been most interested. It is often difficult to share too much information as this is a public forum, and you can never truly know who is reading your stories and thoughts. Some things are fair game to post while others are not. However, I can summarize my major accomplishments and other things that I’ve witnessed over the year. In looking back at the list, I realize how many new things I have experienced this year. While life can often devolve into a monotonous routine, the new people and places that we experience ultimately enrich our lives and change our perspective on what is important and help provide an outline of goals that we hope to achieve in the future. Here is my list of things that were important to me in 2006.
January - A new year brings new beginnings. This was a much better start to a year than the previous. I met a very sweet girl named Jess who has become my best friend over the course of the year and with whom I did so much throughout the year.
February - I witnessed the Pittsburgh Steelers win a Super Bowl for the first time. It was an amazing experience to see people in the streets on that snowy February 6th cheering and honking the horns. Fireworks illuminated the white snow that had fallen. In addition, I also completed my first full year of working on February 9th.
March - On the 11th, Jess and I went with my friends Brian Brindle and his wife Melody to The Funny Bone at Station Square. It was my first visit to a comedy club. On the 30th, I celebrated my 27th birthday.
June - I had the opportunity to attend a Pittsburgh Pirates game with Jess. It seems like an inconsequential event, but we sat directly behind home plate courtesy of my company who kindly provided the tickets.
July - Jess and I visited Gettysburg in hopes of witnessing the reenactment of the Civil War battle. It was postponed due to severe flooding, but we found plenty to do. It was my first real vacation with a girl.
August - Jess and I attended our first Pittsburgh Steelers game on the 31st. It was a preseason game, and the Steelers fell to the Carolina Panthers by a score of 15 to 13.
September - Attended my first state funeral viewing as Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O’Connor died on the 1st. Jess and I paid our respects to the mayor at the City-County Building.
November - I received my first significant pay raise in my career as a software developer. This made me feel proud as my hard work had been recognized.
December - Jess and I ate at The Thai Gourmet restaurant in Bloomfield. It was my first time eating Thai food. Christmas was great. I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with family and Jess.
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12.22.06
Posted in General at 9:30 am by brmeyer
Huzzah! Twenty months after Chance Enterprises proposed that a casino resort should be built not far from the Gettysburg battlefield, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board rejected the license application on Wednesday. By awarding two of the two stand-alone licenses to groups who intended to build casinos in Bethlehem and the Poconos, the board gave preservationists - led by the groups No Casino Gettysburg and the Civil War Preservation Trust - a major victory.
It is not difficult to understand what this victory means. Citizens and politicians have both spoken out strongly against the casino for months. Governor Ed Rendell - who brought the ill-conceived Pennsylvania Gaming Act to fruition - was himself a critic of the idea of putting a casino in the small town. As Susan Star Paddock, the head of the No Casino Gettysburg group, put it after the decision was made: “This [decision] was the power of the people.” Democracy and the will of the people has prevailed, and the sanctity of such historic ground has again been saved for generations to come.
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12.09.06
Posted in General at 12:12 am by brmeyer
The burying of the nation’s past continues. Literally. The renovation project at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh was familiar to me, but I was unaware of its magnitude in terms of historical destruction. While the battle still rages in Gettysburg over the potential placement of a casino near hallowed ground in that town, an equally important preservation debate has arisen here in Pittsburgh. For those not well versed in Pittsburgh history, Point State Park is situated within the boundaries of what was once Fort Pitt. Fort Pitt was built during the French and Indian War in 1758 and housed a garrison of British troops to defend the town at the militarily valuable junction of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers. It was abandoned in the early 1770s but was again used as the headquarters of the Continental Army in the western theater of operations in the American Revolutionary War.
A bastion is a walled fortification that protrudes from some inner primary stronghold. In the case of Fort Pitt, the bastion is referred to as the Music Bastion because it is a walled moat where buglers would have sounded calls during battle. In the 1950s, the Music Bastion was discovered and excavated. For 53 years, the Music Bastion has remained unearthed in Point State Park to allow visitors the chance to view a piece of history. Now, as part of a project to renovate Point State Park to allow for more events - such as concerts and the Three Rivers Arts festival - the bastion is to be reburied. To preservationists and others interested in history, it is unjustified. Historic locations are rarely reburied for the purpose of preservation.
Unfortunately, the contractor who is doing the reburying of the Music Bastion is not using appropriate methods to protect the outside fortification. Pieces of sidewalks, roads, and other trash will be utilized to fill in the moat so as to make the ground level without protecting the walls that make up the bastion. It is typical in such a process to cover the bottom of the moat and the enclosing sides with sand before placing fill into it. As the state is unwilling to spend any additional money on properly preserving the bastion, the fill will be dumped in the moat without proper protection causing potentially irreparable damage to the walls that make up the bastion and have been here longer than America has been a nation.
This is just another item in the long list of American places that are to be destroyed by development. The Fort Pitt Preservation Society is dedicated to preserving the Music Bastion. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette also recently ran a piece about the destruction of the bastion. The photo below shows the outline of the structure.
The Fort Pitt Preservation Society
Group Unhappy with Plan to Dump on Fort Pitt - Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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