finding solutions in problems
Our attitude decides whether we get stuck on problems or flow with solutions. This city built by immigrants learned to function as a unit to manufacture weaponry for the Civil War and World Wars 1 and 2. It's a continuing lesson in which we find we can make money together but not apart. Being blessed with the challenge of diversity of peoples and plants and animals has yielded a relatively stable and comfortable place to live in a world in which Nature and human relations are not that often peaceful.
Pittsburgh is in my mind associated with water, fire, manufacturing, order, transportation, and creativity. We humans gathered here for the water - it's ability to both nurture and carry life. A town where two rivers flowed together to become one bigger one became a center of manufacturing, research, education, and innovation. Our learning to work together - with all our differences - yielded the power to service the world's demands, from food to raw materials to the latest technology. I've always thought of Pittsburgh as a "make it" town. People say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere. Well, I've lived in that great city and it seems to me that Pittsburgh is really where new positive changes get tested out. Ideas get put through the fire here, so to speak, and if something that's positive and good makes it here it'll fly in all the other great cities. Our disagreements, honestly shared in an atmosphere of trust, result in a stronger bond, just as the tremendous heating of iron allows the formation of steel.
There is a reason this city has been looked down on as a place to leave as soon as you got old enough or made enough money. And that reason has nothing to do with Pittsburgh being a bad place. It has more to do with Truman's "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Pittsburgh makes things and it's hard. We work hard, it gets hot, and it's dangerous. In fact, creation is always dangerous. Old ways of looking at things must yield to new. The industrial revolution WAS a revolution, and a lot of people got hurt. Enmeshed as we are in another even more dramatic revolution, we don't enough objectivity to even see were in it. But look all around you. If you choose to allow fear to take ahold of you, there's plenty to panic about. Climate change, biological warfare, transit cutbacks, gas and food price increases, a government no longer responsive to the people, continuing loss of jobs as corporations pursue efficiency at the expense of their labor pools, a budget deficit into the trillions as war profiteers build privatized armies, the list goes on and on.
But if you choose rather to hold precious the opportunities and time we have and do those things which are the most fearlessly loving - for those close to you but also for the future - then all the unexpected difficulties arising become added reasons for action.
Here's a list of local news items which represent dangers but also opportunities:
The Ship of Zion transportation project (http://shipofzion.org), which is only getting off the ground with free transportation to enable people to get to work and other necessities with rides to and from Homestead, Hazelwood, South Side, and the Hill (and planning to expand service to the North Side)(and which was created in part as a statewide economic development template to help those increasing unable to afford transportation) may lose funding within a month.
Robot City - developing robotics for mining, the space program, pollution treatment, medical environments, and military applications - is being established in Hazelwood at the the site of the old coke mill.
Our biotech industry, also developing in the Hazelwood section of Pittsburgh, is coming up with solutions where many have yet to recognize there are problems. But, just as with robotics and the transportation crisis, our responses will determine whether what develops is good or bad. We can grow appropriate biotech compnies such as CytoCulture (http://cytoculture.com) for pollution treatment, alternative energies, and food production in an increasingly unstable world.
Or, we can participate in the race to the bottom with ever more destructive "advances" in warfare - using both robotics and biotechnology - which will profit us in the short but destroy us in the long run.
Pittsburgh is in my mind associated with water, fire, manufacturing, order, transportation, and creativity. We humans gathered here for the water - it's ability to both nurture and carry life. A town where two rivers flowed together to become one bigger one became a center of manufacturing, research, education, and innovation. Our learning to work together - with all our differences - yielded the power to service the world's demands, from food to raw materials to the latest technology. I've always thought of Pittsburgh as a "make it" town. People say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere. Well, I've lived in that great city and it seems to me that Pittsburgh is really where new positive changes get tested out. Ideas get put through the fire here, so to speak, and if something that's positive and good makes it here it'll fly in all the other great cities. Our disagreements, honestly shared in an atmosphere of trust, result in a stronger bond, just as the tremendous heating of iron allows the formation of steel.
There is a reason this city has been looked down on as a place to leave as soon as you got old enough or made enough money. And that reason has nothing to do with Pittsburgh being a bad place. It has more to do with Truman's "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Pittsburgh makes things and it's hard. We work hard, it gets hot, and it's dangerous. In fact, creation is always dangerous. Old ways of looking at things must yield to new. The industrial revolution WAS a revolution, and a lot of people got hurt. Enmeshed as we are in another even more dramatic revolution, we don't enough objectivity to even see were in it. But look all around you. If you choose to allow fear to take ahold of you, there's plenty to panic about. Climate change, biological warfare, transit cutbacks, gas and food price increases, a government no longer responsive to the people, continuing loss of jobs as corporations pursue efficiency at the expense of their labor pools, a budget deficit into the trillions as war profiteers build privatized armies, the list goes on and on.
But if you choose rather to hold precious the opportunities and time we have and do those things which are the most fearlessly loving - for those close to you but also for the future - then all the unexpected difficulties arising become added reasons for action.
Here's a list of local news items which represent dangers but also opportunities:
The Ship of Zion transportation project (http://shipofzion.org), which is only getting off the ground with free transportation to enable people to get to work and other necessities with rides to and from Homestead, Hazelwood, South Side, and the Hill (and planning to expand service to the North Side)(and which was created in part as a statewide economic development template to help those increasing unable to afford transportation) may lose funding within a month.
Robot City - developing robotics for mining, the space program, pollution treatment, medical environments, and military applications - is being established in Hazelwood at the the site of the old coke mill.
Our biotech industry, also developing in the Hazelwood section of Pittsburgh, is coming up with solutions where many have yet to recognize there are problems. But, just as with robotics and the transportation crisis, our responses will determine whether what develops is good or bad. We can grow appropriate biotech compnies such as CytoCulture (http://cytoculture.com) for pollution treatment, alternative energies, and food production in an increasingly unstable world.
Or, we can participate in the race to the bottom with ever more destructive "advances" in warfare - using both robotics and biotechnology - which will profit us in the short but destroy us in the long run.
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 7:08 AM
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