Correction on Second Oakland Stop: The Nationality Rooms
My favorite of all the rooms is the Ukrainian Room. It is a newer room located on the third floor, with an elaborate tile fireplace and warm wood paneling. A hammered copper mural hangs on one wall and the shelves above the door are filled with ceramic plates. Traditional icons hang on the far wall opposite the door. What I like most about the room is that it reminds me of my high school math teacher, who was originally from the Ukraine. Sophie Lassowsky was a brilliant teacher who nagged me up until the day I graduated from college to drop my silly English major and study engineering instead. She died of breast cancer while I was in graduate school.
Third Oakland Stop: Soldiers & Sailors National Military Museum & Memorial
B loves military history, which made this museum an ideal stop in Oakland. It is small and simple and full of Civil war memorabilia. The displays run from the Civil War all the way up to the current conflict in Iraq and includes uniforms and arms. I wandered ahead to look at the exhibits when J and B stopped and checked everything out in detail. While I like history, I am not as into the military & munitions aspect as J and B. I was content to study the scale model of a ship I found in one of the side rooms and ponder Lincoln's Death Mask.
Fourth Stop: Pan Asia Chinese and Japanese Cuisine
This restaurant, located on Route 51, is the best place in Pittsburgh for sushi. We ordered a variety of sushi, sashimi and special rolls for the table and ate everything. The Crazy Tuna Roll, while more expensive, is beyond description.
Sunday in Pittsburgh
Sunday the boys set out on a hike and left me behind to catch up on sleep, work on a painting and spend some time writing. When J and B returned, we headed to Tom's Diner for a late lunch (in my case Cinnamon French Toast) and hit Half Price Books. Which was having a sale on everything in the store.
For $8.00 I was able to purchase a French language computer program so I could begin studying the basics. I also snagged a second language program in Spanish, since I am seriously out of practice and only remember enough to misinterpret conversations when eavesdropping.
Sunday night ended with dinner at the Casbah. If you have $100.00 to spend, this is the place to blow it. We shared two bottles of Dolcetto di Dogliani and a cheese plate. I had cioppino, which I could not finish and was even better when I heated up Monday afternoon.
I thought I was full until Jason, our waiter said two magic words “Pastry Chef”. Turns out I had enough room for homemade sorbet. J and B both ordered the bread pudding, made with fresh peaches and blackberries.
On Monday, after B left, I slept until 2 pm.
The display of Civil War munitions at Soldiers & Sailors caused B to comment to J that the artillery barrage during the third day of the battle of Gettysburg -- the one that was preparatory to Pickett's Charge -- was audible from the far eastern reaches of Pittsburgh, which was of course a quieter place than today.
ReplyDeleteIt was a midsummer Saturday, and normally the loudest noise you'd be apt to hear would be an occasional train or the usual sounds of light industry, farming, yardwork, housework, animals, and so on -- locusts and katydids buzzing a drowsy rhythm in the early July heat, men cutting hay and talking out in the alfalfa fields, a horse snorting, a screen door slamming, the breeze causing drying clothes to flap on the line, children at play. Remember, internal-combustion engines were big steam-powered things you found on locomotives and ships, and electricity was a relative novelty. "Traffic noise" was hoof clops, footsteps, and the occasional rattle of a wagon -- nothing went "whoosh" back then.
B. recalls reading that the cannonade -- the biggest, up to that time, ever heard on the North American continent -- sounded like far-off thunder, but continuous; the wx was fair that morning, and it made the horses nervous. Few people -- only the odd Mexican War veteran, perhaps -- really understood what they were hearing.
(B's own father once was responsible for "care and feeding" of a howitzer battery in a different American war, and from conversations he had with B, B knows that for some people, the sound's indistinguishable from thunder, but to the educated ear, it's as as immediately and unforgettably familiar as a loved one's footsteps heard overhead in an upstairs room.)
Most people had only a general idea that the Confederates were somewhere over toward York or Hanover or Frederick or Harrisburg. Everybody was afraid of J.E.B. Stuart, who seemed to be everywhere in northern Maryland and eastern Pennsylvania at once -- the newspapers were famously full of stories of "Jine-the-cavalry!" sightings. Folks knew all too well that Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia had made their second incursion in as many years into the North -- but people were only beginning to understand that a huge battle had been underway for two days.
Even the telegraph dispatches to Washington had been terse; only later would people would begin to understand the significance of the continuous low rumble they'd been hearing beyond the morning horizon. Perhaps you'll recall a certain scene from Gone With The Wind of fife-and-drum boy bandsmen performing "Dixie" with tears in their eyes as shocked Atlantans see the casualty lists for the first time.
(That's how you found out how a battle had gone in the days before CNN. In B's father's time there were live radio broadcasts during the Blitz in London and black-and-white (color was rare) Movietone newsreels, some less than a week old, of beaches in France and the western Pacific. During Vietnam, as a first grader, B's mom scolded him for sneaking away from the dinner table to watch footage on the NBC Nightly News with Huntley and Brinkley that had been shot at Khe Sanh the previous morning. And more recently we saw towers collapse in real time.)
The next day, Sunday, was quiet, but that evening, real thunderstorms formed up and swept down on central-southern Pennsylvania, as if God Himself wanted to try to cleanse away some of the blood...