The Pennsylvania Canal in Pittsburg

I offer here slight clarification to “The Pennsylvania Canal” paragraph of Kathryn Bashaar’s awesome “Lost Pittsburgh Neighborhoods: Bayardstown” [http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/2019/05/lost-pittsburgh-neighborhoods-bayardstown/]

Great, great stuff, Kathryn! The research is very hard work; thank you for that. Re the canal, I think it’s best to consider it having 3 termini around Pgh – one into The Allegheny, a 2nd pseudo terminus at the basin, and yet a 3rd on The Mon.

Boats traveled down “the Allegheny line” after crossing to the river’s W/N bank from the mouth of the Kiski near today’s lock & dam #5 north of Freeport – 30 river miles upstream of Pgh. The canal lay, in general, on the very path of the W/N bank RR down the entire valley, from this point about 1 mile upstream from Freeport, all the way through the shadows of Troy Hill, and into East Allegheny (Allegheny City at the time) – roughly the North Shore – where a fork in the route occurred, at the sharp bend of today’s I-279 (also the bend in the short “N. Canal St.” BTW, the ground level street beneath this elevated stretch of I-279 bordering the stadium lots is “E Lacock St.” named after the first Harrisburg-appointed commissioner of the PA Canal project). 

From this fork in the canal at today’s bend of I-279, was a boat’s destination (1) the waters of the Allegheny River, (2) the basin downtown, or (3) the waters of the Monongahela River (beyond the downtown basin)?

Boats to enter the Allegheny River’s waters (to navigate farther on the river, or to offload onto riverboats) would continue roughly straight, parallel to the river but on the far (N) side of today’s I-279 for another 1,000 yards (the route of today’s raised RR), passing under bridges at today’s Anderson St., then again under a Federal St. bridge. Once even with the 1st-base foul line of PNC Park, the route turned 90 degrees off today’s RR path, toward that edge of PNC Park, clipping the E edge of today’s Residence Inn, and into the river beneath those stadium seats. 

So, as a gentle clarification:) PNC Park’s right-field corner is not where the aqueduct(s) were (there was an original aqueduct, then a replacement by John Roebling of Saxonburg).

Instead, back at the fork under I-279’s bend at the N. Shore, boats destined for downtown – or the Monongahela bank beyond (at the mouth of Suke’s Run as you noted in your Pipetown report) – would make a sharp left, then float a short 250 yards directly toward the river and onto the aqueduct that originated about 85 yards upstream of today’s RR bridge toward the convention center’s upstream end.

The canal into downtown then carried them a short stretch – as you noted, along today’s 11th St. – to the basin. This basin that intersected the canal route stretched NE under the bus/train station complex to the far side of today’s tracks, and – on the opposite side of the canal – under Liberty Center’s Federated tower and the Westin hotel to 10th St.

Boats destined for the waters of the Monongahela continued through this basin intersection, bending right to parallel Grant St. for a block through today’s courthouse, then bent left through today’s UPMC Steel tower into a 270-yard long underground tunnel that emerged where I-579 crosses 5th Ave. After gentle zig-zagging down through 3 locks to the Suke’s Run mouth (< 25 yards on the upstream side of today’s Panhandle rail bridge), boats entered the waters of the Mon.

If you’d enjoy some video about the canal, search YouTube for my “PA Canal Hunter” series. And thank you again, Kathryn for sharing your hard research work!

Teachers, at the end of your year…

It’s easy to forget that you are superhero healers. But the only Teacher who could heal with a single touch was the son of God himself. Your healing powers take many touches. Young hearts are in your tender care for hours a day.

Like most of you, most of them are looking forward to a break from responsibility, accountability, and learning. However, in many of the stories about that Teacher from Nazareth, he reminds us as the physician healer, that not all of us are as sick as others, and he directs our attention to the sickest among us.

There are some young, tender hearts who are not looking forward to a break away from their superpower teachers. To those poor and sickest hearts, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

As your eyes roll up and back at the unruly instigators of chaos, remember that they want the same break as you do. But remember those poorest of hearts, and make sure that your eyes pierce theirs. Be sure those eyes see your light and taste the healing salt. I suspect they will remember it for months. And possibly much longer. 

Neil D.  2025-05-19

something I learned in high school

Describe something you learned in high school.

I learned that sometimes teachers get test answers wrong, and to catch those rare events was an ego trip. It’s also where they educated me, initiating me into the adult world, where I would often have wrong answers, or no answer at all. The lesson was not that being correct on question #7 was important, but that showing up for work, despite the occasional mistake, is what makes a person valuable at work. And adult life. Teachers don’t choose their profession. Their vocation calls to them. Not always. But almost every morning of the school year, they get up and go. If I can do that too, I can be seen as grown up. 

How ‘America First’ Ends

How ‘America First’ Ends

From

The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/america-first-trump-doge/682164/

Interesting from a left mag:
Engagement is preferred to isolationism.

From the right, some speculate current policy shifts aim at

(A) getting other nations to strengthen their military deterrent strength because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm with Russia;

(B) getting other nations to strengthen their economies because the US cannot alone keep China in check, especially if they are warm on bilateral trade with Russia;

(C) reducing every American interest that isn’t aimed squarely – SQUARELY without distraction or dilution – at checking China both militarily and financially.

There’s a single location on the globe that dictates the world’s future for decades (or centuries), and it ain’t Ukraine or Gaza, for crying out loud. It is…

The Taiwan Strait

I’m no more immune to desensitization by statistics than anyone else. The Ukraine horror, for example, is honestly reduced to that word “horror” because it doesn’t touch me directly. And if it doesn’t touch you directly, I’m not interested in your pretentious moralizing or virtue signaling. But I’ll concede without hesitation that neither you nor I have iron-cold hearts. It shatters mine as it likely does yours.

I think that’s OK. It’s hard not to sound trite, but I think it’s “fine” and “good” for you and me to be heartbroken over Ukraine, Gaza, and everywhere else a single human being suffers. Both you and I are human beings. And so is each individual in the CCP; but, yes, I’ll risk the blanket statement that they are lesser human beings. Or, from a different and more salient perspective, they are *greater* human beings in terms of using the power to which the rest of us human beings are vulnerable. Nietzschean Uberman-style.

So if you work for a corporation that is DEI-inclined, go ahead and apologize for the ill-acquired land on which your office is built. Put some signal icon on all your social media that Black Lives Matter. Advocate for the new 54% of teenage girls who now “identify” as trans after a single generation. And blame climate deniers for normal planetary dynamics. Protest or support strapping some cloth over the bottom half of your face from ear to ear, or whether the 75th needle should be injected into your newborn. You are brilliant; you’ve been educated by the technology that has connected the world.

Except in China.
And in Russia.
Where they have leaders giggling about my angst that their minions can easily have my credit card and Social Security numbers 10 seconds from now.

They aren’t giggling about how easy it is. They are giggling that I give a shit about that.

As long as I’m worried about that, I will make my leaders worry about it too. And as long as my leaders are worried about that, they don’t know what the hell is happening that actually matters…

Wait,…

Pardon me, it MATTERS to you and your current children. For a minute. Or a year, or maybe even half a decade. You are pissed off that you read this lame article for this long, because it took you five minutes to get this far….

They’re a little longer-viewed than you are.

Yes, super powers care about the impact of a 15 second TikTok. But only because they can do simple math. Simple. Math. 15 seconds times 2 billion people is a pretty goddamn big impact.

So go hold your protest on Wall Street or some Ivy League campus. Our ACTUAL enemies never dreamed how easy it would be. It almost makes me wish I was one of them.

Wanna vote for Trump? Excellent.

Wanna hate and oppose him and half of the US electorate?

Not just excellent…

Beyond what evil can *imagine*!!!

“I love Trump.”
“I hate Trump.”

“Holy shit,” says the CCP: “This is easier than dynamiting fish in a barrel.”

“‘Divide and conquer’ was supposed to be hard. But all we needed was a couple of teenage hackers to tip the world upside down. Because Western adults are juveniles.”

Guilty.

And now the CCP must be thinking that this was quite obviously “destiny,” because we “morally upright” people in the west seem now to want to destroy ourselves.

The dividends of peace are annihilation.

Separating the church and state were not originally American ideas. Nor democratic ideas. And I don’t know whether they predated Christianity or not, but we elite moralists and virtue-signalers ought to think hard on the synoptic gospel passages about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. What in hell could Jesus have possibly meant? (Emphasis on “in hell.”)

In the Old Testament, why “in hell” did The Lord require the annihilation of certain peoples? (Whether The Lord did or did not, that is how the storytellers told it.)

If you read much around the “render unto Caesar” passage, you know that the context was excoriation of hypocrisy. As adults, we all should know that the engine of hypocrisy is guilt. And “majority guilt” sounds like it excludes minorities. Isn’t that what “white guilt” means, exactly? I’d like to unpack and expand that a little bit…

I’m a white Caucasian Christian heterosexual male. By popular understanding, I am the best of the best oppressors! Yay me! And Trump is, according to the oppressed, my hero! And if you do not share my precise identity, you are oppressed. Accordingly, if your “identity” shares my demographics, you are guilty of the most ism’s in any western cultures. Shame on us, and power to our resistors!

Support DEI!
Stand for freedom of choice!
Pro Palestine!
Hate Trump!
Support Ukraine!
Down with tariffs!
God is dead!

Love Trump!
Pro Life!
Marriage amendment!
Peace through strength!
Jesus saves!

Whatever you advocate, just don’t watch the US dollar be undermined by non-dollar investment in Africa, Canada, Panama, Mexico, Russia…
After all, reproductive rights have been overturned by SCOTUS!
*Most* teen girls might be suicidal without gender-affirming care.
Elon is a Nazi.
Biden was a puppet.

Just don’t pay any attention to…

The Roman Empire was toppled by… WTF? Christianity? Persians? Jews? Mongols? Britons? Germanic barbarians?

Roman psychosis.

Roman denial.

Hypocrisy? Oh, hell no.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

Unless it’s engagement with Putin.

…

The Taiwan Strait

It’s the epicenter of today’s *actual* Cold War, and I myself have pretty much zero tolerance for disputes about that.

Whether it’s already too late to inhibit Sinohegemony ain’t anything I can opine. But the CCP has made their plans clear for decades, and so I’m more than pissed that leaders of the so-called world powers like the US and Europe have betrayed all of us by astounding neglect.

In my ignorant opinion, there’s better than a coin-flip’s chance that our great grandchildren’s lives will be controlled by the CCP – if not *directly* governed by it, and if not our grandchildren.

…

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

While hippies got high, feminists took the pill, Bob wrote protest songs, and American boys killed in rain forests on the other side of a desktop globe, “I am not a crook” engaged China.

“Engagement is preferred to isolationism.”

As long as the orange-haired antichrist doesn’t engage Putin.

…

Neil D. 2025-03-26

How enormous I, and you, are

What occurs to me more and more often is how enormous I am. How much power I have in my own little world. How much potential I have that I myself do not even recognize and I am not aware of. More and more, it is astounds me how enormous my power is.

My youngest sister shares fond memories of me for my birthday. I cry. I always have when she has done that. More and more, now, though, I sob more deeply and widely. You see, most of the events that she shares about me, I do not remember. This is true when anyone shares a distant memory involving me. I remember so very little compared to the storyteller. And that is what makes me sob more and more. I am not profoundly saddened because I have a shitty memory per se, but because I remember so little of the profound pain and suffering I *must* have caused. To so many. So deeply. 

…

I was, am, and will be so much more enormous than even I can ever grasp. I have done enormously good things. And I have done enormously bad things. 

I have been, am, and will be enormous. Outside time, I am good and bad. Inside time lies the now, and the future. My memory likely won’t improve:)! More and more, I hope my enormousness tips toward good. 

Neil D.  2025-02-28