Blog of Josh Hall

I want a really long black top drive way.  I think i’d like the house to be back in the woods a little bit, but I always loved houses that sit far from the road ominously.  Not too much of a wind in the road, but maybe an S shape to it.  Something that kids can sled ride on though.  Which would be a hard thing to do if I put in a heated driveway, but that’s what I want too.  I love the look of white snow trimmed up to the black driveway, and naked trees dotting the path.  Almost morbidly dark and mysterious, but that’s what I like about winter.  I also want a nice sized paved area next to the house/garage, enough for a half court basketball game.  I also want a cul de sac like how you see in the old english movies, just a big loop and maybe some sort of fountain in the middle, but a decent sized area in the middle so that you can put some benches or something.

Three years ago today, around 2pm, I watched the color from my dad’s face dissappear.  it was a Monday.  I held his left hand in my left hand.  I almost got sick at how he changed colors so fast and drastically.  J’aime, Serah, and Robbie were in the room too, but I’m not sure which ones were watching too.  A week before, almost to the hour, he found out he had a brain tumor.  He went into surgery that Friday, and never woke up afterward.

I’m going to recount the first night I went to see my dad, but only what I directly experience, and only what happened that night. 

.J’aime had called me from the hospital that Tuesday before and said that daddy wanted to talk to me.  I talked to him briefly and said that i’d come down to see him.  I didn’t right away.  It wasn’t until a day later when J’aime called me and said she needed me to come down right away that i actually went down.  I ran down to Mercy hospital since it was only a mile or so from my apartment.  Turns out, Robbie was trying to marry my dad, and that was a lot of emotion, at a very emotional time.

I got tried to get some alone time with my dad to talk about whether or not he wanted this.  The tumor had been causing him to forgot things and say things that didn’t make sense, and he just seemed out of it.  I said, "So, i hear something about you and robbie getting married, do you want that to happen?"  He immediately went from a dopey happy face to an embarrassed child’s face that knows he did something wrong.  He slumped down a little and looked away and said, "Oh.  I don’t know."  I only had a minute or so before some guy that knew daddy came in and sat down to interrupt us.  then Sarah Slavic came in too.  I didn’t get what time I wanted, but it was enough for me to know that it was out of the question to let talks of marriage continue.

Robbie had gathered all her relatives in the chapel downstairs.  They came with a ring and they were expecting a cermony.  I hadn’t talked to her family for quite a few years, but I always loved and missed them.  Robbie’s brother-in-law, Scott, was one of them that I felt I could really connect with because he just had a very easy going personality and was religious.  J’aime and I asked Scott if we could talk to him about what’s going to happen.  The 3 of us went into a room and talked very calmly about it.  J’aime and I said that there was no reason to rush this decision, they’ve had 7 years to get married and they never were able to comit to eachother then.  We said that he is not in any state of mind to make such a life changing decision, that not only affects him but everyone, ESPECIALLY if he died.  Scott said that we shouldn’t deny Robbie the chance to marry someone that she loved.  We failed to see eye to eye on the topic, which was shocking to J’aime and I because of how obvious the right choice seemed.

Robbie called for a Catholic priest she had been familiar with to marry them.  The priest wanted to meet with my dad before hand, as he always did, to make sure the two people want to unite.  As he did that, we called my dad’s best friend, Bruce, and let him know to come down.  I called my step-grand father, an attorney, and asked him what we’re allowed to do legally to stop this, or if we can’t what are we looking at in terms of the estate, life insurance, and anything else if my father dies and they are married.  It wasn’t pretty.  (but honestly, neither is what ended up happening anyway)

The priest came out and said that my father seemed very lucid but that my dad simply seemed like he didnt know if he wanted to marry Robbie, and on that ground, he wouldn’t marrry them.  Honestly, we all chuckled a bit at the relieve because the priest called my dad lucid.  As Robbie went to tell her family there would be no wedding, Serah and I went in with my dad.  This is where "Mr. Lucid" pointed to his IV and asked me if I knew what was in it.  I think i said something along the lines of, "the good stuff, I’m sure."  He said, and I’ll try to quote this as best as I can, "The mon valley express way.  they point it in there and it flows from here (points to bag) to here (points to forearm).  heh, i’m tearfully laughing here…wow dad, you really loved that express way.

A few minutes later, we were watching something on the TV and it hinted the mentioning of this dutch colony in the middle of the state somewhere.  For the life of me I can’t remember the name of it now.  But as he talked about it, I remembered going there as a kid in kindergarten.  I remember seeing their bread ovens.  I remember riding on the bus there.  I remember putting the wood bar that held pales of cow milk on either end on my shoulders.  A rush of these childhood memories came to me, that I don’t think i ever thought about until that moment.  It was quite overwhelming and refreshing, that these memories were coming to me, but not only that, but that my dad was reconnecting me to them.  how Ironic, the man that forced me to block out so much of my childhood was helping me remember some. 

When it came time to leave, everyone hugged daddy and told him that they loved him.  I wasn’t ready for that, because I expected him to come through that surgery fine, and I didn’t want him to think this was an open door to my life once he got better.  I waiting until last and just smiled at him and said, "hey, take care of yourself, I’ll see you this weekend when you get out." 

A lot of development going on in Pittsburgh, and a lot of that development is being met with conflict.  You’ve got citizens of east liberty saying that the development going on there is forcing the low-income families out of the city.  You’ve got Don Bardon screaming "stop picking on me!" to all the people that are contesting his parking garage design.  You’ve got high number of drug users being jailed, but there are complaints since there are 10 times as many african americans jailed than whites when drug usage surely doesnt show much of a difference between races.  Kennywood, a major historic amusement park, just got sold to a Spanish company.

  It’s a lot of wasted time in my opinion.

You people complaining about development in east liberty:  get over it or get out.  The places are bringing jobs to your neighborhood.  These places are making your neighborhood look nice.  Since car burglary is on the rise in the area, it’s obvious that there are criminals in the area, and the more people that get arrested, the safer your neighborhood is going to be.  These are life decisions here, if you can’t afford to live somewhere, you move.  If you bought land, you’re sitting pretty.  If you’re thinking that people are forcing you out, then you’re victimizing yourself.  Maybe you should get a better job and challenge yourself.  Change your expenses like cable and cell phones and junk you don’t need.  I think that’s the general problem with american society, we get comfortable too fast and too sedentary, and when the world changes (as it always does) we get upset.  Embrace change before you get buried and paved over.

To Don Bardon:  You’re digging your own grave.  Calling people ridiculous and not being willing to change design is what will make people think, "this dude is an arse.  I’m not going to his casino."  I know that’s what I’m thinking.  The thing about pittsburghers is that we like things pittsburgh, and everyone else can take a hike.  So this guy from effing detroit comes in and thinks he can take our money and not listen?  Not going to fly.  A better strategy would have been to embrace concerns, these are your freaking customers.

To those anti-casino complainers:  Get over it.  The casino is going to happen, and if it’s a failure, they’re going to go, "wow, why is this a failure?"  and then you can say, "because your building is fugly and you didn’t listen to us."  Let them bury their own grave, it’s their business.

To the druggies:  OMG.  Why is everything about race in this effing city?!!?  Cops arrest people.  if the majority of those arrests are black, there’s probably a good reason for it that does not involve them turning their heads to white people.  It’s probably more along the lines of the places where cops need to be more frequently for crime there just so happens to be more black drug users.  Or maybe it’s that more black drug users are doing less to get away with it.  It doesn’t matter.  All of them are doing something illegal and they all belong in prison or rehab regardless of race.  get your crap together and quit complaining.

You Kennywood enthusiasts:  this one is too new to hear complaints just yet, but just like the glass of water in jurassic park, I’m feeling something big coming on.  Does it suck to lose a pittsburgh historical park to some spanish firm?  sure.  But they’re not taking the fricking park to spain.  IT’S still here!  They’re going to try to make you want to go there, imagine that!!!  Surely someone who is motivated to make it a worthwhile park is better than someone who is willing to sell the park without letting the community know it was up for sale.

All this complaining is taking the spotlight away from pittsburgh being ranked as a top travel location, a quick budget approval, free parking downtown during the holiday weekends, the new dinosaur hall, and 250th year celebration plans.

So I’m supposed to be writing a research paper right now about the internet as a new media, and how we’re utilizing it as a learning device.  That’s all topical and that, but the underlying reality here is that we’re repeating history, and I’m not too sure how many people realize that.  Kids are staying home and learning from the internet and/or their parents.  Families always taught their kids themselves a hundred years ago.  We’re letting children pick and chose what they want to learn based on what they want to achieve and what they’re interested in.  In other words, we’re going back to being practical about what we’re learning about.  What better way to keep a child motivated.  Let’s put the focus back on the child as an individual.

And I think that’s where the innovation of the school system failed.  Instead of breeding big thinkers, inventors, innovators, and revolutionaries, we’ve created the mass produced person!  Thank you Eli Whitney.  People today are cut, pressured, glazed, and offered up on the shelf of the nearest walmart.  Perhaps we thought that "growing" people alike would minimize conflict because we’d all be alike.  We’d all fuel the economy because we all want to buy the latest clothes or CD from the latest American Idol winner.  Everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I?  BECAUSE IT’S STALE!  Creativity inspires creativity, and this single file lemming society is destroying human innovation.

I don’t think we knew this from the beginning though, or at least I’d hope not.  The conspiracist in me wants to say that the government keeps school funding in place as a shepherd to it’s sheep.  I can’t blame them either, we’d kill each other with our differences, the entertainment industry is what weaves us all together and connects us as people.

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow."

 – Kurt Vonnegut in "A Man Without A Country"

Besides the stereotypical retiring in a cabin in the woods and writing novels next to my 2 labrador retrievers, I want to widdle.  I want to make really cool wood carvings, like the type of things that can’t physically exist if you didn’t carve them that way.  Like the ball inside a cage.  I want to carve end tables and fish and anything i can come up with.  My mom’s dad carved a few things, besides building model ships.  His model ships were very impressive.  I wish i would have taken better care of the one that I had.  I definitely want to be a hobbyist when i get old though.