Most Livable Pittsburgh

Well, hi!

Can't believe it's been just shy of a week and I haven't posted!

Pittsburgh was, for the second time in 22 years, voted Most Livable City by Rand-McNally. Yeah, Pittsburgh!! I know some people still have "hell-with-the-lid-off" type visions of my city, but that is way outdated. This city has had two renaissances since the 60's, and it's a city with sparkling scenery, great hometown folks, and arguably, the most beautiful baseball park in the US, if not the world. We have great colleges, world-class hospitals with state-of-the-art transplant centers and burn units, and are home to incomparable pharmaceutical, research, surgical, and communications pioneering.

When I say "great hometown folks", let me tell you, the people around here are world-class, too. I don't know about you, but I've been to other towns/cities, where you get lost, ask for directions, and people deliberately get you lost, just to laugh at the "greenhorn". Here, we not only give you accurate directions, we'll take you there, even maybe out of our way, just to see that you get there OK. I know this because a very nice letter was printed in our own Post-Gazette in '05, from a Toronto couple who, confused by the way the streets run parallel to the rivers here, asked for directions, and were not only escorted to their hotel by their new Pittsburgh friends, but were taken under their wings, invited out to some local hot spots, given their cell phone numbers just in case they got lost again, and accompanied to the Steeler/Penguin (I forget which) game they were attending. And that's just the way we are here. Friendly. Yinz come and visit now!

(Now if we could only do something about the Pirates, the property taxes, and the transit system!) Oh, God, did I really write that?

Good vibes to all of you!

Claudia