I don’t know if someone really hated this thing or it
was structurally unstable, but the other day it looked like the photo below. 
They have since replaced it with another somewhat less unpalatable inflatable.
Photo below.
I didn’t pose this one!
As I get older it has become important to me to celebrate. I celebrate birthdays, other milestones, sometimes just being happy. Today I am celebrating a friend who has earned my great respect and admiration, even though we have never met. Each morning as I read her blog, I admire her wisdom, her thoughtfulness and her ability to give voice to so many of my concerns. I particularly admire her ability to use exactly the right words. So have a wonderful birthday, Ronni Bennett. I wish you joy and happiness and many more celebrations.
This is Pittsburgh Week, for me. On Saturday, I went on a walking tour in downtown Pittsburgh. We looked at buildings designed by Chicago architects, beginning with the Pennsylvania Railroad Station designed by Daniel Burnham and finishing with the Mies van der Rohe engineering building on the Duquesne campus. Pittsburgh is very fortunate that so many of these buildings are still standing. The train station has become an elegant office and apartment building. I don’t know what the apartments look like but the former public spaces are fabulous.
Yesterday, after my Pittsburgh history class, I went over to Station Square. I had lunch in the Grand Concourse, another fabulous, preserved train station. Then I visited the offices of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, the tour creator, where I collected more information about Pittsburgh architecture. One of my dear friends from Chicago is coming to visit this weekend. She is very interested in architecture, and I promised to be her Pittsburgh tour guide. I’m getting prepared. Then, since I ate too much lunch, I atoned by walking across the Smithfield Street Bride and then into downtown.
In conjunction with a new PR campaign, Pittsburgh has put up these inflatables. 
They were chosen in some kind of competition. Each one has a card in front of it showing the artist’s drawing next to a photo of the completed inflatable. Those small images are kind of cute but the 30 foot reality is pretty awful. Size, or rather, scale, makes a big difference.
You can see "Dippy" almost dwarfed in the background.
They were only up for a few days before the graffiti had to be cleaned off. I can understand why someone was tempted. That’s a Henry Moore in the background below.
The Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History are
within the University of Pittsburgh campus, that is, Pitt has grown around them.
One of the most notable landmarks is this dinosaur. The Cathedral of Learning is behind him. During the winter he wears a muffler, red and green at Christmas, black and gold when the Steelers were working their way to the Superbowl. I didn’t write about it, but that was a very big event here.
This dinosaur discovery was also a big event and dinosaurs seem to have a big place all over Pittsburgh. I’ll have more pictures of them soon. In the meantime, I took this picture up close and personal. Most of the time "Dippy" just looks black. But that afternoon the sun was shining on him and I could see all sorts of colors.
When I was a young girl I was a tomboy and ran around with all of the boys in the neighborhood. There weren’t many girls my age. As I got older my mother persuaded me to stop running around with the boys and that nice Jewish girls did not exercise. Because I was overweight and a klutz this suited me just fine. When I got to college (University of Chicago) the prevailing attitude was, "if you feel an attack of exercise coming on, lay down and it will pass." It was only after I got into my late forties that I began to appreciate what exercise might do for me. With enormous effort I finally learned to swim when I was 47. I used to swim a half mile at a time, but finally decided it was too boring. I took up weight lifting and other aerobic exercise. I’m still doing it; I still don’t love it. Occasionally I feel that good feeling everyone talks about, but it doesn’t happen often, and I have to look for it. Today was not a great exercise day. I got to the health club determined to do 30 minutes of aerobics before I went to the machines and then to the Tai Chi class. I only managed 20 minutes of aerobics, but I got through the rest of it, with great difficulty. I don’t know why some days are harder than others.
One of my Osher classes this term is about Pittsburgh history. Today we looked at maps from 1815. The changes are amazing. There was a big pond in the downtown area and a much higher hill than currently exists. They graded the hill and used the material that was removed to fill in the pond. Coming from Chicago I am used to the concept of landfill. Most of the high priced real estate in Chicago is built on landfill. What I’m not used to is hills and valleys.
This afternoon, on my way to my Japanese Art class, there was a man with a large portfolio of architectural drawings waiting with me to cross the street. He asked me if I would like to hear a short, funny story. 
He told me that the street we were crossing and the Frick Art Building where I was going were once a valley with a bridge going across it. The fountain, at left, is actually sitting on that bridge and everything else is land fill. The land north of the building ends abruptly and you look down into a valley–Panther Hollow. I guess at one time it was a larger valley. If the weather ever gets warmer, I’ll walk around and take some pictures of the valley. That’s where I saw the turkeys walking around last fall.
The International Center of New York has a wonderful program for foreign visitors and immigrants to improve their English language skills, and for native speakers to meet these newcomers. I spent a lot of time there holding English conversations and teaching basic computer skills. I loved meeting so many people from other countries. Shirley Sun was my favorite conversation partner. We spent time together at the Center, we ate dim sum together, we went to the Met, the Cloisters, the American Indian Museum in Battery Park. We did a Story Corps recording together. Shirley came from China about 3 years ago. She loved to travel and told me about all of the places she went to in the US before she came to New York. When she was in her teens she visited 15 cities in China during the Cultural Revolution. Probably because her English was not very good, I always felt a sense of mystery about her. I’m sure there was much more she could tell. I’ve been reading Wild Swans, about the lives of three Chinese women, from bound feet to Mao. Maybe I can understand a little more about Shirley Sun.
I saw Shirley just before I moved to Pittsburgh. I promised to call her, but I was very busy because things were finally moving very fast. When I tried to call her after I got settled her phone was disconnected. I had two emails, three phone numbers for her and two for her friend Sally. None of them worked. I feel very bad; I don’t want to lose Shirley Sun. Next month, when I go to New York, I will try to find her, although I’m not sure where to begin.
Isn’t it interesting how you can change the entire meaning of a phrase with the letter "S." For my concerned friends and relatives: I am not sick and nothing has happened to me. My move to Pittsburgh necessitated my finding new doctors. I don’t like doctors; I like hospitals even less. From past experience I know that a doctor’s visit frequently involved me in some activity I did not like. So I try to stay out of doctors’ offices as much as possible. However, I feel strongly that I should have a doctor, just in case.
So Steve got me a recommendation from one of his colleagues and I went to see a doctor. We had a nice talk and he told me to get a lot of tests. I had to have some of these for my cataract surgery, and the doctor ordered a few others, including an echo cardiogram, which I took on Monday. That’s what scared me. I don’t have the results of the test; I won’t know them until I return to the doctor next Monday. Just taking the test frightened me. What if they had found something terrible and rushed me right into the hospital? It’s happened to other people.
I am generally healthy, and for the most part, not much ever happens to me. I eat more or less properly, if a little too much, I exercise, I don’t have high blood pressure or diabetes. I have high cholesterol, but very good HDL’s. I worry about this, but not enough to begin taking statins. So why do I worry? I’m not generally a worrier.
I have come to realize that we are a society that lives in fear. If the government isn’t making us worry about terrorists, then the drug companies are making us worry about various drug-curable (?) aspects of our health. One of the doctors I stopped seeing in New Jersey gave me a number of long spiels about the strokes I could get from my high cholesterol. I have to assume the drug companies did a real number on her.
I marvel that drug advertising can be effective when I listen to the recitals of side effects. But I’m also certain that anyone with a touch of hypochondria probably gets most of the ailments described. In spite of the fact that the side effects keep me from taking any of the drugs, I guess the advertising finally got to me.
BTW, if you are interested in the quality of health care in our wonderful, advanced society read the story about a Rand study which rates the effectiveness or our health care system at about 55%. It seems it doesn’t matter whether you are black, white, rich or poor, your chances of getting good care are about 50-50. "Everyone is at equal risk for poor quality of care."
My photos of the Morikami Gardens don’t do them justice, unfortunately. They are really beautiful, and I will post some photos eventually. We saw some interesting wildlife. We would have missed this 
iguana sitting on the rock, but someone else spotted it and was taking pictures.
We saw the cormorant swimming in the water. They can remain under for an amazing amount of time. 
Eventually they come up and sun themselves to dry their feathers. I don’t know why they bother. They go right back in the water again. But I’ll bet the sun feels good. The pond was filled with lots of very large koi and a number of large turtles. My fish pictures weren’t so good.
100 Books Before I Die 