Letters to the editor
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Pittsburgh, follow the welcoming G-20 model
In January 2005, the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, hosted the fifth World Social Forum and welcomed 155,000 participants from 131 countries to the event; 652 workshops were accommodated all over the city and camps provided for people of little means.
The participants were socialists, anarchists, liberation theologians, communists, environmentalists, feminists and faith-based groups, just to mention a few -- just the types of groups that hope to come to Pittsburgh to protest the G-20 summit. The World Social Forum, in fact, is opposed to the policies of the G-20 and produced a manifesto at the fifth forum asking for a 1 percent tax on stock transactions.
The question is why Pittsburgh cannot follow the Brazilian model instead of the London and Iranian model that it seems to have chosen. The London and Iranian model is one of warfare, tasers, batons and hostility to protesters instead of welcome, as in Brazil. It is as if Pittsburgh is hosting a major ballgame but inviting one team with a red carpet and the other with tasers and rubber bullets. The city has to remember that most of humanity is rooting for the latter team.
Why can't our town fathers and mothers think outside the box of warfare and confrontation a la London and Tehran?
MICHAEL DROHAN
Wilkins
The last laugh
President Barack Obama's announcement that Pittsburgh would host the G-20 economic summit in September was met with chuckles from the White House press corps.
Despite the initial response, the announcement has produced positive PR for Pittsburgh, including a recent Sunday New York Times story, "City of Steel (and Other Stuff) to Get Its Turn on the World Economic Stage."
While the story begins with stereotypical descriptors of Pittsburgh (weird traffic patterns, Pittsburghese dialect, french fries on sandwiches), local leaders made the most of their opportunity to portray Pittsburgh appropriately.
Point Park University President Paul Hennigan said: "If the people in Washington were snickering, it's because they don't understand Pittsburgh and probably haven't been here. If you don't know Pittsburgh, you would snicker about an old Rust Belt industrial city down on its luck, not the beautiful, cutting-edge place it is."
The story notes Pittsburgh is still known as The Steel City and that leaders would rather that successes in other industries be recognized. UPMC President Jeffrey Romoff compares UPMC's role today to that of steel companies of the past, calling Pittsburgh "tomorrow's city" based on the region's ongoing success in health care, higher education and technology.
But Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato had the last word: "Anybody who laughs shows their ignorance. Let them have their two seconds of snickering. We're going to have our three months in the spotlight."
Take that, White House press corps ... and, by the way, our football and hockey teams are better than yours.
DAVID M. MASTOVICH
Bethel Park
The writer is president of MASSolutions, a public relations firm.
It works for him
I am trying to decide whether the letter from J. Ronald Gainsford ("Why Change Now?" July 27) is some sort of subtle satire. He writes of his satisfaction with his health care after a heart transplant and says he would not have received such treatment in a country with "socialized medicine." His health insurer? Medicare, a government program.
Mr. Gainsford received appropriate care precisely because most of his health-care costs have been socialized. If it worked so well for him, why does he think it would be such a disaster to do the same for people under the age of 65?
JOHN LACNY
Overbrook
Canada's system
I would like to respond to George Hunt's July 29 letter ("Problems Overseas"), in which he states that "in Canada cancer patients may have to wait six months to a year for treatment." I really would like to know where he gets his information. Having been married to a Canadian for 51-plus years, that means all my in-laws are Canadian citizens. A few have passed on in recent years from cancer, but none lacked prompt and excellent medical care until then.
Currently I receive periodic updates from a friend in Toronto whose husband is terminal with lung cancer. He was resting at home recently after radiation and state-of-the-art treatment when he was beset with extreme pain.
Can you believe that his doctor came to the house when his wife called? The patient was then transported to the hospital and is now in palliative care.
Mr. Hunt's letter prompted me to e-mail at least 15 friends and relatives across Canada asking if they would be willing to trade their health-care system for the current system we have here in the United States. Not all have responded, but those who have answered negatively -- some in quite colloquial fashion. One retired gentleman who claims to have lived in Ohio, Alabama, Oregon and Washington, enabling him to experience U.S. health care, says he would not trade in a million years. He goes on to say the care he and his family received for $22 a month when he was working was fantastic.
Therein lies my point: There seems to be no shortage of individuals critical of Canada's health-care system who have no firsthand knowledge of that care. Granted, that system has its problems also, but so far I find only satisfied users of said system.
And when I read that a Blue Dog Democrat was a former UPMC lobbyist, I become suspicious of where our representatives' true interest lies.
RON MOTTO
McKeesport
Insurance illogic
Forcing insurance companies to give you health insurance if you have an existing condition is like applying for fire insurance after your house burns down.
NICK KYRIAZI
North Side
Don't criticize the Hilton redesign without knowing all the facts
Regarding Robert S. Pfaffmann's letter about the Hilton Pittsburgh ("Honor Pittsburgh's Modernist Landmarks, Such as the Downtown Hilton," Aug. 3), I offer the following response. If Mr. Pfaffmann is intimately familiar with my design for the expansion of the Hilton, I respect his opinion. If he is not, perhaps he should acquaint himself with the subject matter before attacking its premise. As Bernard Tschumi once told his architecture students at Carnegie Mellon University, "Nostalgia for the past is prolific. We must remember, however, that any architecture is never separate from the culture of its time."
For example, the architects and planners who remodeled Point State Park chose to bury a historic artifact -- the battered walls of old Fort Pitt that once gave the park the feel of an archaeological dig. Was this move done to dishonor the historic landmark or was it a function of the culture of today? Was the cost of maintaining a large depression in the ground that collects a lot of rain water too great to save the monument? Were other forces at work at the state government level that we are not aware of? To pass judgment without knowing all the facts is uninformed, at best.
I was commissioned to design a substantial addition to the west facade of the Hilton Pittsburgh. If I did not perform the work, someone else would have because the force at work -- the culture of today -- drives the need to expand the business in the marketplace. The Hilton is not a museum piece. My design solution refers to what is common to the historic Modernist tower, regardless of the functions contained within -- its geometry.
The planning commission approved the design without revision. I believe its members recognized an asset to the city when they saw one proposed. With all the negative press surrounding the now-halted project, no one has considered, it seems, that a positive could emerge from a great negative.
STEPHEN BERRY
President, Principal Architect
Youngstown Design Company
Youngstown, Ohio
The writer is the architect for the Hilton Pittsburgh expansion/renovation.
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First Published August 10, 2009 12:00 am
