He used to be Curtis Kyles

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – Curtis Kyles had been a young man of patience before a killer framed him in the murder of a woman in Louisiana.

Exonerated after spending 14 years in prison, Kyles head still swirls with fear and shame, and it wanders in many directions, so his feelings are expressed in art.

“Now I don’t even know who Curtis Kyles is,” the man’s words peer from the background of his portrait by Pittsburgh artist Daniel Bolick.

The painting of Kyles is included in an exhibit of Bolick’s “Resurrected” series on display at David Lawrence Hall lobby at Point Park University. The paintings feature men who were freed with the help of innocence projects after being wrongly sentenced to death or life in prison.

“You could not write fiction as astounding as what these men’s realities are,” Bolick stated. “Their life experiences had to show on their faces.”

And Bolick captures their sadness brilliantly in powerful, bold colors, and especially in the use of controlled runs of paint. The paint spills off foreheads, around eye crevices and down checks as if it cries with the subjects.

It’s impossible to look at these paintings without absorbing some of the pain these men feel. No mere apology would seem to be enough to erase these wrongs.

As for Kyles, the prosecution in the Orleans Parish homicide withheld evidence from the defense that could have cleared him of the murder. The killer was later murdered after having confessed to the slaying to a number of people.

Prosecutors still tried Kyles three more times, even after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction. Eventually he was released in 1998 when the local district attorney dropped the case.

It’s no wonder the subject of the painting sobs, or makes such statements as, “I used to be Curtis Kyles.”

The exhibit sponsored by the Innocence Institute of Point Park University ends April 2.

(Editor's note: After this post, Kyles was implicated in another homicide. Our sympathies go out to the victims in that case. This blog does not accept negative comments, nor does it endorse criminals. This posting was simply a review of an art exhibit)

One person's dream is another's nighmare

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – It would be spiffy to be able to afford a $4,000 instant coffeemaker to brew top shelf java in any kitchen.

The fancy machine is one of the luxuries on display at a "dream home" installed behind black curtains at the Pittsburgh Home & Garden Show this month at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Just how dreamy these surrounds are, though, is up to interpretation.

One of the first things that catches my eye is a lifelike sculpture of a tribesman squatting on the floor of what I believe to be the master bathroom. I'm taken aback because it looks as if an unwelcome guest is doing his business on the floor of what turns out to be a mediation room.

I can see myself tripping over this thing in the night, and cannot imagine trying to find my zen in the lotus position with it staring me down.

Moments later, two women pass by with frowns on their faces.

"This is supposed to be a dream home?" one of them says. "More like a nightmare," the other responds.

This display is the work of CJ Interior Design Studio of Pittsburgh, and it obviously put a lot of work into the details.

Yet, somehow the designers believe it is stylish to put plastic chairs beside a rustic wooden dining room table. That seems kind of cold and uninviting.

Everything else here appears to be rather expensive, down to the high-tech LED television in the bathroom.

This highbrow stuff is genius and pretentious wrapped in one fake 8-room residence. And, this probably is the wrong time for many people to tour such extravagances.

Some of my furloughed newspaper friends have yet to find full time work eight months after they received their pink slips. While this horrible recession appears to be lifting, they say there still are not any good jobs out there for them to secure.

To play it safe, I will keep my auto-drip coffeemaker that leaks from the bottom until the pot is brewed.

(The home show ends Sunday)

How to bare the soul with a smile

Lorys Crisafulli acting silly on a recent photo shoot for her upcoming charity calendar featuring scantily-clad old people.

By Scott Beveridge

MONONGAHELA, Pa. – The zany Lorys Crisafulli sums up her many successes with a common sense positive attitude.

“It comes back to how you treat people,” said Crisafulli, 83, of Carroll Township, Pa., who has had at least two great careers and a busy retirement that sent her name around the world.

The retired schoolteacher and antiques dealer is best known for taking off some of her clothes, and convincing 11 of her old female friends to do the same, and posing for a 2008 charity calendar that caught the attention of news organizations from Japan to Washington, Pa.

She’s at it again, in production for a mildly naughty 2011 calendar, one that also will feature a dozen male senior citizens in photographs with the ladies known as the “Vixens of the Valley.”

The first calendar sold 3,000 copies, earning $15,000 for the money-strapped Monongahela Area Historical Society. It also drew sneers from younger people who think old people are ugly.

Here is one example:

“I may be branded a shallow bitch for saying this … but there are certain types of folks who should never pose nude… old people,” a much younger Pittsburgh blogger, Virginia Montanez, stated on her blog, That’s Church, about these models.

Well Montanez branded her personality with that statement, so I won’t use this platform to do the same, although she missed the point in a big way.

These women did something good for their financially strapped community, while also having some oddball fun to make a statement that old people can feel sexy, too. At the same time, they brought themselves a lot of happiness through a vehicle that made them global role models for seniors who want to stay active and give back to the community.

Crisafulli has it right when she says success is best earned by treating people with kindness, generosity and spunk. You won’t hear her snark rudely, or, tell an unattractive person to hide in a closet from the pretty people. That kind of attitude turns to gold.

Click here to read more about her new calendar project. (The link will not last forever)

Cat caught in the headlights

Lusy, originally uploaded by Viola Life.

The techno generation gap

Allegheny Power executives, from left, Jim Myers, Rodney L. Dickens, Mike Doran and Mark Myers appear today before the Pennsylvania House Policy Committee to explain the company's response to a disastrous snowstorm last month.

By Scott Beveridge

SPEERS, Pa. – The older guys - those from fire departments and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency - sat front and center today to explain to state officials why some people claim they let local residents down last month in their response to a disastrous snowstorm.

The younger, better dressed executives sat in the back rows at the Pennsylvania House Policy Committee hearing into the storm response with their cell phones in hand, tuned into the live news feeds some journalists were filing from the room.

"We're following you on Twitter," one of those technology-minded guys told me after I had just updated the Observer-Reporter newspaper web site with a fresh report on the testimony.

His statement seemed to cement the problems news agencies face in adapting to social media with some staff members who resist the rapidly-changing ways in which breaking news is being delivered. So many reporters are still holding pens to notebooks and then taking even longer time to get their stories to print when that method of telling stories has been quickly losing an audience.

Yet, the comment from the audience member about our Twitter feed spoke to an even broader issue relating to a new "generation gap" facing society.

A generation ago, the big understanding gap existed between young adults who opposed the Vietnam War and their parents who then seemed to be living on another planet.

These days, we are separated in a big way between those who get the Internet and those who still pick up the telephone book to call the local florist. This distance knows no age group.

My 80-year-old mother has better Web skills than do many of my colleagues in the local media. An older friend who lives nearby uses Skype with ease to Web chat with her young granddaughter a continent away in San Francisco.

Those who don't get it often say Twitterers, Skypers and Facebookers have way too much time on their hands. In many instances they are right when they point to employees who eat up the payroll via their unchecked addictions to blogs and such.

The criticism from the uninformed, however, also speaks to its hesitation to climb out of the modern dinosaur age.

If only those who are being left behind knew how much time, trouble and money can be saved through effective use of the technology at hand these days.

Meet Chris Hardie

Chris Hardie is flanked on a recent run by Waynesburg University student Tiffany Davis and Waynesburg Mayor Blair Zimmerman.

By Colleen Nelson

WAYNESBURG, Pa. – When Chris Hardie says, "Gotta Run," you can believe him.

The Greene County, Pa., Office of Development and Planning staffer is out the door running whenever he gets the chance – lunchtime, before work, after work and on weekends.

He is on a mission and the mission has a name – Chris Cross the County for the cure.

While many cancer survivors and their supporters walk the track at Central Greene High School for 24 hours for Relay for Life the first weekend each May, Hardie, 32, puts a longer distance face on what he challenges himself to do for cancer in April.

Chris Cross the County takes him from one end of the county to the other, or even across the county line heading for Pittsburgh.

Hardie has been charting a different course each year since 2007 when he ran his first 51 miles for Relay and raised $3,500. His determination to run no matter what the weather attracts the kind of publicity and sponsorship that adds up to thousands of research dollars for the American Cancer Society.

Getting to know the man so many have only seen on the fly isn’t easy. Hardie is on the go even when he's not wearing his running shoes. It’s a rare moment when he can be found in his office with enough time to chat and even then, he is answering the phone, making copies, organizing notes or checking his watch for the next scheduled meeting while he talks.

He’s been up since 6 a.m. on the day of this interview, and there isn’t a day that he doesn’t work out – boxing, Pilates, aerobics and weight training.

“Whatever I’m in the mood for.”

And then there is the almost daily running regime.

“Out of 365 days I’d say I run 350. I’m in training year-round.”

His shaven head, neat goatee and direct gaze complement his compact muscular build. A white bulletin board behind his desk is neatly gridded with his workday tasks – meetings and projects for the county, tucked around his hours as part-time track and field and cross country coach at Waynesburg University.

“I have to keep organized – there’s a lot of things going on here in planning,” Hardie admits. “Any new construction or business coming into the county goes through this office for ordinance compliance. Storm drains, noise, tax abatement, we deal with it. We plan ahead and connect the dots and make sure it’s done the right way.”

Hardie found his own right way as a high school senior, when he realized his body had found its athletic niche in running.

“I have a strong gas tank – I can keep going. The name Hardie is mostly German but my dad’s Cherokee, too. I’m built like him and we’re a lot alike. He has a little gray in his beard and he’s more into working out than running, but that’s about it. He doesn’t think so but he’s the one who taught me to be able to do this. He gave me his work ethic growing up.”

Hardie grew up in Blair County near Altoona, Pa., on land that his great-grandfather once farmed. He lost a grandmother to cancer, then an aunt.

California University of Pennsylvania gave him a chance to run track and field while earning a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s in geography and regional planning. It also gave him another close encounter with cancer.

“One of my running partners, Pablo Prego, started having calf cramps. It turned out to be cancer and it spread quickly. He was only 24. A bunch of us college runners had a run in his honor and the idea evolved over time. When I was at Mount Aloysis College in 2003 I discovered Relay for Life and started helping out. When I moved to Greene County in 2005 and saw there was a Relay here, I got involved.”

When April rolls around, Hardie is ready to run - rain, snow or shine. He has a stock answer for his commitment that is not lessened by being repeated.

“Cancer victims don’t get to choose when they have good days or bad days, so I don’t care what it’s like out there – I’m running.”

This year, Hardie has decided to run in circles for the cure – coordinating the 4th annual Chris Cross with Waynesburg University’s popular Mini-Relay for Life from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. April 18.

“I’ll be running on campus around Johnson’s Commons, doing as many laps as I can. My wife Kelley is the sponsor of the Mini-Relay and our goal is $7,000. The checks are beginning to come in already.”

Hardie bends down and adjusts his laces. He’s bundled up but his legs are bare against another chilly day – a toboggan warms his head. He grins, straightens up and surveys the road before him. It’s lunchtime and Hardie just has time for a quick sprint and a bite to eat.

“See ya now. Gotta run!”

(Colleen Nelson is freelance writer and artist in Holbrook, Pa. She teachers creative writing at Bowlby Library in Waynesburg, Pa. Reprinted from Living in Greene County magazine, a publication of the Observer-Reporter)