The mysterious graves of Brownsville

A rare sarcophagus is one of many unique attractions at a beautiful old church included on a tour of churches this weekend in Brownsville, Pa.

BROWNSVILLE, Pa. – The Rev. Keith Pozzuto doesn’t believe it will be long before his congregation learns the contents of a rare sarcophagus in the historic cemetery behind his church.

The stone grave marker that dates to the early 1800a is deteriorating to the point that it should soon collapse amid the plot of graves at Christ Episcopal Church in Brownsville, Pa.

"It's pretty strange," Pozzuto said. "Inside is a wooden box containing the remains."

He doesn’t know whose grave the tomb contains since much of the lettering relating to the deceases has disappeared with the weather.

It’s just one of a number of interesting stops in this graveyard that will be included in a tour this weekend of local churches to raise money for efforts to dress up the old town along the Monongahela River.

People have been mysteriously placing such odd objects as a round stone pained to look like an alien beside other tombstones in this cemetery in the 300 block of Church Street. The place is just plain weird and creepy in a wonderful sort of way.

There also is false story that is still told today about President George Washington’s cousins having been buried here after being murdered by their slaves.

Here is that tale, taken from the pages of the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa.:

By Scott Beveridge

The story involving two cousins of President George Washington having been killed by their slaves and buried in Brownsville appears to have been mostly bogus from the onset.

The author of an 1881 article in the Magazine of American History was unable to find any mention of the men, Archibald and John H. Washington, in the former president's genealogy.

Yet people still believe the legend about the men buried here behind the historic Christ Episcopal Church, a tale that has been passed along by word-of-mouth through the generations.

"If enough people say it, it must be true," said the Rev. Keith Pozzuto, pastor of the church that will be included in an Oct. 4 tour of Brownsville churches to raise money for a local beautification project.

The tour guide here surely will discuss the story about the 1818 deaths of the men.

The lead author of the magazine story, John Austin Stevens, claimed to have interviewed eyewitnesses of good character for his story. They insisted Archibald, 33, and John Washington, 38, died of typhoid fever after receiving the diagnosis from a local physician who also came down with the same illness after treating them.

The only part of the story that appeared to be true involved their dying while transporting as many as 100 slaves from Virginia to Kentucky while stopped in Brownsville, which was the gateway to the west at the time.

The mystery deepens as to how their tombstones found their way beside that of town founder Thomas Brown. Stevens claimed the visitors were buried in a potter's field reserved for strangers and blacks, having been refused burial at the church whose members were staunchly opposed to slavery.

Regardless, this church built in 1859 "has always had a storied place" in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pozzuto said.

It's believed to be the second-oldest Episcopal church west of the Allegheny Mountains, behind one in Mt. Lebanon, Pozzuto said.

The main doors to the Brownsville church lead to an understated sanctuary with an altar crafted from Italian marble and wood imported from Germany. The altar represents the marriage of the Roman Catholic and German Protestant churches that created the Anglican congregation, Pozzuto said.

The building also boasts a rare and priceless Tiffany stained-glass window, he said.

Meanwhile, the cemetery also contains remarkably preserved tabletop tombstones and an unusual sarcophagus. The 1854 above-ground receptacle holds the remains of a corpse whose identification has worn with weather off the stone.

"It's pretty strange," Pozzuto said. "Inside is a wooden box containing the remains."

The cemetery also holds the graves of many members of the Bowman and Hogg families that were prominent to Brownsville's early rises as an important trade center.

"The history of Brownsville is right here behind this church," Pozzuto said.

The main entrance to the church leads to an antique altar crafted with marble from Italy and wood from Germany, materials that represent the two countries that gave life to this Anglican congregation.

The church tour is hosted by the Northside Beautification Committee to raise money for the purchase banners for Market Street.

The other churches involved are: St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, St. Ellien's Orthodox Church, First United Methodist Church and Calvin United Presbyterian Church.

The tour will begin at 3 p.m. Oct. 4 at St. Peter's Church, 300 Shaffner Ave. Tickets are available by calling 724-785-2444 or can be purchased between 2 and 3 p.m. the day of the tour at St. Peter's.

Scenes from the G-20 summit

A slide show of Scott Beveridge photos of the sideshow this week outside the G-20 summit in Downtown Pittsburgh.

No peace at the G-20 peace march

A man in a homemade clown suit who identifies himself as Vermin Supreme helps to make a circus of the peace march on the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – There was a rude woman guiding a group of activists today along the peace march to the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

She kept barking these orders at journalists with cameras, “Move. Now! Get out of the way.”

Eventually, I caught her attention and told her she needed to find a little peace herself. To her credit, she immediately realized she was out of control and offered an apology.

When the march came to an end outside the Downtown Pittsburgh City-County Building where the speakers were gathered, a University of Pittsburgh student took the microphone in another show of anger.

She said she was upset about a Pitt student who reportedly was beaten by Pittsburgh police the previous evening, the problems with health care being too costly and students like her being strapped with mounting tuition debts. She urged the crowd to become as angry as her about these problems.

Someone apparently forgot to send her the memo about this being a peace march and rally.

It seemed ridiculous for her to encourage madness one day after anarchists in town for the G-20 vandalized a string of businesses in the vicinity of her school in the city's Oakland section. That trouble led to police making 66 arrests, the local newspapers reported this morning.

Meanwhile, another speaker congratulated this assembly for helping to bring 10,000 people Downtown to form a crowd of protesters unlike anyone has seen in Pittsburgh since the Vietnam War.

The last time I checked there weren’t any large anti-Vietnam War protests in Pittsburgh in the 1960s and 1970s. There weren’t 10,000 protesters Downtown today, either. Police along the march estimated the crowd at anywhere between 600 and 2,000.

A freak in a clown suit and actors wearing white potato head puppet suits without an apparent cause to embrace also were among those taking part in the event.

There were many young people beating on makeshift drums to music that didn’t follow a particular melody. Many people carried with them a bad stench of perspiration. A few of the nonconformists turned to the police, bared their stomachs and sang, “You're sexy. You’re cute. Take off your riot suit.”

Later one of my friends reminded me that those hippies probably view soap as a form of the capitalism they oppose.

“You have to spend money to buy soap,” she said.

Meanwhile, a group of 150 Tibetan exiles living in New York and Boston made up one of the larger protest groups.

They came freshly groomed and wearing clean, matching yellow T-shirts to deliver a clear message to China to honor human rights in Tibet. They have a legitimate gripe given the terror China caused in their homeland in 2008 during clashes with Buddhist monks.

The American activists who showed up today in Pittsburgh should have been embarrassed to complain about anything while marching along the same parade route as these exiles.

They also need to come up a serious issue to complain about, and then offer a concrete solution if they are ever going to earn any respect and sympathy.

Tibetan exiles call for human rights in their homeland during the peace march.

An afternoon outside the G-20 in Pittsburgh

Pennsylvania State Police push back a small crowd of Ethiopian demonstrators at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – While leaving Pittsburgh tonight on foot I stopped and joked with a few members of the military who were guarding an entrance to a shopping and dining district void of business during the G-20 summit.

“It was the Armageddon that didn’t happen,” I said about what had been a lackluster showing of demonstrators in the heart of Pittsburgh on the first day of the gathering of leaders from the world’s largest economies.

“Just think what would have happened if we weren’t here,” said a police officer from Chicago who was hanging out with the four soldiers at the trendy Station Square in Pittsburgh’s South Side.

With a hint of sarcasm, I threw into the conversation that I felt so safe earlier in the day upon seeing the National Guard posted in such an unlikely location.

“That’s why we're here,” one of the guardsmen responded in fun.

But in reality I had wondered if the authorities overreacted by having guards stationed at a destination on the opposite banks of the Monongahela River from Downtown, and across town from the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the location of the summit.

The same goes for the many businesses that had their windows covered in plywood. The management at PPG Industries went as far as to enclose PPG Plaza with a chain-link fence topped with concertina.

Even the colleges had shut down and sent home their students who could have gotten quite an education by witnessing such a rare occurrence playing out in this city. Meanwhile, much of the business here had come to a halt at a time when retailers struggling to survive a recession could have benefited greatly from all the international attention.

There were more police than spectators on these streets that have been devoid of cars since 8 p.m. Wednesday, isolated by barricades that separated the heart of the city from anarchists who were causing sporadic trouble in its outskirts. The size of the resistance crowd today did not reach the proportions the city initially expected, police said.

As far as demonstrators Downtown there were about 150 Tibetan exiles decrying China while demanding human rights and far-fewer Ethiopians taking a stand against genocide in their homeland. Add to them a half-dozen stoned Americans demanding their free right to toke ganja.

The protesters were peaceful, yet the Tibetans were surrounded by Pennsylvania state police officers on horseback or standing shoulder-to-shoulder with batons to corral the crowd. Another line of troopers pushed back the Ethiopians even though they weren’t getting in anyone’s way.

No one got hurt, and the demonstrators left peacefully after they shouted their chants for about an hour. I couldn’t help but wonder if these rallies accomplished much because the world leaders were locked away in a convention center behind row after row of tall, temporary steel fences.

It was impressive, though, to see this country’s law enforcement agencies in a massive showing unlike any that has been seen in Pittsburgh’s history.

Tibetan exiles from New York and Boston square off with Pennsylvania State Police in downtown Pittsburgh on the first day of the G-20 summit.

Pittsburgh lights wow G-20 summit to town

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – Artists who design nighttime lighting splashed on buildings have created an incredible new display to welcome world leaders to the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

The slide show of sorts includes some famous images from the city’s history, including those relating to a polio cure and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright to silkscreen portraits created by Andy Warhol. It also includes a shot of a not-so-famous quilt - the oldest of its kind in Pennsylvania - that is among the collection of the Westmoreland Museum of Art.

This light installation came together tonight on an otherwise huge, bland white wall at the entrance to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh where the two-day summit begins tomorrow.

“I haven’t slept for two days,” said Chris Oberdorf, the project manager for the Duquesne Light-sponsored Festival of Lights group that has been shining outstanding art on Pittsburgh landmark buildings for the past few years.

He should get some rest tonight because the small number of people who were not scared away from the city tonight by an intense police presence for the summit were blown away by this work of art.

The artichoke dream

"Artichoke" by Scott Beveridge 9/20/2009

By Scott Beveridge

The notion to paint an artichoke with watercolors came to me in a dream.

It was one of those eureka-type dreams that jolted me awake feeling as if a message had been delivered in a premonition not to be dismissed.

As a cynic, I’ve never given much credence to these visionary moments of mystical inspiration that are better suited for the likes of actress Shirley McClain.

The dream about six months ago led me to believe my subconscious mind was suggesting that I focus again on my roots as an artist at a time when scores of newspapers reporters like me were being furloughed in an industry that has been struggling to adapt to the free Internet age.

Then the dream became a silly joke fueled by my fellow blogger Amanda Gillooly, whose hilarious musings occasionally appear on this Web site.

Gillooly wouldn’t let go of the spiritual guidance that the dream delivered, and occasionally hounded me to grab the brushes, tubes of paint and watercolor paper to fulfill destiny.

The pleasant, sunny weather on Sunday gave me no excuse to get to work.

But then the strangest message arrived in an email tonight from another friend, who will remain anonymous, containing the “official” interpretation of a dream about this edible flower.

Here it is from fatedreams.com:

To see or eat an artichoke in your dream, suggests that you need to get to the heart of some matter. It is also representative of your potential and creativity. Perhaps you are holding back in how you want to express yourself.

"That's weird," is all I can say.