A young white musician sings for racial harmony

Jordan Umbach of Washington, Pa., performs a song tonight he wrote to protest the 2006 church burnings in America's South. His appearance in his hometown at the George Washington Hotel is part of this city's bicentennial celebration.

He is backed up by members of various male choirs from local black churches to celebrate the city's African-American heritage.

This young guy who is featured in Pittsburgh's City Paper appears to have a future in the music industry.

Pittsburgh's soul man Billy Price takes the stage Friday night, followed by a bluegrass lineup Saturday at Washington & Jefferson College headlined by country singer Big Kenny of Big and Rich.

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This birthday party begins smashingly

WASHINGTON, Pa. – The Washington Symphony Orchestra proved tonight that people will come to downtown entertainment in the city of Washington, Pa., when quality takes the stage.

The group of talented musicians conducted by Yugo Ikach drew an overflow crowd to a free concert that kicked off the small Pennsylvania city's bicentennial celebration. The turnout was a surprise to many local residents, who have been accustomed to festivals that typically bomb here.

It's a great beginning to four days of events in what apparently got off to a sluggish start in the planning stages, but is headed to become a smashing success thanks to generous donations from big local industries, which include Consol Energy, The Meadows Racetrack & Casino and Range Resources Corp.

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Billy Price to start the party in Little Washington

The singer known as the "East Coast blue-eyed soul man" will be performing a free concert Friday night in Washington, Pa., as part of the small city's bicentennial celebration.

This sounds much-more exciting than my witnessing today a lazy slob pedestrian punching the driver's side window of a slow-moving car driven by an old man who got in the way of that nutcase while he was jaywalking on Main Street. (That really happened)

Seriously, though, Billy Price has been rocking Pittsburgh for 35 years with a cool style and great horn section. He's a great reason to come downtown, where they say East Wheeling Street will be shut down and loaded with food and beer vendors.

The stage has been set up in a nearby city parking lot in the 100 block of Main Street. It sounds like a serious party in the making.

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Among the best places to look up in Pittsburgh

This building at 931 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, is among some of the city's best-surviving examples of merchant architecture dating to the late 1800s.

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – The Culture District in Pittsburgh is a great place to stop and look up at the old buildings.

The tall narrow ones especially have some of the most-interesting architectural stories to tell in this section of Downtown that is becoming vibrant again.

A quick study shows these brownstones were built in layers, almost as if their owners gave them a new top hat every few years as their businesses and families expanded. The bottom two or three floors were built first, then additional floors were added as the flow of immigrants required more living space in this downtown, which was then a major stop in the late 1800s for trade during America's Westward Movement.

This several block section of Pittsburgh along Penn and Liberty avenues has some of the best-preserved examples of wealthy merchant architecture from that era.

The five-story commercial Richardsonian loft at 931 Penn Ave., shown above, dates to 1892, when it was built for Levi Wade as part of a block of furniture businesses. It's among a number of similar buildings in the area with bronze plaques explaining why they are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

They are located in an area where a number of hip new restaurants have opened in response to a bustling theater district that certainly is among the best of its kind in small cities in America the size of Pittsburgh.

Exciting things are happening in this city, especially with the opening this year of the nearby luxurious and environmentally-friendly Fairmont Hotel. It's just off the Market District, portions of which also are being renovated and restored.

A Broken Promise

When you take away a man's dignity he can't work his fields and cows, "Rain on the Scarecrow"

By Scott Beveridge

The house losing its white paint and becoming overgrown by nature caught my eye while driving along lonely Route 27 in western Minnesota about five years ago.

It especially was the tall, broken tree near the front door that convinced me pull over, turn around and go back to take a photograph of the abandoned farmhouse in the heart of America's Great Plains. After I drove off toward Minneapolis, I thought the composition would make an interesting watercolor.

The scene then made me think of songs by John Mellencamp and Willy Nelson about farmers struggling to keep their land and those who have lost the battle to keep the property that had been in their families for generations.

I wondered, too, how long it would take before a strong wind toppled the rest of that once-mighty tree and sent it crashing into the house without anyone immediately noticing the damages.

Eventually, I sketched this house on watercolor paper and spread some paint here and there, but kept putting the painting aside.

Finally it's taken a number of fresh brushstrokes tonight for me to decide this often-ignored painting is finished just like that house. Maybe.

There is a California Pennsylvania

It's been said many times before that new students occasionally show up for the first time at California University of Pennsylvania and ask for the location of the ocean.

The best alternative to the Pacific Ocean the school in Southwestern Pennsylvania has to offer them is the nearby murky Monongahela River.

Maybe this old clip from a former student's appearance on the "Late Show with David Letterman" will held to dispel the notion among naive students enrolling from a distance at Cal U. the school is on the West Coast. Maybe not, but the video, above, is pretty funny.

It shows a smiling Jon Reed, who hopefully has learn better driving skills since the show first aired a couple years ago, taking Letterman's challenge to parallel park a car in a tight space. Reed bumps his car several times into other parked cars, after Letterman takes a few shots at his school.

"I've never heard of the California University of Pennsylvania," Letterman quips. "There is a California Pennsylvania? I'll be darned."

After the car-parking is over, Letterman pulls out a map of Pennsylvania showing the small town circled in red along the Mon south of Pittsburgh.

Letterman said - probably jokingly - that his show's switchboard "lit up" from people wanting to know more about the borough.

What the show didn't mention was the town was founded and named after the 1849 California Gold Rush.