A Little of This, A Little of That

A sad note today: My deepest sympathies to the family of Frank Striffler, the McKeesport funeral director and entrepreneur, who died Sunday after an illness. There was a fine obituary in Monday's News (it doesn't seem to be online), while Francine Garrone wrote a obituary for the Tribune-Review.

Mr. Striffler was a regular fixture around town, and absolutely did not fit the stereotypical Hollywood ideal of a funeral director. Where popular culture depicts morticians as dour, unhappy, dark people, Mr. Striffler --- in my experiences --- was outgoing, friendly and funny.

Nothing illustrates that better, perhaps, than Frank Striffler's favorite color, a joyous green hue that has long been the trademark of his company's funeral homes, hearses and limousines, and even his own wardrobe.

I know that some people found his sense of showmanship off-putting, but I found him charming, with a talent for putting grieving families and friends at ease. After all, if you're coming from a Judeo-Christian tradition, then a funeral isn't a time to be sad, is it? And even if you don't believe in an afterlife, shouldn't a funeral be a time to celebrate the life of the deceased, as well as mourn their loss?

Mr. Striffler also should be commended for long being a supporter of charitable organizations in the Mon-Yough area and a booster of civic activities in and around Our Fair City.

A funeral Mass is to be held tomorrow morning at St. Martin de Porres Parish, St. Peter's Church, with interment to follow in North Versailles Township. Requeiscat in pace, Mr. Striffler.

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I don't know much about art, but I do know that my alma mater is erecting an appalling piece of garbage on its campus. It looks for all the world like something constructed out of Lego people, or possibly model railroad parts.

It might be tolerable if it wasn't so large ... but it's 100 feet tall and is going to be garishly colored. That's as tall as a six-story building. And they're erecting it along Forbes Avenue near the intersection with Morewood Avenue, so it will be impossible to miss.

Oh, well. Maybe it will take some of the attention away from the student union and the theater arts building, two structures that lack only fasces, concrete eagles and balconies to have been right at home in Albert Speer's plans for Berlin, circa 1937.

The dean of the fine arts school calls the sculpture in question "an optimistic piece of work, about being ambitious." Yes, but to paraphrase John Kerry, one can be ambitious and wrong, too.

Others are justifying it on the grounds that the artist is an alumnus of the college, and that he deserves the college's support. Perhaps, but the campus is not a refrigerator that must be used to display art work from its children.

In fairness, there's a lot of ugly art on that campus, like the orange abstract blocks in front of the engineering and computer science building. Those are a product of their time (the 1970s) and I'm certain they were also hailed as optimistic, groundbreaking and ambitious.

This sculpture is also a product of its time, and is going to look just as out of date a few years from now. In 20 years, this giant piece of "art" will be looked at with the same disdain that people now look at those orange cubes. People will stare, shake their heads, and say: "What were they thinking?"

(Naturally, views expressed at the Almanac are not those of my employers, the management of KDKA, or the commissioner of the National Football League.)

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Speaking of new buildings, when in the name of Frank Lloyd Wrong did that massive shed go up along Walnut Street in Christy Park? I saw it for the first time the other evening.

It's next to an auto repair shop north of 30th Street. I assume it's going to be used for car repairs, but for a split second, I thought they might be opening an airport, and that it was going to be used as a hangar. Egad.

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Are you bugged by that automated voice that now answers "directory assistance" calls for Verizon? So was Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post. So are Verizon's operators.

As it turns out, the voice belongs to a real person named Darby Bailey, and the Boston Globe interviewed her about two years ago. (They wouldn't let her talk to Weingarten, who just demolishes the system and the company that sells it, as he often does.)

In that Globe story, by the way, a Verizon spokesman claimed that the system only fails when callers give it incorrect information: "You know, garbage in, garbage out ... People don't have good information."

Good plan. Blame your customers.

Out of the dozen times I've dealt with Verizon's automated directory assistance, I've only got the computer to give me a correct answer once. I felt like a child who had finally learned to use the potty when it happened.

I've been tempted to say really rude things to the computer prompts, or else to talk in nonsense words. But since Weingarten reports that actual human beings do listen to those calls, I'm glad I don't, I suppose.