I don't know if this will ever see the light of day. It's October 27, 2018 and I woke up to the news of a mass shooting at a synagogue 6 miles from my apartment. Truth be told I had never heard of the "Tree of Life" synagogue until this morning, despite having done several walks through Squirrel Hill and Shadyside both with friends and for the annual ten commandments walk.
I say all this because this shooting didn't directly impact me. I say all this because while it had nothing to do with me, it's greatly impacted my city, some of my friends and my nation. There's something incredibly surreal about seeing every major news outlet you follow talk about streets you've walked in relation to a horrendous tragedy.
Today I walked the streets of Downtown quietly and mostly kept to myself, because the feeling I got this morning was eerily similar to a feeling I felt the morning after the Ariana Grande concert bombing in Manchester, England. If you're unfamiliar, I was on a 10-day workshop with the University of Salford Manchester and we were just wrapping up our stay when the bombing happened two miles from our hotel.
That bombing had nothing to do with us, or any of the lovely people we had met during our stay, but nonetheless we all mourned for this vibrant, cultural town where tragedy struck.
I said to several Pittsburgh outlets when they interviewed us - despite contributing nothing to the actual story - that Manchester is a lot like Pittsburgh. Manchester is at the tail end of a transition from industry to media making and culture. Pittsburgh has shifted to a meds-and-eds economy in a similar fashion.
In the case of the Tree of Life shooting this morning, this was a targeted hate crime by a wacko terrorist. Unnecessary, loud and senseless. There are similarities in both instances, but they were completely different motives, and different results.
I talked a lot in Manchester about how resilient the people there are, and how amazingly homey it felt in only 10 days. I drew all manner of parallels, but I did resolve that that was something I could leave. Horrible as it may sound, that was something I could isolate in my mind as a particular time, place and stage.
Pittsburgh, however, is and always has been my home.
Reading through Facebook today has been an exhausting venture. Both Pittsburgh natives and converts standing on a pulpit preaching about this political agenda or that personal grievance or what have you. For my part, I haven't posted anything beyond a Facebook profile frame thing, and marking myself "safe" for family that lives too far away to understand that Pittsburgh isn't just one big ol' street.
I'm not going to preach politics to you. I will, however, say what I said to my roommate this morning: I don't get it. I simply can't wrap my mind around how someone is able to completely disregard and devalue life due to religious or ethnic traits.
I feel as a society we are failing to recognize peoples' complexity. Your neighbor and your waitress and your mailman have real hopes and fears and loves and goals and heartache. All too often we reduce people to their actions or words in our presence, or worse yet - box them into a single, jaded stereotype.
I don't care where you're from or where you're going, but I want you to know that you are loved by somebody. This world of ours is dark, but through the perpetual clouds of Pittsburgh shine a bright light with bright, lovely people.
I'm reminded, especially as people share the "Pittsburgh Strong" image everywhere, of a poem that a writer in Manchester penned in 2012. He read it at the vigil in St. Albert's Square following the concert bombing and it's called "This is the Place." While it's written for Mancunians and some of the cultural differences are, well, out there, it's comforting and it's strikingly relatable.
We will rise. This city of ours. Because it's what we always will do.
