Amy Grant benefit concert for Habitat for Humanity of Allegheny Valley

As part of the Grand Opening celebration of the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills there will be a benefit concert for Habitat for Humanity on Thursday, September 8 from 8 to 9 PM. Amy Grant will sing "God Bless America" as part of the Galleria dedication at 5:30. The concert, "An Evening With Amy Grant", sponsored by Lite Rock 92.9 WLTJ, will be at 8:00 PM in a tent near entrance 5.

Tickets are available online at http://www.pittsburghmills.com/static/doc_033697.jsp.

The Pittsburgh Mills has been a good partner with Habitat for Humanity of Allegheny Valley since the local Mills development commenced. The local Habitat affiliate dedicated its most recent home on September 3 (some pictures of the home are available here, and the text of the Valley News Dispatch report of the dedication is available here).

Come out and support the work to end poverty housing around the world.

The Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills is easily reached from exit 12A off the 28 Expressway.

File under: Tarentum, Habitat, Pittsburgh Mills, music

Technorati : Amy Grant

Zoundry Blog Writer has been updated

Following up on my earlier post, Zoundry Blog Writer has issued an updated version (0.9.123). Installation over the older installation went very smoothly for me.

The folks at Zoundry have clearly been listening to suggestions from their users, as they have introduced a number of changes and improvements.

They have done a lot to make it easier to add tags. I had to fish around in the software to figure out how to make tags the way I have been doing it. Blogger does not make categories available but before this update to Zoundry Blog Writer I found a suggestion to use del.icio.us tags to create categories. Any reader can see the current tags I have for this blog at http://del.icio.us/parkbench, and can then search within the tagged blog entries using the del.icio.us index of blog entries. To create the kind of tags I want to use I just have to highlight the text to be tagged, right-click and choose "Link to ..." on the context menu, then select "Custom tag space" from the next menu. In the window that pops up, I need to replace the text "http://url/to/tagspace" with the url for the del.icio.us tag. This is a lot easier than the two-stage editing process I have been using, where I compose in Zoundry's Blog Writer, post the entry to my blog, then go back in with Blogger's editor to clean up my code.

Zoundry has a feature in this new version for posting in draft mode to Blogger. When the user starts to post a blog entry, there is a pop-up window with many options, and one of the options is to post in draft mode. This will be a useful feature that makes up for the ongoing limitation in the software that it is not possible to edit html code from within the software. Older versions of the software allowed a user to view the html, but it has never been possible to edit the code from the window in which html code was shown.

Other options on posting include sending weblog pings and trackback pings, all of which will simplify the process of posting.

There are now edit fields for TITLE and CLASS attributes in images and links. This is a great improvement. One of the highly contentious issues in W3C compliance has to do with correct use of the ALT attribute for images. Technically, the ALT text is supposed to be displayed when the image is not displayed. TITLE is the attribute that is intended to be used for pop-up tooltips. Microsoft's Internet Explorer (with which many users are very familiar) uses the ALT attribute for both purposes. FireFox shows a tooltip for an image with a TITLE attribute, but needs a special plug-in if the user wants the ALT text to be displayed over an image that downloaded correctly.

You can download Zoundry Blog Writer here. It is still free - an improved product for the same great price. The product is still in beta, but is steadily improving.

File under: blogs, software, Zoundry, folksonomy

Don't make us sing this song

This morning at Central Presbyterian Church in Tarentum we used the video "Don't Make Us Sing This Song" made by Ecclesia Houston where Chris Seay is pastor. The song in the video is sung by Lori Chafee (Waterdeep) and is based on the words of Psalm 137; the video features scenes of hurricane survivors and is from VJ Travis Reed (highwayvideo.com). The video is quite moving.

I learned about the video from TallSkinnyKiwi here. The video itself is free to use and the zipped video file can be downloaded here.

The disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina looks like it may lead to the largest internal displacement of US refugees in history.

In addition to encouraging monetary gifts through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the Deacons of Central Presbyterian Church are sponsoring the assembly of kits for people being relocated to shelters. The Personal Health Kits will contain basic personal hygeine items; the Hope-In-a-Box kits for children will include similar items as well as a few specific small toys and writing/drawing materials. Members of the church are invited to bring the items to the church where the deacons will assemble the various kits and ship them to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance for distribution.

File under: Hurricane Katrina, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Houston, Tarentum, Church.

Habitat for Humanity to dedicate house in Tarentum

This Saturday, September 3, 2005 at 3:00 PM Habitat for Humanity of Allegheny Valley will dedicate a new house constructed at 134 West Ninth Ave. in Tarentum.

The Rev. Dr. James Legge, president of the local affiliate will lead the dedication service. Following the service there will be an open house from 3:30 to 5:00.

This is the sixth project completed by the local affiliate. It was funded by a major donation from the Mills Corporation in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Mills development.

Donations to Habitat for Humanity of Allegheny Valley can be sent to P.O. Box 147, Natrona Heights, PA 15065.

The Pittsburgh Mills will have a Grand Celebration on September 8 including a concert by Amy Grant at 8 PM for the benefit of Habitat for Humanity of Allegheny Valley. Tickets are available online at www.pittsburghmills.com.

File under: Tarentum, Habitat, Pittsburgh Mills

pastoral letter to Presbyterian congregations after Hurricane Katrina

A pastoral letter to Presbyterian congregations included excerpts from an email message from the Reverend Jean Marie Peacock, Vice-Moderator of the 216th General Assembly (2004), and associate pastor of the Lakeview Presbyterian Church in New Orleans. She reports that she is safe at the home of her parents but that she believes that her home and the whole neighborhood of the church she serves is under water. The letter, signed by Rick Ufford-Chase, Cliff Kirkpatrick, and John Detterick, asks Presbyterians to be in prayer and thanks them for what they are already doing to help in the aftermath of Katrina.

The letter encourages Presbyterians to use the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance website for daily situation reports and guidance for how to be of help.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has also established an online forum that can be used as a contact point for Presbyterians displaced by Hurricane Katrina. While this may be of very limited use to people without electricity or the internet, it may become more useful as refugees are brought out of the disaster zone.

File under: Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans.

Memories of Tarentum a source of hope

Walter Harrison, the President of the University of Hartford, in Hartford, Connecticut has memories of growing up above Harrisons Mens Wear in Tarentum when it was on Fifth Avenue. The family business had been owned by his grandfather, then by his father and uncle. He left Tarentum in 1964 to attend Trinity College in Hartford.

His memories of the unique character of a small town with streets lined with hard-working small businesses inspired his leadership of the University of Hartford's involvement with the revitalization of the Upper Albany Avenue neighborhood in Hartford.

Memories of Tarentum inspire the transformation of a neighborhood in another state. Those of us in Tarentum should also allow those memories to energize us in our efforts for the development of Tarentum.

Harrison's story was originally published in the Hartford Courant, but is no longer available on that site. The column was republished in the University of Hartford's Observer Magazine, and is available here.

File under: Tarentum, renewal, history, hope

New Tarentum branch is part of bank optimization strategy

First Commonwealth Bank today announced its agreement to sell five five branch offices and a drive-through location to Clearfield Bank and Trust Company. The same press release describes First Commonwealth's expansion in other areas as part of an optimization strategy.

Its new branch at the Village at Pittsburgh Mills in Tarentum opened on July 14, 2005 as part of the same optimization strategy.

File under: Tarentum, bank, Pittsburgh Mills