Ryan Loew

For degawëno:da’s, paddling the length of the Allegheny River over the course of four months this year was to be a “witness to the raw element of the natural world.” The roughly 300-mile trip began on May 18 at the river’s headwaters near Coudersport, Pa., and ended on Sept. 21 by the Point State Park fountain in downtown Pittsburgh. The 49-year-old New York resident is a member of Defend Ohi:yo’, a grassroots organization committed to protecting the Allegheny River and all waterways. “Ohi:yo’” translates to “good river” in the Seneca language. The Allegheny and Monongahela rivers form the beginning of the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, and much of the Allegheny River flows within the Ohio River watershed. Sometimes alone on legs of the journey, other times accompanied by fellow paddlers, degawëno:da’s said the trip was to call attention to the need for vigilance in protecting the region’s waters and to “give people an opportunity to acknowledge their natural surroundings.” Along the river, degawëno:da’s saw not only beauty but also industrialization and, on many portions of the trip, he said he felt his ancestors traveling along as well. “I had a few instances where they revealed themselves in different ways.” He hopes to follow up with many of the people he met along the journey, continuing to impress upon them the importance of protecting the waterway and advocating that it have the same rights to safety and well-being that humans have.

Crystal Jennings’s life was thrust into Pittsburgh’s affordable housing saga in July 2015. Her father, Jerome, was one of more than 200 Penn Plaza residents forced to move from the apartment complex. At the time, her father was in failing health. He died of liver cancer in May 2018, a little more than a year after being displaced. However, Crystal’s ties to the Penn Plaza community would only grow stronger over time. She is a core organizer for Penn Plaza Support and Action and helps take care of former residents as if they’re family. It can be as simple as a phone call to check in, Crystal said. But as displacement often separates residents from amenities that were once in walking distance, she routinely helps former residents with tasks like going to the grocery store or the doctor. She’s also helped residents move, sometimes multiple times. For about six weeks, Crystal was paid through grant funding. But much of her work has been as a volunteer. “I tell myself if I just keep pouring into others, I’ll be blessed in the long run. I’ll be blessed on the back end,” she said. “And my blessings come in different ways, in different people.” Crystal’s story is the first episode in a new PublicSource documentary video series called The Only Constant Thing. It was Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, who coined the phrase, "Change is the only constant in life." And for many in the Pittsburgh region, change is a certainty. Redevelopment happens. Neighborhood cultures shift. What’s home today may not be home tomorrow. This series (produced in tandem with our Develop PGH coverage) will document what those changes look like at the personal level, through the voices of residents in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area.

Pushing past cold fingers and the occasional breeze that would flap her sheet music, Monique Mead visited the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill to grieve with others. Taped to her music stand was a photo of Leonard Bernstein and, joining it, this quote from the iconic musician: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." And so, on a recent Sunday afternoon at the site where 11 people were killed on Oct. 27, Mead did just that — playing her Italian violin as dozens of mourners quietly paid their respects. The 49-year-old Shadyside resident, who is the director of music entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music, was deliberate about the songs she played: two Jewish melodies, including the prayer "Eli, Eli,” as well as “Sunrise, Sunset” from “Fiddler on the Roof.” Mead considers Bernstein a mentor and inspiration. She said she toured with him while she was a 19-year-old student; he was conducting during the well-known Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Germany in 1989. "He inspired my career path," she said. Mead was raised “in a family as Mormon as they come,” she said, but as she immersed herself into the world of music, she found herself drawn to what could be considered traditionally Jewish music. At age 21, she learned that her maternal grandmother was Jewish and had fled Berlin to escape the Nazis. Her great-grandmother, who was also Jewish, had been an opera singer in Kiev. “My whole musical talent, I suppose, had come through that line,” Mead said. “The whole violin tradition that I grew up in was the Russian tradition, and these were Jewish-Russian musicians, and so I was just bonding with a tradition that was in the end really my own.”

Drey Frenzley has grown up just a few minutes’ walk from Sto-Rox Junior-Senior High School. The 17-year-old says he likes the close-knit community where he lives, but he describes it as “rough-ish” — not the safest place but still not as bad as the world perceives it. Drey is about to start his senior year at Sto-Rox and plays defensive tackle on the school’s football team. Watch Drey’s story and read more of our series Failing the Future: https://schoolfundingpa.publicsource.org/stories/two-adjacent-districts-different-academic-worlds-the-story-of-sto-rox-and-montour/

Since 2011, longtime Beltzhoover resident Natalie Thomas has been the caretaker of the Unified Positive Effect Community Garden at the corner of Climax Street and Estella Avenue. Thomas, 57, said the space used to be a jungle of overgrown weeds and grass that attracted neighborhood crime. Now people know not to “mess with” her garden, and she said she’s noticed a reduction in crime on the block. Whether it’s working with neighborhood kids to plant flowers or pulling out pesky weeds, hosting garden tea parties or scurrying door to door at local businesses to gather donations for gardening materials, everyone in Beltzhoover and nearby Allentown seems to know of Natalie and her positive personality. She’s a person who smiles with her whole face. She loves kids. She sings and writes poems about her garden. Natalie will chase you down the street, waving her arms and yelling “Hiiiii!” at the top of her lungs because she’s so excited to see you. This is her story.

Amherst Madison deckhand Ryan Gilleran describes life on a towboat pushing barges full of coal, and often other materials, up and down America's waterways.

Documentary filmmaker Tony Buba talks about his approach to his work and his connection to the community of Braddock, Pa.

Standing nearly 30 stories above downtown Pittsburgh, Al Williams — a third-generation ironworker with 36 years of experience — is in his element. The 54-year-old has logged roughly 70,000 hours working on countless structures around the city of Pittsburgh. That's included PPG Place, Consol Energy Center, the Liberty Bridge and now the latest addition to Pittsburgh’s skyline, the Tower at PNC Plaza.

Scores of Pittsburghers filled the North Shore Friday evening to greet a much-anticipated four-story inflatable duck. Artist Florentijn Hofman's Rubber Duck Project floated down the Ohio and Allegheny rivers Friday, kicking off Pittsburgh’s Festival of Firsts. The Rubber Duck Project launched with a party on the Roberto Clemente Bridge. The duck was expected to then be pulled by a tugboat to a nesting spot at the Point, where it will remain for about three weeks. Put on by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Festival of Firsts also includes premiers of theater, dance, music, performance and visual arts. It runs through Oct. 26. Video by Ryan Loew, with additional sound by Katie Blackley. Music by Podington Bear.

Brandon Boan, co-owner of the Tip Type letterpress print shop in Wilkinsburg, Pa., shares his thoughts on using and maintaining old pieces of equipment such as a linotype machine.

"It's like a marriage, you know," said Jomo Lucas, a laid-off worker turned boxing coach. "What you put into Martinsville is what you get out of it." Located in Southwest Virginia, Martinsville's population is declining, graying and growing poorer by the year; its unemployment rate is the highest in the state. But there's beauty in the landscape, loyalty from residents and hope for the future. This is part of a larger project about the loss of manufacturing jobs in Southwest and Southside Virginia. Photography by Jared Soares | Video by Ryan Loew