Community Outreach -The Public is the Number One Enemy

“Beauty and the Beast” – Wilkinsburg, PA

The following poem was written about one year ago… It was written during an event that occurred on my street in Wilkinsburg… This event was the ultimate reason my wife and I decided to move out of Wilkinsburg… CBS WTAE – The following poem is dedicated to the memory of Bruce Kelly Jr. – I do not believe he deserved to die… I think it is sad that 24 highly trained police officers could not subdue a drunk man with a knife…

I am scared… Scared of the community I live in…

Not for the crime… The thugs drugs or gangs…
Not for the fact that a black bandana hangs…
Off the face of a young man… Inner city common unity…
The colors of my neighborhood… A forgotten community…

I dream of death and destruction… I dream of violent scenes…
Gun shots and crack rocks are the subject of ghetto dreams…
Abandoned homes like leaning gravestones… Waiting to be sold…
Outnumbering the homeless who are sleeping in the cold…

I am scared of a thin blue line… Thugs with authority…
Thugs that hate the general public and are willing to kill a minority…
Urban blight is a product of officially shunning gumption……
The goal is to board up enough to dilute the real corruption…

We are all enemies of the state… We are on the wrong side of the line…
We all share in the fact that our lives are worth less than a k9…
The first amendment is a joke… We only have rights in silence…
To open your mouth is nothing more than an invite to violence…

Police station threshold is where the daily war begins…
Inside the temple the soldiers discuss their win… The war against us…
The war against the general public… Public enemy number one…
Your money paid for the bullet that killed you… It even paid for the gun…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

 

“Green Fields” – The Barn at Soergel Hollow – Evans City, PA – This photograph was taken the week my wife and I were watching our friends farm… It was also the week we decided to get married… Also the place where we got married…

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Spring Beauty and Abandoned Blight

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Red branches reaching… The sky is sleeping… Gray skies and thunder rolling… The clouds are weeping… Saturday evening darkness leads to sunny Sunday mornings… Float away to greener lands away from city warnings… The trees reach out to me… Waving tiny branches… Always be alert to step away from shady glances… Understand empathy… Practice individuality… […]

Kicking Down Doors

“January Ice” – Whitney Avenue – Wilkinsburg, PA

When one door closes… Kick that mother fucker to the ground…
A mind is a terrible thing to hide behind a crown…
Dreaming minds define… Faded memories and signs…
Heat waves rise to distort the double street lines…

Abandoned houses in waiting against a blood red sky…
An evening of dreams lost when the mourning doves cry…
Under blue skies… Under the dust clouds calling…
Even an evil man cries to God when he’s falling…

Motivation is relative… Reincarnation a daily occurrence…
Hell is the most powerful of the man made deterrents…
Justice is a fallacy… Recovery is a monetary system…
Criminal is what they call it when we attempt to resist them…

Stand tall and prepare to defend the beliefs you find right…
Nothing in the world changes without a peaceful fight…
Heaven is in your mind… The sweet flesh beneath a rind…
We all cry to our own God when life has us in a bind…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

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Catching up to the Season

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I haven’t posted a gallery in quite some time… Here are a few of my favorite photographs from the past 3 weeks…   plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Bumblebee Climbing – When the Sun is Rising

Bumblebee on Clover” – Hamnett Place Community Garden – Wilkinsburg, PA

Together we care for the soil… We sing praises to the sky…
We give drugs to the low… Yet we take drugs to get high…
Another day of gray skies on a humid august morning…
If the birds stop singing we will listen to their warning…
Rain is clearly on the way… Dark clouds are on the horizon…
When the weather breaks the morning sun will guide them…
The sun is my guide… I will follow it away from the moon…
When the sun eventually sets our minds begin to swoon…
A steady soul prepares us for the chance to float away…
The ground we plant beneath our feet the reason why we stay…
Wait beneath the thunderhead and you’ll eventually find…
Water falls and thunder calls to those who waste their time…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

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Urban Birds – Shades of August

This gallery contains 9 photos.

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Day Before July – Chicory and Damselflies

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A gallery highlighting a morning walk… A simply beautiful walk… plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Red Currant – Pick the Berries

“Red Currant” – Garden Dreams – Wilkinsburg, PA

If you don’t pick the berries… The birds will surely get them…
What makes a cherry last is to harvest with the whole stem…
A Red Currant is slowly swaying in the steady winds…
An Apple is forbidden fruit… Forbidden like our sins…

A crying mourning dove signals from the power lines above…
Set against the cloudless blue sky… Summer scents of love…
The wind blows through the leaves and over the swaying trees…
If the flowers had wings they would visit the honey bees…

Red rust compliments the decaying copper green…
Straight corn-stalks supports the climbing green beans…
Bee balm flowering against a cloudless sky of blue…
A perfect night dreaming with the company of you…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

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Where the Sidewalk Meets the Road – The Earth Bleeds Orange

“Where the Sidewalk Meets the Road” – Mulberry Street – Wilkinsburg, PA – Acid Mine Drainage discharging from the buried foundation of a now demolished building…

Western Pennsylvania shows the scars of one-hundred years of industry… Some are obvious… Abandoned steel mills… Communities left in ruins… Others are not so obvious…

Coal mining was a massive industry in this state… A direct result of a lack of environmental restrictions within the commonwealth was a lack of remediation obligations after the venture was completed… Spent mines were filled with the byproducts of coal processing… Iron pyrite happened to make up a large percentage of this waste… When the abandoned mines eventually flooded… The water mixed with the iron and rusted… Add oxygen and you now have sulphuric acid…

Sulphuric acid… Bleeding from the earth… Where the land will allow it is often hidden by the very people we expect to protect us… But in urban areas where land is at a premium… There is no hiding it… And sadly… There is no money to remediate it… It just continuously flows out of the ground and down the street side… Eventually running through a small hole drilled in the side of the storm sewer… And right down into Nine Mile Run… Which flows into the Monongahela River… Which becomes the Ohio River… And then the Mississippi River… And ultimately the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean…

Among the many colors the earth bleeds… One of the most destructive… And also the most common… Happens to be orange…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

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Abstract Portrait – A Child’s Breath

“A Child’s Breath” – Wilkinsburg, PA – Children are playing in my front yard… Blowing bubbles and laughing… As I stood there with my camera… I suddenly realized that inside of each of those bubbles was the breath of the child that created it… Set free to float across the neighborhood… Waiting for a place to settle down… I had to capture the moment… An abstract portrait of the neighborhood children… A child is a seedling… A grownup is a tree…
A seed that is planted will eventually grow free…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

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