WASHINGTON — As an educator and basketball coach in New Castle, Ralph Blundo guides teenagers through the stormy years of adolescence by teaching healthy habits and providing answers, reassurance and certainty.
After a year marred by the COVID-19 pandemic and political instability, Mr. Blundo said, preparing kids for the future is more challenging than it’s ever been. “Allow the big people to handle the big people problems,” he tells them. “You focus on what’s really important, which is your education and the sport that you’re playing.”
President-elect Joe Biden will take the oath of office Wednesday in Washington, where as many as 15,000 National Guard troops will assemble to prevent insurrectionists from breaching the U.S. Capitol again. Democrats have gained control in the new session of Congress, but their House and Senate majorities are slim. Last Wednesday, the House voted to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time in 13 months. Inside the Beltway, political strategists are bracing for further divisions.
In the Pittsburgh region, the torrent of national bad-news headlines resonates in different ways. Mr. Blundo’s job has been to translate these moments while keeping his students’ lives in the classroom and on the court as normal as possible.
“You have two different groups of people looking at the same thing and seeing something completely different,” he said. “I don’t know how you fix that, but it’s a job that needs done.”
It’s always hard to know how much kids are paying attention to the news, Mr. Blundo said. “We try to keep them informed, but a lot of the things they’re seeing are not good,” he said. His players and students “have had so much taken away from them” because of the pandemic.
Mr. Blundo wants leaders in Washington with a “moral compass,” he said: “Something for our young people to see: being truly positive, people working together, being tolerant and understanding differences and political positions and philosophies.”
“We need to move forward in a positive way and somehow, some way, heal this divide in our country.”
Ahead of Inauguration Day, Mr. Blundo was one of a group of people contacted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to put into their own words their daily hopes, fears and challenges heading into 2021. Mr. Biden has promised a period of unity and healing, but what does that mean to small business owners, a front-line health manager, a former refugee, an artist, a military veteran and a college student?
See what they have to say.
The front-line health care worker
As manager of the Emergency Department at Allegheny General Hospital, nurse Kathy Sikora has shouldered the responsibility of keeping those around her safe from a highly infectious virus that has surged through the region several times.
She manages nearly 300 employees in Allegheny General Hospital’s emergency department. Even with sufficient supplies of personal protective gear, the threat of the virus always looms. It falls to Ms. Sikora to keep the staff in good spirits and focused each day.
“The worry will still be there — and it will be throughout my entire life, at home and at work — until this crisis has passed,” she said. “The challenge has always been keeping ourselves sane in a really insane situation.”
But it’s in dark moments that Ms. Sikora’s optimism shines through. “We will come out on the other side of this stronger than we were before,” she tells her employees.
She shares a similarly hopeful view of the country. The pandemic has shown the power of local communities working collectively to shape the future, she said, if elected officials listen more to their constituents and “lead from within and not from above.”
“We need to get really into the weeds, dig deep and find sustainable solutions,” she said. “I mean, it can’t be that hard. I do it every day in my workplace. We do it in our community. It can’t be that hard to do that!”
She added, “We just have to find our pride again. I really think we’re going to be better on the other side.”
The former refugee
Khara Timsina watched the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on CNN from Kathmandu, Nepal, nearly a decade before he sought refuge in the United States. He recalled the shock, the tears, the feeling of “civilization going down.”
“I did not see the recent incident differently,” he said, referring to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by a mob chanting anti-Semitic slurs, hanging nooses and attacking police officers. “It hurt me, and I was terrified.”
Mr. Timsina, who arrived in the United States in December 2009 among a tide of Bhutanese refugees, swells with pride for the country that welcomed him. “The world looks on us as a defender of democracy,” he said.
But he has seen its darker sides — sometimes in his daily life and sometimes in politics.
“There is racism very much deep-rooted and that will still remain as a challenge to overcome for everyone,” he said.
As executive director of the Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh, he wants a leader in Washington “who kicks aside the politics” and works with others to unify the nation.
“I hope that Americans will realize that the world looks on us as a defender of democracy,” Mr. Timsina said. “America is not like the one they saw with that incident.”
The county commissioner
Blair Zimmerman put in three decades at Cumberland Mine in Greene County before entering public service — first as mayor of Waynesburg, the county seat, then on the county commission.
He has served as a favorite source for national news networks swooping in to understand the politics of coal country, especially after Mr. Trump’s election in 2016. A mild-mannered Democrat, Mr. Zimmerman always has maintained in interviews and speeches at union rallies that he supports the coal industry, while working to build a more diverse local economy.
People want jobs, he reasoned, and coal simply won’t be around forever.
“Our tax base is very dependent on coal; we’re struggling,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “We need new manufacturing and industry. I’m a county commissioner. I can make some calls, but I need the influence of state and federal officials to help me.”
He added, “It should’ve been done 50 years ago.”
A more immediate concern, he emphasized, is making sure existing businesses can reopen safely amid the pandemic. And that depends on a successful vaccine rollout.
“I think we’ve had less than 100 vaccinations in Greene County, and some of the smaller counties have five times that,” Mr. Zimmerman said earlier this month. “So COVID is really on my mind a lot.”
The restaurant owner
Krishna Karuppiah is barely making ends meet these days. The co-owner of "Tamarind — Savoring India" restaurants in Scott and Cranberry, he had to close his third Indian restaurant, Tamarind Express, in the food court of the Highmark Building, Downtown, soon after the pandemic hit last March.
“Not everybody is willing to come out and eat these days,” he said. “Even though we have taken all the measures and sanitized our restaurants thoroughly, people are not convinced it is safe to eat out.”
While the government helped with a small business forgivable loan program, “that loan amount drains away quickly,” he said, especially after he was forced to eliminate lunch service and reduce dinner hours.
Mr. Karuppiah said he is making about 25% of what he usually brings in, surviving on deliveries to customers’ doorsteps with the help of Uber Eats and Grub Hub. He continues to employ his staff because he knows rehiring them would be a challenge.
“Ethnic restaurants have been hit even harder than some of the big chain restaurants,” he said. “Some people have misguided beliefs. They think all Indian food is spicy or that our restaurants are dirty and so stay away.”
Asked about government policies, Mr. Karuppiah said he would love to see a major economic rescue package for the service industry — the kind of legislation Mr. Biden, as vice president, championed for auto plants during the 2008 financial crisis.
“He saw that it did not fail and brought that industry back,” Mr. Karuppiah said. “I hope he will help the restaurant industry, too. I would like the new administration to bring us out of the deep hole we are in.”
The veteran
Megan Andros helps veterans build on their military experience and lead fulfilling lives and careers — sometimes with blunt messaging. She helped to start a 2017 Pittsburgh ad campaign targeted at employers: “Don’t Just Thank a Veteran. Hire One.”
Any roadblocks that veterans face today can be fixed with better coordination at the top and real action on the ground, said Ms. Andros, 37, senior program officer for Veterans and Military Families at the Heinz Endowments.
She notices the difficulties veterans face in dealing with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and beyond. Every federal agency must sit at the same table and work together to create a coordinated and easy-to-access system.
She wants the Biden administration to “recognize that veterans’ issues are human issues that require broad action on behalf of the federal government,” she said.
She pointed to a 2013 report from Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families, a Heinz Endowments grantee, that called for a national veterans strategy. “That call is as relevant today as ever,” she said.
Things are moving in the right direction, she said. The VA will implement the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act, passed by Congress last year to provide support to community organizations — on-the-ground groups that are delivering things such as legal, financial and transportation services not provided by the VA.
What she would tell Americans if she were given an inaugural platform: “I would remind all in our country that our nation was founded — and the laws that govern it were agreed upon — ‘in order to form a more perfect union.’”
“We are clearly still working toward that perfect union,” she said. “I would encourage all Americans to spend a bit of time thinking about their obligation — whether small or large — to achieving this goal.”
The small-business owner
Joel Burstein’s hopes and fears for the country exist through the prism of his leadership consulting business, Keep it Simple Training and Development. Since the pandemic hit, he said, the communication and collaboration skills he preaches are more in demand than ever after offices abruptly closed.
Managers have sought creative ways to keep employees engaged through remote meeting platforms, Mr. Burstein said. But sometimes that’s not enough.
“You miss the water-cooler talk, and the restroom talk, and the elevator talk,” he said. “These folks are so caught in the whirlwind of surviving their day, they’re not always seeing those opportunities.”
Much like remote work during the pandemic, Mr. Burstein said, the country’s fractured state of politics can seem too daunting to tackle. But in reality, he argued, it boils down to a failure to effectively talk to each other.
“I have liberal and conservative clients, and, candidly, we don’t have nearly the level of differences that the world may think we do,” he said. “Unfortunately, we spend too much time talking to people that think like us, and that gives us a false sense of knowledge that we think we know everything there is to know.”
Primarily, people want jobs, he said. They want steady incomes. They want to feel valued and feel like they have a purpose. Today’s social unrest, as with protests throughout history, stem from a basic lack of being heard.
“It is painfully clear that good leadership and bad leadership are equally effective,” he said. “We really have to start opening our minds and hearing things that make us feel uncomfortable and finding solutions that put us back on the right track.
“This is the land of opportunity, right?”
The actor
Patrick Jordan wasn’t expecting to become the host of a local web show in 2020, but that’s one of the many unexpected twists COVID-19 thrust upon him.
Mr. Jordan, of Point Breeze North, is an actor, founder and artistic director of barebones productions Inc. in Braddock and, most recently, the host of “Alone Together Pittsburgh,” a web show he started in March. It’s a place where members of the city’s creative community gather to talk about their struggles and what they’ve got going on in a world without live performances.
“Just doing that show and talking to different people, I realized it was every job, every workforce going through something similar,” he said. “But the entertainment and arts industry got rocked particularly hard.”
Last year was a professional “nightmare” for Mr. Jordan, a man with a 2-year-old daughter. He had a few commercials and TV projects lined up as an actor, plus a full theater season at barebones, that all dried up overnight.
Right before the pandemic, barebones hosted the first of its planned film series with a screening of “Pulp Fiction” catered by the restaurant Superior Motors. That also was quickly shut down, and Mr. Jordan said that barebones’ lobby is still full of merchandise from that event — a moment stuck in time.
Moving forward, he would like to see everyone do their part in curbing the spread of COVID-19 as the vaccine rollout continues.
“With the way a lot of people have handled this, the division in mask-wearing or not mask-wearing, the only thing that’s going to get us out of it is if everyone gets vaccinated,” he said. “I’m hopeful for that in the coming months.”
He also wouldn’t mind if the incoming president starts taking a more direct approach to helping struggling artists. One thought he has: direct representation for the arts community in the White House.
“It doesn’t get the respect from the government that other organizations do,” he said of the creative sphere. “It would be nice if there was a Cabinet seat for somebody from the arts. I’m not holding my breath for that, but that’s what I would like professionally from the next administration.”
The college junior
When Hannah Hassan chose to study ethics, history and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, she set her sights on public service — dreaming as big as the federal government.
Today, she conceded, she is a little more jaded.
She still hopes to pursue that path, maybe in the office of a mayor or city planner. “I’ve learned how important local government is,” she said.
But the tenor of American politics — the gridlock in Congress, the lack of empathy for others, the recent insurrection — has discouraged her.
“I’m not that old, but even I don’t remember it being this bad even five years ago,” she said. “We are living in vastly different realities from one another. My view of what America is is different from someone else’s view.”
She said she still believes the country can turn the corner, in part by fostering unity on the local and state levels. Other issues, like white supremacy and racism, will take a broader and perhaps more difficult, strategy.
“We’ve never fully dealt with some of the things our country was founded on,” she said. “I don’t think we can solve those on the local level. It’s going to take a national reckoning.”
The farmer
Like most other farmers, India Loevner was forced to take a step back when the pandemic upended food supply chains, putting a roadblock between consumers and her product: cheese.
“We really can’t do much in terms of sales,” said Ms. Loevner, owner of Goat Rodeo Farm & Dairy in Indiana Township.
Before the pandemic hit, she would share her cheese at large gatherings. Having a major city so close to her farm was a boon to business. She would hand out samples at grocery stores like Whole Foods. She would connect with customers at her distributor’s annual show, which was cancelled. The Pennsylvania Farm Show — usually held in January as an annual pilgrimage for the state’s farmers — canceled its in-person event this year and has gone virtual.
“There is going to be some sort of farm show, but it’s not the same as actually being there,” Ms. Loevner said. “We really miss being able to do all of those things. It’s really fun to get out and meet people and talk about the farm and our cheese and our goats.”
Farmers, however, are taught to be resourceful and look over the long term. In addition to the hard work, government policy can provide a boost. She received a state grant, before the pandemic started, to expand the capacity of her cheese-making equipment. Those upgrades are almost finished, she said.
She would like to see Washington move to practically address climate change, she said, given the myriad ways that farmers could be affected by droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme weather events. Small farmers would especially benefit.
“Being a business owner, I don’t like to get political. I don’t want to alienate anyone,” she emphasized. “Because we all have more similarities than we do differences.”
She hopes to have a thriving farm for her son, currently an agribusiness major at Penn State, to one day take over.
“We’re proud to be Western Pennsylvania farmers and to have a farm that is close to Pittsburgh,” Ms. Loevner said. “We’d really like to grow a successful business and preserve farmland and connect with other dairy farms and help to keep the dairy business in Western Pennsylvania.”
The artist
Before March, Cody Sabol, 25, of North of Huntington, was a live speed painter who made a living by showing off his artistic gifts at events and occasionally through commissioned artwork, particularly for Pittsburgh’s pro athletes, who seem to have a particular appreciation of his talents.
All those live events evaporated overnight due to the pandemic. With a 1-year-old son to provide for, Mr. Sabol quickly pivoted to focusing more on the projects that the likes of Steelers wide receivers Chase Claypool and Diontae Johnson asked him to do for them.
He found himself working 12 to 14 hours a day to make up for the lost wages from those live events being canceled. His family understood, but Mr. Sabol hopes he doesn’t have to grind as hard going forward as he was forced to in 2020.
“Last year, I was so overwhelmed and overworked, but I had to do what I could to financially support my family when I basically lost my job as a live speed painter,” he said. “… Physically, mentally and spiritually, I need to find more balance. To me, that’s the secret to keeping yourself together, maintaining all the different things you do with your life in a way that’s not overloaded on one side or another.”
Mr. Sabol hopes 2021 will be “a year of healing from 2020,” given the increasing distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and the transition to the Biden presidency.
At this point, he just wants a president who “is somebody to lead and rely on” and feels like as a country, “we’ve definitely gotten better in that department.”
“I’m just ready to be proud to be an American again,” Mr. Sabol said. “I just really want President Biden to speak confidently and speak hope into our nation. I wouldn’t want him to do anything other than that for me.”
The activist
Rashad Byrdsong, 70, of Churchill, is well known as head of the Community Empowerment Association in Homewood. On Dec. 15, the local icon lost his 15-year-old grandson, Jafar Brooks, to gun violence.
Mr. Byrdsong is known for his commitment to social change in city neighborhoods — having created several initiatives against gun violence and other efforts to liberate and educate Black people in the city and elsewhere.
He watched the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in horror — but he also saw it through a historical lens of race.
“If Trump didn't do anything else, he pulled the covers off of what's always been going on here in this country,” Mr. Byrdsong said. “Black people have been seeing this, but for the whole world to see it, it's just very interesting. Now, white folks are talking about other white folks because of their behavior.”
He said white people “have to be able to deconstruct what is currently happening in this country, but also what has happened to Black people here to understand why things are the way they are.”
Mr. Byrdsong views the rise of white supremacy, racism and nationalism as a direct response to political gains Black Americans have made in recent years. The first Black president. Political candidates like Bernie Sanders who promise social justice. Even when Mr. Sanders lost the Democratic presidential primary, Black Americans used their electoral muscle in places like Georgia and Michigan to give Mr. Biden the White House.
To help heal the racial divides, Mr. Byrdsong said the government needs to foster “an economy that actually invests in the social fiber of our [Black] communities.”
“We need to be able to loan Black folks money, and be able to have true access to housing, good education, jobs and recreation, and training for young people,” he said. “Waiting for a proposal ain't doing it. We need to be able to pass down businesses to our children, manufacturing to our children, and ownership of land to our children.”
Daniel Moore: dmoore@post-gazette.com, Twitter @PGdanielmoore. Staff writers Joshua Axelrod, Arthi Subramaniam and Lacretia Wimbley contributed.
First Published: January 17, 2021, 11:00 a.m.
