Fresh Eyes at Pittsblog

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Save for a couple of months at the end of 2008, I have been writing Pittsblog more or less regularly since the start of 2004.  That's close to eight years.  Yikes.

That's the thought that occurred to me late last week in the wake of Pitt's demolition of the University of South Florida at Heinz Field.  That's not the first thought that occurred to me, of course.  I watched the latter part of that game on TV.  The first thought that occurred to me was this:  This is entertaining.  Pitt football is entertaining.    I don't want to get ahead of myself; this was just one game.  But in the more than dozen years that I've now lived in the Pittsburgh region, I can't once remember thinking to myself that Pitt football is entertaining.

That led to the second thought -- above.  The point is that I've been doing this (blogging here) for a long time, and along the way I've acquired habits and things that keep me seeing things in the same old way.  (And I've only been here since '98!)  Maybe Pitt football was entertaining before (at least, before Dave Wannstedt took over) - but I never saw it that way.  I couldn't.

So:

In some posts to come -- and to come infrequently; since the middle of last Spring, I have been away from Pittsburgh almost as much as I have been in Pittsburgh -- I'll venture some thoughts about Pittsblog themes (economic development in Pittsburgh, entrepreneurship, arts and culture) from the imagined perspective of a newcomer.  What does Pittsburgh look, feel, and sound like to someone who is just moving to town in late 2011, someone who is likely to have lived in a number of places previously, some smaller and more insular than Pittsburgh, and some larger on more cosmopolitan?  What are the opportunities and challenges facing the region today?