Diane Katz and her children recycling.
Tyler Moloney lives in the South Side Slopes and calls the Black Forge Coffee House, a heavy metal-themed coffee shop in Allentown, a home away from home.
He grew up listening to classical music and discovered his love for heavy metal when introduced to the band Disturbed. “I’ve been a metalhead since I was in high school. It started as the rebellion thing, as it usually starts out as, but the more I’ve dived into it, the more I found a quality musicianship in metal that I haven’t heard anywhere else.”
One of Tyler’s favorite bands is a death metal group called The Black Dahlia Murder from Detroit. He describes their music as “very aggressive and their songs have a good atmosphere. The storytelling involved is exquisite.”
If he wasn’t listening to metal, he’d be listening to classical, jazz and underground rap. “I honestly have thought that everything else is distinctively inferior.”
Tyler is currently working on a project called The Extreme Metal Entity to promote and build awareness for the underground metal scene. He says Pittsburgh has a lot of potential to be a hotspot for this music. “I want to help promote the best bands who could possibly have a future and find bands who want to come to Pittsburgh and take them to the right people who could treat them the best.”
Emily and one of her sons at home.
Nancy Chubb and Pete McQuillin, founders of Penn Forest Natural Burial Park.
Bernard James of the Hill District, 69, believes positivity and spirituality are the keys to a happy life. He says his biggest goal in life is “to be pleasing to the Lord,” and he believes Jesus is the key to having an enjoyable life. “Without Jesus being in your life, you can’t enjoy life 100 percent. … Jesus makes the whole difference. I have joy everyday. I’m not afraid to die. I know if I die, I am going home.”
Bernard says he lives every day being joyful and kind to others. He makes a point of frequently talking to the friends he grew up with, and he tries not to mind problems in his life such as arthritis. When he was young, Bernard was a runner and swimmer. It bothers him that he can no longer do those activities. However, “it is not the problems that are bad,” he said. “It is how you handle problems.”
He says the Hill District has transformed over the years, noting increased violence. Bernard describes his community as unstable and with described frequent street fighting in the past five years.
“It has changed a lot. The problem here is there’s too much killing, too much shooting. … On the subject of violence, Bernard recalls the MLK riots in the Hill District. “This street right here [Centre Ave.]: in 1968, we did a lot of rioting. Robbing the stores. I didn’t do any burning, but I was in the stores getting the food. … Most of this street was set afire because of [the assassination of] Martin Luther King. He got shot and they went wild.”
According to the Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh’s “worst day of rioting” took place on April 7, 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Bernard was 19 years old in 1968, and he says that apart from the riots, people generally did not fight or shoot one another at that time.
He did not always have the positive mindset he has today. He says his greatest struggle growing up was being illiterate in a society in which education is essential. In school as a child, Bernard was overlooked. He sought attention by acting out, and he recalls making a teacher angry. Many of his teachers disciplined him for misbehavior rather than guiding him through his struggles.
Determined to learn how to read, he spent more time outside and used public transit as a guide, routinely taking the same buses. However, Bernard never fully overcame his illiteracy, and he still has difficulty spelling.
“I thought in order to make it, you had to read,” he says. “Those were some sad years for me. I never really learned how to read fluently, but I let the Lord be who he wanted to be in my life. He taught me that he had a purpose in my life, so I had to learn my spiritual purpose, and that gave me joy.”
Belinda Faulk’s life plays with a delicate balance: health struggles pull her down while her family lifts her up.
Belinda, a 54-year-old Brentwood resident, has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). She says it’s from smoking. She’s been smoking since she was 12 years old.
“It is just shutting my life down. I’m a walker, I like to walk, and I can’t do that anymore. I have to keep stopping every few steps trying to breathe,” she said.
She experiences depression as a result. “Some days I get up and I don’t want to be here. I’m struggling so hard, fighting the cigarettes. I don’t want to smoke. I’ve come down to two or three cigarettes a day.”
She often wonders what life would be like without smoking. Her dream is to spend even more time with her grandkids. “I don’t want a billion dollars. I just want to get well for my grandkids.”
She describes her grandson Tarrin as a piece of work. He was outside with her the day we met, enjoying the unusually warm Pittsburgh weather. Belinda says he is loving when he wants to be. She enjoys helping him learn to count, color and put puzzles together.
Belinda has six children and all but her youngest have children. She tells me her youngest son is gay and that she worries about his safety because of it.
“I pray for him all the time now because a lot of people don’t like gay people and are doing crazy stuff to them. I think I might love him even more because he is gay. I’m proud that he came out with it and didn’t hide it or move to a different city.”
— PublicSource intern Chloe Jakiela
Belinda Faulk and her grandson Tarrin.