Today we are cleaning up some old posts and making sure they see the light of day. Incredibly this post was started before Trump 2.0 began in 2025. At that time the United States government databases referred to the Gulf of Mexico as The Gulf of Mexico. The author began this thought before Juneteenth was erased as a National Holiday. The CBS Sunday Morning Clip was before the January 6, Insurrectionists were all pardoned for their storming of the US Capitol.

It’s Sunday in Phoebe’s house and the humans are engaged in CBS Sunday Morning. Engaged to the point where Phoebe and Crawford have noted new must visit places on their map. There was a solemn seriousness as we engaged in the conversation of what we dogs can learn from history. The United States of America was founded as a country not for all people. The laws of the land were not the same for all people. If you were a person of color(POC) in the United States you were a 2nd class citizen. If you were a native American you were never the first people here. What happened in the 1960’s was only the start of the next chapter.

We discussed being a modern ally for POC. We discussed how we were taught to treat everybody equally. We even discussed how that education led to us not talking about what actually happened to POC. While we as individuals may not have contributed to the racist history here in America, we need to acknowledge–that we have benefited from the racist systems that have been in place. We need to be allies to POC. Becoming allies allow us to begin to understand how this country’s reliance on slavery allowed it to be great. We need to understand how state and federal racist laws, deeds, guidelines and practices have led to the continued repression of POC.

http://museumandmemorial.eji.org/ in Montgomery

Treating POC as a 2nd class citizen has it’s own story in Pittsburgh. Mr. Crawford is named after a street, a Grill and Negro League Baseball Team. Why was Crawford named Crawford? He’s a woke dog. He wants to make sure everybody is on alert for the history that displaced the Lower Hill. The demolition of the Lower Hill comes with Riley history. It also was when the City of Pittsburgh decided it needed a new building for the Civic Light Opera. Later it housed an arctic bird named the Penguin who was admitted into the National Hockey League.

Looking at what happened to the Pittsburgh Hill District when the Civic Arena was built is one example of POC being displaced. The irony now is that the Lower Hill is still a missing link to the community. The Arena that was built for the Pittsburgh Penguins has since been torn down and the new redevelopment that was supposed to happen in 2010 never did. This is one reason the new arena is still ranked so low when it comes to fans and media. You pay to park and go right home. This community is still broken.

23. PPG Paints Arena, Pittsburgh

CAPACITY:

18,187

OPENED:

2010

Location: 6.7 (30th)
Amenities: 7.8 (15th)
Atmosphere: 7.2 (23rd)
Affordability: 4.7 (24th)

Fan score: 6.8 (24th)
Beat writer score: 6.1 (19th)
Overall: 6.7

Still one of the NHL’s relatively newer buildings, PPG Paints Arena nonetheless has lost its luster with Yinzers. Many reported in our survey that the new arena lacked the character of the old now-demolished Igloo and felt the area around the rink was never developed properly.