More Pittsburgh

Here are a couple paragraphs I cut from my last column, all stuff about Pittsburgh… it just seemed like I was going a little overboard with that angle and needed to trim it back, but it’s all true…

Whole column again can be read one of them recently wrote me to discuss my different feelings about being an American expat living abroad and Pittsburgh expat, living in New Jersey.

That seemed insane at first, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I lie awake the night before closing on my first house, in New Jersey, because I felt like I was being unfaithful, abandoning the hometown to which I always thought I would return when it was time to settle down. I never had the same conflicted feelings about moving to China, because I knew it was temporary.

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Thanksgiving is always a veritable diaspora reunion, with people returning to Pittsburgh from all over. I have long looked forward to making the November pilgrimage across the Pennsylvania Turnpike from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, routinely stopping at a McDonalds filled with people decked out in Steelers gear making the same trek.