Pittsburgh and Western PA

After being in DC for a few days, I traveled back out west, not quite as far as Michigan and Indiana, but still about 4-5 hours west to the Pittsburgh area.

On Thursday evening, October 12th, we held a "Get to Know ISI" soiree at Carnegie Mellon University. It was a very poor turnout - only 3 students and 1 field rep from the Leadership Institute (David Beers) showed up. But, for the 5 of us, there was plenty of pizza (wow, I bought too much). And, the 3 students that did show up seemed very interested, and they even told me it's hard to get any conservative students out to any events at Carnegie Mellon. So be it. We tried. I left them with ALOT of ISI literature, so maybe they passed it out and some seeds are being planted.

After the event, David Beers and I grabbed a few drinks at a local spot in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh was very impressive to me. Very neat architecture, among the buildings and bridges (lots of bridges! and tunnels!)

The next day, I woke up and traveled north about an hour to Grove City College, where I had lunch with our ISI Group there, which is doing VERY WELL. Led by Professor Jason Edwards, a former ISI Salvatori Fellow and Douglas El-Sanadi, an ISI honors fellow, they have been reading like crazy. Only 6 months ago, I visited GCC and there wasn't very much happening with the group then. But, then Dr. Edwards got involved. Over the summer they read Science, Politics, Gnosticism by Eric Voegelin and Visions of Order by Richard Weaver. (That is some really tough reading!) Now, they are becoming engrossed with The Superfluous Men: Conservative Critics 1900-1945, which is a collection of essays from the "conservatives" before the conservative movement began in 1945. And, they are also reading one of the most recent titles from ISI Books, Look Homeward, America! by Bill Kauffman.

This was my second visit ever to Grove City College. I love the place. It's a conservative's dream when it comes to the education and the culture. And, these students and professors are taking it up a notch intellectually. Impressive. I drove back to Pittsburgh after our extended lunch meeting and got ready for the Philadelphia Society's regional meeting there. More on that in the next post.