Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 11

nnn -j r- i 1 .1 I vSv John HellerPost-Gaette LJP 1 I Jeff Campbell, left, and Bill Baierl arm-wrestle for the title "Rascal of the Year" at the second annual Rascals' Ball. Baierl won. By Mike Pellegrini Post-Gazette Staff Writer It's Seven years ago, Dan Morrison invited some friends to a restaurant to distract him from his sorrows after a woman jilted him. Taking their cue from Morrison, the men no pesky women were allowed smoked fat cigars, sang silly songs and called themselves Rascals, Rogues and Rapscallions. Thus began The Kingdom of Rascaldom, a realm of inspired merrymaking and enlightened looniness that persists to this day.

"Rascaldom is nothing less than my vision of The Kingdom of God," says Morrison, who is tall and boyish-looking at 34 and is, as might be guessed, the son of a Protestant minister. In an age of declining church attendance, disbanding bowling thing leagues and depopulated social halls, Rascaldom is on the rise. Two Rascal "lairs" have been chartered in Pittsburgh and Roanoke, and a third is expected to form here by the end of the year. At quarterly meetings in a local restaurant, Morrison and his minions, in the words of Rascaldom's constitution, "find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the heroic in the mundane, the historic in the forgotten." So, Rascal functions have a focus. Before each meeting, selected members academics predominate are asked to research a topic, person or event.

"For many people, it is a revelation that the whole universe will unravel if you pull a single thread," Morrison says. Consider what was in store for Greg Scheer, music director of Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Oakland, after he accepted the assignment of finding out all there was to know about Burgettstown. The first people he called on were members of the Burgettstown Historical Society. They spoke of the role the town played in the Whiskey Rebellion, and the bright future it would have once a sewerage system were installed. Scheer, though, became more interested in the town's Italian coal miners.

That led him to Caesar Grossi, the composer who worked in the molybdenum plant. Scheer learned that Grossi, who had studied composition in Rome, had recently been fired as the choir director at the local Catholic church. Upon further investigation, Scheer decided Grossi had gotten a raw deal. Meanwhile, a dispute between the owners of the town's hardware store and auto dealership began boiling over. For years, the store owner had contested the auto dealer's attempts to open a road behind his establishment.

Now the auto dealer was retaliating by accusing the store owner of violating a livestock ordinance by keeping a Dr. Pepper-swilling pig on his premises. Scheer, now joined by Morrison, began videotaping a town at war and, from 50 hours of tape, fashioned a 30-minute program that later aired on Pittsburgh's public cable TV network. Epilogue: The auto dealer prevailed in court, and the Rascals took steps to safeguard Grossi's legacy which encompasses everything from honky-tonk to classical to church music. The choir of Bellefield Presbyterian recently performed one of his pieces, and Scheer is cataloging his work so it can be made available to other groups.

Also, proceeds of the recent Rascals' Ball will be used to establish the Caesar Grossi Music Archives in the Burgettstown Library. "He had worked for the church for 50 years and had never received any recognition," says Morrison, describing Grossi's oeuvre as "good, serviceable music." "What I love so much is that the moment he was rejected, we stepped in and elevated his life and his art." It was, after all, the rascally thing to do. To Haitian music and African drumming, they celebrate the overthrow of dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Sipping wine and puffing Punch Chateau cigars, they learn about Moses Gale, the inventor of a natural gas-fired cigarette lighter in 1872. As "Far Side cartoons flash on a wall, they explore the endur ing persistence of Dante in American popular culture.

And to the strains of music written by a classically trained composer who spent most of his life in a molybdenum plant, they Pittsburg!) J)ost-6a2cttc Monday, March 11, 1996 B-l savor semisweet tales from Burgettstown, Washington County. These Rascals, Rogues and Rapscallions meet quarterly for research, revelry As can be seen, more than lost love was on Morrison's mind when he invited his friends to that evening of revelry long ago. Occupying just as big a place in his thoughts was the sorry state of social intercourse in the United States, especially for men. "If you go to a pub or bar in Europe, you find men singing to gether," says Morrison, who teaches philosophy at Carlow College and is a writer for the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. "Here, they re drinking beer and watching television.

And I al ways feel the parties I go to are inchoate. I want to bring a sense of coherence and unity to them." INSIDE Manatees fall victim to modern times Tracey Welborn in "Cosi" BRADENTON, Fla. Do as I say; not as I did I here walking about in Manatee County, driving down Manatee Avenue, past places called Manatee Convention Center, Manatee Eye Clinic, Manatee Paper Company and Manatee Termite and Pest Control and realizing there are more places named for the manatee than there are manatees left in the world. One lives in the aquarium at the South Florida Muse By Kathleen Kernicky Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel um here. He slides around the water, rolling like a big log, gulping lettuce as he goes, and people look down or parents across America, it's time to wake up and smell the reefer.

1 from the railings at him with friendly and bemused expressions. His name is Snooty, and he'll be 48 in July, which makes him less than ancient but far from green, Maniuana use is growing like a weed among middle- and high-school ana ne never seen a manatee since he was id months old, when he was culled for this exhibit. "He probably thinks he's a person," said Samantha Deckert, a biology major at WALKABOUT DIANA NELSON JONES Manatee Junior College and his handler at the museum. "It's all he's ever been around." From the underwater viewing area, where his granite-colored body is magnified through glass, you can see Samantha's hand pop below the surface with a piece of apple, and his snout Despite flaws, Pittsburgh Opera 's revival of Mozart 's Cosi fan tutte" is worth see- ing. MUSIC B-2.

Kim Fields Freeman faces the facts of life. TVB-6. From parenting to partner-ing, Life Support explores contemporary lifestyle issues. This week's lineup: 1 Today A sense of be-longing should go beyond the workplace. B-3.

Tomorrow Husband and wife running at different speed can 't find common ground. Wednesday Going to extremes for love. Thursday Giving thanks for Dad's gift of dreams. ALSO INSIDE Dear Abby B-3 Kids Corner B-4 'rHoroscope B-5 Television B-6 students. Yet parents, many of whom sang "don't bogart that joint" while experimenting with drugs in the 1960s and '70s, don't want to believe their children are getting stoned, studies show.

Fewer, still, know how to handle a dilemma unique to baby boomers: How to convince their children not to light that joint when so many moms and dads have smoked marijuana themselves. Marijuana use among teen-agers leaped from 22 percent to 38 percent in the past four years, according to a report last week by Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Of 900 Earents included in the survey, 60 percent ac-nowledged using marijuana at some point in their past Still, three out of four parents said they did not want their children smoking pot, and only 14 percent thought their child had experimented. Should you tell Junior the truth about your days in a purple haze? "For a lot of parents it's easier to say, 'I never did We recommend being truthful," says Steve Dnistrian, senior vice president at Partnership for a Drug-Free America, who says baby boomer parents are showing a "classic case of denial" in dealing with their children's drug habits. SEE POT.

PAGE B-2 come up to meet it. It's startlingly incongruous to see a huge creature take so gently a tiny bit of food from a human hand. When he swims toward where you're standing, you can look up and see him in poignant detail: his body's guard hairs, its scraps and splotches, his eyes like daisies, the straight, short whiskers all over his snout and the nose holes that open out when he surfaces. Beneath the ungainly hulk he carries, he is beautiful the way the Elephant Man is beautiful, but his life is a Pvrrhic victorv. He lives in a tank and his name is un dignified, kiddie-ish.

By proclamation, he was named, in 1979, tne mascot ot Manatee uounry. anoory me mascot. I don't know whether any other tourist's heart wrenched, but mine did as I walked away. He's the only manatee I can be assured of seeing during my visit to Bradenton, but he doesn knoif what being a Associated Press In the past four years, mariju4na use among teens has jumped 4 from 22 percent to 38 percent, according to a recent report from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. SEE WALKABOUT, PAGE B-2.