Jobless in Pittsburgh Area Do Fair Job as Craftsmen

--”It’s been a godsend, this show,” Danny Hoover, 37, said as she stood behind a long table covered with stained glass ornaments, windows and lamps. Her display was one of 75 jammed into a banquet hall at Pittsburgh’s Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall for the weekend. The crafts fair of hobby horses, crocheted dolls, ceramic dishes, quilted animals, potholders, Christmas ornaments and countless other items featured the handiwork of the area’s unemployed, who received the space at no cost. Danny Hoover and her husband, Richard, 33, a disabled foundry worker, sold about $200 worth of merchandise in less than six hours. The couple figured the money would help cover their glassmaking expenses and possibly September’s rent. The two-day fair was the first of its kind in the once-booming steel valley, where unemployment remains high. Marie Stankowski put her sales at more than $150. Her husband, Edward, an unemployed steel worker, had made dozens of wooden animals, pencil holders and knickknack shelves. “Some people are leery of giveaways like free turkeys or things from the food bank. Sometimes, people are too proud,” said Marie Stankowski, 49. “You’re less embarrassed to sell your handicrafts or wares.”

--A cat burglar with shifty yellow eyes has been prowling a suburban neighborhood of Nashville, but instead of filching gems and gold he mostly hits clotheslines for potholders and dusting cloths. The victims so far are still amused by the cat burglar--named Stymie, a 4-year-old jet-black Manx who drags the goods home between his legs. He disdains rodents, and now he has started to raise his sights from little valued dish towels and “rags to shirts, underwear and pants,” says owner Ernie Couch. “Last week we returned a lot of children’s clothes to one family he had been hitting pretty regularly,” Couch says. “They were glad to get their clothes back.” “It’s interesting,” said Couch’s 12-year-old son, Jason. “I sort of like it. If you’re gonna have a cat, you might as well have one that does something interesting. His main cycle is eat, sleep, steal.”

--Novelist D.H. Lawrence, dubbed “Dirty Bertie” when his book “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was labeled obscene, has won acceptance 55 years after his death with a place in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey in London.