An essential public service is hidden away in a Millvale alley.
Tucked into a corner behind the gallery and performance space The Maple Leaf, you’ll find a quiet, lovely courtyard with a phone mounted in the corner. If you pick up the receiver — which looks like the sort of phone you’d find hanging in your parents’ kitchen — you won’t hear anything. But you’re more than free to talk.
This is Pittsburgh’s Telephone of the Wind, designed to allow people to “speak” to departed loved ones. The first such unconnected telephone was installed in 2010 in Ōtsuchi, Japan; its creator, Itaru Sasaki, used it to convey his thoughts to a cousin who had died of cancer. Similar installations can be found in out-of-the-way spots around the world (there’s another in a Johnstown cemetery), often dedicated to someone’s memory…