Today's my birthday, and it'll be the first to have come and gone without my Mom's traditional 5 a.m. call. That's the time of day I was born in 1966 at Magee-Womens Hospital, so that's when she'd choose to connect. Didn't matter where I was, how busy I was, how much I might've resisted or rolled my eyes as she'd wake me up to talk about the actual birth or simply stay silent and play a Serbian song ... it was always there.
Until today.
My Mom, Vlatka Petrovic Zgonc, passed in February. It's hurt like crazy ever since, but maybe more today than any other.
And that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? Because the ultimate connection that we have to our parents always remains at the origin point, always remains in ... oh, that whole thing about having created us. We're part of who they are or were. We're an extension. A continuation of a lineage. And the same, obviously, applies to our own children, grandchildren and other brethren.
When my brother recently visited with his baby daughter earlier this summer, I looked at her initially as I would any infant ... and then the way I would my own child:
DARA KOVACEVIC / DKPS
Proud uncle who legit wasn't responsible for that cap.
It's something else entirely, right?
About 20 years ago, I was in Cyprus, where my birth father was living at the time. I didn't know too much about him, and he wasn't the type to share. (World War II and the Nazis took both his parents at a young age.) One night, after he'd fallen asleep, his wife and I went through a collection of old photos. Not black and white, but brown and white, so really old. He was born and raised in Sarajevo, now part of Bosnia, and I was seeing his relatives/ancestors for the first time. Amazing experience ... and that was before the picture of a guy on a horse.
This guy didn't just look like me. He was me.
Both my father's wife and I were floored in the moment. She didn't know who he was, and there was no marking on the back. The surroundings, not least of which was that he was on a horse, strongly suggested this was the early 1900s. As did the guy's expression, which was that classic old-school super-serious staring straight ahead.
No, I don't have the pic. Wish I did. But I've got the moment. I've got the feeling I felt in that moment that ... man, we're all just one long thread, you know?
And on this day, I'm missing my own connection to that thread probably as much as the guy on the horse once did with his own mother.
Sorry for the personal detour this week. Wasn't really feeling like writing about the business. Wasn't really feeling like much of anything, to be honest. But I sat down to start typing up all our weekly updates for you, and this is what emerged.
PENN STATE 108, PITT 100
Our drive to achieve 1,000 total free subscriptions for Pitt and Penn State students still has the Nittany Lions in the lead, 108-100. We've reached the stage of distributing those free subs since we'd promised to do that for the first school to reach 100, and they both did that this week, thanks in large part to a bulk purchase of 38 for Pitt and one of 15 for Penn State.
If you know of a student who'd be interested, tell them to keep an eye on our Twitter account: @DKPghSports
If you'd like to contribute to the drive, email me directly -- DK@DKPittsburghSports.com -- and, after you hear my thanks, Dali will reach out with the rest. The cost of either one is $20 each. You can contribute as many as you'd like. Every contribution counts, large and small, and they're all appreciated.
MILITARY DRIVE, TOO
Our concurrent campaign to match 2,000 military veterans to free one-year subscriptions saw 17 purchased this week -- a bulk purchase of 15 and another of two -- for a total of 681.
We're hoping the pace picks up soon to have a shot at the target by year's end. We hit it last year on Veterans Day, fittingly enough, and that's coming up Nov. 11.
If you'd like to contribute, just like the college drive, email me directly: DK@DKPittsburghSports.com. The cost of these also is $20 each.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Ways to make the app experience even better:
A reader messaged me a couple days ago saying she loves the app, loves the site ... except that the type size was too small for her.
That reminded that I haven't mentioned here in too long that we have an easy remedy on the app: At the top right corner of every article, you'll see the standard sharing icon and, just to the left of it, a couple of capital As. Tap the latter until you have the type size you prefer.
• I realize this'll sound obvious, but ... use our menu! And yes, we do have a menu! It's those three stacked lines in the top right corner of both the app and site and, when it's tapped, it unfurls a super-organized collection of everything we offer. And I share this mostly because I'll occasionally hear from readers who ask how to find this or that from the home page itself, and it's way, way easier to just open the menu and go through there.
• Apple's new iOS 15 system that was released a few days ago is delivering gorgeous app alerts, which reminds me to repeat here that you can control which ones you do/don't wish to receive. Just go to your Profile -- top left corner -- thumb down to Notifications, choose Select, and you'll see the screen with all your team/type options.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 629,403, down 4.4% from a week ago. Our most-read original piece was my column from Green Bay on the Steelers' loss to the Packers, at 13,867. Broken down by team, articles on the Steelers brought 19.1% of our traffic, the Penguins 16.9%, the Pirates 11.4%, Penn State 7.5%, and Pitt 3.1%.
• Our new subscribers for the past week were at 23, up 1 from a week ago.
• Our new app downloads for the past week were 49 for Apple, up 9 from a week ago, and 73 for Android, up 6 from a week ago.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 155,651, down 6% from a week ago, including another record individual day of 36,325.
• Our YouTube video views for the past week were 62,624, down 82% from a week ago.
• We're at 42,449 (+110) followers on Twitter, we're at 37,142 (-6) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,532 (-10) followers on Instagram, and we're at 8,212 (+122) followers on YouTube. These figures are just for our official company accounts on each of those platforms, not including any of our individual accounts.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Random trivia fun, to be read in an Alex Trebek voice: These seven cities beginning with the letter 'C' are in our top 40 for app usage. (Hint so this isn't impossible: Two are in Western Pennsylvania.)