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Articles by Matthew Wallenstein
From Reactive Remediation to Predictive Prevention: A Systems Synthesis of Global Soil Salinization and Sodicity
1 Introduction: Salinization as an Emergent Systems Crisis Soil salinization is degrading cropland productivity worldwide, threatening farmer livelihoods and food security across about 10% of global croplands (FAO 2024) (Figure 1). The problem is accelerating, and climate change is projected to expand salt-affected area further across many drylands (Hassani et al. 2021).
Warming alters cascading effects of a dominant arthropod predator on microbial community composition in the Arctic
Abstract Warming is expected to increase abundances of wolf spider, the top predator in soil communities in the Arctic, but we have little understanding on how increased wolf spider density under warmer conditions affects soil microbial structure through trophic cascades. We tested the effects of wolf spider density and warming on bacterial and fungal community structure in litter through a fully factorial mesocosm experiment in Arctic tundra over two summers.
Opinion: Illinois dust storm underscores the urgency for a new approach to farming
The recent blinding dust storm that caused fatal highway crashes in central Illinois where Interstate 55 passes through flat farmland was a result of an unusually dry April. Windy weather arrived during the period when many farm fields were being plowed in preparation for spring planting — as farmers have done for years or even generations. But these dry, bare fields left the soil unprotected, ready to be swept up by the wind.
ESSAY: A History of the Lexicon of Ckris Wallenstein
“I was accused of being a snake in the grass when I hid all his ice cream.” By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com My father has a way of saying things. He has all these phrases and sayings and words that are foreign to most everyone. He swears up and down that they are established, if not common, turns of phrase. Over the years he has managed to show me a few are not entirely his own idiosyncrasies. Many remain dubious. I like them either way. Some of my favorites are his insults.
I Was the Fakest Hobo in the History of Trains
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Today in the mail I received my copy of an anthology edited by Ben Gwin. It is made up of short stories and poems about Pittsburgh. Along with others, it has a story by C, and a story I wrote. Her story is about when she was squatting in a house, living with a guy she had a messy relationship with. She used the same pseudonym she had used for years in her letters to prisoners.
Holiday - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Some days she thought I was chasing hell, tugging it like a diseased stray, tugging it into everything. But it was more like this weight of unresolved things hanging from my neck, making me topple sometimes. But for this day, for these hours — like most of the days and hours with her — that stray was scratching on someone else’s door. I felt no weight at all. Living seemed more like an act of ablution.
Matthew Wallenstein: The Cap Gun
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com I know a lot of dumb people. I would say that most people are what I would consider dumb. I know some smart people too. The smartest among them is N. I don’t say lightly that he is brilliant. He is very well-read and able to apply his learning to critical thought in ways that were always astounding to me. He introduced me to many books and ideas. In school, he moved through all the tough classes.
Matthe Wallenstein: Of Youth and Vitamin C
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com I was looking to move in somewhere. P was my best friend. He was in college and living in a house with four other people. One of which was the girl he had just broken it off with after a couple years. I had been staying there a week. I slept in his bed with him. We would stay up, draw, go out and skateboard sometimes. Our band played a show a few weeks earlier and P met a girl there.
After the Art Show: 'The two greatest things about hotels are the bathroom and the lighting in front of the mirrors.'
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Stiff fingers, wet socks in my boots. I was cold. I blew into my hands. All the lights were yellow and so the snow around the water was the same. There were not many footprints in it. It felt good to be there. I liked the empty benches at the bus stop, I liked that yellow light filling the footprints. I was walking around an area that was either a park or the lawn of the nearby office building.
Trunk: One of them turned to him and said, “Welcome to Bushwick.”
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Columnist info@pittsburghcurrent.com Maybe ten years ago I published a fictionalized version of something real. I often vacillate when it comes to storytelling, deciding if it should be done through fiction, nonfiction, poetry. With this story, I originally settled on fiction. I would like to tell it here as it happened. It was the beginning of summer in the city. I lived with a bunch of people. Most of us played in a band together.
Dirty Money: 'Not far in front of them was a man with a long hunting rifle. He was pointing it right at the truck.'
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Dirty was 17 and working at Wendy’s. In a lot of ways, he was the closest thing to a responsible employee they had. So he was put on all the closing shifts. They ended at 1 a.m. He was still in high school and would have to get up every morning after he worked and make it there. The others his age were drop-outs. There were a few older guys, 20, 21, and a 26-year-old named Joe who Dirty considered ancient.
Matthew Wallenstein: Solving a Murder
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com “I knew Britney through work. We worked in a factory together. After maybe six months of knowing her I realized that I had worked once with her husband at another job. Ryan, a coworker, told me Britney and her husband Armando were intending to ask me to join their marriage, they were having problems and looking for a third person. He told me to be prepared.
Prince Edward Island: 'On the other side of the door I could hear latches, I could hear locks being locked, metal sliding into place'
Views from Prince Edward Island Canada By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com We left from New Hampshire. My dad drove most of the way. We slept for a few hours at a truck stop in northern Maine then went back to it. The Canadian border guard just waved us through without looking at our passports. Eventually, we arrived on Prince Edward Island. We decided it would be interesting to go to as many of the Island’s lighthouses as we could.
Neighbors - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com I once lived in illegal housing above a factory. Noises, fumes, slumlord. We didn’t like our neighbors. That is, we were very close to the people in apartments 201 and 206. We did not like our other neighbors. Particularly the people in apartment 202 that sat right between us and our friends in 201. Apt. 202 was always causing problems.
Green Card - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com B had just gotten her green card after a long rough process. She and I were in Tijuana. She grew up far south of there in Mazatlan but in adolescence, she lived in Tijuana briefly. She knew it well. I had never been before. I was there to work and we were visiting friends. I got a Sansta Muerte candle in a shop that I still haven’t lighted.
Bear the Dog - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Columnist info@pittsburghcurrent.com “There was a 14 year old kid but he looked like he was about 8. He was short and skinny and small. I’ve never seen anyone as fast as this kid.” “Do you remember his name? “Oh yeah, I remember his name.” “What was it?” “What was his name? I don’t remember. Well I remember his last name, I think.” “What was it?” “I don’t remember.
3 Stories in 3 Paragraphs
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com One The first person my own age I knew that died was T. A heart attack got him at 16. He was overweight, comedic, he played in bands and did drugs with my friends. His body was found in the living room of his house. He died shortly after he left New Hampshire and moved down to Florida. Once when D was driving he pulled into a station to refuel. T got out and pumped the gas.
Tom's Art Show - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com I first met Tom Halamoutis when I was in a band and was told the day before we left for a three-week tour that he was our new bass player. In the couple of years we played music together I knew him to be an absolute wild man, but also kind-hearted and loyal. Shortly after the band broke up he moved into his Grandmother’s house to keep an eye on her. This was in Haverhill, Massachusetts where he was from.
Kudzu - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com One afternoon when I was in high school my dad told me he had cancer. He said it was looking pretty serious, that he probably didn’t have a lot of time. I didn’t tell people much about my life in general and I kept this to myself too. He worked two full-time jobs to pay for treatment and keep us in that third-floor apartment on Liberty. I tried to do things to help, but it didn’t add up to much.
Mutty - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com My mother took me to see my great grandmother at the home. I was in elementary school. I think my mother knew the scythe was waiting for Mutty and wanted me to meet her before it came swinging. Everyone called her Mutty, it was a cutsie version of the German word for mother. We sat at a table just like the ones in my school cafeteria. The floor was white tile. The table was flat and hard. It was evening.
Wallenstein: The Dumbest Cop in Town
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Ckris spelled his name with a K not an H. He started doing that when he went to get a vanity plate and CHRIS with an H was taken. So he got a plate made that spelled it with a K. From then on it was Ckris. He grew up in the same town I did but was born 40 years prior. When I was a teenager our school cop was named Officer Wimpy. The last name provided some pretty obvious jokes.
The Residents of Main Street
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com We were maybe 18 when A fell skateboarding. After he had his accident a few of us stayed at the hospital. Some stayed to all hours of the night or slept in the hall, flipped coins in the cafeteria, waited, waited. We watched his family get the bad news, then the good news, then the bad news.
Love, Batteries, Scrap
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Sometimes they get mad at you because you don’t love them back. Sometimes you love them but you’ve got too many hang-ups, stupid things, baggage that ties itself to you and you’re still dragging around. Once in a while you fall for something that hurts you, leads you around like you’re a street dog and they really have something.
Wallenstein: The Banana Man
Over ripe bananas ready for eating By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com I saw The Banana Man last week. He was standing in the middle of the Family Dollar parking lot, sort of teetering. I rolled my window down and said hello. He said hello back and asked how I was. Then he went on his way, shuffling along, leaning side to side as he went. He is an older guy, well under five feet tall, stooped over.
Where it used to be
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com My father and I sat in the car parked up against the curb. The heat was on but low. Like any real New Englander he had a funny economy with heat, even in the car where it didn’t cost any extra. “The light’s not on, maybe they aren’t there. I’ll drive you around a little while till we find them.” “It’s fine.” “Maybe I’ll just stick around a minute.” “No, it’s okay.
Matthew Wallenstein: Loop Road
Illustration by Nathaniel Parker Raymond By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com We didn’t go around trying to die but we were just as impartial towards living. We were 16. P was driving. I sat in the passenger seat and N and K were sitting in the back. We were in P’s old Peugeot. It was a bulky sedan built in the ’80s. Its paint was the color of rhino skin.
Fugitive Night - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com In the 1970s my father worked for a few years in the youth detention center. There were a lot of kids there for a lot of reasons. One was Z, 15 or 16 years old. He had delusions, he would get confused. He had his problems and was not bright on top of it. Z was polite and could be kind some of the time, but often snapped and was prone to violence.
Another Night in Boston
By Matthew Wallenstein – Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Casey was attending Emerson for poetry. I was planning to sleep in his dorm room that night before heading back to New York where I had been staying on my friends’ couch. We left the building and stopped by a coffee shop that was open late. It was cold out. The drinks were partially just to keep our hands warm. Snow sat along the street in hard, dirty piles.
Montana Too - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein It was the start of morning and the sun was bright in my eyes. When I held my head at certain angles I just saw yellow. Chris, Ben and I had dried off from the swim and put our clothes back on. We were standing by the water. On either side of it there were tall cliffs, they were chalky red. We were in Montana. Our band was making its way around the US. We had been sleeping in the van and on floors for a couple months but it felt good.
Over the Bridge - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein We were young, R and me. She was always talking about philosophers. I liked to skateboard and get in fights. I liked to walk around at night when I couldn’t sleep, which was most nights. She would stay up, never sleep at night, crash hard sometimes midday. One night we went to the park by her house. It was the third day in a row I hadn’t slept. The cops came but we hid. I brought her home in the morning and went back to the park to draw the squirrels.
Lately - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com I dreamed I was in shallow black water surrounded by trees and grey stones. There were snakes moving towards me curling into each other. I turned to swim away and they closed in, tying my limbs like rope and pushing their wet bodies into my mouth, sliding over me, swallowing my eyes. I could feel the empty sockets expand as they wriggled into them. I woke up and read for a few minutes.
Ghosts in Ohio - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com Katie is photographer. She also owns a business processing people’s film. It is primarily just her but on occasion, she hires friends to help. She made a social media post saying that she would process any film people had of the recent Black Lives Matter protests and blur out the faces of protestors free of charge. It was reposted over 4,000 times. She was a bit overwhelmed to say the least.
The Dead Deer - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstain One morning the lifeless body of a deer appeared in the backyard. It was near the big tree that all those rusted bicycles hung from. The snow was piled high and the deer lay there in it. A large and motionless thing in the blue light of early morning. It was an apparition, there were no tracks in the snow, not a footprint leading to the body, not an explanation or clue, just a dead deer. For a while that’s what we called the house, The Dead Deer.
Ferris Wheel - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com My cars were always breaking down and when they weren’t breaking down I still had to be careful where I parked them. I owed close to a grand in parking tickets and they were looking to boot me. I was always finding spots behind stores or in alleys. But when my cars wouldn’t work I’d take the bus. She rode with me late after work leaning her head on my shoulder. We sat in the back.
Montana - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein info@Pittsburghcurrent.com The sun was coming up. The sky was turning red. There was fog everywhere, rising from the pavement and from the trees like breath. We rolled the windows down and the air was cold and clean. We had been up all night driving and we were passing through the mountains of North Dakota. Ben was behind the wheel and I was in the passenger seat keeping him company. The other seven people on tour with us were sleeping in the back of the van.
Phone Books - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com Tomas has been tattooing for over 20 years. He is well established in the industry and a master of his craft. But the pandemic was keeping him from tattooing. Two weeks ago he called me and said he was considering applying to the post office as a way to make money in the interim. I asked him the last time he had a straight job. He said 1996. I asked him when he last had a job that wasn’t related to art.
Doggy Daycare - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com There was the doggy daycare. I needed something to pull in some money when I was between tours with my band. Mike who lived down the hall used to work there and set me up with it. It was 20 minutes away when the L train was working right, but that was rare. The night guy always came in late, Which meant I got off late.
Mother’s Day 2020
By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com My father called me the day after Mother’s Day to tell me that for the next two weeks he wasn’t able to see his new girlfriend who he is crazy about. He said he had been around a few siblings and nephews and did not want to risk giving her the Corona Virus if he had been exposed to it. It was his way of leading into what he wanted to talk to me about. He went on to tell me about why he had been around them. He was woken up by a phone call.
Feral - Pittsburgh Current
Illustration by Matthew Wallentsein By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com “Boats used to come here, I think they parked between these. I don’t know, it’s pretty, who cares,” Chris said. “I can’t wait for drones to start delivering food,” Jack said. “I’m so hungry. Wouldn’t it be nice just to stay here and have food brought to us?” “I’m hungry too,” I said, “but, damn.” We were sitting on a slab of cement about twenty feet above the very dark water.
Coney Island - Pittsburgh Current
Illustration by Matthew Wallenstein By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com We moved to New York so she could go to the hospital there.There were a lot of arguments that summer. It wore her down and me down. I went looking for her past midnight more than once after she had run out in a fit. I was learning I couldn’t fix things. I was learning it was better to listen. There were a few scares. She spent days in hospital beds and I spent days next to her.
Indoor Outhouse - Pittsburgh Current
By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com We were sitting by the fire in his living room. The smoke was clearing up from a minute ago when we both forgot the flue was closed. My father, as usual, eating a bowl of Turkey Hill coffee ice cream, and me telling him he was eating too much of it. I stood up, poked the fire with a stick, watched it turn and loop and pop. I wanted my friend to hear one of my dad’s stories.
The Con Man: In the summer, heat gets trapped in the city and just sits there all night, immutable and mean
By Matthew Wallenstein info@pittsburghcurrent.com My friend is a mostly-reformed con man. He and I spoke today, he was buying a drawing from me. He is out west and settled into a job that seems to be keeping him happy, though because of the quarantine he spends his time hiking through the desert and cooking himself meals, the way he used to. A ways back I lived above a paint factory in an industrial area of Brooklyn. It had been converted into illegal housing.
Matthew Wallenstein: Departure
Illustration by Matthew Wallenstein By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Columnist info@pittsburghcurrent.com This was a while before Corona took over, when life was staid in different ways. She let me pick her up from work like I used to. It was raining. My car was still dirty like it had always been and it still embarrassed me and I still didn’t clean it. We started in, just saying a few easy things. Our words shuffling along.
Doss Down: “More than a few times I woke up driving off the road or on the wrong side of the highway scraping the guardrail.”
a burglar tries to break in with an open window with a crowbar By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer Info@pittsburghcurrent.com I was never very good at sleeping. As far back as I can remember, I had this ugly feeling just sort of hanging on me, and at night, when the distractions left, there was only the quiet and this weight. When I was a kid, real young, before my mom started losing it, nights I couldn’t sleep, my father would take me in his truck and just drive.
Matthew Wallenstein
By Matthew Wallenstein Pittsburgh Current Contributing Writer info@pittsburghcurrent.com He is big enough to break someone in half if he wanted to, but I have only seen Big Dirty hit another man in anger once and it was deserved. That’s another story though. He is and has been by all accounts and experience what I consider to be a rare thing; a genuinely good person. He is large, kind, and can fix anything with a motor. He bought the truck and loved it.
The Secret to Growing More Food With Fewer Chemicals? Squirmy Soil
Our soils are in trouble. Over the past century, we’ve abused them with plowing, tilling, and too much fertilizer. What many think of as “just dirt” is actually an incredibly complex mixture of rock-derived minerals, plant-derived organic matter, dissolved nutrients, gases, and a rich food web of interacting organisms. By plowing and over-tilling, we have increased erosion on agricultural fields by 10 to 100 times natural rates.
One way to reduce food waste: Use it to make soil healthier
Excess lactose from cheese production, such as in the hard cheese industrial facility shown here, can be reused for agriculture. Imagine that one-third of cars manufactured by Ford or GM were never even driven once, but instead were left to rust and ended up in landfills. This exact situation is true today in agriculture, where up to 40 percent of food produced every year in the United States is never eaten (PDF).
Need for Reassessment of Early Transpyloric Feeding in Preterm Infants
Over the past several decades, strategies aimed at eliminating sources of lung injury have changed the practice of neonatology and improved survival rates for the smallest newborns. However, pulmonary aspiration—a well-recognized source of lung injury—continues unabated among neonates today.
One way to reduce food waste: Use it to make soil healthier - SOURCE
Manufacturing dairy products generates large amounts of leftover natural materials, including lactose. Currently the dominant market for lactose is for baby formula, but companies like Leprino produce more lactose than the formula market demands. Rather than sending the rest to landfills, they partnered with our team at Colorado State University to explore potential agricultural uses for it. Leprino approached us after observing dramatic effects in a simple study.
One way to reduce food waste: Use it to make soil healthier
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the United States generates over 39 million tons of food waste yearly. Strawberries rot on the vine for lack of labor to pick them. Food spoils during transport, at the grocery store or in our homes. More is lost during processing, due to inefficiencies and lack of markets for byproducts. Food waste contains valuable nutrients that can make soil healthier and more productive.
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