Bye Bye Fungi
“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” — Dick the Butcher in Act IV, Scene II of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II Following the successful sale of stock in Butler County Mushroom Farm to its employees, the company entered into a long and sad decline. I wasn’t around for that unhappy ride because …
Wake Up!
On a warm April evening, my son and I went Downtown to meet a friend who is alarmed by what Downtown is becoming. Before dinner, we walked around one block, essentially Sixth Avenue to Wood Street to Liberty Avenue to Smithfield Street and back down Sixth Avenue. On Liberty, a group of young people in …
PQ Leads All Magazines for 17th Year
For the 17th straight year, Pittsburgh Quarterly has won the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania’s Golden Quill Awards. Photographer John Beale led the field with three Golden Quills, including the Ed Romano Memorial Award for best in show. Pittsburgh Quarterly journalists won award in the following categories (click on the italicized link to see …
The Audience as Character: Kinetic Theatre’s “Every Brilliant Thing”
There are many reasons to like Kinetic Theatre Company’s “Every Brilliant Thing,” but perhaps the best one is in the way it creates a bonding experience with the audience – rare enough these days — and furthermore, that it does so in a manner that is not political, sentimental, or didactic – the three crutches …
Stock for the Mushroom Workers
“The way to make money in the stock market is to buy a stock. Then, when it goes up, sell it. If it’s not going to go up, don’t buy it.” — Will Rogers Previously in this series: Meddling with MushroomsMy biggest legal project for Butler County Mushroom Farm was also my last. Mr. Y, the …
100 Pittsburgh Leaders
We asked 100 top leaders across Pittsburgh to respond in 100 words or fewerto this question: According to the U.S. Census, in 2021 the Pittsburgh MSA had the inauspicious distinction of having the highest natural population loss — more deaths than births — of any metro area in the country. Pittsburgh lost 10,838 people, followed …
Paul Kengor, Q&A
A Pittsburgh native who grew up in Butler and then earned political science and Ph.D. degrees from Pitt, Paul Kengor, 56, is a professor of political science at Grove City College. Upon taking over in October as only the second editor since The American Spectator was founded on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, …
100 Pittsburgh Leaders
We asked 100 top leaders across Pittsburgh to respond in 100 words or fewerto this question: According to the U.S. Census, in 2021 the Pittsburgh MSA had the inauspicious distinction of having the highest natural population loss — more deaths than births — of any metro area in the country. Pittsburgh lost 10,838 people, followed …
The Summer 2023 issue:
Wake Up!
On a warm April evening, my son and I went Downtown to meet a friend who is alarmed by what Downtown is becoming. Before dinner, we walked around one block, essentially Sixth Avenue to Wood Street to Liberty Avenue to Smithfield Street and back down Sixth Avenue. On Liberty, a group of young people in …
Get Ready for Pittsburgh Tomorrow
In the spring issue three years ago, I wrote a long essay about the need for a big plan to reverse Greater Pittsburgh’s downward economic and demographic trends. A Pittsburgh friend called it my Magnum Opus, the product of 35 years of journalistic efforts here, much of it aimed at moving this region ahead. In …
Design Happy
As a child, Betsy Wentz had the best playroom — the carriage house her mother Kay Wiegand used as the office for her interior design firm. It was packed with color, wallpaper, fabrics and furniture, instilling in Wentz a passion that guided her years later when she decided to switch careers. She had been a …
The War Against Aesthetics in Contemporary Art
Often when I walk through a gallery of contemporary art, I can hear a murmuring between the works that echoes journalist Herbert Morrison’s voice describing the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937: “Oh, the humanity!” It’s as if the depiction of suffering in any form has become the criteria by which we judge art, rather …
100 Pittsburgh Leaders
We asked 100 top leaders across Pittsburgh to respond in 100 words or fewerto this question: According to the U.S. Census, in 2021 the Pittsburgh MSA had the inauspicious distinction of having the highest natural population loss — more deaths than births — of any metro area in the country. Pittsburgh lost 10,838 people, followed …
Wake Up!
On a warm April evening, my son and I went Downtown to meet a friend who is alarmed by what Downtown is becoming. Before dinner, we walked around one block, essentially Sixth Avenue to Wood Street to Liberty Avenue to Smithfield Street and back down Sixth Avenue. On Liberty, a group of young people in …
The Great Chocolate Eating Contest of Kathmandu
Rhododendrons blazed scarlet on the trail to Mt. Everest Base Camp, and the snow-capped Himalayas pierced the sky like Bowie blades. I was hiking in Nepal with my friend David Edgerton of Erie in the time before Covid. On such adventures, my guides and I often open our souls. On this occasion I found that …
Hardy, Cashman, Pearlstein, Thomas, Donahue, Berger
Joe Hardy, 100 He went out the way he lived, dying on his 100th birthday, still smoking his cigar. Everything Hardy did was marked by flamboyance and an enormous appetite for life. He had eight children and five wives. He founded the billion-dollar 84 Lumber, the world’s largest privately owned building materials supplier with stores in 34 states …
Design Happy
As a child, Betsy Wentz had the best playroom — the carriage house her mother Kay Wiegand used as the office for her interior design firm. It was packed with color, wallpaper, fabrics and furniture, instilling in Wentz a passion that guided her years later when she decided to switch careers. She had been a …
PQ Leads All Magazines for 17th Year
For the 17th straight year, Pittsburgh Quarterly has won the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania’s Golden Quill Awards. Photographer John Beale led the field with three Golden Quills, including the Ed Romano Memorial Award for best in show. Pittsburgh Quarterly journalists won award in the following categories (click on the italicized link to see …
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