Articles Archive - Pittsburgh Quarterly

An eerie plant appears in the woods. i bend down and study its translucent white color — ghostly against the vibrant green of mid-summer. The three-inch stems have specks of gray and black, and its tiny leaves resemble scales. Some of the pipe-shaped flowers stand upright, while others droop in a melancholy manner. I think …

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Profiles

50 Leaders Give Their Rx for Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, Pt. IV

by PQ Staff

ditor’s Note: We asked Pittsburgh leaders to give their prescriptions for Mayor Corey O’Connor on how to build a bright future for Pittsburgh. Their answers follow. Previously in this series: 50 Leaders Give Their Rx for Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, Pt. III Kendra Whitlock Ingram, President & CEO, Pittsburgh Cultural TrustThe arts have a unique …

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Profiles

50 Leaders Give Their Rx for Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, Pt. III

by PQ Staff

Editor’s Note: We asked Pittsburgh leaders to give their prescriptions for Mayor Corey O’Connor on how to build a bright future for Pittsburgh. Their answers follow. Previously in this series: 50 Leaders Give Their Rx for Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, Pt. II Wayne Walters, Superintendent, Pittsburgh Public SchoolsAs Mayor O’Connor begins his tenure, Pittsburgh’s path …

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PQ Poem

Tracing

by Noah Davis

Tracing My mother has two, six-inch long scars on the front of her shoulders as if heaven made a mistake and stitched wings on the wrong side and angels had to saw them off. But truthfully, while playing basketball, the bird of her bone simply fell from the nest of her joint. She was opened by a surgeon’s knifedifferently …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

When the Steelers Hired Three Coaches — In One Season

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

As Mike McCarthy takes over as coach of the Steelers, sportswriters across the country remarked about the Steelers’ “unprecedented stability” with just four head coaches in 57 years, “unmatched by any NFL franchise in the Super Bowl era.” Well, sports fans, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, in the early years, the opposite was …

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Profiles

50 Leaders Give Their Rx for Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, Pt. II

by PQ Staff

Editor’s Note: We asked Pittsburgh leaders to give their prescriptions for Mayor Corey O’Connor on how to build a bright future for Pittsburgh. Their answers follow. Previously in this series: 50 Leaders Give Their Rx for Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, Pt. II Jim McQuade, President & CEO, Dollar BankMayor O’Connor has a real opportunity to …

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American Spirit History

Elegy for an Irish American Catholic Family

by Mark Holan

My mother died in late November at the age of 95. She was the last surviving member of her Irish American Catholic family. Her passing closed the century-long story of a Pittsburgh archetype, once more familiar, now a faded shade of green. Her parents emigrated from rural County Kerry, separately and single, shortly before Ireland’s …

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PQ Poem

Ice Ball

by Frank Lehner

Ice Ball A couple of kids sniggering behind a corner mailbox in waitgot me good they did. One, off the top of my cool tossle cap and the second, a square plunk to the shoulder that stung.Then there they ran up Bell Avenue then left through Wilson’s yard vanished I could hear the laughing delight …

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Arts

Barebones’ “Infinite Life” Offers a Night of Revelatory Drama

by Stuart Sheppard

Between the actor and the viewer exists a crucial component of the theatrical experience: the character of the space between them. Size of stage, type of stage, and distance between the audience and the stage are rarely cited as qualities that engender the success of a play, but I would argue, after experiencing Barebones Productions’ …

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PQ Poem

Attempt

by Lloyd Wallace

Attempt I’m trying to seehow far a man can walkwhile standing still. Maybe that is death:falling asleep, and travelling so far inside the bodyyou can’t find your way out again. Winter nights, a few small cloudsshriveled up like chicken hearts. The wind chasing its own tail forever. I’m here, my love,I’m still alive. I’m singing …

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Profiles

50 Leaders Give Their Rx for Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor

by PQ Staff

Editor’s Note: We asked Pittsburgh leaders to give their prescriptions for Mayor Corey O’Connor on how to build a bright future for Pittsburgh. Their answers follow. David Holmberg, CEO, Highmark HealthI lived Downtown for many years before the pandemic and saw firsthand the experiences that brought people together. Pittsburgh’s future depends on creating a vibrant, welcoming …

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Science

How Pittsburgh Will Conquer Space

by Beth Marcello

If the biosciences are to medicine what steel was to manufacturing, then Pittsburgh is on the cusp of its next great economic boom. Ashok Trivedi believes that we are. Trivedi is so bullish on the biological sciences that he endowed the just-launched $25 million Trivedi Institute for Space and Global Medicine at the University of …

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Opinion

Mayor O’Connor, Let’s Travel to Japan and Show Our Appreciation

by Dennis Unkovic

Mark Twain’s famous quote, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” can easily apply to our region today. Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania are in the midst of a renewed period of self-evaluation. While there are some who perceive our future with pessimism, I tend to believe the opposite. Our region is now uniquely positioned …

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PQ Poem

BLACK AND WHITE

by Marc Harshman

BLACK AND WHITE The rabbit lawn on the north side, between the railroad tracks and highway, is deserted but for these five blackbirds and a limp fence of yellow tape.The boy in jeans lay spread-eagled on the asphalt, unblinking when the sun first stepped between the bright clouds. I began to write that I still …

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Arts

Pittsburgh Opera’s “Time To Act” Asks What If Sophocles Wrote “The Breakfast Club”?

by Stuart Sheppard

We may not know much about how Ancient Greek drama was performed, but we do know that it was fundamentally a musical, and more pointedly, a choral event. Furthermore, according to scholar Peter Wilson, it was the “sixteenth-century Florentine pioneers of opera who conceived of their new cultural project as basically a regeneration of Greek …

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Profiles

The Art of Determination

by Tara Rieland

Thomas Solich is the owner of Solich Piano & Music, which has stores in Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, and, as of 2022, Pittsburgh. Blind since birth, he became a champion wrestler, classically trained pianist and successful entrepreneur, becoming one of the largest Yamaha piano dealers in the U.S. Solich lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

Maz, You’re Up

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

In 2010, The Heinz History Center published Maz, You’re Up, a children’s book written by Kelly Mazeroski, Bill Mazeroski’s daughter-in-law. When Kelly was writing the book, Sally O’Leary, a good friend and, at that time, the Alumni Liaison for the Pittsburgh Pirates Alumni Association, told me that Kelly had never done anything like this before …

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Profiles

20 Years of Interviews, Pt. VII

by PQ Staff

Editor’s note: The Pittsburgh Quarterly team has interviewed many of the most interesting and noteworthy people in our “city-state of Pittsburgh” as my old editor and friend John Craig used to call this area. The number of interviews that have appeared in this magazine reaches well into the hundreds (writer Jeff Sewald alone has interviewed …

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Arts

Public Theater’s Cinematic “An Enemy of the People”

by Stuart Sheppard

I have always loved the fact that, as a young man, James Joyce was so enamored of Henrik Ibsen that he learned Dano-Norwegian to read the playwright in his native language. And Joyce’s self-proclaimed first mature work, a play ironically called “A Brilliant Career,” was the story of a doctor battling the pestilence infecting a …

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Opinion

No News is Bad News

by Douglas Heuck

Within a day of the Jan. 7 news that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will close on May 3, I began receiving emails suggesting I create a group to save the paper or start a replacement. Why? Because I worked at The Pittsburgh Press and Post-Gazette for 20 years as an investigative reporter and business editor, and …

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People Profiles

A Hero in Pittsburgh

by Scott Holleran

Assassinations abound. in July 2025, a gunman shot President Donald Trump on fairgrounds near Butler. The nation’s biggest health plan’s CEO was killed in New York City. An arsonist targeted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family. Islamic terrorists vowed to assassinate America’s top pop star, Taylor Swift, causing her to cancel a concert. And …

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People Profiles

20 Years of Interviews, Pt. VI

by PQ Staff

20 Years of Interviews, Pt. VI Read More »