Culture Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

After an 11-year exile to Nashville, Tennessee, I finally woke up smelling Pittsburgh. I woke from dreams of flying through the Conemaugh Gap, inhaling the untouched scent of the Laurel and Cresson mountains surrounding my hometown of Johnstown, and continued across Route 22 to the musky smells of the Monongahela and into the mist of bridges …

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Opinion

Fiddling as Pittsburgh Burns

by Douglas Heuck

Today’s newsletter was going to be a round-up of all the noteworthy Pittsburgh citizens who passed away last year. Instead, it’s about trying to forestall a much more historic and devastating obituary – the death of US Steel in Pittsburgh. For the past six months, Pittsburgh’s “leaders” – civic, corporate, and governmental — have …

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Opinion

Dissatisfied but Grateful

by Samuel Hazo

To satisfy and to gratify are often used interchangeably, but they have totally different meanings. To satisfy, or to be satisfied, refers to a variety of human needs that periodically demand to be met and satiated in order to be eased. The need for food, water, sleep, space, companionship, alleviation of pain, or protection from …

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Arts

Kinetic Theatre’s “A Sherlock Carol”

by Stuart Sheppard

Earlier this month I happened to rewatch the 1976 film, “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” which I had not seen for many years, and was amazed by the interiority actor Nicol Williamson discovered in the character of Sherlock Holmes. In this story, Holmes teams up with Sigmund Freud – talk about an intellectual buddy adventure – to solve …

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Opinion

Pittsburgh Tomorrow: The Voyage of a Year

by Douglas Heuck

At 3 a.m. Sunday, October 20, I bolted out of bed with a thought. Weeks earlier, I’d tried unsuccessfully to attend a Kamala Harris rally to spread the word about the Pittsburgh Tomorrow project. On this Sunday, Elon Musk was coming for a rally — and if I could get in, I wanted to be …

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Books

Dilworth Explores Coming-of-Age Themes in To Be Marquette

by Fred Shaw

Set mainly in the 1970s, Sharon Dilworth’s recent book, To Be Marquette, sometimes makes small moments feel symbolic by utilizing music from the era — think Bob Dylan and Peter Frampton — to help establish tone. However, it’s a song not included that might best summarize the origins of conflict in this well-paced book: Led …

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Books

Walter Turns to AI Fiction with Doppelganger

by Fred Shaw

Noted sci-fi novelist and pioneering computer scientist Vernor Vinge wrote in a 1993 paper for NASA that “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” If so, this tipping point, which he called a “technological singularity,” is upon mankind, one in which …

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Arts

Quantum’s Sleepy “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”

by Stuart Sheppard

In drama, interiority always triumphs over exteriority. Just look at Shakespeare (even his history plays), Beckett, or Sophocles. And mystery is always stronger than explication. Who wants to be told what to think? But with Quantum Theatre’s new production of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” we find an inversion of these principals, in that the …

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PQ Poem

Beer Money for Almost Nothing

by Gary Ciocco

Beer Money for Almost Nothing “Holdin’ on to sixteen as long as you can Change is coming ’round real soon Make us women and men.” John Cougar Mellencamp, “Jack and Diane” The Rolling Rock Brewery, red brick behemoth, stood just down the street. I’d had some of the palest ale already, but in nineteen-eighty-two I stepped inside. …

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Books

Demystifying Creative Nonfiction

by Fred Shaw

For some, Pittsburgh is french fries on salads, rabid Steelers fans and Iron City beer. For others, it’s Andy Warhol, steel mills and pierogies. For Lee Gutkind, it’s the city where creative nonfiction, that nebulous, energetic literary genre he continues to champion, grew into prominence. In his latest book, aptly titled The Fine Art of …

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Arts Culture

Learning to Fly, Again: Pittsburgh Ballet’s “Peter Pan” Makes Children of Us All

by Stuart Sheppard

Marcel Proust may have needed a sip of lime-flower tea imbued with madeleine crumbs to trigger the memory of his idyllic childhood, but I found myself just as deliciously transported back to my six-year-old psyche as I watched Pittsburgh Ballet Theater’s magical production of “Peter Pan” in the Benedum Center last week. Had this performance …

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PQ Poem

Glendale Lake

by Matthew Ussia

Glendale Lake Summer neck deep on my birthdaydrowning has always been too easyno lifeguard on dutycold currents from the depthsstirred up by distant motorboatscan feel every inch of skinunderneath my clothesfor the next three days Autumn past-peak color on the hillsidesdogs rooting through leaveshoping to surprise a chipmunkthe promise of wintercould separate usfrom our sacred …

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PQ Poem

Vanishing Point

by Valerie Bacharach

Vanishing Point Wind kicks sand, a mist of saltwater layers my skin.I am on Hatteras island, the Atlantic on one side, Pamlico sound on the other. My feet unsteady as waves roll in, shift ground beneath me.I walk and walk, stop to gather a few intact shells, ocher and cream, maroon and gray,what were once …

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PQ Poem

Our Ark

by Philip Terman

Our Ark If it’s the spruce it must be the mourning doves, the willow— the two blue birds the arborvitaes—robins If it’s the shagbark hickory the red-headed woodpecker If it’s the red oak at the far end of the trail the magnificent male pheasant If it’s the underbrush at the inflow-end of the pond the …

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Arts

Serious Daddy Issues: Barebones Delivers a Compelling “Crocodile Fever”

by Stuart Sheppard

One of the most difficult questions a drama critic confronts is how much of the plot should be explicated during a review? I think it’s a disservice to reveal too much of a play’s action, as it denies an organic apprehension of the experience. Imagine seeing the film “Jaws” for the first time with all …

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Arts Culture

Bring the World to Pittsburgh

by Aakanksha Agarwal

In pockets across Pittsburgh, a new and different city is emerging, one in which internationals and creatives are finding a foothold in neighborhoods that long have struggled for new vitality. A prime example of this is in Garfield, where Henry Simonds of Headwater Media envisioned a new kind of social enterprise for his hometown. The …

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Opinion

Letter from Philadelphia

by Mark Schwartz

Having moved across the state from Pittsburgh in 1986, I now wonder what prompts me to read each edition of the Pittsburgh Quarterly from cover to cover. Sure, I subscribe to other magazines. The New Yorker is often hit or miss. My location notwithstanding, I can’t relate to “The Main Line Times.” Reading “Philadelphia Magazine’ …

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Culture Opinion

Lessons from Last Place

by Douglas Heuck

Sailing is a big part of the culture in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where I’ve spent 63 straight summers. And some might say that from an early age, I earned the dubious distinction of being a kind of “Jonah” of sailboat races. I’ve never seen myself as that ill-fated shipmate of yore, but the case could …

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Books

All Things Random, Edible and Odd: Essays on Grief, Love and Food

by Fred Shaw

Until the closing of Carmody’s Restaurant in Franklin Park after 62 years, turtle soup remained a fixture on its menu. Once a staple of fine dining, turtle soup typically came paired with a shot of sherry to both sweeten and thin the stew-y broth. For local writer Sheila Squillante, a first bowl of this dated …

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Books

Miss Me Forever Hits “Home” with Bhutanese Protagonist

by Fred Shaw

Tulsi Gurung is in a jam. that could be the abridged version of Erie native Eugene Cross’s latest novel, Miss Me Forever, in which his likable protagonist gets put through the paces. A more nuanced look at this highly readable story, set in Erie and Pittsburgh, might be that the orphaned Nepalese immigrant who arrives …

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Arts

The Moon is Just a World that Never Heals: Quantum Nails O’Neill

by Stuart Sheppard

It is a precept of Zen art to incorporate the spaces between objects into a creation, and to consider them just as significant as the objects depicted. In flower arrangement, for example, the areas between the branches are just as important – if not more so – than the branches themselves. We find the embodiment …

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PQ Poem

Four Shorts

by Sheila L. Carter-Jones

Four Shorts 1.organic green(for Pat who died too young)when you come back you will leada flock of mallards through novice blueno more brown speckled plumagecourting distorted imagesin stagnant pond water your glossy bottle-green head will burnthe wind jealous-amber as alwaysyour wild feathers so fowllight will follow you 2.Construction Worker(about an eighth grade girl) She could …

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