Culture Archives - Page 23 of 38 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Pittsburgh’s old morning newspaper was the small dog in town—feistier, funkier, more colorful, more daring and, compared to the larger afternoon paper, far more fun. Its “personnel department” was Agnes who worked in an alcove full of office machines from the Roosevelt years. The Teddy Roosevelt years. Ray took over. He was bright, funny, had …

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Arts

PICT Classic Theatre Triumphs with Fresh, Exhilarating Treatment of Oedipus Rex

by Stuart Sheppard

Although thirteen ancient Greek poets wrote Oedipus tragedies, only Sophocles’ play, “Oedipus Rex,” has survived. The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote a version, as did Julius Caesar. So did the 17th century poet John Dryden, as well as the 18th century philosopher Voltaire. It has been a foundational story of Western consciousness since Homer referenced it …

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Arts

Reflections on “1984” in 2017

by Stuart Sheppard

Critics have argued that we cannot evade Shakespeare’s influence on our conception of human nature, nor Freud’s influence on our understanding of psychology, and I would suggest, as a corollary, that we cannot escape George Orwell’s influence on our notion of the political. The Orwellian ethos, manifested in works such as his final novel, “1984”, …

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PQ Poem

Assisted Living

by Barbara Edelman

“Every simile’s an insurrection” (unknown) Her phone is like a cordless baby. Her children are a blur of programmed digits. Each week she learns new rituals to survive, from toothbrush to spoon. Her softball glove, her Raleigh 3-speed are not even memory. Her new sports are dress, food, hygiene. A slalom course to every doorknob. …

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Opinion

Train Shows & Guys

by Tim Menees

When they hit male menopause, some men buy a sports car, or a sailboat, or take off with a young woman named Amber. Others take the cheaper and more benign route: buy electric trains and go to train shows. A local volunteer fire department held one Sunday and it was jammed, mainly by men who …

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Arts

CMU Brings Vivid Life to Marlowe’s Great Work

by Stuart Sheppard

Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama manages to combine some of the strongest and rarest elements of great theatre in their production of Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II”: rawness, mystery, risk and precision. This is the kind of performance of a classic play that eschews the pitfalls of tired masterpieces, and instead, evokes its subject like …

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Opinion

Reunion-ited (And it Feels OK)

by Elizabeth Wiethorn

I recently attended my 30-year high school reunion, or as I affectionately call it—Operation “Glory Days.” Quite the surreal experience, and one I approached with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. High school was a weird time for me. I was incredibly self-conscious, didn’t really have a ton of friends, and was never a member …

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Arts

Local Artists: Struggling, But Not Starving

by Julia Fraser

Most Pittsburgh artists are getting by financially but find it difficult to make a living off of their art alone. And African American artists are much less likely than their white counterparts to rely on their art as their sole means of support, according to recent survey. The findings are based an online survey of …

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History

New Housing, 1951

by Jennifer McNulty

Photographer Clyde “Red” Hare moved to Pittsburgh in 1950 to work on the Pittsburgh Photographic Library, covering the city’s Renaissance I, with noted editor Roy Stryker. Hare had his own car and camera and Stryker offered to pay him $50 a week to photograph the city. During that time, Hare made this photograph of new …

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Opinion

Pittsburgh Dark and Light

by PQ Staff

Depending where you look, you can get two different views of Pittsburgh’s economy. On the gloomy side of the street, Pittsburgh dramatically underperformed its 15 benchmark regions last year. We had virtually zero job growth. We had the highest unemployment rate. And our average weekly wages rose just .8 percent—only a third of the benchmark …

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Books

Short Takes: “Leave Me” “Perpetual Carnival”

by John Allison

Pittsburghers could read “Leave Me” for the same reasons they’d see a movie filmed and set here. It’s a kick to see the city as a backdrop, collecting references to your favorite coffee shop (Commonplace in Squirrel Hill), local slogans (“I Bleed Black and Gold”) and outright praise (“she stared out the window at the …

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Books

A Well-Woven Contemporary Tale

by John Allison

For his second act, Pittsburgh novelist Jacob Bacharach has turned in another work of enormously entertaining literary fiction set in Pittsburgh. It’s less cosmic than his debut, the 2014 sci-fi sendup “A Bend in the World,” but equally peppered with highbrow cultural references, trenchant social observations and turns of phrase that spin you right up …

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Architecture & Neighborhoods

Looking at Lubetz

by Charles Rosenblum

Stand at the top of the angles stairs in the entry to the Squirrel Hill Library, and you are cantilevered out and over Forbes Avenue, beyond the facades of surrounding buildings. The way the building creases and folds here, you can see outside and back in at the same time. Go past the free-standing elevator …

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Arts

Serious Threads

by Vicky A Clark

First the Frick announced a new programming initiative in fashion and brought “Killer Heels” to Pittsburgh. The impossibly impractical yet stunningly gorgeous shoes might have made more sense at the Warhol where Andy’s advertising and shoe portrait drawings would have cheekily made the connection between costume, eroticism, design, and identity while contextualizing the to-die-for heels. …

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Opinion

Journalism 101?

by Douglas Heuck

I’ve been a reporter or editor almost continuously since taking over my high school newspaper 39 years ago. So when President Trump called journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” it did get my attention. But journalists get attacked so often that rather than take it personally, I considered whether any truth lurked …

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Arts

Josh Gibson on Deck

by Matthew John Milligan

Pittsburgh’s greatest but still relatively unknown sports hero is about to get a curtain call of a different kind. This spring, Pittsburgh Opera unveils “The Summer King,” the world premiere of Daniel Sonenberg’s tale of the remarkable, short life of baseball legend Josh Gibson. The opera weaves a young black man’s heartbreaking personal tribulations with …

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Opinion

Confession: Cops and Kids

by Tim Menees

I done got busted for breaking-and-entering (cue the blues harp and slide guitar). This is a sad tale but I must spare all young people the same sordid fate. One sunny Saturday morning six decades ago in Seattle’s Ballard district, two kids blew open the door of a playground field house, and the rest of …

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PQ Poem

When I Am Empty

by Anne Rashid

When I am empty I think about you staring back at me in the pouring rain— the family picnic in the Upper Peninsula, my grape pop spilling down the sides of the table, an empty bottle, your lips turned into a smirk, your eyes glinting, you in that moment loving me. I’m empty on the …

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Books

Setting the Steelers Standards

by Fred Shaw

Growing up in a local mill town in the late 1970’s, Steelers’ Super Bowl victories seemed like a birthright. For my generation, it takes little to rattle-off the roster from the ‘79 season, the last of that era’s championship teams. And while the exploits of future Hall-of-Famers Lynn Swann and Jack Lambert live on in …

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Arts

Painting? Have Some Fun!

by Tim Menees

I spent three decades at a job that wasn’t a job, one at which few have actually earned a living. But cartoons disappear when the newspapers are bundled up for recycling. Heck, newspapers disappear. After leaving the newspaper, I began painting… and soon remembered it is darn hard. I venture to say this in spite …

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PQ Poem

Blending Image and Word

by Aaron Fischer

Ekphrasis first began as a rhetorical form used by the ancient Greeks. Defined by Webster’s as “a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art,” it remains one of the oldest forms of artistic analysis, dating back to Homer’s description of Achilles’ blacksmith god-created shield in The Illiad. This form of writing …

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Arts

Hath Not a Jew

by Sarina Gruver Moore

Of Shakespeare’s major comedies, The Merchant of Venice is my least favorite because it’s the least funny. In a post-Holocaust world it’s difficult to stage the play’s anti-semitic jokes, and directors often make the understandable choice to shift the tone contour of the play toward the political and tragic. At first glance, a recent production …

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