Culture

Image and Reality: When They Don’t Match

There’s a saying in Texas, “He’s all hat and no cattle.” I don’t know why I was thinking about Texas as I flew aboard a US Airways flight bound for Ireland. It’s probably because I had just read Doug Parker’s Letter From The CEO in the in-flight magazine, Attaché. Parker’s obligatory dear-dummy letter was an …

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From the Publisher, Winter 2008

In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, winter comes early. You can feel it when the mercury drops to 30 and you’re in a summer cottage with just a fireplace for heat. And so it was one late fall day, when Smokey and I were the only dog and person left on the island. Cold rain fell on …

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Stocks & Pedestal, Winter 2008

Just after saying it has no plans to cut here, US Airways has reneged again. Pittsburgh built the airline a $1 billion airport and has supported US Airways despite high fares and poor on-time performance, spurning low-cost carriers interested in this market. The result? Astounding cuts and the loss of hub status as one new …

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Friends in Unfriendly Times

Adena Johnson Davis remembers marching up to the front desk at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Nursing, plunking down her test scores, report cards and transcripts. She was a slight, young woman and had been an ‘A’ student at Peabody High School. For sure, she thought, this will get me in. The school’s secretary, …

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Song of Sewickley

Would you be shocked to learn that Sewickley — the patriotic, upper-crust town just downriver of Pittsburgh — holds an annual American flag-burning in broad daylight on public property? No need for outrage or a constitutional amendment. Turns out, it’s the perfectly respectful flag retirement ceremony, in which tattered Old Glories are given a solemn …

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Song of Greensburg

A thousand feet up the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the beautiful Laurel Highlands lies the city of Greensburg, an hour southeast of downtown Pittsburgh. A major business and cultural center, its 16,000 population doubles during work hours, giving it one of highest daytime-growth rates in the country.   You, like Ed McMahon, did …

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When We Get There

Now that Pittsburgh has washed the soot from its buildings and reinvented itself for the 21st century, it is often easy to forget that our fair city was once a coal town, sitting atopone of the oldest and richest mineral deposits in the world. The prehistoric energy compressed within the fabledPittsburgh seam fueled America’s industrial …

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A Frame to Conjure With

A few years ago, if you had the good fortune to work as a porter at one of the major auction houses in New York or London, you might have had the greater good fortune to be handed a picture frame, discarded by one of the purchasers of the painting. It was one of the …

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The Bionic Entrepreneur?

For me, fall marks not only the return of autumn leaves, cider and football, but returning to my role as a college entrepreneurship instructor. Despite this being my third year teaching this subject, I’m still troubled by a gnawing, fundamental question: Can you actually teach someone to be an entrepreneur? Is it a trait you’re …

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From the Publisher, Fall 2007

I grew up on what had been an old apple orchard, and fall meant turning the crank of our oak-and-iron cider press. It meant picking up apples from the grass and quickly unhanding those whose undersides had rotted and were crawling with yellowjackets. After a strong rain, it meant the inevitable loss of old trees …

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Stocks & Pedestal, Fall 2007

In the stocks: Polluted air When we recall Pittsburgh’s old nickname, “The Smoky City,” we think of it as a pejorative description of a dirty, industrial place. But when Pittsburgh first got that appellation, in the still agrarian 19th century, it was a badge of honor. Smoke meant factories, and factories meant progress and wealth. …

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Andrew W. Mellon: Building a Banking Empire

The year was 1866. With monotonous regularity, an older man and a little boy boarded the train in East Liberty for the short run downtown. The older man, attired in a long-tailed frock coat and a high-starched wing collar, spoke to the boy about matters of consequence; he spoke to him as an adult. The …

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No regrets

When I drove my 22-year-old son from our home in Los Angeles to his new life in San Francisco, I didn’t realize I, too, was starting off on a new road. I used the six-hour drive to deliver last-minute motherly advice. He wanted to talk about his dream of becoming a musician. For him, the …

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Cut Me, Mick!

Right about when I purchased new 36-inch-waist pants and my self-loathing reached a peak, the new Sylvester Stallone film, “Rocky Balboa” opened. As I shaved the morning after seeing the movie, I wore my towel up high to cover my Dunlop’s disease — when your belly done lops over your belt. With a half-lathered face, …

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From the Publisher, Summer 2007

If all goes as planned this summer, my family and I will sail the waters of the remote North Channel between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Canada in a 28-foot sloop. I’ve sailed a lot on Lake Huron but have never skippered a longer voyage on open waters. It’ll mean preparation in navigation and emergency procedures …

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Stocks & Pedestal, Summer 2007

It took a little doing — the blacksmith had to add a few links in the chains — but we’ve put obesity in the public stockade. It’s often said that in many cultures being corpulent is a sign of wealth and even beauty. In ours, being obese is neither. Some see it as a natural …

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The Revelation of China

To be in China now must be like witnessing the construction of the pyramids. In Beijing, the world’s most powerful totalitarian regime is preparing for next year’s Olympics. Shanghai, a garden of skyscrapers, is getting ready for the 2010 World’s Fair. New highways, airports, power plants, dams and towers are fueled by China’s $1 trillion-plus …

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Andrew Carnegie: The Black and the white

Andrew Carnegie was America’s first great industrialist, the nation’s quintessential philanthropist, and, closer to home, Pittsburgh’s favorite son. He was also, however, a man of startling ethical and moral contrasts, and those paradoxes threaten his reputation. Was his bountiful philanthropy based upon purely beatific instincts or was it, to paraphrase Clausewitz, simply self-promotion “by other …

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Raging Grannies

Sometimes we Raging Grannies create quite a stir. Being of a “certain age,” none of us ever expected to find ourselves before an audience, let alone exiting to applause. But there we are, clambering up on stages and platforms, wearing outrageous hats and running shoes, singing like canaries and loving it. A feisty dozen women …

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Song of Canonsburg

The bustling borough of Canonsburg, 20 miles due south of Pittsburgh, was incorporated Feb. 22, 1802, on what Mother always called George Birthington’s Washday. Yes, it was a bit disrespectful. But so was Mother. And so, for that matter, was George. The Father of Our Country spent a lot of time in those parts during …

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The Oldest Trick in the Book

With an estimated 2,000 new and reissued titles entering the book market each week, no one can read everything. Now, thanks to Pierre Bayard, a French critic and psychoanalyst, no one actually has to read anything. The author of How to Talk About Books One Hasn’t Read? (Comment Parler des Livres Que l’On N’a Pas …

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Keepers of the Flame

Standing in his new South Side studio, a patchwork of windows letting in the mid-day light, glass artist Drew Hine reaches for a map to illustrate his connection to the early days of Pittsburgh glassmaking, an industry that emerged 210 years ago from a red-hot amalgam of sand, ash, lime and coal. “It happened right …

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