Culture Archives - Page 6 of 39 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

When I came to Pittsburgh in 1985, it was a great city — the late David McCullough called it “the essential American city.” But it was a great city in shock. The massive industrial economy had collapsed and 150,000 to 200,000 mainly young people were leaving for greener pastures. I expected to stay for my …

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Arts

Combining the Political and Artistic

by Vicky A Clark

We live a media world, constantly bombarded with unprecedented information delivered on various platforms. It can be next to impossible to separate fact and from, but everyone has the right to an opinion. Many still believe that the art museum, the so-called palace of culture, should remain steeped in the beautiful and provide an escape …

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Arts

Barebones’ “American Buffalo” is Stunning and Revelatory Theater

by Stuart Sheppard

In trying to describe the essence of strong writing – and ultimately, all art — the poet Wallace Stevens said, “A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect, but most likely, the opposite.” What we have in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” (1975) is the embodiment of this ethos, as the play brings …

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Opinion

Stronger than Hate? We Need to Prove it Now

by Douglas Heuck

Five years ago, Pittsburgh was shocked by the horrifying acts of a hate-filled gunman who murdered 11 people and injured many others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill. On October 7, just 20 days before the five-year anniversary of that mass killing in Pittsburgh, the world was shocked when Hamas terrorists savagely …

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Opinion

Broken Politics is Hardly Limited to Allegheny County

by Mark Schwartz

I agree with Editor Douglas Heuck’s piece entitled “The Broken Politics of Allegheny County.” I moved across the state in 1986 to the Philadelphia suburb of Bryn Mawr, in part because I was tired of the political scene in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County; not that it’s proven to be any better here. Obvious and commonly …

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Opinion

How Much Do Voters Care About the Future of Allegheny County?

by Douglas Heuck

(This story appeared in the Fall issue under the headline: The Broken Politics of Allegheny County.) I was on vacation in Michigan this summer, walking down a path to collect my daughter’s dog, when two old friends said hello from a cottage porch. One, from Cincinnati, gets the magazine and asked what the subject of …

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Books

The Making of the Mafia

by Fred Shaw

There’s a scene in season one of “the Sopranos” when teen daughter Meadow asks, “Who invented the Mafia?” The question leaves Tony to consider how to respond with a mouthful of mu shu pork. That she then names those five New York City families with ease exemplifies the way La Cosa Nostra has become ingrained …

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Culture

Is Life Ahead or Within

by Samuel Hazo

After meeting his doctor for his annual checkup, a 70-year-old patient told the doctor, “Checkups or no checkups, we all have to die one day. It’s just a question of when.” The doctor shook his patient’s hand and said, “Not when, but how.” That brief exchange reveals not only two different attitudes toward life but …

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Books Sports

From Basket Ball to the NBA

by Fred Shaw

While the debate over Pittsburgh’s status as a basketball town continues on barstools and radio waves across the region, what’s been settled by Claude Johnson, Carnegie Mellon University grad and author of The Black Fives: The Epic Story of Basketball’s Forgotten Era, is the important role that a black player from Homestead, once a “basket …

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Books

The Allman Brothers Band – and Me

by Alan Paul

The road may go on forever, but it began in my brother’s bedroom on Inverness Avenue, where he handed me a copy of the Allman Brothers Band’s Eat A Peach and told me to listen to it, when I was in seventh grade. I put on some headphones, lay down on the yellow shag carpet, …

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PQ Poem

Colors

by Deborah Bogen

Colors Blood-red was all the rage that year — in the fashion magazines and the furniture showrooms. So, now we had the new loveseat, my mother’s find — the fabric called blood-red, but it looked older and dried up. Something closer to rust. The walls of my room were a perfect sky blue and my …

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Books

The Rebellious Spirits Still Haunting Pittsburgh

by Stuart Sheppard

Some historical events seem so fantastical that they sound like myths when retold, while others are so intrinsic to our nature that they could be today’s news, and actually help us understand our contemporaneous existence more deeply. After reading The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History of an American Crisis by Brady J. Crytzer, I would …

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History

A Fascinating New Museum

by Barbara Eichenlaub

While you probably have never heard of David Karpeles, his accomplishments likely have affected your life. Born in Santa Barbara, Calif., he lived there until he was 6. In 1942, his mother saw a Japanese submarine in the water and decided that it would be safer to move the family to Duluth, Minn. He earned …

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PQ Poem

Empty Hands

by Bart Solarczyk

Empty Hands I dream you naked in a worldwhere touch is forbidden this is death, this is longingempty hands squeezing air.

American Spirit Arts

The Ruins

by Ben Moyer

When Rachel Sager bought a house, she didn’t know it came with a coal mine. Obscured by woods in her “backyard,” and flanking the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) bike trail, are the sprawling ruins of the once robust Banning No. 2 coal mine: a labyrinth of crumbling brick and weathered concrete, wedged between bluffs and …

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PQ Poem

Evacuate My Brain

by Lisa Alexander

Evacuate My BrainAlong that wallI could be quietin the dark—club kids, drag queensbrush by in a stiff hitof hairspray, cigarettes,something candysweethoney bring it close to my lipsI’d stand there smoking,watch the crowd on the floormove as a whole, look for facesI know, faces that surprise me,faces I might want—honey bring it close to my lips …

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PQ Poem

of what is not written, the archive only dreams

by Elizabeth Hoover

of what is not written, the archive only dreams When the archive dreams of Pittsburgh, smoke poursfrom the stacks, and librarians don goggles, wrap the booksin tarp. When the archive dreams of Pittsburgh, I perch on an overhead crane and watch as a silhouetteemerges from a row of hook blocks, shimmingwith a pole to flip …

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PQ Poem

In the Portrait Gallery

by Gerry LaFemina

In the Portrait Gallery Faces of no one I know, some of themstern-eyed, the rooms they sat in soot dark with coal fires & still births.Thus was born stoicism & the Age of Exploration. I lived that way for decades—alternating between hermitage & pilgrimage; the yin & yang of grim & grin.Sure, the men in …

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Architecture & Neighborhoods Culture

Pittsburgh Architecture, “From the Spoon to the City”

by Bea Spolidoro

In 1952, Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers famously declared that architects should have been able to design everything, from “a spoon to a city” — dal cucchiaio alla città. While this can sound a bit excessive to those who are not architects, it expresses the enthusiasm that architects have for the spaces we inhabit. Every …

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Arts Culture

Bryce Glass

by Marylynne Pitz

After his father died and his eldest brother disappeared, James Bryce became, at age 14, the head of a large family. So, he began learning the “art, trade and mystery” of glass blowing at Bakewell, Page & Bakewell in Downtown Pittsburgh. The year was 1827 and by then, the Scottish immigrant had four years of experience …

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Opinion

The Broken Politics of Allegheny County

by Douglas Heuck

A couple of weeks ago, I was on vacation in Michigan, walking down a path to collect my dog, when two old friends said hello from a cottage porch. One, from Cincinnati, gets the magazine and asked what the subject of my next column would be. I told him I was writing about the November …

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Arts

Saving a Pittsburgh Arts Center

by Douglas Heuck

For Jennifer McNulty, Kyle Houser and a small band of arts devotees, the past three years have offered a consuming challenge: How could they save and restore to life a Pittsburgh institution, which they love and which they believe will play a key role in revitalizing the city? McNulty is co-president of the board and …

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