Culture Archives - Page 8 of 41 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

The conceit of the “what if” story has always fascinated us: what if Ebenezer Scrooge hadn’t been visited by his ghosts in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” or if George Bailey hadn’t had the intervention of the angel Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” or if Marty McFly hadn’t gone back in time to make sure …

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Books

Buying Fragments of God: The Crazy Art World of the 1980s

by Stuart Sheppard

If the 1960s changed America’s consciousness for the better, the 1980s certainly changed American commercialism for the worse. And to have lived during this latter period in New York City was to have felt the first tremors of this change, much like living near the epicenter of an earthquake and experiencing its initial shockwaves before …

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PQ Poem

When Did Prison Become My Home?

by Ace Boggess

When Did Prison Become My Home? My wife had to leave me first,saying so over the phone,the fifteen-minute inmate call long enoughfor her to speak pregnant & separationso I knew my home was not my home.Then came work, waving its armslike a candidate for office,promising a few extra dollarsin my trustee account. Too,I wrote poems …

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Books

Real-life Heroes

by Fred Shaw

On Jan. 25, 1904, 179 mostly teenaged miners died in a massive explosion at the Harwick Mine near Cheswick, where today a stone memorial marks their mass grave. A single survivor, Adolph Gunia, was pulled from the rubble by the mine’s designer, Selwyn Taylor, and his assistant, James McCann. Volunteers like Daniel Lyle dug through …

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PQ Poem

mountebank afternoon

by Jason Baldinger

mountebank afternoon (for angele ellis) contrails fadesun tries to breathelife into the old city mission the art deco erawritten in lamppostwatched by eaglesbronzed in way back the wind across mountebankafternoon stretches a flagto the point it could break then take to the skya kite of a freedom imaginedlike the leaves that decoratethese hillsides bare trees

Books

Dougherty’s Debut Highlights the Bonds Among Five Female Friends

by Fred Shaw

Of her debut novel, Pittsburgh native Marianne Dougherty says it’s “about the power of female friendships to sustain us” — an accurate portrayal of what plays out over 380 brisk-reading pages. With a host of well-regarded freelance work in both local and national platforms, Dougherty has penned a tale about what bonds her strong feminine …

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Books

His Father’s Son

by David J. Garrow

For the first 37 years following his 1945 birth, August Wilson was a Pittsburgh nobody, abandoned by his white German father, Frederick August Kittel, and disdained by his black mother, Daisy Wilson, once he dropped out of school in the ninth grade. Self-educated thanks to thousands of hours spent in multiple Carnegie Library branches, Freddy …

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Opinion

Noteworthy

by PQ Staff

Different Views of Christopher ColumbusOn Oct. 12, in Madrid, Spain, an enormous and colorful parade of national pride snaked its way through the streets of the Spanish capital. The “National Day of Spain” is the country’s biggest civic holiday, celebrating Spanish history and achievements and reconfirming Spaniards’ commitment to the nation’s future. The date commemorates …

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PQ Poem

Interstate Five

by Ryler Dustin

Interstate Five What remains of these lost deltasafter the mills shut down: an artof disappearing, black-windowed bars,the towers of a closed factorystill blinking their red lights to hideno work’s inside. For yearsI drove past these roadside dinerscarved out of rain, trailer parks linedwith European trees, the truck stopwhere cigarette smoke driftsinto the air like a …

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Opinion Pittsburgh Immigration

Pittsburgh Tomorrow

by Douglas Heuck

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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