Culture Archives - Page 9 of 39 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Step on board the good ship Explorer and get ready to enjoy your exciting outing on Pittsburgh’s signature rivers. No jazz combo, no dancing here, but there is a tour guide who will introduce you to the stops along your journey. Over there are the former iron-making Carrie Furnaces spanning Rankin and Swissvale, abandoned in …

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Books Culture

Death of the Daily News

by Fred Shaw

Nearly 200 years ago, French social scientist Alexis De’ Tocqueville spent nine months touring America, documenting observations in what became the seminal Democracy in America. His take on the job of newspapers in a bourgeoning new country experimenting in representative democracy could be his most prescient: “’To suppose they only serve to protect freedom would …

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Books Culture

The Blue Continuum

by Robert McNeilly Jr.

“Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”— Robert F. Kennedy Policing in any community is only as effective as the elected officials being informed and prudent enough to avoid common mistakes. When officers make mistakes, they jeopardize …

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Books Culture

Behind a Biography

by Maxwell King

I first got interested in John Kane 20 years ago. I was working at The Heinz Endowments, the large charitable foundation in Pittsburgh, which has a wonderful collection of the work of Pittsburgh artists, going back over 100 years. A local art dealer named Pat McArdle was talking to me about the collection when he …

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Arts Culture

Measuring the Law

by Kathleen George

Many years ago, I worked on a production of Measure for Measure, and many of those lines are still stuck in my head. Shakespeare is of course supremely quotable on any number of subjects. But this difficult and brilliant play about the law as it relates to sex has potent language that keeps floating up …

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Books Culture

Consequences of Love

by Fred Shaw

With kidnapping and murder in the storyline, a “whodunit” often ensues. But like the Coen Brothers film masterpiece, Fargo, sometimes the crimes are less interesting than how the characters react to their circumstances and the events that led them astray. Stewart O’ Nan, a Squirrel Hill native and Pittsburgh’s preeminent novelist, uses this tactic to …

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Arts Culture

The Pinnacle of My Time at Quantum

by Karla Boos

Dear reader, I think you may benefit from a pitcher of Bloody Mary’s. Or a pot of coffee. Or a screened-in porch with an ancient comfortable chair for a September afternoon, whatever your version of support props. This story has twists and turns that challenge one’s staying power. But I appreciate your lending an ear …

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Culture PQ Poem

Colonial Tea Room

by Catherine Doty

At 5 AM you’re buttering the bagels and waiting for your city sewer man to heave himself out of a hole in Barclay Street and bring you a breakfast order for his crew. The list is smudged and long and flush with desire: burned bacon on a jelly-smeared bialy, cold brisket on a kaiser, side of gravy, and Flop …

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Culture History

What Happened to Youngstown?

by Vince Guerrieri

It’s a hell of a thing to know your birth coincides with a line of demarcation in your hometown. On one side is prosperity. On the other, ruin. I was born in Youngstown in 1977. At the time, it was an industrial city, known for its steel production and a variety of attendant industries. The …

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Culture Opinion

A Pittsburgh Wedding

by Douglas Heuck

It all started in March of 2020, when my daughter’s boyfriend flew to Pittsburgh for lunch to ask for her hand. Liking him a great deal, I said yes, not knowing that, thanks to the vagaries of COVID, we would have 30 months to think and rethink the wedding, and experience all the drama accompanying …

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Books

Getting Published at 70

by Chris Posti

I could write a book. we’ve all said it one time or another, whether it’s because we know a lot about a certain topic, or because we’ve had it up to here with our circumstances. But in my case, I wrote a book because I couldn’t find any women’s fiction I liked. I’m not all …

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Arts

Breaking and Healing

by Christine Swann

Artists begin with one question regarding any new creative work. Most might think artists ask themselves, “What should I create?” But the question really needs to be, “Why should I create it?” Intention. It is the driving force behind any project, plan or goal. Without it there can be no satisfying end result. Without it …

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Books

Gabriel Welsch Surveys the Human Landscape with “Groundscratchers” Collection

by Fred Shaw

In the world of landscaping, the term “groundscratcher” is derisive. It’s also the title of Gabriel Welsch’s revelatory short story collection from Tolsun Books. In it, the titular story finds Michael Petrin, ground supervisor of a large estate, at odds with the “maximal Minimalist” Japanese Zen Fusion gardener Yoshi Higashide hired by his boss, the …

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Books

Expanding the Strike Zone

by Fred Shaw

Baseball, once considered “America’s pastime,” has increasingly begun to feel irrelevant as games routinely last more than three hours and options for bored eyeballs abound on the internet. This year’s 99-day labor dispute over how to best divide billions of dollars in revenue has further alienated frustrated fans, who in Pittsburgh have only had a …

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Culture History

In the Mind of the Beholder

by Vicky A Clark

Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis came across an unassuming structure, located at the five-point intersection on Lowrie Street in Troy Hill, where they have a studio. Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation had placed a plaque on the structure, informing visitors that it housed the upper level of Pittsburgh’s first incline, founded in 1887, that …

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Culture Opinion

No Option But One

by PQ Staff

In a letter to his brother Theo in 1886, Vincent Van Gogh wrote: “It seems to me that you have been suffering to see your youth pass like a drift of smoke, but if it springs up again and comes to life in what you do, nothing has been lost, and the power to work …

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Books Culture

When Leadershi* Hits the Fan

by PQ Staff

Leaders have many responsibilities, but if they don’t take the time to help their employees grow professionally and personally, then they have failed. The time it takes to develop employees can be daunting for any leader, as they are interrupted every seven minutes. It’s not practical to eliminate opportunities either as you need to be …

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Books

American Bastard

by Fred Shaw

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25,528 children were born in 1952 in Pittsburgh. One was to an unwed Garfield teen. Cared for by nuns at the Roselia Asylum and Maternity Hospital in the Hill District, she was adopted the following year by a Whitehall couple and named Janet. Since then, Jan …

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PQ Poem

Essential Worker

by Robert Fillman

There was only one blackemployee at our school,Danny the janitor who cleaned up the crumbs fromour Little Debbie cakesat lunch. Danny, who scrubbed the toilets, the muscled thirty-something guy whobecame our protector, who broke up playground fightsand chased down basketballs,raised us up so we could dunk on a ten-foot rim.Danny, whose closet was by the library where …

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Arts Culture

Capturing a Giant

by Maria Sciullo

There’s never been anything quite like it. In its heyday, the Homestead Works sprawled across 420 acres, much of it hugging both sides of the Monongahela River. Roughly 15,000 people worked there, in 450 buildings, dominating the landscape with more than 100 miles of railroad tracks and becoming so intertwined with the town that when Big …

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Arts Culture

Art and Intention

by Nicole Renee Ryan

Growing up on a farm in Mercer County, surrounded by expansive fields and wooded hills, I spent much of my childhood either outdoors exploring or inside reading. I was (and still am) particularly fond of stories that explore hidden worlds, like the poems and drawings of Shel Silverstein and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden.” …

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Culture PQ Poem

Freight: Passing Through

by Dora Odarenko

I resonate over banks of the Ohio cense with soot the river straitjacketed between walls built for restraint. I cast my voice out over Neville Island intertwine with suspect air. In haste and power I slice with authority the boredom of the highway, its hum a faucet left unchecked. A presence inescapable, I penetrate the …

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