Opinion Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

At 3 a.m. Sunday, October 20, I bolted out of bed with a thought. Weeks earlier, I’d tried unsuccessfully to attend a Kamala Harris rally to spread the word about the Pittsburgh Tomorrow project. On this Sunday, Elon Musk was coming for a rally — and if I could get in, I wanted to be …

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Opinion

Letter from Philadelphia

by Mark Schwartz

Having moved across the state from Pittsburgh in 1986, I now wonder what prompts me to read each edition of the Pittsburgh Quarterly from cover to cover. Sure, I subscribe to other magazines. The New Yorker is often hit or miss. My location notwithstanding, I can’t relate to “The Main Line Times.” Reading “Philadelphia Magazine’ …

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Culture Opinion

Lessons from Last Place

by Douglas Heuck

Sailing is a big part of the culture in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where I’ve spent 63 straight summers. And some might say that from an early age, I earned the dubious distinction of being a kind of “Jonah” of sailboat races. I’ve never seen myself as that ill-fated shipmate of yore, but the case could …

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Opinion Regional News

Noteworthy Summer 2024

by PQ Staff

Stop the StrikeFor the past 18 months, Pittsburgh has endured the divisive antipathy of a newspaper strike between the Post-Gazette and five unions. While it’s understandable that workers would like to see better wages and benefits, it’s also clear that the newspaper industry has been in a steep, often terminal, decline for decades. The only …

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Opinion

Pittsburgh Tomorrow: The Power of Belief

by Douglas Heuck

One weeknight in early April, i returned home after a tiring day packed with meetings. I don’t usually drink during the week, but as I sat down with the day’s mail, I eyed a bottle of Malbec on the kitchen counter. I sighed and thought “Nope, too much work tonight.” I grabbed the mail, noticing …

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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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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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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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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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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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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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Opinion

No More Love Letters

by Samuel Hazo

I have always been amused by Hollywood’s vision of writers at work. The writer is presented seated at a desk on which sits a typewriter or a computer. Suddenly the writer seems inspired and begins typing feverishly. The camera stays on him as he continues to type, and his manuscript grows page by page into …

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Culture Opinion

Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?

by David Macpherson

In a rare show of unity, Congress seems poised to declare daylight savings time to be permanent. No longer in March will we drive distracted as we futilely fiddle with the buttons on our old car’s dashboard in a sleep deprived commute to work. The slight increase in automobile accidents in the week after the …

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Opinion

Needed: City Leadership

by Douglas Heuck

Until yesterday, in 60 years, I have only called a political representative once to try to persuade him to vote on something I thought was important. It was in October 2008, when Congress was again considering the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Days earlier, the bill failed to pass the U.S. House by 13 votes, …

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Opinion

The Dreaded Bumper Blocker

by Diane Vrabel

When you think about it, what’s more benign than a parking lot? A neutral zone where idled cars pass the time like languid dogs sleeping in the sun. Well, think again. Parking lots can be hazardous to your health. I’m not talking about fender-benders or road rages when careless drivers clash while parking their vehicles. …

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Culture Opinion

Famous Last Word

by Ray Werner

I decided a few years back, as I approached the magic number 80 that it would be a good idea to die at home. Dying at home, I figured, surrounded by my children and grandchildren, in the house where Susan and I raised our three sons and daughter, would be a storybook ending to a …

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Culture Opinion

What’s in a Name?

by Marianne Dougherty

It’s only been a couple of decades since we kept our contacts (names, addresses, phone numbers) in leather-bound address books. Old-school, right, but that’s what we did before we were tethered to technology: Outlook on our computers, Contacts on our iPhones or Androids. My mother sent Christmas cards to dozens of people each year, and …

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Opinion

A Christmas Story

by Charles R. Altman

It was a December Saturday in 1956 when my surgeon father decided he and I would go out and cut down our Christmas tree just as he had done as a boy. Equipped with a rope, a canvas tarp, saws, an axe and several hatchets, we left our house in suburban Pittsburgh at 9:00 a.m. …

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Opinion

Into the Woods

by Douglas Heuck

June 15th was crisp and cloudless. carrying a chainsaw, orange surveyor’s tape and a compass, I started walking in a straight line into the pathless woods. Trailing me was my Airedale, Hawkins, and behind both of us was the little cabin that a group of friends and I built the previous summer on an island …

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Opinion

An Elegy for Oscar

by Samuel Hazo

Some say we love our pets, particularly our dogs, because it pleases and comforts us to do so. I’m not convinced. From my experience with my own dog, who died helplessly of heart failure in his thirteenth year, I felt and still feel a sense of loss that is more than the absence of self-comfort. …

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