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The Pennsylvania State University has more than 645,000 living alums. Obviously, they know about “Happy Valley,” as do the throngs who attend football games each fall. But if you’ve never visited Penn State, State College or Centre County, it’s well worth exploring, especially on a quieter, non-football weekend. While there are chain hotels available, go …

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Homes

A Collector’s Eye

by Marylynn Uricchio

Tradition winds through the leafy streets of Sewickley like a summer breeze, ruffling the flags on stately old homes and the flowers that adorn each perfect lawn. In a neighborhood filled with beautiful houses, the 1950s French-inspired stucco stands out, as it did when Anne and David Genter bought it 10 years ago. “This had …

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Food & Wine

The Old Ways May Be Best

by Deborah Weisberg

Marino floro plucks a perfectly shaped fig from a tree in his Sewickley yard, opens the door to his chicken coop, and offers the fruit to a chamois-colored hen, which clucks with enthusiasm. Three chickens inhabit this paradise of a mini-farm, where trees yield four different kinds of figs, as well as peaches, plums, apricots, …

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Travel

On the Road to Prosperity

by John Beale

Prosperity means different things to different people. But to the residents of a village by that name in Washington County that’s been significantly affected by fluctuations in the coal and Marcellus Shale gas industries, Prosperity is home. Some of the 1,105 residents have made a lot of money. Some are working hard to just get …

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Travel

Sail Away to Annapolis

by Marylynn Uricchio

Just about every place in Annapolis will tell you it has the best crab cakes in town, and they’re all right. The Chesapeake is famous for its blue crabs, plucked daily from the bay and served any number of ways, but always with abundance. There is so much crab in Annapolis, a visitor can get …

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Homes

A Classic Redefined

by Marylynn Uricchio

It’s difficult enough for many couples to agree on a new home, but the challenges were even greater for Stephen and Helen Hanna Casey. He’s an award-winning architect and she’s the president and CEO of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, the fourth largest real estate company in the U.S. “Steve knows architecture and design, and …

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Homes

An Art Full House

by Marylynn Uricchio

“We’re art addicts so we’re always buying stuff, ” says the owner of a wood-clad modern home in Fox Chapel, laughing. She and her husband are just back from a major art fair and the question, as usual, is where to put the new piece. From the outside, no one would suspect that the discreet …

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Travel

Boom, bust and disaster

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Located at a horseshoe bend of the Monongahela River in Washington County—the heart of today’s Rust Belt—what would become Donora, Pa.was a farming community of 12 people in 1900. Within one year, it exploded to 4,000—as hordes of workers built and manned numerous factories. Its population topped 14,000 by 1920, but today numbers only 5,500. …

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Food & Wine

Cheers! from around the world

by Matthew John Milligan

Consider how the weather transforms our lives. As the thermometer drops, so too do our windows and doors as we make the seamless transition from shorts to sweatpants, smoothies to soups, flip-flops to snow boots and a cotton blanket to a 16-pound down comforter. What we often enjoy most about this season are the traditions …

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Homes

Global Glamour

by Marylynn Uricchio

It took Phileas Fogg 80 days to go around the world in Jules Verne’s classic novel. It took closer to three years for a Shadyside couple to complete their residence, a mélange of influences from their international lives and travels. The result is a journey of a different sort; a home that reflects both their …

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Travel

New Zealand

by Douglas Heuck

Like everyone else who saw the “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, I was somewhat stunned by the dramatic beauty of New Zealand. But I’d never seriously considered visiting until Christmas 2014, when my oldest son was home from Shanghai and said, “Let’s go fly-fishing together in New Zealand.” I’ve always loved fishing, but not …

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Travel

The shrine on Troy Hill

by Barbara Eichenlaub

The story of how St. Anthony Chapel in Troy Hill came to house the largest collection of Christian relics outside of the Vatican begins in the 1850s with a young man from a wealthy Belgian family. After attending medical school, Suitbert Mollinger became a Catholic priest who followed his vocation to America. By 1868, he …

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Food & Wine

Millvale’s Grant Bar

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

Amidst the worldly comings and goings, observe how endings become beginnings,” says the Tao Te Ching, the Chinese book of philosophy and religion from 6th century BC. Despite the separation of millennia, the ancient author could have been inspired by the comings and goings at Grant Bar in Millvale. Since 1933, Frank Ruzomberka and his …

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Food & Wine

Someone Else’s Bar

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

When Else Franzmann is asked where she is from, she is quick to say, “I’m from everywhere and nowhere. I never really had a hometown.” Else lived in five different places before she was 10, her family never sinking roots. After her first job, she moved seven times in 10 years. Later, she started tending …

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Food & Wine

The Greening of Hazelwood

by Quelcy Kogel

Like a Polaroid picture never quite developed, a snapshot of the entire urban farming movement in Pittsburgh is fuzzy at best. But move in for a closeup and it’s clear that urban farming is on the rise, especially in Hazelwood, where a new breed of farmers is restoring the connection between our food, health and …

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Travel

Having a great time in Beaver, Pa.

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Rudyard Kipling visited Beaver, Pa, during the summer of 1889 and referred to it fondly in “Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel.” Spend a day or two there, and you’ll understand why. Established at the confluence of the Ohio and Beaver rivers in 1802, Beaver is the Beaver County seat with an historic district built …

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Homes

Kentuck Knob

by Marylynn Uricchio

In London, he is Baron Peter Palumbo, a property developer, art and architecture collector, former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain and a member of the House of Lords. His wife, Hayat, comes from a Lebanese newspaper family and exudes the graciousness of a woman used to navigating in tony circles. But in …

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Travel

Ireland: Mind Your Manors

by Marylynn Uricchio

Whether you spend the day on Dublin’s bustling Grafton Street or peering over the Cliffs of Moher, odds are good you will encounter some sort of precipitation accompanied by a chill wind and gray sky. It’s what makes stopping by the pub at the end of the day such an appealing Irish tradition. A welcoming …

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Travel

Of Irish Roads and Distant Kin

by Tim Menees

So I’m hauling eight of us—my wife Kay, her brother and his wife, her sister and her husband, and their two Irish cousins Ann and Peggy—down this dinky road in the farmland outside Galway, Ireland, in a blue beast the rental agency calls a “mini-bus.” Peggy is riding shotgun (“Careful of this turn now!”) and …

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Travel

The ease and élan of Ireland

by Douglas Heuck

I can’t really recall why we chose Ireland for our honeymoon 27 years ago. Neither of us is Irish. Maybe it was the writers—Yeats, Wilde and Joyce. Maybe the fishing (not for my wife). It certainly wasn’t the weather or, back then, the food. My wife noted that the same boiled potato and chicken meal …

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Travel

Hiking Boots & Shamrocks

by Chris Allison

While most travelers to the west of Ireland enjoy golfing, visiting castles or fishing, my wife and I hit the hiking trails. We rewarded ourselves for all the hoofing by staying in two quaint Irish hotels with great food and above average hospitality. Before leaving, we invested in L.L. Bean hiking gear—boots, pants, socks, rain …

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Homes

The Curated Condo

by Marylynn Uricchio

When Karen and Jim Johnson decided to downsize, what they had in mind was not a smaller version of their large property in Churchill. The couple wanted a complete change, from traditional with antiques to contemporary with all new furnishings. “We only brought three pieces from our other home – the piano, a marble-topped …

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