Articles Archive - Page 103 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

To paraphrase a new friend, director general of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts Jamal Shah: in celebrating life, art follows the inquisitive human mind in its desire to delve deeper as it challenges the established reality and surprises us with new realities. It challenges us to deepen our quest to explore the overwhelming …

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Sustainability Watch

Infant Mortality Trends

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Infant mortality remains a serious public health issue in the region, nation and around the world. Local data, however, is encouraging. Rates of infant deaths have decreased since 2003 in Allegheny County, where infant mortality has historically been high, particularly among African Americans. Racial differences African American infant mortality rates have declined more sharply than …

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Creative Capital

The Illusion of Control, Part III

by Greg Curtis

In my last post I pointed out that, contrary to the claims of Modern Portfolio Theory, families who own businesses aren’t at all uncomfortable with the “single stock risk” they are taking. (I’m not counting startup companies, which mostly fail.) I also pointed out that, once a family sells its company and invests the proceeds …

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PQ Poem

Miraculous

by Brandon Fury

I found the miraculous in the dim lamp that hung above your head, swinging. I found the miraculous in the hospital lobby— a bag of candy hearts left by a child whose mother ached in a blue chair. The voices of sick and well mingled across the linoleum floor. I found the miraculous in the …

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American Spirit

Seeing a Garden in a Pile of Debris

by Kate Benz, photography by John Altdorfer

Julia had fired up the chainsaw because she had been bored, really. Retirement had been fun for an hour or two, but she needed something to do. She had grown tired of watching people dump things in the vacant lot adjacent to her East Hills home: couches, loveseats, enough beer cans to make you a …

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Sustainability Watch

Combined Sewage Overflow

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Abundant annual rainfall leaves southwestern Pennsylvania in a fortunate position as much of the world grapples with the prospect of a shortage of fresh water. But effective stewardship to protect the quality of its rivers and streams has not been the region’s strong suit. The region’s most pressing water problem is in Allegheny County, where …

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Creative Capital

The Illusion of Control, Part II

by Greg Curtis

When I was writing my last book, Family Capital, my objective was to make it appealing—well, tolerable—for people who didn’t care much for investment issues but who knew they really should learn something about them. Adult children, for example. But also spouses, cousins, attorneys, accountants, bankers, trustees and others who needed a working knowledge of …

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Sustainability Watch

Regional Poverty

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Poverty remains a stubborn problem for most regions in the United States and southwestern Pennsylvania is no exception. The rate of poverty in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Areas remained relatively stable in 2015 at 12.3 percent of the population, according to U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data. But, following national trends, the region …

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Architecture & Neighborhoods

The Unconventional Pays Off

by Charles Rosenblum

Sometimes a building aims to look as if it has always been there. Frequently, architects match the brick of the surrounding neighborhood and use slightly modernized versions of traditional details to make a structure appear that it’s been there longer than it has. This is not such a bad thing. Buildings end up being agreeable …

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Profiles

Jim Withers, M.D., Street Doctor

by Jeff Sewald

My father was a country doctor; my mom, a nurse. Their relationship was grounded in the values of service and compassion, and they included their children—me, for sure—in that vision. So I made house calls with my dad and, among other things, got to practice parallel parking while delivering Meals on Wheels with my mother, …

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Opinion

Passing the Torch

by PQ Staff

Earlier this fall, a group of about 250 civic and cultural leaders gathered to pay tribute to Teresa Heinz Kerry on the occasion of her handing over the chairmanship of The Heinz Endowments to her sons. From creating Riverlife, to championing causes from the environment to social equity to the Cultural District among many others, …

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Regional News

A Question of Learning

by Julia Fraser

As a digital revolution changes classrooms across the region and country, one key question lingers at the end of each school day: Do the new technologies actually enhance students’ learning? The answer is unclear. After decades of research in fields such as cognitive science, the debate is no longer about whether digital technologies have the …

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Regional News

Rethinking Education

by Julia Fraser

Janice Smith’s fifth-grade reading class at Central Elementary in the Elizabeth Forward School District was supposed to be working on a book report. Huddled around iPads, the students chatted with one another, pointing and swiping at the screens. No one was being shushed, few were sitting square in their seats, and no one was holding …

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Food & Wine

A Delicious Quandary

by Cody McDevitt

In 1968, Pittsburgh Chef Ferdinand Metz cabled from Frankfurt, Germany, to tell his friends that the U.S. Team won the Grand Gold Award in the International Culinary Competition. He was at the top of the culinary world, with 16 gold medals and the grand award given to him and his team. And thousands came when …

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Books

Six Books for Your Winter Reading List

by John Allison

This issue, we take up half-a-dozen new books in three groupings: literary works from two creative writing teachers, Pittsburgh sports history from two prominent national writers, and the latest from two great local legal minds. Don’t be surprised if that next national media story about the resurgent charms of Pittsburgh works in a reference to …

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Birds

The Northern Cardinal

by David Liebmann

Winter puts birders in a different mood. There are birds about, but they are fewer and generally more muted—focused on finding food, staying warm and getting through. The birds that stick around for a Pittsburgh winter are hardier, more committed, the stalwarts. They are the loyalists of cold. There is nothing better on a winter …

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Homes

Desert Bloom

by Marylynn Uricchio

The definition of oasis is simple: a fertile spot in the desert where water can be found. That applies to any number of gated golf communities that surround Palm Springs, California. But The Reserve in Indian Wells is different. Instead of fighting nature by pumping water onto artificially green lawns, it embraces the desert soil. …

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Health

YMCA Leads Effort to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

by Kelly Casey

More than one third of American adults are pre-diabetic. This means a person’s blood sugar levels are higher than normal, putting them at increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Patrice McNeely of Hazelwood falls into this group but is determined not to follow in her family’s footsteps. “I just turned 45 …

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Health

Dissecting Diabetes

by Kelly Casey

When Steve Lawthers takes a golf swing, his arm rubs against a small device attached to his skin, near his belt. “Other than when I play golf, I don’t know it’s there,” says Lawthers, 61, of McCandless. The device constantly measures his blood sugar and displays it on his iPhone. He got it by participating …

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History

Christmas in Utopia

by Tom Imerito

It’s early morning on Christmas Eve in the town of Economy, Pennsylvania. The year is 1828. Twenty-seven-year-old Catharina Langenbacher awakens to the five o’clock gong of the grandfather clock in the sitting room downstairs. By the time she clambers down the crude staircase, her widowed mother is preparing breakfast. Catharina’s 35-year-old brother, Romelius, is milking …

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Nature

Old-Growth Majesty

by Thomas Saunders

One of the most spectacular places to visit in western Pennsylvania is an old-growth forest in the Hearts Content National Scenic Area within the Allegheny National Forest. A timber company gave the property to the U.S. Forest Service in the early 1920s, and today this area is home to one of the last remaining untouched …

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Education

Path to Delinquency

by Jeffery Fraser

Aaron Thomas was 14 when a Pittsburgh police drug task force raided the Garfield home where he lived with his parents, whose lives were ruled by an addiction to cocaine and heroin. That led to his first encounter with the juvenile justice system. But the time he would spend in and out of jail, youth …

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