Articles Archive - Page 111 of 154 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

The word “legendary” was built for Chuck Kinder. The heart and soul of the University of Pittsburgh writing program for years, he entered legend as the inspiration for the main character of “Wonder Boys,” the hit novel by his former student Michael Chabon. He fulfills the legend of the novelist with the story so big …

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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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Health

Living with Amnesia

by Matt Stroud

When I pulled up to Diana Staab’s house in May, it would mark my third interview with her and the second time that month that I would spend a few hours at her home in Level Green near Murrysville. When she opened the door and said hello, she was wearing a white T-shirt, black sweatpants …

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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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Health

Heroin Hits Home

by Nick Keppler

By the time he was 35, James (a pseudonym) was living in a Shadyside home worth $500,000, driving an Audi A4 and earning six figures. He was seven years into his job as a recruiter for a technology company. His wife was from a wealthy family, and they traveled often. “Every six weeks, we were …

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Arts

Arts Aligned

by Ben Schmitt

They’re situated on either side of Forbes Avenue in Oakland, almost appreciatively staring at each other in a figurative manner: A world-class university and a world-class art collection. On a daily basis, backpack-sporting college students and briefcase-toting college professors weave in and out of these historic institutions, along with the general public. But not until …

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Health

3-D Mammograms Premier in Pittsburgh

by Kelly Casey

When Diana Napper gets a compliment on her crystal bracelet, she can’t help but make a life-saving sales pitch. “This bracelet is funding some of the best technology in the world,” says Napper, 58, of McCandless. The technology is digital breast tomosynthesis—more commonly known as 3-D mammography. This breakthrough in breast cancer screening can detect …

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History

Home Library Group

by Jennifer McNulty

Coke oven smokestacks loom as members of a boys’ reading club pose in an what is likely a factory slum along the Monongahela where workers lived to be near their jobs at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill in Hazelwood. Six years earlier, steel titan Andrew Carnegie, himself a self-educated working boy who found inspiration …

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Profiles

Jeff Broadhurst

by Jeff Broadhurst

Eat’n Park started out back in 1949 as a very small restaurant on Saw Mill Run Boulevard. Larry Hatch started it, and believe it or not, on the first day, he opened at breakfast and closed before dinner because he was too busy. He couldn’t keep up. Those of us in the restaurant business wish …

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Opinion

Getting away from it all

by Lara Bruhn

“You need a vacation.” It’s bad enough when we hear it from our family members, worse when our employees feel compelled to tell us, and downright embarrassing when a regular client or customer points it out. Despite our best efforts, the physical and mental wear and tear of business ownership can take an obvious toll. …

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Education

A Lasting Impact

by PQ Staff

We asked regional colleges and universities to each choose a graduate who would give his or her thoughts on how the school made an impact on their lives. Allegheny College Chris Allison ’83 Former CEO, Tollgrade Communication, Inc.; Member, Allegheny College Board of Trustees; Entrepreneur in Residence, Allegheny College I vividly remember the late-night phone …

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Sports

Moneyball?

by Brandon Gdula

The morning after flying in from Texas in March, Greg Harris and his mother downed an oatmeal breakfast and coffee before heading to the basketball game they’d traveled more than 1,000 miles to see. They came to Pittsburgh to watch their favorite team, the University of Texas, play Butler University in the opening round of …

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Innovation

Wanted: More Workers (Part III)

by Evan Pattak

With baby boomers poised to retire and far fewer younger, skilled people available to replace them, the region faces a potentially crippling workforce gap that could be especially damaging in sectors that require STEM (science, technology, engineering math) skills. The Allegheny Conference on Community Development estimates that the gap could reach 144,000 workers, although that’s …

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Obituaries

Hillman, Lenchner, Spruill, Peters, Faison, Danforth, Hoffstat

by PQ Staff

Elsie Hillman, 89 The irreplaceable and irrepressible first lady of Pittsburgh, “Elsie” combined vision, commitment, enthusiasm and means with a common touch. Those qualities and a sense of humor and fun helped her spearhead and support political, civic, cultural and philanthropic initiatives for more than 60 years. She headed both the Allegheny County and Pennsylvania …

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Regional News

Seeds of Opportunity

by Julia Fraser

A handful of business incubators have set up shop in Pittsburgh neighborhoods where vacant overgrown lots, faded signs and boarded up storefronts suggest that the local economy has struggled for decades. Nonprofits such as Urban Innovation21 and Thrill Mill are taking steps to redefine the image of incubators as solely focused on highly educated tech …

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Region

Best-case scenario

by Jeffery Fraser

1985 was a grim year for Pittsburgh. The region, reeling from a historic collapse of its industry, was hemorrhaging people, mostly young adults leaving for job opportunities that had evaporated in their hometown. The air was bad, worse than it is today. Even the beloved Steelers failed to offer solace, finishing with seven wins against …

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Opinion

Pittsburgh & Diversity

by Douglas Heuck

Recently, in my “other” job with Pittsburgh Today, we published a report on racial and ethnic diversity in the regional workforce. Given that Pittsburgh is the whitest (86 percent) of the 15 benchmark regions we examine, it wasn’t a shock to learn that we have the lowest percentage of minority workers—11 percent compared with the …

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Arts

An outside view

by Graham Shearing

“Embedded” is a strange word, which we have come to recognize nowadays as the term used for journalists and photographers permitted to report in war zones under military protection and some limitation. That was the experience of British photographer Mark Neville working in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan in 2011 as an official war artist, …

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