Articles Archive - Page 112 of 157 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Are we separate from nature or part of it? Superior to all creatures, the apex of creation, or simply one species among millions? Does self awareness make us unique? What about our sense of past, present and future? These are some of the questions I’ve mulled since The Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Powdermill Avian …

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Nature

Great Allegheny Passage

by Thomas Saunders

One of the most wonderful trail additions in western Pennsylvania has been the Great Allegheny Passage which runs 150 miles between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, Md., where it joins the C&O Canal Towpath and continues to Washington, D.C. Some of the most remote and scenic parts of the trail are the portions along the Casselman River …

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Sports

The Holmes Precedent

by Marino Parascenzo

Time was when yogi Berra had to work off- season as a restaurant greeter. Richie Hebner dug graves. Nolan Ryan pumped gas. When Pirate slugger Ralph Kiner asked for a raise, scripture-quoting general manager Branch Rickey told him: “We finished last with you and we can finish last without you.” During this winter’s off-season, perhaps …

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Books

Neither, Either, Or

by John Allison

If you want to explore the vexing subject of global climate change, Seamus McGraw is the guy to have as a tour guide. He will not torture your brain with elaborate science, tax your patience with lectures about evil consumer habits, or bash you over the head with partisan arguments. Instead, he takes you to …

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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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Architecture & Neighborhoods

The City-County Building

by Charles Rosenblum

Ask people their favorite downtown Pittsburgh building, and many will tell you Henry Hobson Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail. Pittsburgh’s first really famous piece of architecture has been popular consistently since its 1888 completion. But the truly memorable public space is actually right next door, the City-County Building, completed in 1917. The soaring three-bay …

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Health

Is Being Overweight the New Smoking?

by Kelly Casey

Since hitting puberty four decades ago, Claudia Pianko has struggled with her weight. “When I was in 6th grade, I was 144 pounds,” she says. By last January, the 5’ 8’’ Greensburg woman weighed in at 385 pounds. Not surprisingly, Pianko, now 54, has a slew of weight-related health problems: high blood pressure, diabetes, knee …

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Regional Annual Report

Arrival of More Immigrants Softens Population Decline

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Total population fell by 4,597 people throughout the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area from 2013 to 2014. The five-year population trend, however, is one of stability. The region’s population grew slightly in three of those years. The one-year decline—two-tenths of 1 percent—occurred despite the fact that slightly more people moved into the region than left it …

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Regional Annual Report

New strategies emerge for strengthening neighborhood arts culture

by Julia Fraser

The arthouse in Homewood is hard to miss. It’s the house on Hamilton Avenue adorned with mosaics, from the stars against a field of blue covering one of its sides to the swirls of hearts and other images around words and phrases like “yes” and “you are beautiful” that greet visitors to its porch. Inside, …

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Regional Annual Report

States collaborate to grow region’s petrochemical industry

by Jeffery Fraser

The governors of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia signaled their interest in expanding the petrochemical industry’s footprint in the tri-state region last year to take advantage of abundant natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations underneath it. After competing against one another to lure the industry to their states for years, Pennsylvania Governor …

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Regional Annual Report

Region Begins to imagine the transit network of the future

by Julia Fraser

Civic leaders across southwestern Pennsylvania want people to start thinking big about the future of transportation in the region. Imagine commuter rail extending to the airport, expanded bus rapid transit, connected bike lanes throughout the area, smart traffic signals—that kind of big. A new leadership coalition, the Regional Transportation Alliance of Southwestern Pennsylvania (RTA), emerged …

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Regional Annual Report

Region’s housing market remains the picture of stability

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

The regional housing market stayed in character in 2015, with home prices appreciating but at a slower rate than in most other Pittsburgh Today benchmark regions. Homeownership is high across the Pittsburgh MSA. U.S. Census Bureau data show that 69.3 percent of homes in the seven-county MSA are occupied by their owners. Only Minneapolis among …

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Regional Annual Report

Local initiative gains acclaim, plans May celebration

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

In the Monongahela River Valley, where now-silent steel mills once defined the region, a traditional classroom has been stripped of its chalkboards and remade as an entertainment technology academy. Game design theory now helps engage students in English, computer science and math lessons. In childcare centers, children share their day in pictures and voice compositions …

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Regional Annual Report

City police attempt to mend relations in African American neighborhoods

by Julia Fraser

Some of the photos posted on the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Facebook pages include: A smiling child wearing a policeman’s cap and holding a police radio alongside a city cop, an officer and child eating ice cream bars, and smiling police officers riding bikes with smiling kids. The image of citizen-friendly policing is one that …

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Regional Annual Report

Air and water pollution still challenge region

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Environmental stewardship is not a traditional strength of southwestern Pennsylvania, where the legacy of industrialization and growth includes periods of dense air pollution, and streams and rivers tainted with abandoned mine acid and effluent from inadequate municipal sewage systems. Gone are the days when soot from mills and home furnaces turned afternoon into night and …

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Regional Annual Report

Pittsburgh Sees Future Unfolding Around Principles of Sustainability

by Jeffery Fraser

High above the Monongahela River in Hazelwood sits Pittsburgh’s last great brownfield. Only the ghostly shell of Mill 19 stands as evidence of the steel and coke works that for a century had given the neighborhood bustle, prosperity and some of the unhealthiest air in the region. The rest of the 178 acres lies barren, …

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Regional Annual Report

Risky Health Behaviors Run High Across the Region

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

When it comes to avoiding preventable diseases, southwestern Pennsylvanians are their own worst enemy. Rates of smoking, being overweight and physical inactivity across the seven counties that make up the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area are among the worst in the Pittsburgh Today benchmark regions and the nation. Such behaviors have been strongly linked to preventable …

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Opinion

The Path to Growth

by Lara Bruhn

My 13-year-old son is growing taller by the day. I asked him jokingly when he would stop and he replied “If I had my way, never.” He said it felt good to be achieving “new heights” even if he knew it would come to an end some day. The same seems to be true of …

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Special Reports

The Pittsburgh Regional Diversity Survey

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

The Pittsburgh Regional Diversity Survey asked more than 3,500 southwestern Pennsylvania residents for their views on diversity in the workplace, region and their neighborhood. Results from the survey indicate that, while most respondents of all races see value in racial and ethnic diversity, significant differences exist along racial lines in answers to many of the …

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Arts

The new Westmoreland

by Graham Shearing

Early in October, looking out over the view of Greensburg from the newly reconfigured Westmoreland Museum of American Art, someone remarked that a building’s foundations had been discovered recently in the old parking garage, which is being turned into a garden. In England, such work recently turned up the body of King Richard III, slain …

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Sports

Sports town bragging rights

by Jeffery Fraser

Go to any city with a professional baseball, football, basketball or hockey franchise and chances are you’ll find at least one guy in a bar who’ll argue his is the best sports town in America. It’s likely there’s even one in Charlotte after a Hornets victory and a few too many beers. The guy in …

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Profiles

J. Kevin McMahon, Arts & Culture Executive

by Jeff Sewald

It’s not a secret, but I actually was born in Pittsburgh. I don’t talk about it, not because I’m not proud of Pittsburgh; Pittsburgh is great. But in Pittsburgh, if you say you were born here, everybody expects you to know everything about it. When I was a little kid, my family moved, so I …

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