Articles Archive - Page 115 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Our region is facing a potentially crippling workforce shortage, with too few young, skilled workers to replace an older generation poised for retirement. According to research by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, the gap could be yawning—as many as 144,000, with the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields especially hard hit. No one expects …

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Regional Annual Report

High Rates of Chronic Disease, Unhealthy Behaviors Persist

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Southwestern Pennsylvanians find themselves in the middle of the pack when self-reported health status is measured across the 15 Pittsburgh Today benchmark regions. More than 83 percent of residents in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) describe their health as good or better, and 16.6 percent rate it fair or poor, according to U.S. Centers …

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Nonprofits

A New Philanthropic Direction

by Diana Bucco

Since the Buhl Foundation began in 1927, Pittsburgh’s philanthropic landscape has changed dramatically, with the creation of the Richard King Mellon Foundation, Heinz Endowments, Hillman Foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation, Grable Foundation, Colcom Foundation, Benedum Foundation and McCune Foundation, among many others. This rich collection of foundation partners has embroidered the fabric of Pittsburgh— from human …

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Health

Healing Children for 125 Years

by Ben Schmitt

Each day, Dr. Patrick Dantzer, a fourth-year resident at Children’s Hospital of UPMC, walks past an indoor mural commemorating Jonas Salk and his polio vaccine discovery. Pretty big shoes to fill, but also a good way to kick start a shift. The milestones at Children’s are copious—so many medical breakthroughs, including the polio vaccine, so …

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Special Reports

Behind the Times: The Limited Role of Minorities in the Greater Pittsburgh Workforce

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Behind the Times: The Limited Role of Minorities in the Greater Pittsburgh Workforce is based on an analysis of workforce-related data collected by the Pittsburgh Regional Workforce Diversity Indicators Initiative. The Workforce Diversity Indicators Initiative, led by Vibrant Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Today, includes representatives from RAND Corporation, Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board, Allegheny Conference on …

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Opinion

A Maze of Milestones

by Douglas Heuck

I‘ve been accumulating milestones lately. Within a year, I’ll have had my 35th high school reunion, the 30th anniversary of my arrival in Pittsburgh, my 25th wedding anniversary, the 10th anniversary of the founding of this magazine, and finally, the signing and sending of the final check for my three children’s college tuitions. During a …

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Arrivals

Cassotis, Suresh, Nolan, Poole, Zimmerman, Moerdyk

by PQ Staff

Christina Cassotis is the chief executive officer of the Allegheny County Airport Authority. She comes to Pittsburgh from York, Maine, where she was managing officer of consultant ICF International’s airport services practice; in her 16 years with the firm, she held a variety of posts. She began her career in transportation with the Massachusetts Port …

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Profiles

Allan H. Meltzer, Economist, professor, author

by Jeff Sewald

As a kid, I moved a lot around Boston, where I was born. My mother died when I was 5, after which I lived with my grandmother. When I was 9, my father remarried and we became suburbanites, moving to Westwood, Mass. Practically no Jews lived there other than me, my dad and my sisters. …

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Sports

Arnold Palmer

by Marino Parascenzo

Arnie Palmer was at home in Latrobe that September afternoon having a quiet birthday when the doorbell rang. There, wearing a warm grin, stood a kindly old gentleman, gray where he wasn’t bald, who was just five years out of the White House and who, some two decades earlier, had saved the world. “Any chance …

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Books

The Fading Light

by John Allison

Stewart O’Nan’s novel “West of Sunset,” based on the final tragic years of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood, took some nerve to write. Would you like to get into the ring with one of the greatest figures in American literature and try to describe what’s going on in his alcoholic head and distressed heart? But …

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Birds

A little yellow friend

by David Liebmann

The potato chip bird. that’s how my students remember it. At first, they think it’s a canary. I show them pictures on the opening day of class, and they see yellow and call out “Big Bird?” “No,” then, “Canary?” “Wrong continent.” That’s before they’ve learned to use their eyes and ears again to recognize what’s …

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Food & Wine

Cooking the Books

by Sherrie Flick

For me, it started with “The Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls.” My sister-in-law loaned me her copy when I was 7. The 1950s spiral-bound edition depicted smiling, neatly dressed girls in aprons stirring batter and beating eggs in (now vintage) bowls with the boy in the background tasting from a pot resting on …

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Food & Wine

Pitaland

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

If breaking bread is the key to world peace, Joe Chahine has a jump on it at Pitaland in Brookline. A Lebanese Maronite Christian, Joe has pita customers of all faiths and nationalities. An Italian baker, Cellone, delivers Joe’s pita to area groceries. And if you are eating pita at any area Mediterranean restaurant, and …

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Architecture & Neighborhoods

From melons to motorists

by Charles Rosenblum

Why exactly does motor square Garden have a dome? The Renaissance-style cap in oxidized copper and glass sits confidently on a low-rise multiple gable structure in buff brick that is more ancient Roman. Pittsburgh Press writer George Swetnam once called the combination “odd but charming.” The building definitely holds its own architecturally among much larger …

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Homes

Vintage Fox Chapel

by Marylynn Uricchio

For some, the best thing about the movie “White Christmas” is the Vermont lodge where most of it takes place. Its timeless charm is the essence of classic American style. Though it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes it so appealing, the same elements appear again and again in movies made during the 1940s and …

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Travel

Remembering the Great One

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Walking into The Clemente Museum at Engine House No. 25 in Lawrenceville, one word comes to mind: passion. The athletic passion of one of baseball’s greatest players, his passion for helping the less fortunate and making the world better for his and all children, and the passion of the man who created this moving monument …

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Arts

Richard Mellon Scaife

by Graham Shearing

When Dick Scaife died last summer, there surfaced a rash of brief memoirs of a man most often described as “reclusive,” and, more ambivalently, “mercurial.” Before then, he had been shielded from close scrutiny by the code of Omertà, a protective silence, at least by his friends and close associates. This frustrated those less friendly …

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Education

Classroom of the Future

by Sean D. Hamill

It is 12:23 p.m. on a school day, about seven minutes before DeAnna Kwiecinski’s robotics class starts at The Campus School of Carlow University in Pittsburgh. But dashing in the door, red-faced and breathing hard, are third-graders Lorenzo Auteri and Tyler Sharek. “We ran because we wanted to get here first,” Tyler said, fiddling with …

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Nature

Jennings Environmental Education Center

by Thomas Saunders

Among the many delightful, ecologically interesting places to visit within a short distance from Pittsburgh is the Jennings Environmental Education Center. This gorgeous destination along Route 8 is about 12 miles north of Butler, across from the historic Old Stone House. It is a wonderful place for a quick hike or for exploring five miles …

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Regional Annual Report

Lack of Diversity in the Region’s Workforce Raises Concerns

by Jeffery Fraser

Rayfield Lucas had heard there were well-paying jobs to be had in the shale gas industry; jobs that offered the opportunity to earn his way to a future more secure than the maintenance and warehouse work he’d done in the past could ever promise. He went for it. A little more than a month after …

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Science

A Stitch in Time

by Evan Pattak

Through the long, painful decline of Big Steel and the subsequent efforts of Pittsburgh to remake itself and regain economic viability, observers echoed a consistent theme: Pittsburgh will rise again because of the industriousness and talent of its workforce. Indeed, that committed workforce helped the region shape a multifaceted economy that grew supple and strong. …

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Opinion

The Two Sides of a Sale

by Lara Bruhn

I can’t decide which is more awkward, selling to someone or being sold to. I’ve been on both sides, and when the sale is right, there’s nothing better. An opportunity is identified, a plan is hatched, and both parties benefit. But as a small business owner, I spend a lot of time trying to extricate …

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