Articles Archive - Page 132 of 158 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

2011 was a year of historically low interest rates, wide stock-price fluctuations and concerns about a faltering U.S. recovery and the European debt crisis. And the Standard & Poor’s 500 ended 2011 just four one-hundredths of a point from where it began. But in this year’s first quarter, the S&P posted a 12 percent gain …

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Environment

Warning Signs

by Deborah Weisberg

On the first warm day of May, Jim Chestney cuts through thickets of black huckleberry and laurel and ponders his impending climb to a timber rattlesnake den on a central Pennsylvania mountain. It’s a toss-up as to which poses the greater threat—the venomous pit viper Crotalus horridus or its unforgiving habitat. Chestney can attest to …

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Environment

Greening the Region

by Mike Schiller

It was 1868—when looking down from the Hill District to smokestacks belching fire and smoke, a riverbank littered with coal barges and railroads, and a bottomland saturated with muddy streets and gritty row houses pressed hard against the Allegheny River, Boston writer James Parton described Pittsburgh as “Hell with the lid taken off.” Today, Parton …

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Education

225 Years of Pitt

by Ben Schmitt

When Gwendolyn Hays graduated from high school in Potter County, the idea of a female engineer seemed laughable to some. It was 1960. After rejections from two colleges, she turned to the University of Pittsburgh, which welcomed her and her dream. Pitt commemorates its 225th anniversary this year, and Hays is celebrating the university’s commitment …

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Regional Annual Report

Demographics Today

by Jeffery Fraser

A few years ago, a model that University of Pittsburgh researchers use to help them assess local demographic trends suggested the day was coming. Last year brought further evidence that it, in fact, has arrived: southwestern Pennsylvania has finally turned the corner to become a place where more people arrive than leave. U.S. Internal Revenue …

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Nature

The Urban Bear

by PQ Staff

State bear biologist Mark Ternent pulls an oversized syringe from an arsenal of gear at the back of his truck, loads it with a strong sedative, and affixes it to a dart with hot-pink fletching. With spring three days away and the mountains around Johnstown energized with emerging life, Ternent and his Pennsylvania Game Commission …

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Special Reports

Pittsburgh Today and Tomorrow 2012

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Pittsburgh Today presents its annual report on the progress of Greater Pittsburgh, comparing Pittsburgh with 14 other regions in 10 key quality of life categories. This report, written by Jeffery Fraser, is based on the Pittsburgh 2011 Quality of Life Survey. We have also asked regional leaders to describe an obstacle we need to overcome …

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Homes

A Southern Patina

by Marylynn Uricchio

The homes on this leafy street are quintessentially Shadyside, which means an eclectic mix of periods and styles. Though all are grand, one stands apart from the rest with quiet dignity. Painted white from top to bottom, the pristine exterior accentuates the symmetrical lines of its columned entrance, the three sets of French doors, and …

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Profiles

Dan Rooney, Steelers Chairman and 30th United States Ambassador to Ireland

by Jeff Sewald

The Irish like to say ‘it’s a long way from Newry’—where my family comes from originally—‘to Phoenix Park,’ where I now live and work as the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. But believe me, it’s a much, much longer way to Phoenix Park from the North Side of Pittsburgh. My life in professional football was always …

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Business

Show Me the Money

by Seamus McGraw

It was hailed as a game changer. Almost immediately after the first Marcellus Shale natural gas well was spudded in a rocky hilltop in Washington County, unleashing for the first time a vast cache of domestically produced energy, the discovery was hailed as the harbinger of a revolution in energy production that would pump upwards …

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Region

A Clearer Reflection

by Ben Schmitt

For a college course, the assignment seemed simple enough, if not mundane: Ride a Port Authority bus into a city neighborhood and attend a lecture at the YMCA. Things changed, however, when the Duquesne University freshmen heard the neighborhood’s name—the Hill District, a historically African American community. “Almost all 28 of them were afraid to …

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Opinion

A Remarkable Time for the Region

by Douglas Heuck

Twenty years ago, when newspapers were strong, the coin of the realm for ambitious reporters was winning awards. A slightly caricatured general rule was: The more intractable, insoluble and depressing the issue you wrote about, the more awards you’d win. Newspapers were in the business of problems, not solutions. In 1995, I marked 10 years …

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Health

Genomic Stimulus

by Kelly Casey

Not long ago, one of the nation’s most dreaded diseases was polio, paralyzing and sometimes killing its victims. Fortunately, polio proved no match for medicine. Just as polio reached its peak in 1952 with 57,000 new cases, a University of Pittsburgh team, led by Dr. Jonas Salk, was testing a vaccine. Soon, polio all but …

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Science

DNA Decoding: An Economic Driver

by Kelly Casey

Mapping the entire human DNA blueprint was ultimately done to advance medicine, but it has had a bonus impact: giving a jump start to a stagnating economy. A May 2011 report by Battelle Technology Partnership Practice of Columbus, Ohio, said the $3.8 billion federal investment in the Human Genome Project from 1988 to 2003 drove …

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Books

A different Jonas

by Sandra Levis

Well, it’s official: the end is near. Whether or not the dire Mayan predictions for the future of mankind come to pass in 2012, it is clear that time is running out for books.The sad inevitability of this is demonstrated both by the ascendancy of electronic readers and the proliferation of materials promoting new uses for …

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Arts

Gershwin in Pittsburgh

by Gregory Suriano

George Gershwin will be forever associated with New York City. This most American of composers derived his inspiration from Manhattan’s energy, skyscrapers, jazz, nightlife, and evolving Broadway-musical art form. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”65″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] Nevertheless, in the 1920s and ’30s Gershwin and his music traversed the nation, often ending up in Pittsburgh. New York musicals …

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History

The Search for the Lost Archives

by Pamela Walck

A lifeguard’s strong dark arms buoy his young, light-skinned pupil, as other children in the pool cheer their friend’s attempts to swim. The undated, black-and-white photo from the archives of the Pittsburgh Courier is part of a century-long storyline about the lives of African Americans that the newspaper chronicled. It is also part of a …

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Travel

Take a Turn…

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Does the end of gray winter days remind you how it felt to get your bike back out of the garage and cruise the streets with your friends after school? With a visit to Bicycle Heaven, you can rekindle that excitement on a trip down memory lane. After overexposure to paint fumes forced Craig Morrow …

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Food & Wine

Anna’s Cucina Rustica

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

When she was a little girl, Anna Malvone would finish her classes and rush the few blocks to the neighborhood orphanage in Pianura, Naples. There, she helped the nuns in the kitchen, preparing simple meals with ingredients that were plentiful and cheap—tomatoes, garlic, basil and other staples of Italian life from the nearby fields. It …

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Food & Wine

The virtues of varietals

by Alex Sebastian

Good old Gallo hearty burgundy. Are you old enough to remember when that was the go-to wine for every dinner party? Lord knows what was in that jug, but it always tasted the same—red fruit, easy-drinking, probably sweeter than we’re used to these days. It was a blend of numerous grapes (including, reportedly, zinfandel and …

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Birds

The Pittsburgh Pigeon

by David Liebmann

displaced Pittsburghers soon will come home again. The pigeons of Mellon Square, bumped by renovations scheduled to culminate next year, are some of my favorite birds to watch, a bit of the wild smack dab in the middle of “dahntahn.” Don’t disparage these half-pound fast fliers. Though some consider them a nuisance underfoot or fear …

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Profiles

Richard P. Simmons

by PQ Staff

I am convinced that I am absolutely, positively the luckiest man in the world. During my business life, I seemed to be at the right place at the right time. When I graduated from college in 1953, metallurgy was at the beginning of a tremendous technology and manufacturing change, and I was part of it, because …

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