Articles Archive - Page 154 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

2006 Fall

Say What?

If you think it’s hard understanding a George Will editorial, you ought to spend time with the technology intelligentsia as they evaluate a prospective investment in a start-up company. Every industry has its own vernacular, but this gang can befuddle the most erudite among us. Show me the money: names for start-up investors In the …

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Opinion

From the Publisher, Fall 2006

by Douglas Heuck

On my last night on the island I sat down to pen this column. Ahead lay fall and a return to the world of squeezing productivity from every minute of the day. On the porch of the old house overlooking the water, I considered what I was leaving behind. On the far shore of the …

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Architecture & Neighborhoods

Song of Kittanning

by Barry Paris

The tranquil beauty of the Allegheny River at its idyllic venue in Kittanning conceals restless ghosts and a violent history. Safe to say, the 18th-century Native Americans who lived there never imagined it couldn’t be defended from a few hundred white invaders, or that the fate of two great Old World empires across an ocean …

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Books

Full-Court Press

by Karen Lillis

Ten bucks says you didn’t know that Pittsburgh is a hotbed of small press activity. Calling the Pittsburgh literary landscape “the most underrated art scene in town,” Paper Street Press poetry editor, Arlan Hess, described this year’s book fair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Austin, Texas: “There were 450 tables of …

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Sports

A Tall Tail

by Douglas Heuck

It might be on the desolate plains of North Dakota, a lowland plantation in South Carolina or a rolling field in Pennsylvania. Wherever, it doesn’t take a first-time bird hunter long to realize the majesty and value of a good English pointer. The indefatigable dog zigzags in a euphoric trance through fields of high stubble, …

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Business

Backstage with Springsteen

by Sanford Neiman

It was Christmas 1978, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were playing at Pittsburgh’s Stanley Theater. A mutual friend asked my wife to relay a message to sax player “Big Man” Clarence Clemons and ask him to call her. We had a notion of who Bruce was but had never heard of Clarence. …

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Nature

Farewell to a Summer Love

by Paul G. Wiegman

August afternoons resemble the blazing passion of new love: intense and torrid. August evenings are the antithesis: gentle and serene. They are a mature experience that is like a long, tender embrace. On August walks I avoid the blistering, high-sky sun of midday and seek shelter in shaded, cool, stream-cut ravines. The forest umbrella blocks the …

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Arrivals

Arrivals: Fall ’06

by PQ Staff

John R. Price is president and CEO of Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh. He is a Rhodes Scholar, who earned advanced degrees in development economics and diplomatic history from Queens College at Oxford University. He is also a graduate of Harvard Law School. During the first Nixon Administration, Price succeeded the late Daniel Patrick …

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Obituaries

Heyward, Soffer, Trimarchi, Shekell, DeBolt, O’Connor, Rea, Edwards, Little

by PQ Staff

E. James Trimarchi, 83: Over the past 23 years, Trimarchi built a small Indiana bank with $31 million in assets into the $6 billion First Commonwealth Financial Corporation, serving as its first president and CEO and retiring as chairman six months before his death.A native of Indiana who served as a naval officer in the …

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Books

Can You Dig It? Yes.

by Sandra Levis

It’s tough to make a non-fiction work on paleoanthropology entertaining. The search for early forms of fossil man is commonly perceived as a dry one, figuratively and literally; comprising years upon years of tiresome labor by pedantic academics in wretched climates and occasionally yielding a fractured femur with which the average dog couldn’t be bothered. …

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Region

The Truth Can Be A Good Thing

by John G. Craig, Jr.

Let us take a few moments to ponder the corrosive nature of pessimism and its companion, bending over backward in the face of bad news to put the best face on things. Both are civic diseases of significance in our corner of the world. This is not merely anecdotal testimony from someone involved in public life …

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Food & Wine

Salt, Air, Time and a Pig’s Hind Leg

by Virginia Phillips

In a food world where cured pork products have been catapulted to sexy heights of connoisseurship by chefs like Mario Batali, Pittsburghers blithely accept, take for granted and plain underappreciate the elegant—and bargain-priced—sausage and prosciutto made here in a fourth-generation family business in the Strip. “Parma is the best kept secret in town,” says Chef …

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Travel

Haiti: In Search of Hope

by Douglas Heuck

Deschapelles, Haiti – From the window of a small, private plane, the island of Hispaniola came into view in the middle of the vast, blue Caribbean. Haiti and its neighbor on the island, the Dominican Republic, looked like two countries on a globe in a library, set apart by two different colors. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”8″ display=”basic_thumbnail” …

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Region

Gambling a Boon to Travel Industry

by John G. Craig, Jr.

The public discussion about the pending arrival of casino gambling in the region has been largely preoccupied with one tangential, if related, subject. Is there enough money to be made from a slot machine operation within the corporate limits of Pittsburgh to fund the construction of a new civic auditorium to replace Mellon Arena? This …

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Business

Outsourcing

by Sunil Wadhwani

Outsourcing: it’s a topic where everybody has an opinion, but few have the facts. Yet it’s a most important subject — one that has the potential to alter the fabric of the global economy. It’s particularly important for us to consider in southestern Pennsylvania, at a time when our regional economy is at a crossroads. …

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Innovation

The Software Business Manual

by James H. Morris

As the computer and Internet business emerges from the collapse of the bubble, the most successful companies seem to be following a new set of rules. Some rules are old and obvious, but the combination is striking. As a professor at Carnegie Mellon, the world’s premier educator of software engineers, I have been trying to …

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Profiles

A Medical Giant in Our Midst

by Jeffery Fraser

The year is 1958. Northwestern University nominates one of its bright young physicians, Thomas E. Starzl, for a prestigious Markle Scholarship. He is told to come up with a big idea to propose during his interviews with the selection committee. Something that would be recognized as a remarkable achievement in medical science. Something to build …

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Homes

Modern English

by Marylynn Uricchio

From the outside, the stone and shingle cottage could easily be perched along a bucolic lane in the Cotswolds instead of a quiet road in Fox Chapel. That’s what makes the inside all the more remarkable. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”9″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] Eschewing the more traditional approach suggested by such architecture, designer Kathleen Clements devised a …

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Opinion

Stocks & Pedestal, Spring/Summer 2006

by PQ Staff

There is a tide in the affairs of leaders. A rising tide, the saying goes, lifts all boats. It’s a low tide that you have to survive, and rare is the leader who doesn’t face one. Jim Rohr’s low tide came in 2002. After the stock market bubble had burst, America was looking for people …

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Arrivals

Kelly, Hines, Germain, Casillo, Manto, Sekiya, Dell’Omo, Goodfriend, Hilson, Katzner

by PQ Staff

Robert P. Kelly is chairman, president and CEO of Mellon Financial Corp. Kelly, 51, took over Feb. 13, after serving as chief financial officer and senior executive vice president of Wachovia Corp., the fourth-largest bank holding company in the U.S. based on assets and the third-largest U.S. full-service brokerage firm, based on client assets.Kelly has …

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Opinion

From the Publisher, Spring/Summer 2006

by Douglas Heuck

Before we get to the second issue of Pittsburgh Quarterly, I’d like to thank the many people who have passed along ideas and kind words either in person or in letters or e-mail about the first issue. All considered, we couldn’t have been happier with it and with the response. The magazine is resonating with …

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Opinion

Three Places That Found Redemption

by Mark DeSantis

A story of redemption is a story of profound change that we make ourselves. Time won’t redeem us, nor will promises or fond memories. When our cherished world has collapsed in front of us and we stare into the abyss, the choices are stark: keep walking straight ahead and fall into oblivion, take one tentative …

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