Pittsburgh’s 2023 Economic Forecast

With the U.S. facing a strong possibility of recession in 2023, the Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area is at risk of losing more than its fair share of economic activity in such a downturn. Pittsburgh’s labor market has not yet recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, in terms of employee headcount, in eight of 11 major industrial …

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Get Ready for Pittsburgh Tomorrow

In the spring issue three years ago, I wrote a long essay about the need for a big plan to reverse Greater Pittsburgh’s downward economic and demographic trends. A Pittsburgh friend called it my Magnum Opus, the product of 35 years of journalistic efforts here, much of it aimed at moving this region ahead. In …

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The Bully Effect

“I love you.” Bing/ChatGPT to tech reporter It’s almost impossible to overestimate the stakes for generative AI systems like ChatGPT. Google has long dominated Internet search, holding more than a 90% market share. Microsoft’s Bing, meanwhile, has been a pathetic also-ran, holding down market shares in the single digits and being not only largely ignored but …

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Shelter from the Storm

Southwestern Pennsylvania boasts many attractions, but its weather usually isn’t one of them. In fact, a longstanding population trend is the annual exodus of residents who choose to resettle in Florida, the Carolinas and other warmer climates. But when Jordan Fischbach moved his family from Los Angeles 11 years ago, it was the climate that …

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A Moment

While chops sizzle and onions brown,the radio intones failures, floods, and fires,and the family cries its needs, Step out the kitchen doorTrain your eyes on the clouds, rumpled on the darkening sky  How big are they, you wonder, and where is that cicada with its kazoo, and the bees that all day probed the flowers? How far is …

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Am I a Bot? Part II

ChatGPT is scary good. Elon Musk Every so often a technology captures the world’s imagination. The Economist [Generative AI] is as important as the PC, as the internet. Bill Gates I think it will be the most significant technological transformation in human history. Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, the developer of ChatGPT AI relieves people of their …

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Ramona Reeves wins Drue Heinz with First Collection

Take the mordant wit of Flannery O’ Connor, combine it with the stripped-down empathy of Raymond Carver, and you just might have something like It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories. This debut collection by Ramona Reeves offers a window into the entwined lives of characters in Mobile, Alabama — a politically, socially and …

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How I Became Ensnared in the Pittsburgh Web

How did a native of Minneapolis, a Viking fan, fall in love with Pittsburgh? It’s a long story, but a good one.  In 1968, I was assigned as a newly minted VISTA Volunteer to the community action program in McKeesport’s Third Ward, a tough but lively section of town. Hanging out on Walnut Street, in …

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Twin Pine: A Singular Shopping Experience

Inside a converted barn in Wexford, just beyond Winston, the life-sized horse statue decorated for every season, is Martin Potoczny’s labor of love. The serial creative entrepreneur used the forced slowdown of COVID to create his dream of opening a curated antique and vintage lifestyle store. His keen appreciation for artisans, innovators and inventors has …

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The Evening Grosbeak – a Bright Winter Visitor

The day I saw the evening Grosbeaks up along the Allegheny River, I was at a winter corporate retreat at a golf club. I was sitting at a conference table and outside, there were bird feeders. Grosbeaks were picking seeds at every opening, stacked one atop the other. I have no memory of what the …

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Am I a Bot?

A month or so ago a reader of these pages wrote in to let me know she had concluded that my essays had been written by “a particularly dim-witted Artificial Intelligence bot.” Well! I’ve received many critical and intemperate responses to these writings over the years, but that was the first time I’d been accused …

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Ralph Kiner, Frank Thomas and Greenberg Gardens

At the end of the 1946 season, the Detroit Tigers placed Hank Greenberg on waivers.  That season, he had led the American League in home runs and RBIs, but the Tigers they felt they couldn’t afford Greenberg’s $75,000 salary.  The 35-year-old Greenberg cleared waivers in the American League, and the Pittsburgh Pirates, under new ownership, …

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Pittsburgh Opera’s Laced/Unlaced Fashion Show

A capacity crowd of 275 recently filled the Bitz Opera Factory for Pittsburgh Opera’s ‘Laced/Unlaced’ fashion show. The event combined ‘Gothic romance’ opera fashion assembled from pieces in Pittsburgh Opera’s costume shop vault with elegant, accessible luxury fashion from Skye Douglass’ House of Couture Designs, and seductive lingerie from Pulchra Intimates. Pittsburgh Opera’s Resident Artists and local tenor Ben Werley sang dramatic operatic …

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Pitt Stages’ “Seven Guitars” Gives Life to a Dream Deferred

It has been said that the sign of great actors is that they don’t care if you watch them perform or not – as they disdain “playing to the crowd” — and I would argue that the same can be said of great playwrights, who write in a way that invites you to listen to …

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Lord Joe Hardy

I’d assured Joe Hardy that his vision for Nemacolin was flat-out nuts. But Joe was as good as his word and over the years Nemacolin blossomed into a first-class destination resort. Joe’s hotel gained Triple A 5-Diamond status, the resort’s wine cellar grew into the largest in Pennsylvania, and his restaurant became the most expensive …

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When Wampum High School was Small Yet Big

In the well-trod regions of the sportswriting firmament, there is a progression in cliches used to describe successful coaches. It starts with “winning” and escalates to “renowned” and culminates with — ultima gloria — “legendary.” With justification, sportswriters in Lawrence County, which borders Pennsylvania and Ohio about 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, reflexively apply the …

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Homewood Poem

Stranahan, steepest hill in Homewood, pulls my primary-school bones like iron filings across an etch-a-sketch from Belmar at the top to flat Apple Street running across its base near 7101, Mystery Manor. Bought by Woogie Harris, the gangster banker, in the 30’s. In rabbit fur maxi-coats, chinchilla-draped shoulders, jewel-studded t-straps, and wingtips, people stepped from …

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Passion and Purpose

Those who know Anne Dickson are at once astonished and not the least bit surprised by all she has accomplished in such a short time. With her husband, Andrew, she is raising three young boys and the evidence is everywhere in the Fox Chapel home the couple purchased seven years ago. They bought the house …

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Joe Buys the Place at Auction

“I guess that all I can hope for is that, when people think of me, they think, ‘Hey, that jackass started out with only $5,000 and made a fortune. Maybe I can, too!’” Joe Hardy to Jeff Sewald in Pittsburgh Quarterly Previously in this series: Firings All Around! The Nemacolin property was being sold at a bankruptcy …

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An Overdue Obituary – The McKeesport Daily News

When I was growing up in Elizabeth, a small town in the Mon Valley, and uncles, aunts and neighbors learned that I wanted to write for a newspaper, I would hear this common refrain: “Maybe you can work for The Daily News.” Although my sights were set elsewhere, I knew their words were less about …

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Our Football Fascination: Here’s The Thing

As the Chiefs and Eagles prepare to battle in the next Super Bowl, with all the attendant passion, pain and pageantry, let’s take a time out for a moment of reflection. Not on the game’s socio-political or human health dynamics, or other impositions on the fans’ enjoyment, but with a dive to the heart of …

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What Do I Know? Sam Hazo

without a doubt, the course of my life was determined largely by my upbringing. My mother died when I was 6, and while my father was still around, my brother, Robert, and I were taken into the care of our mother’s parents and they raised us, with significant help from my mother’s aunt. My mother’s …

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