Articles Archive - Page 2 of 154 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

2025 Winter Homefront

Prints Charming

‘‘I’m not the biggest fan of neutrals,” notes interior designer Molly Singer. That turns out to be a major understatement. The newly renovated home in Fox Chapel she shares with her husband and two children is the definition of exuberance. Color abounds, as does texture and wallpaper. Lots of wallpaper. “I’m a firm believer that you …

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Sports

Making It Happen

by Charlie Stewart

Mention the game of squash and it will likely conjure a traditional image of men in whites, whacking a hard, hollow ball off the walls of an enclosed court in the rarefied confines of a private club, prep school or eastern college. The indoor game with the long-necked racquet and dark rubber ball hasn’t always …

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Sports

How Baseball Brings Us Together

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

A. G. Spalding once claimed that baseball likely began with the simple act of a boy tossing a ball into the air. The poet Donald Hall, who wrote a book about Pirates maverick pitcher Dock Ellis saw this simple act evolving into “sons playing catch with fathers” and eventually into a game “on a diamond …

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Home & Lifestyle Shopping

Buying a Suit: A Primer

by Clayton Trutor

Long before Covid came along to decimate commercial real estate, there was something called “Casual Fridays.” That one day a week of switching to khakis and polos had tentacles that spread to other days. Suddenly suits were not required attire in many businesses, just as office attendance has widely transitioned to remote work. But there …

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Books

Kennywood Crime Scene

by Fred Shaw

According to the website novel Suspects, the police procedural grew out of the growing interest in true crime that began in the 1940s and ’50s, with Lawrence Treat’s V is for Victim being acknowledged as the first to “bring realism to the mystery genre.” With Dick Wolf’s Law & Order TV empire offering an easy …

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Arts Culture

Let Us Now Heal Wounded Men

by Stuart Sheppard

One thing, as men, that we rarely talk about, are the experiences we have suffered in the form of sexual abuse or trauma. The National Institute of Health found that 30.7 percent of men report having been the victims of sexual violence . . . and more than half of those before the age of …

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PQ Poem

The Bridge to Brunot Island

by Ziggy Edwards

The Bridge to Brunot Island Caged in its lattice of trusses,a worker crossing on footcan witness the last orange flashbefore bare winter conjures Ohio’s vengeance.For now, giants in their opaque depthsbreathe evenly; the bridge’s underbellyjiggles the surface. The hammerhead siren is only sunbathing. A guy on second shiftswears he saw the shadow of Dr. Brunothaunting …

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PQ Poem

Work Confession

by Todd Davis

Work Confession I dug a room that sits empty beneath the earth. I ate the last of the potatoes and didn’t get around to canning before the tomatoes and peppers rotted. Like rain on pursed lips, tomorrow will be a feast day with nothing. We don’t drag the river for our dead anymore. The cemetery’s …

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Books Culture History Profiles

Pittsburgh’s Mal Goode: Television’s First Black Broadcaster

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

On Oct. 28, 1962, the three major television networks interrupted their scheduled programs to broadcast a special report on what would become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. This was a critical moment not only in American history, but also in the integration of American broadcasting. Just a few months earlier, ABC, at the urging …

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Nature

An Ode on Snow Days

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

When I was young, one of the best two-word combinations in the English language was snow day! When I didn’t have to go to school and could stay in my pajamas and watch tv. When I coaxed myself into bulky pants, jackets, socks and boots—way before fleece, down, and waterproof fabric—and my feet got sopped …

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Arts Culture

Pittsburgh Opera’s “Armida” Sings in a Language Beyond Words

by Stuart Sheppard

The French New Wave director Francois Truffaut once remarked of Alfred Hitchcock that he was the only director who did not require sound for his films to be understood; in other words, the effect of his visual narrative was so strong that dialogue was not really necessary. In much the same way, I found in …

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Home & Lifestyle Shopping

Buying a Suit: A Primer

by Clayton Trutor

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Opinion

My Modest, Idiosyncratic Love of City Living

by Pete Geissler

AN ENTREPRENEUR FINDS HIS NICHEI was lunching with my accountant while examining my assets when he suggested that I buy an office instead of renting. I was living and working at the time in a Downtown high-rise apartment and, as he said, “enriching the landlord, not you.” Soon after, I accidentally noticed an ad for …

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PQ Poem

Saturday Morning Flannel Sheets

by Amy Lee Heinlen

Saturday Morning Flannel Sheets Because I say the exact wrong thingmy daughter sobs: I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want youto die. I don’t want to die. She’s five.Her tongue jimmies her first tooth loose from its warmbottom gum. This necessary severing can’t come withouta little wriggle and push, a little blood. I …

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PQ Poem

Prelude

by Gary Fincke

Prelude One night, when you are to readYour poems after a womanWho performs in a beretJauntily angled and a scarfTrailing fringe to her knees, you’reEmbarrassed enough to ponderFeigning illness, every wordYou are about to read becomeAs pretentious as her voiceLifted at the close of each lineAlready dense with inflections. As the half-filled room, formerlyA small …

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Arts

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Finds Poetry in Dance

by Stuart Sheppard

I should have known something special was happening Downtown on a windy, wet, early-April evening when I saw a 10-year-old girl literally yanking her mother into the box office of the Benedum Center. I hadn’t seen a child this excited to attend a performance since I witnessed a little boy twirling his red matador cape …

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Nature

Explore a Winter Hike on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail

by Thomas Saunders

One of our region’s great hikes is the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail. It runs from the town of Ohiopyle on its southern end 70 miles northward to a vista above the Conemaugh River at its northern terminus. Used by through- and day-hikers and runners, it’s one of Pennsylvania’s most beautiful trails. With steep grade changes, …

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American Spirit Opinion

Nashville, Pennsylvania

by Sandee Gertz

After an 11-year exile to Nashville, Tennessee, I finally woke up smelling Pittsburgh. I woke from dreams of flying through the Conemaugh Gap, inhaling the untouched scent of the Laurel and Cresson mountains surrounding my hometown of Johnstown, and continued across Route 22 to the musky smells of the Monongahela and into the mist of bridges …

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Food & Wine Travel

Seasons Saltings

by Barbara Eichenlaub

John Tarallo is a happy person. And he seems to infuse his infectious enthusiasm and passion into everything he touches. Raised in Lawrenceville and Bloomfield, he started working at the legendary Groceria Italiana at 13. There, and in his Italian mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens, he watched and learned about food, flavors and cooking. He went …

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Birds Sports & Outdoors

An Owl for All Seasons

by David Liebmann

I do not recommend birding while driving. Looking up into the sky to determine whether the soaring shape high above is an eagle or just a turkey vulture is generally unsafe. True, I have never veered off the road or crossed into oncoming traffic, but I could have. Hurtling down the highway, I’ve seen red-tailed …

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People Profiles

What Do I Know? Stanley Druckenmiller

by Jeff Sewald

I was born in 1953 in Philadelphia and grew up in New Jersey and Virginia. By the eighth grade, I had attended six public schools before being enrolled at a private day school in the ninth grade. My father, who was a chemistry major in college, worked for Dupont and ended up in labor relations. …

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Opinion

Fiddling as Pittsburgh Burns

by Douglas Heuck

Today’s newsletter was going to be a round-up of all the noteworthy Pittsburgh citizens who passed away last year. Instead, it’s about trying to forestall a much more historic and devastating obituary – the death of US Steel in Pittsburgh. For the past six months, Pittsburgh’s “leaders” – civic, corporate, and governmental — have …

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