Articles Archive - Page 27 of 153 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

I have always been amused by Hollywood’s vision of writers at work. The writer is presented seated at a desk on which sits a typewriter or a computer. Suddenly the writer seems inspired and begins typing feverishly. The camera stays on him as he continues to type, and his manuscript grows page by page into …

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Birds

Darken Our Skies to Help the Birds

by David Liebmann

Who doesn’t love the sparkle of the Downtown skyline when cheering on the Pirates at PNC Park? I’ve sat marveling at the view across the water as the Bucs warm up and the stadium lights begin to come on. The glass, metal and stone are iconic of the Steel City. Then I imagine birds migrating …

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People

What do I Know? Leslie Davis

by Jeff Sewald

My family is from New York, and my younger sister and I grew up in a suburban neighborhood on Long Island called “Five Towns,” which is about a 20-minute drive from Kennedy Airport. We were a typical 1970s family, except that my mother was an oral hygienist in a dentist’s office and loved her job. …

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Creative Capital

American Blacks and Agency

by Greg Curtis

In my discussion of the extraordinarily high individual human agency in America, I have deliberately omitted – until now – an important caveat: not everyone in the U.S. has historically been, or is today, vouchsafed the same degree of agency. Previously in this series: On Agency, Part X, The Sniping About America is Nothing New …

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Travel

Burn Beetle, Burn!

by Kate Benz

I am going to torch a massive, 30-foot-long beetle tonight. I will fork over twenty bucks and the local fire department will hand me a long branch that’s been swathed at the top with fabric. It looks like a giant Q-Tip, ready to be dipped in kerosene or gasoline or something easily combustible. They will …

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Culture Opinion

Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?

by David Macpherson

In a rare show of unity, Congress seems poised to declare daylight savings time to be permanent. No longer in March will we drive distracted as we futilely fiddle with the buttons on our old car’s dashboard in a sleep deprived commute to work. The slight increase in automobile accidents in the week after the …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

College Students Wanted

by Julia Fraser

When the United States slid into the Great Recession, throwing millions out of work, America went back to school. Older adults enrolling in community colleges or other two-year programs led a surge in enrollment that saw colleges add 2.5 million students from 2007-2010, a 14 percent enrollment spike. School administrators were elated. “We all thought, …

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Creative Capital

The Sniping About America is Nothing New

by Greg Curtis

“Going to America!” Arkady Svidrigailov’s dying words as he commits suicide in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment Previously in this series: On Agency, Part IX, It Turns Out, the U.S. Really is Exceptional Criticism of the extremely high human agency in America has been constant, starting even before the USA was officially born. For example, if you …

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Regional News

On a Pedestal, Spring 2022

by PQ Staff

A Steeler for LifeWas it really 18 years ago that Ben Roethlisberger took the field as a rookie with the Steelers? How the years have come and gone. And while last season’s Steelers eked out a winning season with an unlikely playoff appearance that ended in lopsided defeat, the team gave us something that’s a …

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Profiles

Just Asking…Byron Stripling

by PQ Staff

Q: what’s the most interesting thing about your job?A: I get paid to do what I love! Q: what’s the best advice anybody ever gave you?A: Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Q: how do you start the day?A: It starts with gratitude for the gift of another day. As Maya …

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PQ Poem

Fern Hollow Bridge

by Arlene Weiner

The high bridge carries a roadway out of town,an earlier generation’s pride and wonder,emblem of man’s ambition. From belowon the park path, it’s an iron rainbow, a sky that booms with ungiving thunder above a shallow stream that gave no graceto the promising son who did himself to deathchoosing to break himself on the dusty path. …

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Regional News

Unemployment Drops; More Workers Needed

by Julia Fraser

Unemployment ticked down in southwestern Pennsylvania to begin 2022, but the region’s labor force woes persisted, according to the latest Pennsylvania Department of Labor data. In January, 5.1 percent of workers in seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area were unemployed –a drop from 5.3 percent in December 2021. But the unemployment rate in the region remained …

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Creative Capital

It Turns Out, the U.S. Really is Exceptional

by Greg Curtis

“America, you are better off than our continent, the old.” – Goethe Previously in this series: On Agency, Part VIII, America – Where Agency Flourishes Last week we observed that the vigorous human agency of the American colonists allowed them to defeat a powerful antagonist – the combined forces of France and numerous Native American …

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Regional News

Weak Regional Jobs Picture Continues

by Julia Fraser

Employers in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area shed 25,000 jobs from December 2021 to January 2022 – a 2.2 percent monthly loss, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Seasonal job losses are typical in January, but other data offer little hope that local jobs will snap back to pre-COVID levels. Annual revisions …

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Nature Sports & Outdoors

A Little Slice of Heaven

by Kate Benz

My chainsaw is little. Like, really little. A baby chainsaw. The love child of gas-powered monsters that guys twice my size use to slice through the trunk of a 200-year pine as if it were a stick of butter. Those blades are as long as my leg. This blade, the one on my chainsaw, is …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

Infrastructure Bonanza

by Jeffery Fraser

It promises to be a busy couple of years for Vincent Valdes. As the federal government begins to pump $1.2 trillion into the nation’s infrastructure, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission he leads is in the thick of discussions around how to spend the region’s share, which will be counted in hundreds of millions of dollars and …

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Creative Capital Money

America – Where Agency Flourishes

by Greg Curtis

“In the beginning all the world was America.” — John Locke Previously in this series: On Agency Part VII Turning from China to the West Last week we observed human agency as it collapsed in Rome but was championed by the Germanic tribes that would eventually defeat the Roman Empire. The “freedom of the German …

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Sports Sports & Outdoors

They Still Come

by John Beale

It’s a harbinger of spring. As sure as robins begin to appear in backyards in Pittsburgh, Pirate baseball’s faithful travel to Bradenton, Florida. But Pirate City in Bradenton is locked down to fans, and the parking lots around LECOM Park are empty. Some still come. They peek through fences for a glimpse of minor league …

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Events Nonprofits

Night Out for the Aviary

by PQ Staff

The National Aviary’s “Gentlemen’s Night Out” at the PNC Champions Club at Heinz Field included cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, a four-course dinner with wine pairings, live music, and an assortment of premium cigars. Michael Mascaro, Aviary trustee and Executive Vice President of Mascaro Construction, hosted the benefit which included guests: Pittsburgh Steelers alumni Matt Spaeth, Craig Bingham, and JT Thomas, …

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Creative Capital

Turning from China to the West

by Greg Curtis

“Valour begets tranquility, tranquility ease, ease disorder, and disorder ruin.” –Sallust Previously in this series: On Agency Part VI, The Strategy of Xi’s China Earlier in this series of essays I noted that, broadly speaking, the history of Western Civilization has mainly been one of ever-increasing human agency. In the West, human agency has meant individual agency, …

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Culture History

Remembering Our Ethnic Heritage

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

I was born in Pittsburgh in April 1939, less than five months before Hitler began World War II by invading Poland. I entered first grade in September 1945, a month after the end of the war. I was a member of the war-babies generation, the pre-baby boomers, who would grow up searching for an identity …

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Pittsburgh Today Regional News

A Troubling Economic Picture

by Stuart Hoffman & Kurt Rankin

The Pittsburgh metropolitan statistical area’s economy enters 2022 in much the same condition as it exhibited prior to the pandemic. That is, growing, but doing so at a pace below the national average and under the yoke of subpar labor market conditions. Even though the bar has been lowered as to what economic growth targets …

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