Articles Archive - Page 29 of 154 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Q: What’s the most interesting thing about your job? A: No two days are ever the same. Despite being in the zoo business for over 25 years, there is always something new that pops up every day. Q What’s the best advice anybody ever gave you?A: A smile and a kind heart go a …

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Sports

The Homestead Gray’s Vic Harris: Baseball’s Winningest Manager

by Richard “Pete” Peterson

When ranking baseball managers, historians often use the number of times a manager led teams to a victory in the World Series as a yardstick for measuring their greatness. By that measurement, Major League baseball’s greatest managers are the New York Yankees Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel. Each led Yankee teams to seven World Series …

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Creative Capital

Deng’s Accidental Revolution

by Greg Curtis

“Deng Xiaoping knew what he did not know!” — Deng Xiaoping Previously in this series: On Agency Part IV, The Rise of Deng in China Since the Mao Dynasty was launched in 1949 there have been five “emperors” – what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) calls “paramount leaders” – but only three have mattered. Mao, of …

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Sports

Baseball in Clemente’s Puerto Rico – a Dream Fulfilled

by Adam Perry

I had dreamed for years – decades – of seeing a baseball game in the Caribbean. In April of 2017, I spent three unforgettable days in Havana, Cuba, and have been kicking myself ever since for not splurging on a taxi ride to an Industriales game. In January of 2020, just before COVID-19 made virtually …

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Regional News

Taking the Pre-Midterm Election Pulse

by Steve Hallock

A billboard along U.S. route 22 just west of Johnstown offers up to $54,000 and “guaranteed employment” for incoming nursing students at nearby Mount Aloysius College. As the billboard signifies, higher education institutions have taken a lead role in Johnstown’s transition from steel to health care as the primary economic driver. The burgeoning health care …

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History

Torpedoes to Aquaponics

by Jennifer Papale Rignani

They called Rhonda Jordan’s dad lucky lee because he caught shrapnel just hairs away from his carotid artery over in Europe. While he was fighting the Germans, his wife was one of thousands of women who put away their heels and aprons for work in the massive Westinghouse factory in Sharon, Pennsylvania. You could say …

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Books

A Swissvale Sleuth

by Fred Shaw

Shawn Rossi is up against it, as folks in Swissvale might say. As both a Harvard Law School student in the early 1980s and as a practicing attorney in Pittsburgh in 2008, the protagonist in Ken Gormley’s debut novel, The Heiress of Pittsburgh, does his best to maneuver through multiple conflicts that often keep him …

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Creative Capital

The Rise of Deng in China

by Greg Curtis

“It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.” — Deng Xiaoping Previously in this series: On Agency Part III, The Rise of the Individual in Ancient China The current Chinese dynasty was established by Mao Zedong in 1949, following his victory over Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists. The …

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Opinion

Needed: City Leadership

by Douglas Heuck

Until yesterday, in 60 years, I have only called a political representative once to try to persuade him to vote on something I thought was important. It was in October 2008, when Congress was again considering the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Days earlier, the bill failed to pass the U.S. House by 13 votes, …

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Creative Capital

The Rise of the Individual in Ancient China

by Greg Curtis

The Shang and the ZhouThe Shang dynasty (roughly 1600 – 1046 BC) is the earliest Chinese dynasty for which we actually have solid evidence. Earlier dynasties may have existed, but if so no one can prove it – they are referred to as “legendary” dynasties. Previously in this series: On Agency Part II, China and …

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Arts

The War Against Aesthetics in Contemporary Literature

by Stuart Sheppard

There used to be a saying in the painting department at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, “If you can’t make it good, make it red; if you can’t make it red, make it big,” which, as I understand, was not meant to be cynical, but to mock those attending art school for reasons …

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Regional News

Pittsburgh City Council Wants a Year to Look into Annexation

by Jeffery Fraser

Wilkinsburg residents will have to wait another year to learn whether they’ll get a chance to vote on the future of their borough. Pittsburgh City Council leaders said Wednesday that they won’t approve annexing the boroughthis year. Instead, they pushed the deadline for the decision to 2023 to give them more time toinvestigate the implications …

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Regional News

Local Unemployment Drops, But So Does the Labor Force

by Julia Fraser

Unemployment plunged in southwestern Pennsylvania to close out 2021, but the shrinking number of people choosing to leave the workforce remains a big problem, according to the latest Pennsylvania Department of Labor data. In December, 5.3 percent of workers in seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area were unemployed – down from 5.7 percent in November 2021. …

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Creative Capital

China and the Individual

by Greg Curtis

“We found that the belief in human agency in ancient Chinese philosophical and religious thought co-occurred with progress.” — Yukun Zhao et al., “Agency in Ancient China” Previously in this series: On Agency The history of human agency in China – one might better say the tribulations of human agency in China – is, in its …

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Regional News

Facing Facts and the Future

by Jeffery Fraser

Another year has begun with uncertainty clouding the future of Wilkinsburg, where residents wait to learn whether their borough, beset with high property taxes, severe population loss and scant prospects for reversing either, will remain independent or be annexed as a new neighborhood of the City of Pittsburgh, its more stable neighbor. Vanessa Buffry sees …

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Opinion

The Dreaded Bumper Blocker

by Diane Vrabel

When you think about it, what’s more benign than a parking lot? A neutral zone where idled cars pass the time like languid dogs sleeping in the sun. Well, think again. Parking lots can be hazardous to your health. I’m not talking about fender-benders or road rages when careless drivers clash while parking their vehicles. …

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A Win for Wilkinsburg

by PQ Staff

After five years of construction and $6.5 million, the Wilkinsburg train station has changed from being nearly a ruin to being completely and beautifully restored. The restoration of the historic landmark provides a striking and hopefully catalytic example of what is possible in building a new Wilkinsburg. The 10,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts building opened in 1916, serving …

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Arts

Jazz Renaissance

by Marianne Dougherty

It’s hard to play the alto sax when you’re wearing a mask, so Tony Campbell simply cut a hole in his and played right through the pandemic, appearing at any number of venues from Wallace’s Whiskey Room + Kitchen in East Liberty to a concert on the lawn at a private home in Forest Hills …

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Creative Capital

On Agency

by Greg Curtis

“Agency” is a small word, but it has large meanings. In my day job in the financial industry, for example, “agency” issues refer to the differences in interests between investors (the principals) and their financial advisors (the agents). The classic example of a conflict between the interests of these parties involves stockbrokers. An investor can …

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Culture Opinion

Famous Last Word

by Ray Werner

I decided a few years back, as I approached the magic number 80 that it would be a good idea to die at home. Dying at home, I figured, surrounded by my children and grandchildren, in the house where Susan and I raised our three sons and daughter, would be a storybook ending to a …

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Books

An Alternative History of Pittsburgh

by Fred Shaw

Pittsburgh has been labeled variously as a “mosaic,” “hell with the lid off,” and “the Paris of Appalachia.” The East Liberty-born poet Jack Gilbert describes the city in his poem, “Searching for Pittsburgh,” as being made of “brick and tired wood/ Ox and sovereign spirit/ a consequence of America.” Those characterizations loom as well-played section …

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A farm life

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

From photographs I sent to expert tracker Linda Spielman, she was able to tell me wonderful little stories about what animals on our farm were doing last winter. At the top of our hill, a mouse bounded across deep snow, its hind feet sinking into holes made by its front feet. “Lots of animals do …

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