Articles Archive - Page 51 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

About two and a half hours northeast of Pittsburgh is a remote property in Elk and Clearfield counties known as Bennett Branch Forest. The 1,500-acre tract owned by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy adjoins Moshannon State Forest. Visitors can hike a newly designed 3.6-mile round-trip trail through forests of mixed oak, sugar maple, black birch and …

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Regional News

Pittsburgh Renters Have Kept up Their Payments—So Far

by Julia Fraser

On a July Pittsburgh afternoon, temperatures soared into the 90s. Public pools were dry, closed by pandemic restrictions. But for mask-wearing residents trickling out of Eastside Bond, a high-end East Liberty apartment complex, their private outdoor pool offered relief. There are new rules: Masks when not swimming; stay six feet apart in and out of …

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Arts

George Lange: Through a Joyful Lens

by George Lange

Internationally renowned photographer George Lange grew up in Squirrel Hill and recently returned with his family to live in his childhood home. He credits the joy from his Pittsburgh childhood with influencing his playful approach to photography, which often involves allowing his subjects to reveal sides of themselves that are not often shared. “I am …

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Regional News

Jobs Shrink 10%

by Julia Fraser

Employers in the Pittsburgh region started adding to their payrolls in May and June. But it was not nearly enough to offset steep job losses over the last 12 months as the coronavirus pandemic continues to weigh on the region’s economy. The seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area lost an estimated 116,900 jobs from June 2019 …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Vincent Burke, Lifelong Pittsburgher

by Donald Bonk

Donald Bonk interviews Vincent Burke, a lifelong Pittsburgher, as part of the Pittsburgh Tomorrow podcast series. Burke is on staff at the Pennsylvanian Apartments in downtown Pittsburgh and resides in the Northside. The transcript is abridged and edited for clarity. View the episode archive here. “I’ve been a Pittsburgher all my life except for a …

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Regional Annual Report

Bold Action Needed: Helen Casey, Bill Schenck, Farnam Jahanian

by PQ Staff

At a time when the Pittsburgh region is continuing to lose population and has been seeing regional job losses the past few months, we asked a group of regional leaders to respond, in 200 words or less, to this question: What action do we need to take to create the kind of growth, vitality and dynamism that will stem …

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Creative Capital

Seizing LBJ

by Greg Curtis

For readers who missed part 1 of this series of posts, I am summarizing a fictional novel written almost forty years ago. Gen. Green was startled. “Hold it, folks” he said. “I’m a desk jockey now, I haven’t commanded troops in the field since my last tour in Vietnam, back in ’64.” “But, Willy,” George …

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Profiles

When Mother Came to Pittsburgh

by Jim Roddey

In late 2001, I visited mother in Texas. She was 98 and living alone in the same condominium overlooking Corpus Christi Bay where she had been for 45 years. My stepfather and almost all her friends were gone, and I was there to persuade her to come to Pittsburgh. She had lost most of her …

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Regional News

Looking for Answers in the Past to Blunt Pandemic Job Losses

by Bill O'Toole

At the entrance of Laurel Hill State Park, a bronze statue of a strapping young worker pays homage to the men who built the verdant park with a lake in Somerset County as part of a federal Citizen Conservation Corps created to ease the pain of crippling job losses during the Great Depression. [ngg src=”galleries” …

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Health

Mysterious Melanoma

by Kelly Casey

In 2010, Thomas Lauritzen and his second oldest daughter both began treatment for melanoma, diagnosed with the condition only a month apart. “Our melanomas were almost identical in size and in the same location (shoulder blade area),” Lauritzen said. The father and daughter would spend the next year going to UPMC for infusions of the …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Vivek Kumar, CEO and Founder of Qlicket

by Donald Bonk

Donald Bonk interviews Vivek Kumar, CEO and founder of Qlicket, as part of the Pittsburgh Tomorrow podcast series. The transcript is abridged and edited for clarity. View the episode archive here. Read Vivek Kumar’s full bio here. “Paul Graham… A founder of Y Combinator (national start-up accelerator), who’s from Pittsburgh, actually went to Gateway High …

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Regional Annual Report

Bold Action Needed: Lisa Schroeder, Grant Oliphant, Gregg Behr

by PQ Staff

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Special Reports

The Pittsburgh Today Regional Education Survey

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

The Pittsburgh Today Regional Education Survey is the most comprehensive survey to date to ask Allegheny County residents about their experiences and perspectives regarding education and the local public schools that educate 115,000 students in grades kindergarten through 12. The online survey was conducted by Pittsburgh Today and the University Center for Social and Urban …

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Creative Capital

The Russkies, Vietnam and a Possible Coup

by Greg Curtis

For readers who missed part 1 of this series of posts, I am summarizing a fictional novel written almost forty years ago. In the novel, written so many years ago, many chapters were devoted to the back-channel negotiations that went on between the Johnson Administration (in the person of Walter Rostow) and the Soviet Union …

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Books

What the World Needs Now… Is Rod McKuen

by John Allison

Barry Alfonso, a writer living in Swissvale, has produced a book we didn’t know was needed. Chances are, if you remember Rod McKuen, you’ll know his popular image: a 1960s California pop singer-songwriter who also churned out best-selling volumes of poetry that non-best-selling poets considered the equivalent of Muzak. Indeed, Alfonso cites the assessment of …

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Opinion

Colleges and Schools Can and Should Open in a Way That Does the Least Harm

by David L. Katz & Kelly B. Close

Any untimely death is a tragedy. Our youth die in transit to and from schools and universities every year, but these institutions are not shut down as a result. Engaging in life involves some risk of death. COVID-19 deaths in youth are rare. Rational policies should aim to minimize such risks with no expectation of …

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Nature

Floating on the Shenango River

by Thomas Saunders

One wonderful way to see portions of our western Pennsylvania landscape is to paddle a river or stream by canoe or kayak. One place to paddle is the upper Shenango River in western Mercer County, 70 miles north of Pittsburgh. A 23-mile stretch flows unimpeded between the Pymatuning and Shenango reservoirs. The Iroquois name Shenango, …

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Profiles

Ken Gormley: Lawyer, Teacher and Author

by Jeff Sewald

I was the first person in my family to be born in Pittsburgh. My brothers and sisters have always said that this accounts for my “irrational” loyalty to the city. My dad grew up on a farm in Kentucky and was the odd person in his family—the one who left home to get a Ph.D. …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Sean Luther, Executive Director of InnovatePGH

by Donald Bonk

Donald Bonk interviews Sean Luther, executive director of InnovatePGH, as part of the Pittsburgh Tomorrow podcast series. The transcript is abridged and edited for clarity. View the episode archive here. Read Sean Luther’s full bio here. “Pitt and CMU have evolved to be extremely complementary. They physically overlap in this really unique urban environment. That …

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Region

Did We Do Any Good?

by David M. Feehan

Did VISTAs in Pittsburgh even come close to “eliminating poverty,” the stated goal? There is no evidence that this happened, nor do any of the ex-volunteers think they even made a dent. What, then, did they achieve? Most VISTAs believe that they were able to help individuals who needed help. Some of this help was …

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Regional Annual Report

Bold Action Needed: Jim Roddey, Diane Holder, Bill Strickland

by PQ Staff

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Regional News

Local Unemployment Drops, but Rate Remains Staggering

by Julia Fraser

Unemployment in southwestern Pennsylvania fell sharply in May, when the region began to relax social restrictions and reopen businesses that had been closed to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Still, the jobless rate remains at levels rarely seen as the pandemic continued to take its toll on the local economy. The seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan …

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