Articles Archive - Page 51 of 155 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

VISTAs in Pittsburgh

Editor’s note: This is part one of a three-part series. We came to Pittsburgh from all across the United States—from California and Oregon, from Minnesota and Michigan and Alabama, from Florida and New York, from big cities and small towns. We came to Pittsburgh with one mission in mind: To eliminate poverty. We were VISTA …

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Regional News

Breathing Bad Air

by Jeffery Fraser

Air pollution from traffic and industrial stacks finds its way to most places in Allegheny County. But minority and low-income neighborhoods are more likely to endure the highest levels and the health risks that come with not being able to find respite from bad air, a University of Pittsburgh study reports. Researchers mapped black carbon …

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Creative Capital

A Great Mind Ponders Grim Alternatives

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. When George suggested that Grace Atkinson be summoned to the deliberations on the Eastern Shore, not everyone was enthusiastic. For one thing, Grace was recovering from a stroke. Moreover, as one Panel member …

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American Spirit

The Neighbors

by Kate Benz

The cookies had come out of the oven earlier in the week. Delicious and gooey and way too tempting. Free range brown eggs, Amish butter flavored with sea salt, and semi-sweet chocolate chips that had tumbled out of a shimmering gold bag from Ghirardelli, the same chocolate chips that had been pillaged from the shelves …

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Money

Positioning Client Portfolios: PNC, Confluence Financial Partners, J.P. Morgan, Huntington

by PQ Staff

Each year in the summer issue, we ask a group of Pittsburgh’s leading investment experts to answer a question for our readers in 250 words or less. This year’s question: “The coronavirus has led to the first bear market in more than a decade with widespread uncertainty remaining. How are you positioning your client portfolios …

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Nature

The Invincible Elder

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

“Judas was hang’d on an elder…” —Biron in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” “What shall we do with it?” Ron Weasley asked Harry Potter and Hermione in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows.” “It’s the elder wand. The most powerful wand in the world. With it we’d be invincible.” Who knew that the lowly-looking shrub perched …

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Business

Working in the Coronavirus Era

by Douglas Heuck

Q. How do you expect the aftermath of the coronavirus to change the working conditions for the American workforce? A. It’s definitely going to change working conditions. It’s also going to change the way we arrange work. Social distancing is going to change the workplace. The recovery is going to be gradual. I think you’re …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Aaron Watson, CEO of Piper Creative

by Donald Bonk

We began recording the voices of Pittsburgh Tomorrow in January through early March as a new decade fueled excitement about the future of our community. We delayed publishing the interviews, however, during the pandemic shutdowns. Now, it is too soon to know how the virus, it’s economic aftermath and the recent protests and riots will …

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Regional News

An Eroding Anomaly

by Bill O'Toole

The economic fallout of the pandemic threatens to weaken long-struggling fire and ambulance services in southwestern Pennsylvania that were already strapped for cash. Although the way the region’s fire and ambulance services are structured varies, they share daunting challenges including a dearth of new staff and a perennial lack of funding. And social distancing restrictions …

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Creative Capital

The Plan That Would Have Changed the World

by Greg Curtis

For readers who missed part 1 of this series of posts, I am summarizing a fictional novel written almost 40 years ago. Gen. Willy Green sat staring at the file on his desk, still not quite believing what it contained. The second document in the file—the one right after the red-outlined official form that told …

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Culture

Pittsburgh in Crisis

by John Beale

Editor’s note: 2020 has been full of calamity and adversity and it’s only June. Whether the pandemic and unprecedented economic shutdown or the more recent protests that have erupted here and across the world, the ordeals have ushered in a year that’s been unrecognizable from any that preceded it. Photographer John Beale has captured images …

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Money

Positioning Client Portfolios: Federated Hermes, Northwestern Mutual, Bill Few Associates, Schenley Capital

by PQ Staff

Positioning Client Portfolios: Federated Hermes, Northwestern Mutual, Bill Few Associates, Schenley Capital Read More »

Regional News

COVID-19 Survey: Allegheny County Residents React to the Pandemic and Shutdown

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Stay-at-home orders, business closures and other social distancing measures taken to slow the spread of the coronavirus in Pennsylvania were appropriate and necessary in the eyes of 70 percent of Allegheny County residents surveyed last week. More than two-thirds reported they’ve suffered no or only minor financial losses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. …

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American Spirit

Happy Hour

by Kate Benz

The boxed wine seemed like a good idea. So did the cheese—smoked Gouda and Wisconsin cheddar that came in thick blocks and occupied all the real estate on a fancy cracker dusted with sea salt. So the place mats were arranged on the weathered picnic table that in another lifetime was painted a deep, forest …

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Opinion

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

by Douglas Heuck

By chance, in early January, I watched a Netflix series called “Pandemic,” so my sensors were attuned early for the virus news from China. I was initially surprised that people were slow to give it credence and that financial markets blithely reached all-time highs Feb. 19. Soon enough though, as virus news swept the globe …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Michael McQuade, VP for Research at CMU

by Donald Bonk

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Regional News

April Unemployment Nears 17 Percent

by Julia Fraser

Unemployment in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area reached 16.8 percent in April—just below the region’s peak unemployment rate in the early 1980s. For the first time since the collapse of the steel industry, fewer than one million people were employed in the Pittsburgh region, according to preliminary employment data from the Pennsylvania Department of …

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Regional News

Billions Ride on Pandemic-Hampered Census

by Jeffery Fraser

COVID-19 is quietly threatening southwestern Pennsylvania’s share of billions of federal dollars that will be critical if the region is to recover from the pandemic with hopes for a future of growth and vitality intact. For months, the pandemic has disrupted the decennial census, putting at risk efforts to get a complete count of the …

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Arts

Photo as Fact?

by Vicky A Clark

Living through the COVID-19 pandemic will become another watershed moment in our lives, and we will be asking “Where were you when…” for years to come. I remember what I was doing when the planes hit the twin towers on 9/11, but the event that rocked my world was the assassination of JFK. I might …

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Creative Capital

The Top Secret File

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. When we left George and Jenny Leader’s soiree last week, the 13 people at the dinner table were locked in intense discussions about what sort of government could have elected (that is, reelected) …

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PQ Poem

Larimer Field

by Joseph Bathanti

Before every game, before they hit us infield, the coaches yelled, “Line up,” and both teams, twenty-eight Little Leaguers, formed a skirmish, from the plate, down the left field line until it ended at the cyclone fence on Lenora Street where the old Abruzzese who didn’t speak English, and didn’t know baseball, except DiMaggio, sat …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Douglas Heuck

by Douglas Heuck

Pittsburgh Quarterly’s Douglas Heuck reads his editor’s letter from the Spring 2020 issue. Editor’s note: The following column was published in the Spring issue of Pittsburgh Quarterly, just before the coronavirus changed the landscape across the world. It was part of an overall package entitled “Pittsburgh Today & Tomorrow” dedicated to considering changes that we …

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