Articles Archive - Page 65 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Life began for me on January 27, 1957, in Titusville, Pennsylvania. My dad was from there and my mom came from a dairy farm in Mercer. She was a little country girl who loved to play the accordion, and she’d always go down to the tent revival meetings because she also loved Jesus. That’s where …

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Spotlight

Can Higher Garbage Pickup Fees Reduce Consumption and Waste?

by Julia Fraser

The United States is in the midst of a recycling crisis. Decades of recycling haven’t curbed America’s appetite to consume. It’s increasingly difficult to find someone willing to buy the soda cans, old magazines, milk jugs and pickle jars we recycle. Recycling is getting more expensive. And municipalities are shrinking their recycling programs. “We’re in …

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Health

Is Lifting Weights Safe for Older Adults?

by Joseph A. Luxbacher

Question: “I am 65 years old and recently read an article that said lifting weights is beneficial at almost any age. Is that true? I am interested in information on a strengthening program specifically for older adults. Can you provide guidelines or some suggestions?” People of almost all ages can lift weights and benefit from …

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Contest Ideas

Ideas for a Better Pittsburgh: Semifinalists, Part I

by PQ Staff

Pittsburgh Quarterly invited readers and neighbors to offer up their best ideas for improving the region through the Spring 2019 Pittsburgh Tomorrow Contest. The 13 finalists chosen by the Pittsburgh Today advisory board were published online and in the Fall 2019 issue of the magazine. But the ideas of another nearly three dozen thinkers made …

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Creative Capital

Modern Monetary Madness

by Greg Curtis

When I think about MMT—Modern Monetary Theory—I visualize an odious miscreation squatting in its squalid swamp for decades, waiting only for an opportunity to erupt from the scum and devour the world’s economies. Okay, maybe I should be taking my meds… MMT’s main postulate, and it’s only raison d’être, is that a government that borrows …

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Money

Pittsburgh: Buy, Sell or Hold?

by PQ Staff

We’ve asked a group of the region’s leading financial experts to give their opinion on the following question: “If the Pittsburgh region were an investable security, what changes, if any, would you want to see before you advised your clients to invest?” Their answers follow. Linda Duessel, Federated Investors: Pittsburgh already is a “buy.” It’s …

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Sports

For the Joy of It

by Samuel Hazo

I recently read that the audience for baseball is shrinking. The author did not cite any particular franchises or cities where there were fewer fans in the stands, nor did he cite any reasons or statistics. As someone who loves baseball, I wondered what prompted the article. Could the author have seen the proliferation of …

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American Spirit

Pasta with the Shimkos

by Kate Benz

There is spaghetti boiling in a big pot on the stove, Led Zeppelin playing on the radio and two silver bowls filled with thick, doughy, slices of bread on the kitchen counter. “From our Panera fairy,” Kate said, rinsing off a handful of red grapes that she transfers to a silver strainer. “She brings us …

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Regional News

Unemployment Drops—Labor Force Grows

by Julia Fraser

Southwestern Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate remained below 4 percent in July, hovering slightly higher than the national average as job seekers in the region and across the U.S. continued to find work. Unemployment in the region remained at rates that haven’t been seen since the early months of 1970. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the …

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Events

The Allegheny County Parks Foundation Hosts Third Annual Twilight Picnic

by PQ Staff

The Allegheny County Parks Foundation treated the sell-out crowd of 430 guests at its third annual Twilight Picnic for the Parks on Saturday, August 24 to a stunning celebration of the region’s nine parks, one of the largest public parks systems in the country. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”332″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] Event planner Nancy Byrnes designed an …

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Events

Riverlife Celebrates 20th anniversary with Party at the Pier “Bold Paradise”

by PQ Staff

Riverlife has been working for two decades to bring parks, trails and quality real estate development to Pittsburgh’s riverfronts. On the evening of Friday, August 23, the nonprofit organization celebrated its 20th anniversary with a blowout Party at the Pier at the North Shore amphitheater at Rivers Casino. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”331″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] Over 800 …

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Creative Capital

Future Breakthroughs for Heart Disease

by Greg Curtis

“The coronary bypass operation stands as a monument to an almost total lack of understanding of causes, prevention, and effective management of [heart] disease.” —Charles T. McGee, MD. “It’s humbling to see medical dogma overturned.” —Bernadine Healy, MD, former Director, NIH, discussing the heart’s ability to heal itself Once it became clear that human heart …

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Contest Ideas

And the Finalists Are…

by PQ Staff

In the Spring issue, we launched a competition among our readers and residents to send in ideas to make Pittsburgh a better place to live. Ideas could range from something that wouldn’t cost a dime to a multi-million dollar infrastructure project. Part of the reason I wanted launch this contest was that it didn’t seem …

And the Finalists Are… Read More »

Books

Close to Home: Local Poets Get Personal

by Fred Shaw

If all politics is local, perhaps all good poetry might be considered local, as well. Consider how setting and description flavor the Homestead poems of Robert Gibb and the Detroit poems of Jim Daniels. In his seminal essay collection on poetic craft, “The Triggering Town,” poet Richard Hugo asks writers to ground their work, saying …

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Sports

Moment in the Sun

by Steve Schlossman

One hundred years ago, Pittsburgh native son S. Davidson Herron defied expectations that rising young superstar Bobby Jones was too much for him and won the prestigious National Amateur championship at Oakmont Country Club, shocking the golf world in the process. The 1919 National Amateur was the first since 1916 due to World War I. …

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Region

A Slow But Continuing Decline

by Jeffery Fraser

Gavriel Popper-Keizer was living in sun-swept Santa Barbara when he decided to leave coastal California, where he’d spent most of his life. His girlfriend, Alison, also a lifelong Californian, was on board. The sense of adventure was appealing. Neither had a dream job they would regret leaving. And they had come to grips with the …

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Nature

The Price of Nature’s Beauty

by Julia Fraser

Second in a three-part series: Even modest exploration of Pennsylvania’s state parks and forests reveals their gifts: hidden waterfalls that appear along hiking trails, imposing rock formations bolted with anchors for climbing, lakes created by dams for swimming and boating on warm summer days, and rivers and streams stocked with fish for the catching. Some …

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Creative Capital

Is Coronary Bypass Surgery Obsolete?

by Greg Curtis

“You will die with exactly the same heart muscle cells you came out of the womb with.” —Consulting cardiologist, speaking to Your Humble Blogger Having recently experienced the gruesome-car-crash known as coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, I was naturally wondering why, instead of doing its best to kill an already very fragile patient, medical …

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Health

What is Cross-Training, Anyway?

by Joseph A. Luxbacher

Question: “Can you explain what is meant by “cross-training”? I see it advertised at my health club. Is it a special kind of workout program?” Many people, myself included, often fall into the routine of performing the same workout regimen day after day, week after week. This is not necessarily a good practice because by …

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Opinion

Lost and Found

by Douglas Heuck

Some days are memorable for obvious reasons: births, deaths, weddings and funerals. Occasionally, however, a day is noteworthy not for any dramatic event but for what you suddenly understand. For 58 summers in a row, I’ve gone to a little town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula called Cedarville. What has turned out, in retrospect, to be …

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Regional News

Job Growth Stalls

by Julia Fraser

Employers in southwestern Pennsylvania hit the brakes on job creation in the region last month. The seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area added only 800 jobs from July 2018 and July 2019—a 0.1 percent year-over-year increase, according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is the lowest growth rate among Pittsburgh Today’s …

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Spotlight

State’s Innovation Economy Needs a Boost to Compete

by Julia Fraser

Southwestern Pennsylvania’s innovation economy, bolstered by its major research universities, is brimming with potential. But the region and Pennsylvania has its work cut out for them if they want to compete with the likes of San Francisco, Boston and emerging stars, such as Austin, Texas. And realizing that potential begins with a statewide plan and …

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