Articles Archive - Page 72 of 155 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

I was walking where the paved road turns to dirt at Hartwood Acres one winter day. The trees were creaking with cold. Dry leaves were tinged with a dusting of snow. The sky, all gray. Suddenly, there was a bird, small, moving fast. It landed on a sapling no more than 10 feet away and …

Be Alert for a Fast and Active Winter Visitor Read More »

Creative Capital

Cold War II

by Greg Curtis

Roughly five years ago, my book, “The Stewardship of Wealth,” was published in the U.S. Almost immediately, it was translated into Chinese and was being readied for publication by Tsinghua University Press in Beijing. But then one day—actually, it was nearly midnight—I received a frantic call. It seemed that there was a teensy-weensy problem: the Chinese …

Cold War II Read More »

Events

Gentlemen’s Night Out Raises More Than $160,000 for the National Aviary

by PQ Staff

The 2019 Gentlemen’s Night Out on the North Shore benefitting the National Aviary was held on Friday, February 8th at Heinz Field Champions Club. The event was hosted by Michael Mascaro, Executive Vice President of Mascaro Construction and President of the National Aviary Board of Trustees. National Aviary ambassador birds, including a Bald Eagle, greeted …

Gentlemen’s Night Out Raises More Than $160,000 for the National Aviary Read More »

Arts

Tragedy in a Box: A Review of “The Gun Show (Can We Talk About This?)”

by Stuart Sheppard

A refreshing pragmatism infuses Quantum Theatre’s production of “The Gun Show (Can We Talk About This?)” (2013) – a kind of low-tech, iconoclastic exuberance that’s reminiscent of the early films of Godard. It’s a classic one-man, story-telling performance – with some audience interaction – that comes off somewhere between Spalding Gray’s “Monster in a Box” …

Tragedy in a Box: A Review of “The Gun Show (Can We Talk About This?)” Read More »

A Valentine’s Day to Remember

by Judi Vitale

Valentine’s Day makes us think of all the different kinds of love there are in life, and this year the planets will be providing the perfect backdrop for all heartfelt activities. The amorous will find the wee hours Sunday to be particularly romantic, thanks to a nice connection between Venus and Neptune. Mars’ move into …

A Valentine’s Day to Remember Read More »

Creative Capital

The Value of Living Separately

by Greg Curtis

We’ve talked a lot about De Rarum Natura, but we haven’t actually experienced the poem in these pages. There’s a reason for that—poor Lucretius has been unlucky in his translators. The vast majority of the DRN translations have been made by Latin scholars. These renderings are technically accurate and have the merit of passing along …

The Value of Living Separately Read More »

Nature

The Tionesta Natural Areas

by Thomas Saunders

The largest remaining uncut forest in Pennsylvania is the Allegheny National Forest in northwestern Pennsylvania. This remote 4,000-acre area is almost equally divided between the Tionesta Research Natural Area and adjoining Tionesta Scenic Natural Area, which are managed for science and aesthetic values. Situated along creeks at the top of the 2,000-foot-high Allegheny High Plateau, …

The Tionesta Natural Areas Read More »

American Spirit

Seamstress to the Stars

by Kate Benz

There are fittings on Thursday. Eight costumes still left to make and only two weeks to make them before the first dress rehearsal for The Great Gatsby. And Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre costume designer Janet Campbell is calm. Totally calm, actually. Not a hair out of place. Looking amazingly pulled together, as if the only thing …

Seamstress to the Stars Read More »

Innovation

Girl on the Move

by Lenore Blum

I arrived at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in the fall of 1959 as a 16-year-old first year student in the architecture department in the College of Fine Arts. I had chosen architecture because I loved art and math ever since I was a kid, and architecture seemed like the perfect combination. Besides, I lived …

Girl on the Move Read More »

Arts

Soft-Core Pathos: A Review of Pittsburgh Public Theater’s “The Tempest”

by Stuart Sheppard

Cleverness is not a Shakespearian trait. In fact, as we have found after more than 400 years, the more we try to shape him, using our own devices, the less he is able to tell us. This is because his chief mode of artistic engagement is the sublime – versus the allegoric, the symbolic, or …

Soft-Core Pathos: A Review of Pittsburgh Public Theater’s “The Tempest” Read More »

This Week’s Astrology: Feb. 7–13, 2019

by Judi Vitale

Maybe Phil the Groundhog had it right! Or, could it be the planets had an early spring feeling planned out for us all along? In any event, this week will be a build toward a burst of activity by the time we reach next Wednesday. The sun is still in the community-oriented sign of Aquarius, …

This Week’s Astrology: Feb. 7–13, 2019 Read More »

Creative Capital

Time Warp with Lucretius

by Greg Curtis

Lucretius lived and wrote a long time ago. Indeed, if we wanted to, we could calculate how much time has passed since De Rerum Natura was completed in 50 BCE—how many centuries, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds. (But don’t bother. It was 20 centuries, 2,079 years, 24,948 months, 759,355 days, 18,224,520 hours, 1,093,471,200 minutes, and 65,608,272,000 seconds—i.e., a …

Time Warp with Lucretius Read More »

PQ Poem

Kitchen

by Rebecca Clever

Its scent was more like the bread Grandma’s fingers shaped, rising warm to my nose than the ash of her Salem’s crushed in thick glass trays, her coffee cup ringed black after finishing a smoke. That candy jar glazed butterscotch, plump atop her laminate table we used for Go Fish, the cards dumbed down below …

Kitchen Read More »

Events

Thirteen Debutantes Presented at the 93rd Cinderella Ball

by PQ Staff

Presented by their fathers in traditional cotillion style, thirteen Pittsburgh debutantes walked the Omni William Penn ballroom on Saturday, January 26 at the 93rd Annual Cinderella Ball. The evening’s Prince Charming—Joseph Anthony Katarincic III (Jack), a junior at Miami University from Fox Chapel—randomly selected Miss Margaret Elizabeth Maglio as Cinderella. The debutantes, as part of …

Thirteen Debutantes Presented at the 93rd Cinderella Ball Read More »

The Pulse

How Healthy are Allegheny County Residents?

by Jeffery Fraser

In their own view, people in Allegheny County are generally healthier than the nation’s population. They’re also smoking less. Only 16 percent of county residents overall described their general health as fair or poor in the Pittsburgh Regional Quality of Life Survey conducted in June. Nationally, 18.4 percent of Americans say they’re in fair or …

How Healthy are Allegheny County Residents? Read More »

Birds

Death in the Back Yard

by Don Feigert

I had been an outdoors guy all my life, until Donna Rae found “our dream house” in the city of Sharon in 2006. The compromise was that, for a place in town, this property had a bit of wild land and some wildlife: dozens of squirrels, occasional deer, raccoons, skunks, and—some years—hawks roosting in the …

Death in the Back Yard Read More »

This Week’s Astrology: Jan. 31–Feb. 7, 2019

by Judi Vitale

Apart from harsh weather, this time of year rarely seems “eventful.” However, the planets do not see it that way this week. In addition to a new moon on Monday, we will notice other shifts that will result from some rather important planetary interactions. Most powerful among these will be a harmonious exchange between Saturn …

This Week’s Astrology: Jan. 31–Feb. 7, 2019 Read More »

Regional News

Lowest in Decades

by Julia Fraser

Unemployment in southwestern Pennsylvania fell again in December, ending a year that saw the jobless rate slip to levels last seen when the region’s steel industry still ruled the local economy. The unemployment rate in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area was 4.2 percent for December 2018, down .4 percent from December 2017, according to …

Lowest in Decades Read More »

Creative Capital

On Lucretius, Part II: Why His Poem Was so Great

by Greg Curtis

“The greatest poem by the greatest poet.” —Dryden on De Rerum Natura and Lucretius ”Carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti / exitio terras cum dabit una dies.” —Ovid [“The verses of the sublime Lucretius/will perish only when a day will bring the end of the world.”] What exactly was it that made De Rerum Natura, or DRN, so remarkable? …

On Lucretius, Part II: Why His Poem Was so Great Read More »

Nature

Wild Bones

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

My daughter brings home bones and piles them on the driveway: femur, rib, jawbone with a few flat teeth attached, dozens of thin arced parts. —from “My Daughter Brings Home Bones” by Jennifer Richter The American photographer Sally Mann, controversial in the 1990s for the photos she took of her naked children, has a fascination …

Wild Bones Read More »

Books

Short Takes: “Thank Your Lucky Stars” “Asia Ascending”

by John Allison

The pleasures of “Thank Your Lucky Stars” are doubled in the re-reading. The 50 stories tucked into 189 pages encourage a binge. Most are short short, sometimes just a few paragraphs; about 10 are traditional-length short stories (if size matters). But when you return to browse through the collection, images and phrases bust out like …

Short Takes: “Thank Your Lucky Stars” “Asia Ascending” Read More »

Books

The Bad Old Days

by John Allison

You won’t get depressed by reading Richard Gazarik’s “Wicked Pittsburgh.” The retired Tribune-Review reporter does not seek to darken the name of our fair city. He merely wants to gather, in one handy and readable volume, key stories of corruption, crime and skulduggery stretching back to the turn of the 20th century. The cumulative effect …

The Bad Old Days Read More »