Articles Archive - Page 85 of 156 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

April showers bring May flowers, but May showers can quickly destroy the delicate blossoms on flowering trees. Sometimes the blooms only last a few days before a sudden downpour—of which Pittsburgh has been experiencing often these days—washes them away. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”244″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] In this collection of images, Pittsburgh photographer David Aschkenas captures the …

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Events

Maecenas XXXIV Brings Contortionists to the Opera

by PQ Staff

Pittsburgh’s best-dressed celebrated at Pittsburgh Opera’s 34th annual Maecenas Gala on May 12th in a crowd of 250. Local performing arts patrons Pat and Michele Atkins were presented with Pittsburgh Opera’s Maecenas Award. Pittsburgh Opera awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award to Honorable Tom Wolf, Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which was accepted on his …

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Creative Capital

The Stubbornness of Culture

by Greg Curtis

In 2013 J. D. Vance graduated from Yale Law School, an accomplishment he shared that year with the following fraction of his fellow Americans: 0.00000063. I deduced this remarkable statistic very simply, by dividing the number of students in the Yale Law School class (208) by the population of the United States, which, at this …

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Sports

Steelers Add Key Players Who Should See Playing Time

by Matthew John Milligan

The 2018 NFL draft is in the books. The league again elected to feature a number of former NFL players to make team selections, perhaps to quell the booing of Commissioner Roger Goodell. It didn’t make a difference. It did, however, produce a very emotional draft moment. To a roaring crowd, linebacker Ryan Shazier walked …

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Events

Pittsburgh Public Theater’s “Bon Voyage!” Bids Ted Pappas Farewell

by PQ Staff

“Bon Voyage!” a red carpet event celebrating Ted Pappas and Pittsburgh Public Theater, took place on Monday, April 30 at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown. This August, Ted will say goodbye to the theater after 18 years at the helm and more than 450 well-wishers were on board to bid him farewell. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”242″ …

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Creative Capital

Don’t Even Think About Crossing a Hillbilly

by Greg Curtis

We’ve talked about several obstacles to success in middle class Ohio for migrants from southeastern Kentucky: they had horrible accents and they tended to dress funny. But the biggest obstacle was the most difficult to overcome: their behavior. As I’ve noted, Scots-Irish immigrants to America brought with them a constellation of characteristics. These included an …

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Arts

Play Unlimited: The Public’s Ambitious “Hamlet” Rewards on Many Levels

by Stuart Sheppard

“The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” is a monster of a play: at about 4,000 lines, it’s Shakespeare’s longest—full productions can easily run past four hours. (Hamlet himself has 1,500 lines, which alone would constitute an entire drama). And it’s monstrous not only in word-count, but body-count. By the end, the prince has been …

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Business

How My English Degree Helped Build a Tech Company

by Chris Allison

When I was 26, my dad got sick and asked me to take over as CEO of the tech company he started. I was armed with my English major from Allegheny College and a couple of years in a retail management training program. In other words, I didn’t have a clue. Or so I thought. …

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Creative Capital

Don’t Dress Like a Hillbilly

by Greg Curtis

Last week we discussed one of the major hurdles recent immigrants from southeastern Kentucky faced when they tried to assimilate into middle class society in Ohio: they talked like hillbillies. This week we’ll look at a second hurdle: the matter of dress. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” J. D. Vance notes that his Papaw wore the same outfit every …

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Events

Behind-the-Scenes of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s Season Finale

by PQ Staff

This spring, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (PBT) joins in international centennial celebrations for choreographer Jerome Robbins and composer Leonard Bernstein with an all-Robbins program featuring three company premieres. “UPMC Presents West Side Story Suite + In the Night + Fancy Free” with the PBT Orchestra takes the stage May 4-6, at the Benedum Center. In addition …

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Business

The Agency Game

by Evan Pattak

Pipitone Group, an ad agency in Pittsburgh’s Observatory Hill neighborhood, counts Vitro Architectural Glass as one of its largest clients. For the Cheswick-based company, which purchased PPG Flat Glass in 2016, Pipitone manages advertising and web strategy. Yet when Vitro wants to develop and implement a public relations initiative, it brings to the table another …

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Nature

The Allegheny River

by Thomas Saunders

In many ways, the Allegheny River is the centerpiece of our region. It traverses landscapes from wilderness to urban and provides recreational opportunities in many different places along its course. One of the most spectacular parts of the river is the free-flowing 125 miles of the middle Allegheny from the Kinzua Dam in Warren County …

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Opinion

Opining on Eponymy

by Diane Vrabel

It used to be you had to die to get your name etched in stone. Not anymore. Now all you need to do is fork over enough cash to your local school or library and you can purchase a brick with your name chiseled on it while you still register a pulse. Bricks are only …

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Arrivals

Kelleman, Fech, Kaminski, Thors, Bhattacharya, Crawley, Miller

by PQ Staff

Katharine Eagan Kelleman is the CEO of the Port Authority of Allegheny County, succeeding Ellen McLean. Kelleman comes to Pittsburgh from Tampa, Fla., where she led the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority and won that region’s 2016 Businesswoman of the Year Award for economic development. She has previously worked in transit agencies in Baltimore, Dallas …

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Creative Capital

The Inscrutable Foibles of Hillbilly Talk

by Greg Curtis

Although the parallels between my life and that of J.D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” seem flat-out astonishing, it’s actually the differences that are more interesting. Vance and I both started out with grandparents who migrated from southeastern Kentucky to the Dayton, Ohio area, and we ultimately ended up in pretty much the same place: Yale …

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Food & Wine

If Pittsburgh is Having a Restaurant Boom, Why are So Many Restaurateurs Worried?

by Melissa McCart

Even with the opening of Ace Hotel in 2015, there seems to be a lot of East Liberty restaurant spaces waiting for tenants. Head down Penn Avenue and there are a parade of empty storefronts, including the former Livermore space at South Highland and the old Anthon’s Restaurant & Bakery (now the home of a …

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Events

Family House Gifting Gala Raises $145,000

by PQ Staff

The Family House Gifting Gala was held Saturday, April 14 at J. Verno Studios. The speakeasy-themed event was presented by UPMC and UPMC Health Plan and celebrated 35 years of Family House’s mission to provide a “home away from home” to patients and families who travel to Pittsburgh for medical care. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”239″ display=”basic_thumbnail” …

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Events

YWCA Greater Pittsburgh Celebrates 150 Years with Speaker Dr. Jill Biden

by PQ Staff

Over 450 guests packed the Wyndham Grand in Downtown Pittsburgh on Friday, April 13 to celebrate 150 years of the YWCA Greater Pittsburgh with featured speaker Dr. Jill Biden, former Second Lady of the U.S. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”240″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″] Before Dr. Biden took the stage, guests made their way up to a cocktail reception …

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Books

Recalling Poet Muriel Rukeyser and her Work on the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster

by Jody DiPerna

When she was just 23, poet Muriel Rukeyser drove from her home in New York City to the hollers of West Virginia, fueled by a desire to investigate and document the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel mining disaster. By the time she arrived in 1936, many of the men who had dug the tunnel were dead. More …

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Creative Capital

Why Were Pittsburgh’s Scots-Irish So Successful?

by Greg Curtis

If Malcolm Gladwell is right that the cultural legacy of the Scots-Irish explains the poor outcomes experienced by people in southeastern Kentucky, how do we explain the exceptional success of these same people in Pittsburgh? One answer to this conundrum is this one: “Cultural legacy explanations are garbage.” That’s the Politically Correct answer, but it’s …

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PQ Poem

26 + 6 = 1

by Ann Curran

The first time I went up north to Belfast, a helicopter hovered overhead. Very young and very nervous soldiers with guns too large for their skinny bodies carried their fears across the darkened streets. In the Europa lobby, the guide bragged, “This is the most bombed hotel in the world.” We stayed in a lovely …

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Creative Capital

The Culture of the Scots-Irish

by Greg Curtis

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” –Peter Drucker (supposedly) Whether or not Drucker ever said that, every corporate executive knows it’s true. No matter how brilliant a strategy might be, if the corporate culture is toxic, the strategy will fall as flat as soggy Cheerios. On the other hand, if the corporate culture is healthy, a …

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