Articles Archive - Page 95 of 155 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Dualism, a philosophical concept, asks thinkers to consider the relationship between mind and body, often leading to inquiries such as: What is the self? What is consciousness? Do the physical and mental influence one another? Plato and Aristotle pondered the topic centuries ago, their questions often leading to more questions as humans continue to be …

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Opinion

You’re Having a Really Bad Day

by Tim Menees

American Spirit

Walking the Dog with Dave

by Kate Benz, photography by John Altdorfer

Dave has his boss’s dog on a leash. A yippy little black and brown dog the size of a football that is completely oblivious to its unimpressive size, snorting and slobbering its way down the sidewalk near its home on Observatory Hill. It looks like Dave is walking the dog. But the dog is walking …

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Creative Capital

Explaining Donald Trump, Part III

by Greg Curtis

I’m claiming to be able to explain Donald Trump—and predict his actions as President—by reference to only two of his characteristics. The first is that he’s what I’ve called a Mega Entrepreneurial Personality, a trait he shares with an infinitesimally small group of Americans. The second trait is something Trump shares with almost all of …

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Arts

Rich Performances Buoy City Theatre’s “Ironbound”

by Stuart Sheppard

Imagine “Waiting for Godot” set in a New Jersey bus stop. It’s hardly a rarefied trope, as I’m sure many of us have thought we might as well be waiting for Godot while marooned in some cold, lonely place, praying for a bus to appear. Playwright Martyna Majok has taken this conceit and turned it …

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Creative Capital

Explaining Donald Trump, Part II

by Greg Curtis

I’m determined to explain Donald Trump by referring to merely two of his traits, the first of which I’ve dubbed the Mega Entrepreneurial Personality, or MEP. Here are a few more examples of MEP characteristics we’ll need to consider as we try to understand the 45th President of the United States: MEPs are utterly fearless, not …

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Money

Three Simple Questions on the Markets, Part II

by PQ Staff

We asked a group of the region’s leading wealth managers to pen a response to three questions about the markets and how they approach current conditions. Below are their answers to the second question: The Fed is working to “normalize” interest rates over the course of 2017. What impact will a more normal rate environment …

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Creative Capital

Explaining Donald Trump

by Greg Curtis

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, then explaining about Trump is like sneezing about hermeneutics. I believe it to be the general opinion across the land that anyone who thinks he can explain Donald Trump has probably just escaped from an Institution for the Criminally Insane. From where I sit it appears …

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American Spirit

The Corner Barber Shop

by Kate Benz, photography by John Altdorfer

The guy currently occupying the Emil C. Paidar barber chair circa 1932 showed up at 11:30 a.m., half an hour before the Humble Barber Co. opened for the day. He thought he’d be the first in line. Turns out, he’s second. Which might have seemed odd. But the last time he walked through the doors …

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Money

Three Simple Questions on the Markets, Part I

by PQ Staff

We asked a group of the region’s leading wealth managers to pen a response to three questions about the markets and how they approach current conditions. Here are their responses to the first question: Since the election of Donald Trump, stock markets have soared and the confidence of consumers and investors has risen. How real …

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Health

What Does It Take to be a Living Donor?

by Kelly Casey

Michaela Cook of Beaver Falls didn’t hesitate to give her husband one of her kidneys in 2010. The couple had two young children when Erik Cook’s organs were damaged beyond repair by type 1 diabetes. Like most living organ donors, Michaela was motivated by the desire to help a very sick loved one. A small …

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Health

Starzl’s Growing Shadow

by Kelly Casey

Brothers Tim and Joe Scherer have always been close. They play on the same men’s softball team in Beaver County. They talk on the phone every day. Whenever one needs help on their home, they’re there for each other. In August 2015, Tim learned he needed a kidney. For reasons unknown, his body attacked his …

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Regional News

The Last Coke Works

by Jeffery Fraser

At the Clairton Public Library in the industrial Monongahela River valley, patrons can check out “Moby Dick,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the adventures of Curious George and any number of Nancy Drew mysteries. They can read issues of Vogue and Popular Science. They can take home the music of Elton John and Rihanna, or the …

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Region

No Money Down

by Jeffery Fraser

It’s 11 a.m. in Judge Jeffery Manning’s courtroom. The attorneys are ready. The Allegheny County Common Pleas Court president judge is on the bench. The video screen comes alive to reveal the business of the morning, a series of people in orange, jail-issue jumpsuits: One young man with a retail theft charge and a drug …

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Regional News

Living Dangerously

by Julia Fraser

Despite the improvement in the region’s air quality in recent years, southwestern Pennsylvania still fails to meet federal health-based standards for various major air pollutants, such as ground-level ozone, sulfur dioxide and fine particulates, known as PM2.5. And that regional pollution elevates risks of cancer, respiratory ailments and other serious health problems. Air pollution increases …

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Regional News

Does Air Quality Matter to Young Workers?

by Mike Wereschagin

As their due date neared last fall, Ryan Poling and his wife faced a difficult decision. Did they want to raise their daughter in Pittsburgh, the city in which they’ve built a life during the last nine years, or pick up and move across the country, near Poling’s family in California? “It’s really hard to …

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Nature

Building the Buzz

by Deborah Weisberg

On a brisk October morning, Dr. Bill Bookwalter dons a billowy, white beekeeping suit complete with veil and hikes up a hill behind his Fox Chapel home to harvest honey. Most days, you’ll find him in surgical scrubs, but during his downtime, Bookwalter, a neurosurgeon, practices apiculture: he maintains colonies of bees. While the honey …

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Sports

A Modest Proposal

by Marino Parascenzo

Mother Nature has a sense of humor and the soul of Monet. The change in the yard was startling. In just a week it went from being a crabgrass plantation to a breathtaking carpet of fluffy, soft-white clover, a pastel hand-delivered from the French master himself. But lawns are supposed to be neat and clean …

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Profiles

Christina Cassotis, Allegheny County Airport Authority

by Jeff Sewald

I grew up in Southern New Hampshire in essentially a suburb of Boston. My mother was a homemaker, as many women were back then, and my father was a commercial airline pilot for Pan American World Airways, having been a U.S. Marine fighter pilot during the Vietnam War. I’m the oldest of four kids: two …

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History

Pittsburgh to Gettysburg

by Kellie B. Gormly

During a muggy June in 1863, Civil War-weary Pittsburghers panicked at rumors that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was marching his Army of Northern Virginia toward Pennsylvania. The rumors, as we now know a century and a half later, were indeed true—although Pittsburgh was about 200 miles west of the small farming town of Gettysburg …

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Travel

Bring on the Meat!

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Years ago, the Sunday roast inevitably came from the neighborhood butcher. The relationship between the homemaker and butcher was once so significant, that the television series “The Brady Bunch” included “Sam the Butcher,” who was both meat purveyor and love interest for housekeeper Alice. This was before mega-grocery stores and warehouse clubs with inhouse butchers, …

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Birds

The Scarlet Tanager

by David Liebmann

A bird on fire, a male scarlet tanager perched just above my eye level. He was in a tree at the edge of the Upper Fields Trail at Fox Chapel’s Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve. Normally high in the forest canopy gleaning insects in spring and summer, this avian migrant, roughly robin size, had decided that …

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