Jennifer Papale Rignani is a marketing professional and a freelance writer living in south Pittsburgh with her husband and three daughters.
Torpedoes to Aquaponics
They called Rhonda Jordan’s dad lucky lee because he caught shrapnel just hairs away from his carotid artery over in Europe. While he was fighting the Germans, his wife was one of thousands of women who put away their heels and aprons for work in the massive Westinghouse factory in Sharon, Pennsylvania. You could say …
To Bail or Not to Bail
The president of the Pennsylvania Bail Bond Association is not straight out of central casting. His wife and young daughters write children’s books, and he’s sipped a lot of tea at imaginary princess parties. Matter of fact, he looks more like an underwear model than a tough guy who meets criminals in the dead of …
Whistleblower
In 1991, the smell of Nabisco saturated the air in Pittsburgh’s eastern neighborhoods. The cookie factory was still just that, years away from its second act as a Google anchor. Sears was closed, but its big blue shell sat fading in the parking lot on Highland Avenue. Peabody wasn’t Obama and Bush I was in …
Room Service in Wonderland
The view from up here is majestic. The smudged, working class neighborhood of my youth has grown up to be a gentrified village whose renovated rooftops peer out of a sanitary blanket of January snow. I can almost hear the bustle of the hipsters and their Uber apps, heading out to work in the city. …