Maxwell King has published poetry in a dozen literary periodicals around the country, and is the author of two biographies: The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers and American Workman: The Life and Art of John Kane. He lives in Ligonier with his wife Peggy--and with Bingley the bernedoodle, successor to Finn and Cora.
Finny Cora
Finny Cora Finbar bolted down a big breakfastand walked with his best humanto the greenwhere he had his morning poop–on the way back twenty paces from homeall four feetwent out from under him . . . heart gone that mercifully quick Cora outlived her mateby three yearsslowing down. . . and down . . . …
Pittsburgh’s Gentleman Scholar
I wasn’t sure when i knocked on the door that I was really at the right house. I thought I had the correct address, but it had been a long trip. I took the passenger ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and then rode my bicycle 10 miles out to West Tisbury. And then I had to hunt …
Behind a Biography
I first got interested in John Kane 20 years ago. I was working at The Heinz Endowments, the large charitable foundation in Pittsburgh, which has a wonderful collection of the work of Pittsburgh artists, going back over 100 years. A local art dealer named Pat McArdle was talking to me about the collection when he …
A New Initiative
John Kane was the quintessential Pittsburgh working man: tough, hard-working, unpretentious, and yet extraordinarily creative. He emigrated from Scotland in 1879, worked for Frick’s coke works, Carnegie’s steel mill and the Pennsylvania Railroad where he became a painter of boxcars for the railroad. Later, emerging as a true artist, he created some of the most …
Beyond the Neighborhood
For those of us raising families in the 1970s and 1980s, Fred Rogers was that patient, soft-spoken gentleman who made extraordinary connections to our children on the same TV set that usually carried appallingly bad programming. Fred certainly was that wonderful television teacher, but he was much more. He was the genius behind the most …
Anatomy of a Rescue
On the first morning of November, I walked down the long slope from my house in Squirrel Hill to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland for a meeting of foundation leaders to do what people in my position do so many times each week: Assess the merits of a proposal to fund a worthy …