2015 Spring Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Southwestern Pennsylvania has long been an energy center. The nation’s oil industry rose from the derricks of Titusville. Ample coal seams have been mined for centuries. Natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation is helping to achieve energy independence. Yet, until now, there’s been little effort to draft a regional strategy covering production, consumption, health …

Thinking Regionally About Energy Read More »

Regional Annual Report

High Rates of Chronic Disease, Unhealthy Behaviors Persist

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Southwestern Pennsylvanians find themselves in the middle of the pack when self-reported health status is measured across the 15 Pittsburgh Today benchmark regions. More than 83 percent of residents in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) describe their health as good or better, and 16.6 percent rate it fair or poor, according to U.S. Centers …

High Rates of Chronic Disease, Unhealthy Behaviors Persist Read More »

Opinion

A Maze of Milestones

by Douglas Heuck

I‘ve been accumulating milestones lately. Within a year, I’ll have had my 35th high school reunion, the 30th anniversary of my arrival in Pittsburgh, my 25th wedding anniversary, the 10th anniversary of the founding of this magazine, and finally, the signing and sending of the final check for my three children’s college tuitions. During a …

A Maze of Milestones Read More »

Arrivals

Cassotis, Suresh, Nolan, Poole, Zimmerman, Moerdyk

by PQ Staff

Christina Cassotis is the chief executive officer of the Allegheny County Airport Authority. She comes to Pittsburgh from York, Maine, where she was managing officer of consultant ICF International’s airport services practice; in her 16 years with the firm, she held a variety of posts. She began her career in transportation with the Massachusetts Port …

Cassotis, Suresh, Nolan, Poole, Zimmerman, Moerdyk Read More »

Profiles

Allan H. Meltzer, Economist, professor, author

by Jeff Sewald

As a kid, I moved a lot around Boston, where I was born. My mother died when I was 5, after which I lived with my grandmother. When I was 9, my father remarried and we became suburbanites, moving to Westwood, Mass. Practically no Jews lived there other than me, my dad and my sisters. …

Allan H. Meltzer, Economist, professor, author Read More »

Sports

Arnold Palmer

by Marino Parascenzo

Arnie Palmer was at home in Latrobe that September afternoon having a quiet birthday when the doorbell rang. There, wearing a warm grin, stood a kindly old gentleman, gray where he wasn’t bald, who was just five years out of the White House and who, some two decades earlier, had saved the world. “Any chance …

Arnold Palmer Read More »

Books

The Fading Light

by John Allison

Stewart O’Nan’s novel “West of Sunset,” based on the final tragic years of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood, took some nerve to write. Would you like to get into the ring with one of the greatest figures in American literature and try to describe what’s going on in his alcoholic head and distressed heart? But …

The Fading Light Read More »

Birds

A little yellow friend

by David Liebmann

The potato chip bird. that’s how my students remember it. At first, they think it’s a canary. I show them pictures on the opening day of class, and they see yellow and call out “Big Bird?” “No,” then, “Canary?” “Wrong continent.” That’s before they’ve learned to use their eyes and ears again to recognize what’s …

A little yellow friend Read More »

Food & Wine

Cooking the Books

by Sherrie Flick

For me, it started with “The Betty Crocker Cookbook for Boys and Girls.” My sister-in-law loaned me her copy when I was 7. The 1950s spiral-bound edition depicted smiling, neatly dressed girls in aprons stirring batter and beating eggs in (now vintage) bowls with the boy in the background tasting from a pot resting on …

Cooking the Books Read More »

Food & Wine

Pitaland

by Joseph Sabino Mistick

If breaking bread is the key to world peace, Joe Chahine has a jump on it at Pitaland in Brookline. A Lebanese Maronite Christian, Joe has pita customers of all faiths and nationalities. An Italian baker, Cellone, delivers Joe’s pita to area groceries. And if you are eating pita at any area Mediterranean restaurant, and …

Pitaland Read More »

Architecture & Neighborhoods

From melons to motorists

by Charles Rosenblum

Why exactly does motor square Garden have a dome? The Renaissance-style cap in oxidized copper and glass sits confidently on a low-rise multiple gable structure in buff brick that is more ancient Roman. Pittsburgh Press writer George Swetnam once called the combination “odd but charming.” The building definitely holds its own architecturally among much larger …

From melons to motorists Read More »

Homes

Vintage Fox Chapel

by Marylynn Uricchio

For some, the best thing about the movie “White Christmas” is the Vermont lodge where most of it takes place. Its timeless charm is the essence of classic American style. Though it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes it so appealing, the same elements appear again and again in movies made during the 1940s and …

Vintage Fox Chapel Read More »

Travel

Remembering the Great One

by Barbara Eichenlaub

Walking into The Clemente Museum at Engine House No. 25 in Lawrenceville, one word comes to mind: passion. The athletic passion of one of baseball’s greatest players, his passion for helping the less fortunate and making the world better for his and all children, and the passion of the man who created this moving monument …

Remembering the Great One Read More »

Arts

Richard Mellon Scaife

by Graham Shearing

When Dick Scaife died last summer, there surfaced a rash of brief memoirs of a man most often described as “reclusive,” and, more ambivalently, “mercurial.” Before then, he had been shielded from close scrutiny by the code of Omertà, a protective silence, at least by his friends and close associates. This frustrated those less friendly …

Richard Mellon Scaife Read More »

Education

Classroom of the Future

by Sean D. Hamill

It is 12:23 p.m. on a school day, about seven minutes before DeAnna Kwiecinski’s robotics class starts at The Campus School of Carlow University in Pittsburgh. But dashing in the door, red-faced and breathing hard, are third-graders Lorenzo Auteri and Tyler Sharek. “We ran because we wanted to get here first,” Tyler said, fiddling with …

Classroom of the Future Read More »

Nature

Jennings Environmental Education Center

by Thomas Saunders

Among the many delightful, ecologically interesting places to visit within a short distance from Pittsburgh is the Jennings Environmental Education Center. This gorgeous destination along Route 8 is about 12 miles north of Butler, across from the historic Old Stone House. It is a wonderful place for a quick hike or for exploring five miles …

Jennings Environmental Education Center Read More »

Regional Annual Report

Lack of Diversity in the Region’s Workforce Raises Concerns

by Jeffery Fraser

Rayfield Lucas had heard there were well-paying jobs to be had in the shale gas industry; jobs that offered the opportunity to earn his way to a future more secure than the maintenance and warehouse work he’d done in the past could ever promise. He went for it. A little more than a month after …

Lack of Diversity in the Region’s Workforce Raises Concerns Read More »

Science

A Stitch in Time

by Evan Pattak

Through the long, painful decline of Big Steel and the subsequent efforts of Pittsburgh to remake itself and regain economic viability, observers echoed a consistent theme: Pittsburgh will rise again because of the industriousness and talent of its workforce. Indeed, that committed workforce helped the region shape a multifaceted economy that grew supple and strong. …

A Stitch in Time Read More »

Opinion

The Two Sides of a Sale

by Lara Bruhn

I can’t decide which is more awkward, selling to someone or being sold to. I’ve been on both sides, and when the sale is right, there’s nothing better. An opportunity is identified, a plan is hatched, and both parties benefit. But as a small business owner, I spend a lot of time trying to extricate …

The Two Sides of a Sale Read More »

Business

Marcellus Shale: A Tricky Situation

by Seamus McGraw

For years, it’s been a common rallying cry among activists that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has coddled its burgeoning natural gas industry at the expense of other state priorities. Perhaps nothing, they contend, has been more emblematic of that cozy relationship than the fact that Pennsylvania is the only active drilling state in the union …

Marcellus Shale: A Tricky Situation Read More »

Business

AC / DC

by Ben Schmitt

Three University of Pittsburgh professors have seen the future in electrical innovation, and it begins in Homewood. They’re talking about an electrical revolution, and it’s fitting that Pittsburgh and one of its poorest neighborhoods could play a large role. In the late 1880s, Pittsburgh’s most famous Homewood resident, George Westinghouse, prevailed in what has since …

AC / DC Read More »

Obituaries

Aldisert, Van Dusen, Standish, Budway, Geibel, Hilliard, Stewart

by PQ Staff

Ruggero J. Aldisert, 95 Aldisert was a distinguished jurist who served on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The son of an Italian immigrant, he volunteered for service with the U.S. Marines during World War II, seeing action in the Pacific theater as a battery commander on Johnston Island and the Marshall Islands and …

Aldisert, Van Dusen, Standish, Budway, Geibel, Hilliard, Stewart Read More »