2024 Spring Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

When John James Audubon went about portraying the biggest American birds, he took advantage of the double elephant paper that made his enterprise unique. At 26 by 39 inches, the huge sheets lent themselves to nearly full-scale images of our largest avifauna. Take his “Turkey Buzzard,” for example, an old name for the turkey vulture. …

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Home & Lifestyle Homes

Livable Luxury

by Marylynn Uricchio

Interior designers Lindsey Longacre and Kate Tomalis became close friends while working at Restoration Hardware. They discovered they shared a similar aesthetic, and as their friendship grew, so did the requests for help from customers that went beyond the scope of the store. “Clients continued to ask us to work on projects beyond picking furniture,” …

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People Profiles

“Go to the People”

by Jeff Sewald

Inspired by childhood memories of accompanying his physician father and nurse mother on medical calls, Dr. Jim Withers began providing medical care to Pittsburgh’s homeless in 1992. Initially dressing as a homeless person and accompanied by a savvy formerly homeless man, “Dr. Jim” started making regular nightly rounds in alleys and under the city’s bridges. …

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Books

Lockett’s Short Stories Provide Authentic View of Appalachian Life

by Fred Shaw

Learning an obscure Mauritanian language may not mean much around his central Pennsylvania hometown of Phillipsburg, but for Michael Lockett, now a transplanted North Sider, his time in the Peace Corps led to humility, empathy, and understanding different perspectives. Those three qualities color his narrative approach throughout a standout debut collection of short stories, In …

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Sports

Pittsburgh Hopes to Finally Get a Team Worthy of its Ballpark

by Brian O'Neill

Editor’s note: This piece was written and originally published prior to the Pirates getting off to the second-best start of the 30 Major League Baseball teams. Sixteen. That’s how many teams have won the World Series since PNC Park opened in 2001. Another five have gotten to the big autumn show and lost. That’s 21 …

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Arts

The Fine Collection Follows and Augments a Long Line of Pittsburgh Benefactors

by Vicky A Clark

Andrew Carnegie provided the means to establish the Carnegie Institute, but he believed that it should be supported by those who use it. He wasn’t much of an art collector, so he left it to others to buy or give the grand building’s objects. The art museum’s collection grew very slowly at first, with purchases …

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People Pittsburgh Immigration Pittsburgh Tomorrow Profiles

What Do I Know? Guillermo Velazquez

by Jeff Sewald

My story begins in Mexico City. I am the youngest of eight children, and my father passed away from liver disease when I was 11. When someone in your life dies while you are still young, you don’t really understand what’s happening. All I knew was that I saw my father working, and then he …

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Nature

Created by the Glaciers

by Thomas Saunders

There are only eight natural lakes in western Pennsylvania. Among the most beautiful is Lake Pleasant, in central Erie County between the towns of Waterford and Wattsburg. It’s wonderful for exploring, particularly for canoeing and kayaking. These lakes were formed by retreating continental glaciers, about 20,000 years ago. Tremendous blocks of ice were left behind …

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Noteworthy Spring 2024

by PQ Staff

Welcome Nippon SteelLourenco Goncalves, the CEO of Cleveland Cliffs, was interviewed recently on CNBC about Nippon Steel’s deal to purchase U.S. Steel. Talk about protesting too much — he trotted out reason after reason why the deal is terrible. You’ll seldom see a CEO angrier about not being the winning bidder. And if he’d won, …

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Food & Wine

Cliff Forrest’s New Pittsburgh Brewing

by Evan Pattak

Glory Daze, the region’s annual extravaganza of vintage and custom motorcycles, is moving. This year’s show will take place Sept. 21, and it will be hosted by Pittsburgh Brewing Company. Wait, what? An event that draws up to 10,000 people is occurring at a brewery? Where they make Iron City and I.C. Light? Strange as …

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People

My Oldest Brother

by Douglas Heuck

Just before 6 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, I got in the car to drive down to Cincinnati, my hometown. I’ve done it 100 times at least since I moved to Pittsburgh 39 years ago. And I’ve done it for all manner of occasions. This time, it was to see my oldest brother. His heart …

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Books

Buying Fragments of God: The Crazy Art World of the 1980s

by Stuart Sheppard

If the 1960s changed America’s consciousness for the better, the 1980s certainly changed American commercialism for the worse. And to have lived during this latter period in New York City was to have felt the first tremors of this change, much like living near the epicenter of an earthquake and experiencing its initial shockwaves before …

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