The first time I visited Pittsburgh for more than a couple of days was Christmas week about 20 years ago. I stayed at the ...

My twin brother, Allan Block, and I are the third generation in a family business that’s more than 100 years old. My grandfather, Paul Block, was an immigrant from East Prussia, and grew up, through ...

Like it or not, the Carnegie International eclipses everything the Carnegie Museum of Art does. Every director has grumbled about how it commandeers all available resources. But it’s a time-honored ...

It’s a hell of a thing to know your birth coincides with a line of demarcation in your hometown. On one side is prosperity. On the other, ruin. I was born in Youngstown in 1977. At the time, it was an ...

The critic Susan Sontag explores this issue perceptively in her seminal 1966 book, Against Interpretation. She examines the problem of morality versus aesthetics through the opposite side of the ...

Everyone is born with a gift from God. Some people discover their gift, and use it to a positive end. Some discover their gift, but squander it. And others, for one reason or another, never discover ...

Allegheny county’s small population bump from 2010 to 2020 owes much to a spike in the number of immigrants who decided to make it their home. They accounted for more than 60 percent of the 27,000 ...

The last time Roberto Clemente stepped up to home plate was on a field on Puerto Rico’s west coast where he was teaching boys to play baseball. Locals had coaxed him into taking a swing, and he ...

In a review of a Shakespeare production several years ago I argued that, as a general rule, it has proven easier to do Shakespeare new rather than well, but with Quantum Theatre’s current production ...

Within days of Allegheny County’s first confirmed case of coronavirus in March, city and county officials moved to shutter nonessential businesses, with their efforts buttressed by stay at home orders ...

I was born in Tlemcen, Algeria, a small city on the border with Morocco. My family is Jewish, of Spanish ancestry, and had been in Algeria for centuries. Both sides of my family were poor and ...