While the campaign for America’s political future has been under way for months, its most interesting enunciation to date came last week, not from a presidential candidate or talk-jock, but from the nation’s pre-eminent political songwriter, Bruce Springsteen.
Just as Pittsburgh has reclaimed its waterfronts from a history of industrial expropriation, now we must embrace a post-industrial way of thinking that idealizes the life of the mind, urges R. TODD ERKEL RIVERS
Such was the case as I sat listening to President-elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech early Wednesday morning, There was the rush of euphoria and anticipation. And with it, memory.
Pittsburgh never felt more self-assured or certain about the future of its tourism economy than in the spring and summer of 1994.
As if returning to the Super Bowl for a ninth time hasn’t been challenging enough, the Pittsburgh Steelers recently announced that the team will spearhead an effort to host Super Bowl LVII at Heinz Field in 2023.
One fire burned routinely, day and night, up and down the banks of Pittsburgh’s three industrialized rivers. The flames spewed from towering blast furnaces and coke ovens that burned coal, gas and oil at temperatures hot enough to melt rock ore into steel.
ON A SATURDAY EVENING LATE ONE MAY A FEW YEARS AGO, I stood outside a recently opened restaurant and watched as cars, overflowing with hockey fans toasting Pittsburgh’s first Stanley Cup championship, lurched down the street.