In The News

Author Matthew Desmond is giving a lecture today on the effects of eviction on both tenants and landlords. Though his book Eviction is set in Milwaukee, Desmond thinks that the stories he tells are applicable to any Rust Belt city, including Pittsburgh. Note: This article includes a quote from Max King, and Mr. Desmond’s lecture is sponsored by the Pittsburgh Foundation.  

The event was the first of Ligonier Valley Historical Society's History With a Purpose events, which recently received a $3,000 grant from a group of young philanthropists, the Visionaries of the Community Foundation of Westmoreland County.  

Olga M. Welch has been dean and professor at the Duquesne University School of Education since 2005 and has served on many community boards in Pittsburgh, including The Pittsburgh Promise, The Hill House Association and Communities in Schools. She is working on a book about African-American women leaders in education.

Researchers led by University of Pittsburgh Chemistry Professor Alexander Deiters have developed a technology that allows a small-molecule phosphine to act as an “off-to-on switch” to control protein activity, giving scientists more control over studies involving the molecular details of biological processes. The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation of The Pittsburgh Foundation.

 “I think the huge challenge, at least for me, when trying to write about the texture of poverty in America is the temptation to reduce people to the problem,” says Desmond, who appears Aug. 4 at Carnegie Library Lecture Hall in Oakland as a guest of Pittsburgh Arts& Lectures New & Noted series. The Pittsburgh Foundation sponsored this talk.

The goal is to generate long-lasting resources that will benefit students, improve the overall quality of education and enhance the school and community in general as attractive places to learn and live,” Grata said. This committee will serve as a fundraising entity under the Community Foundation of Westmoreland County, which has accumulated over 200 individual funds and assets in excess of $22 million since its establishment in 1995.

At the “Poetry and Race in America,” three generations of African-American poets gathered to discuss the relationship between race and poetry in America. Pittsburgh Foundation President and CEO Maxwell King announced the inauguration of The Ed Ochester Lectureship on African American Poetry and Poetics.

Bern Werner and Rebecca Whitlinger stop by to talk about the upcoming Light The Way 5K.

Artist John Kane, who died at 74 in 1934, has a champion in former music impresario Pat McArdle, himself an art lover and a one-time ironworker, who is campaigning to have the new Greenfield Bridge named the John Kane Bridge. “It behooves the city to raise up a hero like him,” he said. “Everyone should know about him.” “A brilliant idea,” said Maxwell King, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Foundation. 

Larry’s Legacy Fund [of The Pittsburgh Foundation] for needy chemotherapy patients came out of that meeting. It works through the Cancer Caring Center in Bloomfield, a quiet little charity that’s been around 28 years and is chronically underfunded. Its provision of even a supermarket gift card can bring a client to tears.