Still Working

Artist and teacher Jennie K. Snyder started refurbishing and staining old chandeliers after she bought a home in Carrick. “I always had this dream of having a chandelier in every room,” she says. After making the light fixtures for herself she built an online store to sell them to other people interested in something a little different. “They're not your run-of-the-mill, Pottery Barn kind of piece.” Snyder’s chandelier business is one of her many side projects; she says she’d be bored doing just

Magician Al Hastings — who goes by the stage name Al Mazing — performs for kids and families some 250 times a year. He often asks for a volunteer from the audience, but he has learned to choose carefully. At schools, he said, “The kid you don’t pick is the one sitting beside the teacher, because they are sitting beside the teacher for a reason.”

Photographers know that good shots rarely happen by accident. It takes knowledge, planning, and creativity. Getting the perfect photo with Santa is no different.

Being human is difficult, but learning how to be human can be even more so. For the young students at Carnegie Mellon University’s Children’s School, teacher Jean Thompson Bird begins with making everyone feel included. “Everyone’s a friend and everyone can play,” she says. “That’s kind of our overarching rule.” Subscribe to Still Working on iTunes and download episodes here or listen below. Still Working is our podcast about how work shapes who we are and how we see the world. WESA receives

Note to readers: this story features an exotic dancer and details of Santa’s life when he’s off-the-clock. A lot of ink has been spilled describing the the “gig economy.” This sector – comprised of quasi-independent and sometimes short-term jobs – has been made famous by the rise of Uber and other tech-enabled businesses.

Life ends. It’s a fact, but not one that most of us encounter on a daily basis. Theresa Brown does; she’s a hospice nurse for Healthcare @ Home, part of the Allegheny Health Network. She says hospice is really about providing care for an entire family as they encounter the reality of death. “We are all going to die,” she says. “If we’re lucky we get to think about how we want to die.” Subscribe to Still Working on iTunes and download episodes here or listen below. Still Working is our podcast

Finding the right words can be tough. It’s something therapist Kim Hardin grapples with daily. She often works with patients who have experienced trauma, and wants to ensure they feel safe and supported as they confront their greatest challenges.

“The English word ‘rabbi’ is derived from the Hebrew word ‘rabi’ meaning, ‘my teacher,’” explains Rabbi Seth Adelson. On a recent afternoon, he gestured toward the bookshelves that line the back of his office and said Jews have traditionally been known as the people of the book. “We are committed to writing our tradition down. We're still arguing about our ancient books,” he said. “That is what has kept us alive.”

Keeping young children safe and curious, caring for aging parents or counseling a friend suffering from heartbreak are not easy tasks. Done off-the-clock, we don’t not always think of these things as work. In this episode of 90.5 WESA’s series, Still Working, we follow four people for whom caring is part of the job description.

A rainy day combined with a moss-covered tree, and Bryan McQuaid ended up with a broken bone in his shoulder. While trimming trees for an electric utility, the spikes on his shoes slipped. McQuaid’s safety harness caught him, but swung him hard into a tree.