Saturday morning's concert details - North Side - tune in or be there

Our friend, Mindy Simmons, performs two concerts this Saturday. Please turn out or tune in. The Saturday morning event is on the radio and open to all to come for free, at the North Side's Children's Museum.

I've been providing CDs of the song, One World, written and sung by Mindy, in our activities about town in the past weeks. She is very talented and has offered a lot to the campaign with her song.

The following comes from the radio host on Saturday. He plays another role too as he is also going to be at the concert Saturday night, 8 pm, First Unitarian Church, Shadyside, on Morewood Ave.

Other great things happened this week. SLB was featured in AIRSPACE, a national publication showcasing best practices in public radio (see http://www.slbradio.com). Also, thanks to flagship station WRCT (http://www.wrct.org) you can now listen to SLB live via streaming MP3 (as before) or Ogg Vorbis, a new technology said to offer higher quality at lower bandwidth.

On this week’s radio program, ... we’ll have special guests:

At 8:20, Jeffrey Dorsey previews Unblurred, the monthly arts event put on by the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative (PAAI) as part of its efforts to revitalize the Penn Avenue Corridor between Negley and Mathilda avenues through the arts.

At 11, we’ll feature live music with Mindy Simmons, a Sarasota-based musician whose performances have been described as Peggy Lee meets Carol Burnett! In addition to her joining us on air, we’ll join Mindy to emcee her 1/29/05 performance at 8 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church, Morewood and Ellsworth Avenues, Shadyside.

As always, we hope you'll tune in on the radio or be part of our studio audience. Doors open at 10. There is no admission fee, you can hear great live music, and watch how a radio program comes together as well as sample the Children's Museum's grand hall, museum store, and cafe. After our broadcast, stick around to learn more about our radio studio and visit behind the scenes or consider touring the rest of the museum with purchase of admission wristband at the front desk.

Thanks for being part of The Saturday Light Brigade, a public radio tradition from Pittsburgh, PA.

-- Larry Berger

Dan O wanted an opportunity to counter offer. Counter zero.

County Executive Dan Onorato wanted an opportunity to give a counter offer to US Airways before the news dropped as to the job losses. Dan is mad. Dan is bad that the past state, county and government money has evaporated (my word).

My approach is different.

You can't be mad at the market place. Life is too short to be mad at things like gravity. We have to deal with the facts. I do.

I would have given zero to US Airways. That's a counter offer that makes the most sense. We got burnt. Lots of money went away to them and the relationships for corporate welfare didn't have the weight to keep them here.

My plan for keeping US Airways in Pittsburgh is to rush and give away $0.

On other fronts, I'm all in favor of turning up the heat for CCAC and job training. That is an effort that gives to everyone, not to corporate welfare. I would strongly support CCAC efforts, technology efforts, lower tax efforts.

Allegheny County to US Airways: Take our spaces at $10 a square foot put on the table. Gov. Rendell offers $1.25 M for relocation and $1.2 M tech transfer. Ten day response in writting. Our offer appears to be much better. But, it needed to be ten times better. Dan thinks that the deal was a win-win for the taxpayers. Perhaps it will be a win-win that they didn't take it.

Odd way to interact: US Airways broke the leases at the airport. Didn't bargain in good faith with Jim Roddey. Don't deal in good faith with the unions.