Chris Bartlett sits down with his egg roll, just as the weekday lunch rush pours into Reading Terminal Market. At 43, this short, fiery gay man with tightly cropped, graying hair and thin, pursed lips, is already something of an elder statesman in Philadelphia’s LGBTQ community. For nearly two decades, he’s been at the center of just about every gay- and AIDS-related movement to hit this city’s streets. [More]

I previously wrote a shorter feature on Bartlett and his Gay History Wiki for Technically Philly, and he was recently interviewed by the Philadelphia Gay News.

Below, as always, check the extras from a half dozen interviews I did and other goodies from the research of this piece.

I chose to lede the story with something mundane — eating an egg roll for lunch as we started our longest of four interviews. I felt it was a strong contrast to the seriousness of the subject we discussed. I kep being taken by the triviality of conversation around us. I think it speaks well to Bartlett, but it was hardly the first lede I wrote.

Other ledes I tried:

• It was more than 28 years ago that the AIDS epidemic went national, 15 years since a new cachet of drugs made the virus more manageable and Chris Bartlett is looking a little grayer for the road.
• There was a lot of concern that this story wouldn’t make clear how much laughing and living was a part of the roughly 15 years that HIV-AIDS ravaged Philadelphia’s gay community.
• Holocaust survivors have this inter generational conflict with their children.
• And that’s when he started singing Ethel Merman.
• It’s meant to be the first step toward building a social network for dead people.

I’m very pleased with what I chose.

I had lots of lengthy interviews, most of which went to informing the voice and background of the piece. Below, I share some of the highlights.

Bartlett spoke often of those he knew best who are now on the wiki. Here are links to some of those mentioned in the story:

Kiyoshi, Dominic, Jon Lox, Jon Kelly.

CHRIS BARTLETT

• At some point after graduating from Cheltenham High School and before shipping out to Providence to attend Brown University in 1984, Bartlett was taken aside by his father.
  “Do you know about this thing called AIDS that’s out there right now?” Bartlett remembers being asked by his father, who was also gay. “You better protect yourself.”
• On the Kensington woman he was partnered with: “I don’t remember now. I imagine I must have said goodbye, but i don’t remember… I never found out what happened to her.”
• While at Brown, Bartlett answered hot line calls at Rhode Island Project AIDS. He was confronted with the ignorance and fear that had taken the country over. He was a gay youth at a time when a gay plague was said to be exterminating gay men for the sins of their move for equality that started in the 1970s.
  “But I don’t think I was ever fearful,” Bartlett says unflinching, leaning in, keeping his wild eyes steady. He had other lessons to learn.
• Friends pick on him for his fashion sense.
• “At Dominic [Bash]‘s funeral, I said Dominic brought Dignity (the name of a Catholic gay group) and Integrity (the name of a gay Episcopalian group) to ActUp. I didn’t mean it as a pun, but it worked.”
• There outside the Bellevue Stratford protesting an appearance by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, when Bartlett says a dozen protesters got their asses kicked by cops after a coffin that was being used as a prop fell, ash flew into the air and a scuffle followed.
• “I learned something from them all. Dominic was harsh, smart and tough, Jon has this campy humor. Kiyoshi knew everyone and built coalitions.”
• In 1992, Bartlett launched the Safeguard Project, a LGBT health education organization, leaving in 2001
• “We learned this gay community is strong enough to endure,” he says.
• The Inquirer gave ActUp the Al Sharpton media manipulation award a couple years running back in the 1990s, Barlett says.
• “People forget how little people cared about gay communities prior to the Clinton years,” he says.
• We got something and then wanted the same for injection drug users, poor people and black people, he says. We fought.
• “Sometimes this older community, I think, is nostalgic for that, for when we were fighting and protesting.”
• “It’s like the early days of the AIDS quilt.”
• “That moment hasn’t passed I don’t think. There’s a lot more to do.”
• It’s a war, or something harsher still in the language of the Movement. Could I use the phrase “comprehensive list of deaths” instead of “comprehensive list of victims,” Bartlett asks me.
  “Victim is viewed as a dis-empowering and often inaccurate word,” he says.
• “Is it ethical to disclose the HIV status of someone after they die? Now, I’ve found out that it is legal, but I don’t know if it is ethical.”
• So we say on that site that you can’t draw any conclusions about the people listed, some are alive, not all are gay. I want to connect those lost and here in the community I live in

Below, watch Bartlett introduce his idea at Ignite Philly 4.

ROGER BROADLEY

Roger Broadley has been the pastor for more than 25 years of The Church of St. Luke and The Epiphany, which has been among the most welcoming to LGBTQ community members in all of Philadelphia. This is also the location where Bartlett was photographed for the story.

I spoke to Broadley, 58, twice including a 25-minute phone conversation. Broadley was born in Drexel Hill, grew up in Springfield, and aside from 10 years of college and seminary in New England, has remained in the region.

• “Facing what they face, gay men like other oppressed people, brings out a great sense of irony. The worst times are often the most memorable for laughing.”
• “We were here to help with anyone who needed help.”
• “There was a lot of energy, Action AIDS started in our basement.”
• We had 30-35 funerals of men affected by HIV/AIDs between 1988-1990, he says.
• I was energized a year ago when Bartlett said he wanted to create a way to build on the memories, creating the biographies
• We are going to move forward on having an event at the church, a dozen or more terminals set up, come and participate in celebrating the lives
• It’s been almost 15 years since medications completely changed the gay male experience
• If you’re under 30, you have no memory of the loss of a whole culture,” he says.
• An Episcopal priest really sees themselves as a part of the community, very civicly involved.
• “If a neighbor wants to have a funeral here, he can have one. thats how i was raised.
• “I didn’t look for anyone,they came here.
• People are happy here. There was laughter and a lot of energy.”
• On how accepting the church was of welcoming gay men in the 1980s: “The congregation was overwhelmingly middle aged women at the time, women who had jobs when at that time it was still suspiscious. Many never married and were completely open-armed and welcoming in these gay men. We’re practical place. We have this space and how can we help?
• He lives across the street and has for 25 years.
• “This was a whole new world that was opening up for us. There was this sense of incredible possibility, embracing everything. Some of it wasn’t great for us, but we were going for it.”
• Our energy had to get channeled for our brothers who were dying prematurely.
• How would you characterize Chris?: “He’s a systematic thinker, very smart and very thoughtful.
  Much more connected with the movement and has this inexhaustible amount of energy. He’s a truth-teller, a challenging prophet. He’s very respectful of people. He really knows or really cares, always says something encouraging when he sees me, and that’s very honest with him. He’s furious and playful. He’s a team player, really believes in community. he’s not a church person but he had a church period. I think that’s why he gets that. He believes in community and what a church can do for that… You see him in a room and he’s alive. It’s remarkable…

JOHN D’EMILIO

I spoke briefly to the noted gay history academic from the University of Illinois at Chicago. See his CV here.

• “I met and and had dinner with Chris after a conference some months ago, maybe last winter.”
• “There are a number of GLBT historical web sites. Washingtron D.C. has one called Rainbow History and the history project in the district that puts up historical information in the community. In New York, Sarah Schulman, who is involved in ActUP, did a massive oral history project and put it up on web. There’s Chicago Gay History that includes lots of interviews that a journalist and publisher put together. There are other projects like that.
  What seems unique here is the wiki, allowing widespread participation and involvement so it’s not just this tens of history nerds but it’s everybody who feels connected to the lives that have been lost and to the experience of AIDS and queerness in Philadelphia. Maybe there are others, but he’s probably trying a model that is something brand new. We will definitely see this in more places.
• Read a book on Philadelphia and gay and lesbian history from 1950s, 1960s and 1970s written by Mark Stein, he says.

MATTY HART

A project manager with a foundation and the founder of social action-themed Spiral Q Puppet Theater.

My extra notes with Hart haven’t yet been transcribed from a written account.

BILL HEINZEN

Bartlett writes in an e-mail: “Bill Heinzen is a very old friend who has helped me think through the experience of intense trauma in communities  (among WWI Survivors, for example).  He knows everything too ”

• Full disclosure: Heinzen says he freelanced for CityPaper during in the 1990s “Dave Warner-era”
• He’s 43, a resident of the Village in Manhattan and a lawyer with city government. “I’m a month younger than Chris, so be sure to hell him he’s one of the elders I look up to.”
• In 1994 or 1995 I first met Chris. I lived in Philly for four years, and he was very involved in gay men’shealth and very involved in creating peer networks among gay mens in their 20s and 30s. We became friends and shared group friends.
• Without being retraumatized by it, how do you keep up with the mass death of people without sugarcoating it?
• He had this unbelievable sense of history. He’d give a walking tour in Center City based on sites and areas and the links to people bars and — like Giovannis on this tiny Mole Street, west of city hall that I don’t think exists anymore — and be able to point out things no one else could. Gionvannis was by where the Clothes pin is now, it had been a street of mostly black bars and gay black bars unofficailly in the mid 1940s and 1950s and Chris knew this through conversations with older parts of the gay community.
• Someone suffering or dying related to AIDS was often not spelled out in those obituaries about the guys in 1980s, the way with suicide now. It was a pretty sensitive issue and get a lot of people, well, it’s pretty tough information.
• There has this intellectually curious guy, traditionally among gay men there has always been a group of people who were very.. I think what he’s doing is bringing together different elements of what has been seen as part of the gay community, the activist side and also the kind of classics major at Brown, the guy who goes for oxford, the guy who studies latin and greek and drinks cherry. He’ll talk to someone, this 76-year-old who maybe has a crush him and will tell him about erotic relationships from the 1920s… He wants those stories to be respected, not bee relegated to enternal impressionists.
• This is another level of activism, a way of connecting people to the past and community building which is inevitably empowering.
• I’ve given him a book about World War I, when post traumatic stress disorder first taken serious, treat it a more humane way, like after HIV and AIDS
• There was so much of Philadelphia history that was gay history. If you look at the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s. Rizzo was such a dominant figure. There is this bizarre interpaly between Rizzo and the gay community. Rizzo made his name before being mayor, as police chief, he made his name craking down on bars and coffee houses that used to be on Sansom west of Rittenhouse. It was where couples, the outcasts came together. Interacial couples, gay and lesbians, and the cops cracked down on that, particularly homophobic? I don’t know. But, to understand the history of Philadelphia and this lost bohemian past, you have to understand the gay history.
• What is your favorite Chris story?:  It’d be about his occasional spacy-ness. Around the time Viagra came out, he had been in a meeting with someone who was taking alegra, the allergy medicine. Well, the person is this old man, and Chris says to me, ‘I cant believe he just took out his alegra. I guess I really admire that,’ he says, doing this whole Chris rationalization bit. He’s saying ‘I’m going to respect this guy for being empowered by his sexuality.’ And I have to say, ‘Chris, it’s Alegra, you’re talking about vigara. He has hayfeaver.

MARK SEGAL

I also interviewed via e-mail Mark Segal, the publisher of celebrated Philadelphia Gay News, which he founded in 1975. Below watch a quick video of Segal by GPTMC.

While reading up about Segal, who is very much a known name in Philly media circles, I came across a Philly Weekly story about a rift I once heard of, one between Segal and another noted gay activist in the city.

PHILADELPHIA GAY HISTORY

My original draft had a section devoted to Philadelphia’s role in the AIDS epidemic. I dropped it pretty quickly because it wasn’t part of the core story.

Some items I had:

• Whether it wants it or not, doesn’t much matter. Philadelphia has a place in the war against HIV/AIDS.
• We speak often that the first modern gay rights rallies were held in the 1960s outside Independence Hall, where discussions of every man being equal were first normalized.
• Philadelphia was home to AIDS Vaccine 2001, held that September, the first full-fledged scientific conference devoted to vaccines for the virus. By then, monkeys had survived nearly two years after being injected with lethal doses of the virus and then given an experimental AIDS vaccine.
• University City’s Wistar Institute loomed large in the discussion.

Other sections I dropped

• Bartlett is presenting at the Dec. 7 meeting of Refresh Philly, an organization of designers and developers, trying to coax some advice and help to build out the site’s design and functionality. This wiki could be something of a 21st-century AIDS quilt, collecting the lives lost to AIDS in a new wiki style and perhaps even being a signal for a future in which the dead are as much a part of social networks as those are alive. “What about a dead people you might know feature?” he asks.

EXTRA READING

I had my buddy Brian James Kirk give a look over the piece before I submitted it because, well, he had his own AIDS-related alt-weekly cover story this summer.

See a timeline of AIDS events in Philadelphia.

Read my featured clips here, and all of my freelancing work here. I also have some other cover stories here.

Photos by Dan Glider

Front-page story for the Patriot-News:

This isn’t about lowering the drinking age. That’s what Dickinson College President William Durden will tell you.

This is about watching parents follow their freshman sons and daughters into dormitories with beer in tow.

“We have a societal problem towards the attitude of alcohol that we have to fix,” Durden said. “It’s not just have a drink. It’s drink until you’re unconscious.”

More than 100 other college presidents agree. They’ve formed a group, numbering 123 at last count and growing, that has come together to encourage a public dialogue about altering the country’s drinking laws.

The Amethyst Initiative is a petition of sorts. These college chief executives say the current drinking age isn’t working and is creating a dangerous culture of intoxication on college campuses… More.

See the rest on PennLive.com. See the front-page placement at Newseum.

Erich Scherfen, right, and his wife, Rabina Tareen, listen as Witold Walczak of the ACLU of Pennsylvania describes the effect of a federal flight restriction on his career as a pilot. (Photo by Chris Knight of the Patriot-News)

This on Page One of today’s Patriot-News:

Erich Scherfen developed a love for flying early. Growing up in New Jersey, he would play outside and watch airplanes fly toward John F. Kennedy Airport.

After military service, he became a commercial airline pilot. Today, the Gulf War veteran is fighting to keep his professional life in the clouds.

He was suspended without pay in April after being placed on a federal watch list.

“My livelihood depends on getting off this list,” Sherfen said.

On behalf of Scherfen and his wife, Rubina Tareen, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and attorney Saul Ewing filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Tuesday claiming the federal government unfairly placed the Schuylkill County couple on a government list that limits their commercial flight access.

The suit hopes to answer two questions, lawyers said: Why would a couple with no criminal background or ties to terrorism be put on such a list, and how do they get removed? More…

See the rest on PennLive.com. See today’s front page on Newseum.com. See the breaking Web brief I wrote right after a press conference yesterday.

BY John L. Micek and Christopher Wink | A1 story, below the fold

HARRISBURG – Carbon and Monroe counties would each be in line for one of the nine cashless toll sites on Interstate 80 under a plan announced Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.

The sites proposed for Monroe would sit somewhere between Exit 293 for Scranton and Exit 298 for Scotrun and between Delaware Water Gap Exit 310 and the New Jersey state line, according to a map the commission released.

In Carbon County, the Turnpike Commission is mulling a site between Hickory Run State Park Exit 274 and Exit 277 for the Northeast Extension. There’s an alternate site between Mountaintop Exit 262 and White Haven/Freeland Exit 273.

Turnpike Commission officials said they’re gathering public comment and will decide by this fall the locations of all nine of the proposed toll gantries they want to build along the 311-mile highway.

…

Read the rest on MCall.com.

This ran today for the Allentown Morning Call. The coverage is part of a post-graduate internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association (PLCA).

By Christopher Wink | July 29, 2008 | Philadelphia Inquirer

HARRISBURG – They call themselves, simply, “the Coalition.”

They are an informal group of about a half-dozen citizen activists – most of them middle-aged men from Central Pennsylvania – who spend their time waging a grassroots war for governmental change in the Capitol.

Each member of the group’s cast of characters has his own political persuasion and priorities – not to mention colorful turns of phrase and memorable props to enliven the good-government message. But all are motivated by the same philosophy: State government needs fixing and elected officials aren’t doing the job.

“There is a cancer on the Capitol,” said Gene Stilp, founder of Taxpayers and Ratepayers United and one of the more visible Coalition members. “The question is if it’s incurable.”

Love them or hate them – and many hate them – this small group of activists has had a big impact on Harrisburg’s political landscape. Since 2005, their work has helped push out a Supreme Court justice and almost a quarter of the legislature.

Stilp is credited with prompting the 17-month probe into legislative bonuses that just this month led to a raft of political corruption charges against a dozen Harrisburg insiders.

But who are these activists? And why do they spend so much of their time – usually without pay – to do what they do?

Stilp, 58, is one of the higher-profile members of the Coalition, having run for lieutenant governor in 2005 promising to eradicate the position if elected. The former legislative aide is known for constructing oversize symbols that dramatize his causes. Memorably, there was the 25-foot pink pig he designed to illustrate what he considered the legislature’s greediness for voting itself generous pay raises in 2005 without public debate.

A low-key approach

Where Stilp is about grand gestures, Tim Potts is more reserved. He says he’s the only one with “experience in the belly of the beast,” having served stints in the executive branch and as a press secretary to the House’s top Democrat.

Potts, 59, helped launch a public-interest group called Democracy Rising PA in 2004, a response to the late-night vote to approve slots gambling. On his right ring finger is a reminder of why he does what he does – the Army Air Force ring of an uncle, a pilot killed in World War II.

“My mother once told me, ‘You’re doing what he died for,’ ” Potts said.

Eric Epstein, another Coalition member, put it this way: “We want people to be disturbed. . . . But we want them to know democracy is resilient.”

Epstein is perhaps the most irreverent of the group. He might hug you. Or give you a fist pound. Or tell an off-color joke. That facade in many ways belies his involvement as a safe-energy advocate and coauthor of the 1997 Dictionary of the Holocaust.

Still, Epstein takes pride in frustrating politicians.

Last July, after Epstein accused Rendell of acting as though he had “a mandate to pillage,” Rendell told The Inquirer that Epstein “is about as mentally stable as that guy who ate all those people.”

‘Ideology aside’

Chris Lilik is the Coalition’s political balance.

At 28, the baby-faced law school graduate is the youngest of the group and the president of Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania.

Unlike the others, he is open about his political affiliation, although that hasn’t stopped him from taking aim at his own.

“We set our everyday ideology aside and find commonsense solutions that we agree on,” said Russ Diamond, another member, former independent gubernatorial candidate, and founder of PA CleanSweep, which fielded more than 100 legislative candidates in 2006.

The Coalition holds joint news conferences lambasting legislators its members consider enemies of their movement. They agree on some issues, like fielding a state constitutional convention, changing the way legislative districts are mapped, and eliminating all government bonuses.

The legislature has taken notice because of the Coalition’s creativity in attracting media attention and its ability to recruit and fund potential challengers.

Its members make themselves available to reporters and are well-known for their quotability, amplifying the influence of their relatively small organizations.

Still, Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, said critics could take issue with whether the activists truly spoke for the public.

“Government officials have formal power, so technically they are accountable to us, the people,” he said. “So who are the reformers accountable to?”

Added Rendell’s spokesman, Chuck Ardo: “They often allow their stunts to overshadow the substance.”

Big goals, small scale

All their operations are small-time. Stilp and Epstein are one-man shows. Lilik lays claim to more than 1,000 household donors but is the only full-time staff member. Democracy Rising PA has a board of directors, but Potts runs the group from his basement and has no other staff beyond occasional part-time administrative assistance. PA CleanSweep boasts 5,000 subscribers to its e-mail newsletter, but Diamond said he fronts the movement.

“You have to accept the fact that your life is going to be disrupted,” said Epstein. “Some people play golf, they crochet, they make scrapbooks. We try to restore the credibility of government.”

Epstein doesn’t support himself with activism, but through investments, writing, lecturing and consulting.

“I do three things,” Epstein said. “Work, sleep and ferment revolution.”

Likewise, Stilp, who does consulting, says he keeps his professional work separate from his advocacy work.

Lilik is a paid staffer of Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania. Potts receives varying monthly stipends from Democracy Rising, but mostly depends on his wife.

Diamond owns a CD- and DVD-duplication business that provides income – and free time.

“I just see myself as a kind of a regular guy who wants a better Pennsylvania,” Diamond said. “No kids, no wife, no mortgage. That frees me up to do a lot of things.”

And the activists have been busy since the bonus scandal broke.

Yesterday, about a dozen women in evening gowns, tiaras and sashes emblazoned with messages urging change walked the tiled floor of the Capitol rotunda. They were part of a mock beauty pageant called Miss Legislative Reform 2008, organized by Stilp.

The faux pageant was inspired by the bonus investigation, which alleged that a top aide gave a largely no-work job to a local beauty queen with whom he had a sexual relationship.

“It’s gotten attention for its craziness, and that’s what I operate in. If it’s necessary to jump out of a plane in a parachute and land in the fountain out back, why not?” Stilp said. “You have to be multitalented. You have to be dedicated. You have to get angry . . . because you’re trying to change things for the better.”

See it here on Philly.com. The coverage was part of a post-graduate internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association (PLCA).

See it on the front page of the Inquirer at Newseum.com.

HARRISBURG – They call themselves, simply, “the Coalition.”

They are an informal group of about a half-dozen citizen activists – most of them middle-aged men from Central Pennsylvania – who spend their time waging a grassroots war for governmental change in the Capitol.

Each member of the group’s cast of characters has his own political persuasion and priorities – not to mention colorful turns of phrase and memorable props to enliven the good-government message. But all are motivated by the same philosophy: State government needs fixing and elected officials aren’t doing the job.

“There is a cancer on the Capitol,” said Gene Stilp, founder of Taxpayers and Ratepayers United and one of the more visible Coalition members. “The question is if it’s incurable.”

Love them or hate them – and many hate them – this small group of activists has had a big impact on Harrisburg’s political landscape. Since 2005, their work has helped push out a Supreme Court justice and almost a quarter of the legislature.

Stilp is credited with prompting the 17-month probe into legislative bonuses that just this month led to a raft of political corruption charges against a dozen Harrisburg insiders.

But who are these activists? And why do they spend so much of their time – usually without pay – to do what they do?

….

Read on at Philly.com.

This ran today for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The coverage is part of a post-graduate internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association (PLCA).

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell signs legislation on reforming state laws on lobbying and gaming, as Rep. Babette Josephs D-Philadelphia, looks on in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

This ran today for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The coverage is part of a post-graduate internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association (PLCA).

HARRISBURG – State Rep. Babette Josephs came to the Capitol in 1985 vowing to be a voice for “people who have no voice.” For years, the Center City liberal waged a lonely fight against the pervading conservatism in the General Assembly.

In 2007, after Democrats took control of the House, Josephs ascended to a powerful new role: chairwoman of the State Government Committee, the panel charged with considering legislation related to government operations.

But Josephs, 67, now finds herself the scourge of the newly energized reform movement.

…

Read the rest on Philly.com.

Photo from Daylife.

It what may be the most significant story of my young journalism career, here a double byline for a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. This breaking story appeared on the Web and an extensive follow up will appear in tomorrow’s edition.

HARRISBURG – Preliminary arraignments were held today for 11 people charged in the state bonus scandal, in which state Rep. Michael Veon, current Rep. Sean Ramaley and 10 current and former Democratic staffers allegedly conspired to divert millions of dollars in state resources, including more than $1 million in illegal pay bonuses.

The charges stem from two grand jury presentments unveiled yesterday in which jurors said Mr. Veon and the staff members conspired to arrange hefty year-end bonuses to House employees who worked on political campaigns over a three-year period. Mr. Ramaley is accused of working full time on his 2004 House campaign in Beaver County while drawing a taxpayer salary as a member of Mr. Veon’s staff.

During the preliminary arraignments, the defendants hear, and are asked if they understand, the charges against them. They do not enter pleas.

The first preliminary arraignment took place yesterday for Jeff Foreman, an aide to House Majority Whip Keith McCall, D-Carbon. Mr. Foreman surrended to authorities even as Attorney General Tom Corbett held a press conference outlining the case. Mr. Foreman, who was charged with conspiracy, theft, and conflict of interest, was released on $50,000 unsecured bail.

…

Read the rest on Post-Gazette.com.

Image of former House Democratic Leader Mike Veon, D-Beaver Falls, by Bradley C. Bower via Post-Gazette.

I didn’t make it clear that this story is on the cover, which is exciting, though, again, like another clip, a double byline. See PDF of Today’s Post-Gazette here.

How about a front-page, double byline on the cover of today’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review? How about two?

Barden confident about deal for $780M… Read on Pittsburgh Live.

$120,000 send-off raises ire… Read on Pittsburgh Live.

And yes, Kenny Chesney was in the skybox, so Chesney and I were both on the front page of the Trib. Good for me.