Category: default || By jt3y

Short entry for today; I was moving things and couldn't get to a computer.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend for Sunday newspapers in Pittsburgh. The Tribune-Review has had one of the lamest funnies pages in the market for a long time. So imagine my surprise on Sunday when the Trib added 13 --- count 'em --- 13 new comic strips, including two of my favorites, Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine.

Bill Loeffler's story also includes a great capsule history of American newspaper comic strips, and quotes from several cartoonists.

I'd call that a powerful shot across the bow of the guys on the Boulevard of the Allies, and the capture of funnies supremacy in Pittsburgh in one fell swoop (or is that one swell foop?) by the Trib.

(Well, at least I'd call it that, but I'm a dimwit.)

Combine that with Gerry DeFlitch's downright excellent article on local, small-town radio in Western Pennsylvania (it ran in the Greensburg edition of the Trib; I don't know if it made the Pittsburgh editions) and a big "huzzah" is in order for the Tribune-Review.

The Post-Gazette, meanwhile, had a good historical overview of why Allegheny County ended up with 130 municipalities, including capsule histories of the towns. Some highlights from the Mon-Yough area:

--- East McKeesport was originally known by the native American name "Scanderoon" when the first settlers purchased the property there in 1804.

--- To give you an idea of how big Allegheny County's original townships were, West Elizabeth was originally part of Mifflin Township (which became West Mifflin Borough). The town was first established in 1833.

--- The first post office in Western Pennsylvania was established in 1832 at Turtle Creek.

--- Munhall was named for early settler John Munhall, who owned a farm in the area; he came from Ireland, however, with the name Mulhall.

--- One of the plainest municipal names in the Mon-Yough area --- Forward Township --- also has one of the strangest backgrounds. The township was named for Walter Forward, a prominent Pittsburgh judge and politician. In 1869, the state General Assembly approved the sectioning of Elizabeth Township into four smaller townships, including what eventually became Forward. When residents couldn't agree on a name, the courts named the township for Forward --- who had no known connection to the municipality.