Last night I attended a G-20 TOWN HALL MEETING sponsored by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PNC Financial Services Group at the new August Wilson Center. Below you can see my sketch of three of the distinguished panelists who were on stage to discuss the agenda and the implications of the G-20 Summit. From left to right are: James Dobbins, director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center; Barbara McDougall, former Canadian foreign minister and chief finance minister; and Post-Gazette Associate Editor Dan Simpson, a former ambassador and diplomat in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

The fourth panelist, Susan Schwab, a former ambassador and U.S. trade representative, asked me about my unusually large reporter's notebook. I explained it was a sketchbook, she asked to see the sketches ... and then thanked me profusely for not drawing her.

There was a lot of good stuff talked about and you can read about that stuff in the story I linked to above. I was mainly there for the laughs. Moderator David Shribman, Executive Editor of the PG, got a good laugh when he mentioned that Minister McDougal had coughed and wondered whether we should adopt her Canadian health care plan. The audience also liked Dan Simpson's line about how all the tiny municipal governments we have here in Allegheney County reminded him of all the independent governments of Africa.