A birthday wish from little old (literally, ha!) me.

Dear Friends,

A week ago I celebrated a significant milestone - my 40th birthday. So far, it's been looking like an exciting year. As one of my wishes, I'd like enlist your help.

I am on the board of directors for a truly unique and inspiring theatre program for young actors in our region. Portland Theatre Brigade provides professional theatre training for young people ages 7-14. Theatre Brigade not only teaches amazing acting skills (using improvisation through Spolin work - most of you know how important improv is to me!) - but it also empowers these young people to know their own voice and to be leaders and team players no matter their age and talent. I've seen first hand how transformational this program can be to these kids!

One of the most unique offerings in the program is the Portland Theatre Brigade School Tour. Our young actors tour to schools throughout the Portland metro area providing FREE theatre performances for 3,000 students each year. Not only is this an invaluable experience for the young members of Theatre Brigade, it also serves as an inspiring and lively experience for the student audiences they reach. And with the dwindling arts education resources in our schools, Theatre Brigade performances may be one of the few live theatre performances these students get all year.

As Portland Theatre Brigade gets their spring School Tour underway, I humbly ask

PLEASE HELP US RAISE $10,000 BY APRIL 23!

Through a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, as well as pledges from other donors, we're already nearly halfway there.

Visit our website to donate online or send a check to Portland Theatre Brigade, PO Box 5823, Portland, OR 97228. Watch our thermometer fill up as donations come in!

As a special 40th birthday gift to me, I'm hoping that you'll consider a gift of $40 or more towards this campaign. If 100 of you wonderful people pitched in $40 we'd be so close to our goal!! (Of course, we'll be happy to accept donations of any size smaller or larger than $40.)

Anyone who donates to Theatre Brigade during this campaign will receive a link to a wonderful video about Portland Theatre Brigade created by one of the student alums.

Thanks for reading and thanks for all your support!!

Toni

PS - If you haven't liked our Facebook page, do it now! Click here.

thank you

xin cảm ơn
xièxie
thank you
spasibo
shukran
salamat
obrigado
ngiyabonga
merci
mauruuru
komapsumnida
kiitos
kia ora
khawp jai
grazie
gracias
diolch
dank je
danke
asante
arigato

hey baby, what's your favorite color?

My husband and I were joking recently about how well we knew each other and I said, yeah, like what would you say if someone asked you what's my favorite color. And he said, uh, what is your favorite color. And I said, actually, I don't really have one.

There's a really cool design article about color from Smashing Magazine, and online mag aimed at web designers.. It's actually a three part series called Color Theory for Designers.

Etsy has two pretty rad color tools to enhance your handmade shopping experience. Find them here and here.

Here's a few cool photos I found on flickr:

from gem66


from mag3737 through the squared circle group


from kholkute


from Auntie P


from woody1778a

Matt's new commercial

[I missed posting yesterday, so I'll be trying to do another make-up-cheat-double-posting-day for my NaBloPoMo effort this month.]

My hub Matt is in a new commercial for Napa Auto Part and their commemorative football for the "civil war" rivalry between OSU and U of O (Hate the civil war reference, but oh well, it's not my game).



Here's a link to last year's:

2009 Napa Commercial

The Market

This post is sort of a mini-ode to the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. The last day of the market for the season was this past rainy Saturday. It prompted my first poem in about 20 years and some images taken last week.

Kabocha, pear, bell pepper, onion, chard.
The market air filled thickly, hunting for
our meals. It's crisp now, autumn giving dare
to cold of winter. Where to go? Inside.

Friday's A to Z: the "Stinky" Edition

a - agism.
b - black friday.
c - comic sans.
d - "don't ask, don't tell." repeal this already!!!
e - education in this country.
f - feet. stinky feet, literally. blech.
g - glenn beck. there's even a comprehensive glenn-beck-sucks blog.
h - halitosis.
i - ice cream. actually, i love ice cream, but it stinks that i can't have it after every meal.
j - jealousy.
k - ken buck. he recently received the douchebag decree over at bitchmedia's blog.
l - legalese.
m - model minority myth.
n - neo-nazi's. my friends at circle a radio did a program about the rise of fascism in portland.
o - outsourced, the tv show. hear our commentary on the next apa compass fri dec 6th.
p - pickles. eew.
q - queer-bashing. aka homophobia.
r - racism.
s - sarah palin. here's a recent blog from huffington post with leaks from her forthcoming book.
t - trafficking, of humans.
u - unemployment.
v - vermin.
w - war.
x - xenophobia.
y - yanni.
z - zealots. of any kind.

eclosion

I finally had a chance to catch up reading my friend Sarah's blog avventure. She's a professional clown who is in Florence as a pedagogical knight (read more about that on her blog) for a brand new international clown school Helikos, founded by her mentor Giovanni Fusetti. Not only is she blogging wonderfully about her own process as a teacher in training and a witness to the "emergence" of a new school, she's sharing a lovely portrait Florence.

In one of her posts - giocavamo [we have been playing (imperfect)] - she shares one of the teacher's lessons on LeCoq's Twenty Movements. The one that resonated with me was "eclosion" or the verb "eclose"

Definition: "Emerge as an insect from the pupa case, or of a larva from the egg."

I love that essence of emergence. And as a concept for movement... very interesting. I'll be checking out more LeCoq.