Plucky Maidens Junk Fest (11-19-11)

I was a vendor at the Plucky Maidens Junk Fest at the McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove. During a lull in the afternoon, I did this sketch of the area near my booth.

Cool things to buy

Art Spark November Event (11-17-11)

The November Art Spark event was at Vie de Bohême, a wine bar in Southeast. I was a bit annoyed that they would charge $ 3 for a Coke with Grenadine, and their Happy Hour dishes were of the crusty piece of bread with puréed olive variety, but for 4 Bucks! 

Schmoozing for the Arts

So I hung out some and watched the crowds. It was as usual, more arts administrators than artists -everybody loves the Arts, everybody supports the Arts-. There was a tedious-looking recycling-themed Bingo game, undoubtedly to get people to talk with each other, that I didn't event want to bother with, since the room was totally dark and the cards were illegible. After a presentation by RACC staff ("I don't know what I'm doing, but I sure love it!"), some other organization with a purported recycling-cum-arts-focus called Create Plenty presented their program, with a very pregnant young woman gushing over and over about an ongoing fundraiser of some sort. Then, there was a drawing, and I won a weird bag made out of an old Joe Camel t-shirt turned inside out, with some homemade cleaning products in used glass jars (one of them with a Tostitos label still on).

Concert for Veterans (11-12-11)

A great concert by the Oregon Symphonic Band last night! As always, they were fantastic, and we are so glad our son Christopher found this excellent group to play with (he plays the contra-alto clarinet and the soprano clarinet).

Veterans' Day was just a couple of days ago, so there were a few older veterans in the audience at Milwaukie High School, who seemed to appreciate being asked to stand up at the end of the concert.

I am not necessarily into military-themed music, but I particularly enjoyed the Commando March by Samuel Barber, and the very engaging and danceable parts of the Medley from Miss Saigon by Claude-Michel Schoenberg (arr. Warren Barker).

From our standpoint, the most enjoyable moment was to see the high school band students sitting a couple of rows ahead of us, who, when the closing number (Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa) was announced, all became very attentive (clearly a piece they were familiar with); they clearly were very impressed by the piccolo part (brilliantly played by Jesus Cruz)!