Hey all -

Today is voting day in PDX, and there’s a measure on the ballot that affects us quite a lot. The sum is huge to support the school bond ($548 million), but Portland Schools, as per the Mercury, are an embarassment.

PORTLAND’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS are an embarrassment: Only 53 percent of students graduate on time, and the average age of our buildings is 65 years. We’re outpaced by suburbs like Lake Oswego and Beaverton, which have lower dropout rates and better facilities.

…Our schools are falling apart. (We’re talking asbestos-coated pipes, oil furnaces that are time bombs for fire, and kids taking turns plugging in computers because of shoddy wiring.) They’ll be even worse in two years. And with the state mired in a budget apocalypse, it’s our responsibility to fix them. Now. Before a major disaster or tragedy makes us wish we’d voted yes.

Portland Mercury Endorses School Bond

We live across the street from an elementary school that both of my kids will go through. It’s old and extremely crowded — sometimes classes are conducted in the halls, but most often every year they get a new double-wide trailer that sits on the land where they conduct classes (without running water, etc)

It feels like hard timing, with the recession still upon us, but I believe this is an excellent investment in the future, will bring new life to PDX schools and new businesses to the city, and I will be voting yes.

My friend from wayyy back (we were Congressional Pages together in D.C. in 1987…) Allison Orr is a dance choreographer in Austin, Texas. Not just any kind of dance:

“In 2009, I choreographed the biggest dance of my life—a trash truck ballet featuring 24 employees and 16 large sanitation vehicles from Austin’s Solid Waste Services Department.”

Hundreds of people were turned away. She’s started a Kickstarter project to run an encore performance.

Looks awesome, I’m in!

Looks like that probably won’t be the final title, as there are several books out there already called ‘The Enclave‘

All the same, I’m very happy to have it in a version I can pass off to a first round of readers. It’s been a couple of years of radio silence with it.  It came in at 121k words, though I suspect there’ll be some wrangling yet. Hope you’re having a swell Presidents day.

I’m going to try to do some housecleaning here before we get over to 2011. So effking futuristic are we, no? Except for flying cars.

OK:

- My short story Hamlet was picked up by Bellevue Literary Review and should be out this Spring (here’s BLR on Facebook).

- I believe the Turkish-language rights for Couch have been sold to Domingo Publishing. So if you speak Turkish, voila!

- David Naimon and I are now officially calling our co-written short story, entitled The Voyage, a book. So presumptuous! So exciting! We’re just under 20k words in.

- Laura Moulton’s website is way over-due for an overhaul, which is my spousal responsibility. So in the meantime I’ll mention a few of her goings-on here:

• She was awarded a Regional Arts & Culture Council grant for her project StreetBooks!
• She has a great piece coming out in Street Roots soon (< That link searches for ‘Laura Moulton’ on streetroots.org – right now it just comes up with her Brazil article & Project Hamad)
• Her book is coming along – (I’m currently reading the first 100 pages).

- Speaking of novels…mine is still in progress. Laura’s editing the first 75 pages which are considered to be semi-final. There are another 325 pages lying in wait of further edits.

- Taleoh.com is still being coded…

I think that’s it, or all that I can remember presently. Enjoy the last few days of 2010.