This is going around the office ...

Okay, today marks the passage of the largest bill ever - $787 billion, but today I also met a charming lady, one Terry Griffith, who is the Union County Historian.  Today also happens to be the 150th anniversary of Oregon statehood.  At a celebration of this event at EOU this afternoon, Ms. Griffith enacted the moving and riveting story of an Indian woman -- Madame Marie Dorian -- who played a Sacawajea-like role in the early history of Union County and Grande Ronde Valley history.  Meet Madama Marie Dorian AKA Terry Griffith:



Find out more at http://oregon150.eoni.com.

Not every parent can be so lucky. This semester Ivi was accepted into her high school's Jazz Band and an ongoing assignment for the term is to listen to and write reviews or analyses of at least nine jazz recordings, preferably "older classics". When Ivi started with the Evil Saxophone two or three years ago, I immediately and enthusiastically introduced her to Charlie Parker, et. al. from my own collection. Although she seemed a bit nonplussed at the time, actually playing in a jazz band now has really turned her. "Jazz band: I love it, LOVE it, L-O-V-E it!", she recently waxed the other day. So when she told me of her ongoing assignment and asked me for my help in making selections, I jumped at the chance.

First up were four of my favorites (which Ivi had never heard):


Miles Davis: Sketches of Spain
John Coltrane: My Favorite Things
Herbie Mann: At The Village Gate
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue

We are having great fun, digging up old albums and talking jazz.  More detail at eye avenue.

Now if we could just manage a trip to the Portland Jazz Festival, from Feb 13 - 22.  But, hey, we will be headed out to the Idaho Jazz Festival at the end of this month!

Squid-Art, from Chika and Jared!

A visit to a local bank was part of the auspicious occasion of Nik's eighteenth.  While there a bank representative admitted to being a TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program, as you probably well know) beneficiary, but would not cop to having "toxic assets".