Friday, December 9, 2011

check out these downtown Tacoma street banners

I had the privilege and pleasure of being part of a street banner project for downtown Tacoma. These were meant to be relevant from Thanksgiving to Chinese New Year, so had to be more about winter than Christmas. We came up with the idea of doing snippets of imagined, overheard conversations that might have occurred on a downtown street in the wintertime.

The words are from my friend Bill Kupinse and me. Bill is an associate professor of English Lit at University of Puget Sound, a really talented poet and a courageous promoter of other poets. The great design is by my dear friend Lance Kagey, who is just good at this stuff. And last and definitely least, the photography is from my much-despised Blackberry phone.





Friday, December 2, 2011

Bryan John Appleby is playing our Christmas Party - 12/10, King's Books 7 p.m.

My favorite event of the year is our annual Beautiful Angle Christmas Party and Poster Sale, held this year at King's Books in Tacoma at 7 p.m. I first saw BJA with his band at a Warehouse show in Tacoma with Cobirds Unite. We went to see Cobirds, who were great, but we had never seen BJA before. He pretty much blew us away. An amazing lyricist, a pure voice, and just the right touch on a guitar.



At our party, he'll be playing solo, but will be bringing a special guest, The Living, who will be playing a few songs as well.

The rest of the party will be great, too. We're buying the food, beer and wine. We're selling Beautiful Angle posters at fire sale prices. And all the proceeds of our poster sales go to l'Arche Tacoma, one of our favorite charities in the world. Why? Because they help developmentally disabled adults and they make handmade paper. The setting is one of our happy places--Kings Books, where sweet pea leads the Tacoma lit scene and sells books. If you come, please buy books and support this amazing store.

But the main reason we love this night is because you'll be there. We love hanging out with our favorite people. On December 10, a whole bunch of them will be in one room, eating, drinking, talking, and listening together. If you see one, give them a hug for us.

Here's a link to the evite: http://tinyurl.com/7vd564e