Good news

Congratulations to OBT, who today announced that their critical fundraising goal has not only been met, but significantly exceeded. Even though I'm in Seattle (I know, I keep saying that, I'm just trying to help our readers track who's where), it's been fun running into Portlanders and others in the know saying to each other all afternoon, "Did you hear? They did it!" I think it's going to resonate with a lot of folks from other parts of the country who are eager to hear about anything that's working in this impossible economy. As Barry Johnson points out in a subsequent post, there's still plenty of bad news to bring us down from the good news.

Speaking of Mr. Johnson, I'd like to acknowledge his extended coverage of this story, and applaud him for being both fair and supportive. This easily could have become a trial of the mistakes that OBT has made in the past, but it didn't and that wouldn't have been helpful.

Seattle had some arts news of its own today: Kate Whoriskey has been tapped to replace Bartlett Sher as the Executive Director of Intiman Theater. In his convention comments a few moments ago, former NEA Chair Bill Ivey noted how great it was that an arts story made front page of Seattle's newspapers -- that doesn't happen often. Here's hoping/wishing that the editors at The Oregonian would give the ballet's success prominent coverage in tomorrow's paper, as they did when the Ballet announced that they were in crisis.