First, some history: This is the 3rd annual Sand in the City competition. This years event included the participation of 18 corporate teams. The main host was Yoshida's (Mr. Yoshida welcomed us to the event. I'm guessing he drinks way too much coffee). The participants were:

• Yoshida Group
• Meier and Franks Sponsors Bridge Builders
• Thurber Works
• Key Bank
• Northwest Natural Gas
• Synopsys, Inc
• Walsh Construction Co
• CFI ProServices, Inc
• OHSU-Doernbecher Children's Hospital
• Yorke and Curtis Construction
• Hanna Andersson
• Davis, Wright, Tremaine
• Standard Insurance Co
• US Bank
• Media Sculpture
• PacifiCorp
• Wells Fargo Bank
• Hoffman Construction Co

The event was to benefit "Kids on the Block" which, to all appearances, takes large, scary looking puppets run by adults that never learned the idea of not moving ones lips in to schools and terrifies children.

Now the official blurb will actually tell you the following (but believe who you will...):

"The Kids on the Block Awareness Program uses child-size puppets to help children accept and understand differences in one another and learn to protect themselves in difficult situations. Children are currently educated in the the areas of blindness, cerebral palsy, deafness, learning differences, mental retardation, ADHD, aging, cultural differences, divorce, feelings, gangs and violence, sexual abuse, and vandalism."

• Gordon Battaile
• Andrea Goss
• Helen Harro
• Tom Kiley
• Larry Moore
• Darrin Mossor
• Ed Prichard
• Mindy Richards
• Ann Saalfeld
• Vickie Olson
• Zhi Wang
• Leslie White
• Bill Wickart (Prune)
• Mike Robinson (Team Leader and Artistic Visionary)
• Cheryl Gates (Architect from BBL)

From there, we built forms from plywood and two-by-fours to hold our sand (note to self: Next year, use 3/4 inch plywood. Half-inch will bulge with several hundred pounds of sand in it).

We met downtown in Pioneer Courthouse Square around 9:30am on Friday, July 10th. We would have from 10:30 to 4:30. A horn would blow at the end and that would be it. I had to leave early for another activity I was double-booked for (SportsFest Golf! Oh, whatta day...) so I wasn't there for the last hour and a half, but it apparently went swimmingly. Kudos to the team. Well, enough gabbing, let's take a look at some pictures. I've broken them in to three areas to lessen the load of the graphics. Feel free to poke around and if you have any feedback, feel free to let me know.

Just a note about the pictures. They were taken from my video camera via "Snappy" into my PC. You'll note that in Rainer's pictures (taken with a real digital camera) the quality is much nicer and brighter and sharper. If you find the first three groups of pictures too dark, you may want to kick up the brightness when looking at the pictures. If you still have problems, please see the admissions representative for a full refund on your visit.

Pictures:

• Miscellaneous crowd shots
• Pictures of other sculptures (there were others?)
• Shots of our entry
• More shots from Rainer Wieland (Assumes you can access the Eagle Page).

-Darrin Mossor