After the long weekend I’m feeling very grateful, especially my family and friends.

I hope your holidays have started well and you have plans over the next several weeks that help you reflect, reconnect and feel restored.

In the meantime, a couple updates on the AC Dickson: Life Coach all things PICA and Portland storytelling front for those that partake.

AC Dickson: Life Coach

As regular readers of the newsletter know I’m gearing up to film 12 scripted episodes of the AC Dickson: Life Coach project in January.  

Last month I asked for help with hero locations ideas. Thank you to everyone who reached out. Good news, we found the perfect spot! So I’m feeling relieved. Can’t you tell from the picture?

I've also been posting video teasers from our summer promo shoot. I’d love it if you either subscribed to our YouTube channel, or followed along on Instagram. They’re fun and short and I made them for you!

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art

I’m a huge fan of PICA — the contemporary arts center here in Portland. It’s where Susan and I performed in the very first two TBA festivals together, where I’ve had my mind blown time and time again, and where I’ve been on the board the past 6 years. 

One of my favorite PICA events of the year is coming up - The Precipice Fund Party is tomorrow, Thursday December 4th.

Every year the Andy Warhol Foundation gives PICA a 60k grant to regift to regional artists and organization. It’s called the Precipice fund, and this party is where the grantees are honored and publicly share about their projects. And it also serves as PICA’s holiday party of sorts, and it’s open to all. 

This is also a great time to include PICA in your year end giving. For the next few weeks if you give a gift of $300 you’re entered to win a weekly prize.

Extra Special bonus - if you live here in Oregon you can give a matching gift to the Oregon Cultural Trust - and it’s a tax rebate. Not a deduction. 

Math alert!

If you were to give $300 to PICA and then a matching gift of $300 to the Cultural Trust, you would get the entire $300 back on your Oregon taxes for giving to the Cultural Trust. Plus a bit more off your state taxes for your PICA donation deduction, and then a $600 deduction on your federal taxes.

So you’d get like $500 of your $600 back in April, depending on your tax bracket (I’m calculating for 32%) ((It’d be more like $440 if you’re in the 22% bracket))

That’s insane, right!?!

The only trick with giving to the Cultural Trust is you have to give an equal amount to one of 400 or so cultural organization in Oregon. You can’t just give to them and get the tax rebate. But what’s extra cool is those 400 or so cultural organizations are exactly where the Cultural Trust distributes the money they raise to. And you can give up to $500 every year, $1000 if you file jointly or even more if you donate as a company.

It’s like a win, win, win, win, win. 

Storytelling + BACKFENCE Unhinged

If you can believe it, we’re already up to 15 episodes of our storytelling podcast and counting. 

BACKFENCE Unhinged is breezy a 29 minute listen. Frayn Masters and I invite a guest on, they tell an unhinged story, then we ask a few questions and each share a story of our own.

Oh, and there’s also Bry’s hot minute - where Powell’s Book store manager Bry Hoeg shares a few book recommendations based on our guest’s story. It’s available on the all the usual places as well as 7:15am PST Wednesday mornings on Xray.Fm 

Speaking of storytelling…

I hosted The Moth last night!  Sorry I didn’t get this out in time to be a reminder, but the once a year Moth MainStage show is a week from today and tickets are still available.

Also, the very first 7 Deadly Sins: Church show is happening Thursday December 11th at the Tomorrow Theater! 

This is a show I have helped brainstorm into existence, and it’s going to be a great mix of storytelling and performances. The theme for the inaugural show is wrath. It’s a great line up and I hope to see you there.

Okay, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading,

Andrew