Murmurs

Why? Because we can-can.

* Someone forgot to tell Roger and Laura Meier that we're supposed to belittle the French, not glorify them. Word's been whispered to the Murmurs desk that the well-to-do couple (yes, to be frank, he's from that Meier family) is behind the Portland Art Museum's anonymous donation of more than $1 million worth of prints by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The gift follows the couple's donation last summer of the French Impressionist painting Vallée de la Seine by Alfred Sisley. Ooh la la.

* Portland lawyer Marc Kramer isn't the only legal beagle who thinks the state isn't living up to its legal obligations when it comes to schools (see "Putting the Law Back into Lawmaking" page 9). On Feb. 26, ex-Supreme Court Justice Ed Fadeley filed a lawsuit directly with his former colleagues, claiming the state is shirking its constitutional requirement to adequately fund courts and schools.

* Oops! University of Oregon law students dropped a threatened boycott of the $195 tuition surcharge after learning the hike was in fact lawful, publicized, and approved in advance by students. Jason Guinasso, the third-year student spearheading the protest, complained that the surcharge, triggered by the failed tax hike in January, inconvenienced law students as it came midsemester. He dropped the boycott after Provost John Moseley explained students had recommended the timing of the surcharge--a fact that had been covered in the student newspaper. "In my view," Moseley told WW, "the law school students have the least to complain about."

* While City and Enron officials are still gagged by a confidentiality agreement, a late-January email from Enron CEO Stephen Cooper to employees could make a reader think that the Portland faces little if any competition in its lowball effort to acquire PGE. "We don't have, as yet, bids that from both a value and a commercially reasonable term perspective, at least in my view, are acceptable," Cooper wrote.

* Even Paul Allen is tightening his belt. His cable-television empire is collapsing, he laid off more than 40 people at the Experience Music Project, and now Murmurs hears that longtime Blazers CFO Jim Kotchik is no longer with the team. Now, Paul, what about that guy named Whitsitt?

* Last week's Rogue of the Week provoked a near-inferno as Jammin 95.5 personalities took issue with our criticism of Scooter, who made fun of a mentally retarded woman on the air. The Playhouse crew asked listeners to gather WWs across the city for a protest bonfire, but station manager Tim McNamara nixed the blaze. "What Scooter did was wrong," McNamara told WW. He also sent the woman a letter of apology and some "goodies." The crew, meanwhile, turned its attention to a listener who allowed a Jammin employee to defecate on his face in exchange for free tickets.

* What's Bev Stein has been doing since losing to Ted Kulongoski in last spring's Democratic gubernatorial primary? See for yourself later this month, when she directs Forty Years in the Desert: A Bar Mitzvah Tale, a one-man show about Rob Freedman's search for life's meaning, which takes the local writer/instructor back to his Judaic roots. The show will open March 29 at Dreams Well Studio in Southeast Portland.

WWeek 2015

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