We'd like to thank everybody who gave so generously in the last 24 hours to put us over the top with our fundraiser. We are still raising funds...our original goal was $8500, but we wanted a realistic goal that we could achieve. Please continue to tell your friends about our project. Every penny is going to get us a better set of wings, a more amazing pipe organ and so on!!

One update that I'm also going to be adding to our front page, is that we have decided to dedicate the Portal to the memory of long-time burner, Tom Kennedy, whose brother is on our team. Tom Kennedy apparently is the guy who brought the first art car to the playa, and his brother is a long-time friend and collaborator of mine. He will be attending the burn for the first time this year, with his 16 year-old son, who is also helping us build the Portal. Obviously, dedicating the Portal to Tom is very meaningful to them, and we hope it will be to lots of other burners who knew Tom as well.

Thank you!! The whole Portal Crew.

We cut & sanded the final piece of lattice today, with a heroic work party and a new raft of volunteers who cropped up and are full of energy. We've begun painting, and we're making the laminations for the arches. It is looking incredible! Next weekend we should be setting up the rest of the structure, and putting together the bases for the fire organs.

Thanks to so many of you who have donated in the last couple days, we are getting really close to our goal!! Please encourage your friends to give as well. We have just over $1500 to raise!

We had a great, full weekend of work parties, including 4th of July & Monday, up in the gorge.

The really exciting thing was tilting up the 3 interior arches. The structure is large and impressive. It looks so much bigger standing up! We have eleven lattices cut, and ten more to go. All the pipes for the organ are at the space, where we'll start tuning them today. The metal for the organ structure is nearly all welded and ready to take out to Gales Creek to be rolled into curves. Carlos also brought out FOUR spools of EL wire donated to help make the lighting more spectacular. (See Photo)

In the gorge we built the bodies for the final four harps, attached all the baffles, and got some of the bridges and sound boards supported. We also started giving the harps beautiful names, like Zevala, and we took one out in the truck. Sara drove, Theodore and I held the harp aloft, and Christopher video taped the harp making eerie sounds in the wind. It sounds great and the baffles act like speakers. We'll still need piezo mics to make it really sing (loud enough to drown out the perpetual disco at 2:00), but it sounds amazing, and they look absolutely like something from another planet. The harps are going to get a clear coat mixed with some bone-white, dark purplish blue to their underbellies, with sparkly gold accents. We still need to drill for the tuning pegs and string them up, but we're almost done with this part of the Portal.

We are pleased to be nearly halfway to our goal with the fundraiser, and hope all our funders will encourage their friends to join in the final 13 days to make our project a success!

Here's the image that will be on our t-shirts, stickers, mugs and so on! It's also what the harp arch of the Portal looks like!! We have cut the lattice for these arches and they are beautiful.

To celebrate being nearly 10% funded in only 2 1/2 days, and because we just completed the first of our wind harps that will be part of the Portal, and they are *gorgeous* we have added a new reward level, in which high-dollar donors get a wind harp (while supplies last). Anyone donating $750 or above will get a beautiful harp--this includes the higher levels of donation. We only have 5 to give away, so be the first to act! The harps are all different sizes from 12' tall down to 4', so please be aware that there will be some variation in this reward. They will come wired to a piezo microphone. The harps will resemble the one in the photo, and will be finished with a bone-white clear coat and with contrasting colors behind the sound boards.