Back in the mid-90s we got the idea that watching someone else work would be a great way to celebrate Thanksgiving.

1995…Dan: “Got any plans for the next ten Thanksgivings?”
Dante: “Hmmm. Where’s this going?”

The decade of the Dante Circles (1995-2004) is fast becoming history. But like lots of history, it only seems to get grander in its passing.

So it is that this weekend I am again fondly remembering all those years that Dante, Janusz and Paul came down to Portland for the three days following Thanksgiving to blow “cups” while we drank champagne and brunched on the bleachers. It was our celebration of glass. Humored by Dante & Friends we got to sit in front of the furnaces watching them work.

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Time is racing by. I can’t seem to get back to the factory tour I started weeks ago. Victim to some malfunctioning reverse gear on my internal time machine, this morning I found myself staring at this…

Rolling glass circa 1978. The height of fashion on the casting floor? Velvet bellbottoms?

Not today. But who notices apparel in 2008? You can’t see the pants for the tattoos.

Well, back to working out the timelines for the real tours that are coming through next week. If you want to know more about these and other activities that Bullseye has planned for the GAS conference, check out the SEE BE info that Mary Kay’s group put together.

Like everything else they do, it’s just brilliant.

As heady as it is to think that we could conserve 6 million gallons of water a year with Daren’s recycling system, Bullseye is still a factory that is defined more by daily individual effort than by the periodic super-projects.

The humble factory drinking fountain. One little revolutionary idea.

Which is how the filtered water fountains happened.

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Clearly tree-planting along SE 21st Avenue doesn’t begin to address the environmental impact of glass manufacturing today.

What’s water got to do with it?

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Once upon an Earth Day. (OK, Gary, you asked: that’s our sales manager Jim Jones – not long out of college – on the far left. On the far right is Mary Kay’s oldest, now long past college – and thumb-sucking)

When I arrived at Bullseye in 1983 Dan & Company had been struggling to make colored art glass from recycled bottles for almost a decade.

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