Olywa Days of Change

Olympia Film Society – Origin Story – By Dennis Bloom

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To understand part of the history of why the OFS came about you’ll need a little background of what was going on in the late ’70s. Olympia (which had—and still has—the only “urban downtown core” in our tri-city area) had three movie theaters. There had also been a small movie theater called the Cinema, housed in a converted church out on 4th Ave, where Pacific Ave veers off toward Lacey. The Evergreen State College (TESC), too, had its own Friday night film series, held in the lecture hall in the center of campus. Around this same time the movie theater business was in transition. Some older and larger “movie palaces” that dated back to the 1920s, were getting renovated into “multiplex” theaters.

Northwest International Lesbian Gay Film Festival – 1988 – by Helen Thronton

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Marge Brown and I started brainstorming the first NW International Lesbian Gay Film Festival in 1985. Planning began in 1986, a year and a half before the first festival opening date of 1988 . . . I made one of the first calls to a Chicago film distributor to book a film for our festival. The guy on the phone said he had lived in Olympia some years before, as he had been a student at Evergreen. He laughed as he wondered if there were any gay people in Olympia.

Olympia Offers Sanctuary to a Salvadoran Family 1983-1986 – By Bob Zeigler

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In the early 1980s, Saint Michael Catholic Church joined the national public Sanctuary Movement for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees who fled the wars in their countries but were denied US asylum . . . the parish went through three months of discussions and discernment looking at needs, risks, and benefits of doing this, and in a parish vote, more than 70% of members voted to become a sanctuary church. Four hundred members signed up to help in some way and raise the funds to support a family.

Men in Black at the Food Stamp Office – By Joe Tougas

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Donna, Sally, and I were talking over dinner the other evening about the way that the level of friendliness toward strangers had changed over the years, especially the way that people had become a little more guarded in how they interacted with government officials.
Donna said, ”There was that time at the food stamp office, right? Did I ever tell you about that? Now that was a pretty flagrant example of hostility.”
“No,” said Sally. ”I don’t think I ever heard about that.”

A Fantasic Odyssey in Music – By Connie Bunyer

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I arrived in the spring [of 1981] and didn’t really have a plan, just hoped the universe would take care of me. I had my guitar and my flute, headed to Percival Landing, and put out a hat. usking was slow that time of year, but a wonderful woman came by and offered to let me play in her coffee shop for tips and snacks: first gig, Café Intermezzo.

Olympia Farmers Market – By Becky Liebman

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The early days presented a consummate catch-22 situation. Growers did not want to participate unless there were customers. Customers would not return if there wasn’t produce to buy. As manager, I considered myself a marketing genius: I would call numbers I found in the classified ads of the Daily Olympian with a pitch something like, “I see you’re selling cucumbers. Did you know we have a farmers market in Olympia, open every Friday and Saturday alongside Capitol Lake?” Slowly the word spread.

Jazz in Olympia: Big Time Small Town Scene – By David Lee Joyner

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I think the state’s capital is a treasure—beautiful, less crowded, economically accessible, friendly, it had great schools for my kids, and it was a convenient commute to my day gig as Director of Jazz at Pacific Lutheran University in south Tacoma. To my delight, I also discovered a vibrant community of musicians in Olympia, some of international repute and stature.  Unfettered by the lack of local gigs, these wonderful artists’ activities have flourished, and they welcomed me into the fold with the same small-town warmth possessed by the city in general.

Making Music and Friends in Olympia: Carol Elwood – By Jean Eberhardt

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I played violin from fourth grade on. I played briefly with the chamber orchestra at The Evergreen State College when I was a student there. I had a lot of friends in the early ’70s who were in the Evergreen academic program called American Music. Tom Foote was one of the profs. My friend Karen England was taking fiddle lessons from an old-time fiddler in Tenino and she practiced so diligently, more than I ever had. I’d never played anything by ear before but I tried a tune and just wow! It surprised me that it went well.

Oly Activism in the 1980s – By Ron Jacobs

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The biggest protest I recall being involved in with CAAC and CISPES was in fall 1989, during an uptick in the war in El Salvador and after the Salvadoran military had killed six people at a Jesuit home there. Both priests and their housekeepers were brutally murdered. This news intensified the nature of the protest and increased our numbers in front of the federal building on Capitol Way . . . an Evergreen student and I “cased” the building a couple days beforehand, looking for appropriate offices and possible entrance points.

The Sauna, the Goddess, and the Mushrooms – By Joe Tougas

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For several years in the ’70s, the folks at Cold Comfort hosted what they called a Harvest Festival . . . One of the highlights of each of these gatherings was firing up the sauna . . . “I was standing in the shadows, observing the scene as the cloud of smoke and steam began to dissipate and the circle of joyous celebrants around the altar began to reassemble. I saw the most amazing sight. One of the glorious bodies stepped into the candle-lit circle and stood for a moment lit by the sparks from the holy fire . . .”