Olywa Days of Change

The First Lesbian Community Meetings – By Anna Schlecht

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We stood there befuddled on Columbia Street until other women began to arrive for the meeting. Many had come pumped up to argue about who should be invited, but once they heard what had happened, most of the divisions fell away. Suddenly, everyone there had the shared experience of being discriminated against as queers, whether they publicly identified that way or not. Nearly 50 women found themselves standing sullenly on the dark street with nowhere to go.

Hard Rain Printing Collective Part 1 – By Don Martin

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Indeed, it was the concept of workers seizing the means of production that inspired Grace and me to investigate the idea of running a worker-owned print shop. In the days before cell phones and the internet, print media was how we communicated, how we announced our events and rallies and theatrical productions, how we debated political change. We wanted to be pamphleteers. Thomas Paine and the Wobblies were our inspiration.

Hard Rain Printing Collective – Part 2 – By Don Martin

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We had been in the Division Street shop for a couple of years. Struggling, cold, and damp. Honing our skills. Learning from mistakes. We learned about printing standards and the allowable percentage of flawed prints or undercounts. We paid dues to the Graphic Arts International Union, in support of workers in the trade. It meant we could print a “union bug” on our work.

Part 1: Finding My Place in the Universe – By Llyn De Danaan aka Lynn Patterson

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Here’s what my life was like in the late 1960s while a student: Trips to the Pacific Ocean, driftwood, logging trucks, colorful flower-bedecked hitchhikers on freeway turn offs (on their way to San Francisco), light shows and strobes at Eagle’s Auditorium in Seattle, The Whole Earth Catalog, Helix (a brilliant “underground” newspaper), marching against the Vietnam War on the freeway and through downtown, buildings blowing up on campus, rallies at the federal courthouse, Radical Women meetings, Claire Fraser holding forth. I had the time of my life.

Media Monitoring at KAOS – By Susan Davenport

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I was a programmer on KAOS FM, the campus radio station, for most of my undergraduate years at Evergreen 1974 – 1980. I read news stories as the news director, and did public affairs spots . . . On one show I read a brief story about a WPPSS (Whoops!) nuclear power plant being decommissioned, due in part from finding a fault line under the construction site. A week or so later I was called to the office of the college president.

Ela Alvy House – By Daniel Farber

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Over the subsequent year our connections flowed and ebbed. Living down the hall for a quarter or two, meals and conversations that went into the night were random and delightful. We stayed in touch with some folks more than others, but a year later when some of us decided to leave the dorms, five agreed to rent a house on Sherman Street, in Olympia’s Westside.