Olywa Days of Change 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.
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.
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.
VIGNETTES – After a night of drinking with friends at the Rainbow, we all piled outside to catch a little night air. Standing around at the corner, we laughed at everything we said, whether it was funny or not.
Soon hummingbirds started arriving and flying very close. Also eagles were circling and one even dropped a feather! It occurred to me that women are like hummingbirds in a way, because they are seldom seen just being still. Our tipi was a place to come and be still. Hence the name Hummingbird Stands Lodge was born.
Our music and what we wore were the things most visible to other generations. Lots of creativity was going on in our relationships and our denial of materialism. Times “were a changin’.”
The popularity of blue jeans was at its zenith, and the leading manufacturers of denim (Levi Strauss, Wrangler, and Lee) had all made financial deals with secondhand organizations like Goodwill to destroy all blue jeans and jean jackets that came through their clearinghouses.
If you took a clothesline long enough to hang a thousand t-shirts in a row and hung every design I printed in chronological order, you would have a history of life in Olympia in the 1980s. You’d see bands like Gila and Obrador, political actions from election campaigns to social justice movements, businesses that came and went, sports teams, non-profits, and community events.
Cold Comfort Farm took the “Farm” in its name seriously. We thought of ourselves on the model of agricultural co-ops. We wanted to be independent, creative, revolutionary. We were pretty smug about our agrarian accomplishments. Although our knowledge of small-scale farms was spotty and romanticized (not to mention borderline illegal) we were proud of our worn-out overalls and home-grown strawberries and broccoli.