Jean Eberhardt

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.

LLyn’s Tower: An All-Woman Construction Project – 1979 – By Jean Eberhardt

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LLyn De Danaan, Anna Schlecht and I got together for an interview at LLyn’s house, but it quickly morphed into a boisterous reminiscence of the time that Nozama Construction, the newly minted construction collective, came to build an addition on her house to accommodate her growing family. Forty-five years later, this two-story addition, affectionately referred to as a tower by LLyn, still stands.

Women in the Trades: A Multi-Generational Tale – By Jean Eberhardt

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Women were recruited via persuasive media campaigns to join the war effort as “Rosie the Riveters” to work in the factories that were emptied by the men who were drafted to fight overseas. My grandmother became a machinist in her late 30s and developed a steady hand for guiding hair-thin bits chucked into the drill press through metals. She fabricated specialized tiny parts for war planes and then later for commercial jets.

Construction Brigades in Nicaragua During Reagan’s War – By Jean Eberhardt

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During the contra war—a right-wing terror campaign waged by ex-national guard mercenaries of Nicaragua’s ousted dictator and funded by the U.S.—over a hundred thousand people from the U.S. visited Nicaragua. Many of us traveled and volunteered with purpose. For example, delegations of elected officials mobilized by progressive organizations, ecumenical study tour groups, long-term volunteers with Witness for Peace, caravans carrying material aid with Pastors for Peace, medical teams, coffee and cotton harvest brigades, and journalists.