I was a puppeteer for many years, an art form I used in teaching to engage, entertain, and educate. In the late 1980s I worked at the Department of Ecology as a transportation coordinator to get people to drive less, take the bus more, walk more, and bike more to work. With this in mind I came up with the idea to do a giant puppet show
We had no offices at first. The buildings weren’t ready. So, a solution that became a model for programs for years after was born. We retreated to Sun Lakes State Park in Eastern Washington near Coulee City. We loaded vans with food and sleeping bags and projectors, films, books . . . five faculty and nearly a hundred students.
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’.”
I don’t believe we thought we were being radical by starting a coffeehouse. What was radical was our politics and being hippies from Seattle. We had all lived at and attended the University of Washington . . . and coffeehouses were a big thing in the U District among students and faculty. Olympia was a small conservative town in 1964. Family life dominated. Churches were the main place people had for gathering. Saint Martin’s College was here but it had nothing like a coffeehouse. The four of us created the Null Set coffeehouse, but we couldn’t have done it without the support and backing of the Unitarian Fellowship.
History of the Olympia Farmers Market By Stephen Wilcox We encourage readers to contact us with comments and corrections. Disclaimer
The Null Set Remembered By Pat Holm We encourage readers to contact us with comments and corrections. Disclaimer
In 1984, alternative-thinking parents worked with the school district to create an elementary options program, and in 1995, the program was moved to Lincoln School and renamed Lincoln Options. The alternative programs were expanded in later years to another elementary school and two middle schools. The influence of these programs was also felt in many other schools.
The first phone call I took (that wasn’t a crank call) was from a lesbian in Lacey. It was 1973 and I was the founder and sole staff person answering the phone at the Gay Resource Center, a new student group at Evergreen. She and her partner had both been divorced from men, and between them they had five kids living in a double wide trailer. She wanted to know if I could offer them any help regarding child custody issues.
At home that night, the war was present in my mind and my dreams, the images and stories haunting me. I wasn’t the only one. We were soon meeting and talking about how to organize in support of the poor of El Salvador and confront the policies of our own government that perpetuated rampant abuses. No one envisioned an antiwar movement like we had with the Vietnamese War. This was a tiny country and U.S. involvement was hidden and more subtle than boots on the ground, though there were boots on the ground in some cases.
They left me alone with the bagel machine. They neglected to explain how to control the speed or shut it down. For a while I had no trouble keeping up, but soon I was like Lucy in the chocolate factory.