Llyn De Danaan aka Lynn Patterson

I, with my Burmese cat Portable, moved to Olympia in the summer of 1971. The Evergreen State College would open in September of that year and I was a member of the first faculty cohort. I was a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at the University of Washington and had lobbied for a job until Dean Merv Cadwallader at last gave me an interview. I wanted to stay in Washington and wanted badly to participate in rethinking higher education. I was cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, at the Ohio State University and had been in the Peace Corps in Sarawak, Malaysia. I had worked in farm labor camps in Yakima and on community development projects in Washington and Oregon. I had worked with planners at the Puget Sound Governmental Conference, had studied Saul Alinsky, belonged to Radical Women in Seattle, had marched in anti-war rallies, and had been fired three times for being what one boss called, “insolent, impudent, and insubordinate,” a portrayal I accepted proudly. In 1973 I became an Evergreen academic dean, the first woman to hold that post. This job allowed me to search for and hire faculty, especially women and men and women of color, to design fresh new initiatives, and to support the development of the Tacoma Campus and Indigenous studies. I was not fired from Evergreen. I left voluntarily in 2001.

• Early Evergreen and the Harbaugh Affair – By LLyn De Danaan and Don Orr Martin
  LLyn, former dean, and Don, Gay Center representative, share perspectives on their early days at Evergreen and the how they came to sit across the table from each other mediating a gay rights debacle.
• Part 2: Joining the Faculty at Evergreen – By Llyn De Danaan
  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.
• Part 1: Finding My Place in the Universe – By Llyn De Danaan aka Lynn Patterson
  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.
• The Olympia Phenomenon – By Llyn De Danaan
  Olympia has a history not just of supporting roots music but also of being a Mecca for jazz artists, a petri dish for punk and garage, and a rich soil for the growth of Latin influenced bands.
• Celebration of Olympia Artists – May 1983 – By LLyn De Danaan
  In 1983, Lynn Patterson (aka LLyn De Danaan, photographer and cultural anthropologist), Marilyn Frasca (visual artist and Evergreen faculty), Shannon Osborne (owner of Smithfield Café), Mary Fitzgerald (photographer), Candy Street, Cappy Thompson (glass artist) and Carolyn McIntyre (the founder of Radiance) created an arts feast to demonstrate that artists were at the core of a new Olympia. They organized a month-long “Celebration of Olympia Artists” and, in the spirit of inclusivity and collaboration, invited the community to submit information about their own events and to participate in a variety of shows.