7 posts tagged “olympia”

I know I haven't posted in forever, but I'll get to all of that stuff later.  For now, here's a video of a great event that happened recently in my town.  On March 29th, over 800 local volunteers planted 1,007 trees in one day across Olympia.  The planting event concluded with a big party at my library.  If you watch the whole thing, you'll see my boss Cheryl speaking towards the end.  I will admit that I get bored with the occasional sleepiness of life in Olympia, but events like the 1000 Trees in One Day project serve to remind me of how lucky I am to be a part of this community.  Enjoy...

I walked around downtown yesterday with Dory and tried to look at Olympia with "soft eyes."  Sometimes I forget that I like this town.  It's good to remind myself occasionally, especially in the winter.

Here's a trailer for a movie called "Sidewalks in Olympia" that's currently being created by Kinetic Vision Media.  I am impressed with the looks of it so far.  Camp Quixote is moving to a church that's kitty-corner from the library on December 29th, and I'm looking forward to having them as workday neighbors.

Only in Olympia.  All others are playah perpetratahs.

What is your favorite greasy spoon?
Submitted by S@ngarang.

• In Olympia, probably The Clubside Cafe, Darby's Cafe, King Solomon's Reef, and the New Moon Cafe.  Service and food are spotty in all of them, but you take what you can get around here.  The Clubside Cafe also has the best tater tots ever.  Rosie's on the West side has really good food, too, but it's a bit too fancy to qualify as a greasy spoon.
  
• In Seattle, I used to enjoy Ernie Steele's, which became Ileen's, which became I think Julia's Fourteen Carrot Cafe.  Ernie Steele's was the real deal.  Once, I was playing cards there with a school friend and the owner came over and yelled at us because we weren't allowed to gamble in there (we weren't).  I had many an egg breakfast/bloody mary combination there after working my graveyard shift at Kinko's.  I developed a crush on a sweet, spacey fry cook there named Randall, who stood me up on our only date.  It turned out that he was a heroin addict, so it was all for the best.  My cat Randall lives on in his name.  Ileen kept the spirit of the place when she bought it, but Julia's is a rather generic vegetarian restaurant with nowhere near the same ambiance.   Another favorite was the Continental on the Ave.  I'm a sucker for Greek family run establishments, I guess.  My favorite meal there is the egg breakfast with pita, a side of feta cheese and greek fries, which are round crispy french fries that rock my world.
  
• In East Hartford, Connecticut, I ate many 2 am egg sandwiches at the Triple A diner with my insomniac boyfriend Mark.
• New Haven Connecticut is the land of fabulous greasy spoons.  My favorites include the Copper Kitchen and the Yankee Doodle.  The Copper Kitchen is run by a Greek family, and they still remember me when I go to New Haven even though I haven't lived there in over fifteen years.  The Doodle is maybe ten feet wide and fifteen feet long including the kitchen, and it's run by a family team that work phenomenally well together.  When I lived in New Haven, it was a father daughter combo that were truly poetry in short order cooking motion.

I have more favorite greasy spoons, but I need to do something with my day off at some point in time.

Recently, an eleven year old girl in Olympia was raped in her bedroom while the rest of her family slept.  A veritable firestorm of press and public opinion ensued.  A day or two afterwards, the police arrested a young, mentally ill man who was acting suspicious in a nearby church parking lot.  The young man, David Lynch, did not match the girl's detailed description of the rapist.  However, Mr. Lynch was young and probably schizophrenic and lived underground in a wooded area near the girl's house, which was enough evidence to hold him on suspicion.  Collective opinion contended that Mr. Lynch was guilty until proven innocent.

Only, as it turns out, David Lynch didn't do it.  He is just one more mentally ill person who has slipped through the cracks.  He was not the rapist of this young girl.   Of course, his innocence is not as big of a new story as the stories that came as close as possible to declaring his guilt without explicitly stating it. 

I think that the Olympian newspaper, select members of our city council, and many Olympia citizens should be ashamed for the hateful and judgmental reactions to this story.  We need to hold a mirror up to ourselves and reevaluate our views of homelessness, addiction, and mental illness in Olympia.  We pride ourselves on being progressive thinkers, yet many of us are still guilty of stereotyping or, worse yet, ignoring the members of our society that truly challenge our notions of appropriateness.  We should all be helping,  not judging.

Anyhow, because I'm not as eloquent as Phil Owen of Olyblog, here is a link to a beautiful opinion piece he wrote on this subject.

Link to images of the tent city set up to protest the treatment of the homeless in downtown Olympia

Link to images of David Lynch's "underground bunker"

Really, we can and should do better in our community.  There's got to be a better way.