An oldie from 1983.

There were two aberrations from this neat serial run that deserve mention. The first was The Daily Zero, published as a satire of Olympia's newspaper In April 1977. Today's Olympian was called The Daily Olympian from 1938-1982, and "The Daily Zero" was a longtime common nickname for the paper. The Daily Zero was the brainchild of CPJ staff Matt Groening, Karrie Jacobs, Brad Pokorny, Steve Rabow, Jill Stewart, and Charles Burns and the product poked fun at the right-wing slant of The Daily Olympian. Since the satire had mock ads making fun of Olympia business establishments, there was considerable furor over the publication of this one-shot. It did have the look and feel of the real thing. One bit of humor that might have been missed by some locals: Under "Today's Chortle" The Daily Zero had, "It's getting so you can't tell the boys from the girls these days." In Olympia in 1977, there were still people saying that and thinking they were being clever.

The second effort was entitled The Crapper Point Journal and was not a spinoff from the CPJ. It was underwritten in 1979 by a fed-up faculty member who shall remain anonymous. She gathered up students to produce a spoof of the CPJ and, instead of making fun of Olympia as The Daily Zero did a couple years before, this project turned inward. The premise of this paper was that it was published in 1985, foreshadowing what the school would become in six years. Two features worth mentioning, the full page promo for TESC: "Evergreen, it's not just a college, it's a countryclub," and an interview

The port of Olympia gets some help in upgrading the facilities for rail transport. From The Olympian:

The Port of Olympia got a $2 million federal present that will help pay for its growing rail yard.

The 2006 Congressional appropriation was announced Friday by U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

The port will use the money to install tracks to load cargo and stage trains for coupling, said Jim Amador, the port's marine terminal director.

[snip]

As rails are added, the port will become more competitive in recruiting new lines of cargo, Amador said. In the past, he has mentioned transporting transformers for power projects and moving parts used in the construction of refineries as possible new cargo lines.

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - The Bush administration is headed for a clash with the nation's doctors over a federal plan to cut their Medicare fees by 4.4 percent next year, even as the government tries to measure the quality of care they provide.

Doctors say that if the cut occurs, some physicians will be less willing to accept new Medicare patients.

[snip]

Dr. Stephen C. Albrecht, a family doctor in Olympia, Wash., said 20 percent of his patients were on Medicare. If payments are cut next year, he said, it would be 'economic nonsense' for him to continue participating in the program.

While I was back there I visited the ghost-town campus of Franconia College in New Hampshire. Franconia was another alternative school, but it folded up in the second half of the 1970s and Evergreen had a small wave of refugees come from the Granite State. A former Franconia student gave me a guided tour of the place. We had to dodge security people and it sort of reminded me of the days when we would sneak into the TESC steam tunnels at night. The grounds were overgrown and the buildings were starting to show some wear. It really brought home the high-risk nature of experimental colleges in those days. There were other schools that folded up as well during that era.

The best paying job I had in Vermont, armed with my TESC BA in Liberal Arts, was driving a taxicab in Burlington. I never let the company know I was a college grad. There was one other guy in the fleet who had a BA, and the others called him "Doc." If people asked me what I did for a living, I enjoyed answering, "I'm in transportation."

Amidst this whirl of disorder, I learned three crucial things. One, I wasn't going to kill myself. Second, I had far more power over my fate than any doctor ever let on. Third, the existentialists weren't joking: The world is truly absurd.