It is to our credit that the animal most mentioned here is both our mascot and our scapegoat. This is testament to our fair and balanced view.

I speak of caimans, of course. As a New Year draws near, I propose a ceremony to be added to our evolving OlyBlog mythos.

Before midnight 12/31/2005, locate a caiman. Be cautious, they are foul and clever beasts. False promises of cute puppies and chubby toddlers may lure one forth. Once your choice caiman is located, shout (or whimper) all your 2005 frustrations at it. List your complaints and irritants. Make sure you are purged of all such discontent, then drive the caiman from town.

Imagine how cleansed Olympia will be if we all take part in this simple scape-caiman ceremony. We will then step smiling into 2006, lighter and less cranky.

#54

It's the only plate worth hanging on your bumper…

Buy an Evergreen State College license plate and support Evergreen scholarship programs!

I have been trying to write about these experiences for two weeks but have been wordless in attempting to explain the immense gap between my previous perception as understood by Hollywood movies and news accounts and the reality, the feeling of watching a machine made by your country drop a weapon into the community in which you are living. It is so different when you know families in the neighborhood under attack, when the store across the street where you usually shop is closed because the night before someone in their family was killed. When a missile is falling on the same neighborhood where earlier in the day you saw the simple beauty of a small child carrying his younger brother on his back through puddles, watched taxis swerve around a toothless old man driving a donkey cart loaded with fresh tomatoes, and where you sat with a family who insisted you eat more when you know they don't have enough food to feed themselves.

An Evergreen coordinated studies called Man and Art supplied the labor. The idea came from faculty member Jose Arguelles. The end result was an amazing winding mural that effectively combatted TESC's 70's concrete blahness. But instead of Evergreen being in the belly of the beast, the beasts were in the belly of Evergreen. Whenever I showed newcomers around the College, I always made sure they saw this artwork.

Even though I knew they were there, I usually reacted as if they were unexpected when I used those stairs. And I saw something new every time.

Arguelles went on to become a controversial New Age author and co-founder, with his wife Lloydine, of the Planet Art Network. I understand the dragons have since vanished, but I'm not sure if that is true and if so, when it happened. Did they fly away, or were they just painted over? I like to think the former is more likely than the mundane explanation of the latter.

There will be an OMJP meeting tomorrow, Wednesday Dec. 28, at 7:00 at the Olympia Community Center. Here's a draft agenda. Are there other items that should be on it?

1) Introductions
2) Announcements
3) Request for endorsement for nonviolence training
4) Discussion about future action against torture

On the edge of the development I heard some sort of weird ruckus and followed the noise. In a small valley there was a chunk of land that was still serving its original rural function. The realtors had yet to gobble up this place. It was a poultry farm.

I'd say there were about 50 little A-frame coops all in a nice neat grid. On top of each coop was a rooster. And each rooster was crowing, trying to outdo the others. Imagine what 50 roosters all crowing at once, not listening to each other, sounds like. Every one them master of his little territory. It was a caiman's dream come true.

I thought of the Washington State Legislature, I thought of those shouting matches on political talk shows, and, sadly, I thought of Evergreen in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

When the external threats of closure subsided, and when the experimental edge had been considerably dulled, Evergreen began to enjoy a nationwide academic respectability. Part of this was due to having a true political maestro at the helm to market the product, but another part of it was due to the fact the College really deserved it. By and large the experiment was a success. But there was a flip side.

The early years of threatened extinction had created an espirit de corps in the TESC community. That was gone by the late 1970s, and when the 1980s rolled around the College was experiencing severe growing pains in attempting to define itself. By the mid-1980s the campus mood was downright ugly. Some of this was probably due to the inevitable evolutionary stages of any institution.

Today the College seems settled. Too settled. It might be time to bring in a caiman or two.

Transducer

The spangled bird of night descends roughly
upon her furrowed brow --
Well past her autumn, the dew has dried;
home has come the wayward cow.

The falling bronz'd leaves
of the apocalyptic death, they dance
Your veiled, unquenched desert
death gaze flies askance.

She steps quick to yon window --
O hold tight to the laurel wreath of youth,
venerable sage!
The nightingale of Keats now sings only dirges locked in so unholy a cage.

The hunters and collectors of spiritual prey
swoop down upon the jungle night;
in the tropics are we slayed.

The hazy mists surround her aging heart,
filmy shrouds dim her love-starved eyes.
Only Satan dares to clap; his minions leap and cavort across storming skies.

Stripped nude, the grapevine
of her budding loins anticipates
the Rasta disguise of the kaleidoscopical
Mephistopheles,
who falsely pontificates.

Her abandoned knitting falls to the floor,
revealing the fetid carcass of her horned love man.
A mighty darkness whistles.
Death himself comes soon to your land.

She consults her crack'd crystal ball of sinewy flame
The Grim Reaper's scythe emerges forth
to slash her lame.

How dirty thou art -- DEMON ARISE!

Posted on Monday, December 26, 2005. From advice sent to people preparing for a “street retreat