Third Annual!

2018 Milroy!

$10 Sliding Scale for dinner!

Saki!

Dessert!

Djs!

Making sushi!

For you!

On Valentine's Day!

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PIRATES, WE SUPPORT YOU!

Free Radio Olympia, 98.5fm
360.705.9780
myspace.com/frolympia
frolympia.org
fro@riseup.net
Fucking Shit Up Since 2001

The Simple Fool's Silly School of “TOP SECRET” esoteric clowning presents...

An Introduction to the Simple Fool: Discovering the Clown Within

Spring Workshop in Olympia

February 23 &24
Saturday 9-5
Sunday 9-1
$120.00 by donation
Limit 12

For information contact:
dawn@thesimplefool.com
360-705-2506
www.thesimplefool.com

Come and discover your INNER CLOWN - In the spirit of Artivism (art and action for social and spiritual transformation)! In an intimate groups of no more than 12 we will do very basic and deep work with the Clown within, developing presence, authenticity, emptiness and listening. By having the courage to be vulnerable with one another, we open ourselves up to the possibility of play, laughter and tears. All the while we review and discuss our experiences in order to understand ourselves better.

Starting with warm ups we establish safety in the space and comfort in our bodies. Then we play games that bring light and joy to the exploration of what lives deeply yet spontaneously within. Through this play, we become comfortable sharing ourselves with others and are able to move on to exercises that gently build skills for performance. Finally, with great nurturing and support from the group, we bravely embark upon the magical journey of improvisational performances. Thus the clown within is slowly discovered!

Facilitator Dawn Stratton is a modern day court jester and clown teacher. She is the founder of The Simple Fool School.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER CONTACT:
dawn@thesimplefool.com or call 360-705-2506

"There is a still quiet place within where you are filled with unlimited creativity. This is the world of the clown. It is your birthright as a human being and it manifests in laughter and tears."

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

This is an interesting site to play around with, I hope they can eventually expand it to include more countries. Would also be intriguing to see this done on a regional level - say Cascadia or western Washington size.

I'm reminded of our OlyBlog tag cloud - the more a particular tag is used the larger and bolder it is. Also our OlyBlog political compass using a scatter plot to depict quiz results.

Imagine a gauge of our OlyBlog mood visualized as a thermometer. Or if we all used emoticons a tally could be done regularly with the most used emoticon shown larger and brighter.

Eventually maybe we will all be using touch screens which can record our emotions in washes of color, like an updated mood ring.

To expand on a dialog on OlyBlog today:

I ask to what purpose/use is looking at race, other than to celebrate ethnicity & ancestry?

Since race is not an indicator of merit or aptitude (or anything other than simple mixing of genes and expression of traits), to what extent should race be used to "profile" folks? In what kind of "decision" should one's race be taken into account?

I for one have never found anything to be "true" of one "race" vs. another race...so I guess I'm kinda lost in all this "race" dialog.

any thoughts?

So, in response: No, it is not.

Check out the KUOW Flickr photo stream I stumbled upon with pictures of local Olympians and their thoughts about how climate change and rising sea levels will affect the downtown core.

On my most recent visit to West Linn I arranged to give Ron his Christmas present, a DVD copy of Withnail & I. We discovered the movie nearly 20 years ago (it was released in 1987, but we had only rented it on video), and I was pretty sure he didn't have it in his collection. I only bought the standard edition. There is a new 3 Disk 20th anniversary edition. Neither of us is that big of a fanatic. I think.

Needless to say, he was as pleased as punch with the standard copy. He reciprocated by giving me a 5 CD set of Mozart he'd bought himself but never opened.

Then I brought up the notion of getting some pictures of his guns. He was skeptical but willing. He didn't want his face on the internet, nor does he want to draw the attention of criminals trying to steal them. Did I mention that he keeps them in a HUGE SAFE!

Ron first tells me that he's got a picture in his phone, which is similar to mine.  He shows me a pic of a 1911 Colt combat stainless that's still at the gun store.  I ask if he can send it to me.  He hasn't figured that out yet.  Trish helps him.

Actually, the one he has is a 1911 Colt combat blued (which means black, go figure).  It's from 1991.  Lot of 911's in there, eh?

Tell me about it, I say.  Ron says that Colt produced the first automatics, back in 1870.  They have the government contract, and his Dad had one in Korea.

"That's one of the biggest reasons I wanted it," he says.

Now we're getting somewhere.  Ron's dad is dead, and their relationship wasn't the greatest.  Now he's connecting through hardware.

After we hang out I get pensive, and Ron asks what I'm thinking about.  "What to do in the coming year..."

TESC recently notified the families residing in family housing that the college would not be providing family housing after June 2008.

The college has a nice family housing section, but families residing on campus as young adult parents pursue degrees have dropped over the past 20 years and relatively few of the "family housing" units actually accommodate families today.

The families who are residing on campus in family housing are pretty upset by this decision. These families chose Evergreen because of the college's commitment to social justice, fair treatment, and an apparent commitment to supporting the campus diversity that comes with families living on campus.

One of the families living on campus includes two of my grandchildren and I know firsthand how large a commitment it is for a young adult parent to choose full time education while parenting.

It seems likely that TESC can convert these family housing units to dorm style housing units housing 5 to 8 students paying a substantially higher "rent" than the families are paying for these units, and the revenue generation may be playing a part in TESC's decision.

Regardless of the motivation of TESC in terminating family housing, I think it is clear that TESC is not living up to its social contract with the families currently in family housing. These families made substantial changes in their lives to move on campus and pursue higher education. TESC was chosen in part because of its apparent willingness to support these young adults with families. If TESC really needs to abandon family housing and the support that family housing creates, the conscientious way to have done this would have been to "grandfather" the families already on campus and transition the housing as these families complete their education.

Shame on TESC for turning its back on families.

For everyone that was interested in the impeachment resolutions that the Thurston County Democrats were considering, it was held over until the Febraury meeting. There was a lot of prepartions for the caucuses to take care of, and there wasn't time.

You can discuss the resolution here, at the TCD blog. 

Information on the February meeting here.