It's been suggested by one clever Olyblogger that "Olympia is for hippies, Tumwater is for cowboys, and Lacey is for soldiers." Is Olympia a melting pot of countless viewpoints and cultures or is it one central voice with a minority undercurrent? Is Olympia's perspective changing in the face of the global shifts that have occurred since 9/11 (arguably since the election of 2000)?

Steeped in the ethos of the Bible Belt and still "fresh off the boat" from back East, I have not yet shaken a sense of strangeness--of things simultaneously familiar and foreign. As I posted in one reply, my husband (a native Northwesterner) offered my first clarification--the reconciliation of guns and environmentalism--when he offered the term "Ted Nugent hippies..."

Politics, religion, sex, all of the things that one should not discuss in polite conversation, are precisely the areas that I want to explore. What does it mean to be an Olympian?