EASTSIDE ARTWALK Meet up

SURGE!
This is the last Volunteer Meeting to prepare for The Third Annual, International, Social Uprising, Resistance and
Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.) Film Festival, Conference and
Film Festival Network!   www.WeSurge.org

Join us!

Date: Wednesday, May 17th, 2007
Time: 4pm-6pm.

Exact Movie Names and schedules will be found on our website in May!

Volunteers greatly needed! Why? Becauase...

Have you seen the movies “Slackers”… “Coffee and Cigarettes”… or ‘The Vagina Monologues’ (by Eve Ensler)?  If so, then you know how powerful short skits, transformed and interwoven into one movie or play can be!  The SURGE Festival willnot only show movies from aound the world (starting May 18) but on May 21st, the SURGE Volunteer  Do-It-Yourself Film Crew will videotape a one-minute skit that individuals and groups from everywhere will make about anything!  Take back the media… and encourage people worldwide to do the same!  Become a SURGE Volunteer!  Print out our flyers for exact meeting schedules!

SURGE!
Volunteer Meeting to prepare for The Third Annual,
International, Social Uprising, Resistance and
Grassroots Encouragement (S.U.R.G.E.) Film Festival,
Conference and Film Festival Network. WeSurge.org

Date: Sunday, April 22nd, 2007
Time: 3pm-4pm.
Location: Freeschool, 610 Columbia Street SW, Olympia, WA, 98501

Exact Movie Names and schedules will be found on our website in May!

Volunteers greatly needed!

Why? Becauase...

Have you seen the movies “Slackers

Where is the Student Run Café?

By Jay Standish, Volunteer Coordinator, The Flaming Eggplant Café

You may have heard the name "Flaming Eggplant" around campus, but have no clue what it is. You may know that it is a student-run café in the works, but are wondering when and where it will open, or if there will be more to the menu than eggplant dishes. Wonder no more! Read further to wet your palette.

Students have been organizing the Café for over a year now. This Winter The Flaming Eggplant was granted a food prep space in the CAB. This was a battle in and of itself. We recently submitted our operational budget to the S&A fee allocation board. They will decide if we are funded for the 2007-2008 school year. We will operate a mobile vending unit on Red Square or potentially outside the 1st. floor level of the CAB. With sustained effort over the summer, The Flaming Eggplant will open for business this coming fall. We will initially be serving a simple menu of falafel and tempeh sandwiches, rice and beans, hummus, salad, and soup.

The Flaming Eggplant’s first goal is to use seasonal recipes based on food that is locally available and organically grown. Our second goal is to provide more enjoyable, nutritional, tasty, and ecologically sound food to T.E.S.C. The Flaming Eggplant will accommodate menu items for all economic levels. If you just need to fill up on some food fuel, you will always be able to find a super cheap meal on our menu. Once the business is operational, we will be able to offer more creative and varied menu offerings and develop closer relationships with farms in the area.

When the CAB is rebuilt it will include a space for the café, but instead of waiting until 2010 to get it started we have decided to get the falafel balls rolling. If we don’t get started now the movement will be dead by the time the space in the new CAB is ready.

After all the doom and gloom from the Olympia haters about how the place is going to hell in a handbasket, it was nice to look at the front page of the paper and see this. From The Olympian:

The Olympia metropolitan area ranks as one of the top places in the country for business and careers, according to a new Forbes magazine study.

Michael Cade, executive director of the Economic Development Council of Thurston County, said the finding could help the EDC promote South Sound growth.

“Our mission is to promote the area as a place to invest,

Would you like to learn about birds of your local area?  Are you interested in gaining hands' on bird observation skills? 

Join Evergreen student group Center for Environmental and Natural Skills Education (CENSE) Thursday mornings from 7 am to 8:30 am.  We meet to venture out into the field under the Clocktower on Red Square at the Evergreen Campus in Olympia.  This event is free, open to the public, and will run every week until May 31. 

Dress for the weather. 

Check out our website at: http://academic.evergreen.edu/groups/cense for more info. 

It's that time of year again, April tends to be a busy month for white supremacists. April 20th is Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Graffiti consisting of swastikas and the word 'skin' were reported in a southeast residential area in Olympia Tuesday morning, an Olympia police news release said.

Quote from Breaking News story 4/10/2007, link no longer works.

Olympian story 4/11/2007
Update 4/12/2007

My definition of art blogs is somewhat loose for the Oly Bloglines but I figure it is good enough. If you blog artistically or any other -ically, are doing it local (which is the best way to do it), and don't see the blog listed on the Oly Bloglines, send me a msg here through Oly Blog.

Here we go:

No council this week, so no council packet to look through.

So, I decided to look back on one of my favorite seriously boring topics around the city of Olympia: the budget and how it comes together. More specifically, the ad hoc budget committee, a one time citizen advisory committee that was supposed to take a close look at the budget and give the city council a fresh perspective. Go here and here for some background from last summer.

Unfortunately, that never happened. Here is an email from Jane Kirkemo, the city's Administrative Services director:

Last year the Olympia Finance Committee did solicit citizens for an ad hoc finance committee.  It was to be a year long commitment.  We received very poor response and decided against forming the committee.  The Finance Committee instead filmed "a conversation" with the committee where they discussed things about the City budget.  This ran on TCTV for several months.  In addition, the finance committee hosted the January town hall meeting, "Balancing the Community Checkbook" where they are continuing to discuss the City's budget.  I hope this answers you questions. 

Unfortunately, we dropped the ball. We as in the citizens of Olympia, because the response to the ad hoc committee was so poor, the city decided to scrap the idea, and rather hold a Town Hall meeting. Even though I wrote about the town hall meeting, I had no idea it was connected to the ad hoc committee.

Though, I understand why the committee was scrapped in favor of the Town Hall meeting, there would have been obvious benefits to a more deliberative body.

369 blogs plus are peace blogging on Tuesday Topics each week. Our fourth week topic is photos:

Find and post a photo of the Iraq War.
What does this photo say to you about the war?
Do you think this photo could change others' minds about the war?

I got my newest issue of Time magazine yesterday and I've been thinking ever since of this one particular black and white photo it contains. I've not been able to locate the photo yet through the Time site or through a google photo search. So pick up a copy when you can and let the magazine fall open, one page past the center staple fold is the photo on my mind.

Time dedicated the full two pages to this one incredibly moving photograph. The setting is in a funeral home in Salisbury, Md. We see an open coffin in the distance. In the foreground is the grieving widow, head held in her hands, she seated. Also a member of the Armed Forces, standing, back to we the viewer.

Grief is profoundly heavy in this photograph.

How old is the widow?

22 years old.

I'm not really going to be able to offer an interpretation. Or figure out how this image may change someone's mind. Photos such as this, windows into what war really means, can stand on their own.

She's only 22 years old.

Later note 4/12: Comment thread closed