I’m not going to go back and explain the Paul Ingram case. Or, the OK Boys Camp scandal/tragedy. But, suffice to say that both of those events were insane shocks to the core of the Thurston County power structure about 25 years ago. I’d highly suggest reading the links above, just to get an idea…
Month: June 2015
Downtown is a donut hole filled with subsidized housing (according to the maps). How’d we get to this point?
Here’s my donut hole of Olympia population post from a little while back. I observed: Density is good. People living downtown is good. More people living in a dense neighborhood means fewer cars, more people walking and more services and good things downtown. There might not be a lot of people living downtown compared to…
Remember Olyblog 2: Proto Olyblog
As my memory serves, and I have no reason to doubt my memory, but our Blog Father Rick brought us Olyblog because he was inspired by this particular episode about Hyperlocal Journalism from Radio Open Source. The original version of RoS, by the way, was probably one of the most awesome media things I’ve ever…
An Olympia for all who want to vote. And, where they don’t vote
From Ray Guerra via Facebook: Olympia for All is a great idea. A non-partisan slate of candidates pushing progressive ideas will at least make this year’s city campaigns interesting. At best, we’ll be able to push the city council to be much more engaged about deep civic issues than they’ve been willing to be in…
Olyblog 10 year anniversary is coming up fast. And the graphical decline of the blog
This graph shows the posts by month created at Olyblog between August 2005 and June 2015. Right now we’re just about two months shy of the 10th anniversary of Rick McKinnon flipping the switch on Olyblog. This particular website for about four years was the hub of everything Olympia for me. It was also pretty…
You know what guys? All the good ideas fell through for today. So, here’s a story about a barber that I already wrote
This is one of my favorite all time stories I’ve written for Thurston Talk. Its politics and barbers. Seriously, that was a thing once: By the fall, Gov. Mead traveled to Spokane, hearing the wrath of Spokane barbers and their local backers. He promptly sent Collins a telegram asking him to resign. From the Daily…
Riley, the first real public ass in Olympia
In honor of white supremacists being run out of downtown Olympia, I give you an excerpt from Oyster Light, my bookish collection of historical essays about Olympia. Here’s the part about James Riley, who may be the biggest ass who ever lived in Olympia. Much more so than Joseph Bunting, who wasn’t nice either. But,…