Oh Me Oh My-O Gillian Welch

In a blue dress with flowers in sequins and black cowgirl boots, Gillian Welch had hippies dancing in the aisles in Olympia last night. She has such strong facial features and so natural – and her accompanying guitar player dude had his hair standing up in tuffs and pants a little up from his ankles. He rocked back and forth and plucked his little guitar like mad.

This was the last night on their tour and they still came out for two encores. I saw two fellow-MIT graduate students and sat next to one, plus all my roommates. My good friends Sue and Tim were in the front row.

It was awesome. It will definitely go up there on one of my favorite Olympia experiences.

“Peaches in the summer time, apples in the Fall ...”

Bumper Stickers around Olympia

One of the things I love the most are the bumper stickers on peoples’ cars in Olympia.

Here are some of the bumper stickers I’ve seen in the last week or so:

Draft Republicans

Peace is Patriotic

An Eye for An Eye Leaves the Whole World Blind

Goddess Bless

The wonders of fingernail polish remover

My car has gotten a new makeover. I’ve been walking through junkyards, looking for CRXs, stumbling through mud puddles.

And it’s amazing what fingernail polish remover can do for a car previously held together with duck tape. I removed all the duck tape residue with fingernail polish.

This was of course, after replacing the back light panel that’s been smashed since November. I got an excellent deal for that one. Granted, I had to drive all the way down to Chehalis.

Then, I bolted my front light back in, since it was hanging off and taped up with duck tape after the latest car hit me.

And the fingernail polish remover worked wonders. There I was, rubbing off the tape sticky stuff with polish on a Q-tip.

Then, to my amazement, it removed the bad spray paint job on the back bumper. I had attempted to cover up the yellow paint from the taxi cab a month ago. Grey paint dried in drip lines, and did not match the original bumper.

So, finger nail polish removes some serious stuff. Now, that is a scary thought – that we women use that on our nails.

Oh! I can’t leave out: I bought a new “wing” for the back of my car and a new “H” emblem that was missing. These I found at a great junk yard in Lacey. I also glued back in the window lining that was, yes you guessed it – held up with duck tape.

So now it looks sporty and just like when I bought it five years ago. Well, almost.

Now I just have to go buy some more finger nail polish remover.

A day in the life of an MIT student

So, you might have been wondering: what is Heather doing with her days, besides working hard to meet program deadlines?

Well, here is one day last week:

Everyone in the program (47 students) received a secret card with a secret name of a theorist on it. We were instructed not to tell anyone who we were. We researched our theorist.

Then, we had a “Theorist Party” where we dressed up in our theorist garb if we wanted to. We were supposed to talk about our theories and try to form allies and groups of theorist with ideas similar to ours.

My theorist was Maxine Greene, an 87-year-old university teacher in New York. I found this great photo of her on the internet so came in a hat, scarf and a cigarette that I had borrowed from my roommate, as she was sitting back in a chair in the photo with a cigarette in her hand. Maxine Greene believes imagination and the arts should be integrated into education.

Everyone had a twin – we had to find our twin – someone with the same theorist if we could.

I had a lot of fun. We then tried to come up with a School of Thought that we thought our group of theorist belonged to.

We are now in week three of our first quarter. It is a lot of work but I am really enjoying myself as our workshops are fun and intriguing and we have a seminar once a week where we discuss what we are learning. I like my seminar leader, a liberal arts teacher at Evergreen.

The first week we were at a retreat center where I went kayaking during lunch.

I’ve also met some great people in the program and have formed a study group with four other women to divide up our work when we can.

Friday night I attended the arts walk in downtown Olympia with some new friends from the program – dancing and hanging out.

So, keep tuned to more updates from Olympia.