The Third Thirty

"We have a Buddhistic saying, the kids kind of tease me about it, but we have a saying, “from out of the mud, grows the lotus.” And I think that’s very true.You have to think in terms of, out of adversity good can come. So I try to keep that in mind. Try to always be positive."

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"A good instrument will teach you. I think you could sit it in your lap and watch television and it would teach you to play. A really great instrument practically will play itself. And that's what we're after."

Luthier and Musician
Local resident since the early 1990s

“I’ve been given many gifts of the heart over the years.First, the love and support of community, then the ability to learn and understand a bit more about plant and tree life. I’ve learned to interact with plants and trees and to appreciate the gifts they give us every day. It is a gift to be able to grow food for myself, my family, and to offer this food to others. As I age, I experience the natural world and all its inhabitants as deeply interconnected. I’ve learned so much by growing food and paying attention to plants and trees.” 

Co-owner of Blue Heron Farm, first organic farm in Thurston County
Local resident since 1975

“You have to be totally unstoppable. Find a way. They block you on the right, they block you on the left, go out the back. They block in the circle, go out under the ground. They block you over that, then fly over the top. But do not be suppressed, no matter what.”

– Nat Jackson

“You have to decide that, yes, I'm just an individual, but I'm a mighty individual. And if I don't speak up now, there's no one here that will. If I don't rattle some cages, the cage won't get rattled. If I don't call the elephant out of the room, that old elephant will sit right there and nobody notices it. So you have to decide, what role you're gonna play in life? Why did God give me this kind of knowledge and insight? I guess he intended me to put it to some use.”

– Dr. Thelma Jackson 

Dr. Thelma Jackson and Nat Jackson‍

Community organizers and advocates
Local residents since 1970

“Don’t ever get into social justice issues if you want to make money because there is no money to be made. What we did is we enriched our lives. What keeps me going is the outside world seems to be getting really unequal and people are suffering. And then I have friends that are all involved in the same process of social justice. The friends you make are forever, and we keep each other going.”

Co-owner of Olympia’s first coffee house, The Null Set (1964-1967)
Local resident since 1962

“I'm looking forward to hearing from a beautiful new generation of storytellers, young and old. Just bring forth every possibility! Sharpen those tools and get that cranium going and be who you really are and see who you are. A storyteller is a doctor. A storyteller is a nurse. A storyteller is a fireman. We all have our stories to be told. And that's what will make a better future.”

Quinault weaver & storyteller
Local resident since 1957

"I can't imagine life without art, without music, without literature, without theater, without visual art, without dance. I cannot imagine a life like that. And the way in which it allows people to see other’s experiences and other’s way of seeing things, and the way it touches our hearts and our souls and our shared humanity."

Artistic & Managing Director of the Heartsparkle Players
Local resident since 1974

"Those of us in the 70s were coming out of the 60s, which was an entire decade of freedom of thought and experimentation on a lot of different levels. And I think that Olympia at that time was really an open book of possibilities. Boy, back then, it seemed like the ideas were so big there weren’t rooms big enough to hold them. They were just bursting everywhere."

Co-founder of Mansion Glass & owner of Tom Anderson Studios
Local resident since 1971

"I learned how to listen to people. I learned how important it is that people need to be touched. I don't necessarily mean physically, but they need to have their story heard, or their emotions honored. I think that has carried me through a lot of situations."

"I used to tell my students and my kids: if our life's work to leave our communities or our world more sustainable and socially just is a legacy that can be accomplished within our lifetime, maybe we're not thinking big enough."

"I would hope people would respect different nationalities and ethnicities and recognize that we're all a human family. What happens to anyone happens to the family and we ought to take care of each other."

"I would like to have my time of dying a happy time, and have people relieved of my care.  I think I’ve had a good life, and I won’t mind if it ended."

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"Now [in] the last part of my life, I realized that [some of] the lessons we learned may not be appropriate anymore. Yes, we learn a lot from our parents, but sometimes those things need to be relearned or redirected or thought about -- whether or not they're still valid lessons."

"I think life is pretty much a crapshoot. I think that it takes some cunning and some intuition to do the best with the cards that you've been given. But I think that's the minority part of it. Mostly, it's the times that you were born into, your DNA and nervous system, and the culture you were brought up in. It’s so profound and all encompassing! We're pickled in all of that.  I’m so grateful for all the mercies that random fate has given me."

I truly, truly do believe in trying to constantly evaluate who you are and how you are, and my basic philosophy has always been love. If you have love in your life, in your family, and in your companions you have the most important thing in learning to live. And the thing of it is, we cannot know who we are, except when we are interacting with another-human-being.

"I have an idea in my mind that this planet - for what we read in the Koran and the Bible and the Torah - there was nothing here and then Adam  and Eve came and they had children and everybody moved to different states. When people get older their kids go away. It doesn't mean that your son - even if he's living in Bellingham - it doesn't mean that he's not from Olympia. It doesn't mean that in Bellingham they tell him “You don't belong here.” It's his right as a human being.  As a human being everybody has the right to share the knowledge and the wealth of this planet because it was created by humans."

"I think there's a way of living where if you just keep your heart open, opportunities to act come to you. I certainly never intended specifically to be an advocate for homeless people; that opportunity just revealed itself to me."

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"My faith provides a guide. I want to make sure that I never do anything to harm another person and I see every person as connected to me. And I'm wanting to help however I can. When I'm able to see every person as a part of my human family, then I respond to people in that way. It goes beyond just seeing a stranger. I’m seeing someone who is a part of me as well and so I have to reach out."

​"My dad was serving in the Navy during WWII and was gone for the first two years after I was born. We didn't really get along real well when I was young, but as time went on, probably close to my 16th birthday, is when we became closer...I remember he wrote me a letter when I was in college, and that got to me, because I hadn’t had that kind of relationship with him. He was just chatting about how I was doing. He hoped I was doing well. I kept that letter for a few years, but I threw it away. Wish I still had it thirty years later. It was really meaningful."