The Third Thirty: A Community Oral History Project

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 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."

‍

‍

"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 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."

‍

"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 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 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 a through a lot of situations."

‍

‍

​"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."

"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."

"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."

​

‍

"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."