Course Information
Participating Teachers
Sarah McLaughlin - Olympia High School
Exploring Our Places: Sarah's Narrative
My sense of place centers around my smallish community of local Olympia. The center of downtown Oly are the coffee shops where people hang out, meet friends, have a nice locally brewed coffee, read the local rag, and pass time. I feel about Olympia that same sense of familiarity as I did with San Francisco as a young teenager. It is a feeling of home.
As a young girl, I never had much of a sense of place. As an Army brat who left a place every two or three years, I never had a place to identify with. My folks did not mix much with other military families, and so for the most part my family and all of our things created a sense of place. I could say being in the back seat of our car moving to the next command with all my clothes in a suitcase was as much a sense of place as any "house" we lived in. We were a reserved group of folks, and did little mingling with others of similar circumstances.
But everyone finds somewhere where they bond to some place. If not the car, then I would have to say San Francisco, CA. was where I finally felt as if I was "home". I considered S.F. my town. I knew the S.F. way of doing life, its unique forms of entertainment, its sense of style, and its celebrations. When you finally are able to go from friends' homes for supper to parties all over a city via cablecars, any teenager would feel as if they had arrived.
Olympia provides this same sense to me. Living with my husband of 30+ years in this quiet town, I feel at home. Maybe it isn't home like my husband had growing up in smalltown Montana, but it's what I know. I may not know everyone who comes in for coffee, but I know enough folks to say hello, which makes for a sense of community. This doesn't happen for me in West Olympia or the housing developments of Lacey. It happens in the "old fashion" section of old Olympia. I like it very much. It feels like home.
