Senior Services for South Sound and Window Seat Media Presents “The Third Thirty” – A Community Oral History

Debe+Lonnie_ThirdThirty
Debe Edden (left) interviews South Sound resident Lonnie M. Locke (right) as a part of Senior Services Lifelong Learning course, “The Third Thirty:” A Community Oral History Project. Debe will share excerpts from Lonnie’s oral history and they will reflect on their experience as part of the November 8 event at the Olympia Senior Center. Photo courtesy: Senior Services for South Sound
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Submitted by Senior Services for South Sound

Senior Services for South Sound and Window Seat Media are partnering on a new oral history project this fall through Senior Services Lifelong Learning Program. “The Third Thirty” is an eight-week project-based course, exploring the time of life between age 60-90. How does our history and identity shape how we experience this period of time? What challenges are people encountering? What gifts come in this thirty years of life? Students explore these and other questions while learning the art and practice of oral history, building listening skills, and considering the ethical issues of gathering and sharing other peoples’ stories.

On Thursday, November 8, 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., course participants will gather at the Harbor House on Percival Landing to share excerpts from their oral histories and reflect on the experience with fellow participants and their narrators. The event is open to the public. Coffee, tea, and light snacks will be served.

“The peer-to-peer nature of this project is especially exciting to me,” says Elaine Vradenburgh, course facilitator and Curator of Window Seat Media. “The project offers an opportunity to explore and validate their shared experience, while gaining insights into the ways in which their particular histories and identifies shape their outlook and circumstances during this time of life.” Senior Services and Window Seat Media hope to continue to offer this course and build an archive of stories around this theme of the “third thirty.”

Contact Sara, Senior Services Education Coordinator, at activitydept@southsoundseniors.org or Elaine Vradenburgh, Curator at Window Seat Media, at elaine@windowseatmedia.org to learn more about the partnership and to get involved.

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