FREE EVENTS IN THE SOUTH SOUND JAN. 2-8, 2012 >>>
The folks in the Freeloaders-land R&D Department have been diligently working to find new ways to improve this column, and they think they've outdone themselves with their newest innovation. Just in time for the shorter days of winter, Bobble Tiki's column will soon glow in the dark! Are your children afraid to sleep at night? Just use Freeloaders as a comforting nightlight! Read it in darkened rooms, use it to send signals across the Narrows - the options are nearly limitless! In celebration of this new development, Bobble Tiki will shed light on this week's free events that will help you see the light. So sit back, leave that lamp off for a few more minutes and enjoy!
MONDAY, JAN. 2: The Stevie Nicks landslide has brought Bobble Tiki to a life of corked, isolated displeasure. Heartily aware of his divergence from productivity some 25 years ago, he nonetheless goes on, still picking at shag carpets for the cheap and banal and crying all the way to the bank. Not to be overly dramatic but Bobble Tiki has the feeling that the end is nigh. He says this because he's starting to notice something extremely dire in his day-to-day swish through life, equal parts fabulous and scary, and therefore necessarily apocalyptic: His life is becoming just like the color of his hair. Bobble Tiki needs answers. He needs them now! So he's stopping by the free Psychic Buffet that offers "a tasty treat for the soul" every first Monday of the month inside the Urban Onion Restaurant in downtown Olympia. Psychic Lisa Holm and crew offer energy healing with intuitive readings and numerology at 5 p.m.
TUESDAY, JAN. 3: As counterintuitive as it might initially seem, if you own a Nook or Kindle or a device with the Kindle app (iOS, Android, PC), you can learn how to download free e-books to your device from the folks at Pierce County Library. Yes, students that includes Cliffs Notes, if you've managed to seriously drop the ball on homework. As part of its "How To..." Month at the Summit Library, a librarian will teach you how to download for free at 7 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 4: If you're anything like Bobble Tiki you need to work off all the holiday cookies. If you are truly like Bobble Tiki than you know that's difficult because you have a spring instead of legs. If you do have legs, then Bobble Tiki suggests you hit the Cushman Trail in Gig Harbor. It's quite lovely. Even more lovely - Sound Vista Village, a retirement community close to the trail, will serve complimentary cocoa, tea or coffee fireside during January.
THURSDAY, JAN. 5: Isabel Wilkerson's mesmerizing book The Warmth of Other Suns shed slight on the mass movement of six million African Americans from the south to the north in the middle decades of the 20th century - told through the lives of three people who joined the exodus. The Fireside Bookstore Book Group will discuss the book at 7 p.m. inside the historic Hotel Olympian in downtown Olympia.
FRIDAY, JAN. 6: Do you know about the case of Leonard Peltier? In 1975, two FBI agents were shot in a gunfight on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier, as a representative of the American Indian Movement, was convicted of their murders in spite of a government case dependent on coerced testimony and suppressed evidence. Robert Redford produced and narrated a documentary shedding light on the incident with an original musical score by John Trudell and Jackson Browne. Redford made the film in the hopes that Peltier's story, when it became more widely known, would make people demand his freedom though he has exhausted his legal appeals. Catch the film for free at 6 p.m. inside King's Books in Tacoma.
SATURDAY, JAN. 7: Saturday is just an artsy kinda day, isn't it? Which is good, if you're an artsy kinda person. And artsy kinda people need good days, because their lives are difficult. Oh, you chortle, but the price of Ramen has gone through the roof lately. But Saturday is an artsy day because Saturday is the first Saturday of the month, which means the Gig Harbor Monthly Art Walk is on. Take a free, self-guided tour of the galleries along the Gig Harbor waterfront from 1-5 p.m. See other people's work and become inspired.
SUNDAY, JAN. 8: For weeks the newspaper ads have been catching Bobble Tiki's eye: "Psychic Readers Network - Work at Home - No Experience Necessary." If no experience is necessary, then anyone could be a telephone psychic, Bobble Tiki figures - even Bobble Tiki. He's determined to try. He has seen the late-night television commercials that portray psychics gleaning the innermost secrets of amazed callers. But before he takes the plunge, Bobble Tiki will do a little homework. He'll check out the Intuitive and Healing Arts Fair noon to 7 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Crystal Voyage in Tacoma. Psychic readers in palm, face, tarot, angel card and past life promise to enlighten for free. Right now, the only thing Bobble Tiki can predict is last night's winning lottery numbers.