David Timmons, who served as Port Townsend’s first and only City Manager, retired last month after an unprecedented twenty-year stint in a job that burns most people out in five. On this week’s Compass, Timmons visits KPTZ studios for a live chat with reporter Charlie Bermant about how Port Townsend has evolved, his role in that evolution and what he expects for the town’s future.
Two special days at the end of June 2019, brought a confluence of history: the acknowledgement of several thousand years of rich social and religious indigenous culture, ownership and rejection of past intolerance, and the opportunity to educate citizens and visitors alike about the relationship between the ‘SKlallam People and the European settlers who came to occupy this special place the ‘Sklallams called the village of Qatay. A 30-foot totem arrived at the foot of Water Street, and the Cheech-ma-han Trail was dedicated and embraced by the community. Join us as we hear some of the sounds, voices and music that made these two days so special.
The first annual THING event takes over Fort Worden State Park on August 24 -25, presenting a variety of music, theater and literary events. For this week’s Compass, Josh LaBelle (executive director of Seattle Theatre Group) and Adam Zacks (co-producer of the event), two of the organizers talked with KPTZ News staffer Charlie Bermant about how the festival came to be and landed in Port Townsend. We’ll learn about the the festival’s specifics and how it will provide a well rounded immersive artistic experience for all ages.
Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows drew the final curtain on May 2, 2017, closing after 146 years. Immediately after, the city of Baraboo, Wisconsin (historic home of the Ringling Brothers) extended a heartfelt invitation to ALL former employees of the Greatest Show on Earth to attend its festival that summer as honored guests and Grand Marshalls of the Annual Circus Parade. KPTZ reporter Chris Bricker attended, not only to cover the event, but also as a former Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus clown. In this reprise of an earlier Compass episode, we revisit some of these employees, especially those who took care of the Circus Train — the Show’s home on the rails — as it reached its final run.
Also, a year ago, we gathered together some Swan School kids for a “Question & Answer Session,” and we thought it would be fun to revisit their answers.
This week on the Compass, Dave Cunningham interviews climate conspiracy theorist Gene Farr, who believes that climate scientists worldwide are involved in a socialist plot to control the world’s population, led by an unnamed former director of the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and that global warming is actually beneficial–as evidenced by thriving plants and a rumored sighting of a family of fat and happy polar bears.
This week on the Compass we go with Jared DuFresne to a meeting of Port Townsend’s Boy Scouts of America’s first-ever all-girl scout troop. Listen as troop leaders Ron and Janette Linn, along with their daughter and scout patrol leader, Evelynn, as they discuss the benefits of this change. Then join Missy Nielsen as she discusses with Darlene Schanfald of the National Wastewater Residuals Grassroots Network, the little-known challenges of wastewater, and the biological waste material found in bio solids, creating major issues for life in and around the waters of Puget Sound.
In this, the second of two reports from Compass on the Global Earth Repair Conference #globalearthrepair , Chris Bricker visits the issue of breaching four lower Snake River Dams. We hear from filmmaker Michael Peterson, and Jim Waddell, retired Army Corps of Engineers. We’ll also hear conference keynote remarks from writer and speaker, Charles Eisenstein, along with some childhood memories of the lower Snake river from Carrie Nightwalker Schuster, Matriarch of the Lower Snake River Palouse.
This week on the Compass, we talk with a Port Townsend husband-and-wife team, trained in the fields of science and investigation, who will be sharing what they know about some very mysterious and mystical subjects.
On this week’s hour-long Compass special, we join the hundreds of scientists, farmers, tribal elders, students, and environmental activists who came to Port Townsend from around the world recently for the Global Earth Repair Conference. #globalearthrepair
This week on the Compass, we visit what its discoverer is calling the Quimper Lost Wilderness, a slice of ancient rain-shadow forest that has somehow escaped the lumberjacks’ saws despite its close proximity to civilization…until now.
