Compass

What to do for the Holidays? Whether you are wondering where you are going to find your Thanksgiving dinner, or where to celebrate New Years, this week’s Compass has the inside skinny on where to go and what to do.

This week on the Compass we bring you two more presentations from the Economics of Happiness Conference held at Fort Worden Oct. 27-29, a weekend-long event that brought together some of the world’s most prominent thinkers, writers, and activists in the sustainability and localization movements to “discuss, discover, and devise better systems for now and the future,” as the event’s website puts it. We will hear from Community Sourced Capital co-founder Rachel Maxwell, and organic farming and urban agriculture pioneer Michael Ableman, who were both on hand to lead workshops at the conference.

You can view other talks from the conference HERE.

(October 27-29, 2017) Some of the most prominent thinkers, writers, and activists in the sustainability and localization movements came together at Fort Worden’s Lifelong Learning Center on the weekend of October 27-29, 2017 to “discuss, discover, and devise better systems for now and the future”, as the conference’s website puts it.
Read More

When Yes! Magazine co-founder Sarah Van Gelder polled the 250 attendees at the Economics of Happiness Conference held recently at Fort Worden on the question of whether they thought the transition to a sustainable economy would be rough or smooth, only one hand went up for “smooth”. Everyone else expected a pretty rough road ahead. Which is probably the reason they were all there for the weekend-long event that brought together some of the world’s most prominent thinkers, writers, and activists in the sustainability and localization movements to “discuss, discover, and devise better systems for now and the future”, as the event’s website put it.

The conference was organized by local activists including Karen Wyeth and Local 20/20 co-founder Judith Alexander, with major support from Swedish visionary Helena Norberg Hodge’s organization Local Futures, which has hosted a number of other Economics of Happiness conferences around the world, including in the U.S., India, Australia, Italy, and South Korea.

Along with Van Gelder, Yes! Magazine co-founder David Korten, and Post-Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg, Norberg Hodge anchored the keynote panel on the first evening of the conference. This week on the Compass we bring you highlights of that keynote panel.

Check KPTZ Specials for the complete conference proceedings.

In a reprise of a Halloween special from four years ago, we talk with a former police detective who not only claims to have seen Bigfoot twice, but who also helped supply evidence to prove the existence of the elusive creatures that most believe to be only a myth.

This Thursday, October 19, at precisely 10/19 in the morning it’s going to happen: The Great Shake-out Drill. Yes, it will be 10:19 on 10/19 when KPTZ will ask listeners to duck, cover, and hold, and in general to participate in a practice session to prepare for a major earthquake disaster. In this week’s Compass, we talk with KPTZ Emergency Preparedness Advisor Rita Kepner about what is entailed in preparing for the worst.

This week on the Compass we talk with the executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics about a lawsuit they have lodged against the U.S. Forest Service for improperly permitting the Olympic National Forest to be used by the Navy as a training ground for electronic warfare. And then we talk with a direct descendant of the legendary S’Klallam chief Chetzemoka about his legacy.

This week on the Compass, we don waders and participate in a bit of citizen science as we wander up the middle of Chimacum Creek looking for salmon, dead or alive.

We attend a fundraiser to support four Canadian First Nation Tribes in their legal defense against a planned oil pipeline they say infringes on their aboriginal title and rights, and then we hear about recent medical studies showing that our health may not depend so much on what we eat as when we eat it.

Over more than 45 years of cruising with her husband Larry, Lin Pardey has possibly logged more hours at sea than anyone else alive, and also probably done more to document those experiences in books, articles, and videotapes than any other. Pardey came all the way from her home in New Zealand to be at the 41st Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival, where we interviewed her live during the four-hour remote broadcast from the Festival of Phil Andrus’s Tossed Salad on Friday afternoon. This week on the Compass, we bring you a lightly edited version of that live interview.

This week on the Compass, we talk with KPTZ Board President and General Manager Robert Ambrose about his past and the future of the station under his direction, and then we talk with the saviors of what is almost undoubtedly the world’s oldest surviving luxury yacht, which was recently in Port Townsend for repairs.

In the wake of a catastrophic collapse of a commercial in-water net pen that released hundreds of thousands of non-native Atlantic Salmon into the Salish Sea even as Cooke Aquaculture, the owner of the facility, is looking to expand a similar facility on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, KPTZ Compass this week takes a look back to a 2013 story we did about the devastating effect such fish farms have had on British Columbian wild salmon stocks, even without massive accidental releases.

This week on the Compass, Jefferson County environmental health specialist Anna Bachman tells us step by step how her anti-war activism led her to become the principal editor of the most comprehensive work ever published on Iraq’s biodiversity, and to help found Waterkeepers Iraq.

This week on the Compass, local activists rise to meet the threat of a seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic on the Salish Sea; KPTZ reporter Jack Pokorny covers a Port Townsend protest of President Trump’s threats to the Dreamers Act; and then we revisit a program from late last year about the Ecumenical Helping Hands Organization, or ECHHO, which provides everything from wheelchairs to free chauffer services for the handicapped in Jefferson County.

KPTZ reporter Chris Bricker visits a prairie buffalo herd that’s been brought back from the brink of extinction and chats with Blackfeet Tribal Business Council Secretary Tyson Running Wolf in the second installment of his series of reports on the New Old Time Chautauqua’s working visit to the Native American Blackfoot Confederacy. Then KPTZ reporter Jack Pokorny takes us on board the Committee Boat for the Thunderbird World Series.

Earlier this summer, Port Townsend’s New Old Time Chautauqua took their show on the road deep into Indian Country, visiting the Blackfeet Nation in Browning Montana and beyond. Intrepid KPTZ reporter Chris Bricker was along for the ride, and this week on the Compass we bring you the first of several reports he made on the journey.

This week on the Compass we take a tour behind the scenes at the Port Townsend Aero Museum, and learn a little bit about how to restore antique aircraft.

This week on the Compass we attend a meeting of housing activists discussing a ballot measure aimed at creating a public home opportunity fund, and then we learn of a threat to stockholders’ power to influence corporate behavior.

This week on the Compass, we uncover the hidden past of Port Townsend resident Lynn Webster, who for nearly three decades has been modestly avoiding talk of her fabulous life in show business. Today, she finally tells her stories.

Although it may be true that “everything changes except change itself,” as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, that doesn’t mean that the pace and nature of change can’t be controlled—-which is arguably the purpose of the Jefferson Land Trust, the venerable local nonprofit that has gained wide recognition as an exemplar of the land conservationist movement. This week on the Compass, we talk with Jefferson Land Trust Executive Director Richard Tucker and former executive director Sarah Spaeth about the past present and future of the Trust and the lands it stewards.

This week on the Compass, KPTZ Reporter and DJ Chris Bricker talks with fellow-former clown Murray Horowitz about his career as a hilarious radio game-show host. Then we reprise a segment from 2013 that delves into the intricate relationship of music and the human brain.

This week on the Compass, we accompany Port Gamble S’Klallam tribal elder Gene Jones and about two hundred others on a pilgrimage to sacred Tamanowas Rock.

This week on the Compass we feature an exclusive interview with Race to Alaska Race Boss Daniel Evans. And then we get a sneak preview of the Taste of Port Townsend. Steve Evans is the host.