It’s a brand new year, and with the new year some big changes are coming to Port Townsend’s main commercial artery.  This week on the Compass we talk about the newly launched Water Street Enhancement Project.

While for most people the holidays are a season of love, joy, and celebration of friends and family, for others it can be a time of crippling depression and even thoughts of suicide. It is for this reason that this week on the Compass we are bringing you the story of a woman who actually committed suicide, but miraculously survived not only to tell the tale, but to bring hope and help to others considering doing the same.

This week on the Compass we go to the First Annual Olympic Peninsula Farmer’s Convergence and Mixer, where we hear first-hand from farmers about obstacles to their success and the solutions they seek.

This week on the Compass we take part in a bittersweet reunion of workers for what was once known as the Greatest Show on Earth, and then Seattle radio journalist Martha Baskin reports on the kiddie version of the farm to table movement.

‘Tis the season for overeating and not getting enough exercise…but lest we fall prey to the illusion that we can pop a pill to make up for our bad behavior, this week on the Compass we reprise a story we did several years ago on the pills that more and more Americans hope will fend off the ill effects of an unhealthy lifestyle.  Then correspondent Martha Baskin looks at the question of what place natural gas has in plans for a clean energy future.

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.
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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.