…Well, if I’m honest about it (a phrase I find more and more in current novels by UK writers using the first person), I don’t really live in Port Townsend.
Gwen the Beautiful and I actually live in a small, rural suburb of PT, which is itself a small, rural suburb of Seattle, which once was a small semi-rural city but now is a teeming tech industry bastion, but I don’t want to name that city (officially a village) because even though I expose myself in varying degrees daily on our beloved interwebs, we do value our privacy.
Did I ever tell you about my stalker?
Luckily, that’s from another place and time. What I want to present here now is one of the most positive aspects of life in Port Townsend’s growing corner of the Olympic Peninsula.
I’m talking about the fact that it has one of the largest populations of 1970’s hippies you’ll find anywhere, and the result is that the people in PT are just about as rebellious, creative, colorful, welcoming (and also unwelcoming – you remember how the ’70s hippies were, right?), and independently minded as any group of people can be.
Today’s example is a mention in a column by Jas Keimig that I found at The Stranger.Com yesterday. Here’s that mention in full (because it’s news and that allows me to reproduce it, right? God, I hope I’m right. Anyway:)
Southern resident orcas have rights, too: Port Townsend knows this. Today, the town issued a (nonbinding) proclamation recognizing orcas’ legal rights, the first time an American city council has done so, reports the Seattle Times. What does that include? According to Port Townsend Mayor David J. Faber, orcas have “the right to life, autonomy, culture, free and safe passage, adequate food supply from naturally occurring sources, and freedom from conditions causing physical, emotional or mental harm, including a habitat degraded by noise, pollution and contamination.” And we better respect them!
Yep, PT is that kind of place, and as a result I’m proud to live, um, Port-Townsend-adjacent. Come visit sometime. (Not me, the area. If you want to see Gwen and/or me, get in touch about if first, por favor, and we’ll see if you meet the stringent requirements.)
Love Port Townsend and the whole area around it. You picked a great spot to live, and, with your writing, you should be it’s ambassador.
Speaking of living in PT, here’s another fun factoid from way back on Christmas Eve 2021:
https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/port-townsend-council-makes-entheogens-low-police-priority/