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Why I Live in Port Townsend WA…

(by Sergio Amiti/Getty via thestranger.com)

…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.)

Read more of this edition of Jas’ column

Read more about and by Jas Keimig & The Stranger

Facing the Retirement Blues

Yesterday’s post about “strange ripples in the bubble surrounding our solar system” reminded me of how much I loved writing about Cloud Creek Ranch, the magical Ozark property Gwen the Beautiful and I lived on way back when.

For those who aren’t familiar with yours truly’s life and times, while we were in Arkansas I wrote a newspaper column called Live! From Paradise! about the people, the animals, the full-out, in-your-face way of life Cloud Creek created. And loved it every bit as much as I did writing and producing TV shows that once upon a time were watched by millions and now are unknown to – and unremembered by – millions more.

(Uh-oh, I feel a digression coming on. “Out!” I say. “Focus” is the word for today.)

The more I think about it, the more I find myself wanting to write something similar to my former column. Cloud Creek Ranch (and its equally rural predecessor – hey, it bordered on Malibu and a country spot, right? – also called – you guessed it – Cloud Creek Ranch are no more, but our way of life here on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State is also rural and just as enveloped in magic as the others were.

In fact, in many ways, our current digs outside of a small, very independent-minded town called Port Townsend remind me of when Gwen and I first were first married and made our home on the Santa Clara Pueblo near Santa Fe, New Mexico. I haven’t talked about Santa Clara much on the web, but I it does figure prominently in a book of poetry I’ve published.

(Actually in three or four of them, but I see myself starting to commit the grandfather of all digressions, so I’ll come back to that some other time. C’mon, Brode get to the bottom line of this post.)

So–

Some of you may already know that for the past few weeks I’ve been on a kind of inner quest, a journey on which I’m looking for the right topics to discuss here at LarryBrody.Com. Topics that wouldn’t have fitted TVWriter™, the everything-you-need-to-know-about showbiz-but-were-afraid-to-ask site I ran for over twenty years. I’m still searching, but as of today, I think the ups and downs and joys and sorrows of living in the Pacific Northwest and its rain, rain, rain, and blue skies that actually are a kind of misty white definitely need get up on the interweb stage.

In other words, Live! From Paradise! meet Live! From the Olympic Rainforest! How’s that sound?

Other than being just a tad long and awkward, I mean.

Looks like I’m going to have to do some harder thinking about what I’m doing. Which definitely is something I was trying to avoid. But starting this blog has made me understand something I’ve also been trying to keep from facing.

Without hard thinking, how will I know I’m alive?