
Local News for 8/12



(Airdate: August 12, 2020) Nan Evans meets Steve Grace on the beach at the Northwest Maritime Center in downtown Port Townsend. Steve had just come out of the water and shares what he just saw while snorkeling in our local waters.
(Airdate: August 11, 2020) Our Town Host Maryanne McNellis interviews Kris Nelson, owner of four Port Townsend restaurants and bars (Sirens, Alchemy, The Old Whiskey Mill and The Inbetween). Like virtually all business owners, Kris has suffered significant losses through the great COVID-19 shutdown of 2020. She says she loses money every day she stays open throughout the spring and summer. Take out and limited seating does not really translate into profits in the restaurant business. But Kris is a fighter and hopes to weather the COVID storm and emerge with her business intact. Here’s her strategy: “I want to focus on how to succeed, not whether we will succeed.”


At today’s meeting, County Health Officer Dr. Tom Locke said we’d gone a whole week without another case.

For nearly 125 years, Aldrich’s Market in Uptown has changed hands only five times – through five families, unrelated by birth. That is, up until now. The Market has survived economies of the times and two world wars, and has risen like a Phoenix from the ashes of two fires. It’s the oldest grocery store in Washington state still operating under the same trade name.
Clark Aldrich hung out his sign in 1896, and since then, the store’s location has moved several times. Aldrich’s has been both a physical as well as symbolic cultural center for the both the neighborhood community and the town in general. Enter siblings Yos, Rachel, and Christina Ligtenberg! Yes, yet another family – and one with a deep understanding of the Port Townsend community. They’ve appeared, serendipitously, right at a time when Aldrich’s – like a family cat – was about to lose another one of its lives.

Today’s Through Science to Health program with KPTZ host Chris Bricker and Lynn Sorensen, RN discussed local and national news regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Articles from the National Institute for Health (NIH), NPR, and The Atlantic were sources for their discussion regarding vaccine development, therapeutic tests, infection and death projection numbers through 2020, and the human immune system – its usual response to pathogens and its unusual response to coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) where it over-performs, causing more damage to the human body. The question of school re-opening is still that – a question. Local school districts have yet to announce their plan for this academic year.
(Airdate: August 7, 2020) Phil Andrus, host of Tossed Salad and Cats in Our Laps, on radio, salsa, and the history of KPTZ.
(Airdate: August 7, 2020) Oceanna Van Lelyveld, owner of the Cellar Door, on the service industry in Port Townsend and the things COVID-19 teaches us.
