POULSBO — Olympic College invited us out to a groundbreaking ceremony Feb. 14 for their new Healthcare Expansion at the Poulsbo campus. It’s an $8.5M project aimed at expanding the college’s already established (and often full) health care programs to include three new courses focused in the fields of radiology, sonography and surgical technology. The project is chiefly being funded by $6M in covid-era funding secured by the Kitsap County Commissioners plus $2.5M from Virginia Mason (now the only civilian hospital in town) and an additional $200K of recurring annual funds secured by State Rep Greg Nance. Local dignitaries were out in force at the standing-room-only press conference, lauding this collective effort to provide a pathway for more trained healthcare workers in a time where a six-week wait just for an appointment isn’t uncommon. Later that day, the Kitsap Sun reported that Bremerton’s Naval Hospital announced it would be transitioning hundreds of patients into the already taxed civilian system after retirements and staffing shortages left that hospital with only one internal medicine clinical physician for some-2000 patients. The OC Healthcare Expansion is already underway in program development, equipment procurement and now construction with an estimated completion of Phase 2 by 2028. More at olympic.edu/hce
PORT ORCHARD — We got word the other day that an LA artist who goes by Danko has been living in Port Orchard for about a year and half, bouncing between there and Southern California doing art things. This press release announced Danko’s upcoming show at the Seattle Art Museum in March, in the gallery space adjacent to the museum’s 40 Year Retrospective from contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Pretty badass. So we got Danko on the phone a few days after the late February windstorms that knocked power out to just about all of Port Orchard. The artist had been running an extension cord from his idling SUV out front of his house to power lights in his upstairs studio while he put the finishing touches on the show. Power was back on when he picked up the phone. He had ‘The Last Dance,’ a 2020 documentary about the 1990s Chicago Bulls, playing in the background. He paused the show to talk with us about those 90s Bulls, about playing hoops as a kid, about how a kid from small-town Wisconsin made his way to the LA art scene and how that inner child is guiding his current body of work, and this show at SAM opening March 6, which he calls ‘Monuments Of Play.’ More at seattleartmuseum.org and danko.com
IN OTHER NEWS… The Kitsap Great Give is March 11 and Lori writes in to say that she’d like that to get more attention. Each year, the Kitsap Community Foundation gathers both big and small local non-profit groups and charity organizations into one searchable donation website, promoting one big day of community donation. Early giving is open currently. Find more about what these groups do, what they need and how to help at kitsapgreatgive.org. MEANWHILE… the BANFF Mountain Film Festival World Tour (out of Canada) is showing at the Roxy March 7-8. Travis writes in to report that 10% of ticket sales will go directly to two local non-profits: the Great Peninsula Conservancy and a youth outdoor education organization called Y.E.T.I. Doors at 6 p.m., show at 7 p.m. each night, separate programming each night, plus door prizes. Tickets at livetoplay.com. ALSO… one of our Gorst correspondents wrote in, presumably from the Wigwam Tavern, with the WSDOT press release about the current Planning & Environmental Linkages Survey concerning improvements to the Gorst SR3/SR16/SR166/SR304 corridor. There was an open meeting at the end of February, online comments are open thru March 11. More at engage.wsdot.wa.gove/sr-3-gorst-area/study-overview. PLUS… Two recent local earthquakes: a 3.1 magnitude with an epicenter near the Illahee Preserve in Bremerton on Feb. 27 and a 4.5 magnitude with an epicenter six miles east of Orcas Island on March 3… AND… We got a call from the editor at the sun, telling us he wasn’t ‘pissed’ that we accidentally put a picture of one of his newspapers on fire on the cover of the first issue of last year’s smokestack (as reported in last month’s year-in-review). If anything, he brought it up because he thought it was funny. <3SMOKESTACK
