July 28, 2014 Community Happenings

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Category: News

Created on Monday, 28 July 2014 10:57

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    Services Listed
    For Alfred Gray        Services for Alfred Gray, 83, are 10 a.m. Monday, Aug. 4, at St. Michael’s Cathedral.
    Mr. Gray died July 25 at SEARHC-Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital.

    National Park
    Events on Tap
    Sitka National Historical Park offers daily guided programs teaching visitors about the park’s natural and cultural resources.
    Ranger-guided schedules this week are:
    Tuesday – 9 a.m. Battle Walk, 10 a.m. Totem Walk, 12:30 p.m.  Discovery Talk ‘‘Ravin’ About Ravens’’ and 7 p.m. evening program, Tlingit art and T-shirt signing with Teri Rofkar.
    Wednesday – 9 a.m. Battle Walk, 10 a.m. Totem Walk, noon Totem Walk, 1 p.m.  Discovery Talk ‘‘Sea Otters.’’
    Thursday – 9 a.m. Battle Walk, 10 a.m.  Totem Walk, noon Totem Walk, 1 p.m.  Discovery Talk ‘‘Pinks and Chums and Kings, Oh My! Salmon in the Indian River’’;
    Friday – 9 a.m. Battle Walk, 10 a.m.  Totem Walk, noon Discovery Talk ‘‘Fungus Among Us!’’ and 1 p.m. Discovery Talk ‘‘Climate Change’’;
    Saturday – 9 a.m. Battle Walk, 10 a.m. Totem Walk and 2:30 p.m. Discovery Talk ‘‘Bentwood Boxes.’’
    All ranger-led tours meet at the visitor center on Lincoln Street. For more information call the visitor center at  747-0110.

    Creative Writing
    Workshop Weds.
    Creative nonfiction writer and Sitka Fellow Cathryn Klusmeier will lead a workshop 8 p.m. Wednesday in the Yaw Arts building on the SJ Campus teaching attendees how to write memoirs in just six words.
    The workshop, ‘‘Deep stories, few words,’’ is free and open to all-comers.  Those interested should take a pen and paper.
    Klusmeier grew up in the hills of Arkansas. This May, she graduated from Whitman College summa cum laude with a combined environmental studies and humanities major.
    Her honors thesis, ‘‘Arr-Kan-Saw,’’ is a 120-page nonfiction piece about the pervasive power of place as told through the lens of an Arkansas childhood. In her writing, she tries to bring attention to the ways in which the environment literally encapsulates and permeates the self.
    Klusmeier has received two consecutive Perry Grants to work on an academic book project with writer and professor Don Snow, tentatively titled ‘‘Sustaining Place: The Persistence of the Local in an Era of Globalization.’’  She also works as a documentary film editor, and is currently editing a climate change documentary called ‘‘Beaver Believers.’’
    When not immersed in story, Klusmeier teaches yoga in the community, tutors college students in writing, designs blueprints for her tiny house project, and spends the rest of her time outside. She is a long-distance runner, cyclist, and hiker of out-of-the-way places.
    Of her project, Klusmeier said: ‘‘I  am a seventh generation Arkansan. I was born, bred, and raised on dirt roads and lots of chicken and for my project I intend to finish my creative nonfiction book about place. Against the backdrop of my family’s collective move across the country from Arkansas to Seattle, I’ve woven together a selected family history connecting my own, more recent childhood stories of growing up in Arkansas with stories from my parents and their parents so as to illustrate a sense of circular recapitulation and that so often takes place in Southern storytelling.
    ‘‘Despite physically moving away from the South four years ago, I’ve found that I never really left. It is as if the distance I’ve put between Arkansas and myself these past few years has solidified this very real tether that constantly pulls me back into this Southern mire. And while this project is heavily grounded in personal narration, this is not necessarily only a personal story. My aim is that through the articulation of my own story, I might shed some light into larger questions like: can you ever really leave a place? And should you want to?’’

Noted Weaver Teri Rofkar to Present Evening Program and T-Shirt Signing

    Rofkar to Speak,
    Sign T-Shirts
    At National Park
    Sitka National Historical Park will host noted weaver Teri Rofkar for an evening program and T-shirt signing 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Sitka National Historical Park visitor center theater.
    Rofkar, whose Tlingit name is Chas’ Koowu Tla’a, won the 2014 Sitka National Historical Park T-Shirt design contest for her rendering of traditional Tlingit basket designs.
    Her abstract design references an art form less commonly associated with Northwest Coast art.
    “While most of us have visions of totems and formline when we think of Tlingit art, (my style) is the language of geometric,’’ Rofkar said. ‘‘Without a Western style of writing the Tlingit had formline for the literal images, and geometric for pre-contact recording of similar, and more broad concepts.  When recording math and science I find that our original binary code is infinitely flexible to record more complex concepts. While examples of math and natural sciences are not broadly recognized as methodology among the primitive indigenous populations, the depth of sustainable relationships with plants and animals are just now coming to light in the Western world.”
    Rofkar will speak more about both the inspiration for her T-shirt design and Tlingit geometric art. Her presentation will be followed by a T-shirt signing. The shirts, which were produced in conjunction with the park’s cooperating association, Alaska Geographic, are available in sizes S-XXXL and youth size XL.

    Parent Power
    Hour at Hames
    A time for parents to use the gym, or sign up for a class and workout, while their children are cared for by qualified volunteers is set 8:15-10 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Hames Center.
    Call Hames at 747-5080 for more information to sign up.

    Ukelele Lessons
    Slated on Sundays
    Free beginner ukulele lessons are held  Sundays at the Pioneers Home Chapel.
    Individuals can meet 5-6 p.m. to learn and practice chords and the basic strum, followed by “the hundred” ukuleles 6-7:30 p.m.
    Text Jeannie at (510) 610-0075 with questions

    First Friday
    Event Aug. 1
    Local downtown businesses will have extended hours until 8 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 1, in participation with Sitka’s First Friday Event.
    Revitalize Sitka invites all to ‘‘Come to enjoy, shop and relax in Sitka’s lovely downtown area.’’

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