August 26, 2014 Community Happenings

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Category: News

Created on Tuesday, 26 August 2014 10:56

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    Monthly Grind
    Season to Begin
    The Sitka Monthly Grind is gearing up for its 20th season.
    The grind’s philosophy is a family oriented, non-political and affordable event.
    Admission is $5 for adults and $1  for those under 12. Tickets must be purchased ahead of time at Old Harbor Books. The price of the ticket will be reimbursed for those who take a plate of homemade dessert – one dessert per admission.
    The following are the dates and the themes are being planned: Oct 11 Alaska Day Grind; Nov. 7 Whalefest Grind; Dec. 13 Jazz and Blues Grind; Jan. 17 Fiddle Grind; Feb. 14 Valentine’s Day Grind; March 14 Singer-Songwriter Grind; and April 4 Intellectual Grown-Up Grind.
    All will be at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi, except the Whalefest Grind will be at Harrigan Hall. Those with questions, or who wish to participate, can call Ted at 747-5482 or Jeff 747-4821.

    Kuspuk Sewing
    Class on Tap
    A free kuspuk sewing class and fashion show are being planned at the Sheldon Jackson Museum.
    The workshop is 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sept. 20-21 at the Rasmuson Building on the SJ Campus. The fashion show will be 3-4 p.m. Sept. 27 at the museum gallery.
    It will be taught by Unupiaq artist Karen Denise McIntire. Participants will need to take some supplies and their own sewing machines.
    McIntire is an Irish-Eskimo, born in Nevada, raised in Alaska. She spent many of her years growing up in South-Central Alaska and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region. In October of 1986, she relocated to Bethel where she resided for 28 years. In 2013 she moved to Sitka. She is now the owner of a small business, Creative Native, making and selling hand-crafted gifts.
    Participants must register and be able to attend both sessions and the fashion show.
    For more information and to register for this free program, call 747-8981
 
    Core Taught
    Sitka Community Schools announces a new session of the Core strengthening class for adults Sept. 2-Oct. 30.
    Students will meet 5:30-6:15 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary School gym. The cost is $80.
    Registration is at the Community Schools office located in Blatchley Middle School.

    Park Board Meets
    The Sitka State Parks Advisory Board will meet 7:30 a.m. Sept. 9 at Centennial Hall. The public is invited.

    New Arrivals
Baby Girl Workman
    Jesslyn Kaye Workman was born 4:35 a.m. Aug. 17 at Sitka Community Hospital. At birth, the infant weighed 6 pounds and was 19.5 ounces.
    Parents are Skye and Ian Workman of Sitka. The mother is employed at the Sitka Pioneers Home and the father at Chinalski Home Repair.
    Jesslyn joins a brother, Jayden.



    Fish to Schools
    Serves Up Lunch
    The Sitka Conservation Society has announced that local fish lunches will be served every Wednesday during the upcoming year starting Sept. 3 at Baranof, Keet, Blatchley, Sitka and Pacific schools, and at Mt. Edgecumbe, SEER  and Head Start. For more information about Fish to Schools call 747-7509.

Scientist Finds Link to Art

Solomon Endlich. (Photo provided)

    As the first mathematician or scientist involved in three years of the Sitka Fellows Program, Solomon Endlich  thinks that the divide between arts and sciences is an artificial one.
    Endlich, who grew up in a family of artists, said he thinks of himself “not as a scientist in the midst of artists, but as one of a group thinking creatively about the world they inhabit together. I happen to use mathematics, but the sentiment is the same and for me that’s very important. I do physics because I believe that the universe is a beautiful and wondrous place.  I use physics as a way to ponder and appreciate how and why it works.”
    Endlich was trained as a high-energy theoretical physicist at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. His education brought him through a winding road that started with biology and then chemistry, before moving into a pastiche of particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology and general relativity.
    “Once you start learning quantum mechanics,” Endlich said,  “you’re in physics, and you can’t go back. For me it’s always been about simplicity of the ideas and the beauty of the manifold complicated phenomena which we see around us, all coming from just a few fundamental ideas or laws.”
    Now, Endlich differentiates himself from his peers in the science committee by employing an untraditional pairing of subject and method. He’s investigating planetary dynamics – the ways that planets interact with one another and with their solar system – and is employing quantum field theory and particle physics techniques in a field that has traditionally been studied through Newton’s gravitational laws and fluid dynamics.
    “I have a mathematical toolkit that astronomers don’t - they often don’t know quantum field theory, and sometimes they don’t know general relativity because often they don’t need it,” Endlich said.
    Endlich finds it incredible that by applying this uncommon pairing, “you can use mathematics developed (to describe the collision of atoms) to describe the collision of two black holes a million times the mass of the sun.”
    For Endlich, his journey to find more elegant, transparent, and rigorous ways to understand the universe is happening at an exciting time.
    “We’ve gone in 10 years from knowing nothing about other solar systems to finding thousands of new planets totally unlike what we would have expected,’’  he said. ‘‘From the perspective of myself at 14 years old, I feel like I’m working on the coolest thing in the world.”
    Endlich is participating in the Sitka Fellows Program, which offers seven weeks of room, board and studio space to six individuals under the age of 30 each summer. Now in its third year, it is  a program of the Island Institute made possible through partnership with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp along with generous donations from the Hames Corporation and individual contributors.
    The Sitka Fellows Program Open Studios event, which will feature showcases of work by each of the Fellows, will be 7-9 p.m. Aug. 28. For more information, visit www.sitkafellows.org.

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