December 3, 2014 Community Happenings

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Category: News

Created on Wednesday, 03 December 2014 10:46

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Live Music at

Annual Bazaar

Mike and Iko Sullivan will be playing at the annual ANS Christmas Bazaar 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Dec. 6 at the ANB Founders Hall.

The event will include food and items from a variety of artists. For more information call Helen at 747-3410.

STA CCT Panel

Meets Dec. 8

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska Cultural, Customary, and Traditional Committee will meet noon Monday, Dec. 8, at  the STA Resource Protection Department Office, 429 Katlian St.

A light lunch will be provided.  The public is invited to attend.  

Tribal citizens are being encouraged to serve on the CC&T Committee.  Those with questions about the meeting or becoming a member can contact Resource Protection Director Jeff Feldpausch at 747-7469.

SAFV Launches

New Website

Sitkans Against Family Violence  announces the launch of a newly redesigned website at safv.org.

‘‘We have been working on revitalizing it to be a more comprehensive resource that includes the services, programs, and events that SAFV offers,’’ SAFV said.

Of note are several new sections – a timeline of SAFV’s history, details of advocacy services for residents and community members, and information about all of the Pathways to a Safer Sitka prevention programs.

Iota Kappa

Gamma to Meet

Iota Kappa Gamma members will  have their yearly Santa Sale to raise money for scholarships 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 6. Members will meet at Jan Love’s for brunch and bidding.

Guest Artist to Illustrate

Fine Art of Making Books

“A few years ago, I translated a book from French without knowing the language.” 

That’s the simplest explanation that Anchorage artist Jimmy Riordan can offer about the project that he has spent much of the last 10 years on. He’ll be reading from his recently letterpress-printed and hand-bound translation of Francis Jammes’ 1903 novel, ‘‘Le Roman Du Lièvre,’’ 6-7 p.m. Thursday at the Yaw Chapel on the SJ Campus.   

Riordan’s current reading tour marks a major milestone in a much wider project, one that he has treated as a social and cultural lifeline and a tool for seemingly endless learning. It has also anchored his practice as an artist, giving him space to launch experiments in form and concept while developing an identity as a conceptual public artist. 

The project began over a decade ago.

“I stole a book from my college library based on its appearance,’’ Riordan said. ‘‘I had it for a year and then lost it, and that’s when I got really interested in it.” 

He found that the original French version had lapsed into public domain along with the badly translated English edition that he had first found. Without knowing any French, Riordan translated the book five years ago. 

After translating the book, he sent it to dozens of artists who had agreed to produce work inspired by it, which he refers to as the book’s marginalia. That work – which included music, food, paintings, stained glass, drawings, pillows, and sculpture – resulted in a gallery show. 

Following that show, Riordan put all of the work into a truck and drove a winding 15,000 miles across the continent, returning the pieces to the artists, most of whom he’d never met. For him, this offered a sense of connection to a community of artists that he couldn’t find at the time in Anchorage, while also giving him a chance to expand the conversation about ‘‘Le Roman Du Lièvre.’’

That journey inspired Riordan to create ‘‘Held Up,’’ a series of comics structurally based on the novel, “but with content drawn from the travels – anecdotal information, people, places – anything that I wasn’t able to contain in the work,” he said. 

A residency funded by the Rasmuson Foundation recently gave Riordan a chance to return to the core of the project at Zygote Press in Cleveland. There, he and a team of volunteers from the Cleveland printing community collaboratively designed and printed his book manually, carefully folding and cutting the paper while using letterpress equipment and printing techniques that fell into disuse decades ago.

These days, Riordan carries 40 pounds of lead with him wherever he goes. At events, like the one this Thursday, he talks about the printing process and explains it by showing some of the type-set page forms used for his book.

He also carries around a box of the lead type from the dissembled pages of his book. He asks the audience to sort them by letter at the start of the show, melting the resultant letter groups into lead ingots at the end of the event bringing the process full circle. For Riordan, this is partially a ceremonial activity for the audience to participate in,  but at the same time he is fascinated by the process.

“You can alchemically transform the type from language into mass; at the end we have a weighable ingot, and the majority of the weight will be the space between things,” Riordan said.

Riordan is in Sitka as a guest of the Island Institute, and will be part of a number of other events. In addition to a variety of events in schools, he will lead a free workshop for all middle school students 1-3 p.m. Saturday. The hands-on workshop, which is part of the Institute’s Story Lab program for youths, will touch on paper engineering, book-making, and drawing comics. 

Both Thursday’s 6-7 p.m. reading and Saturday’s Story Lab workshop will be in the Yaw Chapel on the SJ Campus. 

For more information visit www.islandinstitutealaska.org or call 747-3794. 

Woman’s Club

Meeting Canceled

Sitka Woman’s Club has canceled a meeting planned Saturday, Dec. 6. The next gathering will be a holiday party in January.

A REVIEW:

Doctor Finds Real Home in Kodiak

Johnson, Robert Holmes, M.D. ‘‘Alaska Frontier Surgeon – Arthur Holmes Johnson, M.D., Pioneer Kodiak Physician.’’ Sprucehaven Publishing. 338 pages, including index.Some black-and-white photographs. $17.95.

The most irritating words in this life of a Kodiak surgeon are ‘‘Frontier’’ and ‘‘Pioneer.’’ By 1937 Kodiak, the oldest European settlement in Alaska, established in 1792, was not a frontier nor needed a pioneer to provide medical care.

Other than that, this is an interesting account of the life of the doctor and his family, much of it through the letters exchanged between family members. They were in Portland, Oregon, and having a rough financial time, as most Americans were, indeed, the world was, in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Things changed dramatically in 1937. Dr. Johnson was offered a job at a cannery in Bristol Bay, Alaska, for the summer. The salary was $3,000; more than his annual income. He happily accepted. The cannery location and people made it a very happy summer, and when the ship stopped in Kodiak on the way home, he fell in love with the town and the island. A resident doctor drove him around town, pointed out the new hospital being built by the federal government and invited him to practice there.

So in 1938 the family sailed up the Inside Passage to their new home. Father, mother, and teen-age son happily settled in. Father continued his pattern of being elected to community posts. The growth of the town due to the Naval station being built nearby was also exciting. Fortunately for this book, mother and son went back East to visit her family, so more letters resulted. Father wrote in the form of a diary, telling every detail. One ended sweetly. ‘‘I am keeping very busy so that I do not miss you too much, but I will say that I don’t care about going home, except to sleep.’’

Part of the business was building a new log cabin on a lot they christened Sprucehaven.

When the family was reunited, life in a small town continued, sometimes with conflicts as two parties faced each other at every chance, especially with the politics.

The son grew up and became a medical doctor and joined his father in Kodiak.

So the life of the Johnson family continued with various good times and dilemmas as happens in real life. The reader is invited to come along. The author’s admiration of his father’s achievements can become annoying, but we must remember – if a son can’t revere his father, who can?

–D.L.

Santa Breakfast

Slated Dec. 6

The 3 to 5 Preschool’s Breakfast with Santa fundraiser will be held  9 a.m.-noon Saturday, Dec. 6, at the United Methodist Church of Sitka at 303 Kimsham.

Besides reindeer pancakes, and a bake sale, there will be a silent auction.  Many Sitka businesses and individuals have generously donated items for this event. Gifts for adults and children, gift cards, and the beautifully wrapped baskets are up for bidding.   

Santa will be waiting by the Christmas tree where Dr. Jacobsen will take his photo with kids, for $5. Santa pictures can be purchased at Harry Race Photo after the event. Pumpkin Patch photos are still available at Harry Race photo center as well. 

All are invited to join Jackie DiGennaro for a Christmas sing-along from 9 to 9:45 a.m. 

For more information or questions call 747-6898.   

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