August 12, 2015 Community Happenings

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Created on Wednesday, 12 August 2015 10:38

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Cancer Support

Group to Meet

Sitka Cancer Support Group will meet 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 16, at the  Brave Heart Volunteers in the Pioneers Home Manager’s House.

Those in cancer treatment and cancer survivors, and their families, are invited to spend some time with others who understand what they are going through. The support group is sponsored by Sitka Cancer Survivor’s Society. Call or e-mail Mary Beth with questions or if a ride is needed to attend, at 623-0842, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Emblem Club Meets

Sitka Emblem Club will meet 5 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 13, at Sitka Elks Lodge. Officers are reminded to attend.

Skeet Shooting

Hours Reduced

Due to low turnouts, the Sitka Sportsman’s Association is shifting to every other week for skeet shooting.  

The range will be open 9 a.m.-2 p.m. every second and fourth Saturday of the month until activity picks up. The association said. The next open date will be Saturday, Aug. 22.

Fishing Vessels

Sought to Teach

Dockside Examiners

To meet increasing demand from  fishing vessels, the U.S. Coast Guard is conducting a weeklong “training academy” in Sitka for prospective fishing vessel dockside examiners.

The training will be conducted Sept. 1-4. More than a dozen students from all over Alaska will be here to learn how to conduct Dockside Safety Exams.

‘‘The most beneficial part of the week will be to get everyone aboard as many different fishing vessels as possible to learn how to conduct exams,’’ the Coast Guard said.‘‘If you have a fishing vessel in Sitka, we would love your help.’’

Schedule an actual dockside exam anytime on Thursday, Sept. 3, or the morning of Friday, Sept. 4. Fishers can offer their vessel for one – or more – practice exams on those days. All trainees will be directly supervised by a qualified dockside examiner.

To sign up to help out, contact Steve Ramp at 966-5620.  

Sport Fishing

Closure Noted

The saltwater area of Bear Cove near Medvejie Hatchery will be closed to sport fishing beginning Thursday, Aug. 13.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game said that the closure includes all waters of Bear Cove east of a line from a point on the Baranof Island shoreline at 57°00.63’ N. latitude, 135°09.80’ W. longitude to 57°01.07’ N. latitude, 135°09.93’ W. longitude.

Coho salmon returning to Medvejie Hatchery are not expected to meet broodstock goals in 2015 due to expected harvest and marine survival, Fish and Game said.

A preseason estimate of 960 coho salmon returning to the hatchery is well below the 2,720 needed for broodstock. With additional harvest expected, this closure is necessary to provide sufficient numbers of coho salmon to meet broodstock needs.

For further information, contact the Sitka ADF&G office or visit http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fishingSportFishingInfo.R1&year=2015.

Fellow Heckendorn

Workshop Thursday

By Peter Bradley

The Island Institute

John-Henry Heckendorn says that when he first came to Alaska in 2012, to run a state House campaign in Anchorage, his hope was to “have an adventure and leave.”

A few years later and still in Alaska, his aspirations have evolved: now he’s hoping to contribute toward fostering “an election system that is fair, and run more efficiently; a state Legislature that is competent, collaborative, and focused on local issues; and ultimately an electorate that has more faith in local politics.”

He’s in Sitka this summer as part of the Sitka Fellows Program to work toward those ends, and will be hosting an  interactive workshop about campaign advertisements this Thursday at 7 p.m. in Fraser Hall (the building on the campus lawn closest to the SJ Museum) on the SJ Campus.

After working on state legislative campaigns across Alaska in 2014 and contributing to the development of the Unity Ticket, he started a political communications firm “the Ship Creek Group” earlier in the year in order to provide campaign management resources for shifting the political climate in Alaska. He feels that Alaska is poised to be a model for the rest of the country, based in part on Alaska’s exceptionally high rates of non-partisan voter registration, the success of last year’s unity ticket, and the success of all four ballot initiatives in the 2014 election.

His team’s work centers around “providing more robust campaign infrastructure for non-partisan initiatives and less rabidly partisan candidates. It’s just one piece of the puzzle that requires decisive action from current and future legislators and administrators, stakeholder individuals and organizations around the state.”

Early on, that has meant working on a series of potential good governance initiatives, including one which was approved by the lieutenant governor earlier this week. That initiative is for automated voter registration through the PFD application process. Now, Heckendorn and his team need to collect 20,000 signatures in order for that initiative to get the question onto the 2016 primary ballot. If successful, tens of thousands more people would be registered to vote in Alaska.

In his workshop on Thursday, Heckendorn says he will showcase a blooper reel of “Alaska’s long and zany history of campaign commercials,” while showing some commercials his team has created that have a different tone. He hopes to spark “a real discussion about what it felt like to be the target of the political onslaught to which Alaska was subjected in 2014, what we decided about our relationship to politics in 2014 and how we’d like it to change in coming years.”

All are welcome to the workshop.

The Sitka Fellows Program, now in its fourth year, is a multidisciplinary group residency program which offers time and space to six emerging artists, thinkers, and entrepreneurs from across the country and around the world to develop their personal projects. Each week features a workshop by one of fellows, and the program will culminate in an Open Studio event on Aug. 22 where the fellows will demonstrate their work. 

The program is coordinated by the Island Institute in partnership with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp, and is made possible through donations from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Art Works program, David and Marge Steward, Sea Mart Quality Foods, and many individual donors. For more information, visit www.iialaska.org or call 747-3794.

Basic Computer

Classes at Library 

Kettleson Memorial Library is offering a free basic computer class for adults who have limited or no previous experience with computers.

The class is part of a series that has four sessions, once a week 9 a.m. Wednesdays, Sept. 9, 16, 23 and 30. Classes will last about an hour.

Registration is required and must happen before the start of the first session. Register either in-person at the library, or by calling the library at 747-8708. Space is limited.   

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