Priorities?
Dear Editor: Sitting at your kitchen table to make a budget, you prioritize the things that are most important for your family – providing daily meals, maintaining the roof over your head, ensuring your kids grow up healthy, and giving your kids every opportunity to succeed.
Each year, members of Congress have the opportunity to weigh in on our nation’s priorities through the appropriations process. This appropriations season, we urge Congress to voice their support on issues that build the foundation to end poverty – health, education, and economic opportunity.
These anti-poverty, global development programs represent less than one percent of the budget. That is less than one penny of every dollar that goes to save lives and support low-income nations to become more self-reliant.
You can also easily voice your priorities to our two senators and representative at www.results.org.
Sitka RESULTS
Michele Friedman, Libby Stortz,
Kim Kirkness, Mim McConnell,
Nancy Knapp, Mary Soltis,
Brenda Campen, Toby Campbell,
Debra Brushafer, Ann Walter,
Mike Litman, Krisanne Rice
MEHS Prom
Dear Editor: On behalf of the MEHS 2018 Prom Committee, we have a number of thank yous for those who contributed to the success of this year’s event.
To begin we need to recognize Alaska Airlines for their continued above and beyond support. This year they provided dresses, shoes, manicures, pedicures, make-up artists, hair stylists, flowers, tux fitting and men’s haircuts. They have been providing many of these services for 10 years. This year the volunteer team consisted of 30-40 volunteers. We’d also like to thank the dynamic team at Centennial Hall, where the event was hosted. They worked alongside our team for set-up, during the event itself, break-down and cleanup.
Bobbi Jordan worked tirelessly as our official event photographer, providing hundreds of professional studio images. ALPS Credit Union willingly provided the use of their stanchions and Lori Adams loaned a red carpet, both of which served as the grand entrance to welcome the students to the event.
Members of the MEHS junior class advisers, school administrators and recreation staff all went above and beyond their line of duty, chaperoning, setting up and cleaning up, providing time and support to make sure the event was a success. To those other community members who came, volunteered, drove, cooked, helped, thank you! We know there are many more of you out there who deserve recognition. For all of you, we are grateful!
Emily Routon,
MEHS Prom Coordinator;
Sierra Felts, Ulric Aloysius,
Hayleigh Johansen,
Taylor Kairaiuak, Joshua DeAsis, Gabbi Comolli and Ana Karmen,
2018 MEHS Prom Committee
SAIL Dinner, Auction
Dear Editor: On behalf of Southeast Alaska Independent Living, I want to express our appreciation to the individuals and businesses who contributed to the success of the art and dinner auction for SAIL held Friday, April 6, at Centennial Hall.
Special thanks is extended to Our Town Catering for their delectable dinner, Baranof Brewing Company and Ludvig’s Bistro for their contributions of beer and wine, and the Pioneer Mountain String Band for filling the evening with delightful music. We also want to give thanks to all of the artists and community members who shared their talent in creating or donating unique works of art auctioned off for donations.
Furthermore, we cannot express our appreciation enough to the many volunteers who donated their time and resources to assist in ensuring the event ran smoothly. Thank you, Danielle Cassedy, Michelle Bricker, Liv Crowl, Tina Bachmeier, Clare Kelly and John Stein – our energetic auctioneer.
The art and dinner auction would not have been possible without all of your support. Thank you for continuing to believe that we can make a difference in our community by empowering elders and people with disabilities and inspiring personal independence for Sitkans of all ages and any disability.
Tiffany Justice,
Sitka Program Director,
Southeast Alaska
Independent Living
Herring Collapse
Dear Editor: Now that at least some of Sitka’s women are frothed up about the Sitka Sound Herring Fishery (LTE: “Herring Fishery,” April 10), perhaps something will actually, really happen. Then again, perhaps not.
The words of Sitka Woman’s Club’s Ms. Lucas, Alexander and McNeilley (in a world that made any kind of sense) would be a clarion call to – if not necessarily “action” (at least not yet) – then (or at least at first) to some semblance of actual, real “Thought.” And then – hopefully – to “Discussion,” “Dialogue,” “Debate” and, ultimately, mature, rational, intelligent, adult, fact-and reality-based “Decision.” By all Stakeholders concerned.
Five years ago, the Sentinel posted a series of LTEs that began:
“Has anyone thought about what would happen if the herring didn’t come?
“The Equinox Snow has fallen, so the Herring can’t be too far behind, can they? They’ll be here soon. Or will they?
“Has anybody thought about what it would mean if the Southeast Alaska Herring Fishery was to collapse?” (LTE: “Herring” March 25, 2013).’’
That sequence of letters continued, five years ago almost to the day, on April 8, 2013 (LTE: “Herring”) with:
“With closure, this year’s Sitka commercial Sac Roe Herring Fishery has failed to meet this season’s even significantly reduced expectations and hopes; i.e., the herring, in fact, did not come.”
It continued:
“The bad news is that we will all now have an opportunity to begin to explore answers to the no-longer rhetorical questions of the immediate impact of this no-show on the commercial fishery and subsistence. And, we may begin learning as soon as this summer, in perhaps (hopefully?) small, barely detectable ways, just how critical herring is – not as the harvest of a commercial fishery, but as a forage fish – to the Southeast Alaska ecosystem and bioregion; to “seabirds and lions, and bears and whales, and eagles and ravens and, perhaps above all, to ‘forests that grow salmon on trees.’’’
“The only good news is this: ADF&G now has (in 2013) two years of significantly depressed herring numbers to work with, with which to better attempt to understand what has happened, why it is happening, and how things may unfold in the future.
Five years later, ADF&G now has a longer and more immediate trend of numbers to analyze, the permit holders have a new conundrum around which with and within with which to finesse, and the questions raised then still stand:
“Are ADF&G’s procedures and attendant policies for managing herring in Southeast Alaska working? And if they are, for whom? And, if not, for whom not? Second: Is the science that those procedures and policies are based on valid; and, if so claimed, on what basis? And finally: Is the current economics and political management of the extraction of this resource working in a way that is even trying to be optimally both economically sustainable, on the one hand, and ecologically responsible, on the other; and again, on what basis?”
Sometimes, being able to say “I told you so” is really kind of cool; at other times (like this one), it totally (expletives deleted).
JG Moebus, Sitka
