UA Update
Dear Editor: Trying times reinforces the neighbor-helping-neighbor attitude that Alaskans unfailingly exhibit every day, and particularly in times of distress. In these unprecedented times, it will take all of us working together to sustain our state and our communities. The University of Alaska (UA) moved almost all of its courses to alternative methods of delivery – predominately online – and while this transition has been stressful, the generosity of our telecommunications partners has made it easier. Your partnership in offering our UA community faster, affordable home broadband services, removed the financial obstacles and streamlined our transition to UA’s work from home directive.
The support for UA in providing greater access to connectivity at lower or no cost is recognized and greatly appreciated by the Board of Regents and by our students, faculty and staff. We know that there are many across the state, including our partners in the K-12 system, our telecoms are supporting during this crisis, and we are so thankful for all that you are doing.
I know that we are all doing everything we can to keep our families, employees and, in our case, students safe. The contributions of our telecommunication firms to that effort has made all the difference. On behalf of the Board of Regents and all of us at the University of Alaska, thank you for your caring and with partnership with us. We will weather these unprecedented times together as we strive to do what’s right for our university, our communities and our state.
Sheri Buretta, Chair
University of Alaska
Board of Regents
In Appreciation
Dear Editor: During this time of uncertainty, I am compelled to write with the most robust appreciation for being constant and true in retaining some bit of normalcy to our lives by giving us the newspaper. I, for one, seem to have made picking up a paper after 5 p.m. part of the new daily routine. Take this as a love letter, take this as you will, thank you for the heartbeat in our community.
Karen Lucas, Sitka
Newspaper Delivery
Dear Editor: These are such strange times we are living in. We so appreciate that the Daily Sitka Sentinel has taken generous steps to allow all of Sitka to get the newspaper for free. We are beyond amazed that our home delivery subscription will resume with extended time when these COVID 19 pandemic precautions are finished.
We would like to personally request that our subscription continue to run its course, and not be extended, as a small contribution to supporting local business and news during these difficult times.
We all will get through this and be better for it.
Peter and Michelle Kennedy, Sitka
A COMMENTARY:
We’re Better Together
By Steve Dalquist
It’s different now. It’s only been a couple months since we were comfortably entrenched in a reality we’d known from birth – that everyone had known since birth and naively expected would last forever – and now it’s gone. There is small comfort to be had, rooting for inclusion with the 80% who will survive. We are all equally vulnerable, equally unknowing of it’s origin and microscopic mechanics. We don’t know how to kill it – all we can do is exhaust it at the cost of our own lives and hope it doesn’t recover. There is a palpable vulnerability that I feel – and I think we all do to some degree – a softly throbbing, chest tightening, anxiety that I may inadvertently find myself in the wrong place for just a moment and then be exposed to the bug. Biological cloak and dagger – it waits for you to be distracted. And then you’re committed – to the testing and the over-stressed healthcare system – inline to become another statistic shaping the odds between survival and death. It’s a vulnerability that bares my struggle to choose courage or give in to what seems inevitable. Rich or poor, Red or Blue, young or old – no matter your gender or culture or faith – we all face an equal opportunity termination. It’s unbelievable, unspeakable, incomprehensible – it just can’t be true – but it is.
“Death is normal, resistance is futile.” The Borg understand these things. We must accept ownership – accountability – for our actions. Clearly no one is to blame and strategically, we can’t afford to await salvation in the waiting room. We’ve been through this before and we can do it again, united we can find a solution, we can turn this around and change poison into medicine. If not now – then when? Convenience is irrelevant. Our interconnectedness is irrefutable. Our behavior will determine whether we live or die together. We are as indivisible as fish and the water in which they swim. If we are concerned for our own health and safety – first and foremost – we must pray for the health and safety of the world.
Deluded by the proposition that happiness can be found outside ourselves, we habitually seek out strategies that blind us to the possibility we are so much stronger united than apart. And so we separate from our peers and focus primarily on those elements of self-interest that cause fragility and disconnection – that push us apart – ignorant of our true bonds. If only we could agree that life itself is the most valuable and wondrous possession in the universe - and that your life and my life are verifiably identical and equal and what I do to you I do to myself. And what I do to myself, I do to you. If only…
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Steve Dalquist has been a resident of Sitka since 1998.
