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Newly cleaned flooring, new paint and new faces will be among the changes students see as they return to school on Aug. 24. However, there will be plenty going on that students don’t really notice. School district staff are working hard to prepare for the coming educational year, whether it be in updating their certifications, preparing the classrooms or focusing on all the little details to ensure a successful year for kids. Online registration will begin Aug. 11 on the school district website, while in-person registration will be held Aug. 1...
In the coming months, the borough plans to get stricter about enforcing parts of its municipal code — particularly rules prohibiting trash and derelict cars or boats from accumulating on people’s property. At a work session June 25, the assembly met with Borough Manager Jeff Good, Police Chief Tom Radke, Economic Development Director Kate Thomas and Public Works Director Tom Wetor to discuss what this new push for enforcement might look like in practice. “We’re not here to have a revenue stream,” said Radke. “We’re here to improve the t...
When most people think of vacation, they don't necessarily think about work. But for visiting Britons Kate Dziubinska and Charlie Winchester, their work is the reason for their vacation. Winchester, 35, and Dziubinska (pronounced Juh-bin-skuh), 29, arrived in Wrangell on July 11 as part of a multi-country tour to learn how other countries are doing conservation work in wilderness areas. It's taken a lot of planning and saving (as most of their travel is self-financed), but it's yielding a world...
It wasn’t a downpour but it was enough to raise the water level at both reservoirs and ease fears of shortages, Public Works Director Tom Wetor said of the rainfall Sunday and Monday. “Overall, I’m feeling pretty good,” he said Monday morning. With just a few weeks left of the heaviest water demand for salmon processing, and with the traditionally rainy weather of early fall approaching, Wetor thinks Wrangell will make it through the summer. “We’re in pretty good shape right now.” The borough last week urged residents to conserve water after a...
Aug. 2, 1923 Ed Grigwire Sr. and Ed Grigwire Jr. came in Monday from Anita Bay where they spent Sunday fishing. They brought back a boatload of trout, which was one of the largest catches of freshwater fish ever seen in Wrangell. It hardly seems possible that two people could have had the energy to have taken out so many fish in one day. Wrangell is surely a fisherman’s paradise and the Grigwires are the town’s two most enthusiastic piscatorial artists. July 30, 1948 “Here comes Charlie,” a local talent play put on last Sunday afterno...
Borough Assembly Member Jim DeBord is right to warn against “going down the rabbit hole too far” when it comes to enforcing municipal code against junk vehicles and garbage on private property. But it’s a hole the borough needs to fill so that no one gets hurt and so that neighbors don’t see their property values go into a hole. The assembly and borough officials are doing the right thing to look at how they can best enforce municipal code provisions against property owners leaving junk vehicles, garbage, unused machinery and other leftove...
Elected officials who say the proposed Alaska North Slope natural gas project is closer than ever to putting steel pipe in the ground and money in the pockets of construction workers should take a break from their political grandstanding and pay attention to the facts. Not a single analyst tracking gas projects around the world ever mentions Alaska when they list developments with the best potential of getting built. They talk about multiple liquefied natural gas export projects going to construction along the U.S. Gulf Coast, in Qatar,...
Did you know some churches are color coordinated? We use colors to visually represent the purpose of a church season: blue is for Advent hope, purple is Lenten repentance, white is Christmas and Easter joy. The longest season is the one we’re in now, from June to October, and it’s green. Our banners are green, our altar cloths are green, sometimes even our bulletins are green! Green represents growth, and we’re meant to use these green, growing days to practice the lessons we learn from God, to grow a little for our own sake and the sake of ou...
At its July 25 meeting, the borough assembly decided not to contribute $25,000 to keep a state Office of Children’s Services caseworker in town. The current in-town caseworker is moving off the island, explained Borough Manager Jeff Good, so the position would be left vacant regardless of whether the borough contributed funds. “It doesn’t sound like (OCS) is really excited about trying to bring somebody back here to fill the position,” he said. “I’m not sure what we get out of spending this money and then trying to go after OCS to bring the p...
Since its 2020 opening, Sirene Spa has been freshening faces, lengthening lashes, clearing pores and applying perfect tans. But now, the spa is giving itself a makeover. Esthetician Robyn Byrd has changed the name of her business from "Sirene Spa" to "Salt and Cedar" - a name that honors her Tlingit heritage and better reflects her updated establishment, which has expanded to include Alaska gifts, jewelry and more. The spa has also moved from the Churchill Building to a larger, more accessible...
It’s more than just a sweet tooth that directs bears to honey. Beekeeper Christi Henthorn of North Carolina explained the relationship between bears and beehives — and how to protect your pollinators from a possibly disastrous bear attack — in a presentation at BearFest on July 29. The Winnie the Pooh story popularized the idea that bears raid beehives to steal their honey, but this is only partially true. “Bears really want to eat, not just the honey, but the honeycomb and the bees themselves as well,” explained Henthorn. Bee pollen is one of...
Each season, a few thousand visitors flock to Anan Wildlife Observatory to watch bears pluck salmon out of Anan Creek. But this popular viewing spot is more than just a fun afternoon getaway - it's also an important site for research on bear populations, habitat and resource needs. In fact, observation sites like these could point the way to less invasive methods for bear research in the future. On July 27, at one of three BearFest symposiums, Shawn Crimmins of the U.S. Geological Survey and...
They gathered around a long table in the front hall of the Nolan Center, cutting construction paper, drawing and coloring images and gluing pieces together. There was focus. There was vision. There was quiet. There was not a kid in sight at the BearFest adult art workshop on July 27. About 12 women showed up to put their creative touch on Native formline art, with templates for bears, salmon, ravens and other things like totems. Various colors and designs could be utilized and the only limit...
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary How does your garden grow?” While gardeners in Wrangell may not plant silver bells and cockleshells, they still grow a myriad of things that some folks might find difficult to cultivate in the Southeast climate. To that end, a tour being offered by the community garden group at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 6, will give gardening enthusiasts a chance to see how others successfully grow things like potatoes, strawberries and a variety of flowers. The group is still enlisting gardens to participate in the tour, but so far...
Actress Jennifer Aniston knows something about Haines that even some longtime residents don't: The town is home to some of the finest wooden bathtubs that money can buy. Aniston is one of the celebrity customers of the small operation that's been slowly growing and carving a name for itself in the luxury wood bathtub world for the past two decades. Buyers include Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the software giant Oracle, as well as hundreds of less affluent customers enticed by the...
There were eight perfect scores in the Sentinel’s news quiz, producing an eight-way split of the prize money. In total, 21 readers entered the contest, answering 18 questions about the news from the first three weeks of July. Trailing the eight perfect entries, nine people missed just one of the questions. It was the first time the Sentinel had run such a contest, which owner Larry Persily called a “current events quiz.” The Sentinel published six questions each of three weeks — July 5, 12 and 19 — based on news stories in the paper. “There we...
Telecommunications company GCI will end its longtime email service next year, a move that will force customers to transition to new email providers. Spokespeople with GCI, Alaska’s largest telecommunications company, said the service will end sometime in mid-2024. At that point, customers will no longer be able to access or use their gci.net account, according to a draft fact page posted online. “We will provide our customers formal notice at least six months in advance of email deactivation deadline,” GCI spokeswoman Heather Handyside said...
A state judge has ordered a tourist shop outside Denali National Park to stop selling products labeled as “Made in Alaska” after the state accused the shop of repeatedly selling fake souvenirs and art. According to a complaint filed by the Alaska Department of Law on July 20 in Fairbanks, the owners of a shop known variously as The Himalayan and Mt. McKinley Clothing Company repeatedly attempted to mislabel foreign products as Alaska-made. At one point, the owners of the store told an undercover investigator “that an alpaca poncho depic...
A major highway project improving the connection between Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula has more than doubled in cost over the past five years — from $350 million in 2018 to the latest estimate of $840 million — and the new pavement is still four years away from opening to the public. The bypass — officially the Sterling Highway Milepost 45-60 Project — is a decades-old plan to divert traffic around the small Kenai River community of Cooper Landing by creating a 10-mile bypass cut through the forested and sloped terrain north of the town. C...
While Alaska’s state government has made progress in getting more people the food stamps they are entitled to receive, advocates say the process to appeal denials or delays is breaking down. Food stamps are a federal benefit managed by the states, and there are rules for how quickly a state has to get the benefit to qualified applicants. Alaska has been taking an unlawfully long time to process most applications since last fall. Citizens have a right to a legal hearing when the state takes too long to get them food stamps or denies their a...
Tracking changes in permafrost can take years and sometimes decades, lags that cannot keep up with the transformations in the rapidly warming Arctic. Now scientists will be developing new technology to track those changes in real time, thanks to a project funded by Google. The company has awarded a $5 million grant to the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center to create a system combining satellite data with artificial intelligence to spot the changes as they occur. The project is led by Anna Liljedahl, an Alaska-based Woodwell...
Tracking changes in permafrost can take years and sometimes decades, lags that cannot keep up with the transformations in the rapidly warming Arctic. Now scientists will be developing new technology to track those changes in real time, thanks to a project funded by Google. The company has awarded a $5 million grant to the Massachusetts-based Woodwell Climate Research Center to create a system combining satellite data with artificial intelligence to spot the changes as they occur. The project is led by Anna Liljedahl, an Alaska-based Woodwell...
Alaska’s state school board has unexpectedly delayed a vote on a proposed regulation that would prohibit transgender girls from playing on girls high school sports teams. Board chairman James Fields said the delay was warranted by “hard questions” about whether the regulation could violate students’ right to privacy, among other legal issues. “I’d be in favor of a special meeting and allowing us to show the public and show our constituents that we’re not just doing this to quickly rush through it. We want to take a good long look at all of the...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed a bill defining electric-assisted bicycles the same as regular bicycles — which passed the Legislature by a combined vote of 57-2 — because “it creates unnecessary bureaucracy by regulating recreational activity,” according to a spokesperson. House Bill 8, sponsored by Rep. Ashley Carrick, a first-term Fairbanks Democrat, sought to revise state code to allow most e-bikes to ride anywhere a regular bike is allowed such as roads, bike lanes and multi-use trails. The bill also said owners of e-bikes generat...
Monday, July 24 Drugs. Agency assist: Hoonah Police Department. Ambulance. Tuesday, July 25 Nothing to report. Wednesday, July 26 Assault. Thursday, July 27 Domestic call; verbal: People were separated. Agency assist: Hoonah Police Department. Vandalism. Intoxicated person. Friday, July 28 Noise complaint. Theft. Harassment. Concerned citizen. Saturday, July 29 Suspicious circumstance. Agency assist: Hoonah Police Department. Theft. Citizen assist. Trespass. Traffic complaint. Intoxicated person. Sunday, July 30 Traffic stop: Warning issued...