Sorted by date Results 1988 - 2012 of 7954
One of the projects that Marina Backman is most proud of is a tumbler that looks like it's wrapped in the universe. It's indicative of her creative process and her business. Since opening Made in Wrangell, a design studio specializing in signs and other artistic projects, Backman has created mixed-media and vinyl signs for other businesses in town. Her ultimate goal is to be a full-service printshop. Backman currently works out of a small studio attached to a hangar at the airport, and she has t...
State and federal fishery managers are forecasting a commercial harvest of about 19 million pink salmon in 2023 in Southeast Alaska, which would be a “significant drop” from the parent-year harvest of 48.5 million pinks in 2021, according to last week’s announcement from the federal NOAA Fisheries and Alaska Department of Fish and Game. A 19-million fish harvest would be at the high end of the “weak” range (11 million to 19 million fish), according to the announcement, which added that a harvest of that size would be only about 39% of the avera...
It's becoming a tradition in communities across the United States, and Wrangell is no exception. Every Thanksgiving Day morning, several hundred thousand walkers and runners across the country brave cold temperatures to race in turkey trots, footraces to help burn lots of calories before lots of calories are consumed. The amount of people can vary. The Buffalo, New York, turkey trot averages about 14,000 participants a year. Run to Feed the Hungry in Sacramento, California, attracts 27,000 per y...
World-renowned showtunes and brightly colored costumes, cute children dancing and Austrians romancing — if these are a few of your favorite things, then the Nolan Center’s upcoming production of “The Sound of Music” might be the perfect way to spend your weekend. Director Tom Jenkins praised the cast and crew for the “tremendous effort” they have put into the show over the past few months. The child actors, in particular, have impressed him with their “great memories” and their ability to nail complex singing and dancing numbers like “D...
Wrangell voters cast their ballots to re-elect Gov. Mike Dunleavy and to toss out congressional incumbents Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola. While a majority of Alaskans also voted for Dunleavy, though by a slightly smaller margin than in Wrangell, the statewide count gives Murkowski and Peltola solid odds to re-election. The Alaska Division of Elections will announce final vote counts and ranked-choice voting results on Nov. 23. Statewide, as of Monday, Dunleavy was ahead of challengers former Anchorage Democratic state Rep. Les Gara...
Fairbanks Democratic Sen. Scott Kawasaki does not live in his mother’s basement. She doesn’t even have one. And yet, in the final days of his closely fought re-election race against Republican Jim Matherly, Kawasaki had to defend himself and answer questions from constituents who read satirical ads sent through the mail by a group called Alaska Policy Partners Inc., which lists Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor among its founding directors. Alaskans’ mailboxes were flooded with mailers as campaigns typically send their sharpest attack ads imm... Full story
Gov. Mike Dunleavy appears on pace for re-election to a second four-year term, based on preliminary numbers from last week’s election. Dunleavy, a Republican, held a substantial lead over challengers Democrat Les Gara, independent Bill Walker and Republican Charlie Pierce, taking 52% of the 217,769 first-choice votes counted after the Nov. 8 statewide election. That tally was as of Monday this week, with updated numbers expected this week as more absentee, mail-in and questioned ballots are counted. If Dunleavy’s vote share stays above 50% by... Full story
Republicans almost certainly will win a majority of the 60 seats in the Alaska Legislature after the Nov. 8 election results are certified later this month. But whether they will control the state House and Senate will come down to which Republicans win. This year, as has been the case for much of the past decade, the party’s candidates are split. There are many differences, but they tend to fall into two groups: One group eschew compromise as they pursue conservative positions on social issues and seek a Permanent Fund dividend larger than any... Full story
In the days following last Tuesday’s election, U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka joined other Trump-endorsed Republican candidates around the country casting unfounded doubt on election results, despite the fact that Alaska election officials are still counting thousands of absentee ballots and have not reported widespread problems in voting. “Our war is not over yet,” Tshibaka said last Wednesday in a podcast interview with Steve Bannon, who previously advised then-President Donald Trump. “This might come down to things like recount...
The U.S. Department of Justice dispatched officials to 64 election jurisdictions in 24 states to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws in last week’s midterm elections — including Sitka, Bethel, Dillingham and the Kusilvak Census Area in Western Alaska. The election monitors included lawyers from the Justice Department civil rights division and U.S. attorney’s offices across the nation. Federal authorities said such monitoring is a regular occurrence around election day, but this year especially civil rights groups and others have...
As they’ve done every 10 years since 1972, Alaska voters on Nov. 8 again overwhelmingly rejected the ballot measure to convene a convention to rewrite the state’s founding document. Advocates on both sides had expected the outcome to be closer this time because of the annual deadlock in the Legislature over the size of the Permanent Fund dividend, an issue that convention supporters said they wanted to resolve with changes to the Alaska Constitution. But as of the Nov. 9 count, 70% of voters had voted against the measure (146,092 to 63,...
WASHINGTON — William Smith, of Valdez, an Alaska Native veteran who served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, joined hundreds of veterans from around the country in Washington, D.C., last Friday to attend the dedication ceremony for the National Native American Veterans Memorial. Speaking on Thursday night at a gathering at the U.S. Capitol, Smith said, “To me, I’m here with veterans. I got my Alaska veterans here. But when you see us tomorrow, you’ll see how strong the veterans are and how much they appreciate this.” “It’s all part of t...
Results will be slow, even in races that don’t use ranked-choice voting, Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer and Gail Fenumiai, head of the Alaska Division of Elections, said at a press conference last week. Through Sunday, just two days before the election, more than 64,000 Alaskans had already cast early or absentee votes, according to figures published by the Division of Elections. Many of those votes, plus others that come in before Election Day on Nov. 8, won’t be counted until after polls close. Meyer said Alaskans should be prepared. “I know that... Full story
After a recent fire put the Ketchikan harbor department at risk of a lawsuit for not requiring boat owners to carry insurance, the Wrangell Port and Harbors Department is considering issuing an insurance requirement for vessels, though the decision-making process is still in the early stages. At the Ketchikan harbor, the owner of a boat damaged in the fire aboard a nearby vessel has threatened legal action against the city for losses. According to Wrangell Port Director Steve Miller, the borough harbor department is weighing its funding needs...
Student involvement is integral to solving the problem of bullying at school. Building a Supportive Environment, a student group better known as BASE, will be a main ingredient toward implementing a bullying prevention program school staff are looking to use. Students who participate in BASE said they're already working to connect with students and to reach out when they believe there might be problems. "My idea is ... having simple acts of kindness or as simple as holding a door open for...
From stained glass designers to wood carvers, Wrangell is home to a thriving creative community. But one of the most popular artists in town, whose work appears all over Front Street, is also one of the most anonymous. If you've ever gone on a Stikine Inn coffee run, eaten pizza at Nic's Place or looked up the weekend movie selection on the Nolan Center website, you've seen the artwork of printmaker and graphic designer Grace Wintermyer. When she isn't working at outdoor retailer 56° North or...
The design for Wrangell’s new water treatment plant, which will improve water quality and accommodate potential population growth, is over halfway complete. During an Oct. 25 borough assembly work session, DOWL engineers reported that the project is on track to accept construction bids by February 2023 and that the bidding window will likely last for six weeks. “If we have a longer bid window, we’re more likely to get more than one contractor interested,” said engineer Chase Nelson. “We get bids in, we evaluate them and we have to make the...
Ander Edens was quite vocal about landing a spot in the state music festival. Literally. The Wrangell High School sophomore submitted a singing audition to the Alaska All-State Music Festival with some uncertainty, but was good enough to land in the top percentage of students who made the cut. Edens is only the fourth student selected from Wrangell in the past 15 years for the state concert, which takes place on Nov. 19 in Anchorage. He's also the only male student selected on the local level...
Whether it’s a pesky case of the winter blues or a more serious health condition, Brooke Reynolds of the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium has words of encouragement for community members who are starting to feel the effects of the changing seasons. The lengthening hours of darkness “affect us all, some of us more than others,” said Reynolds, who is the clinical supervisor at Wrangell Behavioral Health. Even otherwise-healthy people can have “down days,” especially during the winter months. She recommends that her clients stay phys...
An art teacher has created art for teachers. Tawney Crowley, the art teacher for Evergreen Elementary School, embarked on a logo design project over the summer for the Alaska Science Teachers Association, incorporating elements that each region of the state is known for. The background of the logo is a silhouette of Alaska overlaid with items like glaciers and salmon in Southeast, volcanoes and a mammoth skull in the Aleutians, the aurora borealis over the northernmost portion of the state, a...
Each year, the borough compiles a list of big-ticket infrastructure improvement projects, ranked by priority, that it uses to apply for grant funding. This year, the borough is involving the public in its ranking process for the first time. On Nov. 1, Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad led a public forum to educate the community about the borough’s ongoing capital investment projects and learn which ones are most important to residents. An updated list that reflects the desires of the community is an important step in accessing g...
In today’s interconnected world, internet access allows people to connect with loved ones, stay updated on current events, access essential government services and more. But in Alaska, not all communities have access to reliable, affordable internet. Late last month, Alaska Municipal League representative Alicia Hughes-Skandijs met with seven representatives from the library, borough, Wrangell Cooperative Association and others to discuss challenges with the Wrangell community’s internet access. The meeting was an early step in the fiv...
Bill Sheffield, who served as Alaska's fifth governor and survived a brush with impeachment during a decades-long career in public service, died Nov. 4 at his Anchorage home after a long illness. He was 94. Sheffield was born in 1928 to a poor family on a small farm in Spokane, Washington, and he grew up during the Great Depression. After serving as a radar technician with the U.S. Army, he got a job with Sears Roebuck and was sent to the territory of Alaska. "So that's how I got here in 1953,"...
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Fishing regulators and the seafood industry are grappling with the possibility that some once-profitable species that have declined with climate change might not come back. Several marketable species harvested by U.S. fishermen are the subject of quota cuts, seasonal closures and other restrictions as populations have fallen and waters have warmed. In some instances, such as the groundfish industry for species like flounder in the Northeast, the changing environment has made it harder for fish to recover from years of o...
The principal and several school staff members left the community of Kipnuk in Southwest Alaska two weekend ago in two chartered planes following reports of a banishment order, occupation of a school building and a brief blockade during a visit by Alaska State Troopers. As of Nov. 1, the Chief Paul Memorial School in Kipnuk remained closed for the second day in a row, with plans to switch to remote learning Nov. 2, according to the Lower Kuskokwim School District, which cited “the concern for the physical safety for students and staff” in a w...
