KHNS - Haines

An international television production company has optioned the rights for two of memoirs written by a Haines author.

The small town may have more than 15 minutes of fame if the show comes to fruition.

Heather Lende is a newspaper obituary writer, author and Assembly member. Soon, she could be an executive producer on a TV show based on her life.

Imagine getting an email from TV producers with a list of famous actresses who might play you.

“It’s really funny,” Lende said. “Like you do kind of think, is this real? And then you think well maybe. And then you think no, it’s might not be. And then you think well, it could be. I guess part of me will believe it when I see it.”

There aren’t any actors attached to the show yet, but there is an international media company, which touts shows like “American Gods” and “The Young Pope.”

Producers who worked on shows like “Call the Midwife” and “The Honourable Woman” are heading the project.

Lende said one of those producers visited Haines last year, during the talks leading up to this announcement.

“We kind of thought, well, let’s check him out and invite him to dinner with a bunch of friends and let them kind of drill him on the whole thing,” Lende said. “When he passed, they all left and said I think it’s gonna be OK. He’s got it and they’re gonna do right by you.”

“That was me,” said Christian Vesper, a FremantleMedia executive based in New York.

He says a colleague of his got interested in Lende’s books after reading a BBC article about her.

Fremantle reached out to Lende, and things progressed from there.

He explains his interest in the project.

“You know it’s a really tense and divisive time right now,” Vesper said. “I think there’s space on television for a story about family, and life and death. And I think Heather’s writing and stories are very optimistic and humane and I think there’s a place in the world for that, right now.”

Lende said when she first heard from Fremantle, she had some concerns.

“My books are about my life, and they’re also about this community and it’s everything I care about,” Lende said. “I want to make sure it’s done right.”

Working with the producers, Lende established safeguards which she thinks will protect people’s privacy.

The show will be based on her books, but it won’t be an exact recreation.

The main character probably won’t even be named Heather, Lende said, and the town won’t be called Haines.

“It will be a small town in Alaska, we might even call it Port Chilkoot,” Lende said. “And Haines’ll certainly be able to claim it. But we’re being pretty careful there too.”

Lende said her understanding is that the show will be like a mix of “Murder She Wrote” and “Northern Exposure.”

Each episode will be structured around an obituary.

“There will be some existential issue that is solved through the course of it and (they) will find the good by the end of the show,” Lende said.

Fremantle optioned the rights for two of Lende’s books, her very first memoir “If You Lived Here I’d Know Your Name ” and her latest “Find the Good.”

Lende said she purposely excluded her second book, “Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs.”

“The middle book is my most personal,” Lende said. “About getting run over, my mom dying and there’s a lot of faith in it. I actually held that one out for now to see how it all works out. If I’m confident that it’s gonna go well.”

If it does go well, Lende might allow the TV producers to use those experiences, including the one where she was run over by a truck while riding her bike.

“That’s like made-for-TV, right?” Lende quips.

The most recent drama in Lende’s life is political.

She is one of three Assembly members targeted in a recall election this August. Lende doesn’t know if the recall will make it into the show.

“Drama is drama, and it’s pretty dramatic what’s going on right now,” Lende said. “But that’ll depend on when they need the plot twist or depending on what happens.”

Lende said Haines is a dramatic town on all kinds of levels, but she believes what fascinates outsiders about this place is more than that.

“I think people are craving community and connection,” Lende said. “Connection to both other people and a place in the kind of way that we have here, that’s just increasingly rare in the world. And I think that really appeals to people.”

Fremantle’s Christian Vesper said a writer is on board to develop a pitch for TV networks.

It’s impossible to predict whether the show will get picked up, he said and if it does, it’s hard to say how long it would take before the fictional version of Haines makes it to TV.

Haines is getting ready for a weekend full of music, food and Ferris wheels.

The 49th annual Southeast Alaska State Fair takes place Thursday through Sunday.

“It’s gonna be hard to see everything that you want to see this year at the fair,” director Jessica Edwards said.

She’s the leading force behind the four-day event which brings people from around the region and state to Haines.

“I really feel like I have a smile on my face the whole four days of the fair just doing the work that I’m doing,” Edwards said. “It’s a busy time but it’s just really joyful to see people having fun.”

(Read the story and see the photos from the fair last year here.)

The fun includes a few new events. One of them is sure to boost the fair’s cuteness factor.

“We have a lot of excitement around this,” Edwards said. “It’s called the dinky doggy derby.”

The dinky doggy derby is a race for dogs 30 pounds or under.

“We have seen people training out there in Ravens Arena,” Edwards said. “So, taking it pretty seriously.”

There’s also a most loveable dog contest. Humans can compete too, in everything from the fisherman’s rodeo to a new strong man and woman contest.

On Monday, Jack Smith Jr. and Sr. were setting up for the logging show.

One important piece: a new log for the log rolling contest.

“It rolls this year, because it didn’t roll very good last year,” Jack Smith Jr. said. “It sat there and got water-logged and didn’t want to go in a circle.”

Smith said the sedentary log took some of the drama out of the lumberjack competition.

Fair staff and volunteers are making other improvements as well. The carousel went through a thorough refurbishment. The main stage sound system is getting an upgrade.

Edwards thinks that will make a big difference for dozens of musicians.

The two primary headliners at this year’s fair are the Eric Krasno Band and Delhi to Dublin.

“I feel like we’re going to get a lot of people’s happy music place over the weekend, with those two,” Edwards said.

Other headliners include Trampled by Turtles singer Dave Simonett, New Sound Underground and Jon Wayne and the Pain. Edwards said the fair is also incorporating more rap acts like Onry Ozzborn.

“HomeSkillet was a big Sitka festival that focused on rap and hip hop music and they closed last year, there was not more HomeSkillet,” Edwards said. “We feel like we also have to bring that genre in for people who appreciate it.”

Headliners perform Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. But there will be music and other kinds of entertainment throughout each day, including a talent show, break-dancing troupe and wearable art show.

Edwards said wearable art is one of the few craft exhibits in which entries are actually increasing.

And then, there’s the food.

“Lots of food this year,” Edwards said. “A whole food court is springing up over by the park stage. Also new this year, we’ll have a wine garden, where you can get wine in actual glasses.”

Near the wine garden, you’ll find fried cheese curds and fish and chips. On the other side of the fairgrounds, at the main food court, fan favorites like samosas and corn on the cob will be back.

As for the weather forecast, Edwards said all they can do is hope this cold, rainy summer gives way to sunshine for Haines’ biggest event of the year.

Skagway could miss out on $15 million to $30 million over 20 years if it doesn’t renovate its port for larger cruise ships, according to port consultants who delivered the message to residents last week.

Even without the bigger ships, visitor revenue will increase.

It’s difficult to overstate Skagway’s reliance on tourism. More than two-thirds of the city’s revenue comes from sales tax, cruise passenger head tax, and bed tax.

To what degree that revenue increases depends on the decisions Skagway makes over the next couple months.

“Without dramatizing it, this is the most important decision you’ll make probably for the next 20 years,” said Shaun McFarlane, who is with Moffatt & Nichol, a port consulting firm hired by city.

“There are cruise ships wanting to come in in 2019,” McFarlane said. “There’s not a lot of time for more navel-gazing.”

Here’s the situation: Even more massive cruise ships are expected in Alaska in two years.

Skagway doesn’t have the dock capacity to accept more than one mega-ship at a time.

In order to build a floating dock that would create more capacity, the city needs access to property currently leased by a private company.

White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad has said it will cooperate on those improvements, but only if it gets a guarantee its lease will continue past its current expiration date in 2023.

McFarlane said working with White Pass is the best bet to meet the deadline for bigger ships.

“You already have a context and a player in place with White Pass to allow that project to move forward,” McFarlane said.

Moffatt & Nichol conducted an economic analysis where they projected how much income the city would lose without a floating dock for larger cruise ships.

First there’s the question of whether smaller ships would take advantage of the open dock space if the mega-ships weren’t able to make port calls.

McFarlane said that’s not likely. But if it were to happen, contractor Lorraine Cordova said Skagway could lose out on about 2,000 passengers per week in 2019.

“We’re still saying there’s gonna be an increase in cruise ship passengers that’ll come to Skagway even in the constrained case, you’re gonna have more passengers than you have today,” Cordova said. “But it’s gonna be about 2,000 less than what you could’ve had.”

The 2,000 visitors per week equates to about 40,000 throughout the whole 2019 season, a conservative estimate.

If no smaller ships are waiting in the wings to take advantage of empty dock space, Skagway could lose 4,000 passengers per week.

Cordova said the total estimated loss in revenue is between $15 million and $30 million over a 20-year period.

Again, Cordova said without the bigger ships, Skagway’s visitor income would still increase, but the city just wouldn’t be able to capture all of the money it could.

Moffatt & Nichol’s subcontractor Julie Dinneen conducted an appraisal of Skagway’s tidelands and uplands.

A proposed new lease with White Pass would cover just the tidelands beneath the ore and Broadway docks. Dinneen said tidelands typically lease for 6 percent to 7 percent of the land value.

If the city were to follow that rationale, Dinneen said the annual lease payments would be about $60,000 at the low end and $94,000 at the high end.

That’s significantly less than the yearly rent payment of $200,000 proposed by White Pass. It’s also less than what the railroad is paying right now.

White Pass has controlled the majority of Skagway’s waterfront, including cruise operations, for decades.

Some residents don’t want to sign a longer lease because they think the city should take over management of the port.

Moffatt & Nichol also researched port governance structures. They gave examples of ports which, like Skagway, have a public-private partnership, and others in which the government oversees operations.

One of Moffatt & Nichol’s main points was that if Skagway were the create a port authority and transition to a more active role, it would be a long process.

And, as one consultant put it, time is not on Skagway’s side.

The full Moffatt & Nichol reports are at skagway.org.

Skagway paid about $265,000 for the economic analysis, port governance study and environmental compliance report. The city paid Moffatt & Nichol a separate $200,000 for a short-term port planning process.

The Skagway Assembly is holding a special meeting Wednesday, July 26, to discuss the new White Pass lease proposal.

Two Haines entrepreneurs are finalists in a regional business competition. The Path to Prosperity program offers support to small businesses and startups in Southeast Alaska. The contest is a partnership between Spruce Root Inc. and The Nature Conservancy. This year, Path to Prosperity is focused on local food.

“Right now we are prepping for our upcoming lunch hour,” said Sarah Jaymot on a recent weekday morning. “So we’re making sure all our specials are in order. We’ve got a yellow curry and a kale pesto turkey melt and we also have a blind date which is featuring arugula from Foundroot.”

Jaymot owns Sarah J’s Espresso Shoppe. She’s served up mouth-watering breakfast, lunch and coffee to hungry people in Haines for several years now. But her love for food started earlier than that.

“I think I’ve been attracted to food and coffee my whole life,” Jaymot said. “And I think the inspiration started with my grandmothers. I had a fully Italian grandmother, I was the only grandkid allowed in the kitchen because I would do her dishes. But yeah, she kind of taught me to love food and love feeding people. And that cooking is a love language.”

Jaymot turned her passion into her profession about nine years ago, when she bought a restaurant called The Local Catch. A couple years later, she opened Sarah J’s.

The business has grown and seen a lot of success. But there is one major obstacle limiting its growth: space.

“The current space is a 23-foot food trailer that has back storage in a 10-by-10 [foot] shed,” Jaymot said. “So storage is a huge issue. We are busier than our menu and our food trailer allow us to be at times, which slows down our efficiency.”

Jaymot applied for the Path to Prosperity competition because she’s ready to take the next step and build a bigger, sit-down café.

The other Haines Path to Prosperity finalist is Andrew Cardella.

“There’s mostly annual veggies in here, a big strawberry patch here, apple trees,” Cardella describes the bounty of his backyard garden.

His business is still in the idea stage.

“My idea is to enable anyone who wants to garden to be able to garden,” Cardella said. “I feel like there are a lot of people who are interested but don’t know how to get started or maybe don’t know anything about growing food at all…my idea is to get them set up.”

Cardella wants to take away the obstacles people face when trying to create their own gardens.

He started gardening about five years ago with a plot at the community garden.

“I didn’t really know anything, then got this house and still didn’t know anything,” Cardella said. “Then had one failed season and learned a lot pretty quick.”

In his application to Path to Prosperity, Cardella calls the potential business Perma Food-Scaping.

If his dream does become a reality, Cardella hopes he can help Haines become less reliant on food barged in from the Lower 48.

“You know, [more local gardens will] limit how much veggies we have to ship up here and the huge, huge carbon footprint that’s used for importing these foods from down south,” Cardella said. “And then in addition to that, all the plastic that’s used, when you go to a shop and buy a bundle of spinach, and you put it in a plastic bag, and then they put that plastic bag in another plastic bag…if you had just gone out to your yard and picked the same amount of spinach, it’s going to be so much healthier, it’s going to be so much better for you, and it’s not going to use all that plastic in the process.”

Growing local food economies is one of the main reasons Path to Prosperity narrowed its focus to food-related businesses this year. In a press release, contest organizers point out that 95 percent of the food Alaskans consume is imported.

The other finalists this year include a kombucha business in Craig, a food co-op in Sitka and a farm in Juneau.

All twelve Path to Prosperity finalists will participate in a business boot camp in Juneau this fall. Then, two winners will receive up to $25,000 for consulting or technical assistance. Those prizes will be announced in February.

Haines’ Port Chilkoot Distillery and Fairweather Ski Works are both previous Path to Prosperity winners. Last year’s winners were a Juneau kelp food business and Klawock coffee roaster.

Two candidates have filed for two open seats on the Skagway Borough Assembly. And one more candidate has filed for the assembly race in Haines.

Outgoing Skagway Assemblyman Tim Cochran and newcomer Orion Hanson put their names in the running Wednesday.

Cochran is a plant manager at Petro Marine Services who has served two terms on the assembly. His current three-year stint expires this year.

The other seat opening in the fall is held by Assemblyman Spencer Morgan. Morgan has not declared candidacy at this point.

Hanson is a general contractor and the current planning commission chair.

This is Hanson’s first time running for assembly.

If elected, then he would have to resign his seat on the planning commission.

No Skagway candidates have filed for two open school board seats, which are currently held by Mark Smith and Darren Belisle.

In Haines, two people also have filed for two open assembly seats.

Local author Heather Lende put her name in the running Wednesday. Lende currently serves on the planning commission, but her term expires this year. She last sat on the assembly about 20 years ago, before borough consolidation.

Incumbent Diana Lapham filed for re-election to the assembly. She is finishing up her first term, during which she also has served as deputy mayor.

As for the Haines School Board race, longtime board member Sarah Swinton declared candidacy for one of two open seats.

The filing deadline for both communities is next week. Skagway candidates have until Monday, Aug. 15 to declare their interest and Haines candidates have until Friday, Aug. 19. The municipal election takes place Oct. 4.

Commercial fishermen in the Upper Lynn Canal are working overtime after a flood of sockeye salmon showed up last week.

So far, this season is shaping up to be a good one, with decent returns, healthy harvests and larger fish.

Last week saw a couple of escapement records set for the number of reds through the weir on the Chilkoot River.

“It’s a phenomenal push of fish all at once,” said Mark Sogge, Haines’ area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The cumulative total of sockeye through the weir was around 30,000 a week and half ago, he said.

“Now we’re at 76,000. We’ve more than doubled. We’ve had both a record week and a record daily escapement over 13,000 in one day, and 40,000 for last week.”

He said there were clues that the big run was coming, but the count at the weir had fallen off the week before. So, he was a little conservative with the openers.

“Not this opening, but the week before, I did just a 24-hour opening and we harvested about 20,000 sockeye in that week,” Sogge said. “That was more conservative than people have done in the past, probably. But at that point we were sitting at 31,000 escapement and our goal range is 38,000 – 86,000.”

Sogge hit the water on Monday to scope out the numbers, and where the fleet was fishing. There were about 60 to 70 boats, which is a little low, he said.

“A lot of the boats were attracted to what was happening further south in Taku and the Snettisham Hatchery, which has a chance to produce a huge number of sockeye, so I think that drew a lot of boats.”

This week’s fishing period in section 15-A was extended by emergency order until Thursday because of the sudden flux.

The extension may be prolonged until the weekend, though nothing has been decided yet.

The size of the sockeye on the Chilkoot side, which were scrawny last year, are a little more plump this season.

As for Chilkat, the department isn’t expecting a big year.

Some fishermen are reporting smaller fisher, though that might just be the early run, Sogge said.

At the fish wheels on the Chilkat River, about 3,000 fish have been counted, with a steady 50 to a 100 fish per day.

The numbers at Chilkat Lake, are OK at about 20,000 so far, Sogge said. That’s just above the minimum number that the department likes to see by now.

“Our expectation is not for a strong Chilkat run, but you never know,” Sogge says.

Harvest numbers for sockeye aren’t tabulated yet, but the strong chum run earlier this season saw at least 800,000 netted.

The return of pink salmon was low across Northern Southeast.

The commercial season in Northern Southeast lasts through September with Klehini and Chilkat chums and Chilkat sockeye. But Sogge says, until he knows more about those numbers, he’ll err on the side of caution when it comes to opener lengths in the near future.

Sogge said as far as he knows, the price for sockeye and chum have stayed pretty consistent throughout the season at around $1.50 per pound for reds and $0.60 for chum.

Last season saw prices drop after two previous banner years.

The average for sockeye last year, according to Fish and Game, was just over a dollar and a half, while chum averaged $0.44.

Next week, the fishing period doesn’t open until Monday at noon, instead of the usual Sunday. That’s to coincide with the Juneau salmon derby. And, Sogge says, it’ll give subsistence fishermen in Chilkoot Inlet more time to get their share on the weekend without the conflict of commercial boats.

The commercial salmon season started on June 19 in the Upper Lynn Canal and runs until about the second week of October. Of course, that all depends on the fish.