Lisa Phu

For 18 years, ORCA has been teaching people with disabilities how to ski at Juneau’s Eaglecrest Ski Area. Its Adaptive Ski and Snowboard program is helping people discover their own potential.

When Jessica Gilbert skis, she wears a harness that gets clipped to the chairlift, a precaution in case she has a seizure. The job of securing Gilbert is usually one for her ski partner, an ORCA staff member or volunteer. On this day, the 30-year-old is practicing how to do it herself.

“I felt like I wanted to do it for independence,” she says.

Gilbert is autistic. She’s been skiing with ORCA for 15 years and continues to push herself to learn new skills.

ORCA Team Leader Lindsay Hallvik says helping Gilbert with the harness was just part of the routine, but Gilbert wanted to own her ski experience.

“She asked us last year actually, ‘Hey, is there a way that I could do this by myself?’ And we actually were unsure at the time,” Hallvik says.

After talking with Eaglecrest ski patrol and other ski areas down south, Hallvik says ORCA came up with a system and felt comfortable with Gilbert doing it herself.

“Once you go through the research, go through the investigation and we practiced it ourselves, then I know it’s all set up ready to go for her,” Hallvik says.

Brainstorming solutions for how to make skiing enjoyable for everyone is part of what Hallvik loves about her job. ORCA works with a wide range of clients – people with Down syndrome, autism, people who’ve lost a limb or have spinal cord injuries. Ages have ranged from 4 to 82.

“Everyone comes in with a different life story, a different disability, so it’s fun for us to problem solve all the time, like ‘This didn’t work, but that’s going to work. Maybe next time we can try this, and this will make them even more successful,'” Hallvik says.

ORCA stands for Outdoor Recreation and Community Access and is part of the organization Southeast Alaska Independent Living. Its adaptive ski and snowboard program relies on volunteers who go through training. This season, there are 40. Hallvik says having patience is key.

“We don’t have a formula for working with people with disabilities. It’s never going to be the same lesson, even with the same person. It’s a different day, different conditions, they’re in a different space. And so we just really advocate, ‘Do some investigation, like, how are you feeling this morning? Where are you at?’ And you can meet them there,” Hallvik says.

On this day, Gilbert is having a great time.

“My best run was when I held my hands up like I’m driving a car and I was making turns really fast,” Gilbert says.

She says that helps her balance. Besides adaptive skiing, Gilbert participates in other ORCA programs as well.

“I do kayaking, snowshoeing, biking, hiking, different activities like that,” she says.

If it wasn’t for ORCA, Gilbert says her life would be drastically different. She’d likely spend more time at home surrounded by caregivers and family. At ORCA programs, Gilbert is with friends.

“It’s really good for me because I can get out and socialize,” Gilbert says.

And that’s really the point. Program Director Tristan Knutson-Lombardo says ORCA tries to dismantle the barriers people with disabilities face.

“So I think it’s empowering and I think it’s also just fun. It doesn’t have to be all work and serious. It’s just fun to get out,” he says.

At the top of Porcupine chairlift, Gilbert and Knutson-Lombardo get off by counting, “One, two, three, lift off.”

They decide which way they’ll go and who’s leading.

“All right, my turn,” says Knutson-Lombardo. “Let’s do it.”

“Alrighty,” says Gilbert.

And off they go.

Sunday is Learn to Adapt Day at Eaglecrest. ORCA staff will be doing demonstrations of adaptive ski and snowboard equipment from 10-2, and everyone is invited to try them out for free.

The University of Alaska Southeast closed its bookstore in Juneau at the end of last year, because it hadn’t been profitable for years. As the school looks ahead, UAS will need to make more tough decisions about its budget.

Students at the UAS Sitka and Ketchikan campuses have long ordered textbooks through the school’s official Online Bookstore or another website. Now students in Juneau will have to do the same.

Callie Conerton is UAS student government president. She says the closure of the bookstore isn’t affecting how she buys textbooks. Conerton is in her fourth year at UAS, studying elementary education. She tends to order books online anyway.

“If I can get a book that is the older edition that still has 95 percent of the information and is $100 cheaper, I’m going to take that route,” says Conerton.

She says some students are upset by the closure, especially ones that sign up for or change classes right before the semester starts. They don’t have the convenience of buying textbooks at the bookstore but instead have to wait for them to arrive in the mail.

“So it is a little bit hard. Shipping to Alaska, of course, from down south is extremely hard, but it’s an adjustment period. It’s a transition,” Conerton says.

The bookstore has been on or near the Juneau campus since the early 1980s. In more recent years, it doubled as a gift shop and sold a lot more than just books. It had school and art supplies, dorm decorations and work by local artists. It was also the place to buy UAS sweatshirts and gear.

But UAS vice chancellor for administration Michael Ciri says it was simply not financially stable.

“The bookstore had not been profitable for quite a few years and it was increasingly unprofitable and all of the projections show that it was going to be between $50,000 and $150,000 deficit ongoing into the future,” Ciri says.

Starting in the fall of 2013 the university went through a lengthy process to review bookstore operations. In May, officials made the final decision to close it. Ciri says the bookstore’s budget was around $770,000.

UAS gear can now be purchased at a new convenience store in the Mourant Building, and soon at the recreation center. School supplies will be offered in vending machines on campus.

The almost 4,000 sq. foot bookstore was located in the same building as the school’s administrative services and human resources departments. In the near future, Ciri says the space will likely be used as temporary office space for staff while the Hendrickson building is renovated. Otherwise, he says UAS is actively looking at selling the building.

“Not quite certain what the solution will be for all of the business functions that are in that building yet,” Ciri says, “but if we can find a way to use space more efficiently on campus and be able to accommodate them there then we would have one less building to be maintaining, which in tight budget times would be advantageous.”

And Ciri says UAS needs to start planning for even tighter times. During the school’s Christmas break, Gov. Bill Walker asked all state agencies to look at the potential effects of a 5 percent and 8 percent budget cut. Ciri says that translates into either a $3.4 million or $4.3 million reduction, or between 30 and 50 staff members.

“That’s the equivalent of the general funding we receive for a third of all of our academic program, and so you can’t do that without significantly reducing staff. Ideally you wouldn’t do it all through staff reduction. You’d find some other strategies to do it, like selling a building,” Ciri says.

UAS is starting to look at budget cutting measures, he says, like a hiring freeze and identifying how departments can save money this fiscal year.

 

Full disclosure: Callie Conerton is the daughter of KTOO’s Jeff Brown.

Charles Swanton is the new deputy commissioner for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, a position most recently held by Stefanie Moreland.

Swanton joined the department in 1981 and has been the director of the Division of Sport Fish for seven years.

Acting Commissioner Sam Cotten says Swanton will lead the department on Pacific salmon issues. He was nominated by Gov. Bill Walker to the Pacific Salmon Commission, a joint US and Canadian panel that manages salmon fisheries on the west coast. Swanton started his new job on Friday and is now in Vancouver, British Columbia at a commission meeting.

Swanton has Bachelor of Science degrees in biology and fisheries science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a Master of Science degree from the University of Washington. He lives in Juneau.

Deputy Sport Fish Director Thomas Brookover has been named acting director of the division.

A public meeting Monday night on how activities fit into middle school rekindled sore feelings about the Juneau School District’s ban on middle school sports travel.

When the school board decided to ban travel for middle school athletics – a decision that went into full effect this school year – many attempts were made to reverse the decision. Parents and students organized petitions, protests and spoke at board meetings, a group called Save our Middle School Sports started on Facebook and community members formed a task force to look at alternatives to the ban.

The school board wasn’t swayed by any of it. Then-President Sally Saddler said the board wouldn’t revisit the issue unless the district’s Activities Advisory Committee developed a middle school activities philosophy.

Floyd Dryden Middle School Assistant Principal Haifa Sadighi is on the committee. She says it started working on a philosophy last spring.

“It was almost like, let’s get this done and then that might be able to provide us with a platform for advocacy and then move into revisiting the policy,” Sadighi says.

Right now, the philosophy is a one page document stating the mission of activities in the middle school. It outlines the why and how with an emphasis on maximizing participation.

Teacher Molly Box is also on the advisory committee. She says early drafts of the philosophy included the opportunity for middle school athletic travel.

“But because the policy is there right now that there is no travel, it was contradictory to put it in our philosophy at this point, but the AAC is very supportive of middle school travel as an opportunity for all kids,” Box says.

The philosophy does say “intramural and interscholastic activities will be offered with comparable emphasis at both middle schools.” District activities director Sandi Wagner clarified intramural is competition within one school; interscholastic involves two or more.

“There’s no limit as to how many schools. Right now you can’t travel to do that, but five years from now that may change, six months from now that may change – who knows?” Wagner says.

In order for the board to revisit the middle school athletic travel ban, three board members would have to agree to put it on the agenda. Board member Brian Holst asked to do just that in November. No one else on the board supported him.

Middle school parent Scott McAdams says the issue should be looked at again.

“What we found out this year though the Icebreaker Tournament is that if we don’t reciprocate, we won’t be reciprocated back. If we don’t travel to Ketchikan or Sitka or make a village trip or two, those teams will not come here,” McAdams says.

The annual middle school basketball tournament in the capital city historically attracts up to five visiting communities. At the Icebreaker in December, only one showed up.

Parent Rhoda Yadao has an eighth grade son who plays basketball. She said he was disappointed.

“Looking at going forward he says, ‘I sure hope the kids under me are able to have the opportunity to travel,” Yadao says.

The Activities Advisory Committee hopes to finalize the middle school activities philosophy on Wednesday and present it to the school board in February.

Juneau came out in the hundreds for the inaugural gala of Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott at Centennial Hall and the Juneau Arts and Culture Center on Saturday night. The dress code was “Alaska formal” and party-goers could be seen in fashion items ranging from mink coats to consignment shop dresses, from Tlingit regalia octopus bags to purple Converse sneakers.

Below is a sample of what Juneau wore to the Inaugural Gala. Tag and share the photos on Facebook.

 

Juneau resident Henry DeCherney was sitting in a Paris café near the famous Bastille monument around the time the Charlie Hebdo office was attacked Wednesday. But the 25-year-old didn’t know about it until he got a message from America.

“I got a text from my aunt and then a text from my father that was like, ‘Are you safe? Are you OK?’ And I had literally no idea what was going on,” DeCherney says.

After going online to see the news, he returned to his hostel where fellow travelers were talking about it.

DeCherney went back to the Bastille the next day where a large vigil was held the night of the attack.

“There’s candles and people put pens and flowers down and wrote and spray painted, ‘Je suis Charlie’ everywhere.”

He had arrived in Paris on Monday as part of an extended holiday traveling in Europe. Wednesday’s attack on the satirical magazine left 12 dead. In a dual hostage situation Friday, four were killed. The two main suspects in Wednesday’s attack and an associate were killed as well. DeCherney is trying not to let the events ruin his first time in Paris.

DeCherney says most Parisians seem to be going about their normal lives keeping tabs on the events online.

“In the places that I’ve been where there have been TV, it doesn’t really seem like there’s been a lot of coverage of it. Most of the places are still playing like sports, like cricket, soccer, whatnot,” he says.

During Friday’s hostage situations, DeCherney was shopping and walking around the city. When he stopped at a café and got on Wi-Fi, he saw what was happening and made his way back to the hostel. He didn’t really know what was going on or where.

DeCherney says moving around the city hasn’t been hard. For the most part, public transportation was uninterrupted and businesses stayed open. But he says security is everywhere and the sound of sirens constant.

“There’s police and then there’s a lot of guys in uniform with automatic rifles just walking around on the streets,” DeCherney says.

He hasn’t necessarily been scared or felt like he should stop sightseeing. He was alarmed at first after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and his heart rate definitely went up when he found out there were gunmen on the loose.

“But on the other hand, I was like I’m not going to let this affect my daily life. It’s not going to make me more afraid and I think that is the general attitude of most Parisians here,” DeCherney says.

And he’s not allowing the attacks to ruin his first impressions of Paris.

“This is, you know, I hate to say it but, the world we live in now. This is just another thing that happens in big cities and international cities and it’s an increasing problem and I don’t want it to make my impression of Paris any bad or worse because it has really nothing to do with Paris, I don’t think. It’s an international problem,” DeCherney says.

Prior to the attacks, DeCherney planned on only being in Paris a week. His next stop is Marseilles.