Lisa Phu

Juneau residents will vote for three assembly seats and two school board members in the October 7 election. Anyone interested in running for office needs to collect signatures and turn in other documentation.

Assembly positions up for election include an areawide seat, currently held by Carlton Smith; a district one seat, currently held by Jesse Kiehl; and a district two seat, currently held by Randy Wanamaker. Two school board seats, presently filled by Sean O’Brien and Sally Saddler, are also up for election. These are all three-year terms.

Municipal clerk Laurie Sica says a person interested in running for election must file a nominating petition.

“They are online and they are also in our office and what they need to is provide us information with which seat they want to run for and then they have to get signatures of 25 qualified voters in CBJ to agree that they would like to see this person run,” Sica says.

And there’s still time to collect signatures. The filing period to run for city office opens August 8 at 8 a.m. and closes August 18 at 4:30 p.m.

So far, Kiehl has filed a letter of intent to run for assembly, and Deedie Sorensen has filed a letter of intent to run for school board.

Juneau charity organization St. Vincent de Paul has a record high number of people staying in its transitional housing shelter. Usually, around 55 people live in the 26 units. At the moment, there are 66 occupants, almost half are children.

Twelve-year-old Carrie McVey has been living in and out of transitional housing at St. Vincent de Paul for as long as she can remember.

“I’m used to calling St. Vincent’s home because I’ve been here most of the time,” Carries says.

She lives in unit 16 with her 16-year-old sister, 11-year-old brother and their parents.

“We’re all just living in one room. I’ve basically made my bed my own room, ‘cause I have to sleep on the bottom bunk. My brother sleeps in the top bunk and I can just tuck blankets in under my brother’s mattress.”

It’s like a little fort, she says.

Carrie’s father has a job at Goldbelt Security Services and her mother doesn’t work. During the school year, Carrie goes to Juneau Community Charter School. She’s open with her classmates about sometimes living in a shelter.

“‘Cause, like, some of my friends would ask if they could stay the night and I’d have to tell them no,” Carrie says.

There are more kids at the shelter than usual, she says, which means she actually has someone her age to hang out with. During the summer, Carrie visits the playground and wanders around the shelter.

“I like going in and hanging out with some of the other families ‘cause, you know, I know how they feel. Most of us just feel alone, like we have nowhere to go,” Carrie says.

She wants her family’s stay at St. Vincent’s to be what it’s supposed to be – transitional.

“I hope that we can get our own house that we can stay, for once. ‘Cause it seems like, you know, every year we move from one house and then back in here, and I’m getting tired of it,” Carrie says.

Carrie is one of 30 kids currently living at the shelter.

St. Vincent de Paul housing manager Tamee Martini says the high number of shelter occupants is driven by the number of kids. She says families at the shelter usually have one or two kids. At the moment, several families, like the McVeys, have three. A couple families have more.

“It’s sad to see a large family with children that are homeless for whatever reason. I mean, being homeless is sad for everybody, but those children deserve to be in a place of their own and not in a room. I just believe that they need more room to wander around and be kids and be outside poking at bugs or whatever, just being kids,” Martini says.

Individuals and families can stay in transitional housing for a maximum of two years, though most stay for a year. In order to get in, there’s an application and an average wait time of six months.

Rent is $525 a month. That gets a person or family a 400-square-foot room, which includes a bathroom with a toilet and sink; shared kitchen, laundry and shower facilities; as well as a kids’ play room and a computer area for job searching. The shelter stays clean through assigned chores.

Martini says residents are required to be actively looking for permanent housing and for work if they don’t have it.

“We do keep on top of that and have frequent conversations with the families about what are you’re doing to move on to a better situation. So even though it is probably the cheapest rent in town, especially for a family, it’s not something we want anybody to consider the last stop,” Martini says.

Cory MacDonald and his wife live at the shelter with their three kids.

“Miles is the oldest. He’s 7. Leland is 5 and little Chloe is 4,” says MacDonald.

This is the family’s second stint. They spent about six months in the shelter two years ago. This time, it’s been about three months. In between, they’ve lived with family in town. They haven’t lived as a whole family in their own place for three years.

Both parents have jobs, but MacDonald is away from the family for large chunks of time.

“I’ve been in and out of trouble, so I’m actually out on an ankle monitor here right now,” he explains.

For a tight space, the MacDonalds have made the room as homey as possible. The parents have a large bed in one corner. In another corner, Miles and Chloe share a homemade bunk bed, with Leland’s bed at the foot of it.

“Then we got our fridge and our entertainment system and we brought this freezer in here so we could store extra food and stuff. This is our little dining area set up,” MacDonald says.

The children look at home sitting on the beds, eating crackers and watching TV. But MacDonald doesn’t want this to be home. At least, not forever.

The plan is to stay at the shelter for up to a year while MacDonald and his wife save up enough money buy a home of their own.

Juneau police are looking for additional witnesses to a racial incident that marred the parade at the end of last month’s Alaska Native Celebration.

Lt. Kris Sell hopes witnesses who haven’t yet talked to the police will come forward.

“Some of those people may be assuming that we have plenty of witnesses because lots of people were talking to the police that day, and we did get a handful of witnesses. Unfortunately, not all of those people got a good look at the suspect,” Sell says.

The suspect reportedly kicked over traffic barricades on Main Street during the Celebration parade June 14, says Sell. He was then found in front of the Goldbelt Hotel chanting a racial slur to the beat of a drum. He grabbed the American flag from an Alaska Native man’s hand, spit on the flag and tried to run away with it.

“Some people who were attending the parade, some participants, chased him and got the flag back. And we don’t know the names of those people but we would like to talk to them,” she says.

Sell says Alexander Libbrecht, 32,  is a person of interest. Libbrecht was sentenced last week to a year in prison. He changed his plea from not guilty to no contest on an assault charge for yelling racial slurs at a black woman on Gold Street and threatening to beat her with a baseball bat.

He also is under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service for verbal threats against President Barack Obama as well as a New Jersey attorney, who represented him in a previous case.

Sell says Libbrecht’s behavior fits the description of the suspect connected to the Celebration incident, although none of the witnesses Juneau police interviewed have positively identified him. Sell says eye witnesses can be difficult.

“Some people described him as wearing shorts. Some people described him as wearing khaki pants or blue jeans. We had different descriptions about his weight and age and other clothing descriptors,” Sell says.

Sell says Libbrecht has not been specifically questioned about the Celebration incident.

Juneau police had witness interviews scheduled Tuesday evening. Anyone else who believes they saw the face of the suspect can contact Lt. Kris Sell at 586-0600.

A Delta Air Lines flight with 109 passengers scheduled to land in Juneau Friday night had to turn around and fly back to Seattle due to fog. This is the first time Delta hasn’t been able to land in Juneau since beginning its summer route at the end of May.

Delta offers one flight a day between Seattle and Juneau. It arrives in Juneau about 9:15 in the evening and departs the following morning just after 6 o’clock.

Delta spokesman Anthony Black says the flight circled around Juneau for a period of time Friday night before turning around. The plane landed in Seattle after midnight.

“Passengers offloaded and due to low hotel volume, we put up the passengers in the airport, so provided pillows, blankets. We provided food and drink for the passengers. And then in the morning, we provided them with coffee and breakfast sandwiches,” Black says.

Delta made a special mid-day flight Saturday which left Seattle late morning and arrived in Juneau around 12:30 p.m., about 15 hours later than planned. Delta flights were back to normal Saturday evening.

Juneau airport manager Patty deLaBruere says small airplane companies also had trouble with the weekend fog.

“The small carriers were really impacted this weekend from Friday on. They were not able to fly for the most part,” deLaBruere says.

Alaska Airlines service in Juneau was mostly uninterrupted. Of 17 daily flights, one didn’t make it. The afternoon flight to Gustavus was cancelled on both Saturday and Sunday.

For naturalist Steve Merli, bear education isn’t just about staying alive. The way he sees it, knowing how to behave in bear country allows Alaskans to explore wilderness more deeply.

Merli works with Discovery Southeast, a Juneau organization that connects kids with nature through school and summer programs.

In the summer, he talks to campers about bears, which often leaves them questioning their assumptions about bear encounters.

Part of Steve Merli’s job is to change these sorts of perceptions:

“In some comics, like Tundra, it shows bears, like, they just go up to a campsite and eat the person,” one camper says.

Another says, “I have not heard any show that says bears are good in any way.”

He tells the campers more people are attacked by dogs than bears. He also says a bear has never been documented harming a person that’s in a group of five or more.

“So we’re already in a good spot. If a bear passes by, we’re already in a group and a bear is not going to go, ‘That one looks tasty.’ It’s not going to do that to us. It’s just going to go, ‘Woah, there are a lot of humans, I’m outta here,’” Merli says.

But he also reminds them, “There are lots of bears that live around here, so every time you’re outside of a building, a school, your house, you’re in bear country.”

Merli moved to Juneau in 1981. He’s been an educator for Discovery Southeast for 25 years. During the school year, he brings elementary students outside into nature. He teaches them how to identify landforms, animal tracks and creatures that live in the water.

In the summer, he joins the campers on hikes and talks about bears. He’s excited to take them beyond the beaten Auke Lake trail.

Merli picks a spot and heads right, up a steep hill.

“When we go off trail, it always kind of wakes up something inside me, like I become more focused because I don’t know what’s on the other side of the hill,” Merli says.

The campers follow, walking through a thick growth of ferns and moss and lots of devil’s club.

“Oh yeah, you’re just going to dance with the devil’s club,” Merli adds.

He gathers the campers in one spot and points to an imaginary bear about a hundred yards away.

“So I’m coming up the hill and I look up and there’s a bear over there and the first thing I’m going to do is, I’m just going to stop,” Merli says.

The next step is to assess the situation.

“Does that bear know I’m here? And by and large, if it’s that close, that bear probably knows I’m here, so I’m going to have a conversation with it,” Merli says.

He doesn’t suggest raising your voice and looking big and scary, but to simply talk with the bear, like this, “I was just coming up this hill, Bear, and I know that I’m in your living room and I’m just going to check out going back down the way I came because this is your place.”

Merli tells the campers to keep talking as you slowly back away. The bear could stay where it is or move away itself.

Twelve-year-old Landon Jueong learned a different way to deal with bears from his grandfather.

“To scare away the bear by acting big and making the bear not want to go around you or mess with you,” Landon says.

After taking turns roleplaying bear and hiker, practicing Merli’s method, both Landon and 12-year-old Brooke Sanford prefer it.

“I think it was a good way because you are avoiding the bear. You weren’t going towards it or scaring it away,” says Brooke, who has seen bears before.

“I don’t think I’d be afraid of bears in a group, but like alone, if you’re just walking through the woods alone, it might be a little bit scary,” she says.

Landon has this advice for anyone who’s scared of bears: “Bears are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

Merli says having a conversation with a bear allows it to know where you are.

“The average encounter with a bear is one of proximity and orientation so all I’m doing is allowing the bear to orient to me and if I’m all feisty over there, the bear may orient to me more aggressively. And I’ve never tested that,” he says.

Merli spends a lot of his time outdoors, often exploring Juneau’s mountains, cutting down firewood or hunting for food. Like other adventurous Alaskans, he can’t even count the times he’s encountered bears.

“So many,” Merli laughs.

In all that time, he’s only had one encounter that didn’t go so well. Luckily, he was near a house and could just run inside.

Merli’s goal in educating students is to make them feel safe and comfortable in nature. This, he says, will allow them to explore the outdoors and, at the same time, themselves.

“It’s really not about wildness out there; it’s about this wildness inside. Not that savage connotation, but this wild being that’s just like a bear. It’s really capable of this graceful capacity for self-care. I’m hungry, I eat. I need to protect myself, I do it. I’m tired, I sleep. This sounds ludicrous to the construct in which most of us are moving in the modern world,” he says.

Merli says there are a thousand stories out there turning bears into scary creatures. But most of them aren’t true. Those stories, he says, are just about our own fear.

Updated 5:00 p.m.:

About 1,500 people showed up for an early morning live broadcast of the TODAY Show from Juneau’s Mendenhall Glacier. They waved signs, cheered and waited hours for a chance to be on national TV for a few seconds.

“Hats off to Juneau because all of these folks, about 1,500 of them, they’re here at 3:30 in the morning, so you guys are incredible. Lots of pride here in Juneau as you can see.”

When Morales was off camera, she talked to the crowd, held babies and took pictures with adoring fans.

“I feel bad. I mean they all showed up here at, like, 3 o’clock- No, earlier than that. It was, like, 2 o’clock in the morning. So I want to make sure everybody gets a little camera time, or if not, gets a good selfie out of this,” Morales says.

Juneau resident Neely Perisich arrived at the visitor center at 2:30. She didn’t come empty handed.

“My sign says, ‘Hi Kerri and Andrea.’ They live in Newburg, Oregon. They’re my sister and my niece and they watch the TODAY Show every day,” Perisich says.

The sign has a border of blinking white lights. Perisich is with her partner Dave Velasquez. He’s wearing a cut out of Al Roker’s head. He’s a big fan of the TODAY Show co-anchor and weatherman.

“So I got an Al head. He’s got a perfectly shaped head for cutting out on paper. There’s no hair or anything,” Velasquez says.

Most of the crowd inside and lining the walls of the pavilion wanted to be there for the excitement, like Tom Chard.

“Years later, people are going to be saying, ‘Well, where were you?’ And, ‘You remember the TODAY Show came around?’ Yeah, yeah, yeah. The line was out the door. We loved it. It was great. It was a lot of fun,” he says.

Eileen McIver had an ulterior motive for being at the live broadcast. She’s a columnist for the Chilkat Valley News in Haines.

“I wanted to pitch this idea I have for a sitcom, so I’m here to get the attention of someone from NBC. Not sure who. I don’t really have a plan,” McIver says.

McIver is writing a sign on a pizza box, which says, “NBC, you have to hear my pitch. We’ll talk.”

The broadcast from Juneau kicked off a series, #TODAYTakesOff, which sends Morales to famous destinations around the country. She spent a couple days in Juneau kayaking, ice climbing, exploring the Mendenhall Glacier ice caves and visiting Admiralty Island bears. Her adventures were featured on the show.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The last time Alaska was on the TODAY Show was in 2012, when Jenna Bush Hager did a segment from Denali National Park. In 2011, Al Roker visited the Knik Glacier.

But this is the first live broadcast from the state.

It’s been a long time coming. The state’s commerce department first pitched the idea to NBC in 2003.

Original post:

More than 1,500 people showed up for the live broadcast of NBC’s TODAY Show from the Mendenhall Glacier.

The broadcast started at 3 a.m. but people started showing up around 2 a.m., like Juneau resident Jonelle Staveland. She didn’t have to wake up early, because she never went to bed.

“I actually stayed up all night. I was super excited. I never see celebrities. Like, my first time actually seeing something live on TV, so I’m excited,” Staveland said.

NBC’s Natalie Morales hosted portions of the TODAY Show from the visitor center pavilion. She spent a few days in Juneau kayaking, ice climbing and visiting the Mendenhall Glacier ice caves. Portions of her adventures were also featured on the TODAY Show.

Morales said she’s impressed with Juneau’s early morning crowd.

“This is unbelievable. When we were driving in and we saw cars backed up for a good ways, I was like, ‘There’s a traffic jam. Is this all for our show?’ So, thank you, Juneau. You guys are very proud and showing up strong here today,” Morales said.

The TODAY Show episode aired in Alaska at 7 a.m. today.