Rosemarie Alexander

The state ferry Columbia will not return to service until June 18^th, about seven weeks later than expected.

The ship has been out of service since September for a major overhaul, including new engines.

Now there’s a faulty oil pump in the port engine.

State transportation department spokesman Jeremy Woodrow says it could impact some Southeast Alaskans returning home from Celebration, the biennial dance and culture festival in Juneau.

“We’ve revised the schedules for the Fairweather, the LeConte and the Malaspina. And there are going to be some passengers that might want to try get home on Sunday that might not get home until Monday,” he says.

The Columbia went into dry dock at Vigor Shipyard in Portland on September 1, 2013. Work was supposed to be done by May 1. There have been a number of delays since and when the ferry couldn’t make a Wednesday sailing, the Marine Highway pushed the date to next week.

Woodrow says it was fairly easy to absorb Columbia traffic early in the season. With Celebration, it’s more of a juggle for Marine Highway schedulers.

“We revised the schedule around when we knew the Columbia was going to be late, so we could get folks to Juneau. Now we have to move the vessels around once again,” he says. “The ships are full end of this week and through the weekend. That’s why we made some schedule changes so we can get them all home.”     

Woodrow says the Columbia left the Portland shipyard last Friday. The oil pump problem happened in transit to Bellingham, Wash. He says a new oil pump is being shipped from Finland.

Ferry schedule changes can be found at the Alaska Marine Highway System website, or by calling local ferry reservation offices.

Juneau’s Hearthside Books has been sold to a local teacher.

Brenda Weaver purchased the bookstore from co-owners Debbie Reifenstein and Susan Hickey. They announced the sale on Wednesday.

Reifenstein and Hickey opened the store in 1975 in Merchant’s Wharf downtown then moved to the corner of Franklin and Front streets. A short time later, they opened the Nugget Mall store.

“We both had been teachers and we resigned from teaching to get into business,” Reifenstein says.

The new owner is doing the same. Weaver worked in a bookstore for a dozen years before she went into teaching. Now she’s going back to the book business.

For the past 18 years, Weaver has been a teacher at Riverbend Elementary School. During all her years as an educator, she’s been involved with statewide and local literacy programs.

She will take over both the downtown and Nugget Mall stores, and says she will retain the current staff, because Hickey and Reifenstein have done a good job of hiring.

“I am dependent on them,” she says. “I’ve gotten to know them pretty well in the last couple of months and I totally want to keep all of them.”

Weaver says she’s not planning changes in the stores until she’s more familiar with the operation.

“It will remain the same size and grow slowly. There will be increased inventory by the end of the year and we’re hoping to have a couple of grand openings, one at each location, later on in the year,” she says.

Hickey and Reifenstein decided to retire last year. The company has been on the market for about 15 months.

Reifenstein says it was important to sell the store to a local owner, because an outside company would not know the Juneau market.

Susan and I just feel so indebted to the community for supporting us for 38 and a-half years. Juneau is a wonderful place to have a bookstore,” she says. “People are just real well-read here. Some of our sales reps are surprised at the market in Juneau.

Reifenstein and Hickey say they’ll help with the transition then consider themselves retired.

More than 2,000 Southeast Alaska Natives danced their way to Juneau’s Centennial Hall Wednesday evening for Celebration 2014.

The biennial festival is the largest cultural event in the state. Organized by Sealaska Heritage Institute, it brings multiple generations of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people together to celebrate their culture.

The Saanya Kwaan, Cape Fox dancers, were chosen to lead the processional of 50 dance groups in the Grand Entrance.

Harvey Shields is the leader of the Chief welcome dance.

“We are the Saanya Kwaan people and we originate about 50 miles south of Saxman,” he says.

Like other groups here, the Saanya Kwaan range in age from about 5 years old to elders.

“At two and three years old, they put regalia on them and then they start walking around and as they get older they find their place of where they need to be,” Shields says.

The Johnson O’Malley dance group from Wrangell is further down the street.

“I was still sewing on the ferry,” Sandra Churchill says, laughing. She made two button robes this year for Celebration.

“I know we know it’s every two years, and we still put it off ’til the last minute, but it’s worth it,” she says.

Celebration started in 1982 and Churchill has been to all 16 events. Her dance group has been practicing for months for this year’s festivities.

“It’s important for the young children,” she says, “to see the elders and how much they love it and instill that so they will carry it on for us.”

The sidewalks were clogged with people snapping pictures and taking videos. Patricia McGraw and her husband Gary looked like they were on a safari. They had traveled from Pensacola, Florida to Juneau specifically for Celebration.

McGraw grew up in Juneau. She chokes up as she recalls that time.

“When I was young the Native traditions were totally disrespected. And you know kids knew. I was told not to play with the Native kids. But kids know what’s right, what’s wrong, and I’ve always felt quite strongly that they needed their traditions and we needed to honor their traditions,” she says.

And as a non-Native, Celebration is a homecoming McGraw embraced.

At age 75, Ken Grant says his dancing days are over. But he’s danced at many Celebrations with the Mount Fairweather group from Hoonah.

Grant works for the National Park Service and lives in Bartlett Cove, where he has a spectacular view of the Fairweather range on clear days.

His formal Tlingit name even comes from Mount Fairweather.

“It means being proud, and having pride in the mountain and all that it stands for; the songs, the regalia and the stories that come from it,” he says.

Much like Celebration, he says.

“Most of all I think it builds in pride, it builds in passion, which I think is really important. For anything to function properly you need to have that pride and passion,” he says. “And I think that Celebration is a good source for pride and passion.”

Celebration continues through Saturday with dance performances, Native Art, Native language sessions, lectures, a parade and the Grand Exit.

More than 3,200 Alaskans are getting through airport security faster these days as members of  TSA Pre-Check. 

In Juneau, about 230 frequent flyers have been cleared for the expedited security program. The Transportation Security Administration has opened a capital city office, hoping to increase that number. It’s one of ten enrollment centers across the state.

Pre-Check allows airline passengers to leave on their shoes, light jacket and belt. Depending on the airport, laptop computers, liquids and gels can stay in a carry on.

At Juneau International Airport, liquids and laptops must still come out of a bag, but across the U.S., 118 larger airports have dedicated Pre-Check lanes, including Anchorage and Fairbanks.

While some travelers luck out and get the clearance on a flight now and then, TSA spokesperson Lorie Dankers says only a successful security check assures it.

“You’re volunteering some brief biographical information about yourself, verifying your identity, verifying that you’re a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident, and giving fingerprints so we can do a background check to make sure you don’t have any crimes that would disqualify you from being a low-risk traveler,” she says.

The application processing fee is $85. Those who qualify will get a Known Traveler Number to be used when booking flight reservations. The number is valid for five years. Individual reservations must include the KTN.

Some Pre-Check members say they find their KTN doesn’t guarantee expedited security. TSA travel tips indicate they may have to contact their air carrier for a solution. Eleven airlines participate in the program.

TSA has opened six Pre-Check enrollment centers in Southeast Alaska, including Juneau. The offices are not at airports, instead, Dankers says, it made sense to locate where maritime workers apply for their TSA Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC card.

“These weren’t new locations that were put in place. They are run by a TSA contractor, who handled our credentialing work. So when people go to apply for a TWIC, or renew their TWIC, they can apply for a TSA Pre-Check,” Dankers says.

The Juneau enrollment center is at 3161 Channel Drive. The other Southeast offices are in Craig, Ketchikan, Sitka, Skagway and Wrangell.

Editorial note: Information added to clarify some difficulty using KTN, and to add link to Pre-Check travel tips.

Monday’s power outage in Juneau affected about 5,000 Alaska Electric Light and Power customers.

Electricity was out in parts of the Mendenhall Valley, Auke Bay and out the road, as well as some areas of Douglas and downtown.

AELP spokeswoman Debbie Driscoll says about a third of the company’s customers lost power.

She says a crew doing some work on the Lake Dorothy transmission line apparently caused a power fluctuation, and a protective relay sensed it “and it caused what we call our LD1 breaker, that basically a big circuit breaker, to open on that line. That action initiated what we call a load-shed sequence, which opened up 16 feeders down the line. That’s about half of our feeders.”

Power was restored in a little more than an hour.

She says telephone lines to AELP were jammed when the power went off. about 8:20 a.m.  Driscoll says the company immediately posts information about outages to its Facebook and Twitter sites, and you don’t have to be a social media expert to get the information.

“That is absolutely the best place for customers to find information is on our Facebook and Twitter page. And they don’t have to use Facebook or Twitter. They just have to be able to access our website and click on one of those icons and it takes you right to that page,” she says.

Former Juneau Rep. Beth Kerttula has joined the Obama Administration as Director of the National Ocean Council Office.

Since January, Kerttula has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Ocean Solutions. She was appointed to the federal job on Wednesday and is already at work in Washington, D.C.

The job was announced in an email to her Stanford colleagues, where Kerttula has been working on ocean issues. She has described her role there as a conduit between state legislatures and science policy makers, bringing them together to discuss ocean policies. In that job, she had worked with the National Ocean Council.

President Obama established the council by executive order in 2010. Kerttula will lead the office that supports it.

Former Alaska Attorney General Bruce Botelho says it’s a perfect fit for Kerttula, who was a coastal zone management lawyer in the law department when Botelho was AG.

“Given her background as a lawyer for the state, her years of involvement with coastal zone management in representing statewide council, but also being intimately involved in developing the regulatory and statutory scheme, she has the clear legal expertise in the area,” he says.

Botelho says her political experience also gives her a unique perspective for the federal job.

Kerttula represented Juneau in the state legislature for 15 years. She authored the first cruise ship pollution legislation in Alaska. In her last term, the district grew to include Petersburg, Gustavus and Skagway. During her tenure she served on several national boards dealing with environmental and coastal policy, including the Alaska Arctic Policy Commission.

Kerttula will be in the National Ocean Policy job for a year, with the option of continuing through the end of Obama’s term. Botelho says it can only benefit Alaska.

“I expect that Beth, not only having the responsibility of translating national policy around the country including to Alaska, will be serving as someone who can convey the issues that are directly impacting Alaska and what that means for the country as a whole,” he says.

Alaska boasts the largest coastal area in the U.S., but is currently the only state that does not have a coastal management program. In 2012, Kerttula worked on the failed citizens’ initiative to restore the Alaska Coastal Management Program. The Alaska Legislature in 2011 did not re-authorize the program.