360 North Tune In

Beginning Wednesday at 8 p.m. (repeating Sundays at 7 p.m.) 360 North-TV will broadcast a four-part documentary series on the Marine Highway’s 50 years of operation.

It’s clear the Alaska Marine Highway is an integral part of coastal Alaskans lives.  In this series, people share their stories, like artist and Ketchikan resident Ray Troll, who came up on the ferry to help his sister open a fish shop.

“I think I came by myself, but I came just for the summer, of 1983, and 30 years later, I’m still here.”

Stories of people like retired Boatswain, John Kanarr, who met his wife while working aboard the Malaspina.

“My wife likes to say this, I don’t, but she does, that the Alaska state ferry system was the original Love Boats.”

Petersburg Track coach, Brad Taylor, says the ferry system is the only economical way to get athletic teams around Southeast.

“We would love to be able to travel, you know, by air, just because the time out of school would be less, but there’s no way we would be able to afford that.”

Stephanie Hoag, from Juneau, weaves the ferry into the seasons of her life and thanks the Taku for her life.

The other really significant thing about the ferries for me is the fact that, they saved my life.

You’ll have to watch the series to find out how.

Series Broadcast Schedule:

Alaska’s Marine Highway
Wednesday, Sept. 25th at 8 p.m. (Sunday, Sept. 29th at 7 p.m.)
From Bellingham to the Aleutians, the “flagship program” of the series is an overview of the 35 hundred miles the 11 ships travel. It’s also a historical sketch of it’s first 50 years.  This show was released to a national PBS audience earlier this year and has aired in more than half of the states.

Alaska’s Marine Highway: The Golden Voyage
Wednesday, Oct. 2nd at 8 p.m. (Sunday, Oct. 6th at 7 p.m.)
The second documentary showcases the culture, history and change in Southeast Alaska ports as the Malaspina takes it’s Golden Voyage up the inside passage.

The third and fourth shows are long-form, oral histories.

Alaska’s Marine Highway: Life on Board
Wednesday, Oct. 9th at 8 p.m. (Sunday, Oct. 13th at 7 p.m.)
Life on Board, focuses on the challenges and rewards crew members face while working and living on the ships.

Alaska’s Marine Highway: Connections
Wednesday, Oct. 16th at 8 p.m. (Sunday, Oct. 20th at 7 p.m.)
Connections, explores how the ferries have linked people in the villages and towns of coastal Alaska to the road system and to each other.

– Series Begins Tuesday at 8 p.m. –  Series Begins Tuesday at 8 p.m. –  This new series from the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, helps homeowners save energy and money through building, maintaining or retrofitting their homes.

– Wednesday at 9 p.m. – This film is a combination documentary and theatrical play about the final two days Henry David Thoreau spent in his cabin before leaving Walden Pond. The documentary, which bookends the play, is a look at the life of Henry David Thoreau and filmed at Walden Pond at the actual cabin site in the woods. The two-act, four character play dramatizes conversations between Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson as Thoreau was packing up to leave Walden Pond. The play also explores the roles we play in the protection of the earth, while challenging the audience to live more simply, and preserve the natural environments of their home communities. Folksinger Michael Johnathon, host of WOODSONGS, wrote the play and is the host of the documentary portions of the program.

– Coming Wednesday September 4 at 8 p.m. –  This film investigates the parallel stories of collapsing Pacific salmon populations and how biologists and engineers engage in audacious experiments to shore up their numbers. Each of our efforts to save salmon has involved replacing their natural cycle of reproduction and death with a radically manipulated life history. Our once great runs of salmon are now conceived in laboratories, raised in tanks, driven in trucks and farmed in pens. The program goes beyond the ongoing debate over how to save an endangered species. In its exposure of a wildly creative, hopelessly complex and stunningly expensive approach to managing salmon, the film explores possible paths to salmon recovery.

– Wednesday at 9 p.m. – This hour-long documentary relates the remarkable history of Mammoth Cave National Park. These are tales of exploration and discovery beginning with pre-historic Native Americans thousands of years ago. Why were these people willing to brave the darkness with only cane reed torches and woven slippers? Why did African-American slave […]

– Tuesday at 9 p.m. on 360 North –  Kemosabe? Loincloths, fringed pants, and feather headdresses? Heap big stereotypes. Reel Injun is an entertaining trip through the evolution of North American Native people (“The Indians”) as portrayed in famous Hollywood movies, from the silent era to today. Jim Jarmusch, Clint Eastwood, Graham Greene, John Trudell and others provide insights into the often demeaning and occasionally hilariously absurd stereotypes perpetuated on the big screen through Hollywood’s history.