In the Community

Tune in for this special collection of local stories, recorded in 2009, as part of our participation in the national StoryCorps project, featuring Renee Guerin-Blood, Connie & Alan Munro, Kim & Peter Metcalf, Grace Elliott, and Jean Clayton. Thursday at 6 on KTOO-News, Juneau.

KTOO

Monday, December 23
3-4 pm
Writers’ Showcase
A special selection of holiday stories, recorded live in the @360 Studios on December 12th

Tuesday, December 24th

3 -4 pm – A Rochester Festival of Lessons & Carols (replaces Juneau Afternoon)

One of the most beloved traditions of the holiday season is the Festival of Lessons and Carols, a service made famous at King’s College in Cambridge, England. The Festival tells the Christmas story in words and music, and is heard all over the world in many languages and many variations.

Wednesday, December 25th

3-4 pm – Selected Shorts (replaces Juneau Afternoon)
On this program, three stories are presented that each offer a different side of the Christmas experience, as well as a hilarious poem by humorist Calvin Trillin.

The first story narrated is Ron Carlson’s charming and funny, “The H Street Sledding Record,” in which a young family enacts a unique Christmas ritual. What’s not to love in a story that begins with a dad throwing horse dung on his roof on Christmas Eve, to simulate the landing of reindeer?

Frank O’Connor’s “Christmas Morning” gives a richly detailed picture of a family in turn-of-the-century Ireland, and a touching portrait of a mother’s attempt to make things perfect for her young sons one day of the year. Reader Malachy McCourt knows this landscape well—it’s the same emotional world that informs his memoirs A Monk Swimming and Singing My Him Song, and his late brother Frank’s bestselling Angela’s Ashes.

George Shephard’s “Occurrence on the Six-Seventeen.,’ first published in The New Yorker in the 1930s, imagines a small Christmas miracle—sober, self-absorbed commuters, “with necks that know exactly how long they must be pressed against the seat back”, briefly unite in decorating a forlorn tree that has been smuggled on board their train. The reader is Broadway star Tony Roberts.

The “Selected Shorts” Christmas program finishes up with a take-no-prisoners ditty from humorist Calvin Trillin, who imagines a perfect Christmas—anywhere but here. He read his own “Christmas in Qatar.”

Thursday, December 26th

3-4 pm – A Season’s Griot (replaces Juneau Afternoon)

“A Season’s Griot” is public radio’s only nationally syndicated Kwanzaa program. Hosted by acclaimed storyteller Madafo Lloyd Wilson, this annual one-hour special captures the tales and traditions of African-American and African peoples.

Tuesday, December 31st (New Year’s Eve)

9 – 10 pm
Capitol Steps New Year’s Eve Special

KRNN

Thursday, December 19th

9 – 11 pm – A Paul Winter Solstice (NPR replaces SymphonyCast)

The holiday tradition continues with Paul Winter’s Winter Solstice Celebration. A dynamic musical celebration in the extraordinary acoustics of the world’s largest Gothic cathedral – New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Hear a unique exploration of the solstice tradition in cultures near and far. The Paul Winter Consort is joined by musicians from all over the world, including Russia’s Dimitri Pokrovsky Ensemble and gospel singer Theresa Thomasson. John Schaefer hosts the production from Living Music and Murray Street.

Wednesday, December 25th

Tuesday, December 24

5 – 7 pm
Christmas Tideline with Kate Burkhart

7 – 9 pm
Christmas Eve with Shelley

Wednesday, December 25 (Christmas Day)

8 am – 10 am – Christmas Crosscurrents with Libby Stringer
Violinist Libby Stringer will perform holiday-themed music live on the air Christmas morning. While you’re opening your presents, tune in to KRNN for the most authentic of holiday programming.

10 am – Noon – Christmas Soundings with Gale Moses

Noon – 1 – Jazz Piano Christmas XXIX

NPR Music brings you another great concert from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Andy Bey, Stanley Cowell, Sullivan Fortner and Michele Rosewoman perform their favorite holiday songs.

1-3 pm – Performance Today

3 – 5 pm – A Christmas Celtic Sojourn (PRI replaces Afternoon Classics)

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of sold-out concerts around New England, A Christmas Celtic Sojourn host Brian O’Donovan has assembled some of the best musicians, singers, and dancers imaginable from around the Celtic world, and beyond! This year’s live show is again led by music director Seamus Egan, leading his groundbreaking group Solas, along with harpist Catriona McKay, fiddlers Chris Stout and Winifred Horan on fiddle and cellist Natalie Haas. Singers include Chieftains vocalist Alyth McCormack from Scotland, the four-part harmonies of Navan, and the great vocals of Mick McAuley and Eamonn McElholm.

5 – 7 pm – Tideline

7 – 9 pm – Friends & Neighbors with Mike & Anne

Tuesday, January 31 (New Year’s Eve)

5 – 7 pm

New Year’s Eve Tideline Dance Party with Kate Burkhart

The popularity of cooking shows like PBS’s The Mind of a Chef might suggest that Americans are interested in becoming better cooks. If your culinary learning curve has plateaued, you may want to try a new approach. Rookery head-chef and co-owner Beau Schooler is gaining a reputation for seasonally creative cuisine. I joined Schooler in the kitchen one afternoon and he describes one of the restaurant’s special menus.

“We pickled some grapes with chai tea, and we’re doing that with corn flakes and blue cheese. And we got that bacon panna cotta, we’re doing that with passion fruit and avocado,” says Schooler.

Schooler looks at home in the kitchen. Among his many tattoos is a diagram of a pig that shows the name of each cut as “good” and “very good,” and a large knife with the words “mis en place”—French for “everything in its place.”

“And then we’re doing a pork schnitzel that’s encrusted with corn pops with a corn pop ice cream,” Schooler continues. “That one is getting paired with this Octoberfest kind of style beer which has this kind of honey-sweet corn notes, which is why we went with the corn pop crusted pork schnitzel kind of idea.”

Schooler says his eyes were opened to thoughtfully produced cuisine when he was a teenager. He was working at Anchorage’s Glacier Brew House and tried the seared salmon with coconut rice.

“Sometimes food’s a necessity and you’re just eating it because you need to eat, and other times you’re eating you’re getting enjoyment out of it. And that was when it dawned on me that you could have this food that would bring you so much joy and happiness was this piece of seared salmon.”

Since then he’s worked as a prep cook, a line cook, a sous-chef, and studied in southern Italy. But keeping things fresh takes more than that.

“Everybody that works here tends to be big on reading cookbooks, or reading on-line, or checking out what other restaurants are doing. We find these ideas that we like to try them ourselves. I think a big part of it is not being afraid to mess things up. We want to try things and see how they turn out,” Schooler says.

Part of the team that helps keep things fresh is cook Rachel Barril. She stands at an industrial stove searing duck livers for a duck liver whipped cream to top a gruyere cupcake. This is the kind of dish Schooler promotes.

“He pushes you to be more creative, to up your level technique-wise, creatively–that’s just the kind of chef he inspires us to be,” says Barril.

Downstairs in the Seward Street restaurant I run into Stefani Marnon, who just finished lunch. Also known as “Chef Stef,” Marnon has cooked professionally in Juneau for some 16 years and frequents the restaurant.

“The things that I love about his menus is they reflect the seasons,” says Marnon.

I am surprised she doesn’t mention the menu’s diversity. When I ask her if Schooler’s style is considered “fusion,” she cringes. The word fusion is a label and is “90s,” she says, and should be avoided. While his menus might include kimchee, fondue, ramen, and Cheez-its, it also benefits from using locally sourced food like prawns whenever possible.

“I just have Beau make me his prawn dish because I know where the prawns are coming from and I know that they’re great. So you know the stuff is fresh, and I know we hear that all the time, ‘oh it’s in season,’ but it truly is a marker of time looking at Beau’s menu,” says Marnon.

Chef Stef also likes the Rookery’s optional communal-style seating, the affordability, and that among all the creative dishes, there is also a delicious burger for those times when you just want a burger. Speaking of meat, when I ask Schooler what’s next on the menu, he says he’s excited about their home-made charcuterie.

“Terrines and cooked sausages and stuff, and that’s been really fun just because it’s really kind of scientific–like understanding the whole process and proteins and lactic acid and all that, and growing this like beneficial bacteria and creating these cured meats,” Schooler says.

And when the charcuterie becomes routine, Schooler will try something else new. He says that when something becomes repetitive, we stop paying attention to the details.

What do Dolly Parton, the Juneau Public Library, and Alaska’s First Lady Sandy Parnell have in common? Children’s Books, and lots of them. On Wednesday morning, library programs coordinator Beth Weigel and Mrs. Parnell read to an attentive group of kids at the downtown Library.

Since 1928, Juneauites have enjoyed the reverberating sound of the historic Kimball Theatre Organ. After a handful of moves from its original home at the Coliseum Theatre on South Franklin Street, the organ now lives on the 8th floor of the State Office Building where it’s been since 1977. Thanks to a cadre of dedicated volunteers, the organ continues to entertain almost every Friday at noon. KTOO’s Scott Burton attended Friday’s concert with T.J. Duffy and brings us this Halloween–inspired audio postcard.

The folks at Juneau’s Alaska Robotics just sent us Alaskan artist Marian Call’s new video “Good Morning Moon.” The video features footage shot in the Netherlands at Space Expo Noordwijk, which she visited on her European Tour. The high-resolution time-lapse photography comes from the International Space Station and the archive footage was thanks to NASA. All footage was chopped together right here in Juneau.

Photo of Marian Call by Frank “Alaskan Dude” Kovalchek