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With almost 700 participants, Juneau’s annual board game convention sold out for a second time this year. Some people traveled from as far as Indiana and Massachusetts to play at Platypus Con. And the weekend-long event stayed open late — until the early morning hours. 

A lot of players were deep in their games late-night on Saturday. In Centennial Hall, a room full of people competed in a Euchre tournament. In the main ballroom, tables of friends and strangers tried new games while local businesses ran booths selling games they could take home with them.

At one table, Tim Mikulski and friends were diving deep into the annals of capitalism with a game called Flow of History. 

“It’s a card and also a coin economy game,” he said. “So we’re progressing from ancient societies forward. Right now, we’re discovering mercantilism, and yeah, it’s a good competition so far.” 

Mikulski spent most of the day at the convention; at midnight, he was about 10 hours in and counting.  

“We’re feeling ambitious for a late night, but I don’t know if I’m going to close it out,” he said. “Two a.m. feels real far away.”

Platypus Con Creator and President Josh Warren started the convention in 2015. About 130 people attended that first year and it’s since only gotten more popular. Some people come to qualify for state and national championships in games like Catan. 

“A lot of the other board game conventions are just named after the town they started in,” he said. “And I thought that was boring.” So Warren named the convention after his favorite animal instead. 

He was wearing platypus pajamas, fitting for the late hour, but he has other outfit options as well: “I have a platypus full suit with a blazer that I should be wearing because it’s warmer than this. And I do have a platypus mascot costume”

Warren said, after the convention, he’s actually traveling to Australia and New Zealand to see the elusive creatures in person.

Back in the ballroom, Pat Race — who owns the games and comics store Alaska Robotics Gallery in downtown Juneau — ran a booth with his best friend and co-owner. The two of them played a game in between talking to attendees. 

“What a great event this is. The whole community comes out. It’s packed in here all day, and then you get these late night hours and this dwindling, sleepy crowd either hopped up on the chai from these guys over here or they’re cramming pizza,” Race said. “It’s just good, wholesome fun.” 

He said events like Platypus Con bring people together. 

“You get to spend time with people you maybe see in different contexts, and it takes away all that — I don’t know — we have these facades of professionalism, or the ‘getting through the Foodland line’ armor, and so it’s nice to have that all peeled away and just hang out,” Race said.

Barb Lake set down a very tall stack of games to return at the event’s game library, which housed all 2,540 games available to play at the convention.

Her favorite was one called Hues and Cues. 

“It’s like a color matching game,” Lake said.” So somebody has to give you the color that’s on the board, and then everybody puts their chip as close to the color as they can get. It’s really hard, because your perception of what lavender is is very different than what your friends think it is.” 

For Lake, the convention has become an annual tradition. She and her husband have come for the last five years. 

“This is the event of the year for us,” she said.

She said it’s one of her favorite ways to spend time with her friends and meet new people. Learning how to play the games with other people, she said, can bring on a lot of different feelings.

“It is all of the emotions, so it’s frustrating, it’s confusing, it’s hard because you have to figure out how to play something totally new from the rule book, or you have to try and look up a video to learn how to play it,” she said. “So that part can be a challenge, and then when you get it and you like it, it’s like elation.”

Lake said they’ve ended up buying many of the games they’ve played at the convention, and now have their own game library at home to pass the time between conventions.

“We don’t drink, so we don’t go out to the bars. We’re not really, like, into a lot of the other events that go around in town,” Lake said. “But board gaming is what we do.” 

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is coming up on Monday.

It’s a day to remember the legacy of the famous civil rights leader and a national day of service, and local organizations and volunteers will host events to mark the occasion. 

The Black Awareness Association of Juneau will also host a virtual MLK Day event on Monday from 1 to 2 p.m. It’s advertised as a family-friendly service featuring soulful music and accounts from people whose lives were impacted by Dr. King. 

More information is available at baajuneau.org, where participants can also register for the event. 

The Alaska Bar Association, in partnership with the Alaska Court System, Alaska Legal Services Corporation, ACLU of Alaska, will host a free legal clinic at Ḵunéix̱ Hídi Northern Light United Church in the Flats neighborhood from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in the Mendenhall Valley from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

Local lawyers, judges and legal professionals volunteer their time to help advise people on legal matters. Kevin Higgins from the Alaska Bar Association shared information about the clinic on Juneau Afternoon Wednesday. 

“Really anything can bring you in the door,” he said. “And a lot of times what we’re able to do at the clinic, you know, it’s a very limited representation. I’s not like we’re going to be coming into court with you over the life of a potential case, but we can really kind of help you figure out how to orient yourself with the court system and what steps you can take next.”

Higgins said they can help with any stage of a legal situation, including how to potentially avoid one. No appointments are required. You can find more information at alaskabar.org/MLK. Similar clinics are also happening Monday in Anchorage, Bethel and Fairbanks.

After Juneau residents helped raise more than $1 million this fall, a local boy with a rare genetic disease will be able to receive a potentially life-changing gene therapy in the new year.

For the past two years, 4-year-old Cade Jobsisʼs mother Emma Jobsis has been raising money to allow scientists to restart clinical trials that previously showed promising results treating AP4 Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia, or SPG50. 

Cade was born with the rare disease, which would gradually take away his cognitive and motor function without treatment. 

“We got his diagnosis in 2023,” Jobsis said. “And that’s when we found this, this group that was working on this gene therapy, but there wasn’t any funding.”

Jobsis said she and three other families who have kids with the disease started asking their communities for help. She said the Juneau community has been supportive from the get go — especially the kids.

“They would knock on my door with a jar of coins, telling me they had collected them for him. And it was so heartwarming,” Jobsis said. “But it wasn’t the jar of coins that did it. It was the fact that so many kids and families were talking about him and telling people about him.”

The four families raised $3 million to pay for the production of the drugs. Then, in September, a grant that would have covered the treatment administration fell through. 

The families needed another $1.15 million.

Jobsis said she was a wreck, but she didnʼt lose hope. She used TikTok, Facebook and Instagram to spread the word. 

“I just got on my social media and just started talking. And boy oh, boy, did my community hear me,” she said.

Jobsis said so many businesses in Juneau stepped up to help raise the money she couldnʼt keep track of them all. In total, the Juneau community contributed more than $400,000 in just two months. 

They were still less than halfway to their goal. 

“And a local family contacted me,” Jobsis said. “And she said, ‘I have been watching your social media. I have seen what you’re trying to do, and I have heard you say on countless occasions that you just need to reach the right person, and we want to be that right person for you.ʼ”

That $600,000 donation brought them across the finish line, providing enough funding to treat all four kids.

One of them, a young girl named Naomi, got her first dose of the drug on Dec. 9. Now, the other three children are waiting to be scheduled. Jobsis said they’ll find out when Cade gets his treatment in the coming weeks.

“I cannot thank this community enough,” she said. “I mean, as the weather is terrible here, but we live here for the people, the community is unmatched.”

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The darkest day of the year has officially passed. Now, the days are growing brighter. Dozens of Juneau residents marked the occasion at Mendenhall Campground with a ‘light the night’ winter solstice event on Sunday, hosted by the Juneau Nordic Ski Club.

The sun set just after 3 p.m., casting a stripe of pink and gold alpenglow on the sheer peaks that tower above Mendenhall Glacier. Mary Ann Parke kicked into her cross-country skis and set off on the campground’s groomed trail. 

“It’s just absolutely beautiful,” she said. 

Ice crystals clung to her face as she returned from taking a few laps around the three-kilometer loop. 

“It’s really fun skiing between the lights — they got them strung all the way up around the big loop,” she said. 

Parke was there to support the Juneau Nordic Ski Club, which organized the event as a fundraiser.  

As twilight fell, so did the temperature. String lights and ice lanterns illuminated the trail, shadowy figures of snow-laden evergreens and skiers bundled up in warm layers. 

Although meteorological winter began Dec. 1 with the change in weather, astronomical winter officially began Dec. 21 on winter solstice — when Earth’s Northern Hemisphere tilts its furthest from the sun. The North Pole is shrouded in all-day darkness; the South Pole is bathed in all-day light. 

Tristan Knutson-Lombardo is the executive director of the Juneau Nordic Ski Club. He clicked on dozens of battery-powered tea lights to place in paper lanterns along the trail.

“It’s to light up the darkest night and look forward to brighter days ahead,” he said.

For him, the darkest day signals the ski season. But it means more than that, too. 

“Solstice has always been such a social occasion for me, so I think it’s just one more opportunity to gather,” he said. 

He said volunteers run the club and groom trails around Juneau for youth teams to practice and race on. That benefits Juneau’s wider cross-country ski community of all ages.

“On a good winter and a good day, we could have close to 40 kilometers at different sites around town,” he said. 

Finley Hightower made his way to a tent with homemade cookies and hot chocolate for sale. He’s a recent graduate from Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé, and was on the Nordic ski team his senior year. 

“My younger brothers are still on the Nordic ski team, and I really enjoyed it last year,” he said. “It’s a great experience. It’s great fitness. It’s just awesome overall.”

Hightower’s here to support the team and join in the festivities.

Clint Farr sold finger and toe warmers to attendees as a volunteer. He said the passing of the darkest day is a sigh of relief. 

“It’s the place in the year where I’m like, ‘hoo, I made it,’” he said. “The days are going to start getting longer. I feel a lot better. Time for a party.”

As twilight turned to night, people packed together like penguins. They sipped hot drinks, skied the loop and socialized. Farr called it a “resounding success.”

A Juneau musician is giving his final organ performance in the State Office Building this Friday. T.J. Duffy is retiring after 16 years of live concerts on the nearly century-old instrument.

The theater organ concert will mostly feature holiday music, according to a press release. He will also perform Christmas carols that audience members can sing along to. 

In the release, Duffy said he is retiring as a state employee at the end of the year and thought it would be a good time to retire from the organ concerts as well.

The Kimball organ is located in the State Office Building and is the only publicly available instrument of its kind in Alaska. Duffy is one of several musicians who regularly perform on Fridays.

The nearly 100-year-old instrument is nearing the end of its usable life. Repairing it would cost more than $250,000 and requires shipping it to Portland, Oregon for a year.

Duffy’s final concert will be this Friday at noon at the State Office Building.

Juneau Animal Rescue has finally secured a location for its proposed new animal shelter.

On Monday night, the Juneau Assembly unanimously approved leasing a parcel of city property in the Mendenhall Valley to Juneau Animal Rescue to serve as the site of a larger facility for rescued animals. 

Rick Driscoll, the shelter’s executive director, said the approval is a major milestone for making the new shelter a reality.  

“This was kind of the big step,” he said. “We couldn’t really launch a capital campaign without having land that we can say we’re going to build it on. Everything has led up to this point.”

The nonprofit organization has been fundraising to construct a newer, updated facility for the last few years. The current shelter off Glacier Highway was built in 1984 and needs extensive repairs. The shelter also often finds itself at or near capacity for housing dogs and cats. 

Driscoll said the Assembly’s approval means the animal rescue can begin narrowing in on a design for the facility and figure out how much they need to fundraise to make it happen. 

The proposed new facility would have a better ventilation system to help prevent the spread of diseases, and more space for cats, dogs, and smaller animals like rodents and reptiles. The shelter is also interested in creating walking trails in the surrounding area for dogs.  

Driscoll said a long-term goal is to make the site a campus for all things animals by collaborating with other organizations in Juneau.

“Whether that’s working with the Capital City Kennel Club, or working with Parks and Recreation on a dog park, or working with Trail Mix to perhaps do some kind of cool trails out there — the sky’s the limit,” he said. 

Under the approved lease agreement, the shelter will pay $10 a year for the 35-year lease. The annual market value for the land is $3,000 a month. Driscoll said the organization will share more about the design and fundraising needs for the new shelter as soon as possible.