Community

Sounds of early 20th century phones filled the Juneau-Douglas City Museum on Friday night. Ten-year-old Otis Beard studied them closely as they rang.

“There’s a little metal ball clanking from each one really fast,” he said. “It goes at almost light speed. It looks really cool.”

Jim Simard, the former head librarian at the Alaska State Library’s historical collections, says he used diagrams pasted inside the phones to help get them back in ringing condition.

“It’s a beautiful machine,” he said. “They’ve got a magneto that puts out about 60 to 80 volts.”

Museum Director Beth Weigel said the exhibit is a chance to showcase the phones while Juneauites are thinking about the future of the Telephone Hill neighborhood, which faces redevelopment and possibly the loss of its historic homes. 

“We have these old phones in the education collection, and we’re always fascinated by all the stuff we have that people can handle,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of interest in Telephone Hill right now.”

Telephone Hill was home to Alaska’s first commercial telephone service. Edward Webster and his family ran the company out of their house there.

The exhibit also includes three photos of the neighborhood, each taken about 50 years apart. Juneau resident Skip Gray took two of them, in 1973 and 2022. He used to live on Telephone Hill, and he’s spent the last year and a half combing through photos he’s taken of the neighborhood as the city discusses a redevelopment plan for the area.

Looking at the photos on the wall, Juneau resident Katie Henry says it’s important to keep the green space that remains on Telephone Hill.

“I think that hill provides a relief for the encroaching urban feel of the downtown,” she said. “The green is critical. It’s part of what makes it still feel OK to be downtown.”

The state of Alaska transferred ownership of Telephone Hill to the City and Borough of Juneau last year. In October, designers shared four preliminary redevelopment ideas. One involves building new housing among the existing homes. Others would remove the houses and add new homes or apartment buildings.

Peter Metcalfe lived on Telephone Hill in the 1970’s and 80’s. He said he’s open to the city adding new housing, but he hopes they’ll preserve the greenery there, too.

“I’d prefer they consider some new housing, perhaps, but office buildings and apartment buildings? Give me a break,” he said. “It’s one of the very few open spaces. Does the city of New York regret Central Park?”

Stuart Sliter, whose grandmother operated a switchboard in Douglas, said the exhibit brought back lots of memories.

“When you look at some of the old directories that they have here available for us to paw through, I find that I knew almost everybody in the Douglas section, it was such a small town then,” she said.

Sliter remembers having tea at the Webster House. She said she’s unsure how the city or the current tenants could afford to keep all of the houses on Telephone Hill. 

“I can’t imagine that the City and Borough of Juneau can keep it and maintain it as just a showpiece,” she said. “And the people that live there probably couldn’t afford to buy it at today’s prices. It’s prime property.” 

Project leaders plan to give an update on Telephone Hill to the Assembly later this month. It will include results from a historic site study and a public survey. Tuesday, Jan. 9, is the last day to fill it out.

The Juneau-Douglas City Museum exhibit runs through November.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is seeking Alaska Native artists to pitch designs for Celebration – the every-other-year gathering of Indigenous people in Southeast Alaska. The multi-day event takes place June 5 through 8.

SHI President Kaaháni Rosita Worl says this year’s theme is “Together we live in balance,” and designs should depict that using Northwest Coast style art. The winning design will appear on all Celebration materials, including t-shirts and the event program.

Worl said creating a balance between the different Southeast Alaska Native people in the region is essential to maintaining lasting relationships for future generations. 

“The whole concept of social and spiritual balance is a basic underlying theme or value in our culture,” she said. “We need to have both social and spiritual balance to maintain a healthy society.” 

Worl said balance is an important belief in Lingít culture that goes back thousands of years. An example of that can be seen with the Lingít moieties of Raven and Eagle. She said even today, it’s essential that a balance is struck between the moieties during gatherings. 

“When we have someone from a Raven clan speak, we have to have balance and so an Eagle has to respond,” Worl said. “If we don’t do that, our belief is that, you know, the spirits can go wandering, and cause harm. 

Worl said SHI is asking artists to encapsulate that balance not only between Alaska Native peoples but also in the natural world around Juneau. The sketches of proposed concepts are due Jan. 12 and artists can apply online. The winning artist will receive a cash award.

Five-year-old Axel Boline didn’t have much to say after plunging into Juneau’s icy cold ocean water on Monday afternoon.

“It was really cold,” he said. “I’m just cold.”

But for his mom, Amanda Triplett, running into the cold water with her son — alongside dozens of other people — signified the start of a new chapter. 

“It is cold, that initial shock, but you come out afterward and everyone’s smiling and bundled up and it’s fun to come out and be here with the Juneau community,” she said.

More than a hundred people spent the first afternoon of the new year partaking in the Polar Bear Dip at Auke Recreation Area, a three-decade-long New Year’s tradition in Juneau. 

The countdown began under cloudy skies, with temperatures in the mid-30s. At 1 p.m. sharp, the crowd of brave souls crashed into the water at Auke Bay. 

For most, it was a mad scramble in and then back out to one of the handful of fires scattered across the rocky beach.

That was the case for high school students Della Mearig, Zoe Lessard and Miranda Stichert, who said they were the only three people who showed up out of their entire cross-country team. They said they didn’t mind because so many other people showed up. 

“It’s so hype that everyone is here,” Stichert said. 

A few people managed to wade in the water for a bit longer. Half a dozen Capital City Fire/Rescue swimmers were there alongside them, in case of an emergency. 

Pete Boyd with CCFR said the rescue suits aren’t the warmest to wear in the chilly waters. But, he said it’s important to be there in case anything goes awry, and to support the community.  

“It’s just really nice to get out with and show that CCFR is part of the community, that we’re here to help out everybody,” he said. 

Boyd said there were no reported injuries or emergencies at the dip on Monday.

In a warehouse about a mile south of downtown Juneau, Julien Piccard sat at a table near his cot with a late-night dinner of ramen and a plastic-wrapped sandwich.

The temperature was just below freezing outside on Thursday as he and a few dozen people settled in for the night at the city’s new emergency warming shelter location off of Thane Road. 

Piccard has been without stable housing since 2007. For the last few years, he’s relied on Juneau’s winter emergency shelter, a city-funded space that’s meant to be a last resort for unhoused people to survive the night when temperatures drop below freezing.

“If it wasn’t for this place, I don’t know what I would do honestly. It would be bad,” he said. 

Piccard said it isn’t where he wants to be – surrounded by strangers in an industrial warehouse meant for storage, not housing. But if he wants to make it through this winter, it’s where he has to be. 

“I haven’t always been in this position, you know?” he said. “I used to work, have a family… When you’re in Juneau and you get down to the bottom, no matter how hard you fight and claw, and try and get your way back up, you can’t.”  

For two years, the city’s emergency shelter was located downtown at Resurrection Lutheran Church in the Flats neighborhood. But this summer, the church’s congregation was split on whether to run the shelter again, citing rising costs and wear and tear to the church. No other providers offered to fill in because they didn’t have a suitable space. 

As winter approached with no plan in place, city leaders decided in October to relocate the shelter to the city-owned warehouse in Thane and work with St. Vincent de Paul to operate it. The organization previously ran the shelter from 2019 to 2021.

The warehouse was warm inside Thursday night. A temporary plywood wall separates the shelter from half of the building that’s used as the city’s ballot processing center. The cold air outside quickly dissipated to the smells of soup, and the sounds of low chatter.

The warehouse has heating, insulation and electricity, though its bathrooms are port-a-potties that sit just outside. There’s no running water. It’s open from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. and St. Vincent de Paul provides meals at night and in the morning. 

Shelter manager Jackie Bryant said this winter on its busiest nights, nearly 50 people have stayed there, and 163 individuals have used the shelter since it opened in late October. Despite the snowier and colder winter expected ahead, Bryant said after her first visit to the warehouse, she was sure the new shelter could provide the basics for people to get through the night. 

“That was my first reaction: it was warm in here,” she said. “That’s what they need.”

Bryant said the warehouse has been running better than she expected, but it’s still just an emergency stopgap to Juneau’s greater housing crisis. 

“A warming shelter is not a solution,” Bryant said. “It just keeps people alive, which is what it’s designed for, to keep them alive during the winter. It does not replace housing by any means. But there’s a real need for it.”

Ogla Askoak, one of the shelter’s staff, knows that need well. On Thursday she stood at a table near the shelter’s entrance and helped new patrons sign in as they came in for the night. 

“I really enjoy working with these people. I look forward to coming to work all the time,” she said. 

Askoak said she understands the struggle of being unhoused in Juneau because she’s been on the other side of the table. 

“I was homeless before, me and my kids. We lived in a smaller village, and we didn’t really have any help, anyone to reach out to,” Askoak said. “And then we came here to Juneau with no place to go.”

Askoak said she and her daughter first went to AWARE’s shelter, then to St. Vincent and found stability here. Askoak has worked with people experiencing homelessness for over a decade. She said the new shelter works, but she wishes it had a kitchen.

“I find myself somewhat bored, because that’s the one thing I really enjoy doing is baking, being in the kitchen, seeing everyone happy that they got something warm to take out,” she said. 

Julien Piccard said he wishes they had more blankets and cots, and a place to store belongings during the day. 

“You can’t leave anything here. So you can’t you can’t really build anything up, you know, like clothing or something like that,“ Piccard said. “It’d be cool if there was some place where we can store some stuff, you know? But it is what it is.“

One problem both shelter staff and guests mentioned is the location. St. Vincent de Paul and the city coordinate transportation from the Mendenhall Valley and downtown to the shelter, using a city bus in the morning and a 15-passenger van at night.

The city bus takes patrons to the Glory Hall’s Teal Street campus, stopping on request along the way. In the evening a van run by St. Vincent De Paul makes two or three laps from the Glory Hall through downtown to the shelter. Staff say it makes a few more trips from downtown during the night.

Bryant said she’s not a fan of the shelter’s distance from downtown, either. 

“I really don’t care for the location. I’m gonna be honest, I really don’t. But it’s working,” Bryant said. “We’re used to being downtown in the JACC, or when it was at St. Vincent’s. You’re right there.”

That includes quick access to emergency services. She was initially worried the distance would mean longer wait times if help was needed for medical or safety reasons. So far, she said that extra help has come quickly. 

For now, Bryant said the shelter’s biggest needs are more blankets and socks.

For Edgar Vera, celebrating Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe, or the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, reminds him of home.

“It just makes me really happy to have a little bit of Mexican culture here in Juneau,” he said. “We’re so far away that it’s really special to have a little taste of what home is like.”

On Sunday, he sat in the long wooden church pews alongside more than 100 people at St. Paul Catholic Church. The rhythm of live music echoed off the high ceilings and played intermittently as the priest led Mass in Spanish. A portrait of the saint stood at the entrance. 

Vera moved to Juneau from Mexico City with his family seven years ago. Now he’s a senior at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé and captain of the cross-country team. Each year on Dec. 12, his family spends their day commemorating Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico.

The Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a national holiday in Mexico. It honors the day when Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared before Juan Diego, a Mexican peasant and farmer, in 1531. People of Mexican heritage often regard the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe as a symbol of religious devotion.

Last year, more than three million people in Mexico made the pilgrimage to the saint’s dedicated basilica. This year in Juneau, Hispanic and non-Hispanic residents joined together at St. Paul Catholic Church to honor her. 

The Juneau celebration was held two days before the actual feast day so more people could join in. There was a Spanish mass, a play depicting the story of Juan Diego’s meeting and a dinner full of Mexican staples. 

The Juneau Hispanic Ministry organized the event. The group invites people to learn more about Hispanic culture and traditions. Delores Cervantes, who coordinates the group, moved to Juneau from Mexico in 1995. She said each year the celebration attracts more residents, not just from the Hispanic community, but across all groups.

“It’s very important because this represents my culture, and also brings the community together,” she said. “Our goal is to have more people involved and more people attending our celebration – no matter if you are white, Hispanic, Native – we want them all here.”

Since arriving in Juneau nearly 30 years ago, she said she’s seen a shift in the number of people moving from Mexico to Juneau. U.S. Census data shows that Juneau’s Hispanic population has more than doubled in the past 20 years.

Cervantes said now instead of people coming alone to seek jobs, they’re starting to bring their whole families. 

Alex Vargas did just that. He moved to Juneau in 2014 with his wife and five kids. He serves as the director of music for the church’s weekly Spanish mass. He said moving to Juneau was a big step, but one he’s happy he made. 

“I got used to it so quick. I like the nature, I like the place, I like the weather,” he said. “In Mexico it’s so warm, here is better for me.”

He said having a chance to celebrate his culture with his children is important so that they remember where they come from. He said he’s already excited for next year’s celebration and hopes more people will join in. 

“It’s growing the culture, and the people from Mexico is growing here in Juneau,” he said. “We’re glad that more people came to the church and celebrate this important thing for us.”

The nearly 3,000 Juneau skiers who have already bought passes at Eaglecrest Ski Area will have to bear yet another delay to the mountain’s opening date.

Eaglecrest planned to open last Saturday. That was pushed back a week due to a lack of snow. Manager Dave Scanlan said on Thursday it’s still unclear when there will be enough snow to kick off the season.

“We’re still waiting on Mother Nature to give us temperatures for natural snow and also temperatures so we can get our snowmaking system going and get enough snow up and down to get the mountain open for the season,” he said. 

Scanlan said it’s not uncommon for November and December weather to be tricky to predict. He said this year’s warmer and wetter temperatures mean Eaglecrest hasn’t been able to supplement the lack of real snow with its 22 snowmaking machines. He said he’s still optimistic the weather will turn in the mountain’s favor soon enough. 

Last year the ski area partially opened on Dec. 3.

“It’s actually currently snowing at the mountain and the forecast is looking really good over the next couple of days,” he said. “We’re chomping at the bit as much as everyone else is and I definitely have a smile on my face as I look out my office window and see the snowflakes falling.”

Meteorologist Pete Boyd with the National Weather Service office in Juneau said people can expect a weekend snowfall heading to Juneau. But, after that, the weather appears to turn on the warm and wet side going into at least next week.

“Not really looking great for an immediate open at Eaglecrest,” he said.

Boyd said uncertain winter conditions are not atypical for Southeast Alaska, but it appears Juneau could have a lower amount of snow this year. He noted it’s an El Niño year, a natural climate pattern which at times can mean warmer than normal temperatures. 

“We’ve started seeing a lot warmer temperatures through the past few years. So is this normal for December? Not really. But it’s still within climatology,” he said. “And we’re not really seeing anything exceptional with the weather we’re seeing right now. It’s just on the warmer side.”