Community

Calling all gamers: Juneau’s first ever board game convention is happening next weekend at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.

Platypus Con 2015 is being organized by Platypus Gaming, a nonprofit that formed last year. President Josh Warren was interviewed on KTOO’s A Juneau Afternoon last week.

“A large part of the facility will be open for anyone to grab a table and play a game,” he said. “We have a board game library of over 300 titles that you can just check out and take and find some friends to play games with, as well as two tournaments, one on Saturday and one on Sunday.”

The tournaments will feature the popular game Settlers of Catan. There will also be demonstrations of lesser known titles, as well as card games, and classics, like Risk and Monopoly.

“One of the things we’re really trying to provide is not only some beginner games that people can come right into – Settlers being one of those and Ticket to Ride – but we also have a lot of games that have just now come out. Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Colt Express, things like that,” Warren said. “So we’re going to have games for experienced players as well as new players.”

Warren says he loves getting together with friends on a Friday or Saturday night to play games. He also says he’s been to board game conventions Outside, and wanted to bring the experience to Juneau.

“And I felt that there was a strong enough community of board gamers in Juneau to have our own, where it will only cost a small amount of money to come instead of a couple thousand,” he said.

A weekend pass to Platypus Con is $25 for adults or $10 for kids under 14. Single day passes for adults are $15.

Hours are 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.

For 18 years, ORCA has been teaching people with disabilities how to ski at Juneau’s Eaglecrest Ski Area. Its Adaptive Ski and Snowboard program is helping people discover their own potential.

When Jessica Gilbert skis, she wears a harness that gets clipped to the chairlift, a precaution in case she has a seizure. The job of securing Gilbert is usually one for her ski partner, an ORCA staff member or volunteer. On this day, the 30-year-old is practicing how to do it herself.

“I felt like I wanted to do it for independence,” she says.

Gilbert is autistic. She’s been skiing with ORCA for 15 years and continues to push herself to learn new skills.

ORCA Team Leader Lindsay Hallvik says helping Gilbert with the harness was just part of the routine, but Gilbert wanted to own her ski experience.

“She asked us last year actually, ‘Hey, is there a way that I could do this by myself?’ And we actually were unsure at the time,” Hallvik says.

After talking with Eaglecrest ski patrol and other ski areas down south, Hallvik says ORCA came up with a system and felt comfortable with Gilbert doing it herself.

“Once you go through the research, go through the investigation and we practiced it ourselves, then I know it’s all set up ready to go for her,” Hallvik says.

Brainstorming solutions for how to make skiing enjoyable for everyone is part of what Hallvik loves about her job. ORCA works with a wide range of clients – people with Down syndrome, autism, people who’ve lost a limb or have spinal cord injuries. Ages have ranged from 4 to 82.

“Everyone comes in with a different life story, a different disability, so it’s fun for us to problem solve all the time, like ‘This didn’t work, but that’s going to work. Maybe next time we can try this, and this will make them even more successful,'” Hallvik says.

ORCA stands for Outdoor Recreation and Community Access and is part of the organization Southeast Alaska Independent Living. Its adaptive ski and snowboard program relies on volunteers who go through training. This season, there are 40. Hallvik says having patience is key.

“We don’t have a formula for working with people with disabilities. It’s never going to be the same lesson, even with the same person. It’s a different day, different conditions, they’re in a different space. And so we just really advocate, ‘Do some investigation, like, how are you feeling this morning? Where are you at?’ And you can meet them there,” Hallvik says.

On this day, Gilbert is having a great time.

“My best run was when I held my hands up like I’m driving a car and I was making turns really fast,” Gilbert says.

She says that helps her balance. Besides adaptive skiing, Gilbert participates in other ORCA programs as well.

“I do kayaking, snowshoeing, biking, hiking, different activities like that,” she says.

If it wasn’t for ORCA, Gilbert says her life would be drastically different. She’d likely spend more time at home surrounded by caregivers and family. At ORCA programs, Gilbert is with friends.

“It’s really good for me because I can get out and socialize,” Gilbert says.

And that’s really the point. Program Director Tristan Knutson-Lombardo says ORCA tries to dismantle the barriers people with disabilities face.

“So I think it’s empowering and I think it’s also just fun. It doesn’t have to be all work and serious. It’s just fun to get out,” he says.

At the top of Porcupine chairlift, Gilbert and Knutson-Lombardo get off by counting, “One, two, three, lift off.”

They decide which way they’ll go and who’s leading.

“All right, my turn,” says Knutson-Lombardo. “Let’s do it.”

“Alrighty,” says Gilbert.

And off they go.

Sunday is Learn to Adapt Day at Eaglecrest. ORCA staff will be doing demonstrations of adaptive ski and snowboard equipment from 10-2, and everyone is invited to try them out for free.

A local playwright has spent the past few years exploring the lives of Juneau’s homeless population and the people who work with them. The result is the new play “A Lifetime to Master,” which debuted this week.

About three years ago, Merry Ellefson was driving home from cross-country skiing with her son near the Mendenhall Glacier, when she turned onto Back Loop Road and noticed a young man staggering down the street. She stopped to help, and found out he was homeless.

“He was maybe 19 or 18, and I just remember he was really intoxicated. He had nowhere to go,” she says. “It wasn’t like, ‘I’m going to do something. I’m on a plan.’ It was just like, ‘I don’t know anything about this.'”

That incident inspired Ellefson to learn more about homelessness in Juneau. Since moving to the city 24 years ago, she’s worked on and written several plays for Perseverance Theatre. “A Lifetime to Master” is based on nearly 60 interviews she did with people about Juneau’s homeless situation.

“People who are or have been homeless,” she says. “People whose lives or jobs intersect with the homeless. A lot of members of our Juneau Coalition on Housing and Homelessness. People in the school district. Friends. I’ve overheard people at coffee shops or on the streets.”

While the play is about Juneau, Ellefson says its themes resonate beyond.

The title comes from the tagline for the board game Othello: “A minute to learn, a lifetime to master.” Ellefson says a pastor she interviewed connected that phrase to the great commandment from the Bible: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” As she went about trying to understand homelessness in Juneau, she says she kept those two ideas in mind.

“I learned that there’s as many reasons for being homeless as there are people who are homeless,” Ellefson says. “That the issues range from poverty and economics, to family, to community responsibility, to substance abuse, to I think a third of Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness, to domestic violence. There’s a lot of issues that overlap.”

The main character in the play has Ellefson’s name and guides the audience through her interviews.

“It’s really a lot of listening to a lot of stories that are rarely heard in our community, are very hard to hear, as well as some quite uplifting stories of those people whose lives are dedicated to helping people who don’t have homes,” she says.

On a recent evening, the cast of “A Lifetime to Master” runs through lines at rehearsal in McPhetres Hall at the Church of the Holy Trinity in downtown Juneau. The walls are covered with tarps, and actors pop up from lumpy mattresses to say their lines.

Director Shona Strauser has been involved with “A Lifetime to Master” for two years, ever since she read an early draft of the play. She says it’s the most powerful production she’s ever been part of.

“It’s touching and it’s people we know and see,” Strauser says. “You know, you’re going to see people in this play that you would see on the street or at their job.”

The Juneau Coalition on Housing and Homelessness estimates more than 500 residents of the city don’t have a permanent roof over their heads. Strauser says the cast and crew hope the play sparks community discussions about homelessness, and even inspires people to act.

“It’s in your face, this play is in your face,” she says. “And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s the idea that you are in this community, and that everybody is around you, and you’ve got to do something, otherwise you’re turning your back on people.”

MK MacNaughton, who plays Merry, says it’s sometimes easier to start conversations about issues like homelessness through art.

“We mostly don’t walk up to people on the street and launch into deep personal stories or ask intimate questions. So art provides that opportunity,” she says.

Michael Patterson lived on the streets from age 9 to 37, and was interviewed by Ellefson during her research. He says the play is just the “tip of the iceberg” for what homeless people go through every day, but it’s full of truth nonetheless.

“I think if we can allow this to really touch all of our hearts and come together closer as a community, you know, then we have a better chance of maybe finding a real working solution to finally do something about this problem,” Patterson says.

Generator Theater Company is producing “A Lifetime to Master.” Ellefson also received support from the Rasmuson Foundation, the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council, the Juneau Community Foundation and several other local businesses and nonprofits.

The play runs through Jan. 25 at McPhetres Hall.

Eaglecrest Ski Area is closed today and tomorrow due to warm weather and rain.

For now, Juneau’s city-owned ski hill anticipates having the Porcupine chairlift in operation Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“We went from having a lot of fun up on the upper mountain and Porcupine area last weekend to obviously a lot of rain,” Eaglecrest General Manager Matt Lillard said Wednesday on KTOO’s A Juneau Afternoon. “It’s certainly hurt the amount of snow that we have and the conditions. So we’ll be closed the next two days, and then on Saturday and Sunday we’ll be reopening.”

Lillard says the latest conditions can be found at skijuneau.com.

The National Weather Service calls for more rain in the Juneau area through most of the weekend, with a chance of snow by Sunday night and Monday.

The Juneau Assembly has officially committed $1.5 million to a Housing First project aimed at helping the chronically homeless.

The group behind the project hopes the Assembly’s pledge of support will increase its chances of getting a grant from the Alaska Housing Finance Corp. to pay for the bulk of construction costs.

The Assembly adopted a resolution with the commitment Monday without objection. The project also will get a small financial contribution from the theater company producing “A Lifetime to Master,” a play about understanding homelessness in Juneau.

Generator Theater Company’s Flordelino Lagundino told the Assembly half the proceeds from Sunday’s show at McPhetres Hall will be donated to the Housing First project.

“And I really feel like it’s an important story, these stories are really important for all of us to hear,” Lagundino said.

Initially, the proposed facility would have 32 efficiency apartments, a commercial kitchen and clinic space. Another 22 apartments could be added at a later date, along with office space for social service nonprofits. Phase one is estimated to cost about $6.8 million. The whole thing would be about $9.1 million.

The Juneau Housing First Collaborative has been working on the project for the better part of two years. It’s based on a model that’s been used successfully in other communities, including Anchorage and Fairbanks. It says that if you give a homeless person a permanent, stable place to live it increases their chances of getting out of homelessness and improving their lives.

The Glory Hole Soup Kitchen and Emergency Homeless Shelter is the lead agency for the project. Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority has donated land near its headquarters in Lemon Creek where the project can be built.

Potential sources of the city’s $1.5 million contribution include tobacco tax revenue, the city’s budget reserve and unspent cash that rolls over between fiscal years.

Jeremy Hsieh contributed to this report.

Juneau came out in the hundreds for the inaugural gala of Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott at Centennial Hall and the Juneau Arts and Culture Center on Saturday night. The dress code was “Alaska formal” and party-goers could be seen in fashion items ranging from mink coats to consignment shop dresses, from Tlingit regalia octopus bags to purple Converse sneakers.

Below is a sample of what Juneau wore to the Inaugural Gala. Tag and share the photos on Facebook.