Community

Juneau’s laws regulating motorized use of Auke Lake need to be enforced.

That theme clearly emerged from Wednesday’s meeting on Auke Lake management.

Dave Hannah, who has lived on the lake shore for about 50 years, put it simply:

“The rules are no good if you don’t enforce them.”

The meeting was the third in a series being held by CBJ Parks and Recreation to take public testimony from users and lakeside residents.

The review grew out of an accident last summer that resulted in the death of a teenager being towed in an inner tube that collided with a jet ski.  While the accident investigation did not result in any charges against a jet-ski driver, the city vowed to evaluate ordinances put in place in 2007 and 2008.

University of Alaska Southeast Chancellor John Pugh told the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee that use of the lake and area around it has increased a lot since that time, but enforcement is nil.  He said he sees a number of infractions every day during the summer from his office.

“There are people using the lake with boats over 16 foot. There’s people who come in from the salt water and run their engines to run out the salt water in the lake and that happens day in and day out, I’ve observed it,” Pugh said.  “There’s other misuses in terms of running inside the buoys that happens day in and day out as well.”

Pugh said he watches parents drop their boat and kids off at Auke Lake for the day unsupervised, and worries about their safety.

[quote]“I don’t think it’s appropriate for teenagers to be running around with vehicles on a lake that do over 70 mph unsupervised.  And frequently that has been happening in recent years.  And that’s a very dangerous situation,” he said.[/quote]

Jet skiers and wake boarders said the city doesn’t need more regulations; instead those in place now should be enforced.  But that’s difficult for the Parks and Recreation Department and Juneau police.

PRAC chairman Jeff Wilson said it’s better if users police themselves.

[quote]”Everybody has to get along on this lake and think about other people enjoying the lake and I hate to start having the police or staff go out and write tickets,” Wilson said. “That seems like that’s not what we want to do. We want the community to feel safe and recreate there.”[/quote]

Stuart Robards said the issue is similar to problems the city faced years ago with hunters on the Mendenhall Wetlands.

“We had a situation that you probably are aware of on the Mendenhall Wetlands, where there were a lot of objections and complaints from people who were getting buck shot peppering their windows and that sort of thing,” Robards recalled. “The Department of Fish and Game and the Game Board mandated that everyone who hunts on the Mendenhall Wetlands will have a hunter education card in addition to their hunting license. ”

Robards suggested the city require Auke Lake users take a boater safety course, though he noted that too would be hard to enforce.

Parks and Recreation Director Brent Fischer said the city will continue taking written public comments on the issue, and staff will consider the comments as they review existing ordinances. He expects to send recommendations to the PRAC by January, when additional public hearings will be held.  Then the PRAC will send its recommendations to the Juneau Assembly.

It’s not the full mountain, but Eaglecrest Ski Area will open the Porcupine Lift on Saturday.

Eaglecrest General Manager Matt Lillard says a lot of man-made snow covers Dolly Varden and Muskeg beginners’ trails.

The first Saturday of December is always Eaglecrest’s target opening, but Lillard says it became clear about a week ago that enough natural snow would not fall by then, “so we decided that we can make enough snow with our snowmaking crew and our guns to open up the Porcupine area.”

He says the conditions on Porcupine are “really really good.  So we’re excited to open up, get the season going and we just hope Mother Nature fills in the rest of the mountain in the meantime.”

Mother Nature has a lot to fill in. The Eaglecrest website shows 33 inches of snow at the top of Ptarmigan and 12 inches at the base.  Lillard says another two feet of wet heavy snow would be ideal for opening up the rest of the mountain.

He says the city-owned ski area has enough snow-making capability to pump out the fake stuff from Porcupine to an area called the “flats,” at the bottom of Ptarmigan Lift.  He expects to move the guns further up the mountain in the next day or so.

“We already started making some snow there about three weeks ago, and we’ll continue to do that and fill in some holes in the flats.  Our goal is to get open as soon as we possibly can and we’re going to use every resource we have to do that,” he says.

Food service, the ski, rental and repair shops will be open on Saturday, and Porcupine Lift will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

A memorial service for former Juneau Assembly Member David Stone will be at Centennial Hall on Wednesday, Dec. 5, from  2 p.m. to 4 pm.

Stone died unexpectedly last week.  He was 55 years old.

He was Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Stone served on the Juneau Assembly for nine years and was Finance Committee Chairman for much of that time.  He also served as Deputy Mayor of Juneau.

 

 

The memorial has been set for two Juneau brothers who died in a boating accident last weekend.

A Celebration of Life for 26-year-old Casey Newman and 23-year-old Kelly Newman will be at the Twisted Fish on Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. They are the sons of Nancy Davis and Joe Newman of Juneau.

They drowned when their 18-foot Lund skiff capsized Friday evening near Tenakee Springs.  Twenty-six-year-old Jim Brown Jr. was able to swim to shore.

The men were returning to Tenakee from a day of hunting across the inlet.

Friends and family are asked to bring food and stories to share at the memorial.

In lieu of flowers, a Casey and Kelly Newman Memorial Fund has been set up at Wells Fargo Bank, to establish a scholarship at Eaglecrest.

About 1,000 ceramic bones were created at a recent UAS Art Open House, where roughly 300 visitors came to make a difference with their artwork.

For every bone made, $1 will be donated to help genocide victims in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and Somalia as part of the One Million Bones project. The bone collection is part of an international effort. The bones are to be installed in the spring on the Washington, D.C. National Mall.

Local artist MK McNaughton introduced UAS Art Professor Pedar Dalthorp to the idea.  Dalthorp uses ceramic for the bones because that medium holds up best for installation.

“Some bones in the past, like for some of the initial bone making attempts were, some of them used paper mache or some other materials that aren’t quite as weather proof as ceramics,” Dalthorp said.

Dalthorp organized the UAS event, converting studio spaces in the Soboleff building to accommodate the large crowds of people that for an evening became personally involved in UAS art projects.

Teacher Assistant Kate Laster helped set up. She said events like this can generate important dialogue in Juneau about genocide in other parts of the world.

[quote]“It’s a really great project because it’s a community based thing where we can discuss kind of these unseen people. You know, we’re talking about something that’s very, very much happening now,” said Laster.[/quote]

In addition to building bones, the department also had drawing demonstrations, screen printing, a large-scale deer sculpture, pottery making, and live music by Sammy Burrous.  He played a solo set on acoustic guitar in the oil painting studio that brought a vibrant dimension to the event. His music could be heard throughout the Soboleff building as he crooned his blues standards to the visitors.

Over in the ceramics studio, Keith Cox was blind-folded and had just a couple of minutes to shape a creation out of clay on a pottery wheel using his hands, water, and a sponge during the wheel throw competition. A faculty member judged the pieces on artistic merit.  Though Cox lost the competition, and the sponge, he didn’t walk away empty handed.

[quote]“It was stiff, it was a stiff competition. I went in with a high spirit and a lot of confidence that I was really going to successfully make a, like a vase or something, and I came out with something that my son can still eat cereal out of,” said Cox.[/quote]

Over at the Whitehead building, art student Doris Alcorn was sculpting an impressive life-size deer – out of 500 pounds of clay on a metal frame.  The sculpture will be hollowed out before it’s put into the gas kiln for firing.  Because the piece is so large, the deer is crouching so it fits into the kiln.

Ceramics aren’t the only thing popping out of ovens at the UAS Art Department. A wood-fired pizza kiln provided fresh pizzas throughout the evening. What comes out of that oven is always a student favorite.

“It’s built as a pizza oven and it’s wood-fired so it imparts a little bit of uh, a little extra flavor that you don’t normally get out of a conventional oven,” Dalthorp said.

To keep up with demand, Chef Josh Reder pumped out the pies as quickly as possible.

“These are homemade dough, homemade sauce, then fired over wood.  Not much new technology in the last two-thousand years,”  Reder said.

Laster said the event shows the public a lot of what goes on in the busy UAS Art Department.

[quote]“What I love about the open house is it’s basically bringing in people who don’t know we have a pizza oven, bringing in people who’ve not really come down to Soboleff to actually see the art department and what we do and how much fun we have,”  Laster said.[/quote]

Dalthorp hopes the open house will bring in more students and in turn help them realize their creative and professional potential.

To get involved with the One Million Bones project here in Juneau, contact MK MacNaughton at mk@canvasarts.org. Or visit www.onemillionbones.org.

Ten years ago a small group of local residents founded Juneau People for Peace and Justice.  The war in Iraq had just started and people wanted a voice.

Since then, Juneau People for Peace and Justice has been a visible and vocal organization dedicated to cultivating the message of peace.

JPPJ will commemorate the decade on Saturday with a Celebration of Hope that peace really will be given a chance in this war-torn world.

It started in December 2002, when the group took out a newspaper advertisement in the Juneau Empire.

Founding member K.J. Metcalfe says it was signed by people of all political persuasions.

“Had over a thousand signatures of local people saying war was not the answer,” he says.

 Many of those people later joined in a march across the Douglas Bridge that also swelled to more than a thousand people.

“So there was a fair amount of discussion going on in the community and some people would walk that walk and come out and not only talk about peace but also be on the streets,” Metcalf says.

 Similar groups across the country had formed, and their messages were being heard.  JPPJ got the ear of at least one member of the Alaska delegation, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who participated in a town meeting-type forum protesting the war.

It was held the day after Memorial Day. Rich Moniak was there.

“And she said that our event, with all that dissent about the war, was every bit as patriotic as the Memorial Day celebration she had seen the day before,” Moniak recalls. 

 JPPJ is holding a community Celebration of Hope from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday at Northern Light United Church.  Bring a dish to share.