Ten dogs and one cat took to the stage last Saturday for the Pawsitively Fabulous Pet Fashion Show. The Gastineau Humane Society held this year’s annual Pet Festival fundraiser at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. Festival attendees also watched pet-friendly spins on races, musical chairs and product demonstrations.
Photos by Heather Bryant/KTOO
For more photos of the event check out our competition slideshow here.
A beer brewed by Alaskan Brewing Company in Juneau won a silver medal at last weekend’s Great American Beer Festival in Denver.
The Birch Bock placed second in the “Specialty Beer” category, for beers that use “unusual fermentable sugars.” In this case, birch syrup harvested from Alaska’s Interior.
“It’s a lager. It’s kind of dry and malty and you get a little bit of a tart-ness from the birch syrup,” says Alaskan Brewing Company Brewer Rob Day. “You can taste the alcohol a little bit. It’s at 8.5 percent. So, it’s one of those beers that you don’t want to drink more than four pints, but you can sit there and drink it and enjoy the flavors you get from it.”
The Birch Bock was released in March as part of Alaskan Brewing’s limited edition Pilot Series. As with all the brewery’s smaller releases, it was a collaborative effort.
“We all kind of had a hand in it throughout the brewery,” says Day. “We start usually on a one barrel and then we scale it up and then everyone gets their little say on it, and then we go from there.”
The birch syrup came from two manufacturers based in the Mat Su area – the Alaska Birch Syrup Company and Kahiltna Birchworks.
Day says Alaskan Brewing strives to use home-grown ingredients whenever possible.
“The Alaskan brewery is based in Alaska, so the more Alaska ingredients we get to use, that’s a bonus and it helps out other companies in Alaska,” he says.
The Alaskan Brewing Company is no stranger to the Great American Beer Festival awards. The brewery has attended the event 25 times in its 31 year history, bringing home 23 medals.
More than 660 breweries entered more than 4,300 beers in this year’s competition. The 185 judges, representing 11 countries, decided which of the 84 categories each beer would be judged in.
Assemblymember Randy Wanamaker, who’s organizing activities centered around the cruiser’s tragic sinking during World War II, said he was contacted by the daughter of a woman who held on to the letters for nearly seventy years. Winifred Blohm of New Jersey was the next door neighbor and good friend of William George Meeker, Jr. who served as a seaman aboard the Juneau. Wanamaker says Meeker wrote at least sixteen letters to Blohm.
“He became alive to me because I can remember being that person,” said Wanamaker reflecting on his early military training. “A new person, with less than a year, still learning and having a sense of wonderment about it all.”
iFriendly AudioWanamaker said the collection also includes postcards and Japanese documents which need translation. Blohm recently passed away and her daughter wanted to pass the documents on to Meeker’s family, but she could not find any surviving relatives. She then turned to Wanamaker to arrange a possible donation to a museum or library.
A representative of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum was not present during an organizational meeting on October 5th. But a representative of the state’s historical collections said the City Museum would be the proper place for such artifacts.
The wife of Juneau Mayor Harry Lucas sponsored the U.S.S. Juneau which was launched in Kearny, New Jersey on Oct. 25, 1941.
The U.S.S. Juneau was a light cruiser that was eventually sunk following the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Among the 687 sailors who perished were the five Sullivan brothers.
Wanamaker is leading a group that’s organizing events to mark the seventieth anniversary of the sinking on Nov. 13, 1942. He said if anyone has any old artifacts or pictures related to the first U.S.S. Juneau, then they should contact him.
The Alaska State Museum’s summer exhibits that highlight World War II in Alaska are closing October 13th. Museum officials say they will be the last major, locally curated exhibits before the current museum is dismantled and rebuilt as the proposed State Library, Archives, and Museum or SLAM project.
“When Over There Was Here” and “Kiska: A World War II Battlefield Landscape” feature artifacts recovered from Attu and Kiska, and Dirk Spennemann’s photographs of the remnants of the Aleutian Campaign.
Curator of Collections Steve Henrikson says it was ‘all hands on deck’ for the planning, item acquisition, preparation, and installation of the exhibit.
Among some of the featured items include uniforms, service patches, propaganda leaflets, a Japanese 37 mm field gun and an infantry gun, a Japanese flag carried by soldiers during the last charge on American troops on Attu, and artifacts from Lt. Henry Hubbard.
Hubbard was one of the first casualties reported when the U.S Army attempted to push back Japanese forces during the Aleutian Campaign. Hubbard was a navigator aboard a B-24 bomber that was shot down during a mission over Kiska Island in June, 1942. Many of Hubbard’s remaining personal effects likely would’ve disappeared forever if not for Alaska aviation historians who intervened and had the artifacts donated to the Alaska State Museum and Historical Collections. Hubbard’s daughter Gail Reban had put some of the items up on the internet auction site eBay and threw the rest out in the trash. Alaska aviation historian Ted Spencer contacted Reban before the items were lost forever. Some of those artifacts are now featured during the current exhibit at the Alaska State Museum.
You can find out more in this story that originally aired in 2005:
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Longtime Juneau musician Dale Wygant was honored with a mayoral proclamation last night (Monday) at the Juneau Assembly’s regular meeting.
With an otherwise light agenda, the proclamation for Wygant was notable for likely being the last one delivered by outgoing Mayor Bruce Botelho, and for a rousing kazoo rendition of “Beer Barrel Polka” delivered by Wygant’s friends and supporters.
The proclamation names this week “Dale Wygant Week” in the Capital City.
Mayor Botelho noted that Wygant and his accordion appear several times a month at the Juneau Pioneer Home, Wildflower Court, and Mt. View Senior Center, in addition to regular concerts at charity and community events.
Wygant called the honor a “real surprise.” He said he enjoys playing for the older audiences, who can remember some of the thousands of tunes he knows by heart.
“They enjoy the kind of music that I play primarily,” Wygant said. “The old time things, and the polkas and the schottisches and things like that. I’m not much into Led Zeppelin and the more modern people.”
You can catch the Wygant-led Oompah Band this Friday at Southeast Alaska Independent Living’s 20th anniversary dinner and auction at Centennial Hall.
Capital City Fire and Rescue is looking to bolster its volunteer firefighter ranks with a big push to register people for upcoming training programs.
Division Chief Ed Quinto says all CCFR volunteers start by going through 24- to 40 hours of scene-support training to learn how to organize equipment and personnel at an emergency.
“The scene support program kind of gets people started to get their feet wet, basically,” says Quinto. “They get to do all the outside support tasks that does not involve actually putting the fire out or actually being in what I call the hot zone.”
CCFR offers scene support training about four times a year, and Quinto says applications can be turned in anytime. The big push for volunteers this month is because November 9th is the deadline to apply for Firefighter One training, which starts in January and involves more than 280 hours of class and on-scene work.
Quinto says prospective volunteers should be mentally and physically capable of doing the job.
“Being a firefighter is hard work, and so is a scene support person,” Quinto says. “You’ll be lifting some heavy equipment. Chainsaws, fire hoses, ladders, some of those things are pretty heavy, so you want to be able lift at least 50, 60 pounds of weight. You’ll be in a changing environment. You might be out there at 2 o’ clock in the morning and its blowing 40 and it’s raining. You have to be able to handle those situations.”
But Quinto – who started as a CCFR volunteer more than 30 years ago before working his way into a paid position – says it’s a rewarding way to give back to the community.
“We only have about 36 career staff and only about 10 of them are on duty a day between two stations,” Quinto says. “So if we have a big fire or a big event that occurs, we rely on our volunteers to provide the manpower.”
Quinto says he’s noticed a decline in the department’s volunteer ranks in recent years, which he attributes to people leading busier lives. But he says even when volunteer numbers were higher, CCFR could always use a couple more men and women to lend a hand.
