The Sitka High DDF team celebrates its four state titles in the Cuddy Center at the University of Alaska Anchorage on Saturday (2-18-12). The Sitka team won the 3A Drama, Debate, and Forensics titles, as well as the overall team title, and nine individual championships. Twenty-three teams from across the state competed head-to-head in the three-day event. Sitka outscored all schools by over twenty points, including the large schools (4A) winner South Anchorage High School. Continue

Sitkan Bill Foster first visited Cuba fifty-three years ago, in 1959, shortly after Castro had come to power, and shortly before the US would blanket the nation in an economic embargo that would strand the island’s cars in time. Foster recently retraced the steps of his original trip — which he took by bicycle. He took some license plates from his extensive Alaska collection, and a handful of Raven Radio bumper stickers. He brought back stories of people who continue to care for — and to drive — their grandfathers’ cars. Continue

NOAA Fisheries calls it “low-tide-oblique aerial imagery,” but for the rest of us it’s a chance to fly with with shorebirds. The Shorezone Partnership is now completed for the entire Southeast Alaska coast, from Dixon Entrance to Yakutat. Internet users around the world can “fly” the coast via over 1-million video captures, or download 178,000 high-resolution images. Continue

A new article in the journal “Bioscience” this month describes what many foresters have suspected for some time: The century-old decline of Southeast Alaska’s yellow cedar forests is attributable to climate change. Decreasing snow cover over the decades has left fine root structures vulnerable to freezing, eventually killing the trees. Stanford doctoral candidate Lauren Oakes, who took this picture on Chichagof Island, is among a new generation of researchers looking at possible management alternatives for the dead forests, which represent both valuable habitat and a marketable timber supply. Continue

Engineer Craig Warren, with the Sitka Fire Department, installs a new halyard on the flag pole in front of Sitka’s city hall this morning (2-2-12). The department has been training in a variety of situations since acquiring the 70-foot ladder truck a few months ago. This was a particularly tall (work) order. Continue

Fighting master Aaron Elmore, with Juneau’s Theater in the Rough, teaches a swordfighting clinic to over two dozen Sitkans on Saturday (1-21-12). Students started out with pencils, but quickly worked their way up to real rapiers and foils. Two upcoming Sitka productions, “Moon Over Buffalo” and “Cyrano”, both feature extensive swordplay (and daggers!). Continue