Author: Emily Schwing

After seven years without a professional curator, the Sitka Historical Museum has hired Ashley Kircher to fill the position. Kircher is a native of Colorado and an outdoor enthusiast familiar with small Alaskan coastal communities. She studied comparative religions at Harvard and recently completed a Masters degree in Museum Studies at San Francisco State University. She sat down for an interview with KCAW’s Emily Schwing to talk about her new position.

$228 million dollars in federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be doled out to National Forests in 31 states. $8-million of that will go to the state of Alaska. US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made the announcement on Tuesday (06-02-2009). Some of the money will go to fund a project on the Sitka Ranger District. KCAW’s Emily Schwing reports.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Washington refused a request for an injunction on to stop a change in the daily bag limit for guided sport fish. Charter operators have vowed to proceed with a lawsuit. KCAW’s Emily Schwing talked to charter customers on the docks of Crescent Harbor in Sitka.

Sawmill Cove Industrial Park has turned up two potential buyers for the so called “stores building.” If an agreement is reached with one of them, the city of Sitka could be spared paying for the improvements required to bring the former APC mill maintenance building up to current standards. The Sawmill Cove board of directors will consider proposals next week. KCAW’s Emily Schwing Reports.

Vicki Baggen has won her second salmon derby in seven years. The 2009 Sitka Sportsmen’s Association Salmon Derby rounded up this weekend. Emily Schwing has the results.

Sitka High School students celebrated the end of another school year with an ice cream social on Friday afternoon and kids are busily making plans for the next three months. Emily Schwing stopped by the high school to find out who’s doing what this summer.

Despite the closing of Sheldon Jackson College two years ago, the education program at the former college hatchery is still in full swing. An organization called the Sitka Sound Science Center has been releasing fish from the hatchery all week. (5-27-09)

The Alaska Marine Highway system plans to take both fast-ferries out of service this winter. The move will leave Sitka with only two mainline ferry calls a week from October through June 2010. Sitka city and school officials registered their objections to the proposed schedule in a teleconference on Wednesday (5-27-09).

After six months of wrestling with the issue, local government has finally settled on a definition of “private recreation cabin” in the island zoning districts. The Sitka assembly voted last night (5-26-09) to limit the structure to 650 square feet, and to non-paying guests only.

Middle-school students in Sitka learned about life during the Holocaust from someone who was not much younger than they were when Hitler developed his “Final Solution.” Peter Metzelaar was five-years old in 1940 when Nazis rolled into his native Amsterdam. Now in his seventies, Metzlaar is an active member of the speaker’s bureau of the Washington State Holocaust Education Center. He was in Sitka this week (5-20-09) to speak with students about his life, his narrow escape from death, and his regrets during the Holocaust.