There’s no data about the scale of Sitka’s online shopping, but a few visible signs. FedEx now operates four trucks and UPS three. The U.S. Post Office has seen the number of parcels, especially from Amazon, balloon. (Rachel Cassandra/KCAW photo)

Any way you slice it, food prices are high in Sitka. It’s a geographically isolated community and a small town. Increasingly, one way people are responding to these high prices is to buy food online. For our series, “The Cost of Living in Sitka,” KCAW looked into the trend of buying food — not in a cart — but with the click of a mouse. Also, a recent Supreme Court ruling opens the door for an online sales tax, but would that benefit municipalities? 

Downloadable audio.

The thing about online shopping in Sitka is that nobody wants to talk about it. I started out this piece thinking I would talk to a few people eager to share their online shopping tricks — bing-bang-boom. I posted to Sitka Chatters, a popular Facebook group, and got a few comments.

Several people were passionate about online shopping and food prices. But no one wanted to talk on the record about it. So, I decided to dig in on my own. I went to the recycling center.

(Sound of footsteps)
Cassandra: All right, I’ve made it to the dumpster…and I’m going to get inside. I don’t know if this is a good idea. This first box I see is Amazon. Got some bananas.
(Sound of moving boxes)
Cassandra: All right, here’s an Amazon box, Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, a plain box…
Anonymous recycler: Do you need boxes?
Cassandra: Oh no, I’m doing a radio piece (laughs). That’s a big Amazon box. What did you get in there?
Anonymous recycler: Oh, we got a gift for my grandchild’s sixth birthday. Definitely an Amazon purchase. Embarrassingly so.

The dumpster told me that some people are buying big quantities of goods from Amazon. But why? After a few false starts, one of the women who responded to my post online said she’d meet up to talk.

Sue Brown said it’s not about having more options online, but about saving money.  “I’ve always believed in the fact that you shouldn’t pay more than necessary to get what you want so, I guess it’s a matter of taking the time to comparison shop,” Brown said. She emphasized that she does buy local much of the time and wants to support local shops.

“I don’t mind paying a little bit extra. However, it’s hard to reconcile paying 150% or 200% or even 300%. I have seen some items at the grocery store here in town versus when I can get them online with free shipping,” Brown said.

Talking to Brown told me a little about the typical consumer, buying food for the home kitchen. But what about people who operate a food business?

North Sister Juice and Crepe Company is in a tiny strip mall. Behind the immaculate counter, aproned employees handle produce and blenders. I met there with Caitlin Way, who owns Fish Eye Coffee and North Sister with her business partner Alana Peterson. 

Way said they buy almost all the food in their shop online wholesale: their produce, their sauces, sweeteners…everything. It costs 30-50 percent less and North Sister can get bulk sizes of necessities. Occasionally they’ll purchase small items from the grocery store or produce if they run out.

Way showed me around the storage areas. “This is the freezer items. Most of this comes from Azure, so we are able to get bulk amounts of all of these fruits. Big fifty pound bags of oats or flour and then same with sauces, vinegars and coconut oil and maple syrup …we’re able to order online bulk amounts which we need cause we go through so quickly,” Way said as she motioned to the items. When she inherited these businesses, they were already set up to buy food wholesale. That’s how she’s operated since the beginning.

Are Sitkans buying more online now than ever before? Multiple sources seemed to think so. I went to see Ed Conway, the manager of the Pioneer U.S. Postal Station on Lincoln Street. Conway has been working in the post office for the last 20 years alongside Deloris Doggett.

“What we’ve seen in the last probably six to eight years – and over the past 20 years – is an influx of parcels in our post office. Mainly what we’re seeing is Amazon boxes. That’s probably half of what we’re putting up each day.  It’s unbelievable really, how much we put through in Amazon boxes here,”

Conway says the biggest increase in Amazon boxes has been in the last four years. He doesn’t know how much is food and he imagines some of the boxes are being re-used. He also speculates that it’s probably bad for the local businesses here. “It’s just part of the times. It’s part of the times and me and Deloris here, we’re seeing it first hand,” Conway said.

It’s clear that Sitkans are buying more online, including food. I found out why they’re shopping online, and how much. But now, I wonder how much this online shopping is affecting the community.

KCAW’s Emily Kwong looked into it. Amazon did not respond to her press inquiry. No studies been done locally and neither the Sitka Chamber Chamber of Commerce nor the Southeast Economic Development Association were aware of any. There’s no statistics, only signs: the boxes in the post office, later empty at the recycling center. Over a decade ago, there were two FedEx trucks in Sitka. Now there are four. UPS operates three trucks as well. 

The dollars leaving Sitka through online shopping – and the loss in potential sales tax revenue – is a statewide problem. Through email to Kwong, Ken Alper with the Department of Revenue said Alaska sees $1 billion a year in online purchases.

The state could not mandate an online vendor – say Amazon or eBay – to collect and remit a sales tax…until now. In June, the case Wayfair vs. South Dakota appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court. NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported on the outcome. She wrote, “Writing for the five justice majority, justice Anthony Kennedy said that in the modern economy, the rule linking tax collection to a physical presence in the state unconstitutionally deprives states of the ability to collect taxes and perform critical public functions.”

The five-to-four decision was a victory for South Dakota, which relies on a  sales taxes to fund state government. Their attorney general called it “a victory for Mainstreet America.”

But Alaska is unique. There is no state sales tax; only local sales taxes. Municipalities benefit from that. So would Alaskans be willing to pay both? The Alaska Municipal League (AML) thinks not.

Historically, AML has preferred the state not pursue a sales tax. The Wayfair decision opens the door for that. It was a hot topic at the League’s meeting in Denali a few weeks ago.

Executive Director Nils Andreassen said the room had more questions than answers. “There’s a lot to wrestle with in terms of what the impact would be for municipalities, for the state and for Alaskans,” he said.

The Alaska Municipal League is taking the lead to research the implications. They are putting together a working group to answer questions about the legal mechanisms of Wayfair and whether the state or municipalities could and should leverage it. 

An Air Station Sitka helicopter trains over Gastineau Channel in Juneau in 2008. (Coast Guard News photo)

On Sunday (8/12/2018), a Sitka-based Coast Guard crew located a missing 74-year-old man near Haines, Alaska.

According to a press release, the man was found in a heavily wooded area 28 miles northwest of the town near Walker Lake.

A Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Sitka hoisted and transported the man to Haines for medical services. The man had no injuries and was in good condition.

The Coast Guard had been searching for the man since Saturday night. The man’s vehicle had been found unoccupied on a remote road at 6 p.m. Saturday. Two aircrews were involved in the search, as well as three canine search teams and the Alaska State Troopers.

The aircrew conducted their search using night vision goggles, forward looking infrared radar, and a spotlight.

Weather on scene was clear skies, 10-mile visibility and 54 degrees.

To read a full story about the rescue of 74-year-old Valentino Burattin, check out KHNS’s story here

SAVF volunteers install flags as part of a domestic violence awareness project.

According to the Alaska Victimization Study, almost half of women in Sitka have experienced domestic violence or sexual assault. But SAFV—Sitkans Against Family Violence—has found that most men in Sitka have a low awareness of this violence. So Martina Kurzer of SAFV spent six months tracking local incidents of domestic violence.

Downloadable audio.

Martina Kurzer has light brown hair cut short, a broad smile, and a palpable passion for educating the public about domestic violence. She calls it “interpersonal abuse” or “interpersonal violence” because many people think domestic sounds outdated. She meets with me in KCAW’s studio and shares the results of her six months of research.

“In the first quarter, January through March,” she says, “we had 29 incidences of personal violence in the police blotter and we had 23 charges or arrests in the police report. That’s substantial. And then in the second quarter of this year we had 16 mentionings or calls to the police department about some kind of interpersonal violence. And 12… enforcement actions that resulted out of this.”

In total, Sitkans reported 45 cases of domestic violence, 4 stalking incidents, 3 cases of child abuse, and 1 cyber-stalking incident to the Sitka Police Department. Kurzer found these statistics by monitoring published reports in the Daily Sitka Sentinel.

Lieutenant Lance Ewers of the Sitka Police Department agrees with this assessment of the frequency of domestic violence.

He says, “If I were to be asked how often do our officers investigate, the crime of domestic violence, I would say multiple cases a week. In our lovely town, which is a great town, and it’s no different than any other place in America.” Ewers says many of those cases are from repeat offenders. And alcohol and drugs play a huge role in these disturbances.

He says, “In my law enforcement career, I couldn’t even begin to count how many domestic violence investigations I’ve conducted, and I could probably count on both hands how many didn’t have an alcohol nexus to it. Or a drug nexus to it. It was a sober domestic disturbance. And I’ve been a cop since 1999.”

But data from police reports only reveals a small percentage of domestic violence cases. This is partly because not all incidents are reported. Kurzer says, “So if there are 45 cases of callers in Sitka, in six months, I must say there is probably at least ten-fold of incidences of interpersonal violence in our homes.”

It’s also because not all forms of domestic violence are crimes. Ewers says, “There’s physical abuse and there’s mental abuse and they’re very often tied together, All that mental abuse is taxing, that’s hurtful. However, that’s not criminal.” But, Ewers says, threats of physical violence are criminal. People can get arrested or incarcerated for threatening their partner with violence.

Kurzer says SAFV has a wider definition of interpersonal violence. And their services are meant to help anyone experiencing any type of abuse or violence. She says, “For SAFV and all other entities that work in this field, domestic violence is actually defined as a systematic way of one intimate partner to gain power and control over another… and this putting down does not have to be physical.”

Kurzer relays a recent incident she read in the police blotter. She says, “A woman called that her significant other had thrown out her belongings and was refusing to give her her portion of their tax returns. You hear that often. One guy throws her belongings out of the house. That’s economic abuse.”

Economic abuse can be a way for partners to exercise control and power over a partner. According to SAFV, partners threatening to take the children away or threatening to commit suicide are abuse. So are efforts to isolate a partner from their family and friends.

Peg Blumer, a Sitkan domestic violence survivor, experienced many types of physical and psychological abuse.

Blumer says, “He threatened to- threatened to kill my kids… I was never allowed to go anywhere without him.” She adds, “He used to have this game where he would strangle me until I passed out.” But partly through SAFV, she was able to escape the relationship and its threats. Now she works for SAFV.

She says, “I don’t want anybody to feel as alone as I felt—as terrified and helpless. And I don’t see myself as a victim. I see myself as a survivor I see every person who comes to us as a survivor. You can come back from that. You can move on and make your life a good life.”

If you suspect someone is experiencing domestic violence, call the police at (907) 747-3245. If you are experiencing domestic abuse, call SAFV’s crisis line at 1-800-478-6511.

Jessica Henry has her makeup done before Sitka’s first drag show. (Photo: KCAW/Katherine Rose)

Drag shows are an important part of queer culture all over the world. On August 4, 2018, Sitka had its very first show. Although it was a bit of a risk, the producers and performers believe the show was a huge hit, and a welcome success for Sitka’s queer community. Two headliners — both professional drag queens — traveled from Juneau and Tacoma to support the local cast.

Downloadable audio.

The first floor of the Mean Queen restaurant is sold out. About 120 mostly-female audience members scream and cheer, and some hold dollars up in the air to tip Lola Monet, a drag queen from Juneau.

Monet wears a low-cut black dress, pearls, and hip pads to fill out her curves. Like many drag performers, she prefers female pronouns when in her drag persona. The Sitka show is only her fourth performance. She calls herself “a baby drag queen.”

Monet has always been drawn to drag. She says, “I’ve loved dress up, ever since I was a little kid. It’s dress up, it’s play time. And my family was Southern Baptist. And after I started playing with ladies clothes, I was never allowed to play dress up again. So I love doing drag. Its allows me to express the feminine side of me a little bit.”

Ann Poindexter’s drag performance. (Photo: KCAW/Katherine Rose)

For Ann Poindexter, the other headliner, drag has also allowed them to play with gender in a way they weren’t allowed growing up. Poindexter uses the pronouns “they” and “them.” They grew up Mormon in Utah.

They say, “I was very deeply religious for about 23 years from age zero to 23. I was raised to believe that being queer is an abomination and that it would mean eternal damnation and sadness for me.” Poindexter has a thick beard and fake eyelashes, neutral lipstick, and a tan dress. In Poindexter’s adult life, gender identity has become incredibly important to them.

They say, “And especially that space between what is traditionally defined as what is masculine and feminine is where I feel the most comfortable and at home.” Poindexter is fortunate; their family has overcome religious barriers and grown to accept and embrace Poindexter’s gender expressions.

They say, “So, they’re actually incredibly supportive and cool now. It just took us a few years to get there.” And Poindexter’s family was also a source of inspiration for their early drag impulses. They say, “My mom was a seamstress, so as a little kid she would make me these extravagant outfits (2:42) and even though it wasn’t Halloween, I would tear through the wilderness of Utah dressed like a total freak.”

Ann Poindexter’s drag performance. (Photo: KCAW/Katherine Rose)

The show wasn’t only a space for the experienced headliners, though. A number of local performers experimented with drag for the first time. That includes Greg, aka Bailey Craig, the emcee of the event. I ask Craig to describe their outfit. They laugh. “I am wearing a hideous auburn wig. It’s absolutely terrible and I’m wearing a fake moustache. And cargo shorts and a cream-colored polo with red and green stripes and Birkenstocks and socks. I’m essentially the typical white dad. It is so far from who I am as a woman and how I identify as a woman.”

Bailey Craig as “Greg,” the emcee of Sitka’s first drag show. (Photo: KCAW/Katherine Rose)

The creators were overwhelmed with the rush of support from the community. The show sold out in 36 hours, without even a formal event announcement. Jessica Henry was one of the show’s producers. I asked Henry why she decided to help produce a drag show here. She says, “So I feel like the artistic community here is very receptive and excited about new events and I just felt like that ever since I moved here, the queer community isn’t represented.”

Creating a queer space has already affected Sitka. Here’s Aren Vastola, a lifetime resident, who enjoyed the show as an audience member: “It’s really great to see this kind of gender nonconforming performance in Sitka. …As a member of the LGBT community myself, it’s also kind of really comforting and reassuring to see people coming out both like not just to see a show but also in support of that.”

These kinds of spaces have the potential to create a more queer-friendly Sitka. That includes a culture with space for kids growing up queer and questioning. I ask Poindexter if they have any advice young people who might be drawn to drag. They say, “Just experiment. Like just put on heels if you’ve always wondered what would it feel like to put on heels.”

Kelp forest in Sitka Sound, being studied by researchers from UC Santa Cruz. (KCAW/Rachel Cassandra)

The kelp forests in Sitka Sound are rich ecosystems, full of animals that feed on seaweed. The Sitka Sound Science Center is hosting researchers from the University of California Santa Cruz who are examining these forests. I caught up with Umi Hoshijima, one of the researchers for the project.

Downloadable audio.

Umi Hoshijima picks me up in the University of California Santa Cruz’s bright orange inflatable boat. The researchers load it up with scuba gear and we pull out into Sitka Sound.

Umi Hoshijima, is a postdoctoral researcher with UC Santa Cruz. We’re looking for the kelp forest they’ve been researching. Hoshijima tells me about the variety of animals they’re studying: red and green sea urchins, the dusky turban snail and a few other snails, the pinto abalone, and a few limpets.

We pull up to a spot of water with bits of kelp showing on the surface. They confirm the location on their GPS. Then we anchor up. They suit up in their scuba gear and lean backwards into the water. They disappear under the waves. I just see air bubbling up to the surface every few seconds. Later, Hoshijima tells me how they were creating a snapshot of the underwater world just below the surface.

He says, “For every single one of these critters that we’re interested in, we’re going down with a set of calipers to get their size down to the nearest millimeter.” And they do this by placing a small square frame made of PVC every few feet on the ocean floor. Then they count and measure every single creature of interest within that square. It’s tedious work, but one of many things being done to understand the kelp forest.

He says, “What we’re trying to do with the survey is to spend our time looking really closely at small patches of the bottom, to get an idea of the little critters down there.”

Researcher Umi Hoshijima, heading to the kelp forest he’s studying. (KCAW/Rachel Cassandra)

This is the field component of the invertebrate research. It’s part of a larger project headed by researcher Kristy Kroeker through UC Santa Cruz and funded by the National Science foundation. The six researchers involved will look at invertebrates, as well as algae. There is also a lab component, where researchers take these animals and change the temperature and pH, or acidity, of their water. That way they can test how the creatures of the kelp forest would respond to changing ocean conditions. Hoshijima tells me what variables they’re measuring in the lab, “The amount of food they’re eating, how much they grow, and how much oxygen they’re breathing.”

And, Hoshijima adds, Kroeker’s team is especially interested in the impacts of ocean acidification and temperatures in the surface oceans rising. This is crucial for understanding the future of kelp forests on a warming planet.

He says, “We’re concerned that in the near future, a lot of the animals that we know and love in the kelp forest will actually have problems dealing with the more acidic environment. And that’s been shown to decrease the thickness of shells, for things like mussels and oysters and different clams, and that could make it easier for them to get chomped on. It’s actually even been shown in some species to impact the, impact the brains of fish. So it actually makes fish unable to have proper brain function in some ways.”

This year’s data will act as a kind of baseline for understanding changes in the kelp forest. The project has funding for five years of research.

Hoshijima says that means is that they can really spend the time to dig deep into the into the kelp forest.

With all this scientific understanding, Hoshijima hopes the research could impact the world, especially concerning climate change. He says, “We need to have a better idea of how our coastlines could end up changing in the near future. And by sort of teasing apart how that could happen, we might be able to enact policy and change things in a way that we can protect our resources for the near future.”

The feet of the members of the Sitka Men’s Group.

In our society men face unique pressures and expectations. In Sitka, a group of men are getting together to question assumptions about masculinity, and to create their own space to share emotions.

Downloadable audio.

I sat down with the Sitka Men’s Group at the beginning of one of their meetings. They take place in the dimly-lit SAIL offices in Sitka, around a thick wooden table. They gave me a little background on the group. And while they’re not unfriendly to women — which I’ll explain more about in a moment– they consider their interactions confidential. So, they didn’t want me to record even their weekly introductions.
Instead, I invited the members to meet with me one-on-one, to discuss the need for a group like this, and why they participate.
Three of them agreed.

Tom Crane, one of the founders of the Sitka’s Men’s Group says, “Men don’t seem to have a real venue for sharing a lot of stuff, anything from apprenticeship to mentorship to feelings to emotions to what’s coming up at work, anything, so it felt like this was something that was needed.”

The idea for the group sprang from a mixed gender group that was exploring the value of emotional vulnerability. Steve Hutchinson says it can be hard for men to get to that vulnerable place. “With men, there’s this sort of posturing,” he says, “almost this competitive atmosphere, in a way of making yourself look better or look good. A men’s group specifically is important because it’s with other men who have also had those messages from our larger society.”

John Stinson says that these messages are very limiting. He says, “It seems like there’s two emotions allowed for men. One is happiness and the other is anger and anger is so often a mask basically out of fear or confusion.”

I ask, “Do you have any examples of things you’ve reasoned out or worked things out in the group?”

“Yes,” he says, “a relationship that I’m in now and often I feel like I have no one else to talk to. About my own concerns.”

Beyond just sharing emotions and life issues, Stinson says that different themes emerge that the group discusses.

“For instance one week, it was values,” he says, “and that really helped me to clarify what are my values? And I can stand firm on those, and in defining those helps me to discover better who I am and how I can relate with other people.”

Crane says redefining masculinity is an essential part of being a man today. “We might turn the script of what it is to be a man, and that has changed in the last forty years, 50 years, a lot.”

The group first came together almost two years ago, and fluctuates between 3 and 7 members. The men sometimes listen to podcasts together, watch films, or read books that are relevant to their work. This gives them ideas for new definitions of masculinity. Stinson says they’ve been looking at “different ways to express a warrior spirit. For a couple of different weeks, we’ve referenced into letter from a birmingham jail from Martin Luther King Jr., and the effect that had. A man who’d been brutalized and part of a collective recipient of violent oppression and prejudice would choose nonviolence, and he did it with fierceness, with ferocity.”

The men are grateful to have a space of their own but they want to clarify that the group is not anti-women. Hutchinson says, “Especially here in Sitka, I see so many strong and amazing women. Courageous and powerful and and really like world builders and community builders.”

Besides being good for men, the group also benefits the women around them. According to Hutchinson, the group has talked about “how women often become the sole sort of emotional support for a man.”

But this group changes that dynamic. Stinson agrees. “When a man is better adjusted and balanced in his internal world, then he’s going to be softer and easier to get along with the outside as well.”

Hutchinson says that emotional support is essential for men. Not having emotional outlets can have grave ramifications. He says not having that support or that structure can be a risk factor to men perpetrating violence. That’s one of the reasons the group considers itself an important ally to feminism.

Crane agrees that this type of work could have larger societal repercussions. He asks, “What would true brotherhood look like if we weren’t competing with each other and we were cooperating instead? And what would our society at large look like if we were doing that?”

It’s hard to imagine what that would look like. But perhaps there’s a microcosm that already exists, inside the SAIL office in Sitka every Wednesday night. For those of us outside those walls, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Student Gabe Stenek, Lodoe Sangmo, Olivia Olson, Johanna Prince, and Angelina Kimoktoak follow Service Coordinator Jessica Twydell down the Indian River Trail, where they performed volunteer trail work. (Photo by Johnny Elliott)

An organization called Outer Coast is gearing up to start a new two year college on the Sheldon Jackson College campus in Sitka. Their first step, this year, is to test out the curriculum and administration on a group of rising high school juniors and seniors. The curriculum, modeled after Deep Springs College in California includes three elements: classroom time, service work, and self-governance.

Downloadable audio.

I’m with a group of sixteen high schoolers, at the head of the Indian River Trail in Sitka. We all tromp into the woods. The rain has been falling all day, heavy for a Sitkan summer. I ask a few students to hang back with me as we walk.

Michaela Blowe, from Willow, Alaska, tells me about the college-level course they’re all taking. “It’s about freedom and rights in a polarized world. The class itself is full of discussions and just coming up with different ideas and sharing those ideas as well as all the work that we’re doing is actually not for any grade… Like for essays we’re getting feedback but no numerical grade whatsoever.”

I ask her how that changes the work that she’s doing. “I’ve definitely noticed a drop in stress levels compared to school time,” she says, “but at the same time the topics are really interesting so I still want to learn about it.”

The college will also likely have some arrangement that deemphasizes grades. But they want to make sure students can transfer to a four year college if they want.

Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins helped found Outer Coast partly as a way to offer a different kind of school. The education will include classroom time, service work–like this project–and self-governance, where the kids make their own rules and regulations.

“Students are given a lot of responsibility,” Kreiss-Tomkins says. “There’s not a lot of handholding. That, I think, is as important as any academic aspect of the program. Right now, at most college campuses if you make a mess, somebody has a party friday night, whatever, somebody else is cleaning it up for you.”

Kreiss-Tomkins laments what he calls “clientism” in higher education. That’s when schools treat their students more like customers than students. He says the service component of Outer coast is a contrast to that. “It’s not all about one trying to extract the best experience for oneself but to sort of direct and give outwards.”

Kreiss-Tomkins also hopes to offer a deeply committed faculty. He says a lot of typical faculty members aren’t prepared for teaching. He says, “Right now, in the US, you get a PhD, you often have little to no teaching experience and simply because those three letters are next to your name, it’s assumed that you’re a pedagogue.”

So far, in the classroom part of their education, the students have read Plato, Socrates, and a selection of Raven’s stories from the Tlingit tribe. Those readings and living in Sitka have piqued the interest of student Adrian Flinn from New York City.  He says, “I’ve become fascinated over the last few months with neocolonialism, and now looking at the history between Russians in this area and the Tlingit tribe. I’ve become more interested in that.”

Aside from class and their service trip, the students also have self-governance meetings. Flinn says, “On the second day we essentially set all the rules for the program, how we conduct ourselves around each other and the rules around free time whether we can go into town or not and technology use, if we can limit that and put some controls on that.”

The students set their own curfews for 10pm on weekdays and 10:30pm on the weekends. They want to function well early in the mornings for their classes and activities.

On the trail, we hop over puddles, climb over roots, and tromp through sticky mud. After about an hour and a half, we duck through a tangled trail and emerge in a mucky muddy path right next to a stream. Immediately the crowd divvies up buckets and a few kids jump down into the river bed and start collecting fist-sized rocks.

Charlie Ewell, from Lost Angeles, says, “Right now the service project we’re doing is on one of the trails in Sitka and we’re helping restoring or expanding the trail by paving the trail with stones.”

Campbell Sande, Olivia Olson and Angelina Kimoktoak lay rocks on the Indian River Trail. (Photo by Johnny Elliott)

Once the rocks are collected, other students take the buckets and dump them on the path, stomping on them to squish them in.

I ask Ewell what he feels like he would gain being in a college program like this. He says, “An opportunity to have a different sort of education that’s not our traditional somewhat monolithic educational structure that we have in the US.”

Outer coast hopes to offer something different for their students, a balanced education that supports the whole person. They’ll likely be testing the program again next summer with more students, and perhaps after that, open their doors to undergraduates.

This article has been corrected. Deep Springs College is in California, not Colorado, where we originally stated.

Lydia Pierce holds a poop emoji ice cream cone and wears two emoji buttons she made.

July 17th was World Emoji Day and fittingly, Sitka Public Library recently had a “glam emoji” workshop. Maite Lorente Rial runs youth programs there. The glam emoji class is just one of many things she does to make the library a welcome place to its youthful patrons.

Downloadable audio.

I’m surrounded by glass panels, in the meeting room of the Sitka Public Library. There’s a table laid out with bowls of neon plastic beads. Around it are about ten kids talking excitedly. Some sift through the beads picking out their favorite colors. Others discuss their crafting visions.

I ask one of the participants to tell me what they’re doing today. She smacks on the gum in her mouth. “So,” she says, “we’re making emojis and poop emojis. And we’re taking photos um, we’re making pins and we’re having lots of fun.”

That’s Lydia Pierce. The kids are making emoji coasters out of the plastic beads and poop emojis out of icing squeezed into a spiral. There are, of course, a million jokes. Can we eat our poop now?

“Is this poop cute?” Pierce asks and laughs. Pierce is 10 years old. Kids her age kept asking if they could join the library’s programs.

Participants make poop emoji out of icing and cookies.

“And the answer was always a no, because either they were too young or too old,” says Maite Lorente Rial, the library’s Youth Services Director. She decided to do something. These kids are tweenagers, also called tweens or preteens. They’re ages 9 to 12. They often fall between the cracks of programming for youth. They’re too old for story time at the library, but not old enough to be on the library’s teen advisory board. That’s why Rial started the tween program, just for them.

“Probably they are some of our best patrons,” Rial says. “They check out lots of books. They are dynamic.”

Rial considers herself a romantic about the library. She believes it’s a sacred space and gets a little choked up when talking about it. She sees the positive in all the library patrons, especially the tweens. “They are just getting a little bit closer to the pain that humans carry,” she says, “but they are not, they are not there just yet, so they are still fresh like children.”

“Why do you think the library is such a special place for this age?” I ask.

“When kids come to the library and see the same adults,” Rial says, “behind the circulation desk , adults that they can trust, adults that provide a nice interaction. They like it, they feel important. They find a place that is their own.”

Tweens use plastic beads to make emoji coasters at the Sitka Public Library.

The tween program has been a safe space for this group to thrive. Rial tells me about a recent interaction in one of her programs. “There was one of the participants in the room who was very shy, very shy and she was actually with all the noise and the activities that we were offering, she was totally paralyzed. She didn’t know what to do. And my first reaction was to worry. I asked her for help, to help me, to do together, one of the projects that we were offering and as soon as I approach her, you know asking for help, everything change. Her face change. Her attitude change, and she just was right in there.”

It’s clear that Rial has a special relationship with the tweens. Whenever she starts talking, all the kids listen, and she makes poop jokes right alongside them. She also, notably, has allowed them to work with sticky icing and cookies inside the library. I talk with Pierce again.

“And what do you think about Maite?” I ask.

“I really like Maite,” Pierce says.

“What do you like about her?” I ask.

“Her personality and how she dresses, yeah,” she says.

Today’s program is all about emoji, but other groups have made slime out of detergent, glue, and glitter or made records into bowls. Upcoming programs include an interactive Harry Potter film and making zombie barbies. Here’s Yaretzi Macias one of the other tweens.

“I did a heart emoji one and a unicorn poop emoji one,” Macias says.

“And what did you make with your beads?” I ask.

“A heart, for my mom.”

I ask her what she thinks of being a tween. “Um, cool,” she says, “and I seriously am nervous about being a teenager. Because it’s like sometimes my brother says, ‘Are you going to spray paint?’ It’s, like, I don’t know. No.”

In her and her brother’s minds, spray painting is one of those mysterious things that older kids do. Eventually everyone in the program will leave childhood to become teenagers. But for now, with Rial’s help, they can relish their time in between.

The First Presbyterian Church, just after its last service. (Photo: KCAW/Rachel Cassandra)

Sitka’s First Presbyterian Church held its final service on Sunday, July 8, 2018 before closing its doors permanently. One of Sitka’s oldest religious institutions, the church has struggled as its congregation has aged, and attendance has dwindled. KCAW’s Rachel Cassandra attended First Presbyterian’s final service, along with about 50 Sitkans, and sent this audio postcard. The first voice is that of pastor Rob Mathis.

Downloadable audio.

Now that the church is closed, some individuals will be joining other congregations in the community. A few will be continuing on as a Presbyterian fellowship and are looking for a new space to gather.

Chairs inside the First Presbyterian Church of Sitka. (Photo: KCAW/Rachel Cassandra)

Chloe French adds beads to her felt bib. (KCAW/Rachel Cassandra)

Chloe French is a Tlingit artist based in Bellingham, Washington, the recent artist in residence at the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka. Her work is inspired by Tlingit ceremonial bibs, but she adds her own twist to the tradition.

Downloadable audio.

I meet Chloe French at the Sheldon Jackson museum. She’s sitting behind a table displaying a number of her bibs. She picks up a bib and starts telling me about it.

“I collect the myths from around the Southeast,” French says. “One is a variation on the Raven steals the Sun, on this one, when raven steals the sun, the sun is in a bag, so when he flies out of the smoke hole, there’s no light. And he flies around and flies around and he lands on the bank of the Nass river and he calls to the people on the other side to come get him, and they refuse. So he throws the sun into the sky and the people on the other side of the river all turn into the animals of the pelts they’re wearing.”

The bib is made of wool felt and has embroidery and beadwork outlining shapes of various animals. It has a dark background with bursts of color–orange, yellow, blue, red.

“On the piece I have Raven and I have the sun,” French says. “I’ve made bear, seal, and fox turn so that they’re half human half animal. And because I’m a killer whale, I put a killer whale on.”

“What does that mean that you’re a killer whale?” I ask.

French says, “My clan is Tsaagweidi, the killer whale seal clan.”

French used to come to Southeast Alaska in childhood and was captivated by the Native work she saw in museums here. She remembers seeing a Chilkat robe and deciding that one day she wanted to make one. She wove one in 2008. She also noticed the ceremonial bibs. The traditional versions are usually clan crest designs. The decoration is dense beadwork–no applique like French’s work.

French’s bibs contain illustrations of traditional myths from Tlingit and other Native American cultures. (KCAW/Rachel Cassandra)

“The ceremonial bibs,” French says, “which are incredibly beautiful, are worn at special occasions and put away so if you’re not there, you’ll never see these bibs. And I decided I wanted a bib that you could wear anytime.”

French has been making bibs for 5 years. She’s never worked on traditional bibs and there’s sometimes a little tension between French and strict traditionalists. “I do believe,” French says, “that for people who work in the traditional materials and only in traditional ways, that’s perfect too. It’s wonderful. It’s just not what I’m interested in. I’ve always done my own thing. I’ve always been contrary.”

Unlike most of her bibs, this one is simply decorative. French wanted to give herself flowers during a grey winter in Bellingham, WA. (KCAW/Rachel Cassandra)

French tells me how she makes the bibs. She starts by basting down the felt shapes, which means she uses loose stitches to hold the shapes in place. “I start sewing them down,” she says, “and I’ll bead around the edges. All of them are backed with fabric to cover up the stitches. And then usually I’ll decorate the edge with more beading. So that’s the process. They take probably a month for each one to make.”

“For people who do wear your bibs,” I say, “when do they usually wear them? What is that like?”

“Anytime you want,” she says. “I would wear it to the symphony. I would not eat soup.” She suggests wearing them with jeans to really stand out.

For French, the contemporary aspects of her work also have a deeper significance.

“We are not a gone, dead people,” she says. “We are as acquisitive as anybody else.”