Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Smoldering concerns — Smoking ban sparks clean air vs. city control conflagration

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Lines are being drawn in the battle over expanding smoking bans in Kenai and Soldotna to cover all places of employment and public entrances to them.

Except those lines are different in this smoking battle.

Smokers who support increasing restrictions, nonsmokers and owners of nonsmoking business establishments who oppose a more stringent ban — it’s not smokers vs. nonsmokers anymore. The crux of the argument isn’t even over whether smoking is harmful.

It’s become more a question of limits — how far should government go in protecting health and quality-of-life issues for some by restricting the rights of others. It’s either a question of when is it going to start? Or, for others — where is it going to end?

It’ll snuff out itself
Cyndi Day has been the manager of the Maverick Saloon in Soldotna for about 20 years, she said. She smokes at the bar and is a firm believer that people shouldn’t even start — especially her two teenage sons, which is why she doesn’t smoke at home or around them.

“It’s a nasty habit. I’m addicted, and I would rather people didn’t smoke,” she said. “I’ve been smoking since I was a teenager, despite numerous attempts to quit. I fully support teens against smoking. I think if they can convince their friends not to start, that would be great.”

But she is just as firmly opposed to expanding the smoking ban to include businesses like bars.

“We all realize smoking is bad for us and we don’t want people smoking, but the way you go about it is really important. You don’t make a law to make people stop. That’s not how you go about it. Prohibition didn’t make people stop drinking,” Day said.
This isn’t an area where government needs to be involved, she said — it’s a situation that will work itself out.

“It should be up to business owners. If the customer base won’t tolerate smoking, then businesses need to be nonsmoking,” she said.

Day posted a message on the Maverick’s reader board out front along the Sterling Highway that the bar is a smoking establishment. Anyone who doesn’t want to be in a smoky environment can go somewhere else, she said. And if her customer base dwindles due to people wanting to avoid smoke, she’ll change the bar’s rule on her own. But for now, the majority of her customers want to smoke.

“It’s not what the customer base is looking for right now,” she said. “I have a very firm customer base and most smoke, or don’t mind smoking.”

If the rule were to change, that doesn’t mean people will, she said.

“They’ll just start frequenting places out of town. It doesn’t change people’s habits — they just find places they’re comfortable,” she said. “I think it’s going to be very bad for my business, and a lot of my customers will go out of town. They won’t be here. I think it will be good for the J-Bar-B and the Duck and Parker’s.”

Katie Hager, who’s been going to the Maverick since 1995, despite the J-Bar-B being closer to her home, said she’d probably think about finding a different bar if she couldn’t smoke at the Maverick anymore. She said she already doesn’t spend time in Anchorage bars when she’s in the city, because of Anchorage’s no-smoking ordinance.

“It’s not illegal but they’re making it like it’s something illegal,” she said.

Part of the reasoning behind the ordinances is to protect employees from second-hand smoke. But Day said they can protect themselves by choosing where they work.

“They can work in a nonsmoking establishment, that’s a choice that they make. Nobody works here because they have to, they work here because they want to,” she said.

There are risks inherent in some jobs, and people accept them if they choose to work in those fields, she said. Policemen don’t get to say they’ll go on patrol only if no one shoots at them, and electrical linemen don’t get to declare they’re afraid of heights and have poles brought down to ground level. It’s the same with bartenders and servers — they know bars are smoky, and if they don’t want to be around that, they don’t have to work at a smoking establishment, Day said.

“If people are against smoking, this isn’t the bar to come to,” Hager said.

Health implications aside, a smoking ban isn’t something government should be involved in, Day said. Capitalism works through free market enterprise, and government interference mucks up the system, she said. The city councils should also consider that a loss of business at bars and other current smoking establishments means a loss of sales tax revenue, people being laid off and all the spiraling problems that causes — like people not being able to pay their mortgages and an increase in the need for social services, Day said.

“It’s important for everyone to think about once you start letting government infringe on you rights and the free market economy, where do you stop? It isn’t that many steps until socialism,” Day said.

Legislating manners
Tiffany Grimm, 26, of Kenai, used to smoke, but quit when she had her two kids.

“I’ve been a smoker, I’m not against smokers. I’m the daughter of a smoker and I’ve known plenty of smokers. It’s not like I’m this person that has no idea about smokers and their behavior and the way they think and things like that,” she said.

She may not be against smokers, but she is against them doing it around her kids. She’d like to see a smoking ban expand even further than the ones being proposed for businesses and the entrances to businesses and public buildings, to cover outdoor public spaces like parks, playgrounds, parades and other community events.

“A person sitting right in front of the playground smoking, so everybody’s children in the park are having to deal with it, and there’s nothing we can do about it except ask them, and they can be rude. There’s nothing to stop them from smoking right next to the swing set,” Grimm said.

She doesn’t take her kids into smoking establishments, but in public places, like parks or in front of stores, she thinks smokers should avoid her, not the other way around. When she or her husband have asked people not to smoke next to their kids, they get rude responses, she said.

“We’ve encountered almost assaulting behavior when we’ve asked people if they could step away from where our children were,” she said. “We were getting people that would just start yelling at you and lighting up right next to the stroller or lighting up right at the entrance to the store when I’m standing there with a newborn and being rude when I’ve asked them to kind of move away, and blowing smoke right at us. It’s appalling.”

Even outside, second-hand smoke doesn’t dissipate enough when it’s right next to you, she said. Since not all smokers have the courtesy to consider others when they light up, Grimm thinks it is government’s place to enforce the matter, she said.

“There are all kinds of laws in place. People are allowed to operate ATVs but there are guidelines to regulate how they can do that, so it doesn’t interrupt the lifestyle of people in general,” Grimm said. “I personally don’t mind if people drive four-wheelers up and down my road, but other people do. It doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to do that, you just have to do that in a way that’s right for everybody as a whole. You can’t get drunk and belligerent in public, either. They can’t drink on a park bench and leave their bottles there. Why can they smoke and leave their butts there?”

For the past few months Grimm has been advocating for increasing Kenai’s smoking ban. She’s talked to teachers and parents at school, neighbors, community members and teenagers — a couple hundred people in all, she estimates. She’s also written letters on the issue and consulted with the Peninsula Smokefree Alliance.

“I know other smokers who are really in support of this, too,” she said. “… It’s amazing how 95 percent of the teenagers I’ve talked to are just totally in support of this. They’re really surprised. I think that our city really does need to listen to those young voices.”

Employing clean air
Kenai Councilman Hal Smalley said he’ll introduce an ordinance that would ban smoking in all places of employment — bars, pull-tab parlors, bingo halls, etc. — and institute a buffer zone around building entrances, at the council’s March 4 meeting. It will be up for a public hearing at the March 18 meeting. Depending on the response, it may have another public hearing April 1, or the council could act on it March 18.

He said he’s bringing the ordinance forward partly based on requests of constituents.

“Over the years a number of people talked to me about smoking going on and just patrons of businesses and employees visited with me, and in fact some owners of establishments talked to me about it. It’s not really about smoking, it’s a right to a clean, safe working environment. It’s a right to clean air. The ordinance doesn’t say you can’t smoke, it just says you need to take it outside away from people,” Smalley said.

In Soldotna, Councilman Shane Horan plans to introduce an identical ordinance at the Feb. 25 meeting, with a public hearing March 11.

“I thought, ‘Great. What an opportunity to act in concert with the city of Kenai, at least timewise, and maybe potentially adopting expanding the ordinance concurrently, and in that way you kind of avoid pitting one community against another,” Horan said.

The issue is one that’s within the council’s purview, Horan said, especially since the Kenai and Soldotna councils already passed ordinances in recent years banning smoking in restaurants. But he said he has been surprised by the uproar the ordinance has caused. He’d rank it up there in controversy with the debate over a cemetery site and an ordinance restricting sign heights a few years ago.

“I didn’t realize it would spark this much emotional fervor, but I think it’s a worthy discussion with our town and our community, because I love Soldotna for the health and well-being of all our community members and the quality of life we have here, and I just see it as an opportunity to put it on the table to see if we’re ready for such a ban,” Horan said.

Smalley said mounting evidence of the health impacts of second-hand smoke also prompted him to act, especially considering second-hand smoke isn’t filtered, and ventilation systems just remove the smell from the air, not the carcinogen components of the smoke, he said. Patrons can choose to avoid smoking establishments, as he and his wife do, but employees can’t, he said.

“When it gets into your clothes, we hang our coats out on the deck or garage because it gets so bad. I could make the choice not to go there, that’s a choice. But employees don’t have that choice. The job market the way it is, they’re just glad to have a job,” he said.

Smalley said he has heard from about an equal number of people who oppose the ban as well as those who support it. Business owners are concerned it’ll hurt business, he said, but he doesn’t think it will drive patrons out of town to establishments that still allow smoking. It’ll just send them outside for a cigarette, he said.

“I imagine there will be some that will migrate there, but as a nonsmoker I find it hard to believe that someone would go to a bar (just) because they wanted to smoke,” he said.

“There’s no doubt this is going to be a hardship on some folks initially, and I think if it passes there needs to be some patience and there may be some adjusting — not adjustment in the ordinance, but adjustments made in businesses — that hopefully won’t be to the detriment of businesses,” Smalley said.

Following a trend
Smalley pointed to Juneau and Anchorage, both of which have similar smoking bans, and said he’s talked to business owners there who said business wasn’t harmed. Some, like Moose and veterans clubs, even praised the ban because it brought families back to the establishments, he said.

At Humpy’s in downtown Anchorage, manager Shawn Standley said he didn’t see any negative effects of the ban when it went into effect last year. Humpy’s actually switched to nonsmoking a month before the ban was instituted, since the bar and restaurant was remodeling and painting anyway.

“I would say it improved things. We got customer compliments that it was a more enjoyable dining environment,” Standley said. “It was the fist time they commented that they could smell the food.”

He said he thinks the clientele has been the same, and other than some griping from smokers having to take it outside, the ban wasn’t harmful.

“People were upset because they think that should be a bar to bar issue. They don’t think the state or city should be able to make that decision, but people just kind of deal with it. We got some initial grumbling, but a lot just accept it,” he said.

It would be a slightly different situation on the central peninsula if the bans pass, however. In Kenai and Soldotna, patrons who want to smoke wouldn’t have to go far to find an establishment outside of city limits that would still allow smoking. In Anchorage, a smoker would have to go out toward the Matanuska-Susitna area to escape the municipality’s limits.

Billie Milstead, manager at Polar Bar in downtown Anchorage, said the bar has lost customers due to the smoking ban. She doesn’t think they’re driving to Wasilla or somewhere that allows smoking, but she said patrons are choosing bars that offer covered, heating areas for smoking over ones that don’t.

“In the summer it’s not that big a deal, but in the wintertime it’s cold. We definitely see a drop in business,” she said.

Her advice for smoking establishments in Kenai and Soldotna: “Just fight it. Of course they’re (businesses) not going to be in favor of it. I know what’s going to happen to their business.”

Making change to fight cancer — Woman, high school start charity to help local families

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Crystal Sholin has been through a lot of ups and downs in her three bouts with cancer over the past seven years.

They’ve been mostly downs, especially counting the string of family tragedies she’s endured during that period, including the death of her son last spring. But in a way, all the stress, pain and heartache she’s suffered makes the good times, support and moments of happiness that much more meaningful. Now that she’s recovering from a particularly nasty recurrence of the disease, she’s determined to share some of the kindness she’s enjoyed during her bumpy road with others struggling through their cancer journey. To do so, she’s put her figurative two cents of an idea into action, and hopes others donate their literal change in return. Sholin, 39, a parent of a Soldotna High School student, started a Coins 4 Cancer project with the school about a month ago. A 5-gallon jug donated by Alaska’s Best Water sits on the counter at the school’s office most days, where anyone coming by can drop in whatever coins are rattling around their pockets. During school events, including sports games, the jug is moved out to the admission area.

All proceeds will be donated to the cancer fund at Central Peninsula Hospital, which awards grants to local people undergoing cancer treatment to help them with expenses.

In just barely a month, Sholin estimates the jug has accumulated a couple hundred dollars. She’s hoping the program will continue next year, and possibly grow to Skyview and Kenai high schools, as well.

“It is amazing. In just the few weekends that it has been set out at basketball games how much money we already have. And people are putting ones, fives and 10-dollar bills in there, so it’s awesome. They just see the label and they’re just dropping money in,” Sholin said.

Todd Syverson, principal at SoHi, said the program was a good one for the school to be involved in.

“We have several families at Soldotna High School battling with cancer right now. We wanted to do our part to try to help our local families,” Syverson said. “The expenses are astronomical when one’s battling cancer. A lot of times insurance may cover part of it but there are other expenses. The cool thing about this particular program is we’re able to gather these coins and it’s going to stay right here on the peninsula and help these families battling with cancer.”

He said even visiting teams and spectators have chipped in to donate, as well as locals.

“What’s neat is watching a student or a parent donate, and we’ve got a lot of folks who just like to come to activities, whether it’s a drama production or sporting event,” he said. “It’s neat to see what a generous community we live in, and what a giving community we are. I know I, personally, am very thankful to live in a community like that.”

Sholin said she’s happy to give back to the community that’s given so much to her, and having something proactive and positive to do helps take her mind off the negatives.

“This way I don’t sit and stress about things, because if I have too much downtime I really find myself thinking about my son and slipping into a depression. Not fun,” she said. “So if I’m here by myself I just become a blubbering idiot. I need to get out of the house and get something to do. I figured this would be a way to repay people for all of the stuff that they’ve done for me.”

Sholin has plenty to take her mind off of these days. Her life — married to her high school sweetheart, Steve, with daughter, Kaili, and lots of family and friends still living in the Soldotna area from which they graduated high school — started veering off track in 2002 when she noticed an indentation on her right breast. She was 32 at the time, with no family history of breast cancer, but she was diagnosed with an early stage of breast cancer.

Being a naturalist, Sholin chose to take an all-natural course of medication to fight the cancer. She said it worked well — regular checkups and blood tests showed the cancer had disappeared and she was feeling better. So much better that she stopped taking the medication.

“I’m a great starter of things and not a finisher,” Sholin said. “When I started feeling pretty good I stopped taking all my stuff. Almost exactly 12 months later it came back bigger and badder than ever.”

This was in 2003, and she was sent to Washington to do a full PET scan to detect if and where the cancer had spread. It found multiple lumps in her right breast. Sholin decided to have a double mastectomy at that point, in the hope that would be the end of the cancer.

“I chose to take both off. It’s such a high probability within the next couple years if you have it in one that it will come back to the next one. … Most people choose reconstructive surgery anyway, and the healing time and pain and everything is really not doubled so there’s no reason not to take both of them off, because if and when it comes back you have to have the other one off.”

She followed surgery with a course of Chinese herbs meant to combat cancer and keep red blood cell counts up, as well as a course of chemotherapy where she had to fly to Seattle every two weeks for six months. All but one of her 12 flights were paid for by the Angel Flight program, and for the one that wasn’t, a manager at the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center donated her frequent flier miles to Sholin to cover the ticket. Following that, Sholin traveled back and forth to Anchorage every day for five weeks for radiation treatments.
After that was periodic blood tests and scans, but doctors gave her an all clear from cancer. That didn’t extend to the rest of her life, however.

In December 2007 she started losing family members who were close to her, starting with her grandfather in northern Idaho, where she had grown up. When she was getting back to the central peninsula from that trip, her stepmother had a heart attack during a business trip to Anchorage with Sholin’s father, and the family made the heart-wrenching decision two days later to take her off life support.

A few months later, in May 2008, her 19-year-old son, Ryan, was killed in a car crash on Gaswell Road.

In July, her cancer came back, this time to her lungs. She and her husband were hosting an annual get-together with friends over the Fourth of July, and Sholin found herself too short of breath and tired to participate much in the gathering.

“I’d normally just make sure everybody had enough to eat and were set up to sleep. I could hardly breathe. I’d find myself sitting inside half the day and going to bed at 9 o’clock at night and not worrying that other people would have to clean up and stuff,” she said.

The cancer was growing on the outside of her left lung. Her body was producing fluid to try to flush out the cancer, but the fluid was building up in the pleura lining surrounding her lung. With nowhere to drain to, the excess fluid pushed against the lung and collapsed it.

Her doctor removed a liter and a half of fluid, then went in the next day when Sholin was still feeling awful and took out another liter and a half. A doctor in Anchorage did surgery on the lung to prevent further fluid buildup, but there was no way to remove the tumor itself. Sholin was told the best she could do was chemotherapy to wipe out the growth this time, and again if it came back — which it probably would.

“The tumor was inoperable. With all of the stress with losing all of the family, all of a sudden finding out that my cancer is treatable, not curable, that it will continue to come back for the rest of my life. I was just overwhelmed. I said I need some downtime before I start all of the cancer treatment,” she said.

The Sholins’ 20th anniversary was coming up in September. They had talked about going to Jamaica to celebrate. Sholin asked her doctors if they thought it would be OK if she took a two-week trip before starting treatment. They didn’t think the cancer was that aggressive, so they said fine — but no scuba diving.

“I said, ‘OK, snorkeling’s just fine.’”

But near the end of the trip her breathing problems came back. She got home and she and Steve took their daughter, Kaili, to Anchorage for her 16th birthday, but Sholin ended up at Alaska Regional Hospital on Monday morning, to find she had another collapsed lung and the cancer had spread.

“It was more aggressive than any of the doctors thought. It ended up not being just in my lungs but was in the P7 vertebra, in my diaphragm and lymphatic system. It was more like vines than lumps, just kind of smashing things in there and I was unable to breathe,” she said.

Sholin started radiation on her vertebra while she was still in the hospital, and another round of chemo. A CAT scan in December showed the cancer had shrunk so much that she’s finishing up chemo this week. She’s feeling better and her breath capacity has grown, although she’s fighting fatigue and will for some time. But now she’s got some breathing room, which she hopes will last for a long time to come. She plans to research Chinese herbs and any other alternative, natural treatments she can find.

“What they say is it’s inevitable it will come back, just everybody is different,” Sholin said. “One person was only off chemo for a month, other people stretched it out for like two years. Still, I just think, God, every two years for the rest of my life to do chemo, and I’m only 39 now. That doesn’t sound fun to me.”

Rather than watch the clock or dwell on her prognosis, Sholin decided to take action. She’s received support from the Central Peninsula Hospital cancer fund, Angel Flight, Soroptimists and friends who organized a fundraising dinner and auction in her name. Sholin wanted to return the favor.

After her first go-around with cancer, she started a business, called Move to Live, where she turned the pink breast cancer awareness ribbon image into a running figure and had it put on clothing, hats, coffee cups and other items, to donate 10 percent of sales to cancer research and Angel Flight. With Coins for Cancer, the proceeds benefit the hospital’s cancer fund.

In turn, those organizations will help many more people like Sholin and the friends and family who have helped support her.

“I don’t think there’s probably one person that hasn’t been affected by cancer somehow,” she said.

Helping hand-me-down — Collaborative research, years of effort turn donated family heirloom into cultural display


By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Kenai Peninsula College’s newest cultural artifact was a long time and distance coming.

Not only is the Native Eskimo, black-and-white, bird-skin parka probably around 100 years old, it took about 25 years for Gwen Gere’s parents, and then Gere, to decide what to do with it, and another two to three years for the parka to be repaired, researched and readied for display in the Kenai River Campus commons area.

These days the family heirloom parka that was made in a region at least 1,000 miles away from where Gere lives is on display where she works.

Gere’s parents, Russ and Doris Riemann, lived in Anchorage since the early 1950s, running Book Cache stores and a magazine and book wholesale distributor around the state. The business would take Mr. Riemann to Nome and Kotzebue periodically.

“A lot of time people didn’t pay their bills,” Gere said. “In the ’50s and ’60s he was his own collections agent. He’d fly to Kotzebue and say, ‘OK, give me my money.’ A lot of time they’d say, ‘We don’t have any money, but here, would you like this ivory carving or a baleen basket?’”

Once in a while, Gere and her two sisters would take turns accompanying their dad.

“It’s one of those things you don’t get to appreciate at the time. He told me to take your shoes off and go wade in the Bering Sea, and I didn’t appreciate it. I just felt like a dork then,” she said.

On one of these trips about 25 years ago, he came across a historic bird-skin parka, worn by Natives of the region because of its waterproof, insulating qualities. The owner was considering selling it to someone from the Lower 48, but Riemann didn’t want it to leave Alaska, Gere said.

“A gentleman wanted to buy it for a collection someplace on the East Coast, but my parents didn’t think it should leave the state,” she said. “I don’t know how they ended up with it, if my dad bought it before the other gentlemen did or what, but they bought the coat then spent 25 years trying to figure out what to do with it.”

Gere said her parents wanted the parka to be preserved and displayed. Mrs. Riemann contacted the Smithsonian Institute, but didn’t get a response. And the Anchorage museum said it’d end up in storage, since it already had similar parkas. When her parents died about four years ago, Gere took on the task of finding the parka a suitable home.

“It was something my family really wanted to do because my parents really wanted it to be something where people could see it and enjoy it and learn form it, and they hadn’t been able to find that spot,” Gere said.

Gere is the bookstore manager at KPC’s Soldotna campus. She thought the University of Alaska system might be interested in the parka, so she approached KPC Director Gary Turner about it, with somewhat mixed feelings. She wanted the parka to be displayed and cared for, but she knew by donating it she was giving up her say in where it ended up and risking losing track of her family’s heirloom.

She was happy to hear that not only was the university system interested in displaying the parka, but that the parka would stay at KPC.

“He had the vision to see that it was something that was valuable and a learning instrument in the university, so I’m delighted that it’s down here because if you give it away, you give it away and you don’t know what will happen with it,” Gere said. “They realized the worth of it and the value of it. It really is a dream come true for me.”

The parka is now on display in the commons just outside the bookstore, with information about the parka, historic photos and a plaque about Gere’s parents, with their picture.

“My parents were visionaries. They really had a love for the state of Alaska,” Gere said. “That’s why they did what they did, why they tried to keep Alaskan things in Alaska and why they promoted reading and literature. It was their vision and they loved the state, so I think if that comes through, then I think it’s wonderful.

“It meant so much to my parents, all this time they hung onto it and tried to figure out what to do with it. It’s nice for me because I get to see it every day and people have appreciated the quality of it and its legacy, because it’s from a time that is no longer.”

The display itself took a long time to prepare — two to three years, Gere said.

Holly Cusack-McVeigh, a cultural anthropologist with the Pratt Museum in Homer, was teaching a course on Alaska Native cultures when the parka was brought to her attention. Her class just happened to be studying cultures of the Bering Sea region, where the parka was made.

“It was a wonderful opportunity for my students to learn about identifying an object, trying to connect it to a specific cultural group, and be able to follow all that research, as well, and learning how to handle objects,” she said.

Cusack-McVeigh took on the task of researching and preparing the display. First, the parka itself needed tending.

“Based on how long the family had it, and when it may have been made, it’s in really excellent condition for its age,” Cusack-McVeigh said.

A conservator from Anchorage mended a tear in the seam of a sleeve and created a museum-quality, custom-fitted mount that would support the parka, and a case design and the commons location was determined to protect it from harm.
“It’s fairly fragile and fairly delicate. It’s sensitive to light, in that bird feathers are one of the more light-sensitive organic materials,” Cusack-McVeigh said.

It took a few years to finish studying the parka and doing research for the display information — and there are still questions left unanswered.

Cusack-McVeigh figures the parka probably dates from the early 1900s, if not earlier. There were three district Eskimo groups of the Bering Sea region that made similar hooded, bird-skin parkas — the Inupiaq, Siberian Yupik and Central Yup’ik cultures — so she wasn’t able to determine where, specifically, it came from. Such parkas were worn as daily outerwear, since bird feathers are so water-resistant.

Murre, puffin, cormorant, loon, auklet, goose and duck skins were traditionally used to construct the parkas. Biologists with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge helped identify the birds in this specimen. The main black-and-white pattern comes from murres, with a greenish sheen from pelagic cormorants.

The director of Arctic studies for the Smithsonian branch in Anchorage shared parkas from the Smithsonian’s collection with Cusack-McVeigh for comparative studies. And a linguist from the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks helped Cusack-McVeigh make sure she had the correct words for the parka — “atkuk” for Central Yup’ik and Siberian Yupik, and “atigi” for Inupiaq — for the display, since the region’s cultural groups had different names for different types of parkas.

“There was actually quite a bit of research over the course of two or three years as we worked on putting the exhibit itself together,” she said.

Cusack-McVeigh said it’s a relief to have the parka protected and the display complete, so everyone at the college can appreciate the piece, just as she had.

“One of the most amazing things about this parka is the skill with which it was made. I feel that in part it survived and it’s in the condition it is in because the original maker was highly skilled — highly skilled in cleaning skins, highly skilled in preparing skins and just a meticulous sewer,” she said.

“This really is a legacy piece and there’s just an incredible amount of knowledge and skill that went into making a piece like this.”

Growing pains for Gruening — Plans to found new community in present-day Nikiski foundered


By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

Dreams of a better life have urged many people northward. Big dreams have urged people to take chances — to seek gold, invest in land or start businesses. In the North Kenai area, particularly in the burgeoning 1950s and ’60s, some of those dreamers envisioned whole communities and believed they were the ones to give impetus to making those visions into reality.

There was the dream of Radar, Alaska, near Wildwood in the early 1950s. There was the dream of Petroleum City, Alaska, on Holt Road in the late 1960s.

And there was the dream of homesteader Paul Costa and surveyor F.J. “Francis” Malone of a community called Gruening, which they hoped would become the centerpiece of North Road development, the nexus of North Road activity.

The dream of Gruening germinated in the brain of Costa in the mid-1960s, according to Ron Mika, one of the main investors in the project and the current owner of Nikiski Building Supply and the Lamplight Bar and Liquor Store.
Mika, now 71, said that when he homesteaded in North Kenai in 1962, Costa was already living in the area. They had been acquainted previously when both worked on the White Alice early warning system — Costa as a bull cook and Mika as a radio technician.

Costa had been in the bar and entertainment businesses before coming to Alaska, and he wanted to build such a venture along the North Road. He purchased a few acres from homesteaders Ken and Margaret McGahan and constructed the Lamplight Bar at the junction of the North Road and Lamplight Road. After that, in 1966, Costa “wanted to build a town,” Mika said.

First, Costa involved Malone in his dream. Malone, the father of former Alaska Speaker of the House of Representatives Hugh Malone, made drawings of the prospective community.

“He laid out a circle in the middle and a regular town site,” Mika said.

When it came time to name their town, staunch Democrats Malone and Costa thought of Ernest Gruening, who had served as Alaska territorial governor from 1939 to 1953, and was in his second term representing Alaska in the U.S. Senate.

“F.J. wrote him a letter asking if we could name a town after him,” Mika said. “And he wrote back and said he would be very pleased.”

Mika’s involvement in the project began with an injection of his own cash.
“I was working, so I had the money,” said Mika. “And he had the ideas. He had lots of good ideas.”

From the McGahans they purchased 10 acres just across the North Road from the Lamplight Bar. Then they “spent a bunch of money for a guy in a Cat to come in and strip the trees off it and level it out,” Mika said.

Afterward, they hired log cabin builder Johnny Parks to erect a small building in the middle of the clearing to become Gruening’s first post office.

“That was going to be the center of the community,” according to Mika.

In those days, he said, North Kenai had no defined center, while today many people consider the center to be in the area of the old Mac and Dolores McGahan homestead, the current site of Nikiski Middle-Senior High School, the fire station and the cluster of businesses around M&M Grocery.

To the west of Gruening in 1966 were several new subdivisions, a community hall, a trailer court, the Arness Terminal and the Shell Oil storage bulk plant. The land to the south and east was dotted with lakes, which were perceived as ideal locations for future residential and recreational development.

In The Cheechako News on April 15, 1966, Costa’s attempts at promoting his new community earned this headline: “Community of Gruening Begins Building Spurt.”
The article stated that clearing for the Gruening town site was beginning that week, and that construction plans were in the works for a restaurant, grocery store and two-stall Chevron filling station.

According to the paper, these businesses would bring the total in the greater Gruening area to five, including the Lamplight Bar and Home Realty, owned and operated by licensed broker G.J. Spracher. Additionally, said the Cheechako, more than 70 percent of the North Kenai population at the time lived within a three-mile radius of Gruening.

Joe Ross, a primary contractor, had been selected, and two more investors were being brought on board for the building phase — Hank and Mattie Bartos, longtime residents who had recently sold Salamatof Beach land to the Union-Marathon oil companies, who used the land to build Rig Tenders Dock. The Bartoses, the paper said, would own and operate the grocery store, while the filling station and restaurant would be leased.

In light of these plans, the Cheechako offered up this view: “Among the many newly beginning business areas in Alaska, the community of Gruening is unique in one respect. It is strictly a local development. There has been no ‘big money,’ no federal or state funds, no ‘help from the top’ of any kind — and none such has been sought.”

The only bump in the road to success so far, the newspaper said, had been the failure of Gruening’s promoters to land a post office license. According to the article, a proposal and a petition containing more than 100 signatures had been sent to the Post Office Department, but their proposal was termed “premature” and rejected.

Mika said that the rejection stemmed from the community’s name. It was apparently against post office policy to name its structures after individuals who were still alive.

In the end, despite the hype — Costa even had matchbooks made up with covers that said “Lamplight Bar, Gruening, Alaska” — the community of Gruening never materialized.

Malone submitted their proposal for the town site to the fledgling Kenai Peninsula Borough, but it was never officially recorded.

“It was just on paper,” Mika said. And, beyond that, creating an actual town proved to be too much.

“We just didn’t know how to do it, I guess,” Mika said. “We ran out of ideas and steam and money. And everything.”

In 1967, Costa allowed some people to stay in the post office cabin, and on the Fourth of July that year it burned to the ground. Eventually, Costa wanted out of the project and deeded the land over to Mika. Costa also sold the Lamplight Bar, and then it was destroyed in a fire in 1971. Mika and his wife, Louise, purchased the bar site and rebuilt the business.

The Mikas still own the town site, and still refer to it privately as Gruening, although it is empty except for the returning natural growth. The trees were allowed to refill the site, and now it is difficult to distinguish from other surrounding woods.

“I used to think of an antique-type town,” Mika said of his dreams for Gruening. “Steep roofs, a ‘North Pole, Alaska’ type thing. You know, snow on the roofs, sidewalks out front. Decorations out there. A little quaint mountain-village type thing.”

Like many dreams — like the site itself — Gruening is fading away.

Drawing on humor — Cartoonist says it all, 1 frame at a time


By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Humor is a common accessory to fishing. There’s plenty of time to exaggerate a funny story while waiting for the fish to bite, or to share a joke when a day on the water inevitably leads to an evening at the watering hole.

David Booth, of Soldotna, has heard them all, he figures, in decades spent guiding fishing trips on the Kenai River and in Oregon.

“I’ve heard a billion jokes, sitting around with guides and people like that,” he said.

But instead of the standard fish story format, where humorous tales are drawn out as long as exaggerated fish lengths commonly are, Booth went in the opposite direction. He channels humor as succinctly as possible, without a word being spoken.

Booth is working on developing a career as a cartoonist. It’s something he’s done off and on as long as he can remember.

“When my mom found out I was really doing this she sent me some stuff I did when I was really, really little,” he said. “She sent me these things, drawings and little pictures, and some of them I was amazed I was trying to express such abstract ideas, like throwing baseballs and multiple frames and stuff. So I kind of went back in my mind and went, ‘That’s right, I’ve kind of been doing this for a long time.’”

Booth grew up in the Lower 48 and guided on the Rogue River and others in the Pacific Northwest for about 15 years. In the early 1980s he started traveling back and forth to guide on the Kenai, then moved here full time after about three years of back and forth.

“I’ve been questioning that decision ever since. I haven’t been Outside for 25 years. I need to remind myself why I’m here,” he said.

He supplemented guiding with cooking during the winter periodically in local restaurants. But eventually the lifestyle of both began to wear thin. Now age 60, the years of rough living have taken their toll, and Booth prefers to coax expressive looks out of the characters he draws, rather than wrestle 50-pound kings out of the river, and tend to computer programs and color designs, instead of hot ovens and spitting griddles.

“I decided I was gonna quit drinking, which, that is one of the downsides of being a fishing guide for as many years as I did. It becomes a habit and of course Alaska doesn’t beat that down. It kind of likes that. And I got to the point where I realized working in a kitchen, that’s not conducive to stopping drinking,” Booth said.

Booth found himself in a new stage in life — divorced, sober, without all his old friends from his drinking days, and in need of a new career. He decided to redraw new parameters in his life.

“When I finally quit guiding, about a year after that I decided I was just going to do this. I got to the point where I really couldn’t work all the jobs I used to work. I really used up my body pretty bad,” he said. “So I decided to just start cartooning. The more I did it, it appeared I had a real talent for it, and the humor. I have a pretty deep well of life experience and that’s what a cartoonist has to have.”

Booth works under the moniker of Cabin Fever Artworks, and Alaska themes dominated his early strips — wild animals, river guides and the like. Then he hit on polar bears and the controversy over global warming, which he used as the basis of his current strip, “Thin Ice.”

“Polar bears, whales and elephants are my favorite animals. Any one of them, I’d hate to see them go away,” Booth said. “When I realized there was a plight with the polar bears and the whole global warming thing was being dismissed as nonexistent, I said, ‘Well, this is something I feel like talking about.’”

The strip was brought to the attention of Polar Bears International, and is featured on its Web site, www.polarbearsinternational.org/cartoon-corner.
“Polar Bears International noticed my stuff and invited me into their family and said, ‘How would you like to be our official cartoonist?’ And I said, ‘Yahoo.’”
His work is focused on simplicity, being able to evoke a thought, emotion or expression subtly with his characters.

“I’m fascinated sometimes when I try to make one of my bears have a certain expression and body language and I can’t make it happen, and it’s because I’m trying too hard. The next thing I know, there it is. There’s what I’m looking for,” Booth said.

He’s experimented quite a bit with color, starting out doing meticulous shading with color pencils. Nowadays he’s moved most of his process onto the computer. He starts drawing an image by hand, then scans it into the computer and uses a variety of programs he’s taught himself to add colors, definition and other flourishes.

“I really love it, that’s the thing. It can be tedious in some ways to do it right,” he said. “The trouble is I’ll start out with a cartoon, part of it is really, really simple, then I’ll look at it then I’ve got to do this and do this and I need to add a background to it — there’s a lot of tricks to make it as cool as I possibly can. I’m learning more and more tricks every time I do them.”

Booth estimates he has 3,000 to 4,000 images. He can produce up to two or three cartoons a day if they’re simple ones, or he may spend a few days just tweaking one. He sells merchandise of his work online at www.cafepress.com/fishgod, and has a Web site, www.cabinfeverart.com. He hopes to one day have the strip syndicated. In the meantime, he’ll keep drawing what he has to say, one frame at a time.

“I see myself as a Buddhist, I guess,” Booth said. “It’s a Zen kind of thing for me. It’s challenging and satisfying to try to say everything in one picture.”

Art Seen: Painter dresses up youthful art with advanced approach


The walls at the Gary Freeburg Gallery at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus abound with color and well-crafted design this month.

Al baio, a recent graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in New York City, exhibits a series of large paintings depicting young children in various animal uniforms. The paintings are done in Flashe paint, which is vinyl-based, and Sharpie marker. The Flashe paint is very guachelike, allowing for large areas of very flat color. She has been working exclusively in this medium for a year and a half, and color is obviously central to her work. I am amazed that a 22-year-old has such a mature sense of composition and form.

She says her experience of working on this first solo show was thrilling in every way. She also explains that her artwork has been focused on children and childhood for a while, with this current body of work primarily built around her memories and notions of childhood camaraderie. Growing up, she never had many friends and secretly envied all cliques she didn’t qualify for, no matter where their status fell on the totem pole of preschool popularity, she said.

The bright-eyed children in this body of work are unified by their attire as much as by their exaggerated facial expressions. Their animal regalia becomes a trademark of their solidarity, establishing the exclusivity of their gang. As they peer out of their Crayola-colored uniforms, a humorous vulnerability emerges, exposing them for the children they are.

Ellen Chambers, who curated the “Paper x3” exhibit at the college recently, discovered al baio while searching for artists to include in that exhibit. Baio’s work was in a juried exhibit for student work executed over the nonacademic summer months, and she won the Boit Award for her pieces. Chambers says she was impressed by the unpretentiousness and easy friendliness of the young, blue-haired artist, and could not wait to arrange an exhibit.

Baio has come through solidly on this first exhibit; it will be interesting to watch her career progress.

Zirrus VanDevere is a local mixed-media artist and owns Art Works gallery in Soldotna. She has bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and education.

Arts and Entertainment week of Feb. 18

Events:
Ongoing
  • Art Works in Soldotna has photography by Joe Kashi and Rachel Lee on display through February.
  • The Funky Monkey in Kenai has artwork by Laura Faeo on display through February.
  • The Gary L. Freeburg Gallery at Kenai Peninsula College will have “Leader of the Pack,” an exhibition of paintings by New York artist al baio, on display through March 4, with an opening reception from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday. Baio won the Boit Award for painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
  • Kaladi Brothers on Kobuk Street in Soldotna has artwork by Timothy S. Dahl on display.
  • Kaladi Brothers on the Sterling Highway in Soldotna has artwork by Scott and Renee Davi.
  • The Kenai Fine Arts Center in Old Town Kenai has “Portraits of Flowers in Felt, Watercolor and Digital Photography,” artwork by Clayton and Juanita Hillhouse, on display through February.
  • The Soldotna Senior Center is looking for artists to display their work in the center's lobby. Shows are one month long. Artwork must hang on the walls. Call Mary Lane at 262-8839. The artist of the month in February is Melinda Hershberger.

Thursday
  • Rosie Reeder will lead a class on how to start a book group from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Soldotna Public Library.
  • The Kenai Writers Group will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the Kenai Community Library conference room. It is open to the public.

Friday
  • Kenai Performers will present the musical classic “Oliver!” at the Renee C. Henderson Auditorium at Kenai Central High School at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students and seniors, available at Charlotte's and Already Read Books in Kenai, Sweeney's and River City Books in Soldotna, and at the door.
  • Triumvirate Theatre’s Class Act program will perform two comedy one-act plays, “The Final Dress Rehearsal” and “What a Tangled Web,” at 7 p.m. at the theater in the Peninsula Center Mall in Soldotna. Tickets are $10. Visit www.triumviratetheatre.org for more information.

Saturday
  • Kenai Community Library will hold a wire wrap bracelet or necklace class from 1 to 3 p.m. for ages 12 and up. Cost is $12.50. Preregistration is required. Contact Julie at 283-4378 or jniederhauser@ci.kenai.ak.us.
  • Kenai Performers present “Oliver!” at 7 p.m. at KCHS. See Friday listing.
  • Triumvirate Theatre performs “The Final Dress Rehearsal” and “What a Tangled Web,” at 7 p.m. at the theater. See Friday listing.

Sunday
  • Kenai Community Library will show the Shirley Temple film “Heidi” at 2:30 p.m. in the conference room. It’s free and open to the public.
  • Kenai Performers present “Oliver!” at 3p.m. at KCHS. See Friday listing.

Coming up
  • Kenai Performers present the musical classic “Oliver!” at the Renee C. Henderson Auditorium at Kenai Central High School at 7 p.m. Feb. 27, 28 and 3 p.m. March 1. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for students and seniors, available at Charlotte's and Already Read Books in Kenai, Sweeney's and River City Books in Soldotna, and at the door.
  • Kenai Community Library will hold a tea tasting workshop from 1 to 3 p.m. Feb. 28 for ages 18 and older. Participants will sample different blends from the four categories of tea. The workshop will culminate with a tea party.
  • The Sterling Senior Center will perform “South Pacific” at 6 p.m. Feb. 28 and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Dessert will be served. Tickets are on sale now.
  • Central Peninsula Hospital is seeking artwork in a variety of mediums to display in its new addition. Artists in Southcentral Alaska are invited to apply. The deadline for submissions is March 9. For information about the program, contact Leah Goodwin with Aesthetics, Inc. at 619-683-7500, or Goodwin@aesthetics.net, or visit http://kenaiphotography.com/CallForArtists.htm.
  • Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus is requesting proposals from artists interested in creating work to be placed in its new Riverview Commons by 5 p.m. March 13. The installation will be complete by Aug. 17. Proposals must include a conceptual sketch including notes, up to 10 slides of past work, a resume and a self-addressed stamped envelope. Submit proposals to Phillip Miller, Kenai Peninsula College, Facilities and Maintenance, 156 College Road, Soldotna, Alaska 99669. Miller can be reached at 262-0325 for more information.

Nightlife:
DJ
  • Friday and Saturday nights at The Riverside.

Live music
  • Hooligan’s Saloon in Soldotna has a huukah party and ragae band Friday night and 9-Spine on Saturday nights.
  • The Maverick in Soldotna has the Free Beer Band on Sundays.
  • Moosequito’s in Sterling has LuLu Small on Saturday night and a Mardi Gras party with live music Tuesday.
  • The Place in Nikiski has bluegrass by Them Other Shuckers on Friday nights through February.
  • The Rainbow Bar in Kenai has live music by Tuff-e-Nuff at 10 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
  • Veronica’s in Kenai has open mic night from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Friday and music by Scott Merry from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Saturday.

Karaoke
  • 9 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at the Duck Inn on Kalifornsky Beach Road.
  • 9 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at the .406 in Kenai.
  • 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Hooligan’s in Soldotna.
  • 9 p.m. Fridays at J-Bar-B outside Soldotna.
  • 9:30 p.m. Mondays at the Maverick in Soldotna.

Events
  • The J-Bar-B has a cash drawing at 6:30 p.m. Saturdays. Patrons get one ticket each day they’re at the bar. Must be present to win.
  • Hooligan's in Soldotna has Texas Hold ‘Em poker at 5 and 8 p.m. Tuesdays and free pool Thursdays.
  • The Maverick in Soldotna has a pool tournament at 8 p.m. Fridays.
  • Moosequito’s in Sterling has darts on Tuesdays.

On target — NRA helps teen set sights on college

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Living in Alaska, gun rights weren’t something Skyview High School senior Marquee Lucas gave much thought to.

Her family hunts and has firearms. She’s gone deer and grouse hunting with her family, and said she’d be interested in shooting sports if they were available on the central Kenai Peninsula. She’s never run into opposition in those pursuits, so the Second Amendment that protects her and her family’s ability to own and use firearms and the organization that lobbies to preserve gun rights didn’t grab her attention.

That is until she was a junior in high school aiming for scholarships and found the National Rifle Association could put valuable new experiences in her sights.
The NRA operates a Youth Education Summit and scholarship program in Washington, D.C., for sophomores and juniors in high school.

With five siblings, a desire to go to college and an interest in the medical field, possibly in radiology, Lucas wanted to get as early a jump on scholarships as she could. This was one of the few she found that was open to juniors.

The program’s goal is to give students an up-close and personal look at government in action, and to instill an interest in the nation’s history and its governmental processes. Lucas said only 11 students in Alaska applied for the program last year, and she was one of 10 selected to participate, with 35 others from across the country.

“They love having kids from Alaska, too,” she said. “Because, I don’t know, we’re Alaska. We’re special.”

Through the NRA Lucas visited Juneau to get a first-hand look at state government, and went to the week-long Youth Education Summit in D.C. last year.

Participants saw the sights in D.C. — the White House, Supreme Court, Capitol, Pentagon and several monuments. They met congressmen and participated in speeches and debates. Lucas said the highlight of the trip for her was visiting the Quantico Marine Corps base, where she did a night-vision goggle training course, shot an M-16 and M-9, tried Meals Ready to Eat rations and did physical training. She said some students were right at home on the shooting range, while others had never handled a gun before.

Throughout the summit, she said students learned about the Second Amendment and the NRA’s mission and activities. But Lucas said students weren’t required to support the NRA, although she does, and it wasn’t the overall focus of the trip.

“I was always a big supporter of gun rights. I do support the organization and that they work hard to protect gun rights,” she said. “I definitely would like to be a member of the NRA, but it was just neat because the trip wasn’t about making kids be NRA members. It was about us learning about government and that we were going to be the future leaders. I thought that was neat; there wasn’t any pressure at all.”

At the awards banquet at the end of the week, $10,000 in scholarships was given out to recipients chosen for their involvement in the program and their speech and debate skills. Lucas was awarded a $1,500 scholarship.

“It was just a really good opportunity, it just keeps on giving,” she said.

Students who participate in the summit and do outreach in their community to educate others about the trip or other NRA education programs are eligible to apply for further NRA scholarship money, with $20,000 to be awarded in all. Lucas has been spreading the word at Skyview about the program in hopes of getting another scholarship, but mainly so other students can benefit from the opportunity, she said.

Her experience in D.C. is one she won’t soon forget.

“You can try to learn as much as you can in the textbook, but you’ll never learn it until you apply it,” she said. “It brings everything full circle. You learn so much more. It’s not like somebody putting it on the light board or reading it in a textbook. I’ve actually seen it and I’m a part of it.”

Lucas has been putting the leadership experience to use at home. She’s active in her church youth group and Teens Against Tobacco Use. She’s the student body president at Skyview this year and last, and she’s active in the school’s National Honor Society. She did play several sports — swimming, cross country, basketball, track and lacrosse — until an injury sidelined her. Now in her senior year, she’s focusing more on getting ready for college, taking EMT and other classes. This summer she hopes to take a trip to Nicaragua with her uncle, an orthopedic surgeon.

She may also qualify to chaperone a future NRA Youth Education Summit trip.

“I would love to get back to D.C., I’d never been there,” she said. “To actually see what’s in history books — it’s jaw-dropping. It’s amazing. Pretty surreal. It’s a good opportunity for money, but more important than the money is just the learning. What you learned from the trip is so much more valuable than what you get out of the scholarship.”

Science of the seasons: Rocks star in creating good fish habitat


If you think about your favorite trout streams, or perhaps the secret fishing holes you only share with your very best and most trusted friends, there are probably some strong similarities between these streams.

These similarities are most likely going to be related to stream substrates. While stream substrates may seem to be an entirely esoteric subject, it is the characteristic and diversity of stream substrates that salmon check carefully when deciding where they will spawn. Not only do salmon use the gravels, cobbles and boulders as a determinant for spawning, but these same substrates are home to the community of aquatic insects that trout and salmon fry feed upon.

It is well-documented that aquatic insects prefer to be in streams with a mixture of various-sized stones. Insects are most abundant in streams with heterogenous substrates, but their numbers decline dramatically when the fine particles make up more than 20 to 30 percent of the substrate material. These fine particles are defined as being various-sized sands — 0.8 millimeters to 0.12 millimeters — or silt and clay particles — 0.006 millimeters or smaller.

As you can imagine, glacier outflow streams here in Alaska with high levels of fine sediment are poor habitats for most aquatic insects, and salmon don’t like to spawn there, either.

The amount of fine sediments in the substrate mixture is referred to as “embeddedness.” Spawning salmon look for stream areas with low embeddedness and prefer areas with large gravel, cobble and small boulder substrates. The most sought-after spawning areas are those just above a riffle section where water percolates down — downwelling — into the gravel substrates below. This water flowing through gravel brings oxygen to growing salmon eggs that settle into the lower, or deeper, substrates. The spaces between the larger gravel bits provide a home for aquatic insects that alevins and young salmon fry can feed upon. While seemingly unimportant, there is a lot of activity in the stream substrates that we don’t get to see.

The downwelling water flow can also carry fine sediments that fill in the spaces between gravel, especially if there were large amounts of fine sediments present. Too much fine sediment material would entomb and kill the young salmon residing deep in the gravel.

Over a period of years, fine sediment will clog the gravel below and make it less attractive to spawning salmon or trout. Fortunately, periodic high-water flows and stream flooding will wash out the fine sediments and re-sort the gravel. Then the area will become attractive as a spawning site once again.

Stream sediment composition can vary due to a large number of situations. Local geology and geomorphology plays a major role. Streams like the Kenai River that flow through old, well-washed glacier moraine gravel seem to have great substrate diversity. Next time you visit the Kenai River, notice the mixture of big cobbles, boulders, large gravel, smaller gravel and only a very small amount of fine substrates.

Unfortunately, there are a large number of ways that we as humans can change the mixture of substrate sizes in a stream. Some of the most problematic human activities are poor farming (tilling) techniques, road building, logging and large-scale mining. If poorly planned or improperly executed, all of these activities allow fine particles to wash into nearby streams.

In efforts to reduce the escape of fine particles from construction sites, low, black plastic fences and straw bales are placed in neat rows. These are arranged specifically to trap fine particles and prevent them from washing into a nearby stream.

While fine sediments in a stream can drastically reduce the aquatic insect population, at the other end of the spectrum, streams with only huge boulders also have reduced insect populations too. This interesting phenomenon usually occurs when there is a high gradient stream that has washed out most of the smaller gravel and cobbles. The major reason for this reduction in stream organisms is that the boulder substrates are fairly uniform and support only a small number of insects. The overall reduction in the insect population can then only support a small population of trout or salmon.

Diverse mixtures of stream substrates are critically important for the survival of a whole host of aquatic insects. These same rocky substrates create habitats below the surface of the stream that salmon search out for spawning. If these gravel, cobble and boulder substrates are changed, particularly with additions of fine sediments, salmon will avoid the area or have limited success in spawning.

David Wartinbee, Ph.D, J.D., is a biology professor at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus. He is writing a series of columns on the biology of the Kenai River watershed.

Guest editorial: Where the heart is?

One fact underlies much of what has gone on during the first 50 years of statehood — most Alaskans are not from here. While in rural Alaska the population is largely Native and native-born, for urban Alaska almost 80 percent of my generation were born somewhere else.

We were the adventuresome generation that came north in the decades just before and after statehood, ready to “try it for a while,” but with no intention of staying forever. In casual conversation we asked, “Where are you from?” And we answered whichever state we emigrated from.

We became absorbed in the wonder of Alaska. Soon the camper gave way to a rental, and the part-time seasonal job gave way to full-time employment. We got married and had children and upgraded, if we were lucky, to a job with benefits, home ownership and cars that actually started in winter. Time flew.

Then came that fateful phone call. Mom called from several time zones away. After the kids talked to the grandmother they knew as a voice on the phone, she said something like, “Dad’s not doing so well, and we sure miss the grandchildren. When are you coming home?”

At that moment the question, “Where are you from?” became a more profound question of identity, family and soul: Where’s home? Some were just here for money or power and leaving was easy. Others left reluctantly. But many stayed and we became a conflicted generation.

On one hand we loved Alaska — we hiked, camped, skied, built businesses and careers and voted. But gnawing at our hearts was an obligation to family and the subconscious bond, if environmental philosopher Paul Shepard is right, to the place we lived in late childhood just before adolescence turned our thoughts to the opposite sex. Late childhood is known to be a time of increasing independence from parents, but, Shepard suggests, that dependence is replaced by a bond to the natural place of that time in our lives. The bond is exemplified by the fort in the woods, or the wildest place we can find at age 12, where the curriculum is the light, the sounds and smells of the landscape that structure the mind and provide comfort, context and understanding for the rest of our lives.

Some of us managed to transfer that place to Alaska, but it took decades. Now our children are the ones who built their fort in the woods, and it was Alaska woods. They have Alaska subconsciously embedded in their psyche. Unlike most of us, they are from here, but they too are conflicted.

That’s because we have tragically brought them up to be successful according to an Outside standard. “You’re a good student, you should go to Stanford,” some high school teacher told them, and so they did. The forces of popular culture define success in terms of New York, Washington or Los Angeles and those left behind are the implied losers. As one student editorial writer put it several years ago in the Northern Light student newspaper: “We don’t go to UAA because we want to, we go because we have to.” Second best — or at least the perception of it.

So the 50 years of statehood has resulted in an older generation conflicted by the question of, “Where’s home?” and a second generation asking, “Why stay?”
Many have resolved these personal conflicts, but many have not. It will take another 50 years to fully acknowledge that the answers lie all around us. The generation being born now will, despite globalization and Hollywood, need to think of home, identity and sanity in terms of the circumpolar north.

With luck and purpose, 50 years from now the third and emerging fourth generations after Alaska statehood will have built a culture of the North guided by Native tradition expressed in history, science, sport, art, music, literature and poetry that embraces the place for what it is. They, and we, must recognize that our destiny is as Northern people in a Northern land with an unparalleled landscape and a wealth of sustainable energy upon which a sustainable, and therefore sovereign and equitable, society can be built.

As for now — we need to make decisions that will allow future generations of Alaskans to create the great Northern society we have not.

Alan Boraas is a professor of anthropology at Kenai Peninsula College. This column first appeared in the Anchorage Daily News on Jan. 10.

Editorial — Speak truth to power?

Hikes in energy costs over the past year have been a rude awakening on the central Kenai Peninsula to the fact that abundant, cheap energy is a luxury, not a right, and certainly not a guarantee. The peninsula, like most of the country, had it good for a long time, and so was able to put off the difficult discussions and decisions about power generation that other countries have been struggling with.

Not any longer.

The Homer Electric Association Board of Directors made a good decision Feb. 10 to initiate a power supply study before committing to buying electricity from the Healy coal project.

The goal of the independent study is to provide the board with a cost-benefit analysis of possible power generation sources, including natural gas, coal and various renewable energies. “The study will consider all factors involved in power production, including possible future fuel costs, regulatory issues, reliability, and most importantly, the impact it will have on the rates paid by our members,” said board president Debbie Debnam.

Now is the time to wean our dependence off fossil fuels for power generation. Regardless of where one stands on the environmental issues of burning oil, natural gas and coal for fuel, the financial ramifications of doing so can’t be ignored. On the peninsula, it stares us in the face with each electric bill and heating bill.

Fossil fuels come with a cost —and it’s a rising one. Not only are supplies of natural gas and oil dwindling, the price of relying on them for our main power source is rising. Switching to coal would put us on the same path down the road.

There’s no time like the present to change that path. Our hope is this study prompts the HEA board to commit to developing renewable sources of energy. It will mean more money up front, but that investment will pay off when electric rates aren’t so shackled to fossil fuels. That’s the kind of “green” movement everyone can get behind.

Plugged In: Get video carded for better digital photo use

Digital photography and desktop computing are fraternal twins. They’re not exactly alike but have a lot in common.

Decent digital photography requires some pretty heavy-duty computing and desktop printing power. At the same time, digital photography and videography add a great deal of clarity, power and persuasiveness to presentations and written documents.

Readers of previous columns will recall my view that getting a really fast, expensive video card is an unnecessary expense for most consumers. However, if you plan to use your computer for digital photography, then you should consider getting a Photoshop-compatible video card with at least 512 megabytes of memory installed directly on the video card. Digital photographers should avoid video cards that share memory with the overall computer and operating system.

Here’s why a video card is becoming so important to serious digital photographers and technical users, like engineers. Processing digital photographs, engineering drawings and other technical files demands a great deal of graphics manipulation and computing power.

A general-purpose CPU is not optimized for the sort of intense graphical processing required to process these high megapixel digital images. Even though the several most recent versions of Adobe’s industry standard digital photo programs — Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Lightroom — can recognize and use dual or quad core CPUs, they still tend to bog down when processing big images and large technical files. Upgrading system memory to at least 2 gigabytes DRAM and installing a very fast hard disk and a quad core processor helps reduce long processing times, but it’s still not quite enough.

There is another solution that happens to be fairly easy and inexpensive to implement. Starting with the very recent Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe now uses the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) found on high-end video cards to reduce Photoshop’s processing times. GPUs are optimized for precisely the sorts of demands made by Photoshop. Recent high-end GPUs are actually very fast computer cores that specialize in graphics manipulation, where general-purpose CPU processors fall behind.

Replacing an older video card with a new, higher-end video processor is not very difficult or expensive. It’s probably one of the best ways to upgrade a computer used for digital imaging.

Remember, though, that GPU processing only works with the most recent versions of Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Elements 7 and Lightroom 2.2. Older versions of Photoshop programs will not see any improvement. GPU processing of Photoshop works with Mac OS 10.5.4 and 10.4.11, 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and 32-bit versions of Windows XP. The 64-bit version of Windows XP x64 is not supported. In addition, you’ll need to obtain and install the most recent Open GL 2.0 driver software for your new video card in Photoshop.

Not all video cards are suitable, though. To be supported, a video card can be any brand that is built around one of the supported GPU chipsets listed below, and the card must support Open GL 2.0. A current listing of supported GPU chipsets can be found by searching www.adobe.com. We recommend that you download the latest GPU chipset driver software from ATI and nVidia at these links: ATI video cards: www.ati.amd.com/support/driver.html ; nVidia video cards: www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us.

Among the more common, high-end video GPU chipsets supported by Photoshop CS4 are:
  • nVidia geForce: nVidia 260 GTX 896MB, nVidia 9800 GTX 512MB, nVidia 9600 GT 512MB, nVidia 8800 GTX 768MB, nVidia 8800 GT 512MB, nVidia 8600M 256MB, nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB, nVidia 7900 GS 256MB, nVidia 7800 GTX 256MB, nVidia 7600 256MB, nVidia 6800 256MB.
  • nVidia Quadro: Quadro FX 4600 768 MB, Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Quadro FX 4400 512MB, Quadro FX 3700 512MB, Quadro FX 3500 256MB, Quadro FX 1700 512MB, Quadro FX 1500 256MB, Quadro FX 1400 -128MB, Quadro FX 570 -256MB, Quadro FX 370 256MB.
  • ATI Radeon: ATI Radeon 4850 512 MB, Radeon x3870 x2 512MB, Radeon x2900HD 512MB, ATI Radeon HD 2400 256MB, Radeon x1900XT 512MB, ATI Radeon x1800 - 512MB, Radeon x1800 256MB.
  • ATI Fire GL: ATI Fire GL 7700 512 MB, ATI Fire GL 7600 512 MB, Fire GL V7200 256MB, ATI Fire GL 5600 512MB, Fire GL V3600 256MB, Fire GL 3350 256 MB.

Local attorney Joe Kashi received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT and his law degree from Georgetown University. He has published many articles about computer technology, law practice and digital photography in national media since 1990. Many of his technology and photography articles can be accessed through his Web site, www.kashilaw.com, along with links to legal and community resources.