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60 Tons, or 120 thousand pounds of anchor and chain were recovered today from waters just beyond Sitka’s Crescent Harbor. The anchor was dropped on May 20th by the MS Amsterdam cruise ship, which frequents Sitka Sound as it travels to and from Seattle and Anchorage.
I spoke with Fred Reeder the Port Director for Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska, who explained how the anchor was lost.
“They had some trouble lowering it and it just spooled off, they couldn’t break it, they couldn’t stop it, but that part gave way and they spooled off the anchor and about and each length of the chain is about twenty inches long and weight 180 pounds.”
The lost anchor and chain were valued at 250 to 500 thousand dollars. Reeder says Holland America decided to recover the lost items, thinking it would more cost effective, and safer for other cruise ships mooring in the sound. All in all, the recovery is slated to cost upwards of 100 thousand dollars. And, Reeder says finding and pulling such a big hunk of metal up from the depths is more complicated than you might think.
“It took a while, the ship had a GPS position on where they were, but as you can imagine it’s a big body of water, and we drug around and we couldn’t find it, and we brought in some divers from Seattle, from Ballard diving. And they came in. And what exacerbated that the anchor and chain was in just a little over 200 feet of water, so it makes for extreme diving condition.”
The divers used a special mixture of helium and oxygen, and had only 35 minutes to secure a line to the lost chain.
“We’ve got a yarder that used to be used in the woods yarding trees out of the forest; we’ve got it mounted to the deck of our barge, and a 110 ton crane on board. We start pulling with one combination and holding with another and then picking with a crane, and then we pick chain up to about 90 feet, which is one shot of chain, and then we dog that off and lower that chain on to the deck of the barge.”
Once the chain and anchor were on board the barge, the barge saddled up to the Amsterdam to re-link the chain to it’s housing on the ship, where it was then reeled in.
Bill Sharp, the Vice President of Port Operations for Holland America says that this is the first ship he knows of to lose its anchor in Southeast, and that repairs to the anchor braking system were made shortly after the anchor was lost.
The Amsterdam set sail from Sitka, at 5 p.m. on Thursday with the recovered anchor and a back on board.
The Fortress is usually a place for bears who will no longer live in the wild. Monday night, four very wild bears decided to come visit, more or less.
“Well they came in on their own. They’ve been in the area and we baited them in,” says Les Kinnear, director of the Fortress of the Bear. “We put some food in the habitat and rigged the gate to close and latch on its own. And that worked to a degree. We came out at about 10 last night and all four of the bears were in the habitat. We were delighted to see that all three of the cubs were still here. We had worried a little bit that one of them may have been the one that was killed at Thimbleberry last week.”
It’s very important that the bears be collared and tagged, so they can be monitored. Tracking these bears can help scientists and wildlife personnel better understand Sitka’s bear population as a whole.
“Learning more about them, getting more information, where they travel, where they feed, what parts of the day they spend in different areas. How we impact them in their feeding zones. So this is all information that we need to know to be able to live better in their backyard and they in ours.”
Fortress volunteer Debi Terry says the bears had been hanging around the Fortress for a while, before they were baited in.
“They kind of watch from the mountain,” Terry said. “They come down at night. They scale over somewhere over the barbed wire. And just kind of come around, scout around, see if they can find any leftover food. They actually found a way into the shed that has hay and they may have slept there overnight. So they’ve been really smart about finding resources for themselves.”
They spent the night in the Fortress, and seemed pretty comfortable when I arrived. They occasionally looked and smelled up at the people on the observation decks, but didn’t seem too concerned.
“I think the bears right now are actually looking fairly calm. They don’t seem agitated. Actually where they’re laying right now is where they slept over the night. So they’re pretty comfortable. And they’ve been here several nights so I think they’ve kind of walked around before trying to see a way out and they haven’t found one yet. So I think right now they’re just kind of making time and being comfortable until they can get out.”
Meanwhile, in the other enclosure, the Fortress’s two resident brown bears splash playfully in their pond. But, unlike those two, this bear family is not here to stay.
“Last summer Phil Mooney from Fish and Game had wanted to radio collar several bears because we’ve got a lot of bears around town,” Kinnear said. “They come in for the berries, they come in for whatever they can find, while they wait for the fish to show up in the streams. Apparently he’s got four collars to put on sow bears here in town to try and keep track of them. And the options are to trap, or dart, or snare, and we have this opportunity where we thought we could capture a whole family here.
“They’ve been down in the area for quite some time, for several weeks, pushed down out of the Thimbleberry area, by all of the traffic up there. So last night we gave it a try and managed to get all four of them here, in our second habitat. So this morning Phil’s going to come in and we’re going to try and dart them, put a radio collar on the sow, and ear tags on the cubs and then kick them back out.”
Collaring and tagging these bears is not an easy process. They will be shot with tranquilizers, and then in the few hours they are unconscious, blood samples, hair samples, and even a tooth will be taken for study. Now to the enclosure--the bears might have been comfortable before, but as soon as the sow sees the gun over the enclosure wall, she gets very agitated.
She stands up on her hind legs. She chuffs. And then she charges, allowing for a clear shot, which hits her in the hip. She runs and stumbles and runs and stumbles, for over five minutes.
Suddenly we hear a growling whining noise coming from the enclosure.
“It’s surgical quality tranquilization, anesthesia,” Kinnear said. “She’ll be down. It’s just catching up with her now. She’s groggy on her feet, but in just a minute or two she’ll be completely immobilized and unconscious.”
Now, they will try to tranquilize the cubs. I follow Les Kinnear down and into the enclosure. Biologist Phil Mooney is right behind. We head over to the sow, while he approaches the cubs. He shoots them with the tranquilizer gun. One of them runs over to see what we’re doing, before the drugs take full effect.
And this is where we come to the snoring. The sow is lying on her stomach with all four legs out to her sides. And she is snoring up a storm. While she is peacefully out of it, the biologist will take samples and put the radio collar on before the drugs wear off.
And that’s how bears are collared and tagged, in the, not so wild. The bears will recuperate at the Fortress and be allowed and encouraged to leave this evening, back into the real wild.
S&S General Contractors was denied a permit to operate the quarry, after roughly an hour of discussion from the Assembly table and testimony from neighbors.
The permit would have been valid for five years, although S&S would only have had 18 months to do its work. It would have allowed blasting and rock movement from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. In all, it was estimated that some 150-thousand cubic yards of rock would be removed.
The proposal received a mixed reception from neighbors. Many were vocal in their opposition, but others wrote letters saying they had no objection to the project. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska asked for no quarry activity from March 1st to May 30, in order to avoid disturbing herring spawn.
Hugh Bevan of S&S General Contractors said his company was happy to comply with the Tribe’s request, and that pulling rock from the site is a good opportunity for the property owner to clean up the lot.
But Kasiana Island resident Keith Nyitray said the impact of a rock quarry on neighbors would be unbearable.
“I’m sure you know how well sound carries across the water,” Nyitray said. “And on a calm day, I can hear people speaking on their lots across the way. Can you imagine what it will be like to listen to the sounds of heavy machinery and blasting for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, for a year and a half?”
The Assembly gave the proposal a chilly reception, despite a Planning Commission recommendation to approve the permit with conditions.
“How can any person reasonably expect when they buy a secluded property in Alaska that there’s going to be a rock mine open next to their home?” Mayor Scott McAdams said.
The Assembly voted 6 to 1 against the quarry, with Assembly member Larry Crews supporting the permit. The Kasiana Island issue took up most of the last hour of the meeting, which stretched from 6 p.m. until the mandated adjournment time of 11 p.m.
If the tax on sugary beverages had gone on the ballot this fall and been approved, the money would have been used to fund a community recreation center.
Phyllis Hackett cosponsored the measure, along with Mim McConnell. Hackett said the idea for the tax began as a citizen’s initiative, but that a legal technicality required it to come from the Assembly.
“So this is one that I’m simply sponsoring,” Hackett said. “I’m not the maker of it in any way. I’m just allowing it to be there for discussion, and I think it’s a valuable discussion to hear all sides of this concern.”
And a discussion was exactly what happened.
Supporters of the measure said it will help cut down on consumption of sugary beverages, which is a leading cause of childhood obesity.
“Twenty-nine percent of Alaska 2-year-olds consume at least one soda or sugar-sweetened beverage per day,” said Sitka resident Gretchen Clarke. “That has a serious deleterious effect in terms of oral health or just general overall health. Taxes that increase the price of unhealthy items … are one of the most effective ways to reduce their purchase and consumption.”
Sitkan Steve Petro, on the other hand, said the tax goes too far.
“My Lord, we’re in a recession here,” Petro said. “I do not want to pay another $4 for a case of Coca-Cola, which I am going to continue to drink.”
Under the proposal, Petro might not have paid that money. The tax was would have been levied on distributors. But that raised another concern from Scott Calhoun, owner of Sitka Bottling.
“It’s singling out two companies in this town, and the grocery stores and other people can bring product into town that’s not going to be charged like we’re going to be charged,” he said.
So the Assembly amended the proposal to include grocery and convenience stores in the tax, but then came the question of enforcement and how much the city stood to benefit.
Assembly Member Reber Stein asked city finance director Dave Wolff if he could say how much money the tax might bring in.
“No,” Wolff replied, to laughter in the room. “Even with the amendment, it’s still unknown. If it’s powder, do you tax it on the ounce of powder, or do you tax it on the ounces of fluid that powder might make on the recommendation of the manufacturer? There are so many different things in here, for us to enforce it. My staff looked at that and said, ‘God, let’s hope it doesn’t go through, because we don’t have a clue where we’re going to start at.’”
The measure received more support from members of the public than it did opposition, and Hackett said she’d vote yes just to get the idea talked about. But as the complications continued to multiply, Hackett changed her mind.
“I’m just doing an about face. It’s just fraught with problems,” Hackett said. “I’m not going to say it’s a terrible, terrible idea, but I am going to say that I don’t believe it’s ready at this time to go forward. I think it needs a lot more work.”
McConnell, Hackett, and Assembly members Cheryl Westover and Larry Crews voted the measure down. Stein and Jack Ozment supported it. Mayor Scott McAdams recused himself because the money could have been used on Hames Wellness Center. McAdams works for the division of Sitka Schools that helps operate Hames.
Not every ballot proposal fared as poorly.
Sitkans will be voting on bonds to repair Blatchley Middle School, and on whether to use the 1 percent sales tax in the summer to help fund renovations at Pacific High School.
And, after a couple more meetings, Sitka voters could end up deciding whether to issue $6 million in bonds to buy and fix up the Hames Athletic and Wellness Center. That amount was reduced from the original proposal of $15 million.
The presence of freshwater shapes a region’s health and agriculture, and control of this resource can determine who has electrical, and political, power.
Alaska, with its many rivers and glaciers, is positioned to become a major freshwater distributor, and two towns across the state are working to monetize their water supplies.
In Sitka, that water comes from Blue Lake, and the city holds a permit to export 95 billion gallons of it every year. And the idea is to sell the water, in bulk, to overseas customers in regions of the world where fresh water is hard to come by.
“I literally spend probably 3 hours a day dealing with people on bulk water and trying to educate myself more about it, because there’s just so much going on,” said Garry White, director of the Sitka Economic Development Association, and Sitka’s point person on bulk water.
What’s been going on lately is a flood of national publicity, including the cable news network CNBC, which is taping a segment here for a special on water.
The City of Sitka right now has a contract with True Alaska Bottling. The city is charging a cent per gallon for the water.
If True Alaska takes all the water it’s allowed to take under the contract, it could mean $95 million dollars a year for Sitka.
“Frankly, I don’t think that will ever happen,” White said. “The state only allows us to export 33.6 million gallons per day, because we don’t want to come in here and drop the level of the lake. That’s less than 1 percent of the volume of the lake that can come out of there. By the time you bring one of these big ships in, tie it up, throw your 33.6 in there per day, I don’t think you can realize all the 95 billion gallons unless there’s two loading stations.”
But still, full capacity or not, it’s a lot of money for a city where the annual general fund revenue is about $24 million dollars.
The companies are interested, the water’s available, and the city has every reason in the world to get it going. So what’s the hold up? Infrastructure. Namely, the tanker ships that would carry the water overseas.
“They draught about 60 to 80 feet of water,” White said. “So we have to have the infrastructure that will allow a ship to come into that depth.”
The plan at the moment is to let the companies build that infrastructure , and then give them a discount on the water. But right now, there’s no way to get the water into a tanker ship. That’s NOT the case in Adak.
Sitka and Adak have little in common. They’re 1,600 miles apart, and where Sitka’s a vibrant fishing center, Adak is almost a ghost town. The island was built to house thousands when its military base was in operation. Today, the population is estimated to be 300.
The Aleut Corporation now owns the former military facilities like reservoirs and a deepwater port, and it wants to put them to use exporting bulk water. Tony Cange, president of corporation’s real estate division, says Adak’s situation is the reverse of Sitka’s.
“We know we’ve got this infrastructure. I’ve got 12-inch pipes that go down to loading docks, several large piers; you could put an aircraft carrier in there, and I’m sure they have at some point” Cange said. “So we can fit 300- to 500-foot vessels in there easily. The infrastructure’s there, it’s coming along. Now it’s just a matter of getting the water rights applications together and being granted the export certificate.”
Though the Aleut Corporation first talked about exporting Adak’s freshwater in 2000, it only applied for bulk removal permits earlier this month. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources now needs to make sure that Adak has enough excess water that things like the fish population won’t be affected by its removal.
While the process take about a year, Cange is hoping that the corporation’s applications can be expedited so it can start exporting water as soon as January.
Some of that freshwater will be sent to India and used for farming, but most will be shipped to China and bottled for sale to its growing middle-class class. Cange thinks that Adak will only be exporting about 40 million to 60 million gallons in its first year.
But in its applications, the corporation has asked to remove up to half a million gallons a day from each of the island’s three reservoirs: lakes Betty, DeMarie, and Bonnie Rose. And that’s still just a fraction of the island’s freshwater runoff, Cange says.
“There’s over 40 million gallons a day in water runoff,” he said. “That’s just water being sent into the ocean, where it could be sent somewhere that could need it.”
It’s not clear whether Adak or Sitka will develop its water supply first. But in the meantime, the demand for bulk water is only growing.
Alexandra Gutierrez reports for KUCB in Unalaska.
At Medvejie Hatchery, a few miles south, the damage was worse.
A closed water-intake valve resulted in the loss of nearly 1 million Chinook fry. But Medvejie also has been conducting an experimental program that, in the weeks since the accident, has helped the hatchery recover from the damage caused by the accident.
Medvejie Hatchery is at the end of a narrow dirt road about 10 miles outside the center of town. It sits inside a secluded cove, where, down in the water, floating metal boardwalks encircle saltwater pens full of salmon.
The hatchery is run by the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Assocation, or NSRAA.
“It’s probably one of the most complicated Chinook rearing programs in the state,” said Lon Garrison, NSRAA’s operations manager. He says Medvejie produces about 4 million Chinook each year.
“About 2 million of those Chinook smolts come from our more traditional program,” he said. “We call that a yearling program. We actually have them on site for longer than a year.”
The other two million are called zero-checks.
“They may experience a rapid enough growth rate that they meet the minimum threshold to be able to smolt, and go early,” Garrison said. Smolting is the process that makes a salmon be able to move from freshwater into salt water.
At Medvejie, zero check smolt come from Green Lake, where the hatchery has some fish pens. The water temperature in the raceways at the hatchery site, where yearlings mature, is between roughly 43 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit. But up in Green Lake, it’s warmer, about 50 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The warmer the water, the quicker the fish can grow. Their metabolism increase,” Garrison said. “We stumbled upon the fact that, in the first couple years as they were feeding those fish, they grew really fast, and we noticed that some of them were smolting. And they were smolting in the middle of the summer.
“So, it led us to experiment with a couple of things, and actually take a group, put them in the lake a little early, grow them as fast as we could, and see if we could make them smolt.”
And it worked. Now fast forward to the beginning of July. An accidentally closed valve inside one of the hatchery’s on-site raceways resulted in the death of nearly a million young Chinook.
The fry that died were yearlings – the Chinook that stay in the fresh water for more than a year. When the accident happened, the zero-check had just been moved into salt water. To replenish the fish in the freshwater raceways, the staff at the hatchery decided to see what would happen if they moved 100 of the zero-check fish out of salt water, and back into fresh water.
“If they had all died right within the first few days, we would know that that wasn’t going to be a possibility,” Garrison said. “We had no mortality.”
A good sign. So, more fish were sent. Almost a million, using two fish pumps and about 700 feet of pipe and hose. And now they’re all inside the raceways, six large aluminum tanks, basically, each at waist height off the ground, and a little longer than a semi truck.
The zero check fish in the raceways now are about twice the size of the yearlings who were lost, and Garrison says the challenge now will be making sure they don’t outgrow their new surroundings before it’s time to release them.
Once they are released, they’ll have a lower survival rate than their yearling cousins. About 2 percent of yearlings come back, compared to about a half-percent of zero-check. But Garrison said it’s still enough to make the program worthwhile.
Wildlife Trooper Kyle Carson, spoke to KCAW’s Lily Mihalik near the Sitka Raptor Center where it was being skinned. Carson said the bear was attempting to break into a shed housing household trash.
“He had a trash can locked inside it with bleach around there to make sure there wasn’t anything to attract it, however this bear was just destroying the side of his shed, and ripping all the shingles off. So in this case he was very well justified to defend his property. And that’s why we’re here skinning the animal.”
The man who shot the bear declined to give his name, but was present to skin the bear and remove its hide, paws and skull to turn them over to the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. (Which is state law). Employees at the raptor center also helped skin the animal.
Carson said this bear matches the description of a bear seen climbing on a porch in the neighborhood over weekend.
“It was a fairly small bear, so if that was the bear then more than likely this was it. Apparently there is still a large one in the area to keep a look out for.”
The bear was killed in one shot. Its remains will be fed to birds at the raptor center.
Spruce aphids have crimson eyes, green six-legged bodies and their populations are booming in Sitka this summer.
Patrick Heuer is Sitka’s resident Forest Service silviculturist –or forest growth expert—and says locals are starting to see the impact of the aphids’ voracious appetite.
"Well around town in the last few weeks we’ve seen a lot of the spruce trees especially the ones near the beach and at lower elevations we’ve had a lot of folks calling in and asking about that. It’s basically the spruce aphids feeding on the needles, sucking the juice out of the needles in early winter/ late spring."
The result is less than pretty.
"Mid June or so the needles basically turn brown and die and fall off, and that’s what we’re seeing right now. It’s the result of aphids feeding, probably January, February, March, and in years where we have mild winters the aphid population rends to build up so that we get more defoliation."
Colder winters says Heuer, usually mitigate large aphid populations by killing off their eggs before they hatch. But as warming weather patterns move in, aphid populations move up.
“It’s a sap sucking, insect, so you can think of it as a tree mosquito.”
That’s Ann Lynch, a research entomologist with the Forest and Woodland Ecosystems Science Program. She’s based in Arizona, but has worked the last 10 years studying and consulting on aphid populations in South East Alaska. She says this “tree mosquito” sucks the fluid out of older needles, dehydrating, and literally starving the tree of nutrients.
Normally she says, one warm winter or spring can’t kill a spruce tree, but a few warm winters and springs in a row can wreak havoc on spruce populations—the largest defoliation recorded from these aphids occurred in South East Alaska and totaled around 46,000 acres in 1998.
"There has been an increase in the frequency and severity and extent of spruce aphid outbreaks in South East Alaska, by extent I mean the outbreaks have gone further inland then they did gone in the past. And that does appear to be related to winter and spring temperatures."
Lynch and Heuer say the best way to know if your spruce has been affected is to look at the needles. What you’d see is the green tips at the end of the tree basically untouched and the inner or older needles in the tree, brown, sucked dry and maybe scattered around the base of the tree.
Heuer says so far this season only trees at lower elevations have been affected, and if you want to protect your tree from aphids there are a few options.
If you already see the aphids you can rinse them off your tree with a hole, or early in the season you can rinse your tree with a soap and water solution to prevent them from attacking. Either way, Heuer says acting early is the best way to protect your garden spruce.
Green Top Cabin on Yakobi Island is one of these, and because it’s on land classified as “wilderness” upkeep on the cabin and surrounding trails is a little different than it would be in other locations.
When most people think about repairing the foundation of a home, or building log trails and bridges, the first sounds that come to mind are the roar of cement trucks, and the time-saving whir of power tools.
But if you’re planning to do remodeling on wilderness lands, you’ll have to think again. Motorized tools are not allowed. This means no chain saws, no power drills, no nail guns.
No cell phones no nothing, you find yourself dazing off at things you’d never look at back home. The nature part of it I guess and then stepping back and see how he put these logs together.
Kelley Pellet is the contractor heading renovations at Green Top Cabin—one of over 300 wilderness cabins in Alaska-- and he says the best part of working on a project like this is stepping back in time.
The cabin stands about twenty yards up the beach and is a two story yellow cedar log structure that is 34 feet by 20 feet. Inside a behemoth rocking chair, complete with leather and metal studs conjures images of frontiersmen smoking pipes while drying their long johns over the fire.
Pellet feels this same nostalgia. His family grew up in the woods of Sitka, felling trees and hauling rocks from the beach to build his family home. Still, Pellet is more of a modern man, he champions ATVs and is a skilled carpenter that’s more accustomed to heading down to the local hardware store than foraging in the woods for building materials.
These people back in the day, they had time, I mean they didn’t have tv, they weren’t missing, the weren’t expecting to watch the Superbowl the next weekend, they were just working on projects, working on the gardens, so for them to go out and spend a day on the trail working on something that might make it easier to get to another portage, that was fun, that was exercising. They didn’t think twice about it.
Out on the trail, a young bearded Pete Martens looks like he’s been doing his own time traveling. Dressed in traditional Tin Pants and suspenders, he has one side of a log tied to a tree and the other nestled into a saw buck.
It’s change of pace pounding nails, it’s fun, interesting..it’s uh, pretty sweet out here, it’s called, the old timers called them misery whips, but its an old hand saw. This one is al little over four feet, we’ve got a five footer, and there is one hanging over in the tree that two people use at the same time.
After they’re cut the logs are backpacked to the trail and laid into the ground, before being secured with minerals and gravel from the surrounding hillsides. Barth Hamberg is one of the trail’s designers, and says he studied old mining trails for inspiration.
The detail on for the corduroy that we’re making this trail from actually came from an old mining trail at lucky chance that’s at the head of silver bay near Sitka, and that was built in the 1890s I think.
Designing with local materials in mind, he says takes some creativity.
I think the more you can use the local materials on site the more appropriate the trail seems to the site, and so that’s really important in wilderness, We can’t do some things we do in other places, we can’t use helicopters, we can’t use treated boardwalk, so we are limited in materials and techniques.
Pellet and his crew know these limitations of wilderness construction all too well. But they also know the loopholes.
Here’s Barth Hamberg again.
Forest service land starts at mean high tide. Above mean high tide is actually in the wilderness. Below mean high tide is not in the wilderness. And so Forest Service has no jurisdiction over what happens below mean high tide. That’s up to the state of Alaska.
Pellet says using modern tools below the tide line doesn’t save much time, but just as the inhabitants of Green Top before him, he’s not going to say no to a chance to use some fangled technology.
Well you can see the original part of the cabin he used hand tools, but as the additions came on the tools cam out, they started using them.
The tide isn’t the only convenience offered to Pellett and his crew. Lucky for him float planes and motor boats are allowed in wilderness for access reasons. Making contact with the outside world and all its modern comforts just a little closer.
“A volunteer about a year and a half ago was helping us organize a little bit in the back room, and this was laying in a corner with a whole bunch of other paintings pushed up against it,” said Bob Medinger, executive director of the society and its museum.
“This one just looked special. And then we saw the date. We could barely see the signature and the date, it was so discolored. And we thought, ‘Wow. What have we got here?’”
The answer to his question – “what have we got here” – is an 1879 oil-on-canvas depiction of the U.S.S. Jamestown, anchored in Sitka channel.
“It was in terrible condition,” he said. “The frame in the back had almost burst through the canvas, the cracks were unbelievable, I mean, just how it was laying in a corner.”
Enter Dawne Steele Pullman, professional art conservator, who sits next to a window inside “The White House,” an old home in Sitka now used by the historical society. She’s sitting next to the window at this table, with the painting on an easel in front of her. She has a palette dotted with blues and greens and a teeny tiny little brush, which she’s barely touching to the canvas.
Click here for more clips of our interview with Dawne Steele Pullman.
“You can’t rush these things,” Steele Pullman said. “They take time, and the painting lets you go only so far each step of the way.”
The painting is 17.5 inches tall by 29 inches wide, and for the last two weeks, Steele Pullman has sitting right here, by the window, working centimeter by centimeter on every little detail. The corner of a cloud. The lip of a chimney. A couple trees on Mt. Verstovia.
If the paintings are patients, Steele Pullman is a skilled surgeon.
“I use everything from what a doctor might use, scalpels, as well as cutting knives, I use dental tools, I find those handy for digging in cracks and digging out little debris bits. I sometimes have feathers for being able to get debris that gathers between the canvas and the back of the strainer. I have brushes of all sizes from zero to about three.”
Steele Pullman was born in the United States and raised in Europe from age 7, in England, France and Italy. Her restoration training comes from Italy. She earned her master’s degree in Florence. Now, she travels.
“I am a gypsy conservator. I roam the world as kind of the Red Cross of conservation and I have clients and work all over the world. I just came out of Hong Kong, doing some work for galleries and private individuals there. And then I have clients also in Europe and throughout the U.S.”
She’s worked on paintings by Matisse and Renoir for Matisse’s grandson. She spent seven months restoring the mural in the mess hall at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Each work of art has a story. Steele Pullman says this painting, the one of the U.S.S. Jamestown parked in front of Sitka, was restored once before, probably in the 1940s, when art restoration really caught on in the United States.
“And I think that’s maybe what happened with this piece,” she said. “However, the person that previously restored it definitely was very diligent and enthusiastic, a little too enthusiastic, and in some of their restoration they had gone over all the cracks that were existing in the piece sometimes a little too enthusiastically, by making a few more cracks.”
But the difference between the work as it was found a year and a half ago, and the work after Steele Pullman’s treatment, is night and day. Almost literally. The yellowish-black spots in the sky where cracks had eaten away at the paint are now a clear blue. The ship in the foreground almost pops off the canvas.
What was a dingy picture stuck in a store room is now an almost living, breathing record of the U.S.S. Jamestown and its mission in Sitka to to try and ease tensions between the Americans and the Tlingit. The ship was commanded by a guy named Lester Beardslee.
“The amazing piece of the story was this Captain Beardslee,” said Medinger, “who came in here not with the idea that might makes right, but with a much more compassionate approach to try to deal with these problems. Yes, this warship was bristling with guns. And you’ll note in the painting it’s parked right in front of the village. That was no mistake.”
But Beardslee’s approach to dealing with the problems, Medinger says, was to hire Tlingits and Americans to work side-by-side. They were policemen together, they destroyed stills together, and helped establish local government. A document he wrote, reporting to the government on his efforts in Sitka, is still in Sitka’s library.
And then there’s the painting.
“After this was done, the artist made a couple copies, we believe,” Medinger said. “And in fact, there’s one in the Anchorage Museum, and we think there’s one in Seattle. When my volunteer was researching this, we actually got ahold of a gallery in Seattle and sight unseen, they offered us $40,000 for it, right then and there, as horrible as the condition was.”
The condition is no longer horrible, of course, but the painting is NOT for sale. Medinger says he hopes to have it on display in the museum sometime this fall.
(Photos by Sam Heindel, curatorial intern at the Sitka Historical Society & Museum)
That’s inside Freshwater Bay, just east of Tenakee.
About 200 square feet of forest burned there on Friday morning. Meryl and Gordon Chew, along with Darren Heath and Isaiah Strong left on board the boat, called the “Maggie’s Wake,” around 10:30 a.m. Friday.
Gordon Chew, the acting fire chief in Tenakee, says everything went well.
“It wasn’t a big fire. And it was an excellent training for us," Chew said. "There was a lot of smoke and a lot of steam as we hosed the fire down, so it was a live fire. We looked at it as a live fire training opportunity, and it’s a lovely harbor. We didn’t want to see it burn, either."
Chew says Pavlov Harbor is a popular recreation spot.
“It’s a great fishing spot, and it’s a wonderful bear viewing spot," he said. "Bears fish there. There’s a waterfall and a fish ladder alongside, so it’s a great site to see.”
The fire spread not in the trees, but underneath deep spruce overburden. According to Chew’s report, smoke was filtering through the forest floor. And, he says, it appears that someone’s carelessly built campfire might have been responsible for the blaze.
“It looked like some effort was made to extinguish it, because we did find evidence of firewood being thrown into the water," Chew said. "The fire was built in a totally inappropriate spot.”
The fire crew was back in Tenakee by 1:30 p.m.
Voices heard include Lt. Cmdr. David Neel, Father Dave Elsensohn, Cmdr. Doug Cameron, Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr., and Gov. Sean Parnell.
The three Coast Guard servicemen died Wednesday when their MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crashed into the water off La Push, Washington.
Coast Guard Commander Doug Cameron took command of Air Station Sitka just nine days before the accident.
“You’d expect that to mean that I had very little personal connection with the crew,” he said. “But that’s not the way the Coast Guard family is.”
Cameron served with Banks in Kodiak, and with Hoke at Air Station Astoria.
“Lt. Sean Krueger is the one person lost that I was not stationed with previously,” Cameron said.
“Yet given the small size and the rotating nature of airframes in the H-60 fleet, we still had much in common. We shared the same H-60 cockpits. Our flightboots have worn paint off the deck in front of the same rudder pedals. Our hands have held the same flight controls. And much more importantly, we have both had the privilege of flying with people like Brett Banks and Adam Hoke.”
Cameron also thanked Sitkans for offering aid and comfort in the aftermath of the crash, saying Sitka and the Air Station are “completely interwoven.” That was a theme that echoed by Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell.
“You’ve provided and you’ve stepped forward in ways that I’ve already heard family members express their appreciation, and their thanks for what you’ve done,” Parnell said. “And so now beyond Sitka, Alaskans, this is our challenge: It’s to be the shield for these families and for this community, even as these men were our shield.”
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski presented flags to the families of the lost crew members, and Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Robert Papp made the trip from Washington, D.C., to attend the memorial service. He spoke at the ceremony, and then again to reporters afterward.
“It’s such a small service by comparison to the others that when we do have a loss of any Coast Guardsman, much less three, it really touches the lives of all of us,” Papp said. “So that’s why we gather together, why we take the time to do ceremonies like this. It’s really a time for us to get together, to celebrate the lives of these great heroes, and then to shore each other up, to be able to get through the tragedy.”
In addition to the large turnout at the memorial service, it also was watched by more than 1,300 people through an online broadcast.
Words of encouragement and support also were offered to the survivor of the crash, Lieutenant Lance Leone. He was released from a Seattle hospital on Monday after being treated for a broken arm and leg. The Coast Guard says he’s with his family.
KCAW's Lily Mihalik contributed to this report.
Watch a Coast Guard video of the ceremonial flyover, twenty-one gun salute, and Taps.
They’ve jointly hired an intern to explore ways entrepreneurs can tap into money and expertise in the changing economy of the Tongass.
The Sitka Conservation Society and the Sitka Economic Development Association might seem like strange bedfellows to anyone but Haley Sample. She works for both.
Sample arrived in June, one of several current and former students brought to town by the Sitka Conservation Society. She says she was immediately singled out as a little different.
“You know when I arrived I went to a city council meeting and one of the reporters came up and said ‘So, you’re the Republican of the group.’ And that’s been our framework: If you support economic development you’re on this side, if you support the environment you’re on that side. So, it’s reevaluating that position and seeing that those can be mutually beneficial, and that we should both be preserving our beautiful Sitka environment as well as promoting our local economic development.”
Sample has a master’s degree in Public Policy and Sustainable Development from the University of Oregon. She most recently has been a policy analyst for the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance.
Sample says she knows Sitka in the past has been polarized. And although she hasn’t spent much time here, she thinks there’s some movement toward smoothing over those old divisions.
“I really see a renewed energy to merge those two together. I’ve talked to different city officials, different assembly members, and community members so far, and there’s really this thought process of ‘How do we protect our environment while being able to benefit from it?’ Because that’s really our competitive advantage in Sitka, the natural resources.”
Garry White, the executive director of the Sitka Economic Development Association, confirms that view.
“A job’s a job. Whether it is created restoring the forest or taking timber from the forest. It’s a job either way. Our task is to help create jobs and a business environment in Sitka. We try to play with the cards that are dealt to us, with the end goal of job creation.”
White says SEDA is looking for ways to create local investment in Sitka. He calls it “sustainable capital flow.” He thinks if a mechanism is built, the money will come.
“For instance putting our 401Ks and mutual funds in New York City somewhere, maybe we can figure out how we can invest in our own community, keep that money here, and build community – for us locally – rather than always looking for the highest returns.”
Sample says she’ll be trying to plug the gap between traditional lending provided by five local banks, and entrepreneurs who may not be loan-worthy in the traditional sense. Over the course of the summer she plans to collect information in a blog, as well as steer people to resources that are already in place. One of her favorites so far is the Alaska Small Business Development Center in Juneau.
Her goal, Sample says tongue-in-cheek, is to leave Sitka “with a big pile of money.” In reality, it may be pointing out examples of sustainable capital flow in other communities that have started this transition.
“My end goal right now is to figure out what’s going on in Sitka. And now I’m going outside the community and looking at what other communities are doing. I’m doing a case-study analysis, and interviewing, and coming up with a set of recommendations or best practices that Sitka can use to move forward to bring in this new era of sustainable development.”
Sample’s blog can be found at tools4entrepreneurs.blogspot.com.