March 21, 5:30 pm on Zoom & at Sheldon Jackson Museum
Help shape the future of the Sheldon Jackson Museum as we develop an interpretive plan to help guide its development. The community is invited to share what you would like to see for the future of the museum.
The staff and board of the Sheldon Jackson Museum, along with museum exhibition planner and designer Sarah Asper-Smith of ExhibitAK in Juneau, are working on the interpretive plan for the museum.
There are many stories that can be told within this collection, and it is important to hear from visitors, artists, stakeholders, and the local and broader Alaska Native community about what they envision for the museum.
Public library workers of all types in Alaska are invited to register for a monthly virtual Alaska Public Library Chat. Valarie Kingsland, Head of Library Development and Public Library Coordinator at the Alaska State Library, will host these informal meetings.
Public library workers are encouraged to register, even if the current time doesn’t work for them, to receive email updates and participate in a poll to determine the best time for those registered. The meeting details, topics or themes, Zoom link, and updates will be emailed to each registered participant. Meetings will not be recorded.
Conservation and Development Thursday, March 21, 7:00 pm
Free and open to the public.
This is the third of a four lecture/panel series about major public policy issues facing Alaska. The sessions are designed to combat the often willful distortion of history and create a more productive environment in which to arrive at sound public policy.
During this program, the panel will focus on what Alaska’s history can teach us about the relationship between economic growth and our interests in stewarding Alaska’s lands and waters for present and future generations. By looking at debates around issues from damming the Yukon River to Alaskan responses to oil and gas development, we will examine if the binary between conservation and development serves the complexities of the decisions facing Alaska’s residents and lands.
About the Panelists
Jen Rose Smith, dAXunhyuu (Eyak, Alaska Native), is an assistant professor of geography and American Indian studies at the University of Washington.
James Magdanz is an independent researcher specializing in hunting and fishing economies in Alaska.
Moderated by Bathsheba Demuth, Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University.
Image: KIC [aerial of Chevron KIC #1 well, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge], ca. 1980s. Tom Cook Papers, 1972-2001. Anchorage Museum, B2017.012.219.
Within the realm of comic books and sequential art, shared universes are popular vehicles for storytelling. Writers and artists come together and draw on common themes and ideas, incorporating their own work into a broader realm that exists beyond the sum of its parts. The Marvel and DC universes are the best known, but plenty of others exist, including an Alaska one.
Luk’ae Tse’Taas Comics — Fish Head Soup Comics — has been built in recent years by an assemblage of creators rooting their work in Indigenous cultures and northern themes, and peppering it with fantastical elements.
“We all had similar ideas of where this could go, what it meant to tell Alaskan comics or Alaskan Native comics or just comics for Alaskan kids in general,” artist Dimi Macheras said, recalling discussions he and other creators began having a few years ago, aimed at building a common vision...
Works by Macheras, Shafer, and Brame are presently on display at the Anchorage Museum, with an ongoing series of workshops and events planned around the exhibit. “We each have our own room that’s dedicated to our specific work,” Brame said. “And then we have a collective room that’s about storytelling and how to make comics, but from an interactive standpoint.”
Southeast Alaska Native leaders and Chilkat weavers welcomed home a very old Chilkat robe on Friday.
A group of donors bought the robe at a Seattle auction and, through the Burke Museum in Washington state, gave it to Sealaska Heritage Institute so weavers could study it.
Weavers and elders danced into the Shuká Hít clan house at Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, pausing to greet the robe lying on a table at the front of the room. They sang to welcome it back to Lingít Áaní.
Later, dancers performed a pair of spirit dances to, as the program says, “breathe life into the robe and welcome the ancestors home.”
Big Lake Public Library, Delta Community Library, and Skagway Public Library were all both round one and round two grantees.
The American Library Association (ALA) has announced 310 libraries to receive grants through Round 2 of Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC): Accessible Small and Rural Communities.
These public, academic and school libraries represent 45 U.S. states. Below is just a sampling of the work Round 2 libraries will undertake; see the full list below.
As of March 2024, 465 libraries have been selected for LTC: Accessible Small and Rural Communities funding.
Librarian Margot O’Connell is joined by physicians Valerie Edwards, Lisa Antonio, and Erica Foster to discuss the next installments in the Sitka Public Library’s “Doc Talks” series. On tap for Thursday, March 7 at 6:30 p.m.: “Sex After Dark – The Menstrual Cycle (and Other Things Not Taught in High School)” with Dr. Antonio. On Thursday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m.: “The 4th Trimester and Newborns” with Dr. Foster.
Anchorage resident and lifelong Artist Vonnie Gaither talks about her work, inspiration and career. Vonnie is featured in the Black in Alaska short film currently on view at the Anchorage Museum.
A stack of cages full of oysters, a slinky pot made for catching black cod, and a brailer bag stuffed with fish appear to be hanging from the ceiling inside the Tongass Historical Museum.
Museum staff this week are busy building, printing and hanging the final pieces of the 2024 featured exhibit — “On the Edge: Stories from Ketchikan’s Working Waterfront” — ahead of a public reception and exhibit opening that’s set to run from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday.
Anna Laffrey, March 1, 2024. Ketchikan Daily News.
The Sitka Historical Society [hosted] a wine tasting and art display Friday, March 8, in the main auditorium of Harrigan Centennial Hall. The event celebrates the Sitka History Museum’s surprising art collection: “From Our Vault: Sitka’s Treasures on Canvas.” Board member John Stein says many of the pieces are from the 1800s and precede the creation of the museum. Other pieces are contemporary works by artists Norm Campbell and Steve Lawrie. Tickets $40, available online.
Smith works at the intersection of critical Indigenous studies, cultural human geography, and environmental humanities. Her book, "Icy Matters," takes up race, indigeneity and coloniality in ice-geographies. She serves on the advisory board for the Eyak Cultural Foundation, a non-profit that organizes annual language and cultural revitalization gatherings and directs a Cultural Mapping Project on their homelands of Eyak, Alaska.
The Alaska State Library recently added Presidential Medal of Freedom (8/1/2023), a report from the Congressional Research Service to its Federal Depository Library collection. According to this 45-page report, “Between 1963 and 2022, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded 633 times to 630 individuals and one group (the Apollo 13 Mission Operations Team); two people (Ellsworth Bunker and Colin Powell) received the medal twice.”
In addition to providing a comprehensive list of honorees by President, the report also provides some demographics of awardees and provides a history of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and information on the processes of nomination, selection, and presentation of the award.
The IRS recently released an alert that may interest people who use health flexible spending arrangements, health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements or medical savings accounts (FSAs, HSAs, HRAs and MSAsPDF):
A few takeaways from this alert:
General health and wellness expenses (food, gym memberships, vitamins) are not considered medical expenses under the IRS.
Companies claiming these expenses become medical with a doctor's note are misleading. Using FSAs and HSAs for such expenses can lead to plan disqualification and tax penalties.
Check the IRS website or consult a tax professional to confirm what qualifies as a medical expense for FSAs and HSAs.
Do you have an online event or news to share? Email us!
This newsletter contains links to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links are provided for the reader’s convenience. Alaska State Libraries, Archives, and Museums does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Furthermore, the inclusion of links is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, or products or services offered, on these sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites.
