New late-run Kenai king escapement goal ready for review

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

The new numbers are out, setting the goalposts to which the late run of Kenai River king salmon will be managed. Scientists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently released a draft interim escapement goal recommendation calling for 15,000 to 30,000 late-run kings to escape fishing nets and hooks to spawn in the Kenai. The new sustainable escapement goal is a decrease from the previous range of 17,800 to 37,500 kings.

The decrease doesn’t represent a change in philosophy or priority in what the goal is meant to achieve, said fishery scientist Steve Fleischman, who, along with Tim McKinley, authored the draft report. As with all salmon stocks in the state, late-run Kenai kings are managed to provide sustained yield, balancing conservation of the stock — getting enough fish upstream to spawn — and utilization of the resource by fishermen. The lower goal range represents a change in data, not a shift in priority toward stock conservation vs. fishery opportunity, Fleischman said.

“What’s changed is we feel that we have much better information than we’ve had before,” he said.

Little bit, long way away — Fundraiser to nourish education program with local roots

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Les Nelson. Lassie Nelson, of Soldotna, and her son, Les, pose in front of a banner for Ferdinand Center for the Creative, the nonprofit education outreach program Les founded to help disadvantaged youth in the Philippines.

Redoubt Reporter

Santa flew via jet engines, rather than reindeer. He was from Soldotna, not the North Pole. The foamy white beard of his bargain St. Nick trimmings looked about as natural as square eggs. He didn’t speak the language of those coming to see him at a bazaar in Quezon City, Philippines, so he couldn’t take gift requests, much less inquire as to naughty or nice.

To Lassie and Jerald Nelson, of Soldotna, who were visiting their son, Les Nelson, and his education outreach campaign in the Philippines last month, their Santa experience wasn’t quite up to the sack-full-of-magic standard that kids in the U.S. would expect. Then again, not much that they saw in the Philippines conformed to Western world standards.

But as with a communication-challenged Santa — or a plain pair of shoes, a simple shirt, a quick meal, an alphabet drawn in shaving cream or a lesson in basic arithmetic — there can be magic in appreciating what is there, who can be helped and what can be done, rather than focusing solely on what’s still needed, lacking and insufficient.

To a kid in the Philippines, after all, Soldotna is close enough to the North Pole as to render inconsequential the difference in zip codes. Flying across the Pacific is pretty darn special, whether it’s through technology or levitating livestock. With enough smiles and laughter, “Ho ho ho” can bridge a language gap.

“It was a pretty exciting couple of hours. A lot of kids — and a lot of young adults, and even old adults  — came up and got pictures with Santa,” said Jerald Nelson, who agreed to his son’s request to play Santa at a Christmas bazaar organized by a friend, where part of the proceeds are donated to Les’ educational program, Ferdinand Center for the Creative.

Pet project purrs along — Spay-neuter fund off to good start

By Joseph Robertia

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Judy Fandrei plays with two kittens at the Kenai Animal Shelter last spring. Her time spent at the shelter drove Fandrei to start the Peninsula Spay and Neuter Fund, which helps educate people to the pros of spaying and neutering pets, and can help offset the cost of surgeries for those in need of financial assistance.

Redoubt Reporter

Whatever circumstances surround their appearance at animal shelters, even when well intentioned, the sad reality is that not all animals will be adopted. Those that don’t find homes are euthanized. It’s a cycle that plays out across borough, state and country, year after year.

Judy Fandrei is no stranger to this reality. After years working as a veterinary technician and volunteering at local animal shelters, she realized that while some pets are surrendered to shelters by people who are no longer interested in being responsible for  them, there also are big-hearted people who do still care about their companion animals but don’t have the means in their lifestyle or financial situation to provide for them.

In November 2011, Fandrei established the Peninsula Spay and Neuter Fund with the hope of generating enough funds to perhaps pay to fix one or two pets a month, in an effort to curb the number of unwanted animals being brought in and destroyed at shelters. To her surprise, support for the organization and the need within the community to offset sterilization service costs have been overwhelming.

“It’s going unbelievably well,” Fandrei said. “It was around mid-February that I got my first coupon out and we’ve done 158 spays and neuters in the 10 months since then.”

The fund works by financially assisting those who cannot afford to have a pet spayed or neutered. After being referred by a veterinary clinic or animal shelter, Fandrei has pet owners fill out an assistance request form to understand what their needs are. If she has money in the fund, she provides pet owners with a voucher for a discounted spay or neuter procedure that is accepted by all local veterinary clinics.

Since the cost of procedures can vary from clinic to clinic, as well as varying depending on the size and age of the animal, Fandrei said that the vouchers will only cover up to $100 for a canine spay and up to $75 for a canine neuter or cat spay.

“I knew the only way for it to work was for the community to help support it, and people have been very generous,” she said.

Down Under over — Alaska teacher exchange a gamble that pays off

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Gavan and Margaret Brown of Victoria, Australia, take a dogsled ride in Kasilof before leaving Alaska. The two spent a year here on a teacher exchange program. Gavan taught at Kalifornsky Beach Elementary, while Margaret spent time in numerous central Kenai Peninsula schools as a substitute teacher.

Redoubt Reporter

In terms of teaching and exploring the world, Gavan Brown, of Victoria, Australia, has seen a lot. Not only has he been an educator for 30 years, but he’s taken part in three yearlong teacher exchanges around the world — in Birmingham, United Kingdom, British Columbia, Canada, and most recently in Soldotna. Despite this long career and his diverse travels, he said he still learns from each experience, and his most recent one was no exception.

“I didn’t know a lot about Alaska, other than it was a really cold place,” he said.

That’s exactly why he came, though. To Brown — and his wife Margaret, who came and taught in several schools around the district as a substitute while Brown was spending the year as a fourth-grade teacher at Kalifornsky Beach Elementary — teaching is about more than just imparting knowledge. It’s about exchanging thoughts, ideas, customs and cultures.

“Education should be a social experience,” he said. “The 45 kids I’ve had here at K-Beach, plus the others who’ve come in the room for presentations, they haven’t just benefited from my years of teaching, they’ve acquired a different view of the world from the experience, which will also shape those kids, and that’s priceless.”

In terms of how the U.S., and Alaska, specifically, compare to his other teaching posts around the world, Brown said that times have changed since he first became an educator, and a lot of the changes he’s seen are the same from country to country. This isn’t always a good thing, he said.

“We all want kids to be the best they can be, but it seems like we’re all headed toward a more centralized view of education. When I started, education was good for its own sake, and it used to be OK to be an individual, and be OK at math, but really excellent at art or something. Now, there’s so much emphasis on standardized testing, so we all have to jump through the same hoops as educators,” Brown said.

Cool running — Race to stay warm in winter solstice run

By Clark Fair

Photos courtesy of Andrea Hambach, Willow Running Company. Yvonne Leutwyler, of Soldotna, and Clark Fair, of Sterling, complete the Willow Winter Solstice Half Marathon on Dec. 22, in temperatures dipping to minus 30.

Redoubt Reporter

I awoke at 4 o’clock on the morning of a race and struggled to get back to sleep because I was worried about whether I was capable of finishing the event, and, given the conditions outside, whether I was capable of even surviving.

My running partner, Yvonne Leutwyler, and I had spent the night with friends (and race organizers) Andrea Hambach and Dave Johnston in Willow for the Dec. 22 inaugural Willow Winter Solstice marathon/half-marathon. At 6:30 a.m., their outdoor thermometer read  minus 32 degrees. The clear dark skies were pinpricked with stars. We were about three miles from the race venue and at least four hours from sunrise. Normal, rational people would not have ventured outside on a day like this. They would have cranked up wood stoves, snuggled under wool blankets or wiggled their tootsies inside of fuzzy slippers — but not us. We planned to run in it.

For Yvonne and I, that meant 13.1 miles of ice and hard-packed snow mainly across a series of low-lying lakes, starting at the Willow Community Center on the western shore of Willow Lake. This would be the longest run of my life — if I made it — and, by far, the coldest.

About 50 percent of the 31-person field would be joining us for the half-marathon. The rest would be running the full-meal deal — 26.2 miles, all the way to a tiny island on Red Shirt Lake (in the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area) and then back again. (The marathoners, obviously, were the real crazy ones.)

Warming up to cold-weather recreation — Get dressed, get out, get moving

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Clark Fair. A Kenai Central High School skier is dressed for success in a chilly ski race in Homer on Dec. 16. Wearing layers is always recommended outdoors. In particularly cold temperatures, be sure to cover your head — particularly the ears — protect your eyes against wind and snow and cover your nose and mouth to warm air before it hits your lungs.

Redoubt Reporter

Jane Adkins, of Kasilof, grew up a California girl, surrounded by concrete in San Francisco. She had little familiarity with temperatures below freezing, much less below zero. She certainly didn’t know there were people who spent days at a time out in minus 10, minus 30, even minus 50 and colder. Willingly. For fun, even. Not until she moved to Alaska, started mushing and was out there herself.

“I didn’t know people did this growing up. I didn’t know where snow came from when I grew up. I was in my teens the first time I saw snow come down out of the sky, so I think I was in awe with a lot of things,” she said. “The more I saw, the more I wanted to be out there.”

Despite the immediate interest she had for outdoor winter recreation in Alaska, being able to embrace it safely was a learning process with an intimidation curve to conquer.

“They taught me the wrong way. They made it scary and they made me nervous,” she said.

While frostbite, hypothermia and other cold-condition dangers are legitimate concerns, outdoor activity in the winter doesn’t have to be out of bounds, as long as it’s done with knowledge, gear and preparation.

“You learn to deal with it. What I used to be able to tolerate and what I tolerate now are very different. You acclimate,” she said.

But first, you bundle up.

Gearing up

Magic movements — Skate great with correct skiing technique

Coach’s Corner — By Alan Boraas, for the Redoubt Reporter

The Seven Magic Movements of Cross-Country Skiing describe the posture, positions and movements that are key for efficient ski technique. The same basic skills of balance, core strength and good posture apply to both classic- and skate-style skiing. But the back-and-forth motion of classic skiing is different enough from the diagonal motion of skating to warrant separate sets of magic movements.

The first four of the following movements are the same regardless of skating technique, whether it’s V1 to get up hills, or V2 or V2 alternate to achieve speed on flatter terrain.

Almanac: Ball and change — Archaeological dig invites speculation about man’s history

Editor’s note: Sometimes journalists learn much more about a subject after they’ve written all they thought they knew. Such was the case with our story of Arlon “Jackson” Ball, who was gunned down in a North Kenai cocktail lounge in October 1968. In October 2012, the Redoubt Reporter presented the tale of his murder, but in subsequent weeks new information came to light. Following is a brief summary of that original tale, including corrections where necessary, plus what is known so far of the rest of the story.

By Clark Fair

Redoubt Reporter

In the early morning of Saturday, Oct. 12, 1968, in Larry’s Club, Arlon “Jackson” Ball was shot and killed during a bar brawl. The gunman was Jerry Edwards, who was incensed because he believed that Ball had harmed his brother, Larry Edwards.

According to the Cheechako News, Ball was 46 years old when he was killed. According to the online Social Security Death Index, however, he had been born on Aug. 24, 1921, which meant that he was 47. A photograph of the headstone on his grave in Angelus Memorial Park in Anchorage shows that he was born on Aug. 25, 1922, so the newspaper was correct.

Ball was a complex man whose personality generated a variety of reactions. Most who knew him or knew of him would be likely to mention Ball’s penchant for drinking in bars, for talking loud and rough, and for his streak of bigotry.

Soldotna’s Al Hershberger, who knew Ball, said that Ball’s aggressive talk was “definitely more bark than bite,” but he admitted that Ball could be mean and had a low tolerance for people with an ethnicity different than his own. “I think his notoriety was somewhat embellished,” Hershberger said. “I did enjoy talking to him, as he always made me laugh. He definitely was opinionated. I guess it would be fair to call him a bigot, or at least very outspoken and vociferous. A lot of people thought of Jackson as more of a clown than a terrorist.”

According to an obituary in the Cheechako, Arlon Elwood Ball, who was born in Connecticut and lived for a time in Rhode Island, had been a member of Pile Driver’s Local No. 2502 and was survived by a wife and four young daughters, all of whom apparently lived in Anchorage. Ball, the paper said, was an Anchorage resident who had a North Kenai homestead near Salamatof Lake and was the owner/operator of the fishing vessel Iron Mule.

The rest of the story

Plugged In: Digital technology comes of new age

By Joe Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

Last year saw digital photography come of age, capable though not yet so mature as to be boring. Surprising new camera models seemed the norm in 2012 rather than the exception.

The digital photography industry is rather like Alaska’s weather. It’s constantly changing. If 2012 didn’t bring you what you wanted, just wait a week or two until the next round of major product announcements at this year’s big Consumer Electronics Show.

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. Full-frame cameras are those large black beasts traditionally favored by professional photographers for their great image quality and good low-light capability resulting from their very large sensors. Usually, there were only a few slowly evolving full-frame cameras available during any one year, with each model on the market for three to four years between upgrades and far too expensive for most of us.