In a recent interview with Museo magazine, Pivi talks about why she moved to Anchorage a couple years ago: "I choose where I live following my desire to be in a certain place that excites, entertains, and intrigues me and in some way makes my life better. ... I was reluctant to move to Alaska at first as I thought, "How am I going to work there?" Click here for links to images of Pivi and her works. Locally, Pivi and partner Karma Lama, a Tibetan musician and photographer, organized the Free Tibet Concert at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in January; APRN interviewed Lama before the show.
LETTER TO EDITOR: ALASKA NEEDS A HORSE RACE (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): There's nothing more American than a good horse race. Horses are part of Alaska's heritage. With the horse enthusiasts in Interior Alaska, I'm surprised Fairbanks doesn't have one now.
NEW TUGBOATS HEADED FOR WESTERN ALASKA (KNOM, Nome, via APRN): Crowley Marine is launching a couple of new tugboats specially designed to ply Western Alaska's coasts and rivers. The primary concern is the boats' ability to negotiate shallow waters. The first, the Nachik, was christened last week.
DOOMED CANOEISTS WERE WARNED (Chilkat Valley News, Haines): One of the three teens who set out to canoe from Haines to Skagway last week told convenience store manager Eric Ferrin about their plans beforehand. "I told him, ‘You've got to be kidding me. That's not possible. Even if you get in the canal, there's no portages. If the wind comes up, there's no way to get out of it.' I thought I'd talked them out of it," Ferrin said. Two of the youths died after the canoe flipped; one survived for almost an hour in the water before swimming to shore.
YUKON FLOOD VICTIMS NEED CASH NOW, GOODS LATER (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner): People in Yukon River communities devastated by recent flooding and ice jams are asking people to temper tangible relief. Well-meaning people are sending too many things that places like Eagle, 460-plus road miles from Fairbanks, and remote, roadless Tanana and Stevens Village aren't ready for. Instead, people are encouraged to offer money to the American Red Cross, where donors can earmark the funds for Yukon River flood relief. ALSO:
> Flood-freed barge recovered from Yukon River (News-Miner)
FLOURISHING EAGLES FEAST ON SEABIRDS (The Associated Press): It's not only in Alaska where bald eagles are attacking aquatic birds. In Maine, eagles are raiding the only known U.S. nesting colonies of great cormorants. "They're like thugs. They're like gang members. They go to these offshore islands where all these seabirds are and the birds are easy picking," said Brad Allen, a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. "These young eagles are harassing the bejesus out of all the birds, and the great cormorants have been taking it on the chin." Scientists wonder if the aggression is caused by a fish shortage.
PHOTOS: KOTZEBUE'S CEMETERY HILL (Keeping It Real at 66 Degrees North): No words here -- just a series of landscapes and close-ups of grave markers shot at sunset.
HOUSTON PONDERS CHANGES IN FIREWORKS BUSINESS (Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman): The Houston City Council is trying to make changes to the sale of fireworks without it blowing up in their faces. First, they will vote on ordinance changing the city's fireworks code. Second, they will look at whether to put on the October ballot a 2 percent sales tax increase on fireworks.
PALIN ADVISER PUSHED ALLIANCE WITH HILARY CLINTON (Politico): In an unusual attempt to forge an alliance between two of the most prominent families in American politics, John Coale, a Washington-area Democratic donor and onetime adviser to Sarah Palin, urged the conservative Alaska governor to use her political action committee to help retire the presidential campaign debt of Hillary Clinton. ... Coale conceded that he urged Palin and her advisers to consider helping Clinton, but he said it was part of a larger campaign to align the Alaska governor with prominent women in politics.
THE RACE TO HARNESS GAS HYDRATES (The New York Times): Hydrates have long been a costly and dangerous nuisance to the natural gas and oil industries, crystals with an irritating tendency to build up in pipelines deep under the sea or in very cold regions, completely blocking flow. But lately they have started to be seen in a fresh light, as a new frontier in energy exploitation. ... A trial of [a] technique [for extracting methane from hydrates] is set for next winter in the North Slope region of Alaska.
Q&A: TODD AND SARAH PALIN - WALKING THE WALK (Christian Living): Gov. Sarah Palin is on the cover of Christian Living magazine's current edition. Here's an excerpt from a Q&A inside that mostly revisits the well-known basics of the Palin story:
CL: As a Christian leader, how do you deal with [media lies]?
Sarah Palin: I look back at Scripture that reminds me, hey, I'm sure not the first to face this. Criticism will come. Unfair shots will be taken. The question is how are you going to react? I like I Peter 2:12. It says to keep your conduct honorable, so that by your good works, which are observed by others, God will be glorified. When I read that I know others have faced this before me. ... In spite of it all, I've got to live my life to glorify God. That's what I promised myself I'd do 30 years ago, and that's what I must do now - not just to talk it, but to walk it.
CL: But how do you pass that concept on to your children?
Sarah: ... Just the other day Bristol and Willow were at Wal-mart and Bristol called me and said, "Mom, you will not believe what I'm reading on the cover of the National Enquirer!" At first I said, "Don't even waste your brain cells." But she was upset because the inside story said that she used drugs and that I was trying to talk her out of getting married. It gave me an opportunity to tell her that if we let it, lies and criticism can consume us to the point of becoming paralyzed. We have to answer our critics with how we live our lives.
Return to Alaska Newsreader later in the day for new links.
---------------------
HIGHLIGHTS FROM RECENT NEWSREADERS:
As glaciers melt near Juneau, land rises (The New York Times)
Villages stripped of cash to fight erosion (Tundra Drums)
Eagle attack on crane disrupts shorebird fest breakfast (Homer Tribune)
Daredevil crippled in Anchorage stunt still dreams of extremes (Innisfil Journal)
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.