Mary Smetzer

Each year Ice Alaska draws thousands of visitors from around the state, country and world to view premier ice sculptures as they are wrought out of locally harvested top grade ice at the nearby O'Grady Pond Too.

"In a landscape as dramatic as its stories, Alaska Native people face staggering suicide rates, yet remain determined to heal and thrive." So begins the description of "We Breathe Again," a documentary film in progress on Kickstarter.com, an Internet funding platform for creative projects.

Relatives and friends, Native and non-Native, numbering 500 or more, filled a large log building on the Chena River in Fairbanks on Monday to pay their respects to Isaac Juneby and his younger sister Ellen Florence Juneby Rada.

An Eagle Village family is reeling from a series of tragic events this past week that began in Fairbanks and continues in Anchorage. "I still feel like I am in this big nightmare waiting to wake up," said Jody Potts, family spokeswoman.

During the first week of school in August 2010, students in an eighth grade physical science class at Randy Smith Middle School made a startling discovery. There were racist names on an Alaska topographic map.

Returning to Alaska from a stay in Honduras this summer, LindaMae Scolman carried back a large plastic container of brilliantly hued papier-mache bowls and plates.

Yatibaey Evans, the new coordinator of the Alaska Native Education program, was in her last semester of pre-med classes at the University of Washington when a thesis project for her major, Comparative History of Ideas, prompted her to change her career path from medicine to education.

A red rose atop a pink and blue crocheted pillow marked an empty pew seat at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church that was occupied for many years by Athabascan matriarch Hannah Solomon.

When the question was asked of the audience, "How many of you have had a chance to meet Senator Stevens?" virtually every hand shot up.

Three Alaska Catholic bishops walked the aisles of Sacred Heart Cathedral waving spruce branches dipped in waters from Alaska rivers and sprinkling the gathering of 150 congregants in a blessing rite.

Two generations separate the Rev. Trimble Gilbert and his grandson Matthew Gilbert.

Unwrapping and sorting through a bonanza of beauty products was the first task for five female cancer patients attending the American Cancer Society's "Look Good ... Feel Better" class.