Ketchikan: Classy Lines, Classy Lady Photo By Jerry CegelskeThe M/V Carmelita returned to Ketchikan Wednesday with the owner's family aboard and was at Thomas Basin waiting for U.S. Customs clearance when it was photographed by Jerry Cegelske. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

Adah Sparhawk Young: Woman Pioneer Adah Sparhawk Young at Wrangell, Alaska, 1898 Photographer: A. C. Pillsbury Donor: Bertha Hunt Wells Photograph courtesy Tongass Historical Society

Ketchikan Historical: Adah Sparhawk Young: Woman Pioneer By DAVE KIFFER - The history of Ketchikan is full of stories of the pioneering men who built the community out of the rainforest. But little is known about the pioneer women who also made Ketchikan what it is today.

One of those women was Adah Sparhawk Young who came to Alaska to teach, got married and ended up running her own Newtown business for nearly four decades after her husband died.

In 1992, Dorothy Braithwaite - a great niece of Adah Young's - presented the Tongass Historical Museum with a 250 page manuscript detailing Young's life history and also including her diary and numerous poems. This story is primarily based on that manuscript.

Adah Ann Sparhawk was born on March 10, 1853 in Oswego, New York, the oldest daughter of Maine native Ambrose Sparhawk and Alice Sparhawk of Virginia. Her father was wounded in the Civil War and her mother suffered from a variety of illnesses and therefore Adah was often called upon to care for her younger siblings.

After graduating from high school, she began teaching in the early 1870s. Eventually, when her mother's rheumatoid arthritis worsened, she accompanied her to Battle Creek, Michigan to undertake the "cures" at the sanitarium of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. The sanitarium cure - based on nutrition - didn't help the older woman, but Adah and two of her sisters did complete a two-year nursing course in Battle Creek. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

Top Stories U.S. News U.S. Politics Alaska Ketchikan

Science - Technology: Tropical Arctic? Scientists say it was hot 55 million years ago By LEE BOWMAN - Sediment samples taken from a unique drilling expedition in the center of the Arctic Ocean appear to have solved a major mystery about Earth's climate over the last 50 million years.

Scientists report in a series of new papers published Thursday in the journal Nature that the Arctic went through an extreme hot spell during that time, but also began forming glaciers about 14 million years earlier than had been thought, about the same time that the ice cap over Antarctica started to develop.

Researchers studying ancient climate changes have been puzzled for some time by evidence that seemed to show the Arctic lagged behind the southern continent in becoming icy starting by about 43 million years ago, when Earth shifted from a "greenhouse" climate to an "icehouse" climate in a dramatic spate of cooling.

Ice cores taken in Antarctica gave a clear timetable for ice formation there, but the sea ice of the Arctic offers no similar permanent record, and cores taken from glaciers in Greenland and other spots around the rim of the polar region provided an incomplete picture. Glacial deposits from icebergs in the Atlantic seemed to indicate the northern freeze may have been delayed by 15 million years or longer compared to the other pole.

The Arctic Coring Expedition, which battled sea ice as much as 16 feet thick to drill in the same spot near the North Pole for nine days in the fall of 2004, came up with clear evidence that glaciers were dropping pea-sized pebbles into the ocean some 45 million years ago. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

National: Government gives foreign students OK to use sensitive technology By LANCE GAY - The Commerce Department said Wednesday it is shelving controversial national-security proposals aimed at restricting foreign students in universities from using sensitive machinery in advanced scientific and engineering projects.

The move ends a two-year-long confrontation with scientists, who argued the government shouldn't interfere in valuable scientific research involving cutting-edge technologies.

The provosts of nine leading American research universities - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago - protested that any crackdown on foreign students would discourage enrollment, disrupt how professors teach their classes, and hamper academic freedom.

In an announcement published in the Federal Register Wednesday, Matthew Borman, deputy assistant secretary of commerce, said the agency decided the existing background checks given foreign students are sufficient to weed out inappropriate students who might seek to get into these advanced classes. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

Whale entangled in net successfully freed Coast Guard Petty Officers Justin Olson and Brian Williams work with NOAA disentangler Don Holmes in Frederick Sound near Petersburg to free a whale that became trapped in a gill net. Official Coast Guard photo by Lt. Herbert Law, Coast Guard cutter Anacapa.

Petersburg: Whale entangled in net successfully freed - The United States Coast Guard received a transmission Tuesday afternoon from the fishing vessel Fin that a humpback whale was entangled in its gill net in Frederick Sound outside Petersburg and the crew of the cutter Anacapa launched its small boat to assess the situation.

When the small boat arrived on scene, it was determined that the master of the Fin was in no immediate danger and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was notified. NOAA requested the Coast Guard's assistance in taking photos and disentangling the whale. The Anacapa's small boat and crew returned to Petersburg and transported Don Holmes, a NOAA disentanglement expert, and his gear to the scene. On scene the Coast Guard acted as a platform from which the specialist could attempt to free the whale.  - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

Alaska: Earthquakes near and far shake up Alaska wells By Ned Rozell - The great Alaska earthquake of March 1964 jarred Earth's plumbing system far beyond Alaska. More than 700 groundwater wells in the continental United States showed water-level changes, including a 12-foot rise in a South Dakota well. A well in Australia fluctuated more than two feet after the 1964 earthquake. The Denali Fault earthquake of 2002 caused a well in Wisconsin to rise more than two feet.

There's a mysterious connection between water wells and earthquakes, and scientists seem to notice it after every large earthquake, and even after some smaller ones. After reading how the giant Sumatra earthquake of 2004 triggered activity within volcanic Mount Wrangell, an Alaska graduate student took a look at recent large earthquakes in Alaska and Sumatra to see how wells in the state reacted to the big shakes.

Samik Sil, a graduate student from Calcutta, India, recently looked at a few dozen Alaska wells for his master's thesis at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Hydrologists have monitored most of the same wells for years; they shared their data with Sil so he could check for water-level differences caused by earthquakes.

The wells, two on Ester Dome near Fairbanks, 18 near North Pole, and one near Anchorage, all showed some response to at least one of three large earthquakes, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in the Alaska Range in late October 2002, the 7.9 Denali Fault earthquake of November 2002, and the giant 9.2 Sumatra earthquake that caused the devastating tsunami in December 2004.

The water levels in 10 wells rose a few millimeters in response to the Denali Fault earthquake, which had an epicenter within a few hundred miles of the wells. A bigger surprise was the wells' reaction to the giant Sumatra earthquake, which happened about 7,000 miles away. Sil found wells in North Pole responded to seismic signals from the earthquake by rising about 1.4 millimeters.

The wells reacted to the giant Sumatra earthquake in a way similar to volcanic Mount Wrangell, which heated up with small internal earthquakes as a response to surface waves reaching Alaska from the Sumatra earthquake. The waves compressed the volcanic plumbing system within Mount Wrangell, forcing a reaction. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

Viewpoints Opinions/Letters What to do with our unresponsive elected officials is the question! By Byron "Chilly" Whitesides - Tuesday Pinched NERVE By Virginia E. Atkinson - Tuesday RE: Balancing Patriots and Privacy By Glen Thompson - Tuesday Contractors in Iraq By William B. Boyce - Tuesday The Military-Industrial Complex By Tom Proebsting - Tuesday HOT SHOTS PAINTBALL FIELD OPEN-NO PLAY WITHOUT NET UP By Roberta "Bobbie" McCreary Minutemen being compared to Gunsmoke, or Bonanza By Kay Gettle Lopez - Monday What do we do with illegal immigrants? By Mike Harpold - Sunday Memorial Day By Sen. Ted Stevens - Sunday Paintball Field is NOT a Target Shooting Range By Bobbie McCreary - Sunday RE: Minutemen/Border Patrol By Walt Bolling - Sunday Balancing Patriots and Privacy By Mark Beatty - Sunday More Viewpoints/ Letters Publish A Letter Political Cartoonists Political Cartoons Ketchikan May Calendar Arts This Week Today's Forecast Ketchikan Weather Data Current AK Weather Map City Police Report AK Troopers Daily Dispatch Classifieds & Announcements May 2006 Click on the date to read the stories published on that day. S M T W T F S   01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31       Front Page Archives

Ketchikan: STREET TALK Comes to Ketchikan - Ketchikan residents Joyce and Leo Baldwin will be hosting a new local free speech TV show called STREET TALK which will appear on KPU TV Public Access channels.

Leo Baldwin has experience in production and has produced approximately 40 programs for Public Access in Olympia, Washington. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Public Relations from Humboldt State University.

According to the Baldwins, Ketchikan's STREET TALK programs will feature both interviews with notables and people on the street, as well as cover events in Ketchikan, such as the arts, Friday Night Insight programs, step dance, school events and much more. This new free speech TV show also plans to cover City Council and Gateway Borough Meetings. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

Alaska: Governor Murkowski Defends National Park Inholders Right to Access Under ANILCA Provisions - Alaska Governor Frank H. Murkowski on Tuesday submitted comments to the National Park Service, defending the rights of park inholders to access their properties across park lands as guaranteed by section 1110(b) of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. Murkowski has a long history of fighting for inholder rights, both as governor and during his 22 years in the U.S. Senate.

The Park Service is currently in the process of adopting a "User's Guide to Accessing Inholdings in a National Park Service Area in Alaska." The governor's 5-page letter to Marcia Blaszak, Alaska Regional Director of the National Park Service, covers numerous issues of concern to Alaskans who own parcels of land and/or homes within the boundaries of NPS-managed parks, preserves and other conservation system units.

Murkowski asserted to Blaszak that the present draft, although improved over the first, "falls short of appropriately recognizing the inholder access guarantee provided in section 1110(b) of ANILCA. In addition, the process to define and document the access appears to lack sufficient long-term stability to assure individual landowners and other valid occupants they indeed have the access promised to them by ANILCA." - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006

Ketchikan: New Testing Services Available - The University of Alaska Southeast Ketchikan Learning Center has switched vendors for information technology exams. The Learning Centers proctors these exams for community members and beyond. UAS Ketchikan Learning Center is the only site in Southeast Alaska to offer these testing services.

Pearson VUE Test Center has authorized UAS Ketchikan to offer the following exams in the Learning Center: ACSM; Adobe; Agilent Technologies; Altiris; American College; Avaya Inc. Testing; BindView; BMC Software; Brocade Communications; Business Objects; Check Point Software Technologies; Cisco Systems, Inc.; CIW; CommVault Systems, Inc.; CompTIA Testing; CWNP; Dassault Systemes/ CATIA; EC-Council EXIN; Global Association of Risk Professionals; IBM Testing; Investors Business Daily; Linux Professional Institute Testing; Lotus Testing; Macromedia Testing; MatrixOne; McDATA; Microsoft Business Solutions; Microsoft Testing; MySQL National Instruments; Novell Testing; Pegasystems Inc; PRMIA Radware; RSA Security Testing; SAP Siebel Systems Testing; Siemens SITA Inc; Sun Microsystems - SAI Program; Telecommunications Industry Association; Tivoli Testing; VERITAS; VMware, Inc; and Zend Technologies, Ltd.

These exams are mainly industry certifications that allow individuals to upgrade skills or improve the qualifications. - More...
Wednesday - May 31, 2006