Glacier City Gazette: A Day in the Life of…an Alaska Zookeeper
“Hey, guys!” Jim Rutkowski calls out to Korol and Kunali. The brothers are lumbering toward us, drawn by the sound of his approaching cart. “Come on, buddy!” His tone is a playful sing-song, a parent talking to a toddler.
These aren’t toddlers, though. They’re not even boys – not human ones, anyway. Korol and Kunali are Amur Tigers, and Rutkowski has cared for them since they arrived at the Alaska Zoo more than a decade ago. And while Rutkowski obviously isn’t their parent, he talks to and about them the way parents do of their human offspring.
Anchorage Daily News: Through photography, remembering Alaska babies who died too soon
“[A] nurse gave Bergmann’s father a pamphlet on Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (NILMDTS), a volunteer organization that provides remembrance photography to families whose baby has died. Bergmann says she looked at the pamphlet and tossed it aside.
“‘No way,'” she remembers thinking. “I thought that it sounded tacky. Why would I want a photo of my dead child?”
Now she can’t imagine not having those photos.
61 North: Creative collaboration: Hope Studio provides space, community and resources to artists with disabilities
Step inside Hope Studios, the collaborative art studio located on International Airport Road in Anchorage, and chances are good you’ll be greeted with a “Hey, pretty gorgeous!” from Kristine Whalen, one of the many artists who frequent the studio on a regular basis.
On any given day Hope Studios, part of Hope Community Resources, a statewide nonprofit that serves children and adults with disabilities, is alive with artistic activity. Each of the studio’s artists have an intellectual or developmental disability—but within these walls, disability is no barrier to creativity.
Alaska Magazine: Ionia
LIVING OFF THE LAND IS THE ALASKAN WAY: Alaska’s Native people have led a subsistence lifestyle for generations; sportsmen stock their freezers with salmon and halibut in the summer and moose and caribou in the winter; weekend foragers spend the late summer months filling buckets to overflowing with berries for jellies and jam. Yet even in a state where subsistence living doesn’t elicit much awe, Ionia, a 200-acre intentional community located in Kasilof, 160 miles south of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula, manages to stand out.e.
Amy Newman 