Programs

Teressa Baldwin, 18, of Sitka and Keefer Brown, 13, of Wasilla today were named Alaska's top two youth volunteers for 2012 by The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards, a nationwide program honoring young people for outstanding acts of volunteerism. Teressa was nominated by Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka, and Keefer was nominated by Teeland Middle School in Wasilla. Read more.

In 1961, segregation seemed to have an overwhelming grip on American society. Many states violently enforced the policy, while the federal government, under the Kennedy administration, remained indifferent, preoccupied with matters abroad. That is, until an integrated band of college students — many of whom were the first in their families to attend a university — decided, en masse, to risk everything and buy a ticket on a Greyhound bus bound for the Deep South. They called themselves the Freedom Riders, and they managed to bring the president and the entire American public face-to-face with the challenge of correcting civil-rights inequities that plagued the nation. KAKM: Tuesday, 2/7 @7:00pm

The Juneau Community Foundation and the Brady family of Skagway, Alaska are pleased to announce an agreement to establish the Margaret Frans Brady Fund. Margaret Frans Brady was a life-long arts and education advocate who supported charities in North Carolina and Alaska, where her son started a newspaper in Skagway 35 years ago. Mrs. Brady died in January 2010, and her son, William J. “Jeff” Brady, wanted her memory of good works to carry on in the community she loved. The fund is being set up as a donor-advised fund so it may assist worthy arts and education projects or scholarships in Skagway and northern Southeast Alaska. Read more.

If you’ve been following the news about the fuel delivery to Nome or the Bering Sea snow crab fishery’s hiatus you may recognize the name Kathleen Cole. She’s a sea ice forecaster for the National Weather Service in Anchorage and her services have been in high demand this winter.

The setting couldn’t be more bleak; averaging negative 20 degrees before the wind chill is factored in, the frozen and lifeless landscape spans in almost all directions. Sheets of ice creak and groan while a team of specially trained soldiers dressed in subzero-rated arctic coveralls move across the surface of the once flowing and animated Tanana River. Read more.