Foundation Updates

The following is an article in the Pay It Forward column published in the Homer News. This column is sponsored by the Homer Foundation, a community foundation promoting local philanthropy since 1991. To learn more please visit us @ www.homerfoundation.org and like us on Facebook.

When I moved to Homer as a young adult, my new neighbor, Walter Johnson, asked me a memorable and unusual question immediately after introducing himself.

“Which volunteer organizations in town are you working with?”  

The answer was none since my high school had required precisely 20 “volunteer” hours to graduate.  Work was for money. Money could be converted to donation, preferably tax deductible.

That winter I met Anonymous at the Homer Rope Tow on Ohlson Mountain.  I was relaxing between runs and he was shoveling snow into the towpath to cover the ice and make unloading safer.  We chatted, and he mentioned that there was going to be a ropetow meeting with pizza next week, and that the pizza meeting was a chance to meet some other ropetow users and that we’d eat pizza.  I agreed to think about the pizza, and it turned out that on Tuesday evening I was in the mood for some right about the time of the meeting.

As I and a few others enjoyed the slices, the situation was laid bare: most of the board of directors of the Ski Hill had dropped out, as their kids had grown out of it or they had watched ridership dwindle.  He needed a new board for the ropetow to continue to exist and I was holding his bait in my greasy hand.

“I just need a name to put on the paper that I file with the state.  And come to some meetings if you can,” he said. Not realizing that we would eventually be prying stumps out of the frozen soil in November rain, I agreed.

Volunteering with Anonymous and the other ropetow recruits was a revelation regarding what work meant.  The effort wasn’t convertible to money or proportionally to my own fun.  There certainly wasn’t always perceptible gratitude from the kids I had to remind about the rules.  There were occasionally dead ends, and significant effort for small or no gains in the quality of the hill.  

But there was the ability to watch and learn how Anonymous would scheme and plan, propose, cajole, and enlist others in his vision.  It was clear that this goal was worth working harder than one would for money, and small ideas for improvements started to creep into my mind in the wee hours.  I watched him bring other people to the hill and gesture to a future that they could help realize.

Pretty soon I was happily shoveling snow onto an icy towpath. Kids and adults came zinging by, probably not thinking about safety or yearly insurance costs. Perfect. Anonymous had brought me to the other side of wall in which giving felt better than getting.

A few years ago, Lydia Kleine and I were at the Homer Skatepark and were probably about the thousandth and thousand-and-first riders to complain about the park.  Whoops…still paying for that pizza! I knew exactly what Anonymous would do. We started Friends of the Homer Skatepark and managed to bring in two new halfpipes, as well as making some nice upgrades to the street skating area. Along the way we got to meet other people, anonymous and named, who were as eager to support our vision as we were to complete it.

Thanks Anonymous!  You taught me a lot.  And thanks to the Rotary volunteers who shepherd us through the Health Fair, those who dig hiking trails into rocky hillsides, serve on school committees, or have their shoulder to the wheel in so many ways that make Homer better.  I hope we can all pass it along.

George Overpeck is a local artist, philanthropist, and enthusiastic volunteer (and volunteer recruiter!)

The following is an article in the Pay It Forward column published in the Homer News. This column is sponsored by the Homer Foundation, a community foundation promoting local philanthropy since 1991. To learn more please visit us @ www.homerfoundation.org and like us on Facebook.

I moved to Homer from Arizona eleven years ago. I was just out of college and living on my own for the first time in my life. I was instantly drawn to this town for its beautiful surroundings, but I have stayed here because of the community. I grew up in the suburbs of Tucson, Arizona, which was wonderful but I always knew I wanted to live in a small town. I think I found the best one around.

My family was not specifically philanthropic, or let me say, it was never instilled in me to be involved with non-profits. I am not sure if it was just not a focus for my family or that we lived in the suburbs so there were not many around. We had all the sports activities and summer camps, which I know now were probably funded by nonprofits. My thoughts have changed drastically because of Homer, our thriving non-profit community, and the love I have found in my job at the Homer Foundation.

Even though we are a small town at the end of the road, and I do love our city, borough, and state government and all the basic services it can provide, but we all know the municipalities, and more specifically their dollars, are stretched thin. Enter the nonprofits. Let’s think about the winter, do you love skiing? We have two nonprofits focusing on skiing. Or is it hockey or other indoor recreation? I can think of three that support those passions. Or are you an adrenaline junkie with a need for speed? Yep, we have nonprofits for those too. That is just the tip of the iceberg, and I feel like everyone I talk to has a different fabric of nonprofits to make up their own quilt of support, with so many opportunities here for a vibrant, resilient, fulfilled life.

Working for the Homer Foundation, I have become acutely aware of so many different programs, services, opportunities, and holes the nonprofits provide to go above and beyond those basic services provided by the municipalities. They may take care of the roads, but nonprofits help fill the roads with buildings and protected land. They also provide things to do for families and help those in need.

By our count, nonprofits provide over 100 jobs to our communities.  Those jobs provide a payroll of $4 million leveraging money from outside donors, and state and federal governments. They also bring in over $7.2 million in revenues to our communities.

You may not even realize something you love so much, like a trail you walk all the time, or a playground your family uses daily, the library with all of its services, or your favorite annual event, is probably provided by a nonprofit. I certainly did not, but now am so thankful for each and every one of the over 90 registered nonprofits within the area.

Some of these organizations are all volunteers with the biggest hearts while others do have paid staff. I see the entire spectrum to be valuable. I encourage you, next time you are out on the town or going somewhere, to ask if a nonprofit is involved. Look for a sign. Then I also encourage you to also think of how you might want to support them with your time, talent, or treasure. Help keep Homer the best community it can be because of our amazing nonprofits.

Lauren Seaton is the Executive Assistant at the Homer Foundation. She lives in Homer with her husband and daughter and you can frequently find them out on the water or on the trails.

The following is an article in the Pay It Forward column published in the Homer News. This column is sponsored by the Homer Foundation, a community foundation promoting local philanthropy since 1991. To learn more please visit us @ www.homerfoundation.org and like us on Facebook.

As we have all witnessed these past few years, our little hamlet by the sea is experiencing some growing pains. What we once knew as moose calving habitat has become subdivisions.  Where we once strolled to visit a neighbor is now someone’s back yard.  Where we once watched in wonder the annual raising of a sand hill crane colt, there is now a parking lot.  Our little town is growing like we never imagined it would in our lifetimes.

We can dwell on the downsides some other time.  Our focus here is on the lessons we’ve learned from these rapid changes and acknowledgement of those who are working to preserve and improve upon the pedestrian and wildlife corridors that contribute so much to our quality of life.

Studies consistently indicate that communities connected by trails experience  increased levels of physical activity, reduced levels of disease and mortality risks, lower health care costs, increase in volunteerism, fund raising, sense of pride and belonging and increased road safety.  Additionally, there is a reduction in noise and air pollution, road deterioration and congestion.  These studies show that as trail systems grow their use becomes more frequent contributing to an increase in the number of nearby businesses established or expanded.  Overall cost to benefit ratios have been estimated to be as high as $3.55 annually, i.e. for every $1.00 spent on trails $3.55 of benefits are generated each year.

We would like to acknowledge our own City of Homer and their efforts to make downtown a more pedestrian friendly place to travel.  For example, the sidewalk addition to Main Street and the pedestrian lane added to the south side of the Eric Lane extension.  Both projects provide residents of the surrounding neighborhoods safe non-motorized links to Hornaday Park, the hospital and West Homer Elementary.  Also, kudos to Homer Draw Down volunteers for their work improving the many trails around town.

Great strides are being made outside of the city limits as well.  Any Nordic skiers out there can attest to our quality ski trails.  For many of us, it’s hard to imagine a winter without them.  We’ve come a long way over the past 40 years.  Today, Kachemak Nordic Ski Club maintains over 70 kilometers of trail from Rogers Loop over Diamond and Crossman Ridge and on to Lookout Mountain.  For east enders the McNeil trails are manicured regularly and provide some of the best late season Nordic skiing in the State. 

Summer hiking and biking is fabulous as well.  The State Park Diamond Creek single track and trail to the beach are huge attractions for both visitors and locals.  Shout out to Homer Cycling Club for their hard work in making this what might be the birthplace of Homer single track.

The Homestead Trail, a longtime locals favorite, winds through berry bogs and hills of wildflowers from Rogers Loop to the reservoir.  Thanks to Homer Trails Alliance, KNSC, Boy Scout Troop 555, and very generous private land owners working together, the Homestead Trail continues to be expanded and improved upon.  Much thanks to the 100 Women Who Care for their financial support.

In closing, we must remember that trails don’t just happen, though they do happen to make our community a better place to live.  We encourage you to make your contributions, be it monetary or volunteer labor and to get out and enjoy the trails.

For more information about HTA visit us on Facebook or email homertrailsalliance@gmail.com

The following is an article in the Pay It Forward column published in the Homer News. This column is sponsored by the Homer Foundation, a community foundation promoting local philanthropy since 1991. To learn more please visit us @ www.homerfoundation.org and like us on Facebook.

Our floatplane motored past peaks protruding through pillows of cloud. I was sure we’d get turned back to Homer again, until the pilot dropped into a fog-free Port Dick, then slipped around the corner to drop four of us at the beach at Taylor Bay.

My fellow passengers were hiking Tutka Backdoor, while I was running it ahead of them. I took every step of the 32 mile line to Jakolof Bay alone, keeping company with the echoes of dozens of people. In one spot, I remembered a crew rolling boulders into place with rock bars. In another, we’d spent hours taking out a salmonberry thicket. I remembered the shivering soggy camaraderie in the week of pouring rain, the chainsawing run that went past midnight, and all of the impossibly terrible bushwhacks in the places the trail didn’t end up going. Each cut mark, each bit of tread, had a story, and a person, behind it.

Building a trail across the steep and crumpled country of the outer Kenai Peninsula was a crazy idea that only became possible because the community embraced it. In five years, over 100 people, adults and kids, spent nearly 1500 person days building Tutka Backdoor.

Trails have always been about community. Historically, most of our trails were built informally by hunters and travelers. The trails that survive are the ones that continue to be embraced by their communities. Our ecology isn’t kind to trails. Mud slides and washouts take them out, devil’s club bristle over them, beetle-killed forests fall on them, salmonberries lock their thorny canes across them, and even a bloom of pushki and ferns can render them invisible.

In the past couple decades, I’ve watched trails around Seldovia and in Kachemak Bay Park disappear. Some were old logging roads. Others were designed as trails. The ones that thrive are the ones the community cares for, whether it’s the Friends of Kachemak Bay Park keeping Grace Ridge and Sadie Knob clear, the Homer Drawdown group clearing trails in town, or Seldovia residents taking it upon ourselves to keep our own local trails in shape.

We’ve learned a lot about how to build trails better since the early days of informal hunting trails. But community labor is as important as ever to keep trails open, safe, and amazing. The Homer Foundation has generously provided a grant that will allow us to bring together professional trail experts, community volunteers, and park staff on an expedition this summer to plan for the best future of Tutka Backdoor. We hope it will provide not just a plan for this trail, but a model for how to bring community to all our trails.

Brent Higman

The following is an article in the Pay It Forward column published in the Homer News. This column is sponsored by the Homer Foundation, a community foundation promoting local philanthropy since 1991. To learn more please visit us @ www.homerfoundation.org and like us on Facebook.

There’s a reason artists, writers, and musicians joke that their parents wanted them to be doctors. Or lawyers. Even and perhaps accountants.

For the parents in question, probably fearful their wonderfully creative children might never be able to afford to leave home, it’s no laughing matter. They know, even if their starry-eyed offspring have yet to learn, the hard truth behind the phrase “starving artist.”

As a debut novelist, I was that wildly unrealistic writer, awaiting Oprah’s phone call, the New York Times book review, the spot on the bestseller list that would let me quit my day job and focus full-time on the next bestseller.

I wrote my next books as I’d written the first, in the margins of my life, sandwiching half-hour slices of writing time between my work schedule and my children’s activities. When they grew up, I gained the “luxury” of a three-hour block — 6 a.m-9 a.m. — before I headed into my 50-60-hour-a-week job as a newspaper editor. Forget writing at night. By then, I was comatose. Everything I wrote felt piecemeal, scattershot.

Where were the patrons of yesteryear? I sometimes wondered during deep dives of self-pity, who supported the likes of Mozart and Michelangelo?

Turns out they’re all around us.

It goes without saying that I’m no Mozart or Michelangelo. But I felt equally elevated when I received an email letting me know that I’d been awarded a residency at Storyknife Writers Retreat outside Homer.

Much as those art-loving monarchs of old, Storyknife bestows the invaluable gift of time and space upon writers, granting six women at a time residencies of two weeks to one month from April to November to just … write.

Each woman gets her own cabin. Wonderful meals are provided. No one is allowed to knock on a cabin door without explicit invitation or in case of emergency.

It’s impossible to overstate the value of this. Writing is more than just putting words on paper. It involves a lot of hard thinking – about structure, plot, word choice, characters; so many balls in the air at all times. Each time a writer stops to prepare a meal, pick up a child from school, listen to a partner grouse about their day, the balls crash to the ground.

But sit and gaze out the window, take a stroll, hold your breath while the mama moose and her teenager saunter past the deck, and ideas come from all sides — with the time to test them on the page in hopes of producing the best book possible, something that’s come to mean far more to me than those early dreams of fame and fortune.

Storyknife is committed to providing opportunities to a diversity of writers, making for a vibrant, enriching mix of personalities and experience.

During my time at Storyknife, all of us talked of the new insights we had about our own work, the new directions it was taking. The sense of excitement was palpable.

And we all spoke of our profound gratitude to the donors who make Storyknife possible. Think of the pleasure gained from losing yourself in a novel, a poem, an essay, a film whose script crackles. Donors to Storyknife and nonprofit arts organizations like it help those works come into being. Turns out we don’t need kings and queen showering their riches upon a select few artists. We just need people who appreciate art and are willing to help nurture those who create it. To those people we say thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Gwen Florio is a novelist living in Missoula, Montana.

The following is an article in the Pay It Forward column published in the Homer News. This column is sponsored by the Homer Foundation, a community foundation promoting local philanthropy since 1991. To learn more please visit us @ www.homerfoundation.org and like us on Facebook.

By Ken Taylor

A quote from a ten-year-old boy I heard on the radio some time ago remains in my mind, and I think of it often. “It doesn’t matter what color my friends are; all that matters is if they are mean or nice!” That little insightful piece of philosophy can be applied to many aspects of our lives, including how we think of people from other backgrounds, religions, countries, or walks of life.

In 1989, the Fish and Wildlife Service asked me to help them capture and attach satellite transmitters to walruses along the Bering Sea coast of Russia. We flew from Nome to Provideneiya in Chukotka where we met our Russian counterparts and prepared to be flown by a military helicopter to Rudder Spit, a major walrus haul-out area the next day. Unfortunately, the clouds were below the surrounding peaks, and their military prohibited their pilots from flying over ocean waters as no parts would be salvageable in the event of a crash.

Bad weather kept us in this small town for several days, which allowed us to get to know some of the townspeople. Almost no one had seen an American before, and they were anxious to entertain us. A different family would invite us for a light meal each night, followed by broken conversation. They were delightful and generous with what little they had.

Bad weather persisted, and there was no sign of a helicopter. A whaling vessel arrived in port to resupply and was headed right past Rudder Spit. The captain agreed to take us with our gear, at no charge, and after a six-hour boat ride, we arrived at our destination.

We completed our work in a week or so and waited once more for the helicopter to pick us up. Again, it never arrived, and it was several days before we spotted the same whaling vessel returning north. While it might cost them their quota, which they could ill afford, they picked us up and returned us to Provideneiya. That evening, the mayor welcomed us with a party, and many from the town attended.

Similar experiences in the early 1990s working with other Russian biologists to capture spotted seals in the Kamchatka region reinforced my positive feelings towards the Russian people. All were intelligent, friendly, generous and a pleasure to be with.

This is not the picture of Russia we see today as the horrors of the invasion of Ukraine continue with the Russian military ruthlessly and indiscriminately bombing city after city, killing thousands of innocent civilians. But this is Putin’s war, not a war of the Russian people against the people of Ukraine. None of the Russians I know support it. You may hear otherwise on the news, but our news has been reduced to simple soundbites, often overgeneralized, frequently misleading, and sometimes just wrong.

The Ukrainians are suffering horribly from Putin’s war. The Russian people are suffering as well, and it’s only going to get worse before the situation improves. My heart goes out to the people of both countries. The Russian people I know are generous, kind, giving to strangers and those in need.  I fervently hope that we as Americans don’t condemn the Russian people for that which Putin and his generals are responsible and that we continue to support the many local Russian/Americans who have long been an important part of our community here in Homer.

Ken Taylor is a current Homer Foundation Board member.