20 years ago

New Homer resident Kathleen Balsemo (now Gustafson) smoked the Anchorage competition in a contest of statewide poets at a Poetry Slam held at Alice’s Champagne Palace. Balsemo was no newbie to the slam scene, having competed in the 1995 national slam competition.

— From the issue of Aug. 24, 2000

30 years ago

Bear Cove homesteader Ted Pedersen died Aug. 15, 1990, at the age of 85. Born in the Aleutians, Pedersen spent his first 11 years in a Dutch Harbor orphanage and then joined his father, Christian Pedersen, as a cabin boy on his father’s whaling and trading boat. He homesteaded at Bear Cove in the 1940s before moving to Seldovia and to travel.

“He was a grand old man,” Clem Tillion said of Pedersen.

— From the issue of Aug. 23, 1990

50 years ago

The Aug. 20, 1970, issue is missing from the archives.