AUUF Podcasts

Don Bladow is a 45+ year Alaskan, a UAA graduate, and a Master Gardner. In 2015 he developed a 9,000 square foot garden at Hope Lutheran Church providing charity food. Through his work plus many volunteers, Bean’s Café, Lutheran Food Pantry, Downtown Soup Kitchen and other nonprofits receive his bountiful harvest.

If you admire direct and immediate social action, Don will speak to your heart: dirty fingernails are an honorable badge of his ministry to the less fortunate among us. Hear about his initial concept in 2015 to serve the hungry, which began a journey of planning and developing over 9,000 sq. ft. of garden at Hope Lutheran Church.

Vered Mares is co-owner of the year-old Writer's Block Bookstore & Cafe in the heart of Spenard. Born to nontraditional parents who were writers, musicians, and therapists, she explored the high deserts of northern New Mexico as a child and developed a love of travel. She paid to attend art school by managing a bar in Idaho and later created large-scale commercial art. She took up aviation and became a commercial pilot. She ventured to Alaska, returned to school and launched a boutique publishing house, working as a book designer and editor. She considers the Writer's Block Bookstore & Café the culmination of all her life experiences.

Bill was originally supposed to be the Worship Associate for Jim Scott. Jim's flight to AK was canceled at the last minute and he couldn't speak/perform. Bill did a great job of filling in.

Debbie Chulick is a Certified Dementia Practitioner (CDP) and an Education Specialist working at Alzheimer’s Resource of Alaska. Before that, she was the Activity Director at an assisted living facility. Chulick has more than 12 years of experience working with elders, those with dementia and their families. Originally from the Cleveland area of Ohio, she’s lived in Anchorage for the past 15 years and graduated from Alaska Pacific University, earning a degree in Human Services. Chulick is passionate about empowering individuals with dementia, their families and professional caregivers to provide exceptional care for those experiencing dementia.

Rev. Patience Stoddard has served 32 years as a UU minister. In that time, she served as a parish minister, a consulting and interim minister, a Hospice chaplain, a licensed pastoral counselor and the Director of Pastoral Services at a State Mental Hospital. She just retired from serving 3/4 time 5 years at the UU Congregation of the Upper Valley in Norwich, VT.

…about a family trip that went horribly wrong and taught me a valuable life lesson about living in the moment.

Derrick Jamison, 33 years ago in the state of Ohio, was convicted for a murder he did not commit and sentenced to die by execution. He spent nearly all of his subsequent 20 years in prison on Death Row, where he faced six execution dates -- including one occasion when he came within 90 minutes of execution by lethal injection. Later it was shown that Jamison did not fit the eyewitness descriptions of the men who committed the murder and that police withheld evidence from a key witness who’d identified two other men as the perpetrators. He was released from prison in 2005 and has spent the years since then educating people about the risks of wrongful conviction.

Rev. Shelley Page serves as the Interim Minister at the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. A graduate of Cornell University and Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, she also served congregations in Delaware, Michigan, and Utah. A Unitarian Universalist for over 35 years, her lay leadership roles include the founding mother of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canandaigua in New York.  Her previous careers included marketing and communications manager for business and not-for-profit organizations. The mother of two grown daughters, she originally hails from the Finger Lakes region of Western New York and has lived in states across the U.S.

Beloved childhood stories take on new meaning when re-read as an adult. Let's re-visit Little Women and learn more about the Unitarian author, Louisa May Alcott. Bring a copy of your favorite childhood book!.

Former Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell was appointed to the US Arctic Research Commission (https://www.arctic.gov/people.html) in 2001 and served as its chair 2006-2010. The commission helps Arctic stakeholders improve icebreaking and safety infrastructure in the Arctic Ocean. In addition, from January 2015 to June 2018, he also served as president of Pt Capital (http://ptcapital.com/ ), an Arctic-focused private equity firm with investments in Alaska, Canada, Finland, Greenland, and Iceland. In civic life, Mead is president of the public policy forum Commonwealth North and former president of the Alaska World Affairs Council. He recently won the Walter J. Hickel Lifetime Ocean Leadership Award from the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward. A graduate of Yale and Harvard business schools, he's made Alaska his home since 1977.

Rev. Shelley Page serves as the Interim Minister at the Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. A graduate of Cornell University and Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, she also served congregations in Delaware, Michigan, and Utah. A Unitarian Universalist for over 35 years, her lay leadership roles include the founding mother of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canandaigua in New York.  Her previous careers included marketing and communications manager for business and not-for-profit organizations. The mother of two grown daughters, she originally hails from the Finger Lakes region of Western New York and has lived in states across the U.S.

You're invited to wear a T-Shirt that expresses part of your identity. We'll share about the messages conveyed on our shirts and learn some more about the complexities of our personal identities and the identity of this congregation.

Sylvia Short has lived a happily outspoken life as a committed and erudite social activist in Anchorage for a half-century -- and now, at 97, is no less outspoken. Born in 1921 in Stockton, Calif., she became what she calls “an uneducated lawyer,” managing to pass the California bar exam after just two years of college. Moving to Alaska in 1967, she continued her work as a lawyer and helped organize the fledgling Anchorage Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, later serving as AUUF board president. The following year she married Anchorage Community College Director Eugene Short, a childhood acquaintance who shared Sylvia’s love of books. And that’s just the beginning of her story.