18 Years Old and the Mayor

When you first meet Kyle Corbin you see him as a regular kind of guy who was raised from the time he was born in the town of Union Oregon. He attended elementary, middle and high school in Union and graduated from Union High. He has always lived in this town where everyone knows everyone and have taken care of each other throughout they're lives.
Yes, when you first meet Kyle Corbin he seems like just another small town kid. What you dont' see is that at the age of 18 he ran for mayor of his
hometown and won against two other runners
Image courtesy of the Oregon State Library.
who surpassed him in age and experience. His campaign was a simple door-to-door strategy that proved to be affective making him one of the youngest elected mayor in the United States.
Corbin ran for a two-year term where he came across many different issues from raising taxes for a cleaner, more productive water system to the amount of weeds that were in the yards of the citizens.
Kyle's term has ended and he admits that he's relieved that it's over but feels that it was a very valuble step in his life and that it will help him pursue his dream of working in politics but, right now he is happy that he has the time to attend college and work on a major in music.

Our Social Networking World

With all the different social networking sites in the world wide web these days, such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Fubar, and many more, it raises the question of "Who really cares what your doing 24/7?!" Not only can individuals update they're status online but, they can also update they're status from they're cell phones....and they do.
Shela Johnson is 17 years old and says that she does status updates almost every hour and likes the fact that she can let people know what she's thinking, saying and doing but her brother Chris, who is in his twenties, says that he only updates when something amazing happens in his life. He also believes that girls are just more open about everything than guys are and want everyone to know everything about they're lives. "To be honest, it's actually kinda annoying that girls update all the time because it shows that they just want someone to pay attention to them," says Chris.
It raises the question about genders and social networking. Girls seem to display if they're upset or happy about relationships, school and friends and guys seem to keep everything really reserved and private unless it's to they're closest friends in personal messages and not comments for the whole world to see.
Should we be more discreet with our updates? Is Tweeting that you just put mustard on your corn dog or that you just went to the bathroom really necessary? Has social networking status' ruined our ability to socialize with other people?

picture courtesy of Joits

Man, I Love College!

In the song by Asher Roth, "I Love College," He sings about the life of the typical college student. The typical college student is painted as the one who graduated high school and moved on to better things such as studying late nights and getting a degree in a respected feild, graduating and going on to work in the said feild.

As most of the parents are so over joyed to send they're little graduate into the world of higher learning they forget what college is really like when they were attending.

The first day the freshmen arrives on that campus and the parents are gone, there are parties.

Some students are able to maintain they're focus and not stray into a houses that are jam packed with beer, assorted alchohals, and questionable substances but, most every college student has been to at least one of these parties. They are drawn to them like a moth to the flame.

I remember the feeling of the first week I attended Southwestern. I arrived at the dorms not quite sure what to expect. I knew there would be parties and that I would drink, there was no doubt about that. I just didn't know it would be so frequent.

After about a month of so of being in college and living in the dorms, my friend Devan, who lived in the apartment style dorm right next to mine, invited two of his close friends to come and stay for the weekend in to dorms with him. I remember it like it was yesterday, they drove ten hours from the eastern part of Oregon just to be there.

We had already decided that we were gonna go to the beach for our drunkin bomb fire. Since there had already been cases of students getting caught drinking at public beaches, we decided that we were going to climb down to one of the private ones. We took only three SUV's full of people and wood pallets and parked at the end of the beachside road and walked the rest of the way to the edge of the cliff and climbed down the rope to the beach. After getting the pallets and booze to the beach and starting our fire we started our night.

We were having a great time with no worries, we had our DD's, our warm fire and our drinks. I at the time was hanging out with Devan and his two friends, one was a DD and the other was already starting to show the signs of clear stupid drunkinness. Four of us were walking near the water when we saw a hand held spot light form one of the beach houses on the cliff scan the beach. Someone shouted "run back to the fire!" On arriving to the fire we decided that it would probly be a good idea if we went back to the dorms; so we put out the fire and climbed back up the rope. We sudenly noticed that we weren't all there. Devan's stupid drunkin friend had ran down the beach to the cove and climbed the ninty degree cliff that was in front of him. We combed the beach for almost an hour with our cell phones calling his name. The thing is that he was to drunk to realize that we weren't the cops trying to find him so we didn't find him until he heard Devan's voice and we had to climb back up the rope and over a light house fence just to get him back. As soon as we knew that everyone was safe and warm we went to the local 24 hour breakfast dinner to get some food.

Yeah, after telling my mom about this adventure, she admits that she didn't realize what I would be doing with my spare time. Man, I love college!

Puppy Mills

Many people are unaware of puppy mills. The Humane society has been working for years to stop this cruel practice and raise awareness of it's cruelty and the affects to the dogs.

The question one would ask upon hearing about puppy mills is, "what is a puppy mill and why are they so bad?" To answer that question I met with Janene Baker, an advocate for the Humane Society, and she explained that puppy mills are widely known as "puppy farms," making them seem very innocent and like they would be a good place for dogs to breed.

In these puppy mills the female dogs are forced to breed everytime they are in heat and when the puppies are born they have very little time with they're mother before they are weaned, resulting in poor nutrition and put into a cramped envirement with other dogs. Due to the conditions the puppies are exposed to, they often develope poor socializing skills and temperment issues. As the puppies grow older they often have respitory problems and weak bones in their hips and joints because of the bad transportation to pet shops as puppies.

Many pet shops are unaware that they have recieved they're puppies from puppy mill and the owners of these puppy mills sell them to pet shops to gain the largest profit possible on purebreds. Ways that you can help discourage the business of puppy mills is before you buy a new puppy:
Consider adoption at an animal shelter and not buying from a pet shop.

If choosing to buy from a breeder, see where the puppies have been born and bred.

Make sure that the breeder is more interested about the animals well being and not just selling them to you.

Let others know about the cruelty and affects of puppy mills.

There is power in numbers and no animal derserves to be treated with cruely. The Humane Society appreciates the help of those who care about animals and they're rights to good homes and a healthy, happy life.

My next article: Puppy mills

For my next column I have been inspired to write about puppy mills. Not to many people know what goes on in puppy mills or that they even exist. I am going to be writing this article to bring an awareness of these organizations and the health effects the dogs obtain.

Picture courtesy of Cheezylu's

The blog thing of this week....

So....yesterday was Easter Sunday. It was nice in side but rainy and windy outside. I woke up at around 10 a.m. which is strange because I was awake till four in the morning taking care of the drunkin group of friends at my house that night.....who thought it would be the coolest thing just to stay up all night and be really loud and attempt to exicute the moon walk for no apparent reason but to say that is what they did with their weekend. Anyways, I woke up at this time and was happy that eveyone had left and I would have a nice quiet Easter Sunday.
I got up and threw on some clothes, that didn't make me look like I had just rolled out of bed, and I went to Safeway to get some eggs and a color kit to dye eggs. To my surprise, there were no kits left; so I decided to go to Target......it was closed.....closed? So I decided to go to the Shop'n Cart. I figured that there weren't enough people to even shop in the run down store so there had to be color kits there. Sadly I was wrong.
I asked the woman at the counter if there were any color kits left and she just shook her head and told me to go to Walgreen's. Tired and ready to give up on my childhood tradition, I drove across town and strolled in to the Walgreens. I followed the aisles of candy that would soon be discounted and forgotten all the way to the egg coloring kits. There they were! Yes!
I grabbed the only one I could see wasn't made by Disney and headed for the egg aisle.
With my kit and my eggs I walked up to the counter and purchased my items. It surprised me when the woman said that I was lucky that the store hadn't cut the budget like the other stores.
Wow, budget cuts on childhood memories.

Three Things I Learned From Stephen King.

I simply must say that the first thing that I can remember learning from Stephen King is that the plot of the story isn't as important as the reader knowing who the characters are. I think that the reason people are scared when they read a horror novel or see a horror film is because they can find a character that they relate to and it scares them because they start to think that something horrible could happen to them as well. Getting to know who the characters are also helps the audience root for what jerk will be the "next to go" and who they want to see live till the end.

The second thing that I learned from Stephen King is to get the first draft done quickly. I have found this to be very good advise. Once you have a good idea of what your going to say everything else just seems to fall into place like it was meant to go there in the first place. Then when the first draft is finished then you can go back and play with the thoughts and make it the best it could possibly be.

And last but not least, the third thing that I have learned is that when you love what you do then you'll be happy. I certainly don't want to be working a job that I'm going to hate for the rest of my life. I want a job that will give me the room for creativity and not just doing the same repetitive thing everyday. I believe that Stephen King loves what he does and it shows in his work; I want to strive to be the same way and find what makes me happy in life.

Photo credit: meeg-el, courtesy of Flickr.com.

My column: Taking a stand against Racism

It seems that ever since the beginning of time there has been racism. The Webster’s dictionary defines racism as a belief that the difference in a person’s race has an inherent superiority. Racism has created arguments, division and even wars between every race in the world.
I believe that the reason why races discriminate against each other just based on differences is because we are a fearful. When things change or we are faced with diversity in people, our instincts tell us to be “on guard” or to retaliate with negativity. As normal human behavior, we are more comfortable with what we are familiar with. From the time we are children we are taught to notice differences in shapes, feelings, and even color.
Even in the times of the ancient Mediterranean regions, such as Greece and Rome, there is record of slavery of “inferior” races. Slaves have often been a sign of power and wealth. The most common examples of slavery to Americans was the slavery of the African Americans and then later in history the discrimination of the Jews by the Germans. African slaves were greatly mistreated by the Europeans. To some of the slaves it was a chance to work and live a better life but most were unfairly treated and lost all of their rights as human beings. The Emancipation Proclamation declared the freedom of the slaves of America and was issued the 22nd of September in the year of 1862. The slavery may have ended there but the racism didn’t. African Americans in the 20th century were discriminated against with restrictions on where they could go to school, shop, eat, or even the water fountains they were allowed to drink from. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was pasted and gave not only blacks but, every person of color the freedom from being discriminated.
The Holocaust. Since the 18th century, holocaust has been used to refer to the death of a large number of people. In a span of thirteen years an unimaginable amount of men women and even children were unrightfully killed for simply just being born a certain way. Adolf Hitler formed “Nazi Germany,” to rid the world of imperfection and weakness. Even today we are touched by this form of racism and discrimination.
We have repeated our history too many times when we don’t take a stand when we see open racism in our communities, workplace and schools. No matter if it’s something as large and horrific as the Holocaust or even as small as a racial slur in front of friends, it affects someone deeply and sets back the progress of acceptance we strive for in America.
I believe that as Americans, we should be proud to have such great diversity and character as a country and take a stand for acceptance and respect for the fellow man. As a country of individuals we can use our voice to speak up for the ones who are being prosecuted for race and beliefs.

Laura Ruez

I have agonized about who to write my profile about and have settled on Laura Ruiz. Laura Ruiz is the founder of Celebration Street Academy of Dance; she is a mother of two and a teacher of many of the classes provided at the Academy. The Academy was first located in a warehouse in Winston, Oregon. The studio looked normal from the outside, like an old warehouse, except the sparkly royal purple door used to enter the studio. It seemed put off the other owners of the buildings next to the studio, that owned car repair shops, to hear the sound of classical, pop, and hip hop music blaring from the studio. The inside of the studio was just a masterpiece of mirrors used for checking alignment and technique on the dance floor, and an observing room for parents and visitors. The attendance of the classes started to rise and Laura decided that the studio should look for a new place to conduct business.


It took months of searching but, Laura and the staff finally found another warehouse, in Winston, to conduct classes. The warehouse had more room for students on the dance floor and a separate office and changing room for the staff to work and the dancers to get ready for they're classes. Laura was sure that because of the new location of the new studio and the size, that the classes would continue to grow and more staff would be hired for classes. The door was quickly painted and the dancers soon made the new studio they're home away from home. Laura was very pleased with the new location but, felt that God wanted her to expand more and bring the studio to a more populated area.



After a year of being in the second "Winston" studio, and having much success in bringing more students into classes; Laura, as well as the staff, felt that it was time to move on with the studio and strive for a more public area. This area was about fifteen minutes north of Winston in the town of Roseburge. Yes, it was time to move again but, the move had to be made after the annual recital due to all the already present chaos that comes with the season. After two months of costume changes, eight hour practices, and dress rehearsals; the recital came and past. It was now time for Laura to make her move on buying the two story building in downtown, Roseburge. The building was perfect from the hardwood floors and plethera of mirrors to the dressing rooms, parents room(with a oneway mirror so that the dancers wouldn't get distracted by those watching practice) and the location. Not only did Laura show contempt about the change by saying "Well, we've finally found "The Spot," but the staff and students were happy to finally have a place where they could actually give understandable driving instructions to.

Laura has made three things priority in her life; serving God, raising her two amazing kids and running the Celebration Street Academy of Dance. And she is doing a beautiful job with all of them and plans to continue to do so.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Laura Ruez

Any of the houses my mom has.

Ever since I can remember, my mom has always made a house into a home. She leaves all her signature touches to the places she lives in. In our tiny duplex apartment in Burbank she owned a clock that smelled like wood polish that had a hint of lemony freshness and would play a song on the hour, which was so annoying and loud that it would wake you up every time it rang. My mom eventually lined the clock wall with a maxi pad to prevent the bells from making any sound. Outside the duplex were trees that left little pods that had very distinct oder that smelt gross when I first arrived there but, then later learned to love it when it was mixed with the Californian heat.
I loved the summertimes when my mom would bar-b-que hot dogs and corn and we would sit in the back yard on a blanket and eat our dinner in our bathing suits. Everything seemed to be perfect.
I love anywhere my mom lives because she makes these places home but, I love the duplex because those were the times I shared with only my mom. I think about them and know that she helped me appreciate the little things in life and to recognize the times when your happy just to be with the people you love.

Gran Torino

Gran Torino
By: Heather Riley


Over the many years Clint Eastwood has produced and casted in many classic movies including “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” made in 1966, “Paint Your Wagon,” made in 1969 and “Dirty Harry,” made in 1971. Clint Eastwood won four Oscar for his film "Million Dollar Baby" and many nominations throughout the years. With his movies he has given not only great entertainment but, touching messages.
In the current film “Gran Torino,” Eastwood plays a very crotchety, racist, old veteran whose wife has just passed and is living alone in a Detroit neighborhood populated of Asians with only his golden retriever Daisy, and his Classic ’72 Gran Torino (which everyone envies, including his young and greedy granddaughter.)
As the movie plays out, Korean War veteran Walter Kowalski (Eastwood) expresses his hate for quote, unquote, “Gooks.” He soon finds, when he saves his neighbors Hmong daughter from a group of African American gangsters, that he has more in common with the foreign family then with his own flesh and blood.
Walter is faced with reality that integrity is increasingly lacking in the youth of the neighborhood when his garage is broken into one night and he finds a young boy trying to steal his Gran Torino as an initiation into a gang. As a result Walter challenges them when they make a threat on his life.
Eastwood was nominated for a Golden Globe for the best original song in a motion picture. Suprizingly, He did not win the award. In an interview with people magazine, he was asked why he chose to play the part of Walter Kowalski; Eastwood said that he felt that he knew the part well because he grew up in a different time where people weren't afraid to say what they were thinking.
I asked one of the people that viewed the movie what their opinion about the film was and a Tyler Ballard responded, ”it was an amazing movie that addressed a problem in today’s society that is overlooked a lot of the time.”
The movie came out in theatres Jan. 9 of 2009 and continues to play in theatres.

My review is going to be on the new Clint Eastwood movie "Gran Torino." I saw the movie this last weekend and will be posting it promtly.

Sex Ed. In College?

By: Heather Riley


OSU and LBCC are well known to provide many courses to help students become successful in there careers but, do these schools also provide courses to help students in they’re everyday life and decisions? One of the classes that provide this help is the Human Sexuality class in the psychology field.
This class is required for general education and many students, if not all, are required to take this class. This class informs students of the many aspects of human sexuality from each genders view.
I personally had the chance to sit in on many of these classes and I was able to learn things about not only the opposite sex and their anatomy but I also was able to learn new things about my own gender without any embarrassment or feeling uncomfortable. The professor was humorous and laid back making the students more at ease. I spoke to a student that was required to take this course for his forestry degree. Hoss Haney said that while taking this course he first thought is that he would feel uncomfortable taking the class but, after completing the first class he said his worries were gone because everything is confidential due to using private keypads when questions are asked. Many students find that they are not alone with the questions they have and the situations they may be facing. The class provides a confidential question box where students can submit a question and the professor answers them in class without exposing the identity of the student. Not only is the class easy to understand and helpful but, the book required for the class is clear and easy to read, unlike some of the confusing books provided for students.
I erg students to take this class because it provides knowledge that everyone should have that will make them more able to make clear decisions about themselves, their partners and sex.

Some questions about the human sexuality class

Questions for my "new feature story," as I said before I am working on a story about the human sexuality class. Some questions that I would like to know is: 1) Why is this class a requirement for obtaining certain degrees? 2) How do you think students will benefit from taking this class? 3) What is your opinion on the sex education in high schools? 4) What is the atmosphere like in the class (comfortable, uncomfortable, light, blunt, etc.) 5) Does this class teach things students "will actually use in life?"

Most of this story will be focused on opinions and statistics. My main goal is to try to help students get to know about this class and how it will relate to them in they're everyday life and decisions.

First week of school

Ok....the first week back from Christmas break. So far I have only missed one class and have found only three problems with classes either not the one I should be taking, too full or out of my time range......so far so good. Hope everyone else is finding their way around classes and campus because I've probly walked into two different buildings that didn't even have my class in them....ha ha good times, good times.
I like my classes this term. All of my classes are basically writting classes so I just love it! Finally getting my blog page all together and it's turning out pretty well, I just wish it showed more of my personality. I have a myspace page and it's pretty much me down to every detail. It might just be because I don't know much about blogspot stuff. Eh, I learn fast.

new feature story

Right now I'm starting work on a feature story for my "Feature Story" class. My idea was to write about a class at OSU that manny students take for some strange reasons. This class is required in order to obtain a forestry degree and my cause some students to be uncomfortable. Human sexuality is this class I speak of and is very interensting and has information that many may not have heard in high school. I'm choosing to write this because many may be unsure when they have to register for the class. Maybe it will ease some anxiety.