There's Plenty to See by the Sea

The Oregon Coast offers endless sights and experiences. Here's a few ideas that are practically in our own backyard.

At a look out area and gift shop 500 feet above sea level, you can catch a spectacular view of Cape Foulweather. It's a great place to see whales and bald eagles. The gift shop has windows lining the outer wall overlooking the cape, with plenty of binoculars to borrow while inside the shop.

View to the South at Cape Foulweather from a lookout point by the parking lot.

Visitor's at the Devil's Punch Bowl explore during low tide.

The Devils Punch Bowl is a great sight both during high tide and low tide. During low tide, you can actually walk down and into it. Careful to pay attention to the tide though. Getting caught inside during high tide would be very dangerous. 

A plume of water blowing through a small hole in the rocks at Thor's Well.

Thor's Well is located just South of Yachats. It's an exciting place to visit when the tide is coming in because the waves burst straight into the air through a hole in the rocky shoreline. Careful not to get too close to the ledge if you want to stay dry.

Something really exhilarating along the coast is Devil's Churn. The view is nice, but to really experienced it, walk down to the rocks. Here, you can feel the mountainside rumble each time a big wave comes in. Due to this, the best time to go is when the tide is coming in. It truly feels like the devil himself is knocking.

 Jonathan Jones pears into the cavern the waves have carved into the mountain over the years. This is where the waves crash into to make the deep rumbling sound.

Aside from the many sights to see, there's plenty of marine life to see as well. 

A small crab hides in a crack between rock formations where the brutal waves can't reach it.

Sea anemones start to close as the tide starts to change to low tide.

A seagull looks out towards the ocean.

Why Bag Bans Are Only Logical

 Six months have passed since a group of middle school students from Memorial Middle School's "Green Team" spoke to Albany City Council about banning the plastic bag. The City Council Listened respectively as Danielle Hernandez, William Summit, Laik Gregory, and Joshua Labelle presented their case. While Mayor Sharon Konopa suggested they make their proposal to legislature, the movement seems to have lost traction.

That could be due to the fact that folks in Albany just want to keep picking up their animal excrement with their "free" from the grocery store bags, or perhaps they think it's the government infringing upon their rights.

It was clear that former editor of the Democrat-Herald Hasso Herring thought it was an invasion of government, stating in his blog post that covered the event, "Albany has so far avoided this particular intrusion of what people can and cannot do."

I personally can't comprehend why someone would think that way when it's abundantly clear that there would be nothing but good to come from a plastic bag ban.

There are many things under the direction of the government that the public has limited or no access to because of the negative effects it has on living being or the environment. Take the insecticide DDT for example. It was banned in the US in 1972. It's pretty common knowledge that it's bad for the human body, but it is also highly toxic to marine life.

Nobody seems to be upset that it's been banned though.

So why is it that so many people get upset when having single-use plastic grocery bags gets threatened?

The common arguments seem to be that folks thinks the government is encroaching on their rights, and they also like to reuse those plastic bags for garbage.

Wait, what?!

People are actually getting upset that they won't be getting those bags for "free",(after making a  purchase of course), so that they can use them to put garbage or pet waste in, just to throw it in their garbage bins and send it off to the landfill.

That's doesn't settle well with me.

Aside from that, though, there are plenty of other things that come in plastic bags that can be reused. For example, bread and fresh veggie bags can easily be reused. I always save mine to reuse for whatever because I feel guilty just tossing them.

A lot of people argue that single use bags can be recycled. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of places that accept plastic bag recycling and they end up having to be taken somewhere specific if you want them to be recycled. Even then, the US EPA estimates less than five percent of plastic bags are recycled annually. Ouch.

Luckily for us, America's largest supermarket chain just announced on August 23 that they will be eliminating the plastic bag altogether. Kroger says they will eliminate plastic bags from all their stores by 2025. They will start with ridding their subsidiary QFC of plastic bags by 2019. Other well known operations under the Kroger company are Fred Meyer, Frys, Harris, and Ralph's.

They already offer one dollar reusable bags that will still be available for purchase, and they will still have paper bags available.

Kroger said they are responding to growing environmental concerns raise by shoppers, employees, communities, and nonprofits.

When you stop to think about it, banning the bag is the only logical answer to getting the world back on track to take care of the giant floating space orb we call home.

Photo Story - HVAC Contractor: It's a Dirty Job and Joel Salinas is the Man for It.

Joel Salinas takes a few moments to take a break from his work as an HVAC Contractor to get a Gatorade from his work van. Salinas works for Evergreen Heating & Cooling.

Salinas has to clean up the dry wall he cuts out of the walls, to install new vents for a forced air system.

Salinas is proud of his one-handed dry wall scrap balancing skills, saying his girlfriend would be proud because she's a server at a restaurant.

Salinas shakes the bits of insulation and dust from himself, next to a pile of supplies he'll be using to do the installation. Being an HVAC Contractor is a dirty job. 

Salinas looks through the hole he's cut in the ceiling for the air return to check the measurements he made inside the tight attic space, before the hole was cut.

Feature Writing Week 10

My three goals at the beginning of the term:

This term, I'd like to improve my interviewing skills because a good interview means a better story. I'd like to get better at coming up with good questions to ask people I'm interviewing because it would lead to a better story. I would also like to be better at managing my time and get the ball rolling on my stories sooner, rather than later.

I didn't do so hot when it came to achieving my goals this term due to unforeseen circumstances. I do feel like I improved slightly with asking good interview questions though. I learned to ask people how they got started in what they do, which can really give a lot of information just from that one question. I did not improve my time management skills whatsoever, but I feel like I stayed mostly on top of things during a trying time - better than I thought I would have.

Photojournalism Week 10

I really love the photo I took of Russell Tripp. It may not be the most perfectly balanced for lighting or extremely well framed, but he looks really pleased and interacting with him was a really cool experience. He's a very nice person and happy to humor people.

What it reflects about what I learned is to really pay attention to faces and expressions.

My photography skills grew a lot over the last 10 weeks. I have gotten a little more comfortable taking photos of strangers. To get to where I want to be with that will take a long time I think though. I'm not afraid to get some weird angles now, and I'm also working on getting closer to my subject.

Things I pay closer attention to now include are what's happening in the background of my subject, particularly behind their heads, and the depth of field, and light sources.

Feature Writing - Writer's Choice: LBCC Opens1993 25-Year Time Capsule at 50 Year Anniversary

In 1993, Bill Clinton was president, gas was $1.60 a gallon, you could buy a brand new house for $130K in Albany, and a 25 year time capsule was buried in the courtyard at LBCC.

“Anyone remember what this is?” asked Jon Carnahan, former president of LBCC, as he held up a VHS tape. He had just removed it from the time capsule which was unearthed last week on Wednesday, May 16. It marks the 50th Anniversary of LBCC.

Many LBCC representatives, old and new attended the event. Bob Ross, LBCC's first full-time staff member who still teaches today; Russel Tripp, LBCC Founding Board Member; Jon Carnahan, previous president of LBCC; Greg Hamann, current LBCC president were all familiar faces at the event.

Trisha Melcher attended the event because she was a student at LBCC in 1993 and her daughter Mandy Melcher was at the child care center at the time.

Some of the things in the time capsule showed how much the world has changed in 25 years. A floppy disk, homemade cassette tape and an LB school phone number list are good examples of that.

Other things from the capsule, like giant textbooks and an HP printer ink cartridge that look extremely similar to the ones used today, show the world hasn’t changed as much as one might think.

A new time capsule was buried the same day, set to be dug up in 2043 to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of LBCC. People were asked ahead of time to make suggestions of what to put in the new time capsule.

LBCC President Greg Hamann's favorite of the items to be buried are a bottle of Roadrunner Red IPA from Deluxe Brewing and a baseball signed by the LBCC 30-consecutive-game winning baseball team.

The complete list of items that were put into the new capsule included LBCC’s mission/ core themes/ values, pennant, Roadrunner Red IPA, baseball signed by the 30-game winning streak LBCC baseball team, viewbook, schedule of classes, marketing materials, 50th anniversary button, Rocky the Roadrunner plush, fidget spinner, 2017 solar eclipse items, aerial photos of campus, Commuter student paper from May 16, part of the old gym floor, recent news headlines, gold medal from classified appreciation day, Democrat Herald from May 16, fast facts about LBCC, inspired t-shirt, drawing by LBCC Cooperative Preschool, and 49 issues of The Commuter 1970-2018 digital.

Photographer of the week

Born as Margaret White in 1904 in New York,  Margaret Bourke-White studied photography at Clarence H. White School of Photography in 1921-22. Her father was an avid hobby photographer, but she never picked up a camera until after his death in 1922.

She then spent five years attending four different universities from 1922-1927. She attended Cornell University and made money selling photographs of the buildings at the school until she graduated in 1927.

During her college days, she married and then divorced in two years. At the time of finalizing her divorce, she took the opportunity to legally change her name. She took on her mother's maiden name (Bourke) to create her hyphenated professional last name.

In her early days, she was an industrial and architectural photographer, traveled to Germany and Russia to do photo essays, and photographed the great American dust bowl. She was recognized by early on from her architectural and industrial photos. Her father spent most of his life working as a designer and engineer, and many speculate that this had an affect on Bourke-White's eye for her early work.

This work caught the eye of Henry Luce who started Fortune Magazine and she became the first staff photographer for the new periodical.

In 1936, she became one of Life Magazine's first four photographers on staff. She was also the first female photographer for Life. One of her photos was even used on the very first issue of Life magazine. It featured the Fort Peck Damn in the process of being built. This was for the feature story in the magazine which highlighted the life and boomtowns around the dam construction, of which Bourke-White took the photos for.

Working directly with Life, she covered World War II, covering the siege of Moscow, and liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. These graphic photos shocked the world with images of concentration camps and gas chambers. The photos ran in Life Magazine.

Afterwards, she travelled to India to photograph Gandhi and mass division caused by religious devision between Hindi India and Muslim Pakistan.

In 1969, she retired from Life magazine. At this point in her life, she was suffering from Parkinson's and spent the later part of her career at Life doing things other than photography due to the effects of it. She passed away just a few years later in 1971.

My favorite photo of hers is the first cover of Life Magazine. I really love her use of contrast of light on her architectural work.

Image courtesy of The Met.

Photojournalism Week 6 - Free Shoot: Event

Russell Tripp poses next to a photo of himself breaking ground on the Albany campus building site in the 1960's. It was part of a display of photos at the 50th Anniversary event at LBCC.

Former LBCC President Jon Carnahan, pats Russell Tripp on the back while they look back on a photo of burying the time capsule that was buried in 1993, and was about to be unearthed at the 50th Anniversary event after being underground for 25 years.

Many people gathered for the 50th Anniversary event in the courtyard at LBCC on Wednesday, May 16.

Current LBCC President Greg Hamann high-fives Rocky the Roadrunner after they and George Van Keulen put the new 25-year time capsule into the ground.

Photojournalism Week 8 - Sports

Candy Flip Her jams, scoring points for Sick Town Derby Dames at the Wheelie Awesome Mayhem bout on Friday, May 19.

Panda Moanium helps Rough Cut block a player from the Adventure Coast Star Stompers.

Sick Town Derby Dames blocks the Adventure Coast Star Stompers' jammer to prevent them from scoring points.

Photojournalism Week 7 - My Hometown / My Neighborhood

Spearit Beads & Co. is a small business located on 1st Ave. in Downtown Albany, Oregon. It's been in business about 10 years and people commute from all over the state just to visit the store. People visiting from other states make it a point to visit the store when they're in town as well. It's one of the largest bead stores on the west coast.

Shayne Hash and Craig McAnulty are cooks at the Calapooia Brewing located on 140 NE Hill St, Albany, OR 97321.

Column: How to Talk to Someone Who's Grieving

It’s easy to imagine that when someone has cancer, it’s like the inglorious picture painted by the bicyclist Lance Armstrong. Vomiting and other unmentionable things happening to your body, just like a really bad flu.

In reality, it can be much more like a recurring nightmare that grips its scaly claws onto you and every single one of the people you love until the life has been sucked out of you.

You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.

My dad passed away on May 12 at 11 a.m. He was 53 years old. It was the end to his seven year off and on battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

For me, the grieving process started before he was even gone. There came a point when we knew he wasn’t going to make it.

If you know someone that’s battling cancer, has a family member who is, or recently lost someone to it, I guarantee they’ve heard all of the classic sympathies multiple times. I’d recommend avoiding them. Saying “cancer sucks,” or “let me know if you need anything,” are not always great options.

Also, you know those sad sympathy eyes? The ones that people give you when they feel bad for you? Yeah, don’t do that either.

Being sympathetic is okay, but I guarantee the person who’s grieving is tired of seeing those eyes. They’re just a sad reminder of being sad. Being sad gets old and exhausting and they’re probably trying not to feel sad as much as possible.

Saying, “cancer sucks,” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Chanting it to the person suffering through the ordeal won’t make it any better, either. They know it sucks better than most. They don’t need to be reminded of it.

I’ve heard a lot of “I’m sorry,” or something along those lines and it’s a very good option. It’s a tough situation for everyone. Nobody wants to go through it and it’s hard to watch someone you know go through it. There’s not much that can be done. I’m sorry too. It’s a sorrowful time.

Let them know they don’t need to respond if you decide to reach out to them through a means other than face-to-face. It can be overwhelming when there’s a lot of people reaching out to offer their condolences. Take some pressure off of them by letting them know they don’t need to get back to you.

Another thing is, you don’t need to offer to, “let me know if you need anything.” If they are anything like me, there’s a good chance that they don’t even know what they need.

If you’re serious about the offer of being there for them, bring something to the table. Take them out for a meal or be a listening ear. Ask to go out to coffee or join them on their errands.

They’re likely overwhelmed with emotions and thoughts, just trying to get through one day at a time. Having someone there with them can help ease that. Don’t try to force company on them if they decline though.

Everybody has their own way of grieving.