Eagle Cap Extreme, sled dog racing, la grande, wallowa, joseph oregon, eastern oregon university, michelle benton, billy boyd ==================== Category: Newsish La Grande Alive Youtube link: ——————————————
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Michelle Burton and Billy Boyd are a pair of professional choreographers who have been performing and coreographing together for, well, pretty much forever. And for the month or so, they’ve been working with students at Eastern Oregon University to put together the upcoming performance “Life is a Highway”, a group of performances all oriented around travel.
Now these two aren’t small potatoes. And what I mean by that is these guys are the real deal. They’ve been working in the industry for a long time. They’ve performed at Disney Hall and the Ford Amphitheater. They’ve worked with a lot of big names in the performance industry. They’ve worked in Africa to create a social theatre at a local AIDS orphanage. Like I said, not small potatoes. And so when I talked to them naturally I asked them, why the heck come here?
Now, they have been working with the students for about two weeks now. And they said one of the biggest joys they’ve had is watching the students step up to the plate for challenging numbers. Because this play is broad! It’s going to have pieces from everything from the title piece Life is a Highway to Hamilton the Musical. It’s difficult performance, but that hasn’t stopped the students from taking the bull by the horns and throwing themselves into it. And what it’s resulted in is a performance for everyone!
The performances are the weekend of February 3rd. Ticket information and performance times can be found on EOU’s website.
Like this story? Be sure to share it along and get entered into La Grande Alive’s monthly drawing for a $20 dollar gift certificate to Marketplace Family Foods!
This video was brought to you by Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Grande Ronde Hospital, EONI, Anything2Digital.com and Les Schwab Tires
Did you know that Eastern Oregon has sled dog racing?
I didn’t know that!
Well, we do! Every year in January the Eagle Cap Extreme sled-dog race brings between two and four hundred people to Ferguson Ridge Ski Area for a series of sled dog races right here in Eastern Oregon. There’s 4 races: the 200 mile, the one hundred mile, the sixty two mile, and the 21 mile junior race. Every year the sled dogs congregate in a great mass of snow and dogs barking and yowling to be let off the leash to pull and run. Most athletes know the feeling: they want to run.
And then when noon rolls around, Everyone gathers around, boom! The mushers yell and the dogs pull and off the teams are gone, some for multiple days.
Now, this year, according to their website, the race winners were Miriam Osredkar for the 200 mile, Trevor Warren for the 100 mile race, and Jane Devlin for the 2 day 62 mile race. The winner of the 200 mile race finished the race in 32 hours and about 45 minutes. That’s 32 hours in the cold, wet Eagle Caps with nothing but dogs and your thoughts. I would probably go insane.
So if this interests you, next year be sure to head out to Ferguson Ridge ski area just outside of Joseph Oregon for the Eagle Cap Extreme, 2019! Also, be sure to share this video along to be entered into our January drawing for a $20 Marketplace family foods gift certificate.
This video was brought to you by Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Grande Ronde Hospital, EONI, Anything2Digital.com and Les Schwab Tires
And that’s your weekly doggie roundup! Newsish roundup, I mean… One more big shout out to our sponsors.
Be sure to share this video and tune in to La Grande Alivefor more local content. I’m Will Bowman.
Hey La Grande Alive!This is your weekly Newsish Roundup brought to you by Grande Ronde Hospital, Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Anything2Digital, EONI, Valley Realty, Country Financial, and Les Schwab Tire center!
Will makes a final high note *ding!*
The Piano Gallery Plus Can you play the piano? I can’t, that’s apparent by the intro. But Joyce Hoke can! Very well, actually. And now her and her husband are opening up shop for their piano teaching, tuning, sales and more right down off the main Island City strip and you should check it out!
A big part of the Hoke’s lives is pianos: Joyce is the piano teacher. For years now she’s been teaching kids and adults alike the wonder of playing!
You can definitely tell through her interview that she gets a lot of creative satisfaction through playing the piano.
Lloyd, her husband, doesn’t play. Instead, he tunes. But after many years of driving all over Eastern Oregon to tune pianos, he’s ready to settle down in La Grande and make a business with a hard brick-and-mortar store! But he wants it to be more than just pianos, he said.
Lloyd’s vision for the store is to be a comfortable place where you can buy everything to make your home tasteful and comfortable as an old-time a piano parlor. Lloyd is actually a pretty-handy furniture repurpose guy. When I stepped into the Joyful Sounds store off Island Avenue, I was blown away by the creativity and vision behind some of his repurposing ventures! Old pianos, old desks and tables, old lamps, pretty much anything old he can get his hands on he takes from old and makes to new. Sometimes he takes apart a piano and makes it into a bunch of things! Piano lamps, piano desks, piano bookshelves. It’s pretty cool.
Now, the deeper aspect of these two’s business is that they both see God is what they’re doing. Joyce feels that music is a God-given gift she has, and that it’s her calling to teach others the wonder of what playing the piano can be! Lloyd is a carpenter like Jesus was. And he actually sees the process of repurposing and refurbishing to be a parallel to the Gospel he believes in.
The Joyful Sounds Store and Gallery is grand opening is this weekend, Friday and Saturday, and there’s going to be fun, merriments, and special deals for people who attend. Also, if you’re interested in hosting your art in their store, contact Lloyd or Joyce at this number. And be sure to stay tuned to La Grande Alive! We’re going to do a little bit more about Joyful Sounds in the future so keep your eyes peeled!
Behind the Streams Do you have old VHS tapes you need converted? Well, if you do, our employee Jonathan Marvel has got you covered!
Jonathan Marvel has been working at Anything2Digital for about two years now. He’s a young man who has grown up in La Grande and several years ago he began his internship-turned-job here at Brent Clapp Media Services. He’s the guy who transfers all your old media to DVDs!
And last week he and Brent, the boss around here, hopped in a car and drove all the way to Hood River for the “Working in the Gorge event, an employment recognition event to celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Over a hundred people attended this event at which Brent and John got to present about John’s experience working for Brent Clapp Media Services.
Jonathan is a wonderful young man and, though sometimes his disability causes him to struggle, he shows up every day with a smile ready to do his job. He loves Marvel movies and he always tells me, the vegetarian, when he’s eaten his vegetables for the weekend. Jonathan is proof that, though disabilities may hinder people from achieving the same efficiency as the non-disabled, they’re not insurmountable. Jonathan never complains and always does his work. The biggest tragedy of his employment is that we don’t have more work for him.
Big shout out to you John!
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Get Out and Go! And here’s your upcoming events in Get Out and Go with Emily Adair!
And one other quick event-related notice! Rehearsals are starting for this year’s Handel’s Messiah! The first rehearsal will be October 15th, 2017 and will bbe 6pm every Sunday after that. LGA will have more on this special annual event as the performance gets closer.
Sports Spotlight And here’s your weekly sports spotlight with Ronald Bond!
Around the Mountain And here’s your around The Mountain in 90 seconds, your EOU sports with Iain and Chris!
Hey La Grande Alive! This is your weekly Newsish Roundup brought to by Grande Ronde Hospital, Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Anything2Digital.com, and EONI!
New Nook for Looking Glass Books
Looking glass books is moving to a new nook. Specifically down Adams Avenue a couple blocks where the bookstore will now house the permanent home for the La Grande Shakespeare Company, according to Grant Turner, the owner and operator of the store. Several weeks ago Grant was approached by his landlady of his current building who said they were going to sell the building he was in. And so he didn’t waste time, he said. He found a new location several blocks down from the old one and, well, he hop skipped quickly into new space and is currently in the process of redesigning it for his vision: a half bookstore, half-black-box theater venue which will be the new stomping grounds of his Shakespearean productions.
The new location is, well, smaller than the old one. But Grant says he likes small, intimate theater spaces. He thinks it makes the plays more of a shared experience, heightens the intimacy, and forces the audience to be active participants in the Shakespeare plays.
The Grand Opening of the new store is going to be June 1st, Grant said, followed by the opening of the first Shakespeare play in the new space Henry the 5th the following day. Keep an eye out of the trailer for the new play only on La Grande Alive.
Brought to you By This title story was brought to you by… Northwest Furniture and Mattress
Coffee With Will and Armando Barboa / Doolittle Raiders Gala
Writers can’t all be professionals. Most writers, unfortunately, have to spend eight hours of their precious writing time going to jobs outside their writing passion in order to, well, eat, squeezing their obsessive scribbling between the hours of 5pm and 1am (or 1 am to 5am depending on your inclination) assisted by egregious amounts of caffeinated beverages. Armando Barboa is one of those writers. Armando was my guest this week on Coffee with Will. He’s a member of the US Armed Forces, a staff sergeant to be exact, and a writer. And these two aspects of his life, he said, oftentimes cross over.
Armando said that he uses writing to connect with the places he travels, his experiences, and his own creative side.
And one of those places he’s traveling is Pendleton Oregon for the Doolittle Raiders Gala coming up this weekend, Saturday, April 29, from 9 am to 11pm. So here’s a little history lesson: on April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25 bombers took off from the platform of US Navy Aircraft Carriers 650 nautical miles from the coast on a mission to bomb Japanese cities. Each of the crews knew that, bottom line, the damage they caused would be like a papercut on a grizzly bear, but that wasn’t the point. The real point was to show Japan that America wasn’t down and out, and that we still had the power to resist. What they really wanted to do was give a morale boost to thousands of Americans discouraged by the recent attacks on Pearl Harbor. And their mission was successful. And the bravery of these airmen who agreed to pilot these planes has become a symbol for the spirit of the United States resistance to foreign invaders ever since. And this weekend, the last surviving pilot of these missions will travel to Pendleton to speak and participate in a celebratory event for the raid.
Overall the conversation with Armondo was full of fun and nerdiness you wouldn’t expect from an interview with a die-hard serviceman. The rest of this interview can be viewed on lagrandealive.tv or our Facebook page. And be sure to check out the Doolittle Raiders Gala in Pendleton Oregon, this Saturday starting at 9 am at the Pendleton Army Air Field.
Get Out and Go! And what else is going on this weekend? Well, I’m here to tell you along with my partner in crime Emily Adair from Go Magazine with this week’s Get Out and Go!
One more quick event, this Sunday, April 30, 11 am to 2:30 pm there will be a workshop for Milonga Tango at the Art Center East in La Grande. Milonga is a dance form from the Southern Cone countries of Uruguay and Argentina. Exotic, I know! But still, no experience is necessary, and it’s 15 bucks a person or 25 bucks per couple. Visit the art center east website for more information.
Local Sports
The La Grande Tigers Softball team went two for two this weekend against Ontario winning 4-1 and 6-1 back to back at home. Union/Cove also had a double-win, beating Pilot Rock/Nixyaawii 4-1 and 8-5 also here in the valley. Elgin, on the other hand, was the black sheep of the weekend, losing both their games at Burns by rather different margins 5-23 and 10-12. Next softball games are scheduled for the 28th when La Grande plays Baker/Powder Valley at home, Elgin plays Grant Union / Dayville / Prairie City away, and Union / Cove plays Heppner / Ione right here in the valley.
In the boys Baseball world, La Grande had a little less success than in softball. They lost one, won one v.s. Ontario playing at home, the first game a 6-5 win followed by Ontario’s comeback at a similarly slim margin of 4-5. Two very close games. Union/Cove instead of winning two lost two against Durfur / South Wasco 1-12 and 5-11 and put them down and out for the weekend. Continuing the valley’s bleak baseball end of the week, Elgin also lost two to Pilot Rock / Nixyaawii, 0-7 and 2-9, making this weekend pretty much a big fat strikeout for the valley’s baseball teams. Next games are this weekend: La Grande plays Baker / Powder Valley on the 29th, Union / Cove plays Grant Union/ Prairie City on the 28th and Elgin plays Heppner / Ione the same day.
Around the Mountain
An speaking of sports, here’s your Around the Mount in 90 seconds with Evan and Chris for our special 21st anniversary episode.
La Grande Alive Live
For all the most recent LGA content, be sure to tune into La Grande Alive Live every weeknight at 6pm on our website and Facebook ppage.
Happy 4th of July, La Grande Alive! This is your weekly Newsish Roundup brought to you by Grande Ronde Hospital, Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Anything2Digital.com, and EONI!
11 Students, 3 Plays, 1 Summer
There’s big happenings at the Opera House! Eleven students have been enlisted professionally to bring three plays to the stage this summer, and not only that, but three plays at the same time. And this last week, I got the opportunity to sit down and talk to them about what it’s like to participate.
The three plays that will be showing are Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Catch Me If You Can, and The Wizard of Oz. Showtimes can be found on the Elgin Opera House website and the three plays will be running until the end of this month. Be sure to get your tickets and catch it (wink) if you can.
Art Creates Cash
And speaking of art, did you know that, according to one study, the arts are actually a cash cow for Eastern Oregon? The Arts and Economic Prosperity study was recently taken as a collaboration by La Grande’s Art Center East, Baker’s Carnegie Center for the Arts, and the Josephy Center in Joseph. In this study, these three organizations collected a bunch of information that translated to the arts contributing over 1.2 million to the economy in 2015. It also showed that the arts organization created 39 jobs in 2015, and that’s not even including the part-time ones. And according to the Observer Newspaper, this information is reflected across the state. So the next time you’re tempted to say artists are just a bunch of moneysucking farts, don’t forget, there’s a lot of cash created by arts! You can read the full story in this last weekend’s Observer Newspaper.
Get Out and Go!
And after a long hiatus and without further adeu, here’s your upcoming events in Get Out and Go with Emily Adair from Go! Magazine.
Michelle Burton and Billy Boyd are a pair of professional choreographers who have been performing and coreographing together for, well, pretty much forever. And for the month or so, they’ve been working with students at Eastern Oregon University to put together the upcoming performance “Life is a Highway”, a group of performances all oriented around travel. 
Well, we do! Every year in January the Eagle Cap Extreme sled-dog race brings between two and four hundred people to Ferguson Ridge Ski Area for a series of sled dog races right here in Eastern Oregon. There’s 4 races: the 200 mile, the one hundred mile, the sixty two mile, and the 21 mile junior race. Every year the sled dogs congregate in a great mass of snow and dogs barking and yowling to be let off the leash to pull and run. Most athletes know the feeling: they want to run. 
Can you play the piano? I can’t, that’s apparent by the intro. But Joyce Hoke can! Very well, actually. And now her and her husband are opening up shop for their piano teaching, tuning, sales and more right down off the main Island City strip and you should check it out!
Do you have old VHS tapes you need converted? Well, if you do, our employee Jonathan Marvel has got you covered!
And last week he and Brent, the boss around here, hopped in a car and drove all the way to Hood River for the “Working in the Gorge event, an employment recognition event to celebrate National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Over a hundred people attended this event at which Brent and John got to present about John’s experience working for Brent Clapp Media Services.
