Weekly Newsish Roundup, January 5, 2017 – 5 News Stories in 10 minutes!

Check out this the weekly Newsish Roundup for January 4 – 11!

• Barreto Boosts La Grande High School
• Coffee with Will and Nicole Lewis
• Shooting High: Tigers Basketball
• Upcoming Events
• Local Sports

Big thanks to our sponsors Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Grande Ronde Hospital, and Direct Music Source!

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/KNKn3xoRz0Y

Hey La Grande Alive! It’s freezing cold outside, so cuddle up around your computer screen and watch this your weekly Newsish Roundup brought to you by Grande Ronde Hospital, Direct Music Source, and Northwest Furniture and Mattress.

Barreto Boosts La Grande High School

You know, back in the day, (and this is just one of my personal observations) big-businesses often cared a lot about social projects. I recently read a billboard at the Columbia Gorge Hotel about a timber tycoon who donated millions of dollars to make the Columbia River Highway a reality. But it seems to me that these days businesses and social projects don’t seem to be on as good of terms. Social services like roads, schools, and libraries are instead largely taken care of by the state. But recently, according to the Observer, Barreto Manufacturing, a local multi-million dollar company, stepped up to the plate for the new high school career technical education building being added to the La Grande High school. The Tech Education building is a big-honkin complex being added to the high-school in which kids are going to be able to study trades like welding, drafting, and construction. Barreto Manufacturing is a local multi-million dollar company that manufactures landscaping equipment that has their headquarters right here in the Grande Ronde Valley. And over the break, they actually opened up their doors, facilities, and personnel to the kids to use over the break to construct welding booths for this new building, free of cost. They also got materials donated for the booths from companies from companies in Eugene to Idaho. The result: a bunch of high-school kids with life skills in their belts, a reduction of the high school’s budget from about 16 thousand to 4.5 thousand, and hopefully a small step in returning social services like education into a genial relationship with local public education providers.

Our title story today was brought to you by, first, the Observer who published it first. It was in their Wednesday paper. And second by Direct Music Source. Direct Music Source is a positively quaint little music store on the strip in La Grande owned by Margaret and Tony. Head there if you need lessons, parts, or just a good conversation about all things musical.

Coffee With Will and Nichole Lewis

It’s not often that I get an opportunity to sit down with big stars and chat about, well, anything on Coffee With Will. I’m a bit goofy and awkward, and I think the peace lily reminds them too much of between two ferns with Zach Galifianakis. But that’s exactly what happened last week. I got a one-time, red-hot shot at an interview with a small-town-star who probably has more followers on Facebook than I have dollars in my bank account. (It’s not true, I checked, but not by much, I’m sorry to say…) Nicole Lewis grew up in La Grande. She’s the daughter of Susan Lewis, a close friend of mine, and she recently moved to Nashville to get serious about her music her writing. And over Christmas break, she came in and did three songs with us including a new song she recently wrote called “Cuddle Up”, a song perfect for all you lovebirds sick to death of snow.

Nichole and I talked about many things in our interview including writing, a shared passion of ours. Nicole writes country-western music, a genre that is well-known for it’s simple and plain-spoken lyrics. But, she said, writing simple is anything but. Writing things tersely and not wasting words is a discipline, she said, that she’s learning more about in Nashville.

It’s not often I get the opportunity to sit down with a quality musician and pick their brains, especially one of the caliber of Nicole Lewis. The rest of this interview is available our our website as are the three songs she performed for us.

Upcoming Events

A new art gallery is opening up at Art Center East, according to GO! Magazine. Hiroko Cannon paints local wildlife from the Plateau region near her home in Pendleton. Her show will be open January 6th at 6pm for the reception, and will remain open until February 24th. And speaking of skiing, Anthony Lakes is having a free nordic skiing and snowshoeing day this Sunday 8am to 4pm. Also, Lonni the Eclectic Cowboy is playing next thursday night at 6pm at Local Harvest Eatery. Lonni’s a small-town, cowboy-boot-wearin’ Mormon who’s gig is writing and reading cowboy poetry and some of it’s pretty dang-tootin’ good.

Local Sports

In sports, the La Grande Tigers cooked it this weekend in the SCTC Holiday classic, taking two against stayton 55-40 and Amity 62-45. That puts them at 9-0 entering into this weekend’s league game against Baker. And this week, we here at LaGrandeAlive got a chance to talk to them about the upcoming season.

Their first game is tomorrow against Baker City at Baker City, leading off the season with their big rivalry against the dogs from across the hill. In other boys basketball news, Elgin went one and one this weekend, beating Cove 42-33 at the La Grande Optimist Tourney. But they couldn’t keep it up. Powder Valley stomped them 29-49 the following day. Union boys also split their weekend, beating Baker JV 52-33 but losing to Imbler 34-52 the following day. And Union wasn’t the only team Imbler beat this weekend: the day before they cruised by La Grande JV 48-33 at the Optimist tournament, putting them one up one down overall for the weekend.

In ladies basketball, if the La Grande boys dunked, the ladies sunk. The lady Tigers lost both of their games by pretty large margins this weekend, first v.s Molalla 39-75 and then versus Hermiston 25-53. The Union ladies did slightly better, winning one losing one, their win against Wallowa 43-28 and their loss against Cove by a hair of 37-40. So La Grande won zero, Union won one, but the Imbler girls took two. They won both their games against Elgin and Powder Valley this weekend, beating Elgin by a double-up score of 60-30 and Powder Valley by a smaller margin–but still quite the margin nonetheless–40-25.

Now let’s jump up to EOU for their first games of 2017. The men’s basketball team picked up  twin wins against Northwest University and Evergreen State. They beat Northwest 92-71 and then Evergreen State with the ever-so-slightest of margins 98-92. And the ladies were right there with them. The lady Mountaineers took the same teams, same result, Northwest 67-66 and Evergreen State 70-38. Both men’s and women’s teams will play against Warner Pacific and Multnomah this weekend 5:30 pm Friday and Saturday respectively at home in Quinn Coliseum.

And that’s your weekly Newsish Roundup. This roundup was brought to you by Grande Ronde Hospital, Northwest Furniture and Mattress, and Direct Music Source. Please like and share this video and tune in to La Grande Alive for more local content. I’m Will Bowman.

Big thanks to our sponsors Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Grande Ronde Hospital, and Direct Music Source!

Please visit our website at http://lagrandealive.tv!