Weekly Newsish Roundup, September 1, 2016
8 News Stories in 6 Minutes and 23 Seconds!
Hey La Grande Alive, this is your weekly newsish roundup brought to you by Direct Music Source, Grande Ronde Hospital, Family Foods, Valley Realty, and Northwest Furniture and Mattress.
Did you know that, in the original short story “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen, the princess not only sells her voice but her tongue too? And in exchange for this oral bartering, not only does she not get it back, but the dude she sold it for ends up marrying another woman. In the end, Ariel commits suicide and finds herself as a disembodied spirit performing 300 years of penance before she can actually have her soul–her ultimate goal the entire time–and get into the Kingdom of Heaven. Pretty brutal, huh? But that’s okay, because that’s not the story that you’ll be seeing at the Elgin Opera House Starting this weekend. That story is based on the good-old-fashioned Disney story we all know and love, a story of love, a story of really catchy broadway tunes sung by lobsters, of women giving up essential parts of their bodily functions to try their hand at a man. That’s the story that you’ll get to see, good old-fashioned family laughter and fun. In fact, last week I got a chance to sit down with the director of the play Terry Hale and talk to him about the play, and how (unlike Hans Christian Andersen short story) the Little Mermaid fits in with the more overall mission of the Elgin Opera House: to provide fun, family-safe plays for the Grande Ronde Valley.
The play premieres this Friday, September 2nd. It runs until September 24th, every weekend, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2:30 pm. The cost is 8 bucks for balcony, 17 bucks for orchestra seating center stage, expensive, I know, but, please, whatever you do, don’t sell any essential bodily functions to pay for the show. Lobsters, fat seagulls and ruby red hair just aren’t worth it, man.
Alright, what else is going on this weekend other than Mermaids?
Well, There’s live music tonight at Ten Depot Street. There is also another concert by Anna Tivel tomorrow at the Stage Door Theater. Hank Cramer the “Wandrin’ Minstrel” will play also play tomorrow in Baker city 6pm at the Wagon Encampment. Also this Friday, ”The Outsiders” art show at Art Center East will show pieces of a bunch of teenagers from Union County. Also, Saturday, the Farmers Market is in La Grande from 9 am to noon ish and in Enterprise the Juniper Jam music festival will feature multiple bands including Some People, Mise, Wild West and Groovy Wallpaper, plus Laney Lou and the bird Dogs and more, running from 1 to 10 pm. Lastly, Community Merchants is pretty much the cool-squeeze of all local businesses: everything in their store is locally made, bought, and sold, and they’re having a Business After Hours for business representatives to get together, chat, eat and otherwise network with other like-minded-local individuals. The after hours will be September 6 from 5 to 6:30 pm.
Sports
In sports, high School football starts this weekend! Friday is the big day: the La Grande Tigers will play Pendleton at La Grande, Baker will play Nyssa, Imbler v.s Pilot Rock, Elgin v.s Cove at Cove, and Union v.s. Umatilla at Umatilla. There’s so much football going Friday the pigs are running for the hills to keep their skins. But only one of those games will be covered by the LaGrandeAlive.tv online stream: La Grande v.s Pendleton, 6:00 pm on Friday at the EOU Community Stadium. And actually EOU’s new sports director Steve Hendrix got to sit down with the coaches of the LHS tigers and talk to them about their strategy for the coming game.
So here’s my question for you, sports lovers: who do you predict for this year? Who’s going to take the gold and who’s gonna fold? What kind of matches do you foresee being good, bad, fun to watch? Also, if you’re into local football, be sure to pick up a Wednesday edition of the Observer. They have a fantastic spread on each of the local teams, their schedules, and features of some of the key players from each respective crew. And be sure to tune into LaGrandeAlive this Friday for the first LHS live football stream.
Now, everyone, please stick around a little longer. Football isn’t life and other sports do, in fact, exist in Eastern Oregon and are just as important to keeping the world spinning.
Like soccer, for example. The EOU soccer girls trickled through Lewis and Clark Sunday afternoon 3 to 1.
And volleyball! EOU volleyball girls smashed Vanguard 3 games to none winning 25-16, 25-21, and 25-17.
And like running! The Drug Free Run was this last Saturday (which, unfortunately, I didn’t run in). This run is an annual run put on here in the Grande Ronde Valley by the Union County Safe Communities Coalition. Every year, while all the pot growers are safely and comfortably down in the valley tending their home-grown plants, all the running-nuts take to the hills at Mount Emily Recreation Area to actively protest these lazy toker types by doing what they do best: actively hurting themselves. Ah, the life of a health nut, pain today for pleasure tomorrow. Anyways, the winners this year were Jacob Huntsman with a 5k time of 26:38 and Timothy Vanderlugt with a 10k time of 42:44. And just so you know, Timothy is like 50 years old and can still beat me and most others I know in La Grande at races. So what this means is that none of you people under 70 have any excuse for complaining about getting old while Timothy Vanderlugt still exists. Period. Unless you’re Timothy Vanderlugt complaining about other people complaining. Fair enough.
And, lastly, polo! This weekend 8 polo teams, 70 horses, 30 out-of-towners, and a bunch more home-growns gathered and smacked the ball around on horses in this otherwise unheard of equine sport right here in La Grande. Did you know that La Grande Had a polo club? I didn’t, but we do, apparently. In fact, La Grande polo is actually bigger than you’d guess. It’s part of a Northwestern league that travels to places including Spokane, Portland, Yakima, and even as far south as Salt Lake City to mount their horses and play. Melissa Joseph, one of the founders of the La Grande polo club, said it’s just fun to play as a family here, and what the polo club really is is a group of really good friends they get together with and play polo. If you’re interested in joining the polo club, call Melissa and Steve Joseph right here in La Grande. They have two tournaments a year, and you could be involved with the next one.
Alright! That’s it! This weekly roundup was brought to you by Direct Music Source, Grande Ronde Hospital, Valley Realty, Marketplace Family Foods and Northwest Furniture and Mattress. Tune in for more local content. I’m Will Bowman.
