Weekly Newsish Roundup, September 15, 2016

Weekly Newsish Roundup, September 15, 2016
— 8 News Stories in 10 Minutes and 58 Seconds!

Check out this the weekly Newsish Roundup for September 15 to 21, 2016!

In the news this week:

GOP Meet and Greet
Pill-Free Pain Clinic
Scam Watch!
Upcoming Events
Local Sports

Hey La Grande Alive! This is your weekly Newsish Roundup brought to you by Valley Realty, Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Marketplace Family Foods, Grande Ronde Hospital, and Direct Music Source.

For all you Republican fan-boys out there eager to meet-and-greet your local Oregon elephants, Bud Pierce, the republican candidate for Oregon governor, is coming to La Grande along with three of his fellow GOP cronies. Think big lights, camera flashes, big smiles and stilted little waves by the politicians at the podium as hundreds of La Grandians cheer as their favorite candidates take the stage! Now remember you’re in La Grande. Drop that and imagine a barbecue. Because that’s what’s happening this Sunday from 1pm to 4pm at Riverside Park. Bud Pierce will be there, as well as Mark Callahan, Judy Goodman, and Daniel Crowe, all republicans, all running for separate offices, all coming here to meet and greet the politically active in La Grande. I chatted with Jennifer Boyd, the advertising manager for the event, and she said this event is a great way to get to know the candidates on a personal level. She said at this event they will talk about how they can help our area and what their plans are. But barbecue is expensive and politicians need to buy those fancy suits somehow: the cost for the event is 10 bucks for adults and 5 bucks for children. There event is hosted by the Union County Republican Central Committee and, yes, La Grande, aren’t pasty white or straight are invited too.

Okay, here’s a little dose of Will’s philosophical musings: all you pill-poppers and med-pot tokers, let’s talk about pain. What is pain? Why do we have it? Well, pain, contrary to popular belief, is actually a good thing. Pain is our body’s messages to us, us the mind and consciousness, that something is wrong with our bodies! Something is out of place, something’s not right, something is going on very conducive to our continued survival and healthy functioning ability as a biological organism. Pain is not the enemy, contrary to what some of you who pop pills or keep yourselves in a constant state of marijuana-induced unfeelingness may believe. Now, hold your horses, I’m not totally insensitive: pain can be at times debilitating. When pain is constant and we feel like we can’t do anything about the cause of the pain, this is what we call chronic pain. Chronic pain is defined by Medline.gov as pain that lasts longer than 12 weeks, and if pain is lasting longer than 12 weeks, then something is really, really wrong. Sometimes, there’s not a lot we can do about it. And chronic pain is the reason many people day after day pop pills, suck smoke, and otherwise try to dull their pain signals. Did you know that, according to the Observer, Oregon has the highest level of pain-killer abuse in the nation? Alright, so where am I going with all this bumbling and philosophizing? Well, what I’m trying to say is that there’s a better way than pills to deal with chronic pain, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. A new clinic is coming to the Grande Ronde Valley. It’s going to be an “opioid-free” clinic and it’s goal, said Dwight Dill, head of the mental health department at the local CDC who I talked to this morning, is to teach people alternative methods of pain-management than just popping pills. He said that some of these methods include yoga, physical motion, cognitive therapy, and all of these methods are much more effective at dealing with pain than popping pills and, in the long run, much less expensive to the individual and the nation. The whole goal, he said, is to break the cycle of addiction to opioids both locally and nationally. This clinic is going to open in October and will be available through referral by your doctor. So if you have chronic pain, don’t pop a pill, listen to Mr. Dill and ask your doctor about the new clinic coming to La Grande right next to the EOU campus and it’s alternative pain-management techniques.

Scam Watch
Alright, it’s time for LaGrandeAlive’s complimentary scam-watch. According to Elkhorn Media Group, people are getting phone calls by somebody wanting them to buy a La Grande High School calendar over the phone. So first fact, yes, LHS does have a calendar. Second fact, no, perverts, it doesn’t involve scantily clad high-schoolers. That would be illegal. And third fact: the LHS calendar, while real, is only sold in-person and not over the phone. So don’t believe these people, whatever you do. Also–here’s the second scam to be wary of. If you get a text titled a “Debit Card Alert” it seems like most people would know not to text back, right? Wrong. Apparently not everyone is as skeptical and jaded to the wiley foils of the world and its denizens as I am. Apparently some customers of banks have been getting just such texts and have been sending back their cards. So, here’s the principle: for you people all-too-eager to believe that you’re the millionth visitor to a website and texts that ask you politely for your debit card number, don’t pay for anything over the phone or on the Internet unless you know exactly who it is or you’ve talked to them before. If someone unfamiliar calls you, give them nothing. Nothing, I tell you. Except maybe a few snarky comments about their mothers and a hefty dose of hangup beeps. Hang up the phone, delete the text, and navigate to another page: you’re not that special, you’re not the millionth visitor, and your bank is not texting you to get your debit card number over the phone. Email phishing scam.

Wallowa Valley Festival of the Arts
So, what else is happening in the valley? Well, All this weekend and early next week the Wallowa Valley Festival of the Arts is going to be getting jiggy and spreading the good-news of Art in Joseph, Oregon. Now this festival began as just a single art show. But this year it has a film-festival, a 20 artist En-Plein-Air painting contest, a reception, a quick draw, and so much more. There are various costs and times for the events and I’m not going to go into all those here. But they can can be found either in Go Magazine–where most of the information about this story came from–or on the Wallowa Arts Commission’s website at www.wallowavalleyarts.org. Also, across two valleys in Baker City the Great Salt Lick contest.

The Great Salt Lick Contest
The Great Salt Lick Contest is essentially a show and auction of salt-block sculptures. Salt block sculptors licked by livestock. Yes, you heard right, this art is touched by the tongues of livestock. Here’s the logic: all livestock licks salt. All the salt they lick takes on weird and eclectic shapes as a result of the licking. So let’s get all those weird salt block sculptures together, sell them at a quirky art show, and give all the proceeds to benefit Parkinson’s disease. The event starts at 5:00 pm on Sunday, September 17th at the Carnegie Art Center in Baker. Also, The Little Mermaid is still going on at the Elgin Opera House. Showings are Friday at 7:30pm, Saturday at 2:30 and 7:30 pm, and, I can tell you from experience, the show is well-worth the 8 to 17 bucks you pay for seat. Also, Friday at 4:30 pm there’s live ragtime piano at the Carnegie Art center in Baker. The Happy Canyon pageant and Wild West show is happening at 7:00 pm in pendleton. The EOU ladies basketball team is hosting a “Kids Night Out” sports night at Quinn Coliseum in La Grande WHAT DAY–essentially a bunch of kiddos kindergarten to 8th grade together and play sports and have fun. Tickets are 10 bucks per child. Also, last, there’s going to be a fiddler show and dinner in Elgin at the Rockwall Grange. The Rockwall Grange is 3 and a half miles north of Elgin on Middle road, and proceeds of the dinner and show will help with upkeep.

EOU Sports
The EOU Mountie football team is now 2 and 0, beating Montana Western on Saturday 35-23. And with that win, duh-duh-duh-daaah!–Time Cam is officially the winningest coach in EOU history, according to the EOU Sports website. He’s won 49 games–that’s more than any other coach at EOU. And on a more corporate level, the EOU boys are now NAIA ranked 10 in the top 25 coaches poll. You’ve got to wonder–how exactly do they get a top 25 coaches poll? Don’t all the coaches just vote for their own team? Shows how much I know about football. Anyways, the next EOU game is here in La Grande against College of Idaho at 6pm. We can all hope the boys make it 3 and 0 and Mr. Camp gets his 50th career win at home where we all can see him.

In other EOU news, the women’s soccer team just couldn’t score this weekend against UC-Merced. But then again, neither could the other team, ultimately tying the game 0-0 in a scoreless overtime draw against the Bobcats on Sunday afternoon. The women’s soccer team is now 2-1-3 and will travel to Olympia Washington on Friday to play Evergreen at 3:00 pm. The boys, however, didn’t have such an anticlimactic weekend. They beat Sierra Nevada 6-2 on Friday and Menlo College 2-1 Saturday to take their 4th and 5th straight wins of the season. It was their first overtime win in the program history. The team will return to the field in Olympia Washington against Evergreen at 1:00 pm.

The Volleyball Girls also trumped their games this weekend, smashing the Northwest Christian “Beacons” 3-0 this last Saturday here in town. The games were 25-16, 25-10, and 25-19, leaving the Beacons just a little less bright on their drive back home to Eugene. The Mounties’ next game is this Friday at Northwest in Kirkland, Washington at 7:00 pm.

La Grande Tigers Football
Now, taking a quick hop-skip off the EOU campus, the La Grande Tigers lost 20-18 for their second loss of the season last Friday. The game was in Baker, Oregon, and the game came down to the final 3 minutes, the Tigers missing the 2-point conversion opportunity on their final touchdown by several feet, leaving them 2 down with just not enough time to rally the ball and return for a final field goal. This is their second loss of the season, and the Tigers will travel this weekend to play in Sunnyside Washington at 7:00 pm. Don’t forget to tune in to LaGrandeAlive to watch the game live.

Union Bobcats Football
The Union Bobcats also lost last Friday against Riverside in Board Oregon, 30 to 27. They will play Pilot rock this coming Friday also at 7:00 pm. Imbler also lost this last weekend against Weston-McEwen with a sad-score of 33-6 far away from home in Athena. This weekend, they will get a shot at Riverside at 7:00 on Friday at which game, we hope, they can redeem themselves. Three losses, and no silver lining for the 4th either. Elgin also lost this weekend, leaving the Grande Ronde valley dazed in a winless-stupor for the upcoming weekend. Elgin lost against Arlington at Arlington, the final score 30-14. Elgin plays Pine Eagle this weekend, Friday at 7:00 pm. We can only hope that with these next games the valley can shake itself out of this early-season slump and gather some momentum for the latter half of the season.

And that’s your weekly Newsish roundup.

This roundup was brought to you by Grande Ronde Hospital, Valley Realty, Northwest Furniture and Mattress, Marketplace Family Foods, and Direct Music Source.

I’m Will Bowman

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Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/lsTHLS_viz0

Weekly Newsish Roundup, September 15, 2016