NewsPacblog

“Give em’ hell Janelle!” the audience yelled.  The call-and-response chant was initiated by the first black member of Congress from Oregon; Rep. Janelle Bynum entered office in 2025. LBCC’s Tripp theater was half full on a rainy Saturday morning, Feb 7. “Mike Johnson knows who I am now. I wouldn’t say we’re besties,” said Bynum, a Democrat. “I told Speaker Johnson it’s Black History Month and I’m going to be all over you this month.” Befitting the aggressive rallying cry, she added, “I’m your fighter and you send me into battle every Monday.” “Last year I went to D.C. I got to talk to Janelle Bynum there,” LBCC Student Leadership Council Legislative Affairs Director Will Vellinga said later. “The education pieces she’s very supportive on. It’s great to be inspired, but right now I need results.”  U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden also attended the town hall. He is the longest-serving senator in Oregon’s history. The Atlantic has called him “The Lonely Hero of the Battle Against the Surveill...

“It gives me goosebumps talking about it.”  The single-minded focus of Student Leadership Council event planner Katelynn Anstey turns more emotional. “It’s so important to me. I know a couple of students that after working at school all day have to try and find a bus route that can get them to a food pantry before it closes, and then they have to lug all of that food home.”  Anstey is overseeing tables lined with rows of paper bags full of five different meal options in the Commons Cafeteria on LBCC’s Albany campus. This is what the SLC is calling the Mindful Market. Monday the afternoon of Jan. 12 was its debut. They hope to continue the project, but there are some snags. “I think that (a free market) should be available on campus. That was why I decided to set it up on my own,” said Anstey. “The Mindful Market is definitely a project that the whole SLC is very involved in,” SLC presidential candidate Jaxon Lee explained.  Anstey started her planning in the middle of th...

Topic 1  I am not quite a journalism major yet. I am also interested in music. They seem equally non lucrative. Larger picture, I want to try and use my creativity to share people's stories, maybe also using audio and visuals, as I am interested in film and I think podcasts could be a whole lot better than they usually are. I want to improve my interviewing skills.  Asking strangers questions is tricky.  I am interested in several different artistic fields. I am looking to change paths and make more creative work. Hopefully get some sort of an audience and try to incorporate this into a profession.  I am taking this course because I think it will help me with my writing and have practical application to communicate information. Topic 2. I would like to get more practice interviewing. I am much more comfortable writing independently. But I think people could be more interested in hearing the words and thoughts of others. I think once I get over the initial awkwardness...

Inside his office, instructor Scott McAleer displayed the results of his slow exposure camera. When his class talks about photographs as historical documents, he says, he has the class pose. The period style recreation takes seven minutes or more and produces pictures that are “creepy and old-timey looking.” He details some of the trade-offs of technology and we discuss the differing perspectives between journalists, who look constantly at what is happening now and next, and the historian’s world, immersed hundreds of years into the past. “I just don't think of modern events in the same way that I think about the discipline of history. To me, they're separate.” McAleer showed interest in my background and future, though I have no training in history or experience in any of his classes. He also was pleased and eager to share the success story of his former student Sean Kinsey, a graduate, a history major and member of his history co-curricular. Kinsey, he explained, completed a ...

  While the album might not slap, Will Smith certainly does. At real risk of detailing something, straight away, I would sincerely recommend against wasting your time with, as well as giving more undeserving attention to someone who is thirsty for it, here’s a quick rundown:  “Based on a True Story” is actually a misleading distraction from Smith’s real life assault on comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars award show. After the violence, Smith claimed on live TV that he was called on by God to be “a vessel for love” and called Jada his wife.   This, not the slap, is what surprised Jada– they had been living “completely separate lives” for years. Will Smith described this scenario as a “bad marriage for life,” according to the New York Times. Meanwhile the Washington Post writes Jada had been in a multi year relationship with her son's close friend, which she rebranded an "entanglement" and Will Smith is adamant was a “relationship.” Even Jada’s mom reported about the slap, “...

I’m sweating and it’s only 8 in the morning. The cold beer helps.  It’s winter, but the weather has the effect of donning a wetsuit in a hot car with the windows up. It’s turned my underarms into their own kind of swampland. I am far from alone. In fact, there hangs in the humid air the feeling of a peculiar far-flung family assemblage, or I should say – rendezvous. It's like being surrounded by cousins who are friendly, but so distant as to be unplaceable.  Perhaps they are amenable because there is a vague bond, but no actual shared history, and so no ancient percolating feuds to revisit. Tante Sue, to be sure, will cotton to no mess.  We are strangers, from around the world, snug, swaying, spinning and stomping with some local regulars and for the next few hours we will share something that one would struggle to recreate anywhere else on the globe.  It’s Mamou, Louisiana. North of New Orleans.  This is Fred’s Lounge, only open for a few hours on Saturday morn...