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Wednesday, February 2, 2022

SHHS Wind Ensemble perseveres, makes All-State Contact Originally published in The Chronicle Vol. 139 January 26, 2022

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JEREMY C. RUARK jruark@countrymedia.net

The St. Helens High School (SHHS) Wind Ensemble is back after performing at the 2022 Oregon Music Educators Association State Conference in Eugene. The students, under SHHS Band Director Noelle Freshner’s direction, performed for K-12 music educators from all over Oregon during the three-day All-State conference that began Jan. 14.

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The challenge But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the students almost didn’t make their performance. Freshner said that under the state’s pandemic health and safety regulations, each member of the ensemble needed to be either fully vaccinated or to have proof of a negative test within 72 hours of performing to be allowed to perform at the Eugene event. “This was not something that we were able to get for them locally. Nowhere in the county offered “trip” testing for people without symptoms, let alone a guarantee of results quickly enough to show proof at this event,” she said. “After calling around everywhere I found a private lab that told us they could test our students and have results back in time.” The week the SHHS Ensemble needed to test, there was a huge surge in testing across the state and the lab Freshner had contacted was swamped. She said the samples were taken and she hand-delivered them to the lab’s courier on Wednesday, Jan. 12 to assure time to get the samples tested by the lab. Somehow, the students’ samples were lost. A new plan was developed that required using a lab in Corvallis and not getting test results until late in the day. Freshner said that plan meant they’d have to put the students on the bus without results, not knowing if they were positive or negative. “If any students tested positive we would have had to isolate them and any other unvaccinated students till rides could come pick them

CLATSKANIE • CLATSKANIE SAFEWAY • HI SCHOOL PHARMACY IN CLATSKANIE • CLATSKANIE MARKET The St. Helens High School Wind Ensemble and Band Director Noelle Freshner.

up to take them home,” she said. “It seemed our only option, so we started making arrangements for the lab tech to meet our students early Friday morning.” The solution SHHS chaperone Karen Himes contacted Freshner with a new option, offering to give the ensemble students rapid COVID-19 test kits purchased but not used for another student trip. That option would have results before the students needed to get on the bus the following morning for the trip to Eugene. Freshner accepted Himes’ offer and quickly arranged for the students to get the testing completed. “The morning testing went well and by 8:30 we had confirmed all negative results for all our students and they were on their way to meet the band and load (on the bus),” she said. “In the end, we had 100% of our students there and on stage (in Eugene) to perform.” In Eugene The SHHS Ensemble was selected after applying to perform last spring. Vari-

ous recordings of the band and ensemble performing over the past couple of years were submitted. The school was notified this fall that the wind ensemble was selected to perform at the Eugene event. The SHHS Wind Ensemble performed four selections, including Polly Oliver by Thomas R. Root, Louisiana Parish Sketches by Julie Giroux, Hope Remains Within by Zachary Cairns, and Deus Ex Machina by Randall Standridge. “This set had a lot of contrast and highlighted many of our great players with exposed solos throughout,” she said. “It was just difficult enough to challenge the members of the band but be ready in time for a great performance at the event.” As the students performed, Freshner said she was proud and almost overwhelmed. “As someone who has attended this conference since becoming a music education major in college, performing at this event has always been on my bucket list,” she said. The audience at the Eugene concerts were music educators and students from across the state. “My own high school

band director was in the audience along with many colleagues who have never had the opportunity to hear our bands perform at contests or festivals in the past,” Freshner said. “I am so honored we got to do this, and so proud of how well they performed. It was everything I hoped it would be.” The experience in preparing and performing at the All-State event underscores the opportunity for students to gain life-long lessons, according to Freshner. “These past two years of COVID has been so hard on them, and on our program, but these are the students that put their heads down and persevered through it,” she said. “They easily could have just given up and quit, but they didn’t. They came out stronger and eager to work.” The Eugene performance in particular allowed the SHHS students to be heard by not only other high school directors but all of the local college directors. “The directors from PSU, OSU, UO, WOU, and SOU were all in the audience hearing our students perform,” she said. “This could be helpful to any of these students as they apply to

Courtesy photo

attend or audition to perform for any of these college ensembles in the future.” What’s next For the rest of this winter and into the early spring the bands will prepare for upcoming festival performances and finish off the basketball pep band season. “In May, over Memorial Day weekend, we are scheduled to perform in Disneyland,” Freshner said. “We will start getting ready for that parade performance in late April.” Freshner said she continues to look for performance opportunities outside of what the SHHS band members typically do each and every year. “I would love to be able to take our bands to perform in places like Washington D.C., New York, or Hawaii,” she said. “These trips are very expensive and take a ton of pre-planning to make happen, but it is something I want to see us do in the future.” The SHHS Wind Ensemble will be performing public concerts in March just before spring break. Follow the group on social media for upcoming performances.

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Mysterious creatures showing up along Oregon’s shoreline Originally published in The Chief Vol. 130 January 28, 2022 JEREMY C. RUARK jruark@countrymedia.net

Courtesy photo from the Seaside Aquarium

The pyrosomes are most commonly found in tropical waters, but stormy ocean conditions are known to bring the mysterious creatures as far north as Alaska.

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Folks that live in Clatskanie and Rainier are within an hour away from a walk along the sandy beaches of the Oregon Coast. And this week, people strolling along the beaches are discovering sea pickles. The Seaside Aquarium reports the sea pickles or sea squirts, known as pyrosomes are washing up all along the Oregon Coast. “We came across one on the beach yesterday, but we have reports of hun-

dreds down on the beach in Florence,” the aquarium’s Facebook post reads. People adding their comments to the aquarium’s post state that they have found the sea pickles at Cannon Beach, Tierra del Mar, Manzanita and Lincoln City. One person wrote, “No doubt from the volcano area off Tonga,” referring to a recent undersea eruption that recently trigger small tsunami waves along the Oregon Coast. The pyrosomes are most commonly found in tropical waters, but stormy ocean conditions are known to bring the mysterious creatures as far north as Alaska. As the ocean currents change with the seasons, beachcombers have been

finding an abundance of pyrosomes along the hightide line. The aquarium states in its post that Pyrosoma atlanticum is the most observed species found along Oregon beaches. They are described as a rigid, bumpy, pinkishgray tube about the size of a finger. Throughout the world pyrosomes can range in size from a few centimeters to over 30 feet long, but the common Pyrosoma atlanticum reaches a maximum length of two feet. “These totally tubular critters are actually known as a colonial tunicate, a mass of thousands of smaller organisms with a rigid notochord (a simplistic backbone),” the aquarium post reads.

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