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About Vernonia's voice. (Vernonia, OR) 2007-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 2009)
area news Columbia Chorale Welcomes New Director Tuesday Rupp is the new Artistic Director of Columbia Cho- rale of Oregon. Ms. Rupp, who holds a Music Degree from Boston Univer- sity and a Master’s Degree in Con- ducting from Portland State Uni- Tuesday Rupp - the new Director of Columbia Chorale. versity, is a Portland native. She is currently also the Musical Director at Milwaukie Presbyterian Church and the Artistic Director of the clas- sical cross-over ensemble Roxy Consort. Rupp is very excited about the Columbia Chorale’s upcoming holiday season of performances, “A Tradition of Noels,” which will be held on December 12, at Milwaukie Presbyterian Church at 7:30 and on December 13 at the St. Helens High School at 3:00 PM. “This will be a fun and festive and really lively performance featuring seasonal music from all over the world,” said Rupp in a recent phone interview. Columbia Chorale will also be per- forming at the Grotto in Portland on December 27 at 8:00 PM, as part of the annual “Festival of Lights.” Rupp really enjoys the community chorus experience, and the power of voice as an instrument. “On the surface, we’re just making music,” she explains. “But with a choir, we have a chance with words to create a message. We can ex- press joy, anger-- express a whole gamut of emotions. The things we feel, the whole range of human ex- perience, we have a chance to ex- press through our performances.” Rupp said she joined Co- lumbia Chorale because her “...ex- perience and approach to making music was compatible.” She says her goals as an artist and with the ensembles she works with are to “... not just expose the community to art but the wonderful presence that music brings to our lives.” Rupp and Columbia Cho- rale are also preparing for a concert in March which will be a tribute to Cole Porter and composers from the Jazz era. “For me, there isn’t an instrument more powerful and ex- traordinary than the human voice,” says Rupp. “And we try to make our chorale concerts as accessible and user friendly for our audience. If someone is not familiar with choir music performances, this is a great way to experience something new.” Columbia Chorale of Or- egon is open to all interested com- munity members and meets to prac- tice at the St. Helens high school on Thursday evenings from 7-9 PM. For more information, you can con- tact Betsy Galloway at 503-543- 2915. The Meier Site Lecture november 2009 PCC Forum Held in St. Helens By April Bamburg 7 PCC classes],” she said. “I would like to see some tutoring for the classes you’re providing out here.” “When you’re talking about people in Columbia County, these people out here are not exactly following through with the plan of going to college right after high school gradu- ation,” she said. “I can very easily see people being very hesitant to pay $7.60 to ride the bus to PCC for tutoring.” There are several factors that can be challenges to PCC in determining which cours- es will be offered to Columbia County residents each term, Rule said. One is that classes re- quire a minimum enrollment to schedule them, although there have been instances where PCC has held classes for local students at lower than the minimum enrollment, sometimes with as few as three students. Another challenge is that it can be challenging to find venues to hold courses, as rent can be prohibitive, and not all venues are suitable for instruction. The third issue is that finding community members quali- fied to act as PCC instructors can be challeng- ing. Currently, Portland Community Col- lege offers the following services locally: Math, English, Social Studies, and Art classes held in Columbia County, access to Teleweb DVD at the Vernonia Learning Center, the Co- lumbia County Rider shuttle, which runs from Columbia County to PCC several times a day and a partnership in the Regional Public Safety Training Center Project targeted for Scappoose. For the 2008-2009 academic year, 1,058 Columbia County residents attended the Rock Creek Campus, and there are 372 attend- ing this term, said Meryl Lipman, Community Relations/PR Manager for the Rock Creek Cam- pus. She said that when the St. Helens Center closed in 2001, it was for budgetary reasons. Scholarships available to local students PCC is offering seven scholarships for $2,500 each to students attending in the winter term and taking at least six credits. Residents of Columbia, Clatsop and Tillamook counties are eligible. “These scholarships will cover a full term’s classes,” Lipman said. Applications are due November 6 at 5 p.m. For more information on these schol- arships, contact Erin Riley, PCC Foundation Scholarship Coordinator at (503) 977-4385, or via e-mail at eriley@pcc.edu. When Portland Community College representatives met with community members in St. Helens on October 21, David Rule, presi- dent of the Rock Creek campus, promised that within two years, county residents would see increased opportunities through the college. Since 2001, county residents attending classes at Portland Community College have had to travel to the Rock Creek, Sylvania or Cascade campuses for classes, to take online classes or, in some cases, have been able to take courses offered locally, but the college has not had a strong presence in the county. Now, col- lege officials want to change that. Officials at Portland Community Col- lege are working with local politicians, school districts and local businesses to create an aca- demic master plan for course offerings to ben- efit attendees from Columbia County. Discussion so far has centered on ways to create an academic strategic plan that is sus- tainable, meaning that if students want to regis- ter for a series of classes, they can sign up for the first in the series and know that the future classes will be offered. “By December, we will have a broad outline of an academic plan,” Rule said. The next step will occur during the first half of win- ter term, when the college will develop a model for course delivery including how and where courses will be delivered. At this time, the college is not offering classes in Vernonia, but students in St. Helens and Scappoose High Schools participate in the Portland Area Vocational Technical and Edu- cational Consortium. Last year, Rule said, be- tween 93 and 95 local students used PAVTEC. A handful of community members attended the forum, and several spoke up. “People get frustrated with [PCC] not serving the rural areas,” said St. Helens resident Al Petersen, who suggested that the college could learn from another community college headquartered in Pendleton. “Blue Mountain Community College serves an area twice as big [as PCC],” he said. “There could be some les- sons learned [from] BMCC’s outreach beyond where the central campuses are located. That’s a policy decision we’re glad you’re trying to This article has been published at April’s web site, http://www.examiner.com/x-19696-Colum- change.” bia-County-Buzz-Examiner.” “Many feel that Columbia County is a cash cow for PCC taxes,” commented Brian Little, a St. Helens resident who is on the board of the Columbia Learning Center, located in St. Helens. Little also said that the CLC Board would be interested in partnering with PCC to offer services. An alumnus of PCC asked that tutor- ing services be offered locally for courses that county residents are taking. “I’ve had to do the traveling, and there’s no tutoring locally [for The October 16 th lecture at Scappoose Peterson Grade School presented by Dr. Kenneth Ames of Portland State University should have been titled, “Things Are Not What They Seem” instead of, “Iron and Ce- dar: The Meier Site and the Archeology of the Lower Columbia River”. His lively presentation of information about the local Chinook Native American history was punctuated with lots of slides that today look like beautiful empty watershed spaces. In the past until around the mid-1800’s they supported multiple huge cedar plank dwellings of a dense Native American population. As Dr. Ames expressed it, if only they had built on basalt pilings so their buildings would have been pre- served, then this area would have been as famous a tourist draw as the Southwest Pueblo Indian ruins. The 1833 malaria epidemic which wiped out the local populations was the “…worst demographic disaster in the history of the world,” according to Dr. Ames The area was a hub for a complex society comprised of three language groups who traded together and up and down the coast, and was possibly home to the densest population of Native Americans in North America. With their huge buildings, they were able to store tons of food for the winter and for trade. They smoked food stored in the rafters, and built cellars they filled with baskets of grains and vegetables. As an example, the Meier site is uncovering the story of a plank dwelling that was home to probably over 200 people at its peak, as well as their stored food and trade goods. This home was divided by status and wealth levels, so there were three different economic strata living under one roof, at least until it was someone’s turn for Coffin Rock. Next time you are strolling by the river, be careful where you walk. Remember, you are walking on his- tory. For more information about local archeology sites or to find out what you can do, contact: Cindy Ede at 503-543- 3065 or coede@opusnet.com. Meyer’s Auto Body 493 Bridge St., Vernonia 503-429-0248 Set your sights on Meyer’s Auto Body