Journalism 1189

This class has made online learning pretty simple! It was a flexible class, that broadened my blogging in general. Prior to his class I'd never written a blog, but after a few it became pretty simple! There aren't any limits or rules as to what you can do with them! You can just let your imagination run! This class has been great as far as scheduling, with it being online it was easy to work around the other things in my schedule, and still be able to get assignment complete. The instructor gave us a lot of freedom in our writing, and let us write about whatever we seemed to be interested in. I wish that the instructor had a blog on here as well, it would have helped guide us, seeing as many of us had never blogged before. I also would have enjoyed going a little more in depth with the background of blogging, although i suppose our text could have helped with that. I (as every other college student enrolled in this class) loved that there was no text to be purchased! It saved us money, although I think a book form of our "text" may have been pretty interesting to read.
So now as this class comes to a close I want to end saying it was a great semester, and I learned a lot from everyone's posts! Enjoy the summer!

Health Craze?

Lately it seems everywhere you go there are "alternative options". For example you're walking through the grocery store looking at produce, you're feeling pretty dang good about yourself for just pulling yourself away from the cookie and chip aisle long enough to grab some bananas. Success! You've gotten something healthy to balance out the rest of the junk food in your cart, then just as you're rounding the corner you notice the organic foods section. This is like the healthy of healthy! But it costs so much more. So do you go with the healthy bananas, or the super healthy organic bananas?

Upon leaving the grocery store still upset about the prices of the organic bananas (if there's less done to the product making it more healthy then why do they charge twice the price?), you hit up a fast food restaurant for a quick dinner fix. You look at the menu and try to decide between the nuggets or the double cheeseburger, but then haunting you on the next menu panel over is the "healthy choice!" panel filled with milks, juices, salads and fruit.

After being guilted into the salad and milk option you head home and get ready to pop in a movie after a long day. Well what's a movie without popcorn, right? You open the cupboard to grab the salty treat pop it in the microwave and head to the dvd shelf to pick one out. There in plain sight you see your old work out video you bought a few months ago, still wrapped in plastic waiting for you to fulfill that promise to yourself. 

You reluctantly head back to the microwave and toss aside the bag popcorn so that it doesn't distract you while starting your routine.

Sound familiar? Lately Many Americans are being heavily influenced by the media to count their carbs, calories and snacks during the day. There's just about every type of diet imaginable out there. Health in America is hitting an all time high. Suddenly the price of health food has sky rocketed, and newer healthier options are being brought out all the time. People are becoming more self aware of their health and strive to better themselves. It only seems natural that this nationwide epidemic will continue to spread, and more and more healthy foods will become readily available to one and to all. 

Enough is Enough

Rough & tough, big and bad, give up your lunch money! Thats what comes to mind when you think of a bully, right? It seems like as time goes on bullying has become more and more acceptable, maybe not when put in terms that way, but think about it! The violence in our society is rising, and at what cost?

Movies? If there's no fighting, no blood, no gore, it's not a good movie, right? No one wants to see the movie about little bunnies in a world where nothing goes wrong! They want action, horror and humor (which is sometimes a little too crude).

Music? Listen to the lyrics we're so into! Most of the pop/rap/hip hop music is not only demeaning, but can be just ruthless! 

Even TV! The news is just awful, everything is about missing children or college students. Violent attacks, robberies, etc. Sitcoms? Someone gets into a fight at least once a week...

As the years pass these things just seem to become more acceptable. It becomes the normal! Well what kind of message does this send to the younger generations? If parents don't screen what their children are watching they're going to catch what is going on. Even here, my two year old nephew got beat up by another little boy at daycare just last week. Two! He went home with a black eye and a gash out of his mouth! 

The violence in our society rises more and more every year, but what can we do about it? It's impossible to screen all violence from little children, even half of their TV shows have bad guys and bullies! But what cost will this force our families to pay in the long run? Recently in Cambridge was a guest speaker talking about this topic, what it's like to grow up being bullied. Although there is no outright solution to bullying and violence I think it's time we start to tone down! Lets take care of our future generations. They shouldn't have to pay the cost for our actions!

(Just over a week later black eye gone, but still sporting a lovely cut on the mouth)

Another 1.1 Million in cuts for Cambridge

Cambridge Isanti school district has recently approved another $1.1 million in cuts for the next school year. That is equivalent to up to four full time positions, or 24 hours per day in staffing.

This is only the first round of cuts (totaling $1,134,953) and more cuts are expected to take place in the school board meeting on April 23.

Bruce Novak, the district 911 superintendent, expressed that "Every reduction we make impacts tha classroom." The preperations began last November when it became known that cuts had to be made due to state funding. Novak continued on expressing the need of creating a long term budget plan, rather than taking it year by year. A four day school year has also been considered in order to save expenses in bus routes and electricity. 

Dan Fosse, of the Cambridge Isanti school board said "We must find ways to save money to keep from making budget reductions." Even the projected million in cuts might not be enough in the long run. 

Various projects will continue to occur the next few years. A $494,200 bid was just accepted to work on remodeling the Cambridge-Isanti education center. This remodel is to improve the ventilation system, and make the building a little more safe for any employees or visitors.  As another project the bid is still out for repairing the high school parking lot.

Novak expressed to the public that it becomes more and more difficult to make the cuts over time, because with every cut that puts more pressure on the other staff to pick up what was left behind. For more information on how the cuts will effect each building you can take a look at http://isanticountynews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5686&Itemid=1 

Herman's Town

Herman's Bakery on a Saturday morning is the place to be when you live in Cambridge. Immediately upon walking in the door you're caught in a new world. An old fashioned bakery lined with fresh baked breads, pies, and decorative cookie jars, coffee mugs, and of course the wonderful smell of fresh baked pastries and coffee on the side. After choosing what exactly will fit your sweet tooth for the day you head into the next room and find a place to sit. More times than not the tables are all pushed together to create a larger seating environment, and booths are cluttered with families toting along extra belonging to keep the little ones entertained as they finish their breakfast. Newspapers are sprawled across the tables, and conversations carried over from table to table. The talk of the town could be anything; property taxes, school district cuts, or even something as simple as where is the best place in town to grab a drink after work.  The employees all wear either red or pink with a pink striped apron over it, and are often seen chatting with the regulars as they finish their morning rounds.  Although it's not an official meeting this is something working into the schedules of many people throughout town. They can all just sit down, speak what's on their minds, and enjoy each other’s company.

"Most of the regulars have lived in town for quite some time,” commented Rebekah Benjamin, an employee at the bakery. “many we know their names, and what they want even before they get here."

They seem to be optimists and believe that Cambridge has great potential, but think we're expanding quickly and the economy can't seem to keep up. Never the less none of them have made plans to leave, intend to keep their Saturday morning tradition alive. So if you're ever around town swing by, grab a treat, and chat with some of the locals. 

Cambridge

Cambridge

Cambridge is a small town compared to the twin cities where I grew up in, so when my parents drug me and my sisters up her five years ago it didn't seem very promising. "There's nothing to do!" was often the complaint around my household. Luckily we do live in town, but even then it was what? The movie theatre and the park? WOW! That's exciting! No wonder we're known for all of our meth users...

Now that I've lived here for some time I've come to realize that there is a lot more to do. For one we just built a new community center (which I won't spend a lot of time on because I know that Craig has already covered that), or if you're religious there are all sorts of youth groups through out the town, or there is always the ever popular Target and Wal-Mart hang out spots. Sporting events are HUGE in small towns such as this, football games on friday nights in the fall, basketball games in the winter and of course baseball all fall. Coffee shops are prosperous in Cambridge there's Coffee Ambrosia with their ever famous snowmen, or Cafe Caffine with delicious smoothies.

Otherwise if none of those are really for you, you could travel just a few miles further out of town and hit up Isanti's bowling alley, Rendezvous Coffee (sometimes offering both delicious drinks and live music!)  and numerous parks (perfect for sledding in the winter). 

Although no town is perfect Cambridge and Isanti strive to keep the best for their students. The city offers a lot more than initially percieved to try and deter drug use throughout the community. So if you've never taken a good look at Cambridge, stop and take a look around. It's not so bad.

Blog?

Blogging is by definition an online journal, or a log of published thoughts on a web page, but there is much more to it than that. There are many different types of blogs, which is part of what makes is so appealing to many people. You generally start with a basic entry, which could be something personal, something persausive, or at least something that others can relate to. Then once you have your basic idea down you can go with it wherever you want. You can add video clips, links to other sites, and even photography to emphasize your point.
The most enjoyable part of blogging for me is being able to add my own input to topics that I believe are important. I also really like that you can add photographs to your blog. I'm a huge fan of visual interpretation, and like to look at things from a different perspective and photography is an often under estimated form of that.
One downfall for me is that in order to keep your readers attention you have to keep the entry short, sweet, and to the point. I tend to drag out story a little more than I should, but that will only get better in time.