mike mcreynolds

 Calling all Featured Writers, it's Poetry Month. Let's see a poem from you. Either one you wrote or one that means something to you. Here's one I wrote the other day: A Good Heart  I feel that I have a good heart.   I was going to say that I think I have a good heart,  to be modest,  but you don’t think with your heart.   You think with your head based on what you feel in your heart.   A good heart will drive your thinking  to make decisions with empathy and compassion.  A good heart’s empathic voice speaks with compassion.  What makes a good heart?   Is it who likes you?  Maybe.   Is it because you help others?  That depends on your motivation.  Are you doing it to help others or be thanked, making you feel better about yourself?   The answer will tell you a lot about yourself.   It seems to me that putting others first is the only way to show your good heart.   A good heart warms your whole body.   You feel the warmth in your chest every time you help anyone feel better.

  The Day That Changed My Life for Good BANG! What was that?! Oh shit, that was the tube in my front tire.  Thank God I was alone, so I didn’t offend anyone while I bitched out loud about my situation. That meant I had to walk my bike to my mother-in-law's trailer to Meadow Park off Conifer Street in north Corvallis, which was a good mile or two. Little did I know that I wasn’t going to make it.    It was warm and sunny for the first Sunday of November. I made it across Walnut Avenue with no problem.    I took that opportunity to light up a cigarette.  Little did I know it was going to be my last. I had to hold my front tire up. Basically doing a wheelie while walking my bike on the sidewalk heading east past a huge apartment complex.  As I was turning north onto a bike path, I noticed my right foot was slipping like I had stepped in oil. I stopped and didn’t feel anything slippery on my shoe, so I kept walking. My foot kept slipping.  My head was really confused by this phenomenon

Bring on Spring Term      Hope your break left you refreshed. I am now in my third term of journalism. This term I will be writing featured stories and starting my column about the experiences of students with disabilities and the challenges we face just to get to class, doing our homework and what can LB can do to help us get the same education as everyone else. I've been just resting during the break. Cheering the OSU Beaver Women's basketball teams march to the Elite Eight. They soared much higher than pre-season poll said they would go. Picking them to finish tenth in the final Pac-12 season. They finished as one of the top eight teams in the country.     It was a honor to have my first story appear in the February print issue of The Commuter. I also had a story posted on the online version of The Commuter. My major is Creative Writing but my focus is on Journalism.      My three goals for this Spring term: 1) Meet all my deadlines. I didn't meet that goal last term and

You Need to Start to Notice All the Art . ! When was the last time you stopped looking at your phone or laptop and saw the art that is inside and outside LBCC? What do you mean you haven’t seen any art? It’s literally everywhere you look.  How did all this art get in and around Chinook Hall, Benton Center, and our Main Linn-Benton College campuses? Well that is a good question. You cannot really know by reading the tags mounted next to the art installations. The names of the people on the tags who created the paintings, statues, or sculptures don’t tell the whole story.  Let’s look at three art installations. First we’ll look at artist Kris Mitchell’s White Oak “Learning Tree” in the lobby of the Benton Center. Next came the main LBCC campus’s north entrance art sculpture that was completed while the building of Chinook Hall. Finally,  Albany master artist Bill Shumway, LBCC staff members Marc Rose and Renee McKitterick, members of the Benton Center Arts Committee tell the story about

Inside the Darkside         “You don’t understand the power of the Darkside.” Darth Vader couldn't have said it any better. Open since April 1, 2005, Darkside Cinema is the only independently owned and operated movie theater in Corvallis. They play first run, indie, international, and documentary films.  Some of you will remember their previous arthouse movie theater on Jackson Avenue: Avalon Cinema, open from 1997 to 2007.  Paul Turner, owner of the Darkside, said he handed his contractor all his concepts of what he wanted the cinema to look like – drawn on napkins! The contractor then used those to put the official blueprints together. Then came the process of getting all the permits together. Once that was done, that’s when the real work began.  The finished product is something Paul, Joey Bauer, Kellan Holte, and Caitlin Stow are proud to say, “That is where we work!”  The atmosphere is classic with posters of cinema like Citizen Kane. They have velvet pictures of old Holly