The Western Howl – Page 71 – The Western Howl

I traveled to the city for spring break and this is what happened

Cole Boeck | Copy Editor

Contact the author at howlcopyeditor@wou.edu

Western’s Board Game Club has started a scavenger hunt that encourages students to explore around campus and learn about different resources. Co-hosted by the Residence Hall Association, Star Trek Club and ASL Club, this event is composed of two sessions. The sessions are divided into weeks, starting on Mondays and ending Sundays, with new clues and puzzles introduced each week.
The first session runs through weeks one through three of spring term and the second session will run through weeks six through eight.
In addition to the physical scavenger hunts in which participants search for clues on campus, there is a virtual version for those who are remote. The virtual hunt encourages students to learn about which resources are accessible online. Each week has a different set of puzzles which can be found at bapac.club.
Week one included five individual puzzles, covering a wide range of genres including sudoku, jigsaw and nonograms. The event is ongoing and has prizes at the end for student participants, though staff and faculty are also encouraged to take part. This event provides fun trivia and an opportunity to learn more about Western’s campus. Take a breather and solve some puzzles.

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Utilizing Kale

These three simple recipes easily incorporate kale into one’s diet

Jude Bokovoy | Lifestyle Editor

Contact the author at howllifestyle@wou.edu

These three recipes were created to include optimal amounts of kale by Jude Bokovoy and can be found on instagram @judy.the.foody.

Kale is an easily accessible vegetable with great nutritional value. According to Healthline, kale helps lower cholesterol, risk of heart disease and inflammatory responses. It is also high in fiber, antioxidants and vitamin C.What really stands out is that kale has the ability to reduce the likelihood of developing at least five different types of cancer. The catch is, kale is typically sold in huge quantities and has a short shelf life.

One of the most common ways to consume kale is by packing it into a smoothie. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t have to be a green smoothie. One can easily hide the vegetable taste with just the right amount of fruit. Below is a smoothie recipe that incorporates both a fruity taste and a healthy amount of vegetables. One of the biggest benefits of kale smoothies is that one can freeze the kale beforehand, which is a useful way to reduce waste if one has a large bag of fresh kale that can’t be used before it goes bad.

KALE SMOOTHIE

Start to finish: Three minutes

Yields: One smoothie

⅓ cup of kale

2 small mandarin oranges

⅛ cup frozen mixed berries

5 tablespoons of Dah! mango probiotic yogurt

6 tablespoons of Organic Life Green & Clean juice

Put ingredients in a blender. Blend to the consistency of one’s liking. For a fruitier taste add a banana or another kind of berry. For a veggie heavy smoothie add chard or any other leafy green.

The next recipe is a comforting omelet. The amount of ingredients can sound overwhelming, but rest assured, it can be made in a short amount of time. This cheesy, vegetable filled omelet will warm one’s heart while fueling the body.

VEGGIE OMELET

Start to finish: Seven minutes

Yields: One omelet

3 Eggs

Handful of kale, chopped

4 grape tomatoes, chopped

2 slices of ham, chopped

Sprinkle of sharp cheddar cheese

Sriracha or ketchup, optional

Warm butter or cooking spray in a small frying pan. Then crack and scramble eggs into the pan when ready. Add the rest of the ingredients, then flip half of the mixture over. Cover with lid. Serve with sauces of your choice. Top off your omelet with sriracha and ketchup for a spicy and flavorful taste.

Last is a recipe for a decadent mushroom and kale ravioli. Ravioli is a highly underutilized pasta dish because people fail to realize that it is so quick and easy to make. Kale is a great addition to any pasta, especially ravioli. All one has to do is add washed and chopped kale to their sauce as it is cooking.

MUSHROOM KALE RAVIOLI

Start to finish: 15 minutes

Yields: One serving

½ Bag of Giovanni Rama mushroom ravioli

¼ Jar of Mezzetta roasted garlic sauce

Handful of kale

Red chili flake

Boil five cups of water. Add ravioli to a pot of boiling water for around four minutes. Simultaneously pour sauce into a large warm frying pan. Add red chili flakes while the sauce is cooking to create some spice. Add kale and cooked ravioli to the sauce. Cover with lid until warmed to one’s liking. Then plate.

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A guide to finding your music routine

Having a playlist for each daily task can make the day more enjoyable

Jude Bokovoy | Lifestyle Editor

Contact the author at howllifestyle@wou.edu

As an employed student-athlete, it is important that I am able to stay on task, which resultsing in what many would consider to be a borderline obsession with routine. Recently, I have found that listening to music has helped me tremendously in maintaining focus. When I am doing online school work, I make sure to put on blue light glasses and play a lo-fi playlist catered to the exact homework or study activity I am doing. By doing this continually I am able to stay on task. When I study without my glasses or lo-fi music, I tend to feel off kilter and face more distractions. Spotify has an abundance of lo-fi playlists catered to studying, reading, writing and more.

I also listen to music to encourage myself to cook by putting on a playlist I made specifically for cooking. Music makes mundane chores — like doing dishes, wiping down counters or laundry — go by much faster.

Specificity is key. I work as a delivery driver and am able to stay concentrated by listening to a very specific artist for the duration of my shift. When I listen to a wide variety of artists and genres while delivering, I tend to get side tracked and forget the addresses and items.

The newest music involvement I have implemented into my routine has impacted my overall mood every day. Every morning when I make coffee, I put on a mellow worship playlist and do simple yoga stretches. This puts me in a positive and relaxed mood. Starting the day off with a routine that allows me to worship and gets my blood flowing has made a huge positive difference in my day-to-day life.

Finding a good playlist for working out can be tricky. Most people want something that keeps them going while doing various exercises, but I tend to stick with the Spotify featured playlists in the workout genre. When I go on runs, my guilty pleasure is to listen to a 2000’s workout playlist. The nostalgia takes me back to elementary school P.E. classes — except now I am faster and actually have a boyfriend to sing about.

Figuring out one’s music preferences can be a step in the right direction when it comes to creating a consistent daily routine and is incredibly mentally stimulating.

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Chamber music for a new audience

Contemporary string quartet, Thalea, performs at Western

Camille Lenning | Entertainment Editor

Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu

The internationally acclaimed music group, Thalea String Quartet, made an appearance on campus on April 2. In a performance made possible by the Smith Fine Arts Series, Thalea wowed the audience with their contemporary take on chamber music.

The group began by gracing Rice Auditorium with a piece by contemporary composer Akshaya Avril Tucker, called “Radha in the Forest.” Violinist Kumiko Sakamoto introduced the song by reading from the program note written by Tucker, which described the emotions portrayed by the composition as “delirious joy, floating above painful loneliness.”

The piece featured soprano vocals from Sakamoto, a first for the chamber group. Her operatic voice filled the room with a bittersweet song as she painted the scene of the classical Sanskrit heroine Radha pine for her lover, Krishna, in a cold winter forest in 2020.

Thalea’s concert program included a rendition of the iconic B-side medley, “The Long One,” on the Beatles’ album, Abbey Road. Guitar and drum solos were transposed for violin and cello, and musicians Christopher Whitley and Titilayo Ayangade did not disappoint in their renditions of the iconic Beatles tunes.

Ayangade then introduced their next piece, Florence B. Price’s “Five Folk Songs in Counterpoint.” An inspirational Black artist, Price’s composition includes five popular American melodies, “Cavalry,” “Clementine,” “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” “Shortnin’ Bread” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Each song spurred quiet declarations of recognition, and the latter song featured an impressive cello-forward performance from Ayangade.

Violist Lauren Spaulding introduced the next work, a folk-inspired piece by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. The piece consisted of four movements that aimed to capture the spirit of America, which Dvořák came to appreciate after his time in the country. The joyful piece was clearly a favorite of Spaulding’s, who more than once rose from her chair, swept up in the music.

When they had finished their main set, Thalea granted the audience an encore that required their participation.

“There are only two rules,” Whitley said of the piece, “when we clap, you clap. When we don’t clap, you don’t clap.”

What followed was a song that featured the talents of all four musicians in bouts of solos, while the audience clapped to the beat as directed by those onstage.

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Upsets destroy the perfect brackets

Unpredictable upsets and pairings leaves the title of national champions to anyone

Mollie Herron | News Editor

Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu

March is over, which means the infamous NCAA Division I basketball tournament, March Madness is coming to an end. On April 4, 2022 the championship game for men’s basketball will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana at Ceasar’s Superdome. The women’s teams will play their championship game on April 3 at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Every year, competitions are held to see who can make the most correct guesses as to who will win each game of the tournament. Large brackets are filled out and entered into different game websites where winners are awarded prizes or money.

The NCAA tracks the “perfect brackets” that people fill out this year, but unfortunately there are no perfect brackets left. The competition started with 20 million brackets that were filled out online for the men’s tournament, but after just the first day the number dropped to 192. With University of Richmond beating University of Iowa, New Mexico State University beating University of Connecticut and Saint Peter’s University beating University of Kentucky in huge upsets, only those 192 were left in the competition for the perfect bracket. The upsets continued and started taking down brackets, and after the University of Notre Dame took out University of Alabama, there were only four brackets left until Iowa State University beat Louisiana State University and there were officially no more perfect brackets.

For the women’s tournament there are also no more perfect brackets after starting with over 1 million. After their first day the number of contenders dropped to 28, and after the entire first round only three remained. After the upset of Creighton University beating Iowa there was only a single perfect bracket left until Iowa State beat Louisiana State ending the possibility of a perfect bracket this year.

Based on bracket numbers, more people are interested in the men’s tournament, and this year, due to so many upsets, there were arguments for why every team in the Sweet 16 could end up being in the Final Four. Analysts are saying Texas Tech University has the best defense while University of Miami has all the parts to make for a great offense. Gonzaga University was the betting favorite and most people predicted them to make it to the Final Four, but the fact that Duke University is one of the only three teams to beat them this season made their potential matchup unpredictable.

The Sweet 16 played their games and viewers watched a few incredible upsets and we saw Gonzaga lose to University of Arkansas and not make it to the Elite Eight. All season Gonzaga was revered by fans and analysts as being one of the best teams and had a real shot at winning it all, but they fell short and lost 74-68.

St Peter’s ranked No. 15 beat No. 3 Purdue University 67-64 so they could play University of North Carolina in their Elite Eight game after their own upset of 73-66 against University of California Los Angeles. After their games, Miami and University of Kansas advanced to the Elite Eight as well. Duke, as expected by many, took out Texas Tech to get them to their match against Arkansas.

In the fight for the Final Four, Duke beat Arkansas 78-69; Villanova University beat University of Houston 50-44; North Carolina beat St Peter’s 69-49; and Kansas beat Miami 76-50. Villanova is set to play Kansas on Saturday April 2 and later the same day Duke plays North Carolina to see who will earn their spot in the championship game.

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Wallowing in Wallows

Indie music scene gains “Tell Me That It’s Over” Spring release

Mikayla Coleman | Managing Editor

Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu

On March 25, the indie pop band Wallows released their sophomore album Tell Me That It’s Over. Wallows is made up of three members, Dylan Minnette (who you might recognize as Clay from the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why”), Braeden Lemasters and Cole Preston. The album consists of ten songs, crossing and combining several different aspects of the indie pop, folk and rock genres in a unique and artistic way.

“Hard to Believe” — I enjoy how the melody kind of climbs up and down. It is a really pleasing scale. The guitar is pretty grunge, but the bridge has a really light hearted whistle break with some interesting synth-type orchestral moments. It’s a good contrast. The lyrics and vocals are very simplistic in nature, but I think that adds to the song overall.

“I Don’t Want to Talk” — The whistle hook at the beginning of the song reminds me a lot of the band Dayglow. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the harmonica at first but it has grown on me. The lyrics describe the ending of a relationship and wanting to have a clean, quick cut off rather than stretching out the break up process. It does a good job of explaining a specific experience that is often hard to articulate.

“Especially You” — I think that the modulation of the synth takes the cake in this one. It compliments the rest of the song really well. The lyrics are again, very simple, but very relatable. I mean, who isn’t confused by people all of the time? The guitar is much cleaner on this, making it a great beachy road trip song.

“At the End of the Day” — I love Braeden’s vocals. No offense to Dylan, but I have always been more into Braeden as a vocalist. These lyrics have a good amount of complexity that makes the song more personal. It does an interesting job of interpreting the “If you love her, let her go” trope.

“Marvelous” — This is much more upbeat and fast than the previous tracks. Not sure if I am down with the repeated use of “hole.” Stadium synth came in clutch. This song sounds like how my brain feels when I have an ADHD episode.

“Permanent Price” — Definitely feeling more of a folk-indie vibe from the use of strings. Not my favorite. I feel like it’s a bit cookie-cutter in comparison to the other songs that have something special sprinkled in. The harmonies make it feel like something from the early 2000s.

“Missing Out” — Another slow one. The beginning is a little bit misleading. It starts with a nice classic piano scale, but takes a sharp turn to a more rock-type and autotune-diluted chorus. This variation is interesting, but I don’t think that it is my cup of tea.

“Hurts Me” — 80’stastic! I’m getting funky with the synth in the beginning. I could see someone humorously singing this in the context of struggling with a vape addiction. Makes me feel like going to a roller rink after struggling through a week of finals.

“That’s What I Get” — The percussion makes the difference in this one. Also the staccato strings in the bridge. The lyrics are pretty basic and it’s hard to figure out if it is in an iconic way or if it’s just another stereotypical love song. I am leaning towards the latter.

“Guitar Romantic Search Adventure” — We got some Dylan vocals! Very fitting for the mood of this song. I am very down with it. I think that it tops all the rest of the slower songs in the album. The piano and synth together give a very ethereal, Beach House kind of feel.

I am a longtime fan of Wallows and I have significantly enjoyed their early work. “Tell Me That It’s Over” was able to simultaneously maintain inclusion of things that made me enjoy them initially and also spread their wings, adventure and experiment with different styles and instruments. 7.5/10.

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Springtime romance

Season two of “Bridgerton” brings love and angst to our screens

Camille Lenning | Entertainment Editor

Contact the author at howlentertainment@wou.edu

This review contains spoilers.

“Bridgerton” season two premiered on March 25 and has already reached the number one spot on Netflix’s “Top 10 in the U.S. Today” list.

Overall, “Bridgerton” is a great show to get anyone into a springtime mood. The colorful clothes, garden sets and lavish parties are enough to get even the most critical of people excited about the change of seasons. The marketing team was spot on with their release date.

The plot this season, while a little over complicated and slow-paced at times, was entertaining enough to keep me enthralled. The angsty romance between Anthony Bridgerton and Kate Sharma alone was a fantastic representation of an enemies-to-lovers storyline — which helped keep things moving at slow points.

Side plots were in abundance this season, including Eloise Bridgerton’s discovery of the feminist movement, added money troubles for the Featherington’s and even more Lady Whistledown drama. These plots were fairly compelling, but they could’ve cut much of the filler and still come out with a good season.

My only real issue with season two was the consistent lack of communication between characters. While it certainly stoked the fires of drama, I can’t help but think the plot could’ve been simplified by just having characters talk to one another. The bond between sisters Kate and Edwina Sharma, for example, is often tested throughout the season. Kate refuses to tell Edwina she had feelings for Anthony, who is courting Edwina, which unnecessarily drives them apart during the climax.

Altogether, this season sated my hunger for a springtime period piece, but it was by no means a masterpiece of television. 6/10.

Western Oregon University’s Land Acknowledgement
Western Oregon University in Monmouth, OR is located within the traditional homelands of the Luckiamute Band of Kalapuya. Following the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855 (Kalapuya etc. Treaty), Kalapuya people were forcibly removed to reservations in Western Oregon. Today, living descendants of these people are a part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians.

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WOU scavenger hunt

Utilizing Kale

A guide to finding your music routine

Chamber music for a new audience

Upsets destroy the perfect brackets

Wallowing in Wallows

Springtime romance

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