Highland Park band: Recent events

May 25, 2017 elliotwallarticles Leave a comment

The Highland Park Senior High band has had many exciting, recent events. One was the trip over spring break to San Francisco. The band traveled to California to participate in an event called “Music in the Parks,” which is a competition hosted at a school right outside of Santa Cruz. This trip was not only a band trip, but an opportunity to visit many different tourist destinations including: the Twin Peaks, Fisherman’s Wharf (Pier 39), Chinatown, California’s “Great America” Amusement Park, and even the Cable Car museum. The trip was definitely worth the money, and the Highland Park band also won 2nd place in the competition.

Another recent event of Highland’s band, was the experience of marching from Rice Park, down to the Saints stadium. Many different schools went back to back marching down the streets of downtown St. Paul including: Central, Humboldt, Washington, Murray, Randolph Heights, and many more. After the event, the students got to enjoy the Saints game at CHS field.

photo taken from: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1DG2-jnyeOc/maxresdefault.jpg

The last event that the band will take part of, is on May 25th, when the spring concert will take place. The Scot’s band, Honors Band, Symphonic band, and Jazz band will all play. All these bands, and their teacher, Mr. Matuzak, have been working hard all year to have the best performance!

News, World

California family kicked off Delta flight

May 25, 2017 gabbyanders Leave a comment

On April 23, 2017, a California family of 4 were kicked off a Delta flight en route from Maui to Los Angeles. Brittany and Brian Schear from Huntington Beach, CA boarded a Delta flight with their two small children. Issues began when the family was asked to give up their two-year-old son’s, Grayson, seat. The family refused, seeing as they had payed for the seat they didn’t see a reason to give it up.

The Schears originally purchased the ticket for their 18-year-old son Mason, but then decided to send him home early so their 2-year-old could have a seat. The family had explain the situation to the ticket agent and the ticket agent accommodated the families needs and arranged for the four of them to sit together.

A flight attend had ask the Schears to give up their 2-year-old’s seat, and when they refused the Delta flight attendant demanded they give up the seat. Again refusing, the family was then threatened with jail time and having their child put in foster care.

Brittany Schear began filming the encounter on her cellphone. You can hear the flight attention repeatedly asking them to move their child, and Brian clearly distraught and trying to stay calm and reason with the Delta staff. You can hear a female employee say as the Schears refused to exit the plane, “You have to give up the seat or you’re going to jail, your wife is going to jail and they’ll take your kids from you.” While Brian told a Delta staff member, “You’re saying you’re gonna give that away to someone else when I paid for that seat? That’s not right. You need to do what’s right. I bought the seat and you need to just leave us alone.”

After The video was released Delta responded saying, “We are sorry for the unfortunate experience our customers had with Delta, and we’ve reached out to them to refund their travel and provide additional compensation. Delta’s goal is to always work with customers in an attempt to find solutions to their travel issues. That did not happen in this case and we apologize.”

News, School Life, World

New school lunches requirements

May 25, 2017 masoneischens Leave a comment

Many children complain about the healthy school lunches and how to change them, but a lot of parents with children in schools are very happy with the healthy school lunches. Michelle Obama’s campaign “Let’s Move” was an attempt to lower the child obesity rates by putting nutritional standards in school lunches, and encouraging kids to be active. She set many bars in food safety as well for kids, making sure that all food packaging was properly labelled so it was safe for kids with allergies or other medical conditions. According to the American Medical Association, this campaign actually worked. The child obesity rate in kids ages 2-5 has decreased by 5.4%. It may not seem like a big change, but it definitely helped the child obesity problem. Now with a new president, and new ideas, the standards for school lunches have changed once again.

Some specific changes that are going to happen are to whole grains, salt and milk. As far as whole grains go, states with trouble meeting the 100% whole grain rule (100% of grains served must be whole grains or grains that contain an endosperm, bran, and germ) can get an exemption to only serve 50% whole grains. Salt requirements are being lessened so schools don’t have to meet sodium requirements, and live up to what some believed to be unrealistic standards. In regards to milk, the only changes that are occurring are to the type of milk that can be served. The standard previously was that if the milk was flavored (chocolate, strawberry, etc.) it had to be fat-free, but now it can be 1% instead.

President Donald Trump has changed the standards for school lunches under a new slogan labelled “make school meals great again.” According to PBS’s Newshour his argument for this change is that it will lower the cost of school lunches. The USDA reports that school lunches in 2012 (after the increased health requirements were enacted) cost a total of $11.6 billion dollars, but before healthier school lunches were put into schools, the cost was $6.1 billion in total.

Making the school lunches less healthy would decrease the cost of school lunches, but it could also increase the child obesity rates. The USDA also said that the amount of waste from raw, and cooked, vegetables has risen in the years since the new restrictions have been implemented, so the standards are perhaps defeating themselves because kids aren’t even getting the full nutritional value of the lunch.

Another argument made by the president, in favor of changing the school lunch restrictions, was that by having only healthy options it put the agriculture industry in a bad place. This was created by forcing them to conform to unrealistic standards and constant quality checks. In an official statement, on the now president’s campaign website, it even went as far as to call the FDA the “food police” and regulation of school food “overkill.” The FDA didn’t fire back at the comments on the website, only saying that the repeals of health regulations for school foods would be unpopular because people are now much more concerned about healthy food.

Entertainment, Movies/TV/Theaters

Tahji Brown – Watermelon

May 24, 2017 murphynick12 Leave a comment

Senior student, Tahji Brown, recently made an album called: Watermelon – which is made up of all original songs he created and produced himself. He is an artist, and he likes to sing and make music, specifically rap/hip-hop songs. He also features other students on some of his songs as a way of having them express their creativity by singing.

FullSizeRender Tahji has a variety of songs on Watermelon that almost everyone can listen and dance to, because they’re fun. My two favorite songs from the album are “Bad Apologies” and “Fortune Cookie” (feat. Nehali Van Der Leeuw). Some of his songs have very peculiar names that I didn’t understand at first, but when I asked Tahji what is the inspiration behind each song he said: “Every song on this album has a different story and they all relate to me.” The songs of the album Watermelon is Tahji’s fun way of showing how much he loves watermelon.

I’m not a fan of hip-hop/rap music but Tahji Brown makes his music in a way that people of all ages could enjoy. Last year he made an album called: The New Cool – and he sold over 86 copies to students at Highland. He is still currently selling copies of Watermelon and everyone says they love to hear the music he creates. I always want to support any local artist in my community, especially in Highland Park.

Tahji Brown is a creative singer that produces fun music in hopes of making people feel happy and excited. If you’d like to hear a few of his songs, check out his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBiYEPM0basnm0RqIEpq6Cg

School Life

Una Noche Inolvidable

May 23, 2017 sunthany_v1 Leave a comment

Friday, May 5th, 2017, was Highland Park’s prom, located at the beautiful Landmark Center. The theme for this year was “Una Noche Inolvidable” which translates to “An Unforgettable Night.” Since prom was on Cinco de Mayo, the people of the prom committee wanted to embrace the special day.

Around 400 people showed up to the event, and everyone looked amazing; so did the decorations. There was of course a table set up filled with snacks and drinks such as: jamaica, water, chips and bean dips, as well as candy from Dulcemex. Ms. Becker, the prom committee leader/teacher, had decided on decorating the tables with vases of bright and colorful flowers such as red and orange flowers.

Aside from the wonderful decorations and food, they also had a little photo booth in the corner of the room; everybody loved it and couldn’t stop going back in for more.

Now, the music of course is very important when it comes to prom, it helps set the mood, and this year we incorporated plenty of reggaeton, bachata and much more to try and stick to the theme. Plenty of people came out onto the dance floor and danced the night away.

I think it’s safe to say that prom 2017 was most definitely an unforgettable night.

Entertainment, Movies/TV/Theaters

The Marvel Cinematic Universe

May 22, 2017 Evelyn Lewis Leave a comment

With the American release of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, on May 6th, now seems to be a good time to talk about future movies from Marvel, and about the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.

Currently, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in Phase Three. Phase One consisted of introductory movies for the main Avengers characters (Iron Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Iron Man 2) plus The Avengers. It was Phase One that started the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and first drew attention to it, with the release of Iron Man in 2008 and culminating in The Avengers in 2012.

Phase Two consisted largely of sequels to the Phase One movies, such as Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. These movies expanded on characters introduced in Phase One and tended to be rather darker and grittier than the “comic book” feel of their predecessors. Along with the sequels came two other movies, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man, that introduced new characters and plotlines. Phase Two spanned from 2013 to 2015.

That brings us to Phase Three, which started last year, in 2016, with Captain America: Civil War, which functioned as a sequel to Age of Ultron. The other two Phase Three movies released thus far have been Doctor Strange and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

There are seven movies planned for the future at the moment, which will continue the trend of some movies being sequels and others introducing new characters. Two of them (Spider-Man: Homecoming and Black Panther) will serve to formally introduce characters who first appeared in Civil War, while four of them (Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Avengers 4) will be sequels. The last planned movie, Captain Marvel, will introduce an entirely new character.

Softball, Sports

Highland softball is the conference champions

May 22, 2017 bellaciccarelli Leave a comment

On Monday, May 8th, Highland Park varsity softball played in the conference championship game against Como High School to become the 2017 conference champs. Como High School has had a very good season, going 12-3 overall and 7-1 in conference. Como’s great season primarily came from senior pitcher, Kathryn Proper, who had 12 strikeouts against Highland that night.

Highland has had a great season going 10-5 overall and 7-1 in conference. Highland has a well balanced team with lots of fresh, and new talent. For Highland, we have returning pitcher, Jenna Cook (11), shortstop, Chloe Smith (10), third baseman, Bella Ciccarelli (10), and the captains, center fielder, Majeur Tucker (10), and catcher, Hanna Zavoral (12). The rest of the team is filled with excellent incoming freshman that are flexible and can play all positions, as well as many first year juniors that have made a great addition to Highland’s team.

During the Como vs. Highland season series, earlier in the season Como beat Highland 1-0, with the one run coming late in the game. But the second time around, in the more important game, Highland pulled through and took the win, 4-3.

The night was very exciting for both teams, as Como started the night off with hot bats but quickly cooled down as Highland began rallying. Cook had a double in the fourth inning to hit Molly Crandall (11) in making it 1-1.

Then in the 6th, Crandall had an inside the park homerun, bringing herself and Zavoral home, putting Highland up 3-2.

At the top of 7th Highland allowed Como to score 1, making it 3-3. Bottom of 7th Highland had two outs with a runner on second, and Cook up to bat. Cook ended the game with what should have been a sac infield fly, but due to miscommunication on Como’s side, the shortstop and 2nd basemen collided, dropping the ball, allowing Zavoral to score.

The game ended with Highland up 4-3.

This will be Highland’s 3rd consecutive year winning conference champs. Coming up, Highland plays Minneapolis South for the Twin Cities Meet on Friday, May 19th, at the U of M field. The Twin Cities Meet is where the two conference champs of Minneapolis and St. Paul play each other. After the Twin Cities Meet, Highland will play in sections, which is still undecided as to who, and when, they will play.

Adapted Bowling, Adapted Softball, Badminton, Baseball, Golf, Scoreboard/Schedule, Softball, Tennis, Track & Field

Sports schedule for: May 22-27

May 22, 2017 HPSH Plaid Line Leave a comment

For a full calendar of events please refer to: http://www.sports.spps.org

Spring Sports: Baseball, Softball, Boys Golf, Girls Golf, Adapted Bowling, Adapted Softball, Boys Tennis, Badminton, Track & Field

Activities the Week of May 22-17

Monday May 22:

Varsity Boys Golf 18- Hole Tournament @ Highland National GC 8:30am

Girls Varsity Golf @ Highland National GC 2:45pm

Varsity Baseball @ Lakeville South 5pm (Bus 3/7pm)

Tuesday May 23:

Softball Section Playoff TBD

Varsity Baseball vs. Central @ Toni Stone Stadium (N/C) 4pm

Co-Ed Track & Field Conference Prelims @ Central 4pm ( Bus 3/6:45pm)

Boys Lacrosse @ John Marshall , Rochester, MN. 6pm

Wednesday May 24:

Varsity & JV Baseball Twin Cities Game TBD

Girls Golf 18-Hole Tournament @ Phalen GC 9:30am

Thursday May 25:

Co-Ed Track & Field Conference Finals @ Central HS 3pm (Bus 1:45/6pm)

Boys Varsity Golf @ Highland National GC 2:45pm

Friday May 26:

Boys Lacrosse @ Minnehaha Academy 6pm

Saturday May 27:

Go Scots!

Events, News, School Life

Cinco de Mayo performance 2017

May 17, 2017 victoria1213 Leave a comment

On Thursday, May 4th, Highland had its annual Cinco de Mayo performance.

The day performance took place during 7th hour and most classes got to go down to the auditorium to watch it. Outside the auditorium there were paintings reflecting the Latino culture. The stage was decorated with red, green and white balloons and a 3D flower backdrop. Pinatas hung from the balcony and banners the 1862, Battle of Puebla painted on them were displayed across the walls. On the stage a Mariachi played while students, parents and teachers found their seats. The performance started shortly after everyone was seated.

This year was a little different than last year. This year’s dances included Bachata, Traditional Aztec dancing and El Baile de Los Viejitos. There was also a special performances by Sra. Nelsons first and fifth hour Spanish Immersion classes. Her first hour danced Cumbia and her fifth hour danced Merengue. The Folklorico dancers had the Mariachi play live during their performance and it was a surprise to everyone.

All performances and dancers looked amazing and well rehearsed, and even though the bell rang during the last performance, it was a very well put together performance.

Before the night performance, families were invited into the field house for dinner. Everyone who showed up seemed to enjoy the meal.

The night performance went in the same order as the day version. The night show did not have a live Mariachi performance, but it did included more Aztec dancers and drummers than the day show. Overall, the performance was the same except the Folklorico dancers actually got to finish without the interruption of the 2 o’clock bell.

In my opinion, with more dances and the stage being decorated very nicely, this years Cinco de Mayo performance was my favorite so far.

Entertainment, Events, News

Fyre Festival scam

May 17, 2017 hp890 Leave a comment

Many millennials were excited a couple of weekends ago about the new music festival deemed the next Coachella or Lollapalooza. The first ever Fyre Festival had its kick off and went to absolute shambles.

The Fyre Festival was advertised as a “luxurious music event with many A-list artists” but none of those artists showed up. The festival organizers, Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, were trying their best to make this an amazing event, but things didn’t go to plan. Even the employees don’t know if they are going to get paid. Billy McFarland said, “Just keep working ’til Friday, and we’ll let you know Friday.”

This isn’t the first time one of Billy Mcfarland’s entrepreneurial ideas has gone bad. In August, of 2013, McFarland launched his new black card, Magnises. The black card was geared, and advertised, towards Millennials. It stated it could “unlock your city,” as it included many luxury benefits such as member only concerts from various artists and top seats for certain sport events. The black card was launched originally only in New York City, but then expanded to San Francisco and Washington D.C. Many customers started complaining about the card though. One customer, according to Bussinessinsider.com, stated that they would send the same exact email for every problem, but it was more like a fill in the blanks.

In the end, the Fyre Festival was supposed to be a luxury music event with the average ticket being $12,500. Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, the Fyre Festival founders, stated they will try again next year, offering free tickets for those who paid this year. For now though, they are facing up to 100 million dollars in lawsuits for false advertisement and not paying employees.