Spardettes Spring Show
Josie Luke
The Emery High Spardettes Spring Show drew a large crowd to the Spartan Center Feb. 27. The Spardettes performed a total of 10 dances, with seven as a team, one a co-ed dance, one a dance with the Emery High Cheerleaders, and one by the two senior Spardettes. The Spardettes also hosted local dance studios, with Encore Dance Studio and Emery All-Star Cheerleaders each having three teams perform, and Showtime Dance and One Step Above each having two teams perform. Also performing were the cheerleaders from Emery High and Canyon View Junior High.
The Spardettes have 17 dancers this year. They are, Seniors: Drill Mistress Mallorie Mason and Jaylene Mangum; Juniors: President Shelby Huntington, Vice-President Shalee Scow, Secretary Heather Madsen, AnnDee Adams, and Jessica Labrum; Sophmores: Megan Allred, Meran Allred, Chalet Hooley, Leisha Magnuson, Devyn Mann, Krystal Ann Richardson, McCall Spears, Kara Stilson, and Miranda Jaime Stokes; and Freshman TyLynn Webster. The Spardettes are led by Amanda Frandsen.
My Ride
A Buggy Makeover
James L. Davis
Clint Sorensen of Huntington is rebuilding his buggy…again. His off road monstrosity has been a work in process for years now and each time he takes it into the shop it comes out a little bit bigger and better.
Originally a 1987 Chevrolet Blazer, Clint broke the frame on his yellow buggy some time back and now it sits on the frame of a 1973 Blazer.
With a Chevy 350 fuel injected engine under the hood, Clint installed one ton axles on the buggy and has gone through seven of them as he’s taken the buggy over rocks and through the mud, which is why when the buggy is reborn in the summer it will be sitting on two ton Eaton axles. Originally the buggy hit the road with 36 inch tires, which Clint upgraded to 38 inch tires and then to 42 inch tires.
“When I put the 42s on I kept breaking the axles,” he said.
When he finishes the buggy’s latest upgrade it will leave the shop with 53 inch tires.
“I just keep upgrading. I’ve probably dumped $40,000 into it and thrown most of it away, but it’s a hobby.”
The full-time mechanic built the buggy to be good for both mud bogging and rock crawling, saying his monster is a lot heavier than most rock buggies. Weighing in at around 6,000 pounds before his latest upgrade, Clint said it will probably tip the scale at close to 8,000 pounds when he rolls it out of the shop this summer.
“It probably goes the best in the mud,” he said.
Clint and his buggy have seen some notoriety in the past, having appeared in two off road magazines after he took the buggy to Moab for competitions.
When the buggy once again has tires underneath it, Clint will have a battle on his hands for the drivers’ seat because his wife, Amie, is as big a fan of driving the buggy as he is.
“The kids love it too,” he added.
Adventures in Movie Making
Casey Wood
Not that long ago in a building relatively close to here the young men and women of my church were separated into two teams. Our assignment: to make videos to be seen at the end of the night. My friend Justin and I were on the same team and worked together to make up a story line and act it out. This was one of the most fun things we had ever done, and so we decided we wanted to do it again.
I quickly found a digital camcorder to, in a bolded, underlined, size 16 font, conquer the top 3 spaces on my Christmas list. My parents gave in, and Christmas morning 2005 I was the owner of my own Canon ZR90 digital video camcorder.
My friends and I put together a few very short and very stupid movies, but we wanted something more. One night when the group of us was hanging out we began shooting “Arabian Space” in a friend’s basement. We got pretty far into it and saw a tiny gleam of potential. We had no idea what we were getting into! We ended up spending about 15 hours filming the movie, which turned out to be about 25 minutes long. Near the end of 9th grade our film debuted at a school talent show at San Rafael Junior High School.
Near the beginning of this current school year we were informed that the Star Theatre was going to hold the First Annual Huntington Film Festival. We knew we had to do something for it, but we didn’t find out until early September and the original deadline was late October. We had no time to create a new film, but in the past we had thought about recreating Arabian Space. Justin as my unofficial assistant-director and I considered our options and decided with the time we had we could not come up with an idea good enough to win the festival, but he left the final decision up to me. I decided Arabian Space was our best bet.
We knew we had to do some things differently, such as actually write a script, hold auditions, and get some decent film editing programs. I gave out scripts to each person in our group of friends and invited them to audition for parts the following week. Some of my friends were defiantly better actors than others, but all who wanted to were aloud to play a part in the film. When the cast was assembled, filming began.
We spent between 20 and 30 hours working on choreography, memorization, practicing, and actually filming, and while doing so faced some serious trials partially because of our busy lives, but mostly because of our lack of experience. On our last day of filming we were working on the last 3 scenes of the movie at Castle Dale Elementary School where we were lucky enough to have a Police Officer pay us a visit. After narrowly escaping charges of having our fake weapons on school property and filming on school property without a permit we had to finish the final scene making the transition between the last 2 scenes pretty choppy.
While all of this was going on I had spent nearly $200 on film editing and special effects programs. I bought Ulead VideoStudio 11.0 by Corel for editing and ParticleIllusion SE by WonderTouch for special effects. After spending another 12 or so hours on producing the film it was finally completed by the changed deadline of November 5. As a side note, be careful with deadlines, I learned this the hard way by waiting until the night before to burn it. The first burn of a DVD takes about an hour and a half and as always plenty of mistakes were made and there were tons of errors on the disk. I decided from there on to give myself couple of days to get the bugs worked out. I also have learned the hard way that when buying disks it is important to use DVD+R or DVD+RW disks instead of DVD-R or DVD-RW disks. Minus disks only play on certain DVD players and can create lots of problems when trying to show it. Plus disks play on all DVD players and are a lot easier to manage.
All in all filmmaking has been an incredible experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I would recommend it to anyone, but before you give it a try be ready for a lot of work, and a lot of fun.
Swell Recipes
Kathy Ockey’s Clam Chowder
“A variation of this recipe is found in almost every cook book but the first time I saw it was many years ago in the Salt Lake Tribune,” said Kathy Ockey of Orangeville. “It is not cooked a lot in our household because of the high calorie/carbohydrate content but is used for family dinners, and is always used on Christmas Day. Christmas tradition in our family includes everyone coming to our home on the afternoon of Christmas. We have Clam Chowder, salads and whatever else anyone would like to bring or what is leftover from Christmas Eve. We try not to do a lot of cooking on Christmas Day by having things prepared ahead of time. Our family gathers to have an enjoyable afternoon of visiting, playing games or with whatever toys the kids have received for Christmas.”
Ingredients
2 – 6 3/4 oz. canned clams 3/4 cups flour
1 cup finely chopped onions 1 qt half & half (milk)
1 cup finely diced celery 1 ½ tsp salt
2 cups diced potatoes 1 ½ tsp sugar
¾ cups butter pepper to taste
Secret ingredients learned from years of making this recipe:
7-8 drops of Tabasco sauce and 1 bay leaf
Drain juice from clams and pour over vegetables in pan. Add enough water to barely cover vegetables and simmer over medium heat until tender. Melt butter, add flour and blend and cook a minute or two. Add half & half, continue cooking until smooth and creamy. Add clams just before serving, allowing enough time for them to become hot. Season with salt, pepper, sugar and also the Tabasco and bay leaf. This can be made ahead and is really better if is it done the day before.
“I have two granddaughters that do not like clams so I take some of the chowder out for them before I add the clams to the pot.
Swell Recipes is a new weekly column to The Emery County Review. We know there are a lot of good cooks and good recipes out there. If you would like to contribute a favorite recipe and tell the story behind it, please call the Review at 748-2541 or Kathy Ockey at 749-9192.
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