Global Posts

My name is Zach Colangelo, and I am a freshman college baseball player at longwood university. Being a student athlete here is hard which is probably the same for any other division 1 student athlete in the country. Trying to balance out class time with lift, practice, early optional practice, study hall, eating, and ultimately free time for yourself to just unwind at the end of the day. I have been playing baseball ever since i was young, my father and all of his family played baseball and it just got passed down to me and my family as well. This portfolio will show my video resume, a review of a day of traveling to vcu this fall, and a review on the movie sandlot.

Combined Military Service Digital Photographic Files. “Aerial View at Nellis Air Force Base.” Picryl, Photograph, 6 July 2002, picryl.com/media/aerial-view-at-nellis-air-force-base-afb-nevada-showing-construction-underway-333c5b.

Del Coro, Tomas. “Crime Scene Investigations 990 / North Las Vegas Police CSI.” Flickr, Photograph, 8 Aug. 2010, www.flickr.com/photos/tomasdelcoro/4873531782.

Gies, Daniel. “Bum with Microwave.” Flickr, Photograph, 28 Nov. 2009, www.flickr.com/photos/daniel_gies/4139626635.

Grazio, Wayne. “Anything Helps.” Flickr, Photograph, 15 July 2016, www.flickr.com/photos/fotograzio/28240091221/in/photostream/.

Gra“Empty Hat.” Flickr, Photograph, 29 May 2016, www.flickr.com/photos/fotograzio/27041685690.

Highsmith, Carol. “Desert Inn, Nevada.” Rawpixel, Photograph, www.rawpixel.com/image/3089121/free-photo-image-america-carol-highsmith-cc0.

Marvin, James. “Las Vegas Boulevard .” Flickr, Photograph, 20 Nov. 2006, www.flickr.com/photos/mandj98/302279753.

Pixabay. “Las Vegas, United States of America, Night Image. Free for Use.” Pixabay, Photograph, pixabay.com/photos/las-vegas-united-states-of-america-1249899/.

Tanaka, B. “Las Vegas Strip.” Getty Images, Photograph, www.usnews.com/topics/locations/las_vegas.

The US National Archives. “City of Las Vegas.” Picryl, Photograph, 1979, picryl.com/media/city-of-las-vegas-las-vegas-boulevard-state-scenic-byway-fremont-street-experience-c7e9e2.

TheSimsWiki. “The Sims Wiki.” Sims.fandom.com, sims.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sims_Wiki.

Us. Directed by Jordan Peele, Film, Universal Pictures, 2019.

Ypsilon. “Las Vegas District Map.” Wikimedia Commons, Photograph, 11 Aug. 2018, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikivoyage_Las_Vegas_district_map.png.

I am Amory Wheeler and I’m a sophomore at Longwood University. I am a communication major with a focus in public relations, for this reason, I decided to mainly direct my Eportfolio toward major social media influencers. Mainly focusing on the D’amilios and Kardashians.

Las Vegas, Nevada was a strange place to live in as a child. Its reputation as an adult playground fraught with gambling and nightlife makes it a place that is the opposite of what one thinks of when it comes to raising a family. And yet, my family and I found ourselves living in this incredibly off-kilter city for two years. Although Las Vegas was and still is a melting pot with many different people and lifestyles, I was still incredibly sheltered. Back then, my father was on active duty in the army, meaning that Las Vegas was just another location where our family was stationed. As such, we lived on a military base just on the outskirts of the famed “strip”. My exposure to the Las Vegas that is its casinos, bars, clubs, and lavish hotels was therefore limited and monitored. There were still hints of it, yes, like how my favorite indoor amusement park was inside a massive casino that allowed smoking indoors, or like how the buffet my family enjoyed going to was in the same building complex as an endless sea of poker tables and an excess of spirits. Through both my childhood naivety and my parent’s careful censorship, I developed tunnel vision. The Vegas that I knew when I was six and seven years old was bright, colorful, whimsical, and at times magical. I knew nothing of the other, less kid-friendly side of the city because I did not have to. I only knew what I was allowed to be exposed to. You can see, then, how returning to Las Vegas at roughly 15 years old was like returning to someplace familiar now turned strange. Yes, the nostalgic undertones were still there, and at times the wonder, but the difficult part about growing up is that I no longer had tunnel vision.

We visited the “safe” areas first. The military base that I had such fond and detailed memories of was finally beneath my feet again. When you live on a military base as a child, it becomes less of a base and more of its own hidden town, with schools, stores, movie theaters, parks, and neighborhoods. When I was not being given micro-doses of the strip, the base was my entire world. We tried in earnest to find the old house that we used to live in, although, in the end, we could not recall exactly which of the nearly identical homes was ours. We stopped by the elementary school that my brother and I had once attended, and it did not look like any time had passed since we left. This trip was as much a vacation as it was a pursuit of what had once been, and it was filled with enthusiastic retellings of childhood memories. Each location inevitably leads to reminiscence. It was not until we reached the “city” part of Vegas that our recollections were abruptly challenged.

Initially, we marveled at all the sights that we were able to see once again, such as the pyramidal Luxor Hotel and the roller coasters that snaked their way in and out of the New York New York casino. I grew excited being close to all of the familiar landmarks once again, and walking down the streets again after nearly a decade was surreal. However, I began to notice what my child self had not. The strip was lustrous and extravagant and everything that it had always been, but the strip was only so long. Past the bustling tourists and flashy attractions was abject poverty in a way that to this day I have seldom seen. Crossing from the strip into the rest of Las Vegas was akin to crossing an invisible boundary. Houses were tiny and crowded together and in varying states of deterioration. The unhoused living in both above-ground encampments and tunnels beneath the city was far from uncommon. This part, the forgotten part, of Las Vegas was inundated with shades of brown and the downtrodden. I began to realize that the illustrious, skyscraper-laden Vegas was not Vegas, regardless of what I had seen as a child. This was Las Vegas, Nevada. Extreme wealth disparity was shrouded in smoke, mirrors, and showgirls. Travelers were more than welcome to the city, but the city had failed those who had spent their entire lives there. This reality was, of course, not beautiful. What was once a vacation powered by nostalgia became a very sobering experience, one that I will not allow myself to forget. Vegas is a city with riches built upon the backs of people that it no longer takes care of. 

Biferno, Anya, et al. “Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?” NASA, NASA, 27 Sept. 2023, climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.

Stabile, Angelica. “Physicist to Tucker Carlson: Climate Change Is ‘Fiction of the Media.’” Fox News, FOX News Network, 21 June 2021, www.foxnews.com/media/physicist-tells-tucker-carlson-climate-change-is-fiction-of-the-media.

When my roommate and I traveled the five miles down to High Bridge, the first thing we did was get a map from the bike shop. One of the guys who works there is from Virginia Beach just like me, so I like to say “hello” to him. After that, we were on our way.

Almost as soon as we were on the trail, we met a dog! He was still a puppy, so he jumped all over me and possibly damaged my water bottle holder, but that is okay because he was very sweet. About a minute after that, we reached a telephone tower that was covered with and surrounded by dozens of birds. We later figured out that they were black vultures, which are quite large and have unique white marks on their wings. We spent at least five minutes just watching them before we continued.

I then learned that squirrels are far more talkative creatures than I was aware of, which was both an interesting discovery and a relieving one because it made me realize that all of the creepy bush-rustling sounds were just these silly little rodents. After this, we discovered a snake’s skin, but we did not, unfortunately, see any whole snakes.

We eventually stopped for a snack break during which we saw several daddy long-legs on a poll. We saw far more long-legs at the restroom later on, along with dozens of ladybugs just on the ceiling of one of them, but this is unfortunately the only picture of either of these insects that I took. No ladybugs this time 🙁

We passed by many people’s properties along the way, including one that had an old, broken down bus on it. My two favorites, however, were the house with the dog that said “hello” to us and the pasture with two horses. They were right next to a huge field with what appeared to be a track for horses to practice jumping hurdles on, so hopefully I will one day pass by while they are training.

After many interesting animals, leaves, and games or twenty questions, my roommate and I finally arrived at High Bridge. We had a snack there and my roommate dropped several chips through the cracks into the void, and we met some very nice dogs, too. The view was nice, but we were too tired and hot to stay for long.

When we finally began to walk another five miles back, we saw this beautiful caterpillar that I believe should be the last thing I show you on this essay because we were too tired to appreciate much of the walk back, and he is a very pretty caterpillar.