Eric Flowers

editor@tsweekly.com
Posted inNews

Not Just a Number: Honoring soldiers’ sacrifice one name at a time

Volunteers will gather at the Riverbend Park to help read the names of all the fallen soldiers in Iraq.
Eric Flowers

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been marked by some sobering milestones, the death of soldier number 4,000 in Iraq, 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan and the list goes on.
This year, Memorial Day marks another anniversary closer to home. It will be the fifth year that community volunteers gather in Bend to read the name of every soldier killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and related operations.
The community vigil began as a way of personalizing and quantifying a conflict that had, in the mind of organizer Tracy Miller, been reduced to sound bites, slogans and statistics.

Posted inNews

Head East: Why Bend could be Oregon’s next college town

OSU-Cascades will begin to pursue a four-year educational program.
Eric Flowers

Editor’s note: Campus images by Ambient Architecture.
It turns out that the second time was the charm for Becky Johnson and OSU-Cascades. The charismatic dean who likes to ski, hike, fly fish and play golf spent two decades at OSU as a professor and a top administrator in Corvallis before she threw her hat in the ring to lead Oregon State University’s fledgling university project in Bend. Johnson, who helped to write the strategic plan for the campus, seemed like the perfect fit.
But it wasn’t to be, at least not yet.
The university tapped another administrator to lead the Central Oregon campus. Johnson went back to work on projects closer to home, assuming the role of vice provost for academic and international affairs and amassing an impressive list of accomplishments at the college including helping to lead the college’s strategic plan development in 2007.

Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides

Adios Career; Hello Kiddo: From HP engineer to diaper duty

Once an engineer for HP, Meagan gave up her job to take care of her only child.
Eric Flowers

Meagan Greenough was climbing the corporate ladder as an engineer at Hewlett Packard when she decided to abandon the career quest in favor of a lifestyle that seemed to fly in the face of her upbringing and her education. Rather than ascend another wrung at HP, Greenough quit her job when she had her first and only child, taking up a role that many women abandoned decades ago as a stay-home mom.
Greenough, who now works less than part time as a doula when she is not with her three-year-old son, doesn't regret the decision. She was already feeling like the corporate career world was getting stagnant, and the pregnancy spurred her to take the plunge into a new career in stay-home motherhood.
“It was a little bit planned and it was a little bit serendipity. I was kind of ready to try a change in my career,” Greenough said.

Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides

Home Sweet Home: Foregoing the workplace for motherhood

Misty Rupe is a stay-home mom with three children and keeping up an impressive work ethic.
Eric Flowers

The running joke in Bend is that best place to find a stay-home mom is not in the kitchen or in the home at all, but rather in the nearest pilates gym or yoga studio. And while that may be the case for some moms, the truth is that the majority of stay-home mothers in America have less education than their counterparts and are home because it makes more economic sense to be there, given the cost of childcare. But as one Democratic strategist recently learned, it's dangerous to make assumptions when it comes to motherhood.
Misty Rupe falls into the broad category of women whose decision to stay home was made easier by the economics of parenting. After their first child, Hayden, was born, Rupe and her husband, Tyler, decided that it made more sense for her to stay home than to continue her career as an office manager where most of her salary would have gone toward childcare.

Posted inMusic

California Dreamin': Dueling guitar trios descend on Tower

The California Guitar Trio and Montreal Guitar Trio will make their way to the Tower Theatre this Friday.
Eric Flowers

When Paul Richards, Bert Lams and Hideyo Moriya take the Tower Theatre stage on Friday it will be a homecoming of sorts, not for the three musicians per se, but for their instruments, at least.
Two of three members, you see, play guitars that were built wholly or in part in Central Oregon. So when you hear Moriya or Richards burn through the guitar solo of Queen's “Bohemian Rhapsody” – something they are known to do frequently – give a silent little thanks to Breedlove Guitar Co. which opened the door for the California Guitar Trio in Bend.
The trio was here in 2009 as part of the annual Breedlove guitar festival and is looking forward to returning to Bend as part of their marathon 2012 tour. This time they're bringing friends, and not the hanger-on, drink-all-your-beer-and-crash-on-your-living-room-couch kind. No, they're actually bringing another guitar trio, The Monteal Guitar Trio.

Posted inNews

Family Feud: Telfer-Knopp primary could tell us how far is too far for local GOP

The fight for the local and Oregon ballots.
Eric Flowers

Signs of unrest within the Senate District 27 started to appear as early as mid-February, before the legislature had wrapped it's inaugural interim session.
Bend Republican Chris Telfer, a former city council member and one-time candidate for Oregon treasurer, got the first inkling of the coming political storm from a colleague who had just gotten off the phone with a representative from a polling firm. The pollster wanted to know how the legislator felt about the possibility of Tim Knopp challenging Telfer in the May primary.
It was disquieting news for Telfer, a fiscally conservative Republican who was coming off a successful legislative session that saw some of her high priority jobs and economic development bills passed.

Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides

Dear Earth, I'm Sorry: Confessions of a non-composting, methane maker

The importance of composting and what benefits come from doing so.
Eric Flowers

I have a confession to make, I'm not composting – at least not in the way that I know that I'm supposed to. I'm mulching my grass and all, but my orange peels and coffee grounds are still going down the drain or into the garbage.
It's not that I'm not aware of the benefits of composting, or that it's too much work. Like most people, I'm just too lazy and cheap to make the initial investment of time and money.
Don't get me wrong, I actually care about the waste I'm putting into the landfill – an issue that was hammered home during a recent visit to said landfill for a story about a new methane gas conversion project.

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