Eric Flowers

In the matter of the slight discrepancy you've found in the number of reported conceal/carry permits in Deschutes County, I think 'yawl are biting at this pizza from the wrong end. Consider for a moment the trouble with mandatory auto insurance, reportedly ignored, for whatever reason, by upwards of twenty percent of the motoring population.

Hi Everyone,
Back to the topic of our favorite, or rather your favorite, animals in the world…dogs! I hike Farewell Bend trail three times per week and notice that on the beach next to the Reed Market bridge a sign states dogs (must) be on leashes at all times! Unfortunately, (only) a few law abiding residents of Bend will honor this by doing the right thing and putting their loved pooches on a leash.
Most people probably feel that it is no big deal to have their dog off the leash, running freely along a wooded nature trail. To us who do not have dogs and have to avoid the poops left on the trail by dog owners who cannot be bothered to pick up after their dogs, it is a problem. It's 2009 and we are all supposed to be educated, honorable, honest citizens that respect one another by following the rules of the game. Can you lazy dog owners please pick up after your dogs and put them on a leash like the city (ordinance) states?

I applaud you for your Spring Style cover of March 26. With about 20% of this edition of The Source devoted to high fashion in the high desert, I reveled in your humor and good-natured distraction from the media saturated, depressing news about Afghanistan, the brutal drug war in Mexico, the esprit de corps of our city council, and the mind numbing cost of health care.

I wanted to say a few words about the, you guessed it, bike lanes. We have seen many, many responses to the bike lanes here in Bend and how important it is to keep them free of vehicles and junk.

This week's letter comes from J. Turley who fears a crackdown on downtown skateboarding will limit commuting options and unfairly target law-abiding skaters. Thanks for the letter and the reminder that skating is (still) not a crime. As a small token of our gratitude for your letter, drop by our skate-friendly office, 704 NW Georgia, and pick up a pound of Strictly Organic coffee on us.

Central Oregonians have shared several beautiful spring days in the last couple of weeks. It has been a chance to prepare and test out alternate transportation for the summer. Thousands of people leave their car at home and ride on another set of wheels. Enjoying a ride to work on a sunny day is one of the greatest parts of living here in the summer. But Bend is trying to put unfair and bias regulations upon commuters of the skateboarding kind.

I am a blue-collar person. I have a wife, two daughters, and all the pleasure that that brings.

Can the editorial staff please do me a favor and stop using parentheses to interject their astute observations of obvious grammatical errors within readers' opinion letters? I can't tell where the readers' semi-coherent ramblings (which often include parenthetical explanatory notes) end and the editors' assertion of their own snickery grammatical superiority begins. It's like, before taking the splinter from your brother's eye, remove the beam from your own, man.