Eric Flowers

Dressed in a signature black leather trench coat with a prodigious and graying beard that spills over his collar and down the front of his shirt, Timm Schimke cuts a Grizzly Adams meets Jerry Garcia visage. If he doesn't look like your average bureaucrat, that's because he's not.
On a recent blustery March afternoon, Schimke gave me a quick tour of his office the 80-plus-acre Knott landfill. It's a place that most residents would prefer to know as little about as possible. Knott landfill has been taking local residents' refuse for more than 30 years, and Schimke has been here for most of them starting as a heavy equipment operator and working his way up to solid waste director.

A state criminal investigation into Deschutes County District Attorney Patrick Flaherty that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing came via a tip from Sheriff Larry Blanton.
Attorney General John Kroger's spokesman Tony Green said in an interview that his office took up the case against Flaherty after getting a complaint from the Deschutes County sheriff.
The complaint turned into a multi-month investigation involving the Oregon State Police, the governor's office and the Washington County District Attorney's office, which reviewed the case against Flaherty and formally cleared him of any wrongdoing last week over allegations that he had misused his authority in a grand jury proceeding.

After the door closes, it's not the darkness, but the quiet that strikes me – that and the fact that I'm totally naked, floating on a bed of Epsom salt in a contraption that looks like what would emerge if my bathtub impregnated my washing machine.
I'd rather be in a slope-side hot tub – that's my idea of relaxation. Instead, I'm in a windowless, seven-and-a-half by four-foot, fiberglass sensory deprivation tank. As such, I'm part of one of the newest trends in wellness and relaxation, dubbed “floating” by its proponents.

At 56, John Regan is starting over – again. Next week he'll begin another job as a truck driver for a commercial outfit in Bend.
For now he's living in the back of his van. An electrician by trade, Regan hasn't done any electrical work since the housing market flamed out four years ago. Like other some unemployed workers in Bend, Regan isn't sure when he'll have a proper roof over his head again.
What he does know is that he has a place to go almost every day for a cup of coffee, a bowl of soup and hot sandwich at Family Kitchen, a non-profit meal provider that has stepped up over the past year to meet Bend's growing need for such services.