Erin Foote Marlowe

Last year, when Chris Telfer locked horns with the most powerful lobbyist in the state, political insiders in Salem thought it would blow over. After all, the issues at stake weren't life or death. The dust up was, in fact, over something as silly sounding as a hookah bill.
But what appeared to be just a run of the mill “heat of battle” scuffle has shaped one of the most interesting and unlikely races the region has seen in years – a pitched Republican primary for the District 27 senate seat that represents Deschutes County in Salem.
The story would be interesting enough if Telfer's run-in with lobbyist Mark Nelson had simply cost her his financial support, and it most certainly has – he's thrown his weight behind Tim Knopp, Telfer's challenger and helped funnel stacks of cash into his coffers.

My first impression of Max DeKock is that the 17-year-old Bend Science Station student is probably pretty at home in a science lab. Gangly, flop of curly hair, oversized clothing. Check, check and check.
Then he starts telling me about his rad science project involving time perception that recently won him first place in the Northwest Science Exposition and I realize he's a great communicator. Then he starts cracking jokes like that he would probably be “freebasing in some dark alley” if not for the science center. And it hits me that this kid is totally awesome, and I'm the jerk who is expecting to find the Bend Science Station a musty lab filled with geeky students going through some kind of boring advanced science curriculum all in an effort to get an edge when applying to college. So wrong.

In 2011, a small cluster of men in rural Deschutes County popped onto the radar of county health workers. The men were young, often using methamphetamines and having sex with other men.
They came to the attention of the health department because some began to experience symptoms they couldn't explain – until they took an HIV test.

It was one of those prototypical bone dry August afternoons in Los Angeles when an arsonist lit the blaze that became the Station Fire. Temperatures that day in 2009 were in the nineties with winds gusting at about 20 miles an hour.
The conditions were perfect for a conflagration. By the time it was extinguished nearly two months later, the Station Fire had burned 160,000 acres, destroyed 89 homes and killed two firefighters. Pictures and video of the scenes show giant plumes of smoke billowing over the city, people sobbing near burnt out homes and horses running scared amid the flames.