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Posted inMusic

Austin’s Latest Drama Show

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Shearwater
Rook
Matador
Upon the first few listens of Shearwater's Rook, I wanted to synch up the tracks to the cartoon version of Watership Down or The Last Unicorn, ala Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz. Rook is an album worth immersing yourself in, front to back.
The Austin-based indie band (which began as a side project of the equally dramatic Okkervil River) has created a vast lyrical narrative that is darkly beautiful and visually apocalyptical. Opening with the lines "From the wreck of the ark to the fading day of our star," lead singer Jonathan Meiburg's voice oscillates between choirboy delicate and forceful, while complex arrangements consisting of strings, harp, piano and bugle tell the story of a world gone wrong. The rockin' title track describes scenes more ominous than a Hitchcock film. The song "Century Eyes" warns: "You are not the last of this house, or the first to go over the side." And "I Was A Cloud" holds no empathy for the naivety of our sad hero with lines like, "Your frantic waving did not provoke feeling/But this little one/Steady your wings now sparrow."

Posted inMusic

Truckers Kept A Rollin’: The South rises again as Drive-by Truckers rolls through Bend

DBT is coming to ouR house. Can I get a hell, yeah!When your Alabama/Georgia-based band features a three-guitar attack and you have two albums with
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DBT is coming to ouR house. Can I get a hell, yeah!When your Alabama/Georgia-based band features a three-guitar attack and you have two albums with the word "South" in the title and a third with the word Alabama in it, it's sort of hard to escape the Southern Rock label.
 
In the case of the Drive-by Truckers, it may be well earned. But it's a little unfortunate because the band, which makes an unexpected stop in Bend next week, has pretty much transcended the Southern Rock genre, bearing little resemblance to previous torch bearers like Molly Hatchet and Lynyrd Skynyrd. You won't find any cliché two-guitar harmonies on Truckers albums or in its shows. There are no cowboy hats and giant belt buckles; no Stars and Bars on the band's tee shirts.
While the band often wears its Southern pride on its sleeve, it's an aching pride. At their best, the band's songwriters - at least five different writers have contributed songs to band's studio albums over the years - explore themes that resonate well beyond the South. The band's songs, which are defined by their storybook narratives, tend to focus on ordinary people whose lives fall apart by violence, drug abuse, sickness, death and poverty.

Posted inNews

History Be Damned: Wild west bounties won’t save the Snake River runs

For centuries, killing predators was to fish and wildlife management what leeches were to medicine. By the mid-20th century, even the dullest minds in government
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For centuries, killing predators was to fish and wildlife management what leeches were to medicine. By the mid-20th century, even the dullest minds in government had figured this out. But duller minds were yet to come.
Enter the administration of George W. Bush. In 2008, it is hawking control of salmon-eating birds, fish and mammals as if this were Dr. Kickapoo's Elixir for Rheum, Ague, Blindness and Insanity.
Virtually the entire scientific community agrees that if the four nearly useless Snake River dams remain in place, Columbia and Snake river salmon stocks will go extinct. Even Bush's National Marine Fisheries Service has admitted this. Mostly because of these dams, the system's cohos are already extinct, sockeyes are functionally extinct and 13 stocks in 78 populations are threatened or endangered. Yet last October, the Fisheries Service released its draft Columbia-Snake salmon plan that calls for a surge in the war on predators. The surge, together with barging young salmon, increasing hatchery production and all the other bells, whistles and tweaks that have failed so spectacularly in the past, will cost $800 million every year. By comparison, the Army Corps of Engineers estimates the cost of breaching the dams at $1 billion.

Posted inOpinion

Taking Back the Planet: End of interstate era may be in sight to animals delight

The cops shot a cougar in Chicago a month ago. DNA tests suggested the young male may have begun his journey in the Black Hills
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The cops shot a cougar in Chicago a month ago. DNA tests suggested the young male may have begun his journey in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 1,000 miles away.
If so, he roamed across three big states, looking for love. Earlier this winter, an automatic camera set up by a biologist photographed a wolverine in a forest north of Lake Tahoe. This was jaw dropping — the first documented wolverine sighting in California in 85 years. Hair samples suggested this vagabond may have come from as far away as Idaho's Sawtooth Range. Scientists suspect these pioneers are following stream courses, figuring it out as they go much the way Lewis and Clark did, though without the help of Sacagawea. I imagine it's harder for a cougar to reach Chicago than it is for a climber to summit Everest. Wisconsin is awash in whitetails, but even at today's lofty gasoline prices Eisenhower's interstates are a shooting gallery. Try crossing I-10 in Phoenix on foot and you get the idea.

Posted inOpinion

Victory for Freedom in the Supreme Court

Justice is done One of your neighbors has a grudge against you and secretly informs on you to the police. The next thing you know
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Justice is done One of your neighbors has a grudge against you and secretly informs on you to the police. The next thing you know you're being held in a prison in a strange country. You don't know what you're charged with or what the evidence against you is, and you can't go to court to find out. You end up staying in that prison for years without any trial.
 
That's the position that many of the approximately 270 prisoners incarcerated at "Camp X-Ray" in the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, find themselves in. Thanks to a landmark decision last Friday by the US Supreme Court, that unconscionable situation will change.
The court ruled, 5-4, that the ancient principle of habeas corpus - the right of an accused person to know the evidence the government has against him - applies to Guantanamo prisoners. Under last week's ruling, Guantanamo prisoners will be able to go into federal district courts to demand that the government show why they should remain incarcerated.

Posted inOpinion

Don’t Ignore Pet Abuse Story

Dr Holly O’Brien was right on in her letter regarding animal abuse in our area. She brought up the worthwhile idea of the Source doing
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Dr Holly O'Brien was right on in her letter regarding animal abuse in our area. She brought up the worthwhile idea of the Source doing an article on animal cruelty laws and what the public can do if they witness animal abuse. I was disappointed that you did not jump on her suggestion, choosing instead to print only a summary of the general concept of the law. You did the public a disservice by ignoring her advice, which called for also pointing out what the public can DO when such shameful behavior is viewed.
Please do take her valuable recommendation about doing an in-depth article on animal cruelty and its prevention. This is a subject that can never be brought up too many times; people who abuse animals rarely stop there. One of my dogs, Piper, was subjected to an electrified food dish for three years, before he came to be my forever friend. His owner was married with children. What example does this set for them?

Posted inOpinion

Golf Courses Need To Go

Some of the largest nitrate polluters are the golf courses. The courses are massive green grass lawns being grown in a semi-arid environment. What makes
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Some of the largest nitrate polluters are the golf courses. The courses are massive green grass lawns being grown in a semi-arid environment. What makes plants green? Nitrogen. Therefore, in order to have green golf courses on the edge of the desert one needs massive amounts of polluting nitrogen. Plant nutrient uptake can be significantly altered by the ph of the solution it is being delivered in, meaning the grass might not even be able to use much of the fertilizer being applied. Much of this nitrogen (among many other chemicals in synthetic commercial golf course fertilizer) stays in the ground unused by the grass. Even when used by the grass these chemicals go back into the soil when the plant dies.

Posted inOpinion

Advice Goddess Grates

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Letter of the Week 
We're not exactly sure who brought us this week's letter of the
week, as she flies under the righteous handle of Mora Lee Sound. But
anyone who calls out the Advice Goddesses' panties has our respect. Go
Mora Lee!

Amy, the Advice Goddess,
My commentary is in reference to your wellspring Source of advice to Nun for Me in last week's paper:
Is this really what our world has arrived at? Has God been replaced by a goddess whose "good advice" is to ditch the woman with high morality and a sense of self-worth in favor of floozies who will drop their pants at the first fluctuation of a hormone?
As for Biblical criticisms, please open your Bible more often than you open your "after-one-night-stand" birth control pills, and you might see that the Old (Mosaic) Law Covenant in which disobedient children were "stoned" was replaced by an entirely New Covenant dominated by Christian principles. (Romans 7:6) Yes, "principles" - another word you may want to look up in the dictionary, the other dusty book presently buried by the thong undies of your avid advice-takers.

Posted inCulture

La Sirenita: Lori LaBissoniere’s expressive painting

Dog days in the studioBend, with its urban center situated just minutes from beautiful landscapes, is attracting a growing community of artists. One painter, Lori
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Dog days in the studioBend, with its urban center situated just minutes from beautiful landscapes, is attracting a growing community of artists. One painter, Lori LaBissoniere is developing an expressionist style that contrasts with the mainstream aesthetic found in many polished art galleries. LaBissoniere and I talked on a Friday afternoon, one of the first (and only) really hot days this spring. Sitting in her cozy studio downtown, and having been inside teaching all day, LaBissoniere was feeling restless.
"We should have done this interview outside on a day like today," she told me. As a young artist, LaBissoniere is artistically adventurous, drawing on multiple sources of inspiration and trying new styles in her work.
When I asked her about her artistic influences, LaBissoniere mentioned Jaimie Lynn, a snowboarder and contemporary graphic artist. "I find inspiration from street art, and art that I happen upon by chance - not only from famous artists," she says.

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