Laurel Brauns
Posted inNews

Listen: Bend’s Arts and Culture Scene with Cate O’Hagan 🎧

Cate O’Hagan is best known for serving as executive director of Arts Central for more than two decades. She shares insights on state and local arts funding and the tensions between authenticity and appealing to tourists.
Laurel Brauns

For this week’s “Bend Don’t Break” podcast we talk with Cate O’Hagan, a longtime champion of the arts in Central Oregon and the chair of the Deschutes Cultural Coalition. O’Hagan and her board helped decide how to allocate nearly $1 million that recently flowed into the county to support the arts from a fund the […]

Posted inNews

Pick Me Up

A lifeline arrives for local arts and culture organizations
by Laurel Brauns

A recent stream of funding may save some of the state’s most beloved arts institutions from an almost certain death. In an unprecedented move, the Oregon state legislature allocated $50 million in coronavirus relief funding to venues, cultural nonprofits and performance organizations. In Deschutes County, the bounty of $1.7 million is distributed among organizations as varied […]

Posted inNews

Q & A with Deschutes County Forester Ed Keith

Deschutes County is one of the only counties in the state with a forester dedicated to reducing wildfire risk. We chat with him about what he does—and what homeowners can do to protect themselves
Laurel Brauns

NEWS—Wildfire expert and County Forester Ed Keith talks to the Source about why the recent fires happened all at once, what causes fires in Oregon and what people in Bend are doing to keep the community protected from megafires in the future.

Posted inNews

Listen: Protecting Bend From Megafires with County Forester Ed Keith 🎧

In the aftermath of last week’s mass destruction, we take a deep dive into the history of wildfire and forest management in Central Oregon, with local forestry expert Ed Keith.
Avatar photo Laurel Brauns and Aaron Switzer

For this week’s “Bend Don’t Break” podcast we talk with Ed Keith, who has worked as the county forester for Deschutes County since 2012. Keith traces the history of forest management in Central Oregon, including the impact of grazing and timber harvest, and describes how decades of fire suppression in Oregon’s forests disrupted the natural […]

Posted inNews

K-3 Students Will Return to the Classroom in Early October

Bend-La Pine Schools Superintendent Lora Nordquist announced the district will offer hybrid learning earlier than it planned
Laurel Brauns

All Bend-La Pine Schools students in grades K-3 will begin to return to in-person hybrid classes during the week of Oct. 5. The announcement came Tuesday evening from Superintendent Lora Nordquist who stated that COVID-19 cases improved faster than the district anticipated. Originally, BLPS planned to wait until late October to decide whether to bring […]

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Are We Next?

What local, state and federal governments are doing to protect Deschutes County from wildfire
by Laurel Brauns

With 10% of the people in Oregon under some type of evacuation order, and roughly 1 million acres burned throughout the state, there’s plenty of reason to believe that out-of-control wildfires could reach Bend in the coming years. While the future is impossible to predict, Central Oregon may be more protected than other parts of […]

Posted inBest Of Central Oregon

Best Green Business

Central Oregon Locavore
by Laurel Brauns

Central Oregon Locavore has been connecting local farmers with customers since 2010, when it opened an online store. Today, Locavore is a small, indoor farmers market on NE Third Street with a co-op feel: it sells fresh produce, dairy, meat and other local and sustainable goods. The shelves are stocked with colorful vegetables, bulk bins […]

Posted inNews

The Politics of Climate Change

In Oregon, legislators have struggled to pass consequential laws to lower emissions. The recent Republican walkouts exacerbated that.
Laurel Brauns

As Oregon and California set new wildfire destruction records this past week (3.1 million acres burned in California and 1 million in Oregon), climate change experts argue this is just the beginning.   “Climate change dries out the grassland and will continue to make summers longer and hotter, with longer fire seasons,” explained Brad Chalfant, founding […]

Posted inNews

Listen: Criminal Justice Reform with John Hummel 🎧

The Deschutes County District Attorney discusses innovative ways his office lowered the rate of recidivism for drug offenses
Laurel Brauns

For this week’s “Bend Don’t Break” podcast we talk with John Hummel, who has been serving as the Deschutes County District Attorney since he was first elected in 2014. Before that, he served on the Bend City Council for six years, and then resigned in 2007 to earn his Masters in Public Policy from Johns […]

Posted inNews

Staggering Numbers: Nearly a Million Acres Burning, Half a Million People Under Evacuation Orders

Officials offer guidance for hazardous air quality, now in Central Oregon
Avatar photo Nicole Vulcan and Laurel Brauns

The numbers are almost too much to fathom: As of late Thursday, a record-breaking 900,000 acres of land in Oregon was on fire. With that, 500,000 people are under some type of evacuation order. (Update: This is corrected from an earlier report; an estimated 500,000 people are under either a Level 1, 2 or 3 […]

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