One of the best smorgasbords of art in Central Oregon is hosted this weekend at Bank of the Cascades’ Summer Festival, with 150 booths and artists. There are wood carvings, water colors, and fine outdoor wildlife photography, like Dan Ester’s collection of crisp photos of osprey with fish in their talons set against the blue […]
Phil Busse
Phil Busse has done his tour of duty with alt-weeklies, starting in 1992 right after graduation from Middlebury College as the first environmental beat reporter for San Francisco Weekly. After a brief detour through the University of Oregon School of Law, Phil returned to writing as the first Managing Editor for Portland Mercury. In 2006, he started the Media Institute for Social Change in Portland, through which he continues to host a summer program teaching college students to produce documentaries.
Until he was 25 or so, Phil thought that he would be a spy, and took scuba lessons to prepare, and learned to drive a motorcycle and an 18-wheeler. Perhaps, then, it is unsurprising that his favorite holiday is the Fourth of July (he loves blowing stuff up). He feels at home with Joseph Conrad's fictional characters.
Posted inCulture
Feasting on Fiber
Sisters’ Outdoor Quilt Show celebrates 40 years
It started inconspicuously in 1975: Jean Wells Keenan simply hung a dozen quilts made by her students outside her shop on one Saturday in July. Over the years, though, a few more quilters showed up, and then a few more, and so on, until nearly every square inch of the small town of Sisters was […]
Posted inNews
Smells Like Hippie Spirit
The Source’s tie-dyed welcome mat to Phish Phans
There is a certain amount of debate about how the word “hippie” came about, and who coined the term. But hey, who owns a word anyway? While working as a journalist in San Francisco, I was consistently told that long-time San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen had first penned the title in the mid-60s for […]
Posted inCulture
Art Watch 7/1-7/8
The terminal at Redmond Municipal Airport/Roberts Field is not the most likely place to expect an art gallery, but throughout the summer, the walls along the north entry corridor are lined with beautiful plein-air paintings of Smith Rock. The 25 different pieces of art were individually created during one five-hour period of time during the […]
Posted inOutside
More Downhill
Mt. Bachelor Bike Park’s sophomore year is bigger and badder
At the end of last summer, the crews at the newly-opened Mt. Bachelor downhill bike park heard a lot of different opinions. Some riders told them that Lava Flow Trail, the easiest sloping trail, was too fast. But other riders begged for something a bit more gnarly, and to turn up the challenges. And, in […]
Posted inMusic
Better Than Her Men
But still, does anyone have worse taste in men than Sheryl Crow?
Although Sheryl Crow first broke into the public consciousness with the declaration that, “All I want to do is have some fun,” in the two decades (and some change) since her breakout, blowup debut album, Tuesday Night Music Club, Crow has proven that she clearly has more substance than being a simple party girl. On […]
Posted inMusic
Nashville With a Twist of the Northwest
Cloverdayle returns for shows in Bend by way of Nashville
The husband-wife songwriting duo that is the nucleus of Cloverdayle appears more clean-cut suburban than gritty country-western, with Chad Hamar seemingly more prone to wear a knit cap than a cowboy hat, and Rachel Lamar’s wholesome look straight out of a Bikram yoga class. But then they open their mouths, and out pours classic wry […]
Posted inOutside
Pickett’s Charge Storms On
A veteran mountain bike race stays young
Twenty-one years ago, Bill Clinton was midway into his first term, the first blog was launched, the global temperature was a few degrees cooler, and mountain biking was still a relatively new sport. The equipment was crude, little better than big boy dirt bikes. A few prototypes had shocks, and disc brakes were only for […]
Posted inCulture
Art Watch 6/25-7/2
Georgia O’Keeffe came from lush and wide-open landscapes of Wisconsin, but famously translated desert landscapes into vibrant and intensely personal visions. And, it is that interplay between scarcity and abundance that seems to lay at the heart of much of the blossoming genre of “desert writing.” This Thursday, the High Desert Museum will host the […]
Posted inCulture
Turn Up The Volume
Locally grown radio station KPOV turns 10
The building set back from a parking lot adjacent to Bond Street, behind a chain link fence, is unassuming. A door painted brick red opens into a basement level ciderblock building painted white. What had been a maintenance building for the school district has since been converted into a labyrinth of office cubicles and recording […]