Hi, I just read Charles Finn’s column On Flying Out of Redmond. I can’t find a direct email for him, but I just wanted to pass on that I thought it was beautiful and really captured how those early a.
Source Weekly
Posted inOpinion
Tax The Smart
Here’s an idea. Let’s relieve Greece of its economic woes by levying a classical culture tax on all the rest of us.
Posted inCulture
Move Me, Baby: Latest Resistance installment never comes to life
I kept thinking, “The game is about to come together.” I was sure that the next alien I shot would be the one that transformed Resistance 3 into the eye-popping, controller-clutching game that started the franchise. In Resistance
I was thrust into a human-alien war that displayed all of the PlayStation 3’s strengths. I could see for what seemed like miles. More importantly, I could shoot for what seemed like miles. Most important of all was that I could shoot the tubes on an Alien’s backpack from miles away and watch him spin out of control as his cooling system stopped working and his overactive alien metabolism cooked him alive.
Posted inOpinion
Telfer Takes the Axe to the Arts
Oregon government can't offer many shining success stories over the past decade, but the Oregon Cultural Trust is one of them.
The brainchild of the late State Sen. Ben Westlund, in less than 10 years it's amassed an endowment of more than $15 million. It has given grants to more than a thousand artistic and cultural nonprofit enterprises, including about 30 in Central and Eastern Oregon. The Museum at Warm Springs, the High Desert Museum and the Cascade School of Music all have benefited from Cultural Trust grants.
Posted inFood & Drink
Bend’s Beer Renaissance: The Brew Shop goes big with their move to 3rd Street
Inside the new Platypus Pub at the Brew Shop.
Bend beer aficionados now have yet another place to call home. This place, however, is like no other. The Bend Brew Shop has moved their Division Street store to that stubbornly antiquated former church building on the 3rd Street strip, affording them enough space to have a pub.
The Brew Shop is upstairs, meeting all your home brewing equipment and supplies needs in addition to offering over 500 bottled beers organized by state and country of origin. A side entrance with an awning leads you down a set of stairs into the Platypus Pub where you will find a carefully chosen selection of 15 beers on tap along with standard pub fare.
A group of friends and I eagerly visited the Platypus on their opening day last Monday. The pub is nice and cavernous, but with a somewhat stale feel; maybe it's the antiseptic green color of the walls, bare, with sparsely placed framed beer posters. The bar itself is slight, but the room offers ample seating for groups and pairs, a couple of dart boards at one end and the seemingly mandatory flat screen TV with a black leather couch at the other end. At this pub, the selection of beer trumps atmosphere.
Posted inCulture
Our Picks for 9/21- 9/29
Hank III, Bend Roots Revival, Oktoberfest and more stuff happening this week.
6th Annual Bend Roots Revival
thursday-sunday 22-25
Bend Roots, the free community music festival, is finally here, which signals the end of summer, but one of the best parties of the year. This time around, there are 100 bands booked for three days at the Century Center, but on Thursday night head down to the Victorian Café and get things started early with a performance by Grateful Dead tribute act Rising Tide. See the big festival guide in the Sound section. Thursday, Victorian Café (14th and Galveston), Friday-Sunday, Century Center, 70 SW Century Dr.
Bend Oktoberfest
friday-saturday 23-24
Like German stuff? Bavarian, actually. Let's be precise. What's not to like about brats, wiener-dog races and high-gravity beers like the Marzen? The original Oktoberfest started in late September and ran through the first Sunday in October, which must be why we celebrate Oktoberfest in the month of September. This one is only two days long, but promises games, food, spirits and fun for all. Free entry, too, and conveniently located in downtown Bend. 5-10pm, Friday. Noon-10pm, Saturday.
Posted inCulture
On Flying Out of Redmond
Thoughts on flying out of small airports.
You're leaving in the morning and pack the night before, throwing in your phone charger, toothbrush, the novel you’ve been meaning to get to, an extra shirt you won’t need. Before bed you count backward from the boarding time, padding five minutes here, ten minutes there, allowing extra time to get through security. In a state of disbelief you set the alarm for an hour you haven’t seen in years, one that makes you wonder if you should go to bed at all.
When the alarm goes off, you groan, cursing fate and the executives of airlines. Not to disturb your wife, you dress in the living room while the coffee brews, putting on the clothes you set out just hours ago. Dressed, patting down your pockets you run through a mental checklist, afraid you’re forgetting something. Meanwhile, the cats watch you sleepy-eyed and disgusted from the sofa, wondering what you’re doing up at such an hour. You take a slug of coffee and tell them you wish you knew. When you kiss your wife goodbye she tells you to be safe. “I’ll call when I land,” you say, and close the bedroom door behind you.
Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides
The Focused Brain: Learning the basics of Qigong with Kristina Bak
“It is what you make of it” would be a good introduction to some of qigong teacher Kristina Bak’s core philosophy. Bak says there is ample research suggesting that “focused attention affects outcome, and that our thoughts appear to literally change neural structures in our brains.
Posted inFood & Drink
Filling a Void: Planker Sandwiches puts a distinctive twist on the traditional sandwich shop
Plankers gives downtown Bend a quick and affordable option.
Joe Devenchenzi had a simple idea. After years in the restaurant business he wanted to make and serve fresh products while avoiding the late hours.
After visiting Bend for most of his life and owning a home in town for the past eight years, the Grants Pass native decided to open up a place of his own. And where better to open a local food joint then downtown Bend? Although to the dismay of many thin-pancake-loving locals, Devenchenzi entered the former Crepe Place location and opened Planker Sandwiches. Named for the term snowboarders use to describe skiers, Planker has become a local favorite despite the slight change in menu offerings from the previous occupant.
“People have been pretty supportive,” said Devenchenzi, “We still offer crepes. We just went from a build-your-own-crepe menu to a set menu. But anything you want inside we can still do our best to accommodate.”
Posted inCulture
On Gifts From Friends
On a recent Sunday evening, 3,000 miles from home and feeling every inch of it, I opened a bottle of wine. It was a gift from friends, an Argentinean red I knew to be excellent, but contrary to plans I had for it, it was not a joyous occasion. Across from me, my wife sat slumped on the couch, the two of us hungover from a crying jag. Circumstances forcing us into a decision we would have preferred not to make, we'd just finished a number of physically and emotionally grueling days, and the reality of our new situation was settling in. I seldom like to drink when feeling blue, alcohol for me a celebratory drug, one used to augment happy occasions, not mask the bad ones.
That said, it functions well to bevel the hard edges of the world, and I will admit to feeling the need. The bottle, it turned out, was the only alcohol we had on the premises. Scarcity, as much as necessity it seemed, would press it into service. When it was given to us, I promised to open it only when the time (and more importantly) the people, were right. Having come from dear friends, I didn't want to share this bottle with just anyone, my idea being to toast the best of the old as I rang in the new.