Culture Features

Rick Steber, the author of more than 30 books, spent the past 16 years researching and writing this book about the unsolved murder of Phil Brooks, a cowboy who was found shot to death in the desert near Fossil. “I'm going to run with this until there's an answer. This book answers a lot of people's questions,” says Steber. “There were so many rumors and it was my job to sift through all these rumors.”
On the last day of summer a deadly dance unfolds on the sprawling landscape of timbered hills and open sagebrush country that defines Eastern Oregon. A curious cowboy on a green broke horse, cow dog trotting faithfully alongside moves slowly, cautiously, down the spine of a rocky ridge. The cowpoke slips from the saddle, takes the lead rope in one hand and squints through a narrow opening between tightly packed trees and into the swale below. Then he squats on his haunches, takes a can of snuff from his shirt pocket and tucks a fat pinch of brown tobacco under his bottom lip. He replaces the lid, adjusts his hat to shade his eyes from the setting sun, and continues to intently stare downhill; hoping to see what he might see, expecting something to happen, not at all sure what that something might be. The lead rope remains in his right hand, the snuff can in his left. Behind him, the horse blows a soft trill of air out of quivering nostrils and begins to anxiously paw the ground. The dog at his side, alert to danger, cocks an ear and points it down the hill.

“My play is mythic more than seedy. I see D as a cross between Mary Magdalene and Don Corleone,” says Howard Schor, co-founder and executive director of the Bend Experimental Art Theatre (BEAT).
A veteran theater producer with more than 30 plays to his credit, D's Place, written and directed by Schor, will debut at 2nd Street Theater. Five years in the making, the playwright views his piece, which encompasses two acts revolving around prostitutes and brothels, the first in Denver in 1864, the second in 1881, as “My ode to women. My myth of the first liberated woman.”

Come mid-October, have you ever been sitting in one of our local theaters and wondered to yourself how BendFilm chooses the independent films we get the privilege of watching during the festival? Contrary to what you might think, it's not through Hollywood movie magic, or based on the recommendation of little green fairies with projectors for eyes who simultaneously both project and watch each submitted film. As cool as that may sound for an animated short (don't steal this idea), that's not how it's done. Instead, BendFilm assembled a team of community members to watch and rate hundreds of submissions as part of their selection committee.

Written by New York native Teddy Wayne, Kapitoil, is this year's Deschutes Public Library Novel Idea community read. The acclaimed book chronicles the pre-9/11 life of Karim Issar, a computer programmer from Qatar who attempts to reconcile his Muslim faith with the trappings of American culture as he begins a wildly profitable career predicting oil futures.
There is something inherently compelling in Wayne's work, a tone that is never sentimental, but because his novel is told through an immigrant's eyes, this causes readers to become attached to Karim's enchanting way of using the English language with both humorous and heartbreaking effects.