Culture Features

Central Oregon native Alastair Morley Jaques, who entertained a spellbound audience at last year's recitation of Allen Ginsberg's “Howl” and two sold-out Edgar Allan Poe shows last October, has spent countless hours preparing to bring Poe to life once more.

It's a warm Thursday afternoon in downtown Bend and the streets and plazas are full of young people blowing off some after-school steam, but inside an Oregon Avenue shop, there are four high school students with heads down and pens racing across the pages of composition books. There's the silly banter to be expected from high school freshmen and sophomores, but for the most part, the students are serious about their writing. The four girls aren't required to be here and there's no extra credit to be had, but they are writing nonetheless, as many of them have been doing for several months as part of The Nature of Words Storefront Project, a free drop-in writing workshop series.

Character name: Cheryl
Actor's name: Jenny MacKenzie
Other local productions: Witness for the Prosecution, Tony 'n Tina's Wedding, Couple Dating, Evil Dead the Musical

It might be hard for some longtime Bendites to believe, but BendFilm is now in it's seventh year and has long since shed its “new festival” tag, solidifying a reputation among filmmakers and cinema fans for high-caliber shorts, features, animation and documentaries. Once again, the festival will spread throughout town, as well as all the way to Sisters, showing films at the Regal Old Mill, the Tower Theatre, McMenamins Old St. Francis School and, new this year, the Oxford Hotel.

After two years of trying, I finally saw a naked man in Bend. Not that I was trying very hard, or that I really even cared, but still, he was naked and I saw him.
I hadn't actually been in search of a naked man for 24 months. It was six months to be exact, spread over a span of two years. I discovered it was hard to find a naked man in Bend January through March. Perhaps it was too cold and dark.