Culture Features

Perhaps you’ve driven by and noticed a large piece of wide-open space within the city of Bend along Pettigrew Road. This oasis, surrounded by a neighborhood and development, is Fields Farm, a quiet, nearly 10-acre plot of land that has been nourishing its community for more than three decades. Jim and Debbie Fields began farming […]

What are you hungry for in life and community?” That’s one of many messages rotating on the front of a white, defunct Kenmore refrigerator sitting on the curb outside a home on Northwest Cumberland Avenue in Bend. Passers-by are invited to open the fridge and rummage through the treasures inside, which are constantly changing. On […]

From the kaleidoscopic pages of “A Field Guide to the Subterranean: Reclaiming the Deep Earth and our Deepest Selves,” a new memoir by Justin Hocking, tumbles the author’s ambition, as a young man, to be hard. He cultivated a stiff upper lip in his late teens by training to become a mountaineering guide in his […]

Once students reach their junior year, they seem to cross a very important threshold—they are no longer just high school students; it is time to plan for the future. Whether it be questions from well-meaning adults, discussions with older friends or the constant flow of college mail into students’ inboxes, the thought of college becomes […]

Did comedian Jamie Shriner ever tell you about the time she put gum in her older sister’s hair, right before the pair were set to audition for a production of “Beauty and the Beast”? And the crazy part? By the end of this funny-ass anecdote, Shriner, astoundingly, isn’t the villain. “That’s another one of those […]

Born to dance, Elise Porter, a Bend resident and local movement aficionado, pursues her life’s purpose by helping “humans get unstuck and release into the full joy of movement expression.” Propelling herself into as many styles of dance as possible, from high-school belly dancing classes and ballet-modern fusion in college, she’d jumped at every dance […]

In my half-filled baby book, my mother wrote several entries about my appetite such as, “Loves bananas, crackers, and cookies” or “Loves to eat all the time.” Was this an early indication of my affair with food? I use that word quite seriously because it’s something I keep quiet about unless I’m around other food-smitten […]

“I can’t believe I saw a llama.” That’s a phrase often repeated as folks encounter Jeff Wagner and his llama, Yogi. Wagner hauls Yogi in a trailer, from La Pine to the Old Mill District, on a regular basis so they can take a stroll. He started doing this during the pandemic because he thought it […]

A little-known piece of Bend history, nearly lost in oblivion, has been recovered and pieced together. The project was inspired by one tiny newspaper article from 1925 titled, “Colored Men Form Club for Betterment of Race.” “I have no idea how long ago I found that story and printed a clipping of it for future research,” […]

Story is a part of life in how we exist and make meaning. Lucky for us, Central Oregon is home to a number of museums that hold history, science, and nature in deepening our understanding of the world and our experience of wonder. Spring is a great time to delve into some of the regional […]