Local News

health of Migratory birds are just one of the concerns raised by opponents of the project. SUMMER LAKE - This is a place the phrase "austere beauty" might have been invented to describe. High, rocky ridges dusted with early-spring snow ring a desert plateau sweeping down to a broad expanse of water. The only sounds are the wind, the song of birds and the infrequent whine of tires as a car or truck passes on Highway 31.The handful of people who live in and around the tiny town of Summer Lake about 100 miles southeast of Bend worry that things will change if NT Hydro goes through with its plans. The Idaho company wants to build a pumped storage hydroelectric plant by the lake, involving turbines, two eight-foot-diameter pipes running uphill from the lake and 12 miles of new power lines.
 Julie Bryant and her husband own the Summer Lake Inn, a small resort with a few cabins near the shore of the lake. Bryant fears the hydro project will ruin the environment that brings tens of thousands of migratory birds - and hundreds of birdwatchers and waterfowl hunters - to this remote spot every year, as well as the special ambiance that draws permanent and temporary urban refugees in search of peace.
"It's the quiet, the light," she says. "People come here because you can see the stars at night and you can't hear anything but the birds."

Notes? He don't need no stikin' notes. Hillary's husband looks quite a lot older than when he left the White House nearly eight long, long, long years ago. The hair is snow-white now and the gray suit fits a little snugly around the waistline.
 
But, damn, Slick Willy has still got it.
Bill Clinton showed up to Bend High an hour late, predictably, and spoke for 15 minutes longer than he was supposed to - also predictably. No matter. The crowd, which filled the upper bleachers and packed the gym floor, ate it all up.

Spring break has officially begun at the University of Oregon on this Friday afternoon, but there’s no shortage of young faces remaining on the Eugene campus. A line, five people thick in some places, starts at the doors of McArthur Court, extending in both directions for more than a thousand feet, nearly enclosing the university’s massive athletic complex. There isn’t a basketball game at Mac Court today — the team is in Little Rock, Ark. and slowly losing its lead in a first-round NCAA tournament game. And there isn’t a concert either — live music doesn’t stop at Mac Court too often these days. These people are here to see Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful who is in the midst of a less than two-day sweep of Oregon in preparation for the state’s May 20 primary.