Remembering Firefighter John Hammack
We’re deeply saddened by the recent passing of John Hammack, (58 as reported by The Oregonian and 60 as reported by The Washington Post), of Madras, a firefighter who lost his life while working a recent fire in the Mt. Washington Wilderness near Dugout Lake. Hammack, a longtime logger, and his crew partner, Norman Crawford,…
Video of the Week: “Prison is for people who never roller skated”
Hahahahahaha. Awesome.
More Fires Follow Last Night’s Lightning
BLM Oregon Just because it’s raining, doesn’t mean there can’t be fires. According to the Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch Center, area fire crews had responded to 48 separate incidents as of this morning. Storms in Central Oregon started yesterday afternoon and continued through the night. The lightning display made for some great front porch beer…
Up in Flames
It is a very clear memory: Heading away from the house, smoke hanging thick in the early morning air, in the backseat of a car packed with photographs, valuables, and the brand-new jean overalls I had gotten school shopping. I was 7 years old when my family was forced to evacuate our home in southeast…
Keeping it Real
The tiny city of Oakridge, apart from neighboring Westfir, is the only Oregon city completely surrounded by national forest. This fact, when combined with the hundreds of miles of trails and relatively steep terrain, make Oakridge an ideal mountain biking destination. Turns out, it's not so bad for beer drinking either. A few years ago…
Warm Springs on a Hot Streak
Last Monday, when I arrived on the Warm Springs Reservation, it was a whirlwind of confusion. A pillar of smoke billowed in the background. The Warm Springs Incident Management Team was in the process of transferring firefighting duties to Oregon Interagency Incident Management Team 4 (ORIIMT4)—a well-trained crew made up of federal, state, and municipal…
Brewery Food, But Better
Apps The folks at Crux Fermentation Project sure are smart. They know that patrons will stick around longer if tasty snacks are the norm, rather than overpriced chips and salsa and Costco-quality buffalo wings. Real food also pairs better with all those heavenly high-alcohol beers Crux specializes in. If enjoying a Doublecross (Strong Dark Belgian…
You’d Be Surprised!
I live in what is called the Wildland-Urban Fire Interface. Fire is always licking at my thoughts. Living on land next to a forest has its upside, but the threat of fire is not one of them. When the days get hot—and this happens earlier and earlier each year-the high desert turns into a tinderbox.…
We Didn’t Start the Fire
Hot, dry and windy weather, along with the scores of ongoing Pacific Northwest fires, have prompted local agencies to place fire restrictions on popular summer recreation spots as well as bans on open flames and sparks. Smokers must only light up in their cars (extra gross), in approved campgrounds (see below), on lakes and rivers…
Janie (and Everyone Else) Has a Gun
As I stumbled and stammered, trying to find the most appropriate word to describe Bend’s alarming spike in weapons offenses, Lt. Chris Carney stepped in. “You can call that disturbing,” Carney said flatly. A Bend Police Department accountability review released in June revealed that weapons offenses in Bend were up a staggering 115 percent over…
Go Green or Go Home
It’s time for Bend to stop acting so provincial and step into a leadership role. Our city of 80,000 could do so by implementing the Oregon Department of Transportation’s lauded data analysis tool, GreenSTEP, a relatively new software that sets up various transportation and lifestyle scenarios and estimates greenhouse gas emissions. GreenSTEP came about as…
One Day at a Time
MONDAY 22 Though One Day at a Time usually focuses on the most terrible aspects of the human condition, today we devote our attentions to life! In particular, the birth of the royal baby! Born to the Duchess and Duke of Cambridge, the bouncing baby boy weighed in at 8 lbs., 6 oz. and…WAIT. THIS…
Letters
To The Editor, As fellow firefighters and the public mourn the loss of the nineteen Granite Mountain Hotshot crewmembers in Yarnell Hill Arizona on June 30th 2013, we are also left with the questions of how and why this tragedy happened. It will most likely take months for the Serious Accident Investigation Team, (SAIT) to…
Chris Horner is Back!
Chris Horner doesn’t sound like an athlete who has been sidelined by injury for four months. When we talked last week, I could barely follow the chipper, fast-talking pro cyclist—he was that excited. In there somewhere were comments about doughnuts and early season races, knee pain and watching the Tour from home, his contract, the…
Burrowing Owls
All our small owls—screech, saw-whet, pygmy, flammulated, and boreal—nest in tree cavities, created by woodpeckers, broken limbs or just plain old age. Then there’s the little burrowing owl, also a "cavity nester," but the cavity is a hole in the ground. The burrowing owl is inextricably (oh, how I love that word!) linked to the…
A Film That Almost Wasn’t
Nobody puts baby in a corner! The same can be said for the actual film “Dirty Dancing,” which was never intended—or remotely expected—to be a blockbuster cultural icon. Yet, the movie introduced a new term to the world, grandly mirrored the same loss-of-innocence of one Jewish-American girl to that of America in 1963, had a…
Mutant Ronin
In 2009, Fox tried to give Wolverine his own franchise. What resulted was a forgettable slog of baloney called X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Four years later, the stench of Origins has dissipated—so here's The Wolverine, Fox's latest attempt to make X-Men amounts of money while only having to hire one X-Man. But here's the thing: This…
Zero Dark and Troubling
The common refrain is that investigative journalism is a dying industry; that the time and painstakingly meticulous detective work necessary to uncover politicians’ dark secrets are rare commodities in today’s rush-rush media world as Remington typewriters. But Jeremy Scahill, the national security correspondent for The Nation, gives hope that the likes of Nellie Bly, Bob…
It Came From the Trees
Every year the popular Pickathon festival outside Portland garners attention for one main aspect of its evolution: its growing attention to sustainability, with organizers eliminating single-use cups as well as disposable food containers, replacing them with souvenir metal tumblers and reusable bamboo plates. Along with solar electricity, commute options and a team of people charged…
Meet the Artist
Angela Raines describes her art and her personality with the same phrase: Addicted to whimsy. “If there is a fort to be built, I’ll be the one to build it,” explained Raines, whose anthropomorphic bunny paintings caught our editor’s eye at the Mississippi Street Fair in Portland last month. Raines' entire life is full of…
A Gumbo of Swamp Sounds
Yes, it is cliché to describe something from Southern Louisiana as “gumbo,” but it is also so, so apt. Gumbo, if I must explain, is a spicy stew made with seafood, meat, celery, onions and other root vegetables. Most important are the bitter okra leaves that draw together the dish. Likewise, Cedric Watson, an East…
Our Picks 7/31 – 8/8
wed 31 and sat 3 Cheap Trick and Kansas ROCK—The rambunctious Cheap Trick, performing Wednesday, is just a warmup for Kansas (Saturday), whose graying members each have one foot in the grave. But the Americana revival makes the group surprisingly relevant again! And, yes, we all are dust in the wind. You can pick up…
Out of Town 7/31 – 8/8
near portland friday 2-sunday 4 Pickathon By festival lovers for festival lovers, Pickathon is clean, safe and packed with bands to discover; six forest-clad stages! The party is also seriously sustainable, using zero single-use dishes and utensils with a solar array that generates enough electricity in the year to offset all of the energy used…
Watch “Orange is the New Black.” It’s Impressively Good.
The new Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black,” is phenomenal. And I’ve only watched one of the 13 episodes. Others in the office, already addicted to the hilarious yet poignant, well written/scripted/acted series about a late 20s upper middle class white woman who goes to prison for a decade-old drug offense, say it…
