Cover Story
Love Your Neighbor
In Central Oregon, conversations around race often start with the phrase,”Bend is so white.” While Census figures show that the region is majority-white, thousands of people of color live, work and play here, too. In the first of several open forums sponsored by the Source Weekly and led by the Source’s 2019 Woman of the…
Gung Ho For Shows: Primus W/ Wolfmother and Battles
All summer long, Primus will be touring the country while paying tribute to Rush and the Canadian band’s 1977 album, “A Farewell to Kings.” This is turning out to be quite the significant tour. For one, Rush’s “Hemispheres” tour was actually Primus bassist Les Claypool’s first concert at the age of 14. And second, the tour…
Solutions to the Housing Crisis
The year 2019 was a successful year for advocates of more affordable and equitable housing policies in Oregon. Oregon legislators passed the first state-wide rent control bill in the nation. They also put an end to single-family zoning throughout the state. Bend took the lead on this policy by allowing du-, tri- and four-plexes throughout…
Free Will Astrology—Week of February 13
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian author Derek Walcott had a perspective on love that I suspect might come in handy for you during this Valentine season. “Break a vase,” he wrote, “and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.” I urge…
Burning Man in Bend’s High Desert
For those who’ve wondered what inspires someone to tow trailers and tutus into the Nevada desert for eight days at the end of August every year for Burning Man, now is the chance to understand it. The High Desert Museum brings this unique annual event and the creative forces behind it into perspective with the…
Letters to the Editor
Editor’s note: Some of you might have heard of the term “solutions journalism.” The Ground Truth Project, which has a mission of serving “under-covered corners” of the U.S., defines solutions journalism as “focusing on what works, and how it’s done.” Other definitions of solutions journalism include shining a light on the ideas and actions intended…
Love the Wine You’re With
After spending several days with Central Oregon winemakers and wine shop owners, I fully understand the difference between an enthusiast and an oenophile. Sarah Worley, owner of Good Drop Wine Shoppe, doesn’t just love wine; she lives, breathes and drinks it. Cindy Grossman, who co-owns Faith, Hope & Charity Vineyards with her husband, Roger, proudly…
Zwickelmania 2020
Judging by the number of people at area breweries nearly any night of the week, Central Oregonians don’t need a special event to entice them to celebrate Oregon’s craft beer scene. BUT, we’re also guessing that a special event isn’t a reason not to celebrate, either. Sat., Feb. 22 is Zwickelmania, a statewide event heralding…
Out in the “Woods”
F or my second piece of 2020, I stuck with my promise to review more beers outside of Bend. This time I ventured all the way to…. Deschutes River Woods!!! OK, OK… so yeah… it’s technically still Bend, but please keep reading. It was a fun visit and is completely unique to Central Oregon. I…
Homeless Camp Evictions
Eviction is sometimes caricatured as a cruel act by fat-cat landlords, pushing low-income families out into the bitter cold in the dead of winter. But what happens when the landlord is the public itself, in the form of the City of Bend, and the people being forced out already live outside? During the Feb. 5…
10 Screenings, Four Days
After the alarm clock jolted us awake at 3 a.m. for a flight from Redmond to Salt Lake City, Utah, it would be nearly 24 hours before our heads hit pillows again. Over a four-day run, my wife, Floy, and I would see five features, three documentaries and two collections of shorts during the 2020…
You Are What You Eat
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a federal statute spearheaded by Michelle Obama and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, set new standards for school meals, ensuring that kids in grades K-12 ate nutritionally-focused food. Changes in menu items included more fruits and vegetables, fat-free milk and whole grains. In 2013, the U.S.…
Wilderness Permits: A (tentatively) good compromise?
For the past several years, officials from the Deschutes and Willamette National Forests have been engaged in a process aimed at managing overuse in the Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Washington, and Three Sisters wilderness areas. We’ve known since last year that a day-use permit system, with a cap in the number of users per day, was…
Man vs. Wild, Elk Lake Edition
Before taking the snowcat trip up to Elk Lake, my mind was clouded with the stress of day-to-day life. When would I have time to do laundry? Did I remember to pay my gas bill? The 45-minute drive through the wilderness quickly brought me back down to size. The snowy vastness reminded me how small…
New at WinterFest: Outdoors Gear
The Polar Market at Oregon WinterFest is a hub for outdoor sporting gear—something many people in Central Oregon already can’t get enough of. And this year, the Polar Market is only getting better for those sporting-goods junkies. For the first time ever, TruNorthwest Exhange is hosting a consignment fair for people to come and drop…
Boarding in Jordan
A statistic floats by early on in local filmmaker Jesse Locke’s new documentary, “7 Hills,” which brings a shock to the system. The country of Jordan has 67,600 displaced humans from Iraq, 671,579 from Syria, 14,457 from Yemen, 793 from Somalia and 6,146 from Sudan. That’s close to 1/10th of the population of the entire country.…
Empty Cups
Part 2 in a series highlighting this writer’s experience as a judge in a high-profile cannabis competition. As I began to detail in an article last month, I was assigned “vape cartridges” as my product to review as a judge for the High Times Oregon Cannabis Cup. Normally, that would have been great. But in…
Naughty By Nature is Timeless
Rap music has changed immensely since its inception, and just in the last few years, a shift has occurred in what becomes popular. But even in a genre that continues to evolve on the daily, there’s no doubt about the classic groups that continue to reign supreme. And Naughty By Nature? The definition of classic.…
WinterFest First Timers
Local band Brandon Prinzing & The Old Revival will be making its WinterFest debut Saturday night, kicking things off for Jemere Morgan and Naughty By Nature. Funny enough, when I reached out to Prinzing for this story he was spending time in Hawaii—enjoying a far different scene than what he and the band will be…
Opportunity Zones
The Federal Opportunity Zone program was created in 2017 through the Investing in Opportunity Act—part of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The goal is to stimulate economic development and job creation in economically distressed communities by encouraging long-term investments in low-income neighborhoods. Instead of relying on taxpayer dollars and government programs, the aim is to…
Business Whirled
Business Whirled I’m a woman who’s fiercely competitive in the business world. I’ve been rewarded for pursuing deals as relentlessly as highly successful men do. Yet, taking this approach in my dating life — energetically pursuing men and confidently asking them out — has been a bust. The men I go after seem to find…
