Keep The Wimp
Currently there’s a brouhaha brewing over Deschutes County’s intentions to close down NW Wimp Way thereby eliminating an alternate access route into and out of Crooked River Ranch. If you don’t know NW Wimp Way it’s the roadway that heads west off Highway 97 just north of Terrebonne and just south of the Rex T.
Hey Balloon Boy Dad, We Stopped Working Because of You. Pay Up
News outlets have been going bonkers with all the fallout from the Balloon Boy and his wacky dad (strangely, Balloon Life magazine has been mum on the subject) who looks like he, along with his wife, might get the book thrown at at him by pissed-off law enforcement officials for the alleged hoax he pulled…
Faux Pros
In a town where everyone is either: a) a former Olympian/World Champion, b) a really important big deal someplace else before they moved here, and c) wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, add professional photographer to the list. If my calculations are correct, there are more professional photographers in Bend than there are medical professionals.
Ignite Bend 3 Video
Sorry for the delay on this, but we at the Source got some pretty solid video from Ignite Bend 3 last week at the Tower Theatre. If you don’t know what Ignite is, here’s a crash course: Presenters choose any topic they’d like to share and then give five-minute slide show presentation.
Conservatives' Big Coup: No Pop for Prisoners
The conservative group Common Sense for Oregon is preening itself over a major victory: It’s gotten free soda pop taken away from Oregon prison inmates. Common Sense jumped on the issue when it found out that prisoners were allowed to have free soda pop with their meals.
Damn Yankees
From age eight I lived for baseball. The kids in my neighborhood took over two adjoining vacant lots and created a diamond where games were played almost daily from when the snow melted in April through until late October.
When Is Too Much, Too Much?
“Man,” noted a Canadian journalist who called this week with some questions, “for a town that’s the poster child for a depressed economy due to the fallout from the housing boom and greed era, Bend sure has a lot of entertainment going on all the time.”Ah yes, this is the town with the endless array…
KPOV Gets Federal Grant, Moves Transmitter
There’s been plenty of good news for KPOV 106.7FM, Central Oregon’s community radio station coming down the pipe today.
Oregon GOP Musters the Troops Against Health Care Reform
Got an e-mail “Action Alert” yesterday afternoon from Oregon Republican Chairman Bob Tiernan urging me to bombard the state’s Democratic congresspersons with phone calls opposing the “Obama-style health care reform” package that just cleared the Senate Finance Committee. Tiernan waxes positively apoplectic over the finance committee bill – which in fact is a weak-kneed, limp-wristed,…
The Best Thing I Saw at BendFilm: Blue Bus
It’s been four days since BendFilm wrapped up, but there’s been one film that’s been sticking with me since. The film is called Blue Bus, and well, I can’t stop thinking about it.
Real Estate Still Struggling to Touch Bottom
Oh, happy day – the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 10,000 yesterday for the first time in over a year. Meanwhile, however, we witnessed another milestone that probably means more to the typical Central Oregonian: The median sales price for single-family homes in Bend dropped below $200,000 in September.
Homeless Man Held In Double Murder Pt. 2
This is a quick follow-up to the previous story about last night’s arrest of a homeless man who is accused of killing two other men yesterday at a homeless camp north of Bend. I just came back from the arraignment hearing where the suspect Jason Michael Centrone appeared via video camera to hear the…
Swine Flu Hitting Deschutes Hard
The swine flu situation in Deschutes County is more serious than the local news media so far have reported, judging by an e-mail County Communicable Disease Manager Shannon Dames sent to health care professionals today. Under the subject line “H1N1 Cases are way up!” Dames’s e-mail states: “I am sure this is not news to…
Our Picks for 10/14 – 10/22: Ignite Bend 3, The Federation, Tracorum, Eric Tollefson, Battle of the Bags
Ignite Bend 3 wednesday 14 The third installment of the Powerpoint presentation show hits the Tower this week with another wide variety of talks, as well as some music from Kousefly. Slideshows have never been this exciting and this time through, topics include fire, running, diabetes beer and walking, among others. $3 suggested donation. 6:30pm…
Embrace Your Inner Couch Potato: Flicks and books to keep you stoked
I'm sure somebody will lambaste me for not being hardcore enough, but the cold, rainy weather we are in store for this week makes me want to embrace my inner couch potato and throw a log in the fireplace. This is a great time of year to overhaul your bikes, grind your skis, go to…
Child's Play: Wild Things turns make-believe into devastatingly emotional art
You could argue without fear of contradiction that Where the Wild Things Are is the most ambitious film ever conceived that was inspired by a 10-sentence-long picture-book – but I don't think even that sentiment does justice to this prickly, hilarious, devastatingly emotional work of art. Maurice Sendak's classic book hinted at the complex psychology…
Hits from BendFilm: The gamut of cool, eye-opening, heartfelt and comic flicks just keep coming
note: Our film critic, Morgan P. Salvo, spent the weekend taking in the movies of the BendFilm Festival, where he's long been a volunteer. Here's a list of the flicks that caught his eye and also may have caught your eye, too, if you made it out to BendFilm. NARRATIVES: Cold Storage (Directed by Tony…
Dreaming: Ellen Waterston and the Nature of Words
I've witnessed two close friends give their all to creating book festivals. When new friends here raved about the huge gift of The Nature of Words, I asked Ellen Waterston for her story:
Feel the Love: Alpenglow Café casts a warm light
When you name a place Alpenglow in a ski town, you better be able to back it up. For mountain dwellers, the very utterance of the word conjures a Zen oneness with nature and feelings of peace and serenity. After a tough day when you look up toward the horizon and see that reddish glow…
Feel the Love: Alpenglow Café casts a warm light
When you name a place Alpenglow in a ski town, you better be able to back it up. For mountain dwellers, the very utterance of the word conjures a Zen oneness with nature and feelings of peace and serenity. After a tough day when you look up toward the horizon and see that reddish glow…
The Gift of Kottke: The guitar legend on recording, collaborations and Brett Favre
Going to see guitarist/songwriter Leo Kottke perform live is a lot like walking downstairs on Christmas morning and seeing all of the brightly wrapped presents under the tree – you'll receive several gifts you expected, some flat-out surprises and a few more that make everyone in the room glance at each other with beaming smiles.…
Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs
No, it's not a covers record. Nor is it a greatest hits collection. In fact, you may not know Yo La Tengo yet. Well, here's the quick rundown. The Hoboken trio has been twisting the alt-rock genre since 1984 and are heralded by critics and underground rock fans for their ability to create often catchy…
Spare Change?: Local non-profits cut back as donors tighten their purse strings
On the final day of business at the Working Wonders Children's Museum, Jason Friedman watched his two sons intensely engaged in their tactile experiences. The 15-month-old, Levi, squeezed the mysterious substance “moon sand” into a ball, then crushed it gleefully. Five-year-old Maxwell ran around dressed up like a firefighter, role playing with other kids in…
The Greening of Bend
President Obama would be proud of Bend for the vision it has shown on issues like the original cash for clunker program with our junk busses, massive debt being incurred at Juniper Ridge for no benefit to the public, bailouts for BAT, gross overspending on employee health care, new taxes on water and sewer during…
From The Meddle East: Phony heroes, justice delayed but not
The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is reporting from a place called Narnia, where a lion rules, this evil witch is everywhere, yet Viggo Mortensen is nowhere to be found, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly. Liar Liar Richard Strandlof has…
Poll Was Full Of Poop
Seldom have I read a more tragic story than the extinction of the passenger pigeon, flocks that stretched as far as the eye could see, one tier above another, taking an entire day to pass overhead. In just 200 years, Europeans arrived in America and decimated 5 billion birds for cheap meat, feathers, target practice…
Strange How The Leftwing Mind Works
After 15-plus years of denigrating conservative Christians, and the idea that Christian morality should be taught in the schools, and opposing Christian religious symbolism on any public land, bible clubs on campus, removing God, and the Bible, from the schools, and replacing it with [teaching of] evolution, abortion rights claiming that the fetus was nothing…
Cat Licenses Aren't The Answer
In response to H. Bruce Miller's recent article on outdoor cats [Posted on the Wandering Eye Blog, 9/24] I have a few questions. Mr. Miller seems to believe that the sole reason for the disappearance of birds from his neighborhood is due to the increased housecat population created by a new housing development nearby. Mr.…
Homeless Man Held In Double Murder Case
The Deschutes County Sheriff's has arrested a Bend homeless man as a suspect in an alleged double murder at a homeless camp north of Bend.
Here's a copy of the press release that just came out this morning.
What’s With The Weather?
As I write this it’s cold and rainy outside. That’s cold, according to The Weather Channel, as in twenty-five degrees below normal for this time of year.
