Editor's Note: In this week's issue

Depending on the angle from which you view it, the differences between the rural and urban areas in Central Oregon are either a yin-yang balance, or a divide as wide as a canyon. Yes, there are working cowboys here, and yes there also are computer programmers who sip their lattes and jawbone about their beers IPUs.
This week’s issue touchdowns somewhere in that interface, with a couple articles looking at the friction between those two very different worlds—the wild rural spaces, and the tamed urban zones.
Most directly, our feature story this week looks at the shooting of a cougar this past week on Pilot Butte—a space that is in some of our readers’ backyard! It is a reminder that part of the very natural beauty many note as this region’s greatest attribute is also one of the region’s most unpredictable factors.
Also, in this week’s Slipper, we give a nod to Rep. Greg Walden, who has been a primary reason that the Secure Rural School Act looks to get back in circulation. First passed 15 years ago, that Act was set up to replace federal money for rural schools which was lost when timber sales dried up. Bringing back—or at least holding onto some public funding—for rural schools is a critical issue for Central Oregon as the rift between graduation rates in urban and rural schools has drifted further apart. Rep. Walden’s work to restore that funding is an important step towards lessening those differences.
Cowboy or computer programmer, we hope you enjoy this week’s issue.

This article appears in Mar 25 – Apr 1, 2015.