Some days you're just raring to go grab adventure. And sometimes a crackling fire, a slumbering dog and a good book call your name.
Yin and Yang: Explore the Backcountry or Curl Up with a Good Book
Posted inNews
Let's Dig Our Way Out of This Hole
The City of Bend is talking about creating a no-destination-resort buffer zone around the city, and the Central Oregon Association of Realtors doesn’t like that idea one bit.
Deschutes County is reviewing and revising its rules for where destination resorts can go, and city staff wants to prohibit them within five miles of the city’s Urban Growth Boundary.
Posted inNews
Snow Job: local TV talking heads predisposition to powder.
I’m sure more than a few locals have their pet peeves when it comes to the local television’s newscasts and their talking heads. Talking heads who regularly fall victim to mispronunciations, delivery flubs, you name it.
Posted inNews
Finn Riggins Brings its Weirdly Awesome Indie Rock to Bend Tonight
If there’s one band that I’ve been pleased to see make return appearances in Bend over the past year, it’s Finn Riggins (read our profile of the band from this summer), the sometimes goofy but always tight Boise indie rock trio.
The band is playing tonight at McMenamin’s Old St.
Posted inOutside
Look Out Below!: Grebes are falling out of the sky
This has been the year for grebes to fall out of the sky, literally. Three weeks ago, a Western grebe was discovered standing in the middle of Bradley Road east of Sisters in the early morning hours by Spirit of Sisters storeowner Sue Purcell.
Sue had no idea what the bird was, where it had come from or why it was sitting in the middle of the road. But she did the right thing and checked to be sure she wasn't going to be run over by a 10-wheeler, carefully wrapped the bird in a blanket, placed it in a cardboard box and called me.
The western grebe, aechmophorus occidentalis, is a water bird that eats fish of all kinds, and is so adapted to paddling on and under water that their legs have moved so far aft they and their kin have evolved into swimmers, not walkers.
Western grebes are black-and-white, especially in breeding plumage, with a long, slender, swan-like neck and brilliant red eyes. In the early 1900s when bird's feathers were big in women's fashion, grebes were slaughtered by the “plume-hunters” who took only a patch of skin and breast feathers and sold it as “Oregon Sable.”
Posted inCulture
The World is a Stage: The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus wraps a real-life puzzle in a universal enigma
Although this movie will be spoken of generally as “the one Heath Ledger was making when he died,” the latest work from the director of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam, is not exactly a Heath Ledger movie. He's hardly in it. And while it's natural to eagerly await the scenes in which he appears – as attractive and talented as he was – to do so while watching The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus would be a waste.
If you want some pure, unadulterated Heath Ledger, watch Brokeback Mountain or I'm Not There. Equally, do not expect to see much of the three actors who stepped in for Ledger: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, as their scenes amount to about 20 minutes. Instead, go see this one because it's made by an interesting writer-director whose mix of substance and style is consistently daring and thought provoking.
Posted inFood & Drink
The Bend Barrio: Say 'Hello' to Nouveau Peruvian-Mexican food at Hola!
Since opening in 2007, Hola! has become a mainstay for consistent Latin cuisine. With a menu that features traditional dishes from Peru & Mexico and an extensive tequila bar, Hola! offers authenticity without overkill, relying on fresh, hand-made dishes and a casual, fun dining experience. From tableside guacamole ($9), to shaker-size margarita portions ($7-10), and two convenient locations serving lunch and dinner, say hello to a seasoned restaurant with staying power.
Visiting the East Side location for lunch, the intoxicating smells of tortilla chips frying and carne asada roasting took me back to the year I spent in the Barrio of Tucson, Arizona. Back then, I lived beside the oldest Mexican restaurant in town, El Charro, where house specialty carne seca was air dried daily in a cage hanging over the roof. The smell of Mexican comfort food is as much of a feature of life in the Barrio as the sweltering heat, and the smell of Hola! reminded me of Tucson.
Posted inFood & Drink
The Bend Barrio: Say 'Hello' to Nouveau Peruvian-Mexican food at Hola!
Since opening in 2007, Hola! has become a mainstay for consistent Latin cuisine. With a menu that features traditional dishes from Peru & Mexico and an extensive tequila bar, Hola! offers authenticity without overkill, relying on fresh, hand-made dishes and a casual, fun dining experience. From tableside guacamole ($9), to shaker-size margarita portions ($7-10), and two convenient locations serving lunch and dinner, say hello to a seasoned restaurant with staying power.
Visiting the East Side location for lunch, the intoxicating smells of tortilla chips frying and carne asada roasting took me back to the year I spent in the Barrio of Tucson, Arizona. Back then, I lived beside the oldest Mexican restaurant in town, El Charro, where house specialty carne seca was air dried daily in a cage hanging over the roof. The smell of Mexican comfort food is as much of a feature of life in the Barrio as the sweltering heat, and the smell of Hola! reminded me of Tucson.
Posted inMusic
Teaching the Punks to Dance: The Redwood Plan, with a lively attorney at the helm, bring dance-punk down from Seattle
Lesli Wood, her short, asymmetrical hairstyle streaked with fire engine red, is rarely still on stage. She claps, she jumps and, now, with her new band, The Redwood Plan, she dances.
After a decade spent at the helm of Seattle punk act Ms. Led, Wood is now wrapping up her first year with The Redwood Plan, the dance-rock quartet she formed with several other mainstays of the Seattle's rock scene. Her crowds have traded mosh pits for hip-shaking, but the Lesli Wood that earned a reputation as the political rabble-rousing lead singer of Ms. Led still rocks.
She still rocks, that is, when she's on tour, like she'll be this week when she comes to Bend's Players Bar and Grill on Friday, but during most days, Wood, like so many of us, is behind a desk. You see, though her mostly black clothes and aforementioned distinct haircut might not suggest it, Wood is an attorney and has been for the past five years.
Posted inCulture
Darwin At COCC
As a professional biologist, Jay Bowerman can probably be excused for taking a purely non-political perspective on his latest endeavor, a nearly yearlong series of lectures on Charles Darwin and his landmark work on natural selection and the accompanying theory of evolution. A former president and executive director at the Sunriver Nature Center and Observatory, Bowerman has long been fascinated by the lasting impact of Darwin's theories and the evolving scientific framework, which Bowerman calls “an incredible unifying theory for all the life sciences.” Not unlike the theory of relativity in physics, just about every process in the natural sciences can be traced back to Darwin's pioneering theories.