Plan B: Corn utopia, your own backyard, and the Metolius challenge

Posted inOutside

Plan B: Corn utopia, your own backyard, and the Metolius challenge

Pam Stevenson

ADVENTURE DEFICIT DISORDER

"The best laid plans of mice and (wo)men often go awry," wrote poet Robert Burns. If you are anything like me, you feel a welling sense of panic as winter suddenly tranforms into summer on the High Desert. The anxiety revolves around a desire to maximize our short summer by packing each weekend between Memorial Day and Labor Day with as many adventures as humanly possible. If a weekend gets lost to poor planning, or unforseen circumstances, I suffer from a condition my friends and I have dubbed "ADD" (Adventure Deficit Disorder). As far as I know, the only cure for a sudden bout of ADD is Plan B.
Fortunately, like a drugstore pharmacist, Central Oregon offers up a vast array of antidotes, especially this time of year. Sometimes we forget how much fun it is to just play in your own backyard.

Posted inFood & Drink

The Go Getter

Eric Flowers

As my beloved bar assistant, Regan, is off on an internship in hopes of making the world a better place for developing nations, I am left with the task of replacing one of the most loyal, hard working, and intelligent people I’ve ever worked with.
Anyone who has ever hired and collected resumes will tell you that unfortunately most resumes are hard to read, bear little relevant information, and are unappealing to the eye.

Posted inFood & Drink

ReTreats: Trout House

Alice Finer

Clams and mussels at the Trout HouseIn a departure from our usual format, we sent writer Alice Finer in search of a different kind of dinner pairing: a day of play in the great outdoors followed by a memorable meal at one of the many far-flung restaurants around the region. Look for other destination dining stories under the Retreats flag in upcoming issues.

Last week, with Memorial Day looming, my organizational skills severely lacking and a dramatic economic recovery increasingly unlikely, it was time to come to terms with the collapse of my summer's more ambitious plans. But living in the land of plenty when it comes to recreation, I could instead embark upon a season-long staycation here in Central Oregon to rival my most riveting excursions to date. Unfortunately, in all my excitement, pragmatism flew out the window, and I kicked off the summer with a tour of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument on a holiday weekend along with every visiting man, woman and their six screaming children. I ended up on a trail of tears, the highlight of which was a full panic attack about 50 feet into the mouth of the Lava River Cave that sent me screaming back into the light while grannies and preschoolers skipped by me with their lanterns and wide-eyed enthusiasm.

Posted inFood & Drink

ReTreats: Trout House

Alice Finer

Clams and mussels at the Trout HouseIn a departure from our usual format, we sent writer Alice Finer in search of a different kind of dinner pairing: a day of play in the great outdoors followed by a memorable meal at one of the many far-flung restaurants around the region. Look for other destination dining stories under the Retreats flag in upcoming issues.

Last week, with Memorial Day looming, my organizational skills severely lacking and a dramatic economic recovery increasingly unlikely, it was time to come to terms with the collapse of my summer’s more ambitious plans. But living in the land of plenty when it comes to recreation, I could instead embark upon a season-long staycation here in Central Oregon to rival my most riveting excursions to date. Unfortunately, in all my excitement, pragmatism flew out the window, and I kicked off the summer with a tour of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument on a holiday weekend along with every visiting man, woman and their six screaming children. I ended up on a trail of tears, the highlight of which was a full panic attack about 50 feet into the mouth of the Lava River Cave that sent me screaming back into the light while grannies and preschoolers skipped by me with their lanterns and wide-eyed enthusiasm.

Posted inNews

You Can’t (Pan) Handle the Truth : A new road tax, panhandler crackdown and a Metolius update

The Source Staff

The proposed panhandling ordinance that's been floating around city hall for the past few months may be torpedoed for good this week. The council was scheduled to meet Wednesday night (after this issue had been printed) to discuss, among other things, the city attorney's research into the legal issues around panhandling. Her report, which was available on the city's website (ci.bend.or.us) prior to the meeting, didn't exactly provide a ringing endorsement of the concept-one of several that have been floated in the past half year or so, including graffiti removal laws and downtown skateboard bans that seem to be targeted at Mayberrifying Bend. But the council may have to draw the line at panhandling, which enjoys near blanket protection based on Oregon's broad free speech laws.

Medford was the most recent city to attempt a panhandling ordinance and got the smackdown from a district court judge. Medford is appealing, but the law is pretty clear, according to city attorney Mary Winters. A city can adopt rules to keep its citizens safe, but it may not enact laws that limit speech, including solicitations for handouts.
While Winters didn't make a recommendation, she cautioned the council strongly against jumping into the fray. "Adoption of even a modified version of the Medford ordinance could lead to costly constitutional challenges that the city could lose," she wrote.
If that's not a flashing red light, we don't know what is.
Several councilors said prior to the meeting that they weren't too keen on a panhandling ordinance, particularly if it could land the city in court.
"My gut feeling is that unless it's legally bombproof, I don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole," said Councilor Mark Capell.
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Posted inNews

Keeping Art Alive: Arts Central is just one Oregon arts organization vying to stay afloat

Mike Bookey

Cate O’Hagan at the former Mirror Pond GalleryWhile giving a tour of what was until recently the Mirror Pond Gallery, Cate O'Hagan moves quickly but thoughtfully. She's a busy woman, to say the least, but she takes time to show off the architecture work of third graders, which although not on par with Frank Lloyd Wright, is nonetheless creative. We breeze by some watercolors on the wall and then we sit down, O'Hagan taking off her stylish square-framed glasses and setting them on a massive square table.

O'Hagan, the executive director of Arts Central, the region's state-designated arts and cultural council, seems to enjoy the chance to sit down, because again, she is a busy woman who's had a busy week.

Posted inOpinion

Life During Wartime: From bailout to busted at G.M., Cheney comes clean and pigs fly

Eric Flowers

The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is reporting from the White Salmon River, removing computer-tracking chips from salmonids then attaching them to squirrels to baffle scientists, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly.
$30 billion for Failing
Here’s JohnnyIf you haven't heard, General Motors is now in bankruptcy, and received another $30 billion for the fine work. These additional dollars aren't even a loan, but raise the U.S.'s - Our - ownership stake in GM to 60%. Kudos! Go pick up your Hummer, Saturn or Pontiac today! GM has been creatively bankrupt for decades, and over a dozen plants have been identified for closure (adding over 20,000 in potential job losses), and 2,000+ dealerships have already been notified that GM is breaking up with them (including three in Central Oregon) = another 100,000+ un-employees. Ever optimistic, and citing Chrysler's rapid reinvention only a month into bankruptcy, President Obama offered, "Many experts said that a quick, surgical bankruptcy was impossible. They were wrong." We'll just have to take his (and GM's innumerable, inept managers') word on that one… In other news: Michigan will soon be sold to militias for training exercises, and ex-GM CEO Rick Wagoner was seen driving a Toyota Prius, smoking a Cuban cigar, looking for a tasty quiche.

Posted inOpinion

Insensitivity is Ignorance

Eric Flowers

A recent item that ran in the Upfront section of our May 14 edition about the deportation of suspected Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk made a regrettable comparison between the Israel-Palestine conflict and concentration camps. The Source Weekly is a strong supporter of all minorities and regrets likening the modern conflict, while grave, with the horror of the Holocaust. We sincerely apologize for any offense that the ill-conceived comparison created and have offered the following space to a member of the local jewish community for a more detailed perspective on the subject. – Eric Flowers, editor.
It is important for readers to understand why Jews are sensitive to negative public characterizations. Countless Jews have paid with their lives for incitement from the medieval "blood libel," which falsely accused Jews of killing children to use their blood to make Passover matzah. During the late 1800's the Russian forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published (falsely claiming that Jews would take over the world through banking and the newspapers). It would later influence Hitler in his mad quest to murder all Jews.

Posted inCulture

The Biggest Little Town in Wheeler County

Suzanne Burns

…just another Whole in the Wall.On a recent road trip to the sleepy berg of Mitchell, 82 miles from Bend, my husband and I stepped into a world that would make David Lynch jealous. Mitchell, population 170, is the kind of town that embodies the wholesome earnestness of Agent Cooper of Twin Peaks praising a small town's coffee and cherry pie blended with the quasi-dark undertones of the Twilight Zone. Where was Rod Serling, stepping in front Mitchell's Whole in the Wall, a dilapidated shack that once sold modest treasures, to wax philosophic about the prizes and pitfalls of small town life?

Our unofficial tour guide, a friendly woman corralling her curls into a stocking cap, invited us into her second-hand store to warm our hands by the woodstove. On this unseasonably cold day in mid-April, our guide motioned toward a card table heavy with tattered Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, a Flowbee Haircut System (the intriguing device you once saw on late-night infomercials that cuts hair through a masochistic vacuuming process), and too many bodice-ripping romance novels to count.

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