Don’t Hate Corn

Posted inOpinion

Don’t Hate Corn

Eric Flowers

The October 29 article "Wanted: Good Buns…as in the bread that holds your burger," may mislead consumers about high fructose corn syrup.
High fructose corn syrup, sugar, and several fruit juices are all nutritionally the same. High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as sugar and is handled similarly by the body. In 1983, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration formally listed high fructose corn syrup as safe for use in food and reaffirmed that decision in 1996.

Posted inOpinion

Tickets Are Real

Eric Flowers

I read the article "Beware Parking Ticket Racket" from the September 25th issue. I decided to do some research of my own because I did not believe everything the gentlemen had stated. From the information and facts I had found it seems that he is just a pissed off person with a valid ticket and does not want to pay a measly $25. I went to the "permit only lot" to see the signs. The signs are bigger than what was stated in the article and the signs clearly read "Parking by Permit Only Violators Will Be Ticketed." Yes, this is a private lot and the owners had decided to contract Municipal Parking Services to monitor their lot. MPS has several agents watching lots around Bend.
People have been taking advantage of parking in the lot behind Midtown for several years. MPS put four signs on the lot requested by the owner. I had talked with one of the agents from MPS and he stated that he told this gentleman that he could call the owner of the lot to try to have the ticket voided. If the owner did not void the ticket then MPS could not do anything about it. The agent at MPS never said "there was nothing I could do about it". The gentleman was not telling the whole truth about what had been said. The owners of the private lots have sole jurisdiction on voiding the tickets. MPS is not responsible in any way for voiding tickets.

Posted inOpinion

BendFilm Was Always First

Eric Flowers

I accepted the request of the BendFilm board to be the Executive Director in November 2007. So that we would not have to close our doors, I came on board for no salary for two months - which was my choice. At all times, I have attempted to honor the mission of BendFilm, which is to celebrate the passionate voice of the independent filmmaker. Anyone who thinks my 'agenda' was anything different than that doesn't know me. I love film. I love filmmakers. I love BendFilm. At all times I worked towards honoring that mission. I worked solely towards honoring the funds sponsors gave, and to honor the work the filmmakers created, which at times is simply extraordinary.

Posted inNews

Is Bigger Better? Bend weighs an unprecedented growth plan.

Eric Flowers

Hay farm today, auto mall tomorrowYou can't see Bend's sprawling auto malls and shopping centers, or the rows and rows of cookie cutter homes, from Dave Hanson's hay and cattle ranch south of Redmond, but Hanson, whose family has been farming out here since the 1940s, can feel it - sure enough.
Hanson breeds brood stock cattle which he has shipped to as far away as Japan, but he wonders how long he and other farmers can make a living off the land when cities continue to chew up agricultural land to feed their appetite for new homes, malls and office buildings.

Posted inOpinion

Our Medieval Electoral College

Eric Flowers

Where’s the moat?A Wikipedia search for the origins of the Electoral College yields the following interesting factoid:
"Germanic law stated that the German king led only with the support of his nobles. Thus, Pelayo needed to be elected by his Visigothic nobles before becoming king of Asturias, and so did Pepin the Short by Frankish nobles in order to become the first Carolingian king. While most other Germanic nations went to a strictly hereditary system by the first millennium, the Holy Roman Empire could not, and the King of the Romans, who would become Holy Roman Emperor or at least Emperor-elect, was selected by the college of prince-electors from the late Middle Ages until 1806 (the last election actually took place in 1792)."

Posted inOpinion

Trick or Cheating: Taking the easy way out on Halloween, crazy Coulter, and sex talks

Eric Flowers

The Queen of Shock

Trick-Or-Driving
Upfront was primed to launch a tirade on this page about the apparent death of trick or treating, seeing as how last Friday we only had three groups of masked children come to our door. But we soon learned, upon arriving in a different neighborhood, that kids are still hitting the streets en masse to get a free sugar fix and that Upfront's dearth of trick-or-treaters was due to our non-streetlight, plenty of broken-down cars street.
Apparently, kids and their parents, not unlike Hemingway, enjoy a clean, well-lighted place to knock on doors. While there were plenty of costumed children in this pristine neighborhood, there was one troubling practice we witnessed: parents driving their children from house to house. Folks were loading up the kids for a 25 foot trip to the next house and then repeating this process all the way around the block.

Posted inOutside

What Goes ‘Round, Come Around: The curious life of bot flies

Jim Anderson

In the 80-plus years I have lived on this grand old planet we call
home, I have come to realize that the world of nature is so complex I
will go out among the stars with only a hint of what's really going on.

Take
bot flies for example. These pestiferous little buggers (pun intended)
make life miserable for any mammal they come into contact with,
especially rodents, livestock and humans. Scientists have placed bot
flies into one big family: Oestroidea (OH-est-ROW-eh-dee-ah). The bot
fly is a "true fly" that is, they belong to the order Diptera, which
means, "with two wings." While all the other billions of insects are
flying around with four wings, flies have only two, and a "balancer"
that gives them the remarkable agility to avoid fly swatters and such.

Posted inOutside

Fall into Winter: Squeeze in a last-chance hike before the snow falls

Pam Stevenson

THREE FALL HIKES
Fall colors at Mt. JeffersonFall is hiking season in Central Oregon. Now that
November is here, the window of opportunity for many of our best hikes
is closing quickly, but if you can squeeze in one more hike before the
snow flies, here are some of my favorites.
Get there any which way you can: Jeff Park
There
are four ways to gain admission to the "Park," a gorgeous lake-studded
meadow at the base of Mt. Jefferson. Every autumn, I try to find an
Indian Summer weekend to backpack up there when the huckleberry bushes
paint the fields burgundy. My usual way in is an easy six miles up the
Whitewater Trail, off Highway 22. One time, we took a shuttle and came
back out the Pacific Coast Trail and Woodpecker Ridge Trail, which is
about the same length, but can involve a challenging crossing of the
creek running down from Russell Glacier. You can also enter the park by
taking the South Breitenbush Trail or the PCT from the North. Once
you're there, it's an idyllic place to hang out or, if you're really
gung-ho, you can attempt to climb 10,497-foot Mt. Jefferson. Whichever
way you get there, you won't want to leave.

Posted inCulture

Wii Like Music: Nintendo takes on the Guitar Hero phenomenon

Shawn Wallbaum

Somewhere under the rainbow, robotic children play music.It's been a slow process for Nintendo to release games that use the Wii
balance board, but now comes Wii Music. This game was in line to be
released with the Wii system, but it ran into a few snags and was more
or less left in the dust. Well, it seems a resurrection has occured due
to the popularity of Guitar Hero and Rock Band and Nintendo wanted this
game on the fast track. Wii Music was overseen by famous Nintendo
composer Koji Kondo who has contributed music to some of the best games
Nintendo has ever released including Duck Hunt, Mario Bros., Zelda, and
many others. The game allows for either single or multi-player action
and lets you choose from up to 60 different instruments. Players can
choose to play the piano, violin, guitar, bongo drums, harp, trumpet,
and other instruments and the Wii Balance Board is used to play the
drums with pedals while the Nunchuk serves as the drumsticks.

Posted inCulture

Lifeless Haunting Will Shock No One: You’ve seen this one before…on every channel

Mike Bookey

Scissor sisters. I almost don't know what to say about this innocuous entry into the
thriller genre except that it's as about as mediocre as they come, as
generic as it gets, and predictable beyond a shadow of a doubt. My
first thought was proven to be true that any movie with "Haunting" in
the title and especially "the Haunting of…" is doomed from the get-go.
Just check out Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) if you don't believe
me. This movie was so below my level of consciousness that it didn't
even have enough power to make me mad. I just sat there and so did the
movie.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley, follows, you guessed it, Molly
Hartley and her pesky haunting and does so as follows: Molly (Hayley
Bennett) is attending a new high school in a new place with just her
dad. He says "let's have a fresh start" at breakfast, foreshadowing
things might not go so well. They've moved to the same community as her
mother's mental health facility and soon Molly has headaches,
hallucinations and troubles all stemming from the fact that mom jabbed
a pair of scissors in her chest years ago and was put away. Molly is
basically haunted by her mom…constantly, via flashbacks and what seems
to be present day escape visits.

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