Crunch Time for Transit: Citizens Step to the Plate to Pinch Hit for BAT

Posted inNews

Crunch Time for Transit: Citizens Step to the Plate to Pinch Hit for BAT

Eric Flowers

Getting out the voteIt’s 9:24 a.m. and Bend Area Transit (BAT) bus number three buzzes along its route through the city’s south side, picking up passengers headed for destinations as diverse as its individual riders, when Annis Henson, seated in the second row, starts speaking out about voter registration and the November election.

Henson grips a clipboard snapped shut on brochures, voter registration forms and a pen. Everyone on the bus swings to attention at the sound of her voice.
"If you haven’t registered to vote yet, I can help you do that this morning," Henson says. "If you’re 17 years old on or before October 14 and you turn 18 by November 3 you can register to vote in the state of Oregon." She answers a bus rider’s question about registering if someone just moved here from out of state. She passes him the clipboard and he begins filling out a voter registration form. At Henson’s count that’s 70 people she’s now registered.
Henson is a member of Citizens for Bend Area Transit (C-BAT), a group of volunteers working to spread the word about a ballot proposal that would create a transit district for Bend and transfer BAT’s operating expenses from the city budget to a permanent property tax increase - 39.3 cents per $1,000 of a home’s assessed value, or about $48 a year for a home assessed at $287,000.

Posted inOpinion

Don’t Forget the Hunters

Eric Flowers

Thank you for the "Wild Things" issue. I'd like to put in a word for another much-maligned predator: Me.
Like the coyote, I hunt too, and I'm fighting a bad public image. People accuse me of being unethical. They say I kill for sport. They embrace nature and try to prevent me from having a place in it. But I'm every bit as necessary to a healthy ecosystem as the coyote and the eagle, and not even in a very different way.
I am, by virtue of what I do, a conservationist. My activity helps to keep in balance that crucial relationship between predator and prey. Skeptics should note that in places where hunting is not allowed (National parks being a prime example) wildlife populations are out of balance. Coyotes, wolves, bears, and cats are doing their part, but it's not enough. Something is missing. There's an unfilled niche.
Society wants to believe that four legged predators can fill that gap, but there's a problem. Animals are unreliable. They tend to wander. They hunt where they want, not where they're needed. They kill what they can catch, not always what's most expendable. They never have nor ever will be able to fill the wildlife management role that man has occupied for eons.

Posted inCulture

Make A Joyful Bosom Affair: One woman’s birthday gift is another’s force majeure

Mike Bookey

“A woman needs a man,” by Kristin ProvostLenora James was in a pickle. This last May, the Bend woman forgot to
send a birthday gift to a friend celebrating her "Happy Boobday."
James, inspired by the breast theme, applied paint to her breasts and
imprinted them on a blank canvas

She soon realized this was a
perfect fund-raising project to fight breast cancer. Members of James'
family had struggled with the disease, and she had just helped a close
friend cope with the Easter Sunday death of her mother. James soon
contacted the Sara Fisher Project (the breast cancer education and
assistance powerhouse based in Bend) and the Joyful Bosom Affair was
born.
The original goal of the Affair was simple: get women to
paint their breasts, press them onto a canvas and incorporate the
imprints into a painting. The paintings would then be displayed and
sold at the First Friday Art Walk on October 3 as well as the Bend Fall
Festival with the proceeds going to the Sara Fisher project.

Posted inCulture

Doing the Thing Right: Spike Lee scores with epic saga

Mike Bookey

Is that a head you got there?You gotta hand it to Spike Lee. He's willing to take risks. With
Miracle at St Anna, the risk is a larger-than-life mainstream war movie
that tries to hold onto his visionary/radical/art-house/civil rights
themes
From the first scene of an ex-Buffalo soldier watching The
Longest Day with John Wayne on TV, to a final scene of extremely
questionable merit, this is an epic saga of redemption cloaked in a war
story mystery. While working at the post office, Hector Negron (Laz
Alonso) shoots a man he recognizes from his past. Subsequently, the
head of an extremely rare statue is found in his closet. His story is
then told in flashback form, following the trials of the Buffalo
soldiers' of the 92nd Infantry Division. A big oafish soldier, Train
(Omar Benson Miller), carries around (for good luck) the aforementioned
statue head he found in some ruins. The soldiers, under the command of
Staff Sergeant Stamps (Derek Luke), travel out of radio contact to an
Italian village and hole up with an Italian family. The impending
arrival of German troops adds tension and the plot gets almost too big
to handle, but even when it meandered I liked it. The use of clips that
could've easily hit the editing floor captures the kind of idiotic
small talk that might prevail when doom waits around every corner.

Posted inCulture

A Wild Ride: Eagle Eye delivers adrenalized action

Mike Bookey

Run shia, run.Even if you normally pick up a double Americano on the way to the
movies, I would advise against it if your destination is Eagle Eye. You
may find yourself on your back with electric paddles on your chest and
a medic screaming, "Clear!" This movie is one all-out-Space
Mountain-on-acid-thrill ride where you won't need any supplements to
boost your heart rate.

Even veteran high octane cinema junkies may be
surprised at Director D.J. Caruso's ability to bury your head against
the headrest and put a cinematic G force on you that may cause your
date to scream.
After US forces bomb a Middle Eastern terrorist
target - despite computer warnings there is barely 50% probability we
have the correct target - we jump to Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) - a card
shark and copy shop employee whose prospects are dim. After an earlier
collaboration with Caruso in Disturbia and a major role in the last
Indiana Jones movie, LaBeouf moves into the action hero mold alongside
actors like Matt Damon and Daniel Craig. And LaBeouf handles the role
with both believability and style.

Posted inMusic

Festival Season Will Never Die!

The Source Staff

Step into the barn at the Outback Music Festival.There's a good chance you already packed up all your summer music
festival gear…the folding chairs, the tent, the bug spray and even the
sequined cape and matching mask. You sealed all of these away for next
summer, when you'll reemerge from your winter cocoon come Memorial Day
Weekend just in time to head up to Sasquatch.
But head out to the
garage and start digging because the people who brought you the Coyote
Festival earlier this summer have made it their mission to extend
summer at least one more weekend for the Outback Music Festival. Held
in the same Summer Lake (near Paisley, Ore.) location of the Coyote
Fest, this event is slated to kick off on Friday and run until Sunday.
Organizers say the ticket fee covers your camping as well as access to
the hot springs located on site - not a bad deal at all, especially
when it means an extra week of summer (or at least summer mentality).

Posted inMusic

Weekend Rally: Getting our Bend Roots stuck and trying to dance with Taj

Elise Jones

The Dirty Words Display the Ultimate Rock Star Stance.With Oktoberfest raging downtown on Oregon Avenue, wiener dogs
racing about and beers sliding down many a throat, a Floater show at
Midtown and Alaska's Paper Scissors indie jamming at the Silver Moon,
Sound Check sketched out a nice plan to hit it all on Saturday. But the
first stop was the Bend Roots Revival, where we'd poked our collective
head in on Friday night for the tail end of the Person People throwdown
and also returned later for the Grateful Dead covers by Rising Tide.

Saturday's
Bend Roots lineup was complete with all the local all-stars, and we got
started early with a show by Anastacia and her new band that showcased
the songwriting ability of one of Central Oregon's finest female
performers. Next we took in some Brit-flavored indie rock from the
young men of Space Hoax and chased that down with a rousing set by the
raging rock and roll sounds of The Dirty Words.

Posted inMusic

Omaha’s Finest: Neva Dinova’s friendly exchange

The Source Staff

And Your mother said you’d never go anywhere without cleaning your room.After 12 minutes of conversation broken up by three dropped calls, I
realize that I've learned almost nothing remarkable about Omaha's
latest Saddle Creek Records phenom, Neva Dinova. Lead singer Jake
Bellows has jokingly (hopefully) claimed that the band puts ruffies
into the drinks of its naysayers and also asserted that he isn't all
that concerned with keeping up with new music before our communication
breakdown. Oh, and he's also stopped in mid sentence to chat to his
band mates about a moto-cross race track that the guys are driving past
somewhere outside of Tulsa.

The connection drops again and Bellows
calls back, this time on a different phone with much clearer reception
and with a strikingly different demeanor. He jumps immediately into
discussion about his folky, slightly alt-country sound that the band
has dubbed as "rural textures" and the fact that now, after 15 years in
existence, Neva Dinova has a well received record out on one of rock
music's more esteemed labels. Bellows suddenly isn't the asshole I'd
pegged him as.
"We never sit down and say 'let's make a song
that's influenced by this certain thing," Bellow says of his band's
tough-to-categorize take on indie folk rock.

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