Bachelor has fixed lifts, prices, image and they’re letting you know about it

Posted inNews

Bachelor has fixed lifts, prices, image and they’re letting you know about it

The Source Staff

Behind mountain biking and pushing babies around in thousand-dollar
jogging strollers, bitching about Mt. Bachelor is one of Bend's most
beloved pastimes. Bendites complain about ticket prices, parking,
grooming or staffing issues just like people in larger, more urban
cities bitch about the coaching decisions of their local sports teams.

While
this is certainly a storied pastime, last season the bitching went from
nit-picking static to fever pitched shouting as winter began with hiked
lift ticket prices and ended with reports of potentially dangerous
chair lift maintenance practices and an earlier than usual closing date.

Posted inOpinion

Make It Count: Our 2008 city council and local measure endorsements

Mike Bookey

Position ONE: Peter Gramlich
You know what Make It Count: Our 2008 city council and local we like about Peter Gramlich? Dude's a straight shooting, open-minded cool guy who believe it or not…gasp…actually seems to want to work for what's best for the city. This is a guy who, when discussing a proposed ban on fireworks at a council meeting said, "You know, I'm usually the guy who shows up with the fireworks," but didn't let his apparent love of novelty explosives cloud his ability to soberly discuss what became a pretty hot issue amongst the public.
While Gramlich is an incumbent, he's not technically running for reelection, seeing as how he was appointed to the council after John Hummel stepped down, but during his short time he's cemented himself as the council's most reliable progressive and quite possibly its least bullshit-believing member. Although Gramlich works as an architect, he's kept COBA out of his campaign coffers and says that growth is the city's number one issue, telling us, "If we don't do something to stop sprawl, it's going to happen."
The new dad who's married to BendFilm founder Katie Merritt (tack on a few extra cool points for that one) thinks that the city should have a say as to who gets to set up shop in Juniper Ridge (sorry Wal-Mart Superstore enthusiasts) and is fully backing stabilizing Bend's transit woes, even if the transit district ballot measure fails. Gramlich's opponent, Tom Greene, is an equally nice guy, but is running on some vaguely vanilla themes of "fiscal responsibility" and when asked to discuss his second important issue at a recent League of Women Voters forum…he drew a blank.
We realize local elections aren't popularity contests (as evidenced by former Source staffer Scoop Lewis' failed 2006 county commissioner campaign) and it's not Gramlich's semi-star status in town that's got us backing him - it's his reliability. Hell, he even has his complete voting record posted on his website.

Posted inOpinion

Glass Slipper: Project Homeless Connect and Volunteers

Mike Bookey

It's no secret that tough times have settled on Central Oregon.
Foreclosures are up and 401Ks are down. These are anxious days for our
republic and for our town. But times are a little bit tougher for some
and we as a community got a glimpse of that last weekend when more than
1,800 people in need, many of them children, showed up to Deschutes
County Fair Grounds for a helping hand during a one-day outreach event
targeted at Central Oregon's homeless population. That's a roughly
fifty percent increase in individuals seeking assistance from just last
year when 1,200 people attended the inaugural event

The evidence is clear: homeless is a serious problem in our community that is only growing worse.
A
survey conducted earlier this year found that more than 1,700 Central
Oregonians had no permanent housing or were sleeping in cars, the homes
of friends, shared motel rooms and, in the worst cases, outside. More
than a third of the homeless were children.

Posted inOpinion

Rock the Vote, Jailbait Style: Kids under 18 want a change, monster UGB, and “W”

Mike Bookey

Vote for Miley!Anyone remember tearing through the latest Scholastic News during grade
school? Or maybe being forced to read it by a merciless second-grade
teacher with frizzy hair? Either way, every four years, this youthful
beacon of learning and news (yes, the same newspaper where you first
learned that squirrels could, in fact, water ski) puts out a
presidential election poll. And the poll has correctly predicted the
results for the past 40 years. No dimpled chads or Supreme Court
decision controversy necessary. The vote, which has been going on since
1940 has only been wrong twice since its inception - once in 1948 when
outcome went in favor of Dewey, once in 1960 when Nixon clenched the
under 18 vote. So whom did the future leaders of our country choose as
the 44th President of the United States? The poll has Barack Obama
winning 57 percent to John McCain's 37 percent. Scholastic News reports
that almost a quarter of a million kiddos, grades 1-12, voted either
online or via paper ballot. Out of the battleground states only
Colorado, Indiana and Missouri went to McCain while Florida, Iowa,
Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania went to Obama. Interestingly, four
percent of students voted for people like Stephen Colbert, Miley Cyrus
and the Jonas Brothers.

Posted inCulture

The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild – by Craig Childs

Mike Bookey

Craig Childs, out talkin’ to the animals.The operative word in the title of this book is "Dialogues." Craig
Childs doesn't just observe and report on 34 different animal species.
He has conversations with them, albeit unconventional ones. Consider
this passage in which he's followed a raven into a desert canyon only
to find himself in the midst of dozens of ravens: "'Listen to us!'
cried the ravens. 'I don't speak your language,' I called out,
exasperated. Hearing my voice, the ravens only became more infuriated.
I was disoriented, watching them dive around me . . . 'Listen to us!'
they kept crying. 'This is not your place!'"

But besides artful
descriptions, the author does his research and knows his subject matter
well. In the same essay I also learned that ravens can follow another
creature's gaze, sometimes cooperate with wolves in making a kill, and
have even been seen pulling in a baited fishing line with their beaks
and then stepping on the slack line over and over until they've
"caught" a fish. Childs’ writing often gives the impression that he
himself is some sort of permeable membrane at the border between
scientific fact and poetic mystery. His sharp eye for observation is
matched by his taste for experiences that cannot be explained or
familiarized. In this he's a direct literary descendant of the great
Loren Eiseley.

Posted inOutside

Quit Nerding Up Football

The Source Staff

I've been asked by the Left Field department to share my views on
fantasy football and I'm glad to do it because fantasy football is
eating up sports fans and turning them into soulless statistic chomping
geeks.
Last Sunday, I was jumping up and down in my sweatpants,
spilling PBR Light (I'm watching my figure) all over the place as
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan sent a 26-yard bomb spiraling
into the hands of receiver Michael Jenkins, who stepped out of bounds
with one second left.

Posted inOutside

Missing Moose and Gator naps: The Natural World road trip report

Jim Anderson

A stranger to Central Oregon, but common to Florida, the American Alligator. You'd think any Oregonian with a grain of sense would wait until
January to fly off to Florida for a week or so but my son, Ross, called
me last March and said, "Pop, for your birthday, I'm going to give you
an all-expense paid week in Florida. Come on down!"
Well, this and
that got in the way for us to make it happen; two things that were
significant. The first being that my wife, Sue, went to work on a
summer-long contract with the National Park Service to do a butterfly
census in Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California. The other
being a new job for Ross, who is a Lt. Col. in this man's USAF Reserve.
Sue
finished her contract on Labor Day, and Ross, who started out his
career with the Air Force as an F-16 Instructor Pilot, and whom, like
many service men and women, has done tours in the Middle East, recently
took command of the 482nd Operations Group at Homestead AFB in Florida.

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