Chalk up another casualty of the Central Oregon real estate bust and the Bush recession: A grandiose water park planned for Redmond has been put on hold.
Redmond Water Park Down the Drain?
Posted inNews
The Schwab’s Summer of Shock and Awe
After watching the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention and about a half-hour of the talking heads on CNN last night, The Eye wandered off to bed for some well-earned shuteye when …
Posted inNews
Merkley’s Moment in the Spotlight
In the modern world everybody's supposed to be entitled to 15 minutes of fame, but Jeff Merkley only got three minutes at the Democratic National Convention.
Posted inOpinion
Where’s the Working Man’s Course?
I'm writing to discuss the lack of municipal, or at least affordable, golf in Bend. It seems that golf in Bend is reserved for people who's chief concern in life is that scratch on their new Porsche.
Posted inCulture
Book Review: Frayed Ends of Sanity
Frayed Ends of Sanity
An editor becomes a prisoner of the page in Senselessness
"We are all tainted with viral origins," William S. Burroughs once observed. "The whole quality of human consciousness, as expressed in male and female, is basically a virus mechanism." No one understands this idea better than the agitated writer-hero of Horacio Castellanos Moya's "Senselessness," who has taken on the task of editing a 1,001-page oral history of the torture and mutilation of a Latin American country's indigenous population. The man has three months to complete the task - a not unreasonable deadline, if only the sentences of the victims didn't unhinge him so.
"I am not complete in the mind" is the first sentence Moya's narrator reads. It comes from a man who watched his wife and children hacked to death by machete. This utterance soon describes the narrator's frame of mind, too. Paranoia rises up within him, clanging like an ever-louder alarm. Something is not right. People are watching him. The secret police know he is in the country. If only he could relax. Feverishly, he tries to seduce one woman after the next, but the images he reads in that day's work of editing combine with his pornographic fantasies in a hideous montage.
Moya brilliantly scripts this breakdown. His sentences bulge and seethe, coiling around the parenthetical self-justifications and self-recriminations of his increasingly frenzied narrator. Following each lapse of debauchery the man attacks the report with more empathic gusto. He is a novelist, after all, so he doesn't just tinker with style and language; he must imaginatively place himself at the center of it. He imagines being maimed and murdered; he imagines himself doing the killing and the torturing.
Posted inCulture
The Mystery of the Hidden Artwork: Why Nancy Drew gave me unrealistic sleuth expectations
I've been pacing back and forth in the reference section of the Bend Public Library for a good twenty minutes now, every once in a while stopping to pounce on the unsuspecting atlas or dictionary and rifle through the pages before sighing and shoving the book back into its spot on the shelf. Local artist Mark Bernahl told me that one of his random acts of art had been spotted amongst the stacks a mere two weeks ago and I was determined to find it. Possibly find it, take a picture of it in a cooler and proceed to call a national press conference. Maybe it was because I'd gotten way too into the whole Sasquatch-gate scandal or maybe it was just because I simply wanted to see one of Bernahl's creations for myself, but I wasn't ready to give up after twenty minutes, that's for sure.
Bernahl is every librarian and book purist's worst nightmare. His offenses are much worse than bent corners, creased spines and the occasional pencil scribbling or highlighted sentence. He cuts out entire sections of books and carves designs in the pages. The thing is, librarians don't know he exists. In fact, they don't even know the "damaged" book exists. Bernahl is an artistic phantom, leaving only hidden traces of his work for the random passerby to stumble upon. He uses books that libraries have gotten rid of, alters them, and stashes them back in the stacks where they sit, gathering dust, until the day someone finds them. Finding them, as it turns out, is another story altogether.
Bernahl says he has placed a total of 21 of his creations in libraries and bookstores throughout the Northwest. His work has infiltrated the stacks in libraries in Bend, Corvallis, Eugene, Portland, Boise, Vancouver and Baker City, to name a few. Bernahl does not keep a list of which book he's placed in which library, he only archives what he's created.
Posted inCulture
Will Paint for Money: The inaugural Old Mill artfest
When the fine editor of TSW asked me to cover the inaugural Art in the High Desert Festival, I immediately poured a rum and coke and considered leaving town. Just what Central Oregon needs is another art fair with crafts by hobbyists who should do us and their families a favor and get real jobs. I guess Starbucks isn't hiring and Wal-Mart can use only so many greeters.
While scanning a handy guide provided by a far-too-perky volunteer, I took a grumpy swing through the tented camp of 100 artists next to the Deschutes across from the Old Mill. You could hear the cries of quiet desperation in the pleading eyes of the artists hunkered and hovering in their cave-like booths. "Please stop." "Please buy." "Is not my art good?" "Am I not worthy?" "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" OK, the sun or the morning shot of rum was getting to me. I decided to retreat across the bridge to the Lubbesmeyer Gallery. The twins, Lori and Lisa, are the only artists on the board of Art in the High Desert not in the show. With a gallery so close, they didn't have much need to be schlepping their collaborations into the late summer heat. Lori was one of the jurors, and I talked to her and Lisa in the cool of their gallery/studio.
"The screening process was tiring," said Lori. "Over 300 artists applied, and they were all excellent. Making considered choices was difficult."
Posted inOutside
Kids and Bugs: Talking birds and bees…literally
Those of you who have been reading this column for any length of time know that I have more than a casual interest in insects -well – all arthropods for that matter, including scorpions, spiders and other "creepy-crawlers."
The main reason that I enjoy them is that they are so varied; there's lots of them and just about all of them interact somehow with you and me. There are millions of species worldwide, with new ones being discovered almost weekly. I also receive a great many questions about arthropods. In that light, arthropods are hard to ignore.
Among all the outstanding adventures I've enjoyed with nature in my 80-plus years, by far the most delightful have been with children and insects: especially tagging Monarch butterflies. Kids never cease to wonder about nature, and neither do I.
One time, years ago, over at OMSI's old Camp Hancock -which has since been elevated to the status of "Hancock Field Station" – a young man asked, "Mr. Anderson (adults were called, "Mister" back in those days), I wonder if you could tell me about the birds and bees?"
That was a surprise, I knew the young man well. His dad was a doctor, so him asking me about that business was something I hadn't expected. Anyway, I told him if he wanted to join me with any of his friends after the campfire that evening, we'd get down to brass tacks. Just as planned, he and two of his tent pals (we camped in tents in those days, not the snazzy "A" frames they have today) came along, and as we settled down by the dying campfire I started into Planned Parenthood 101.
Posted inOutside
Ditch the Remote: Extreme Ironing, DDR, Floating and the Reverse PPP await
Future olympians?THE TORCH MOVES ON
If you are like most people, you were unusually glued to your TV the past two weeks watching the Olympic coverage from Beijing. You were blown away by the incredible, record-setting gold medal perfection of Michael Phelps in the pool. You were mesmerized by the gymnastic performances of Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson. You were shocked and dismayed when we dropped the baton…twice. And you have probably learned more about beach volleyball than you ever wanted to know. Maybe you even rooted for Bend's own Adam Craig in the mountain bike race. Now that the torch moves on to Vancouver for 2010, I'd like to submit my candidates for new Olympic sports:
Extreme Ironing: Founded in 1997 by two Brits named Phil and Paul, but better known as "Steam" and "Spray," EI is a sport that "combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt," according to the Extreme Ironing Bureau. "It involves taking an iron and board (if possible) to remote locations and ironing a few items of laundry. This can involve ironing on a mountainside, preferably on a difficult climb, or taking an iron skiing, snowboarding or canoeing." In 2002, the German Extreme Ironing Section organized the highly successful World Championships in the village of Valley near Munich with German ironist Hot Pants winning the individual event and a British team taking the top spot in the team event. The international popularity of this sport makes it an obvious selection for the Olympics.
Posted inCulture
The Home Computer of the Future and the 1980s: The Commodore 64
Come in, commodore.The home PC landscape in the 1980s was quite a bit different than it is now. The average consumer believed that home computers were just video game systems with keyboards and to a degree that was true. One home computer, however, helped change that myth and it was called the Commodore 64.
The first Commodore in the line was the Commodore Vic-20 that debuted in 1981 with pitchman William "Captain Kirk" Shatner asking consumers: "Why buy a video game when you can have a computer?" The Vic-20 was a huge success selling millions of home computers at a price comparable to video game systems of that era.
The Vic-20 was a good value for the dollar, but its limitations were obvious to those who wanted some power with their computing and were willing to pay extra for it. Commodore heard the cries of the public and in 1982 the Commodore 64 was released. The case it was released in, the famous "brown breadbox," was the same as the Vic-20's only a different color. The idea behind this was to keep costs down by cramming all the new 64 components into the Vic-20's shell.