Dr. Lynn Barton McDonald, a longtime Bend physician whose body was pulled from the Deschutes River on Monday, might have been an indirect casualty of the Bend real estate boom and bust.
Physician’s Death Might Have Been Suicide
Posted inNews
Merkley Ads Push the Legal Envelope
When is a campaign ad not a campaign ad? The outcome of the Gordon Smith - Jeff Merkley Senate race could hinge on the answer.
Posted inNews
“Kent Couch: Helium Hero or Balloonatic?”
That's the provocative headline on a blog post in Great Britain's The Guardian newspaper about Bend's own Kent Couch, the gas station proprietor who flew a lawn chair attached to 150 giant helium balloons from Bend to Idaho on Saturday.
Posted inNews
Things Are Stranger Here?
Is Bend, Oregon on its way to becoming known as the national capital of weirdness?
Posted inNews
Wrong Address, But Right Neighborhood
Blogger Jeff Mapes at The Oregonian discloses that the Jeff Merkley campaign made a boo-boo in its latest attack video against Gordon Smith: The posh home on Country Club Drive in Bethesda, MD that the video identifies as Smith's actually isn't.
Posted inNews
Battered Bend Builders Beg Bend for a Band-Aid
Builders in Bend want the city to kick-start their stalled industry by giving them a break on Systems Development Charges.
Posted inOpinion
Don’t Rock the Mountain
Lettter of the Week
This week’s feature letter comes from Evelyn Dong who presents us with a contrasting viewpoint on the Tumalo Backcountry proposal — from a skier’s perspective. Thanks for the letter Evelyn.
Posted inMusic
Whiskey, Wednesday and Alice Cooper
Guest Artist Jack Daniels not Pictured.Whiskey was the drink of choice last Wednesday at the Midtown
Ballroom. Yes, this is still very much a beer town, but the harder
stuff came out to greet a pair of Southern-flavored acts in Drive-By
Truckers and openers Dead Confederate. The brown stuff made an
appearance on stage as well, but we'll get to that in a moment.
Sound
Check wasn't quite sure what to expect from the Midtown on this warm
Wednesday night - mid-week shows are tough to gauge. It can either be a
total sell-out or a night of chirping crickets, we can never quite
figure it out. But a respectable crowd of seemingly die-hard Truckers
fans filled up about half of the Midtown's concrete floor, creating
what we'll call a "mid-sized" crowd.
Athens Georgia's Dead
Confederate opened the show with a slightly psychedelic,
reverb-intensive set that included a good chunk of the band's
increasingly popular EP as well as some lengthy yet soaring
improvisations.
Posted inCulture
Cascades Theatrical Co. and the Tower Theatre Ponder: Ya wanna put on another show?
Dee Torrey: Man on a mission.Executives at the Cascades Theatrical Co. (CTC) and the Tower Theater
are contemplating future big-budget musical productions in the wake of
the "success" of their first collaboration, Urinetown: The Musical
(UTM). UTM completed its two-weekend run May 11.
Rickey Minder, who played UTM's Little Sally, said she appreciated the opportunity for growth that production provided.
Her
response is noteworthy, and not because it's unexpected of an aspiring
actress who was previously cast in a non-speaking role in CTC’s recent
production of The Fantasticks, which ran on its NW Greenwood stage last
February. Rather, the response of this 21-year-old Idaho native and
competitive hip-hop dancer illustrates the sort that Torrey works to
foster in his "troupers." The CTC exists to accomplish three major
purposes, Torrey explained in another interview: "We want to do good
theater, and [that means some] heavy drama. We want to educate the
public, and give our actors a chance to grow."
Posted inOutside
Pigeons vs. Soccer
HEY, IT COULD HAVE BEEN
BUD COLLINS…
Apparently the only thing dropping from Wimbledon faster than Americans and top-seeds are the pigeons.
Championship
officials last week hired an assassin to take out pigeons who weren't
scared of by the two hawks originally hired to rid the area of flying
rats. The dive-bombing birds were a nuisance to players for sure, but
they were also creating a health hazard in one of the restaurant areas
of the All England Club, officials said, when they began defecating on
patron tables. Sort of puts the yuck factor in the traditional
Wimbledon indulgence: strawberries and cream.
People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals, of course, wound themselves up in a tizzy
admonishing championship officials, saying the marksmen were used as a
"first, rather than last resort" according to ESPN.com.
But the
whole thing got me thinking about where marksmen might be appropriate
in the American sporting arena - and where PETA has no jurisdiction.