What does a president's daughter from Texas do when she's in Bend and gets a yen for some liquid refreshment and a fellow Texan to talk with?
Jenna Makes the Bend Bar Scene (Briefly)
Posted inNews
Clinton’s “Lie” Was Mostly True
Remember that "tall tale" the Clintons were telling about Trina Bachtel, an expectant mother in Ohio who reportedly died because she didn't have $100 to pay for medical care? Turns out the tale wasn't as tall as it appeared.
Posted inNews
KTVZ’s idle gaffe
One of our staffers was watching American Idol (for research purposes) last night on the local Fox affiliate when the screen went blank on his set as the show ran over into the time slot designated for the nightly news cast, which is beamed over from sister station KTVZ (both stations are owned by the News Press and Gazette Co out of St. Joseph Missouri.
Posted inOpinion
ODOT’s Astounding Arrogance
It's hard to believe that an agency as "upstanding" as ODOT would hire a spokesman who is more arrogant than Peter Murphy. But then again, the person who is your spokesman is your mouthpiece, so it stands to reason that Mr. Murphy's comment that Sen. Ben Westlund is "just another person" is also how ODOT feels.
The arrogance of these people is astounding! The fact that Sen. Westlund was the head of the Senate Ways and Means Committee that ODOT has to go to for money makes him NOT "just another person." Mr. Murphy should be referring to an elected official with much more respect. The implication here is that Sen. Westlund has no more credit than Joe Blow down the block, and he's "just another person."
Posted inNews
Road to Nowhere: Former ODOT employee says failing roads got a free pass
You don't have to be an engineer to see that many of Central Oregon's highways are falling apart. The roads are scarred with wheel ruts and littered with potholes and haphazard patch jobs. Exhibit number one being the Bend Parkway.
Conventional wisdom tells us that Oregon's practice of allowing studded tires on its roadways is the reason that our streets are in such sorry shape. And there's a good amount of scientific evidence that says that particular piece of conventional wisdom is right on. One estimate put the annual bill for studded tire damage on Oregon roads at $11 million.
There is another theory that has circulated among certain circles, one that I came across early on in my reporting career here in Central Oregon that has never been substantiated - at least to my knowledge. This theory, really more a rumor, held that some of the damage to our roads could be chalked up to lousy materials.
But even those who never heard whisper of an "asphalt conspiracy" would have been interested to hear what a former Oregon Department of Transportation employee had to say during a sparsely attended hearing in Bend last week. Michael Ray Perry told an administrative law judge that he personally tested hundreds of road projects that failed to meet state standards, some of which have already started to fall apart. Moreover, Perry said supervisors routinely dismissed his findings in an effort to keep projects steaming along.
Posted inOpinion
An Actor for All Epics: Film icon passes, the danger of blogging
A couple of cowboysHe was Moses, Ben-Hur, Michelangelo, El Cid, Andrew Jackson and John the Baptist, not to mention about a hundred other less-well-known historic and fictional figures. But on the screen, Charlton Heston was always Charlton Heston.
Born Charlton Carter in Evanston, IL in 1923, Heston began his acting career on the stage and in TV and appeared in his first movie in 1950. His big break came two years later, when Cecil B. DeMille cast him in the circus movie The Greatest Show on Earth. But it was his performance as Moses in DeMille's 1959 epic The Ten Commandments that turned him into a Hollywood icon.
Other larger-than-life roles followed - notably as the title character in Ben-Hur, where Heston thrilled the kids with the famous chariot race scene (still considered one of the greatest action sequences ever filmed) and made their moms go weak in the knees by displaying his well-sculpted torso as a galley slave in a loincloth.
Posted inCulture
Confessions of an Addicted M &J Open Mic’er: Under the influence of the underground
The open mic: where stage fright goes to die.It's one of the only places in the world where you can wash your laundry while toasting fine tequila over a game of pool as you tap your feet to the strumming rhythms of a singer/songwriter's acoustic guitar. The M&J Tavern is a proud host of a weekly open mic on Wednesday nights. If the tavern with its cement floor, pool tables, video poker machines and long rustic bar and old school juke box, could be personified it would be Bob Dylan during his country stint in the late 1960s.
It's been just over a year now since I first signed my name on the open mic performer's list. The sign-up sheet is sometimes full with visiting and local musicians. On other nights it's marked with just a few signatures. Initially, I was motivated to get a new music project, Kousefly, then a duo, out of the stuffy garage and in front of people; it was a nerve-racking, gut-wrenching and humbling experience. But I loved every second of it and was hooked immediately.
Posted inOutside
Bumble On: Why we need bumblebees
the buzz on bees isn’t goodOK, people, listen up! Bees are our friends! Especially bumblebees. Got that? Without those big, scary-looking black and yellow (some orange) buzzers, almost every flowering plant in Central Oregon would have trouble making seeds for new plants.
Yes, soil, water and sunlight are what it takes to keep plants going, but without bumblebees (and other pollinators) plants could not reproduce their kind. So, the next time you have a bumblebee buzzing around your backyard please don't try to kill it, say "thank you," instead.
Bees, and a long list of other insects, depend on flowers to make a living. Commercial beekeepers travel thousands of miles in the spring hauling millions of bees back and forth between California and Canada pollinating everything from celery to peaches to ensure bigger seed crops and better fruit yield.
Posted inOutside
Spring Has Sprung: Catching up on a delayed spring season
It's time to ride againYour worst fears have been realized as I'm back to guest author this column for two weeks while regular columnist Kevin Grove is in Vietnam on business. What kind of business I don't know. Let's leave it at that.
Trail Talk
One of the best things to happened this past winter was an increase in the number of mountain bike riders riding the Maston Allotment trail. As a result, the trail has become, except for a couple of spots, much more packed and enjoyable.
And what with the cool weather extending so far into April, people looking for an easy, mostly flat, trail to start getting back into mountain bike riding shape should consider a Maston outing.
Posted inCulture
Rainbow Six Vegas 2: Shootin’ em up Sin City style
What happens in vegas stays in vegasHigh Rollers, Straight Shooters
The original "Rainbow Six: Vegas" is one of the best shooters to come out on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. A streamlining of the "Rainbow Six" style and a tighter and more contemporary game play engine made this a successful game. This also made it successful enough for a sequel. But like most great games with follow-ups, this could be a worthy successor or an over priced add-on to the original.