It's always fun to see how people from The Great Outside perceive little old Bend, Ory-gun, so The Eye decided to pass on some observations made by blogger Jim Tankersley of the Baltimore Sun, who was here to cover Barack Obama's appearance on May 10:
As Others See Us
Posted inNews
A Pat on the Back for Anti-Resort Vote
The Oregonian’s editorial board handed some praise to Crook County citizens this morning for voting to put the brakes on more destination resorts.
Posted inNews
So Now We’re “The New Boulder”
There they go again: USA Today has published another Chamber-of-Commerce-style puff piece on Bend, touting it as "the new Boulder."
Posted inNews
Westlund Ups the Debate Ante
On Wednesday morning, Republican state treasurer candidate Allen Alley challenged Democratic nominee Ben Westlund to a series of five debates. On Wednesday afternoon, Westlund called Alley's bet and raised him by five.
Posted inNews
A Political Smackdown for Destination Resorts
It's not clear what the legal effect of Crook County's overwhelming vote against destination resorts will be, but it might make public officials all over Central Oregon want to hesitate before throwing open the gates for more of them.
Posted inOpinion
Cat Scratch Fever
Letter of the Week
Jim Anderson (tSW 5/22) has a long list of reasons to be alarmed about the killing of indigenous animals by non-indigenous cats, but he ignores one very critical fact. Countless indigenous populations have been decimated not by cats, but by non-indigenous humans who have irreparably altered or destroyed their natural habitats, or just plain killed them off.
Posted inNews
Westlund’s Opponent Issues Debate Challenge
Republican business executive Allen Alley threw down the gauntlet to Ben Westlund today, challenging his rival for the state treasurer's job to a series of debates.
Posted inMusic
Liner Notes: Don’t Skip the Openers
Did someone say old timey? the decembErists join death cab on Saturday’s lsa bill. This weekend is one of the biggest ever for the Les Schwab Amphitheater, which is hosting what we could fairly call Sasquatch Jr. or perhaps Baby Sasquatch, or maybe Oregon-quatch - take your pick. Any way you split it, we're basically just cashing in on the overflow from the Central Washington mega festival and bringing those acts down our way. This siphoning of Sasquatch Festival acts results in an added bonus - super sweet openers to already super sweet headliners.
The names on your ticket stubs will read Michael Franti & Spearhead, Death Cab For Cutie and Modest Mouse, but the bands warming the stage for those acts could each hold their own as headliners under different circumstances.
Friday night, it's Built to Spill, long time residents in the upper echelon of indie rock, taking the stage with their sometimes poppy, sometimes jammy and always tight brand of rock and roll. We've been looking for BTS to come by for a while now - their hometown of Boise isn't that far away is it? - and now we finally get a stop off.
Posted inCulture
Across the Earth: Lahiri’s new collection of stories spans the globe
Toward the end of Jhumpa Lahiri's mournful, deeply satisfying new collection of stories, two Bengali lovers visit a museum in an Italian town founded by Etruscans. There, amidst dusty sarcophagi, they discover shelves lined with terra-cotta urns depicting the journey the Etruscans made to this landscape - a landscape since claimed and reclaimed by several other populations. "The sides were covered with carvings showing so many migrations across land," observes Lahiri's narrator, "departures in covered wagons to the underworld." It is a beautiful, yet idealized, image of how people get from here to there. Nothing at all like the scattered, dislocating journey she or her family made to the U.S.
"Unaccustomed Earth" is a profound meditation on the emotional undertow
of these migrations. Ranging in setting from Seattle to suburban
Boston, Rome to the clattering streets of Calcutta, Lahiri's cast of
mostly Bengali characters struggles to grow accustomed to their new
homes, their new families created by loss sustained in faraway places.
In the title story, a recently widowed father flies out to Seattle to
visit his daughter, a new mother, ferrying a secret about a woman he
has begun to see. "Once in a Lifetime" chronicles a brief time when the
Chaudhuri family lived with friends outside Boston while searching for
a new home. It later emerges that their house hunting has a haunted
edge: Mrs. Chaudhuri has cancer. The home they buy will be the place
she dies.
Posted inOutside
Killer cat strikes again!: High Desert Museum turns a blind eye to cat menace
Nothing is safe when an outdoor cat is on the prowl. Last week I gave the High Desert Museum the glad hand for the many things they are doing to further conservation of our natural and cultural resources. The principal subject was the excellent work they are doing with spotted owl reproduction with captive owls.
In my opinion, the spotted owl work the High Desert Museum is doing is akin to the art and science carried out with the (once nearly extinct) California Condor in similar institutions around the nation.
However, when it comes to carrying out conservation of wildlife that inhabits the Museum's grounds the HDM is a total flop! At this moment they are not going to get the "glad hand," but the back of my hand. Why? The Oregon High Desert Museum is allowing one of the most destructive alien species in the country, the housecat, to kill Oregon's indigenous wildlife on museum property.
Let me tell you how this all came about…