Ken Hashagen, president of East Cascades Audubon Society of Bend, and I often get together to discuss bluebirds, kestrels, Great Gray Owls, eagles and other boring topics. “Boring!?” I should say not. After just a few minutes we’re waving our arms about and I can feel my blood pressure building up as we get into […]
Bend News
Canada to Cascadia
Alicia Renner started bonding with her natural surroundings almost immediately, by planting trees as a teenager in northern Alberta and British Columbiaโgenerally known to the rest of us as the Canadian wilderness. As the trees grew, so did her dedication to creating fashion in the form of handmade clothes and accessories. Renner moved to Bend […]
Landmark Disability Rights Settlement
It all stemmed from the power of protest. Jordan Ohlde, a Bend man confined to a wheelchair, is one of eight plaintiffs who, along with the Association of Oregon Centers for Independent Living (AOCIL) brought a landmark case against the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) to make state street crossings safer. For Ohlde, who suffers […]
Invasion of the Californians
Since well before 1971, when Gov. Tom McCall famously told tourists, “For heaven’s sake, don’t move here to live,” Oregon has engaged in the oddly addictive pastime of taking Californians’ money while blaming them for whatever malady currently affects the state. What happens, though, when the march from down south begins to creep onto Oregon’s […]
April Anxiety
Ten years after the Great Depression, deep into FDR’s second term, the University of Oregon Men’s Basketball team, which ran the somewhat novel (for the times) fast-break offense, wound up in the first-ever Final Four. They would go on to win the national championship โ beating Ohio State, 46-33, on March 27, 1939. This was […]
Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Oregon
Last week, the author of the recently-released book, “Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Oregon,” Eli Boschetto, rolled into Bend for a talk at Roundabout Books. The book is one of several installments broken down by location (Oregon, Washington, etc.), with book sections further broken into “manageable sections” that people can do in a few days […]
A New Path Forward for Health Care
Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate dealt themselves a political blow this month when they rolled out the American Health Care Act and then killed it before it could reach a vote in the House of Representatives. There were a great many concerns about the plan: the proposed deregulation of the private health insurance […]
Get Your Garden On
There may be the occasional flake flying, but still, the time for prepping the garden is upon us. For those with established gardens, you may even be seeing the first tendrils of life springing up from the soil. For the rest of you, there’s plenty of help out there to get your garden growingโor to […]
Ape-pocalypse Now
Sometimes when we go to a movie it’s simply to escape the outside world. As long as the film can transport us to a new world, a different time period or some far-off dimension, it doesn’t much matter if the movie is good or bad. But as a critic, it can be difficult to search […]
The Kedi’s Meow
“Everything is beautiful if you look at it with love.”-“Kedi” Hundreds of thousands of cats have roamed freely through the streets of Istanbul over the last several thousand years. The people of the city treat the cats like neighbors, not like annoying strays snatching food off tables. Indeed, part of living in Istanbul is making […]

