Glass Slipper

In 1921 a group of Bend citizens, most of them women, led a successful campaign to have the city acquire 11 acres of land along the Deschutes River and protect it from development. Those 11 acres became Drake Park, the “jewel in the crown” of the city's park system.

The laws of probability say that, given enough time, if something is possible, no matter how improbable, it eventually will happen. A flipped coin someday will land on its edge. A million monkeys banging on a million computer keyboards someday will produce Shakespeare's King Lear. And the Oregon Liquor Control Commission someday will get something right.
The last wildly improbable event occurred last week, when the OLCC forbade the sale of the notorious Four Loko and six other alcohol-heavy, caffeine-spiked drinks.

If you were doing a remake of “The Untouchables,” neither Ted Wheeler nor John Kroger probably would be your first pick for the role of Elliot Ness. They're skinny guys with glasses who, let's face it, look more than a little nerdy.
When it comes to tackling organized crime on Wall Street, though, Oregon Treasurer Wheeler and Attorney General Kroger are a couple of tough customers.

Never mind Israelis and Palestinians, Sunnis and Shiites, Bosnians and Serbs – the longstanding war between bicycle partisans and automobile loyalists can get as nasty as any of them, though fortunately it's rarely as violent.

Xenophobia (noun) – an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers, or of that which is foreign or strange.
From the beginning, xenophobia has darkly stained the pages of American history. In the latter half of the 19th century, “the yellow peril” – Chinese immigrant labor – was the prime focus. During World War I, German-Americans were beaten up on the streets. During World War II we herded Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.

In politics, going along to get along is often the easiest and safest course. Nowhere is that more true than within the cozy confines of the Deschutes County Commission, where there are only three members and anybody who doesn't go along is a conspicuous minority of one.
Last week Commissioner Tammy Baney refused to go along with her colleagues, Alan Unger and Dennis Luke, in speeding the approval of the county's new destination resort map. The obstacle, in Baney's mind, was a special provision involving the Cyrus family's Aspen Lakes development.

The wolf has always gotten bad press. To early Christians he was a symbol of evil, or even the Devil himself (in contrast to Jesus, the “good shepherd” protecting the flock). In folklore, from werewolf legends to tales about the Big Bad Wolf who harassed the Three Little Pigs and the wolf who almost ate Little Red Riding Hood, Canis lupus consistently was cast as a villain – though sometimes a comic one.
His literary reputation, combined with a tendency to grab the occasional spring lamb or calf, didn't endear the wolf to European-Americans as they moved across America and set up farms and ranches. The result was a campaign of extermination that eliminated wolves from most of the lower 48 states, including Oregon.

George Washington grew it, Shakespeare might have smoked it, and its use in medicine dates back some 5,000 years. But until last week, the State of Oregon regarded it as a dangerous drug in the same category as heroin and LSD.
Bowing to scientific evidence and common sense, the state Board of Pharmacy voted to reclassify marijuana from a “Schedule I” controlled substance to a “Schedule II” one. Schedule I drugs are those that have a “high abuse potential and no acceptable medical use in the United States.” Schedule II drugs also are deemed to have a high abuse potential but are recognized as having legitimate medical uses, such as the painkiller oxycodone and cocaine, used as a topical anesthetic in some surgeries.

The three inevitabilities of life in Bend are death, taxes, and having a hard time finding a parking space downtown. Nobody can do much about the first two, but the city and the Downtown Bend Business Association are taking some practical steps toward dealing with the third.
Having a parking situation that's a little bit tight isn't totally a bad thing; it definitely beats having a downtown full of empty parking spaces. But if people have to circle the area five or six times to find a space half a mile away from where they want to shop, some just go home – or never come in the first place.

The ink was barely dry on the health care reform legislation when 14 attorneys general from states across the country – including Rob McKenna up in Washington – rushed to file a lawsuit claiming that it's unconstitutional.
To his credit, Oregon Attorney General John Kroger didn't join the stampede. “Based on a preliminary review of the legislation,” Kroger's office announced, “the Oregon Department of Justice is of the opinion that the health care reform bill is constitutional and that the challenges to the legislation are without merit. Legal scholars around the nation have expressed similar views. As a result, Attorney General Kroger will not waste taxpayer dollars on filing meritless litigation.”