Nearly 23 years ago, I was living and studying in Zimbabwe. A week after I arrived, there were two items on the radio: First, Mike Tyson had lost a title bout and, second, after 27 years, Nelson Mandela had been released from prison. A week later, I met him. He was visiting Harare, Zimbabwe—his first […]
Glass Slipper
Posted inOpinion
Process Poopers
November has been a cruel month for public process in Bend. Last week, we reported on the continued drama surrounding the City of Bend’s major $69 million project to modernize Bend’s water delivery and treatment system. Namely, city council's Nov. 6, city council approval of a membrane filtration system to keep the city’s water safe. […]
Posted inOpinion
Transient Room Tax: A Beginning, Not An Ending
On Tuesday, voters wisely approved two tax-the-tourists measures that will, in theory, bring even more tourist dollars to the region. Measure 9-94 will ratchet up the transient room tax (TRT) in the City of Bend from 9 to 10.4 percent; and, in the process (and based on current residence rates), pull in roughly $450,000 in […]
Posted inOpinion
Build It, and They Will Ride
Nobody asked us, but had they, we would have said: “Put a bond measure or property tax increase or something on the ballot to raise some revenue to fund a quality transit system in Deschutes County, or at least in the City of Bend.” Yes, we need funding for a bus system. And now! A […]
Posted inOpinion
A Team for the Whole State
This week we're giving a Glass Slipper to the Portland Timbers. With a 1-0 win over their brutish rivals, the Seattle Sounders, the team climbed into first place in the Major League Soccer's Western Conference—and, with only two games remaining in the regular season, they are poised to clinch a playoff berth for the first […]
Posted inOpinion
Corporate Good!
Last week, Philip Knight, the CEO at Nike, announced he will donate $500 million to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) for cancer research (pending matching donations). It is his third in a series of donations ($100 million in 2008 and $125 million last year) that have helped bolster OHSU's stand as one of the […]
Posted inOpinion
Horner’s Win is More than a Race Result
On Sunday, Bend’s Chris Horner, 41, won the Vuelta a España, a three-week-long bike race through the mountains and valleys of Spain. In doing so, he became not only the oldest rider to win the Vuelta (local papers there dubbed him El Abuelo, or the grandfather), but also the oldest rider to win a grand […]
Posted inOpinion
Not So Fast, NSA
Three weeks ago, declassified materials revealed that in 2011 a federal judge had admonished the National Security Agency for its spying practices, a far-reaching endeavor that involved collecting tens of thousands of domestic emails without a warrant. The NSA, the judge said, was also guilty of repeatedly misleading the court about its practices. This revelation […]
Posted inOpinion
Easy Changes Make a Big Difference
Sure, the elbow-in-the-ribs assessment is that there are two seasons in Bend—winter, and road repair; a “joke” nearly as irksome as being asked whether you’re the one who ordered all the hot weather. Yet, as summer winds down, we recently sat around our editorial conference room and assessed what has changed from May until now. […]
Posted inOpinion
Too Early to Claim Gold
Do you know who Vladimir Morozov is? Neither did we. But he won fifth place at the recent World Swimming Championships (100 meter free), which is exactly where Bend, the self-dubbed Bike Town USA, ranks in the state (yes, the state of Oregon, not even the nation) as a bike-friendly community. Behind the platinum- level […]