The Wandering Eye

In his Sunday column, Bulletin Editor John Costa talks to three of Bend's biggest movers and shakers to find out why the Bend real estate market went belly-up and how to keep it from happening again. They offer a number of ideas. Some of them make sense; one is just crazy.

The plot thickens in the Sawyer case: KTVZ and KOHD are reporting that the office of The Sawyer Five real estate firm was closed yesterday - and the principal broker has left to start his own agency.

It was great political theater. Greg Walden held up a big glass jar full of peanut products wrapped in yellow crime-scene tape and dared Stewart Parnell - the owner of the Georgia plant that shipped salmonella-tainted peanut products - to eat them.

Some senators have made a big fuss about the tax problems of Obama appointees Tom Daschle, Timothy Geithner and Nancy Killefer, but quite a few of them have had the same kinds of problems themselves.

It's the end of the line for Brainstorm NW: The editor of the 12-year-old conservative Republican magazine has disclosed that the February issue will be its last.

Since last Friday, both local TV news outlets have been carrying the story of Bend Police Capt. Kevin Sawyer being put on administrative leave while he and his wife, a well-known local realtor, are under investigation by the FBI. But, curiously, there's been nary a word about it yet in Bend's Only Daily Newspaper.

Some days The Eye wonders whether the members of The Bulletin's editorial board bother to read their own paper. Today is one of those days.

Jody Denton's showplace downtown restaurant, Merenda, has folded, but it's being reborn as "900 Wall." Can it survive in its new incarnation?

Newsweek magazine has a piece this week lauding Nigel Jaquiss, the investigative reporter for Willamette Week who broke the sex scandal story about Portland Mayor Sam Adams - and also raking The Oregonian over the coals for dropping the ball on this and other tough stories.

The Bend real estate market shows no signs of reviving yet, but the market for weirdness may have bottomed out.