The Wandering Eye

Get ready for a major outbreak of wailing and hand-wringing from animal lovers: The Bend Metro Park and Recreation District sent geese to the gas chamber this week.
On Tuesday, Park & Rec rounded up more than 100 of the Canada geese that infest Drake Park, put them one at a time into what The Bulletin’s account described as “a trash-can-sized enclosure filled with carbon dioxide,” and terminated them with extreme prejudice.

It’s finally summer in Bend, and right on schedule downtown merchant and blogger extraordinaire Duncan McGeary has posted his first rant of the season against downtown street closings.
Well, it isn’t a rant, actually – more like a mild sigh of protest.

The epidemic of whooping cough that already has infected more than 900 people in California and killed at least five infants appears to be spreading into Oregon.
The Medford Mail Tribune reported yesterday that Jackson County has recorded 23 cases of the disease so far this year – roughly four times the usual number for this far into the year.

Not to be outdone by the Oregon Catalyst’s John Kitzhaber “scandal,” Carla Axtman of the liberal/Democratic Blue Oregon blog has come up with a “scandal” involving Kitzhaber’s Republican opponent, Chris Dudley.
If anything, Axtman’s entry is even lamer than the Oregon Catalyst’s.

Forbes magazine has posted a fascinating interactive map showing, county by county, where Americans moved to and where they moved from. One rather surprising fact: More people still seemed to be moving into Central Oregon than out of it – at least as of 2008.

Now THIS is my kind of hike: Visitors to Bend this summer will be able to travel “The Bend Ale Trail,” a tour of eight local craft breweries.
“Known throughout the world as one of the top outdoor recreation meccas, Bend, Oregon has now also emerged as one of the premier craft brewery capitals of the United States,” says a press release put out by Visit Bend, the city's tourism promotion agency.

The conventional wisdom said that John Kitzhaber, a popular two-term former governor running in a heavily Democratic state, would have a cakewalk to a third term. But suddenly he finds himself in a horse race.

You can catch The Wandering Eye (aka me) along with Barney Lerten of KTVZ and Jamie Christman, co-host of COTV’s “Talk of the Town” show, in an hour-long panel discussion on KPOV at 5 pm Friday, June 18. Tune to 106.

Troy Reinhart, the president of the Bend Chamber of Commerce, has written a two-page document titled “Saving Bend Through Government Innovation.” As you might expect from a conservative Chamber of Commerce president, Reinhart thinks “government innovation” mostly means shrinking government and turning its functions over to private business.

Did the John Kitzhaber campaign slip cash to an official of the Independent Party to get him to post negative comments about Kitzhaber’s rivals? That’s what the state Republican Party is hinting.
The GOP wants state Attorney General John Kroger and Secretary of State Kate Brown to investigate “the potential improprieties concerning the financial activity and coordination between the campaign of Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber and Independent Party of Oregon officials.