News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 183
The best thing about documentary filmmaking, it turns out, is the friends you make along the trail. For nearly two years, Sisters native and cinematographer Sam Pyke and I have been traveling around the country meeting people who have managed to retain, and to pay forward, the resiliency, optimism, and self-sacrifice that once exemplified the American Character. We covered a lot of country in this effort — from Nevada and Idaho to Wyoming and Texas, and points beyond.... Full story
While filming the Len Babb Movie Project — we are eight months into this endeavor and making tremendous progress — cinematographer Sam Pyke and I have covered thousands of miles, visited six states, and interviewed some truly incredible Americans. Perhaps none more so than Victoria Jackson and her family. Victoria is a two-time Ranch Rodeo World Champion, an accomplished photographer, author of two books, and an enrolled member of the Ft. McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone... Full story
It was late June, but there was frost on my bedroll when I woke up in the dark at the Murphy Ranch cow camp on South Flat, about 25 miles up the Chewaucan River from Paisley, Oregon. I was there — along with cinematographer Samuel Pyke — to begin filming The Len Babb Movie Project, which was an idea that flashed into my head two months earlier while riding my colt. I had just finished watching a couple of documentary films about cowboys and the life —... Full story
A few summers ago, while lounging around the Munich Airport waiting for a flight to Reykjavik, I bought a book: “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World,” by Peter Frankopan. Frankopan is a senior fellow at Oxford University, and has written a convincing reassessment of world history. It is also a poignant and extraordinarily well-considered forecast of our possible future as a broader, Western culture. It’s a good enough read that, while spending the weekend moving horse... Full story
Hobbs Margarét, 32, of Sisters Cattle Company, might be a radical. Maybe that’s a result of his deep West Texas ranching roots, his degree from the University of Oregon, or because he lived too long in the low-intensity warfare of Los Angeles. Whatever the source, it’s no accident that the word “radical” reaches back to the Latin “radix,” meaning “root,” because Sisters Cattle Company is aiming for a radical change in the way we treat our soils, and beef cattle, in... Full story
If you are one of those rarified Americans who still believe that natural rights are bequeathed to us by our creator, rather than granted to us by government masters, you will perhaps appreciate the gift of Robert Francis O’Rourke. During the last presidential debate, O’Rourke did us all a great favor by pulling back the curtain on progressive thought, exposing their willingness to seize by force the legally held and protected property of law-abiding American citizens. Bet... Full story
With all due respect to Sgt. Bailey and the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, whose service and dedication to professionalism are both real and deeply appreciated by this space, the advice to citizens to stand back and “be a good witness” in the face of crime is ultimately damaging to a community. The “be a good witness” meme has been all the rage in law enforcement circles for several decades, and there are some solid reasons for it. Overzealous citizens who don’t und... Full story
The new American penchant for tribalism isn’t doing us any favors. That was on full display at the most recent Democrat presidential debates, where candidates pandered vigorously to their various tribes by promising virtually anything they could think of — from healthcare to college educations — for free. The idea that Bernie Sanders, who is still combing his hair with a balloon, and whose pandering is delivered in language taken directly from the All Soviet Congre... Full story
Last week, while some Oregon legislators were resisting the cyanide pill of a “climate bill” — whose only certain result will be the destruction of of good jobs for mostly rural Oregonians — I bombed south through the desert to pick up a new horse for training. A two- year-old chestnut with brains and breeding, I’m honored to get this filly started for her owners. I loaded her early the next morning, serenaded by eager meadowlarks in the sagebrush and sprin... Full story
Way back a thousand years ago, when I came off the desert to try once again — reluctantly — to reconcile myself to the vagaries of human civilization, I committed a cardinal sin: I sold my saddle. In the world of buckaroos this is a subject so taboo — like sitting in a baseball dugout and suddenly starting a conversation about The Yips — it is better off left alone. But this is, after all, rodeo week, and some stories still have happy endings. I sold... Full story
I took some time off from working the colt, writing, and fixing the myriad things around the Figure 8 that broke in the last big snowstorm. I put all that away for a three-day fishing trip down the Lower Deschutes. I went with my friend, neighbor, and legendary guide Steve Erickson, and an old cop colleague who has spent much of his adult life working violent crimes — a grueling career that has left his armor severely dented by the sword- and axe-blows of human... Full story
Juanito Mendiolea was a Basque immigrant who over many years donated considerable time and energy helping my family with our sheep. He was an enduring presence at our place, during winter lambing seasons when we carried bummer lambs into the house to warm up by the woodstove, at spring shearings when the wool piled up in lanolin-rich mountains, or when the coyotes killed our lambs and we set out to deliver a measure of frontier justice. Memories of Juanito and his quiet, deter... Full story
Out here in the West water is precious, particularly when living on the east side of any mountain range between the Sierra-Cascades and the Rockies. Eastsiders live within a perpetual loop of drought and diminishing returns. The diminishing returns are a result of aggressive settlement beyond the 100th meridian, which has been a desert since before the end of the last Ice Age. The illusion of abundance in the western deserts was easy enough to sustain for more than a hundred... Full story
Challenges travel in packs, and this winter is no exception. No sooner had our second generational snowstorm in four years ransacked an otherwise placid winter, than one of the dogs ripped open his shoulder in an accident and needed medical attention. Twenty or so sutures later, a leak opened up in the master bedroom in the same place we had a leak in the winter of '17, which required some late night alpinist adventures on the north face of a precipitous peak, and will... Full story
I'm writing this on Sunday morning, during the first real snowstorm we've enjoyed this year-though I almost didn't believe it was going to happen. I stopped believing the weather woman about two months ago. This was a deliberate act of rebellion because riding the prediction roller-coaster was damaging my nerves and upsetting the dogs. Calls for snow this winter have too often dissembled into blue skies, warm chinooks, and mud in the paddocks, and although I have sympathy for... Full story
We are, in our travels, occasionally blessed to spend time with incredible people who, against every conceivable cultural and political roadblock, still manage to make a difference. This happened for me last Wednesday morning when I was fortunate to share some time with Wilson Wewa. Wewa is the last enrolled member of the Northern Paiute tribe who is fluent in the Numic language spoken by Paiutes, and the last man on earth who can sing the burial songs of his people. Sit with... Full story
Last week provided a sobering look in the American mirror. Much of that ugly reflection was concentrated in the State of Virginia, where Governor Ralph Northam first admitted, then denied, that he was one of the two utter dimwits who appeared in a photo from his medical school yearbook. One of the idiots was wearing blackface, and the other case of arrested development was done up in Klan regalia, including the stupid hood. Northam seems to have seized on the "plausible deniab... Full story
The field of candidates for the 2020 Presidential Challenge Blowout is taking shape just in time for pitchers and catchers - they report for spring training in early February - and what makes this timing so marvelous, so utterly serendipitous, is that it also beginning to look a lot like a mid-season Sausage Race. The Sausage Race is a baseball tradition born in Milwaukee where, during the seventh inning stretch of Brewers games, mascots dress up like different sausages and... Full story
There is a concept in the art world known as "negative space." The basic idea is that instead of trying to draw the branches in a tree, one draws the space between the branches, and therefore, ultimately, the whole tree emerges. With that in mind, last Thursday night I put on my old high school football helmet, tightened the chin-strap, and sat down to watch an hour of Sean Hannity. But here's the catch: I had no interest in watching whatever it was that Hannity was raving... Full story
Now that the APA (American Psychological Association) has decided that the political opinions of psychologists are a legitimate factor in mental-health care, we've reached another crossroads on the sordid trail of modern American history. Under the guise of concern for "the impact of power, privilege, and sexism on the development of boys and men and their relationships with others" - the APA has helped to create, legitimize, and now openly supports, a burgeoning new mental... Full story
One idea that surfaced from the recent VAT (Vision Action Team) meetings was to foster a vision of Sisters Country as the artisanal capital of Oregon. That idea may be one of the better ones to have emerged from the project, if only because it is an organic outcome of broad-based community support. It is also something that is already happening, and largely independent from political or economic winds that blow beyond anyone's meaningful influence or control. It is the... Full story
Americans have become a fearful lot. And I really do mean scaredy-cats, a bunch of whimpering, simpering, cowardly lions afraid of everything from chocolate milk to clowns, from fake eyelashes (it's a thing) to 11-year-old playground bullies. I'm not sure how this happened, but fear has become a pervasive element in our culture. It's virtually everywhere, replacing optimism and confidence in the same way that "feeling" has replaced "thinking." The lawyers have a lot to do... Full story
My detective brain tells me that President Donald Trump is lying, though it's unclear to me exactly what he's lying about. It also seems clear that fired FBI Director James Comey, too smug by a country mile, is lying also - either actively or by omission, and who knows which. But that's not unusual in any caper involving a cast of variously costumed crooks, particularly one with so much at stake, and it remains the purpose of independent investigations to sort it all out. And... Full story
If you don't know, artificial intelligence, AI, is creeping inexorably into our lives. From facial recognition technology to autonomous vehicles, from drone swarms to Siri, from Tesla to Pandora's "Musical DNA," AI and machine learning are among the incredibly powerful - and largely invisible - forces driving our next cultural revolution. There are even reports that shopping carts at the grocery store will soon be outfitted with AI, so that grocers, and presumably whoever... Full story
Last week I was elk hunting out east and saw, for the first time, a wolf in the wild. I've seen just about all of the other big predators in North America at one time or another: homo sapiens in various stages of sobriety, bears, lions, bobcats, and gators, but seeing a wolf - and very close - was a first. For the record: I saw a wolf, and I liked it. A few months back I tried to write a middle-of-the-road sort of column about the return of wolves - you know, one of those... Full story
