News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 183
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico - If you are one who cares about horses or, as in my case, embrace an unreasonable affinity for all things equine, sooner or later you are going to end up in Mexico. This is particularly true if you came of age in the buckaroo traditions, because caballeros from Spain and Mexico are the fathers of that Great Basin tradition. I've wanted to visit San Miguel de Allende since the 1980s, when my granddad - old cuss that he was - was hired to train... Full story
For many people, the Great American Kaepernick Conundrum looks more like a spoiled brat dishonoring genuine sacrifice than a meaningful protest. The other side views Kaepernick's crusade as a righteous moral and political fight against inveterate police violence and institutional racism. Probably no one who supports one side or the other in this mess can be persuaded to move off of their position, and that's largely because, in an era of extreme political partisanship, we... Full story
We are going to be hearing a lot about tribalism in the coming years. That's mostly because so many Americans now see solutions to their angst in joining identity clubs. Pick something about your identity - it must make you feel anxious - then go ranting and throwing stuff and lighting things on fire when the world doesn't step aside for you and your special identity. What's weird is that they often do this under a banner of unity, though the laser focus on what makes them... Full story
Sisters doesn't need its own police department. To begin with, we can't afford one. Police departments, like an effective military, are extremely expensive to operate and maintain. That's particularly true if the plan is to staff it with highly qualified and motivated law- enforcement officers who aren't just station-warmers trolling for a double-dip on their pension, or badge-heavy control freaks tucking in to small-town life after bouncing from agency to agency. Those folks,... Full story
Sisters resident Jeff Ramsey is a passionate man. As a Hollywood stuntman and stunt coordinator he has been lit on fire by Drew Barrymore, kidnapped Mel Gibson, and been bashed over the head with a breakaway lamp by Julia Roberts' stunt double. He's crashed cars on purpose and been blown off of more horses than he can count, but above all, Ramsey says, "I love to be on fire." Ramsey, who split time as a young man between the deserts of Arizona and Southern California, came to... Full story
San Jose, California native Brythnie Tobar, 28, is no stranger to challenges. After six years in the Navy conducting combat intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions as a radar operator on P3-Orion aircraft, she has already tackled the Pacific Crest Trail, and on Monday morning she rode off from Sisters and over the Cascades on the last leg of a 4,320 mile bike ride across the United States. Travelling as a member of Warrior Expeditions, Brythnie's cycling feat b... Full story
Last week's Letters to the Editor offered an important study in contrasts. One was a well-considered essay in which the writer expressed her concerns, approached the discussion with a counter-argument, and finally made an effective, reasonable case in favor of her beliefs. The other was a kind of "First Thought, Best Thought" screed, lacked any argument whatsoever, and finally morphed into an embarrassing public soccer-flop. Soccer-flopping, if you don't know, is an invention... Full story
Independence is a funny thing. These days many of the folk who enjoy its fruits - liberty and freedom - are pilloried, marginalized or, as in the case of this column during the late IP43 unpleasantness, exposed to censorship campaigns orchestrated by people who simply will not be satisfied until the only opinion they ever hear is an echo of their own. Behind that sort of Orwellian bent is a deliberate unwillingness to appreciate what makes diversity tick. When put to the... Full story
Over the last couple of weeks I've heard from a growing chorus of people - and some of you aren't going to like this - that Sisters is "losing its small-town appeal." A number of folk across the spectrum - old-timers, young'uns, and a number of in-betweeners - have shared with me a list of irritants to support their opinion. So, in the interest of genuine diversity, I decided to air some of those thoughts because they might be instructive, or illuminating, or at least worthy... Full story
With the rodeo back in town I've been thinking about horse-wrecks. Depending on how you look at it, it's either fortunate or unfortunate that I have a considerable library of personal wrecks to choose from. It's a qualifying roster of equine catastrophes that would, sadly, make more of a book than a column - something like Thomas McGuane's marvelous musings about the cutting-horse crowd in "Some Horses" - but in the spirit of all things dust and blood and the roar of a Sunday... Full story
The Montana writer Richard Hugo, spoofing T.S. Eliot, wrote in the opening line of his mystery novel "Death and the Good Life," that "April is the cruelest month, my ass." He meant that after a hard Montana winter any sign of spring, however tenuous, could only bring psychic and spiritual relief to the seasonally aggrieved. Come April and May we often feel that same way here on the Figure 8. We laugh at weather forecasts because we all know that it might be - as it was just... Full story
Historians and archeologists tell us that human beings began collecting wild honey about 10,000 years ago. Evidence shows up in ancient North African pottery, Egyptian art, and honey in jars has been recovered from the tombs of the Pharaohs. By 600 BCE the Picts of ancient Scotland - naturally it was the Scots - were brewing honey-ale, or mead, a legacy which comes down to us even in poetry such as the epic of Beowulf, which means bee-wolf, or bear. But bees are not just a... Full story
One of the Northwest's best-known and well-respected trail writers will be speaking in Sisters next week. For many years, William L. "Bill" Sullivan has been the go-to source for trail and hiking information in our area. He is the author of 22 books, including the updated "100 Hikes" series; and his "100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades" is considered by many to be the hiking bible for Sisters Country. His presentation will highlight recent changes and additions to local h... Full story
I didn't watch the Stormy Daniels interview. For one thing I was busy cleaning my AR-15s - which are, in fact, an excellent choice for target shooting, hunting, and home defense - and for another thing I just assume that she is telling the truth and that her skillset really is worth $130k a pop, if not much, much, more. And for a third thing - not that any other reason is really required - I've seen the Russian bordellos in Dubai, and as a result I've sworn off strumpets as a... Full story
I have been at war with rodents for most of my life. I am presently doing battle with a particularly clever mouse in the greenhouse, who has, in full disclosure, managed to outwit my considerable efforts to end his life early and with extreme prejudice. This lifelong, low-intensity fight for dignity against rodents has resulted in various demonstrations of comic folly, such as the time I cornered a Norwegian rat while cleaning out our garage in Solvang, California. I chased... Full story
On February 24 Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, no stranger to the lava beds of Oakland politics, released a message warning illegal immigrants of deportation action by ICE in the City of Oakland, California, and elsewhere around the Bay Area. Schaaf's magnanimous behavior - a move sure to shore up her base - sparked the now customarily tepid warning from Thomas Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, of a possible obstruction of justice investigation. Which... Full story
The common denominator underlying school killings isn't what you think it is. It isn't guns, and it isn't mental illness. The only common denominator underlying mass school killings is long-term, dissociative exposure to violent media. Whether it's violence in films, violent lyrics, violent television shows, violent novels, violence depicted across social media, or the endless flood of violent imagery in first-person-shooter video games, those countless hours steeped in... Full story
And just like that, the collusion narrative imploded. Which doesn't mean there is a political winner in the United States. Far from it. What emerges from the indictment produced by Mueller et al, in addition to some truly laugh-out-loud funny capers pulled on dimwitted, blinded-by-rage Trump rally stooges, is the picture of a magnificently coordinated, extremely well-financed, and brilliantly conducted psy-op campaign whose principle aim was to discredit the results of an elec... Full story
Gene Frechette knows something about baseball. Frechette, a former resident of Sisters now living in Eagle Crest, has spent 55 years associated with professional baseball, and he's on a mission to preserve the arms of young pitchers. Frechette is among the deans of professional pitching instruction. Orlanda Cepeda, a 1999 inductee into the baseball Hall of Fame, had this to say: "In my career as a player I hit against many premier pitchers who had exceptionally good pitching... Full story
The bludgeoning of our Republic continues. For the sake of argument, consider this: Suppose the Republicans are right, and the Russian collusion narrative is, in the words of Victor Davis Hanson, "an incoherent effort to destroy Donald Trump's candidacy beyond the bounds of normal politics and later a renewed and unprecedented endeavor to abort his presidency." Suppose the collusion narrative actually is manufactured out of circumstantial evidence, combined with a wildly... Full story
During my law-enforcement career I responded to a lot - and I really do mean a surprising number - of fights, stabbings, and at least one shooting, at quinceanera celebrations. You can imagine the scene: tables overturned, chairs flying, lots of shrieking and weeping and terrified children hiding behind the DJ table. The big question, after all of the major players were in bracelets and the ambulances had rolled away to the hospital, was always the same: What could possibly... Full story
I like to write in diners. I like it because I always hear something marvelous about politics, or the weather, and also because there is something inspirational in the smell of bacon, the comfort of a worn-out booth beside a picture window, and the reliable goodness of hashed browns, two eggs over-medium, and a side of English muffins. One day last week saw me in a booth early enough to enjoy Sisters in that golden hour - you know the one I mean - when the kids are... Full story
Our American obsession with celebrity is as interesting as it is potentially dangerous. It's also hard to dislodge, as war correspondent George Weller discovered when he defied Gen. Douglas MacArthur's ban on travel to Nagasaki after the Army Air Corps detonated Fat Man, a 21-kiloton nuclear weapon, over the city. Nearly 1,000 allied POWs were living in Nagasaki, interned as slave labor in the Mitsubishi war plants. Most of them were starving to death, or being beaten to... Full story
I admit to a conservative streak in my nature. One problem with that is a tendency to paint the past in golden hues and promote a world that never really existed. And it's probably accurate that if we are ever to learn anything, and carry that knowledge forward, we can't do it by living too long in the rearview mirror. This was brought home to me recently on a visit to Bruno's Country Club, in Gerlach, Nevada. I was by turns outraged and appalled to find it had undergone a... Full story
My grandfather warned me a long time ago that "You can't get something for nothing," which always sounded like an unassailable bit of wisdom pulled from Stonewall Jackson's Book of Maxims. But granddad wasn't around for the invention of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, if you don't know, is a digital commodity invented by a cryptologist whose real identity - he ran under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto before handing Bitcoin off to the world - remains a mystery. In other words, he's the Wizard... Full story
