News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 183
On a recent research trip into the Nevada outback, Nugget editor Jim Cornelius and I had occasion to stop for a few minutes in Silver Lake, to pay our respects at a monument in the local cemetery. Ten feet high, unprepossessing, the monument was erected in 1898, to remember the victims of Oregon's deadliest fire. The Silver Lake Fire of 1894 isn't really the stuff of a Christmas column, except that in the midst of an agonizing tragedy there were also towering acts of... Full story
The real crux of the word-ban issue at CDC isn't that the words are "banned." They aren't, not really, and as of this morning there are no credible reports of bonfires on Capitol Hill fueled by the ritual tomecide of policy manuals. Officially, the words are merely "discouraged." What's most troubling is the rationale put forward to explain such discouragement - which is that the words frighten people. We are told that certain words such as "fetus," and phrases such as... Full story
Few subjects in wildlife conservation are as fundamentally polarizing and explosive as the topic of wolves. And like most subjects in our "Breaking News" zeitgeist, the hyperbole shills on all sides of the wolf issue seem to work in feverish piques, pandering to our baser emotional responses, and often ignoring outright any evidence contrary to their own cherished narrative. In other words, we hear mostly from the mostly unreasonable. Which makes the conversation very... Full story
If there was ever a time to examine the wisdom and efficacy of attempting to govern 320 million people as a single entity, maybe now is it. The GOP's tax bill came in at 479 pages. It's a safe bet that not one single professional representative - on either side of the aisle - has read the bill in its entirety; not even Al Franken or John Conyers, who clearly have the time after tossing grenades into their own offices. It's an even safer bet that no one, and I really mean no si... Full story
I am sentimental about sawmills. That's especially true around Christmas because the Sierra Pacific sawmill - at one time the second largest of its kind in the United States - was also the principal private employer where I was raised, in the sparsely populated northeast corner of California. My stepfather worked at Sierra Pacific for over 20 years, rolling logs in the millpond, pulling chain, freezing through graveyard shifts in the stacker house, and finally loading long... Full story
Sisters students saluted the community's military veterans in recognition of Veterans Day last week. On Thursday, November 9, Sisters High School opened its doors to local veterans for the annual Veteran's Day Assembly. Beginning with a breakfast for veterans and their wives served by SHS Leadership students and a brief introductory welcome by principle Joe Hosang, nearly 50 veterans from all branches of service gathered to swap stories, share a few laughs, and enjoy a... Full story
It's time to come clean. Way back in March, or April, maybe it was May, I wrote in these pages predicting - it was really more of a populist pandering, almost a campaign promise - that we would grow 500 pounds of vegetables. That was worth a giggle then, and somewhere inside I knew it was bold, but it seems much funnier now. Armed with lessons learned from our previous gardening heartbreaks, attendance at a master gardening class, and no shortage of work - rebuilding the... Full story
The first True Bill in the big collusion extravaganza has finally been handed down. Early Monday morning, in a showbiz fail, Paul Manafort, former chairman of Trump's presidential campaign, made a strangely unattended perp-walk with his lawyer into the FBI's Washington D.C. field office. Manafort, who was clearly the first chair in a sloppy money-laundering symphony, was joined in the indictment by Rick Gates, a former deputy campaign chair, accomplished Moscow-mingler, and... Full story
The graduation of a female from the Marine Corps' Infantry Officer Course has left many of my fellow veterans conflicted. To be clear, there is no short-shrifting her accomplishment thus far; IOC is the most difficult infantry school anywhere in the world. But we are conflicted because we are, most of us, raised with no small pride in the notion that the infantry is the last place left exclusively to men. We like it that way, a lot, but we are conflicted because we hold the... Full story
In 1782 Ben Franklin published a fake edition of an otherwise real newspaper. It was meant to curry sympathy for American resistance to the British, by claiming that natives allied with the British were on the warpath, slaughtering settlers by the hundreds. Complete with phony ads and other articles, it was all fake news. Fake news becomes fake news when it is published, or broadcast, by an otherwise reliable source. Conversely, when fake newspapers publish real news the... Full story
After a tumultuous couple of years that saw several high-ranking officials terminated, a captain sent to prison, and deputy and former sheriff candidate Eric Kozowski placed on administrative leave last week for alleged policy violations, The Nugget recently spoke with Deschutes County Sheriff's Office spokesman Sergeant William Bailey about the current state of the sheriff's office. In reference to the widely reported spate of personnel issues that plagued the department,... Full story
The biggest problem with the NFL isn't the mostly meaningless and entirely self-congratulatory fad of anthem protests. The biggest problem with the NFL is that the product is becoming unwatchable. A football game lasts, on average, about 3.5 hours. A prime-time game between two teams with anything on the line can last even longer. By the end of that 3.5 hours the audience has been mugged to exhaustion by an endless series of artless and grating commercials selling everything... Full story
"Lord, let me die but not die out." - James Dickey, "For the Last Wolverine" A few weeks ago, on our way to the End of Summer Concert and Barbecue at the Camp Sherman Store, my wife and I crossed paths with a bear. He wasn't a big bear, probably not much more than a yearling boar, and we surprised him at whatever he was doing. He lumbered a few yards into the brush, then stopped, sniffed the air, and sat by a rotten stump. We stopped too, and for a long time the three of us ju... Full story
I have a friend from the Marine Corps, John "Scoot" Davenport, who lives in Youngsville, Louisiana, and is an admiral in the Cajun Navy. That's a joke - there is no such thing as an admiral in the Cajun Navy. But recently I had the opportunity to talk with Scoot about his experiences as a volunteer during the onslaught of Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Scoot, like all good sons of the bayou country, has a boat, an enormous affection for people, and a lot of neighbors who share... Full story
Before the Milli fire started getting that strange look in it's eye, filling the sky with smoke and causing the evacuation of Crossroads, my wife and I were pleased to host a couple of through-hikers attempting the Pacific Crest Trail. Because of the fires in Central Oregon, numerous trail closures, and active measures by our much-adored firefighting professionals, they were forced to abandon the trail at Elk Lake. We were happy to help in whatever ways we could. We were broug... Full story
This week I had planned to write about our garden. After a few years of heartache and disaster, I wanted to share a tale of success - the 18 pounds of peas we've harvested so far, the bucket-loads of green beans, the beautiful squash, and the luscious ears of corn that have sweetened up just right and taste exactly like a Central Oregon summer. But then Charlottesville happened, and a young woman named Heather Heyer was murdered by a serial loser named James Fields, a... Full story
A living buckaroo legend - and accomplished artist - Len Babb will host a show in Sisters, August 5 and 6, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Sisters Fire Hall Community Room. The show will feature Len's original oil paintings, watercolors, pen-and-ink drawings and sculptures. Len's art has been favorably compared to Western artist Charles Russell, and it is a comparison Len embraces. Babb told The Nugget: "Russell once said that big hats and high-heeled boots don't make cowboys,... Full story
If you were ever lucky enough to live out on the great sagebrush sea, like I was during a certain vanishing era, you might have enjoyed a slice of old Americana in perhaps the rarest of ways: trailing cattle and working horses. The outback was, in those days - and still is to some degree - a kind of underworld, a parallel universe, richly populated with characters and stories both real and imagined. Most folks, I think it's fair to say, travel through the desert without much... Full story
For sheer overwrought political drama, vigorously milked for every last drop of click-bait and ratings potential, last Tuesday was certainly a hoot. Revelations that Donald Trump, Jr. "took a meeting" with the mysterious Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya created the largest case of mass apoplexy in the politico-media machine since the final, uninspiring episode of "Seinfeld." Veselnitskaya, methinks, has received precious little attention, as the major organs of American... Full story
Occasionally, in the heat of summer, life will throw us a gift. Such a thing happened to me the other night, as I sat on the back porch in the golden light, watching a squadron of swallows dive-bombing around the barn and reading from Ernie Pyle's magnificent collection "Brave Men." Many folks know of Ernie Pyle, the humble journalist who followed American GIs throughout World War II. He wrote about them so endearingly that he was embraced as a comrade in arms by "the... Full story
I was among those who thought the roundabout was a good idea. I still do-they work-though some of the motoring theatrics I observed this weekend might cause one to have legitimate second thoughts. For a moment, tourist-watching from my favorite surveillance hidey-hole in the Ray's parking lot, the roundabout sounded like lower Manhattan, horns ablaze, tires squealing, and wild oaths being issued, as touring cars bristling with kayaks and canoes and jammed full of vaping... Full story
"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." - Calvin Coolidge No sitting governor of Oregon has ever refused to meet with a Medal of Honor recipient. Until now. On June 8, Governor Kate Brown snubbed Master Sergeant Leroy Petry as he stood waiting - at her invitation - outside of her office in Salem. Maybe you've heard of Master Sergeant Petry. In 2008, he and his fellow Rangers from the 2/75th Ranger Battalion were fighting... Full story
Thousands of rodeo fans ignored occasional rain, constant wind, and low temperatures to enjoy five days of spills, thrills, chills, and a new arena record in tie-down roping at the 77th annual Sisters Rodeo. Sisters Rodeo offers the largest purse anywhere on the rodeo circuit during the second week of June, which virtually guarantees that the nation's top cowboys and cowgirls will come from across the nation, and indeed the world, for a shot at the money and a champion's... Full story
Once, while attending a summer program for young students at UC Santa Barbara, I attempted to skateboard down a long, sloping hill. I had no business doing that. I was not a skateboarder. Where I hailed from in the outback corner of northern California skateboarding was not a thing - because it is very difficult to skateboard on dirt roads. But I tried anyway. I stepped aboard and went merrily down the path until, and quite suddenly, the skateboard developed speed wobbles, bec... Full story
Brett Miller of Sisters has been honored by the Wounded Warrior Project as the recipient of the George C. Lang Award for Courage. The prestigious award, presented at an event in New York City, was founded in memory of George Lang, a Medal of Honor recipient who passed away in 2005. It is bestowed upon an individual who best exemplifies the spirit and virtue of Lang, who was a humble yet unyielding advocate for all veterans, particularly those with disabilities. Although Lang s... Full story
