News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 276 - 300 of 734
A group of Sisters High School students conducted a much-needed service project for the new Sisters Country Outdoor Education Center at Camp Tamarack Wednesday, September 25. From the moment they arrived until they returned to school - exhausted and hyped for all the fun they had - they knew they'd done good work. Rima Givot, SHS science teacher, set the tone for the day as the happy seniors left the bus to gather around the welcome campfire: "You will all be working together... Full story
Camp Tamarack has been around Sisters Country since 1935, when Donna Gill and Lucile Murphy leased land from the Forest Service and built a little lodge, a few cabins and set up a horse camp for girls on the shore of Dark Lake, about 15 miles northwest of Sisters. Since that time, the camp has changed hands a number of times. Betty Roberts, one-time Oregon Secretary of State, owned it for a while. One of the owners, Sue Sherman, was a camper, counselor and then owner, and sold it to Edie and Ted Jones in 1990, and it is now... Full story
Great paper last week! Lots of stuff to digest; letters-to-the-editor, Lady Outlaws volleyball, the shooting on Highway 20, the unfortunate death of one of our dear old pals - to the story on page 15 about high school kids restoring the riparian along the banks of Bear Creek down by Medford, where the writer claims our beaver is a "vandal." That one really yanked my chain! Since when is our native Oregon beaver a "vandal?" Just because it was doing what nature designed it to... Full story
Through September and October Lynn Miller of Sisters Country - editor/publisher of Small Farmer's Journal, author, poet, one-time ballet dancer, trained singer, shoe-salesman, commercial fisherman and jack-of-all-trades - will have several of his American Indian cultural pieces and farm scenes hanging in the Sisters Library. The exhibit is sponsored by Friends of the Sisters Library. Miller was born in Kansas, grew up for a while in Puerto Rico and Southern California, and... Full story
There is an abundance of Jerusalem cricket heads being found on porches, decks and under eaves of homes in and all around Sisters. The Jerusalem cricket is another of those creatures we share the Earth with that gets a bad rap; most people find them, "ugly," therefore harmful, "poisonous" and possessing other disagreeable traits. That's impolite and incorrect. Jerusalem cricket males wander about the sagebrush and bunchgrass at night, making a "chirping" sound to attract femal... Full story
Starting September 19, the Sisters Science Club will be kicking off the 2013 series of free symposia in Sisters, featuring current topics on science. The first of the series will be presented by OSU geology instructor Dr. Daniele McKay, "Volcanoes in Central Oregon: When will the next eruption occur, and how will it affect you?" What a topic - when we live right in the middle of volcanoes on all sides of us... The symposia will all take place at The Belfry, 302 E. Main Ave. in... Full story
I enjoy sleeping late in winter. I wonder if I took to hibernating (I have plenty of fat reserve to do so), if my tired old brain would improve. At 85 it seems to be going downhill rapidly, and inasmuch as shoveling snow and shivering through a Sisters Country winter is no longer fun, maybe I could achieve three goals at once by hibernating: Stay warm all winter; not care about snow piling up, and improve my brain. The classic hibernators in Sisters Country are resident bats,... Full story
Birders are wondering what an arctic tern is doing in Sisters Country, the last possible place to find one. But it's true, there is an Arctic Tern in Sisters - and Vern Goodsell, Sisters airplane-builder, is restoring it. This tern is made of aluminum, wood, steel tubing and fabric. An old flying pal from over in Forest Grove called Vern just recently and asked if he would take on a rebuilding project of the Arctic Tern that's been stored over there for a number of years. In h... Full story
Whychus Creek got a kind of health check-up last weekend. Saturday was the day for the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council's annual invertebrate sampling in Whychus Creek. Twenty-two volunteers from throughout Central Oregon met with Xerces Society aquatic biologists Celeste Mazzacano, Michelle Blackburn and UDWC research coordinator, Lauren Mork, to learn the techniques and art of collecting specimens from the somewhat turbid creek. Last spring, as the winter snows began to... Full story
If there's one bird in Sisters Country that can bring smiles one moment and frowns the next, it's our big and bold northern flicker. The photo above shows a male enjoying a repast of suet cake they enjoy in winter - and if you continue to provide this favorite flicker food - in summer as well. Flickers are at home wherever there is food. They'll chisel insects out of trees and shrubs wherever and whenever it suits them. By the same token, they'll stand right in the front door... Full story
There is no predator on this planet quite like the coyote. Yes, Man is pretty good at killing things and surviving, but when it comes to doing it with tooth and claw we can't even come close to the coyote. If coyotes ever learn how to shoot guns, use poison, or set traps, there won't be a safe place for a human to sleep or grow food. Yes, coyotes do think and adapt, they have the uncanny ability to survey a situation and make the best choices for the coyote. There is one... Full story
On warm summer evenings, common nighthawks can be seen - and heard - zooming through the skies over Sisters Country. In the dim half-light before sunset, these sickle-winged birds fly in a graceful zig-zag pattern, flashing white patches out past the bend of each wing as they pursue insects. Nighthawks got off on the wrong foot with people when they were first named, and it hasn't got any better. First, it was the guys who named the bird: "nighthawk." Big no, no. Back in the... Full story
Last Thursday, a Sisters Ranger District road maintenance crew, under the guiding hand of Forest Service Fishery Biologist Nate Dachtler, dug their way into the logging history of Sisters Country as they helped bring Indian Ford Creek alive for redband trout and other aquatic organisms. The crew dug into the old Brooks-Scanlon railroad and logging road bed near Indian Ford Campground on Highway 20 to remove an old culvert put in by Brooks-Scanlon in the 1950s, when the... Full story
Last Friday, lots of home-schoolers and their parents had the opportunity to experience an up-close-and-personal look at Sisters Country's pale tigers and other butterflies. Seventeen adults and 17 children from Bend and beyond took part in the annual North American Butterfly Association (NABA) count held within an area that included Green Ridge, Prairie Farm, the Round Lake road and the Metolius River. Several NABA members from Eugene also participated to help butterfly... Full story
When an accident in 2005 left quilter Claire Spector with neural-visual blindness, she feared she would never pick up a needle and thread again. She decided to donate her nearly 60 boxes of fabric to her friend and fellow quilter, Betty Anne Guadalupe of Prineville. Betty Anne invited area quilters to use these fabrics in a challenge whereby they would piece together the top and she would do the custom quilting. The collaborative venture was exhibited in a show in Bend that... Full story
My old pal, Kris Kristovich, Sisters High School track coach and splendid photographer, sends me the best photos from nature about once a week. The other day he sent a bunch of warbler photos that contained a male Wilson's warbler singing, about knocked my eye out. I thought I could hear it; it was so wonderful. Once in a while, he has a photo he can't ID. The photo he sent was that of a snakefly, similar to that above. I was going to use his excellent image for this story,... Full story
Bethany Bachmeier, a freshman in Sisters High School, was watching the various small, wild rodents skittering about the Trout Creek Conservation Area (TCCA) out behind the high school and wondered who they are, what they do, and how they impact forest health. The advice she needed to conduct a study was right at hand in the person of Rima Givot, science teacher at the high school. They came up with scientific research methods to help Bachmeier find answers. Bethany began her r... Full story
If you ask Tracy Leonhardy - long-time licensed Oregon wildlife rehabilitator in Sisters Country - what she's going to do with the fawns she has to care for each spring, she'll say, "Try and save them, so they can grow up wild." Then she'll quickly add, "but people shouldn't keep picking them up!" Despite warnings, people keep taking fawns from the wild because they feel sorry for them and think they're abandoned. If you see a fawn standing alongside a doe that's dead -... Full story
There I was, sitting at my MacBook working on a new story when suddenly, without warning or fanfare, a lovely little jumping spider leaped onto my finger and sat there staring at me. The majority of adults that I know who find spiders "repulsive," "poisonous," and a "threat to life-and-limb," would have jumped out of their skin, probably gone off screaming and started spraying chemicals all over the place. There is only one spider living in Sisters Country that can hurt you -... Full story
In my good friend Al St. John's wonderful field guide, "Reptiles of the Northwest," there are seven snakes you can stumble over - or scare the pants off you - in the Sisters Country, among them: • Rubber boa - harmless to humans; • Racer - (above right) - harmless to humans; • Striped whipsnake - harmless to humans; • Gopher snake - harmless to humans; • Garter snake - harmless to humans; • Night snake -... Full story
Lori Small has been leading Sisters children on an adventure of discovery and learning for more than 31 years, but it's about to come to an end. When she watches her third-graders go on to fourth grade this spring, it will be for the last time. She is retiring. When Lori was young, she spent countless days with her grandmother - herself a school teacher of many years. When Lori speaks of her grandmother today, the early influence is clear. Lori went off to Oregon State... Full story
Jennifer Hartwig's artwork is on display in the Sisters Library through the rest of this month. Hartwig got her start in scratch art while attending high school in Whittier, California. Then, as often happens to artists, priorities change, marriage and children come along and they lose the urge, if not the skills. That's what happened to Jennifer; it wasn't until about seven years ago that she found her way back to her love of scratch art, and it was penguins that helped do... Full story
The Metolius River got a whole lot of loving care last week. Darek Staab, project manager with Trout Unlimited, gathered up a whole bunch of people: young kids, old kids, and complete strangers from all over the country, and put them to work repairing the banks of river. Trout Unlimited, with the help of Nate Dachtler, fishery biologist, and Maret Pajutee, both of the Sisters Ranger District, identified several places on the banks of the Metolius River where people had put too... Full story
So there you are, birding on Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, or Summer Lake Wildlife Management Area in summer, or hunting during the season in winter - and you see a swan with a large colored and numbered neck-collar. Or you shoot a duck or goose and it is wearing a neck-collar, or has a band on its leg. Then what? You can join the growing number "citizen scientists," who contribute their unexpected finds to the proper organizations, and discover the snow geese you harveste... Full story
The time has come to add fur-trapping to those we once held fast as an integral part of our culture and have since abolished - such as child labor and not allowing women to vote. In the 50-plus years I've lived in Oregon I've seen some pretty lousy things happen to our wildlife, and trapping is the worst. My old pal Ed Park and I once found a badger near Brothers in a leg-hold trap that had been suffering for so long it dug a circular ditch round-and-round on the end of the... Full story
