News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
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Jay Bergevin’s “retirement” to Sisters has brought him back to a passion he developed in his first business in the 1980s: The hunt for exceptional antiques and unique items for the home. “It’s just in my blood,” he explains. Bergevin recently opened Velvet & Rust in Town Square. It’s an antique store, but it’s far from run-of-the-mill. “I’m tired of antique stores that only have grandma’s stuff,” Bergevin told The Nugget. Velvet & Rust features items from a Napoleon III-era de... Full story
Ian Reid, Sisters’ district ranger, knows that when he takes his seat on the “Houseless in Sisters” panel on Thursday, October 20 at Sisters Fire Hall, he’ll be on the hottest seat in the house. It’s his agency, after all — the U.S. Forest Service — that is directly responsible for managing camping in the forests surrounding Sisters. And that’s where the unhoused of Sisters Country live. “It’s a complicated role,” he acknowledged in an interview with The Nugget.... Full story
For anyone paying attention, these are unsettling times. Downright scary, in fact. For the first time in decades, the specter of a nuclear strike looms as a real possibility as Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine falters and is rolled back. Even as I write this, Russian missile strikes are targeting Ukrainian cities — deliberately killing civilians — in retaliation for an apparent Ukrainian operation that damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge in Crimea. The knock on e... Full story
Some mighty trees have fallen in Sisters’ cultural forest in the past couple of weeks. Jim Anderson “went out among the stars” last month, and the same week saw the passing of Joe Leonardi, one of the pillars of Sisters arts scene for decades (see obituary, page 8). On Sunday, we got word that pioneering Sisters businessman and community servant Bob Grooney has died. For folks who knew these men, there is a sudden, palpable sense of absence in Sisters. It was strange to take... Full story
Colleen Thomas seeks to “demystify” the people who are experiencing homelessness in Sisters Country. She is hoping that a “Houseless in Sisters” Town Hall event set for Thursday, October 20, at the Sisters Fire District Community Hall will go a long way toward doing that. Thomas, Deschutes County’s homeless services coordinator, is one of five panelists who will participate in the forum, sponsored by Citizens4Community (C4C) and The Nugget Newspaper. “All individuals... Full story
When Cary Kiefer was in high school, she heard a speaker address the perils of substance abuse in a way that was so compelling she remembers it to this day. “That had a big impact on me,” the Sisters woman said. With family in Sisters schools, she wanted that impact to affect them and their peers, so she spearheaded bringing one of the nation’s most renowned public speakers on the subjects of mental health and substance abuse to Sisters. Tony Hoffman will offer two prese... Full story
Eight mountain bike racers from Sisters are rolling in style through their inaugural season under the auspices of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). The Nugget caught up with team members as they prepared to head out the Peterson Ridge Trail for a practice session on Thursday. They’re halfway through their four-race season, and they’re making big improvements quickly. The second race of the season, held in Prineville last month, set a solid benchmark. “Ev... Full story
Editor’s note: Jim Anderson, long-time naturalist columnist for The Nugget died September 22, at the age of 94. At his family’s request, we’re republishing a column published in August of 2020, when he moved to Eugene and “retired” from writing. That didn’t stick; his column on the Reno Air Races can be found on page 16. It was a great honor and privilege to know and work with Jim Anderson, who, in Rudyard Kipling’s immortal phrase, “filled the unforgiving minute with 60 secon... Full story
Temporal milestones — birthdays, New Year’s Day — don’t carry a lot of weight with me. Never felt particularly different after a birthday, and the turn of a calendar has never really felt like the turn of a page. Certain events, however, do have the power to make me pause and reflect — and feel every bit of white in my beard. My daughter getting married this summer was one. It was a joyous occasion, of course, but it’s a bit disorienting when all the event... Full story
Our minds and our bodies are not separate — they are a deeply and intricately integrated system. When we experience stress and trauma, it can manifest itself in a multitude of physical symptoms. And when our bodies face a chronic condition, it can affect our mentality and emotions. Rosimery Bergeron, a licensed professional counselor out of Camp Sherman and Bend, works with that integrated system to relieve stress and trauma, enhance well-being, and improve... Full story
Sisters High School was one year old when my wife, Marilyn, and I moved to Sisters. I thought it was pretty cool that the outfit called themselves the Outlaws, because there were Outlaws at the hub of my musical and cultural wheel. I understood that the Western moniker “Outlaw,” as Sisters High School meant it, had nothing to do with robbin’ banks and stagecoaches — it was about being untamed and untrammeled, like the wild horse they chose for their logo. That set well... Full story
The shooting that left three dead (including the shooter) at The Forum Safeway in Bend Sunday evening is a stark reminder that no community is insulated from the plague of mass-shooting violence that has accelerated alarmingly across the nation. We all recognize on some level that an active shooter can enact his violent fantasies in any community — including our own — but our protective psychological mechanisms kick in, causing us to recoil from such a stark... Full story
Doug Reynolds’ life has revolved around outdoor adventure since he was a kid growing up in rural Connecticut. “From as long ago as I can remember, in all my free time I was tromping around in the woods,” he said. He was an active Boy Scout, skiing, backpacking, camping, and whitewater rafting. And he learned the ethic of respect for the environment. “All of that stuff sort of molded who I became as an adult,” he said. “It’s really been the primary focus of my whole life. I... Full story
A friend of mine has a plot of land north of Sisters that he loves as deeply and profoundly as a person can love a place. “I’ll never develop my land,” he told me. “It’s truly wild out there.” This friend of mine is not what you’d picture if you were to commission a forensic sketch of an “environmentalist,” but his depth of ecological understanding and his love for land and landscape is unmatched. He’s what you might call a “green-neck,” a term I hadn’t heard for a whil... Full story
A semitruck driver who was apparently seeking a place to rest for the night got badly stuck at Suttle Lake last week. His damaged truck ultimately had to be hauled out by a towing crew. Black Butte Police responded to a 911 call about the incident at about 7:45 p.m. on Thursday, August 11. The driver attempted to make a turn the truck could not negotiate and ran over boulders and stumps. The truck’s cargo container was crunched and it popped a tire, leaving it stranded. C... Full story
Local folks were shocked at the news that thieves hit the Sunglass Hut in the Old Mill District for $20,000 in product earlier this month. It was the kind of brazen shoplifting incident that has been occurring in bigger cities across the nation for the past couple of years. Lt. Chad Davis of the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office acknowledged that Sisters is not immune from such incidents and offered some tips for retailers. Davis emphasized that the safety of store staff a... Full story
Judging from the traffic through 3 Sisters Automotive Service Center last week, there is quite a bit of pent-up demand for the services Jorge Solorzano offers at the new operation. The new automotive business (unrelated to an outfit of similar name that is now closed) opened on August 1, offering a range of services like oil changes, brake work, tune-ups, changes of air and cabin filters, replacement of belts, and battery changes. “Basically in-and-out services, you k... Full story
Kelvin Lettenmaier is, in the estimation of Black Butte Ranch Police Chief Jason Van Meter, “the epitome of a community police officer.” On August 3, Officer Lettenmaier, 57, was to work his final shift as a Black Butte Ranch Police Officer, after two decades of service that made him a beloved figure at the resort community eight miles west of Sisters. Lettenmaier has had a long and varied connection to the Ranch. His family moved to Central Oregon in the 1970s, where his fat... Full story
A few years back, a colleague who works at another media outlet said, “You get spicy letters to the editor!” This week’s tranche of letters proves her right. As I told my colleague then, the “spiciness” of the letters reflects an engaged readership with strong opinions and passions, and the courage and capability to express them. The Nugget has always believed that Letters to the Editor is a forum in the marketplace of ideas, defined as the concept that, ideally in a free so... Full story
John Leavitt is hanging up his spurs as a member of the Sisters Rodeo Association board of directors. “It’s time,” he told The Nugget. “It’s been 45 years.” Leavitt’s service to Sisters’ longest-running event may have spanned more than four decades, but he’s really been a rodeo man most all his life. Leavitt grew up on his family’s cattle ranch in Lakeview. “We ran cattle on 37,000 acres,” he recalled. “It’s the best way to grow up… I went to my first rodeo when I wa... Full story
Last week, The Nugget received a message on Facebook: The only thing that the Nugget is good for is to burn in my fireplace. Left leaning and disgusting!! Burn it! I’m pretty sure that this churlish little missive was meant to hurt our feelings, but it was kind of funny, actually. Because I’m also pretty sure that genuinely left-leaning readers don’t see The Nugget tilting their way. I have notes from them, too. They’re usually longer. For a lot of folks these days, politic... Full story
What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leaning of his life were for the ardent hearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise. — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses This is a prayer for the ardent hearted. For, like McCarthy’s cowboy hero, John Grady Cole, I hold reverence and fondness for those for whom the blood burns in their veins, whose p... Full story
I’ve been waxing nostalgic about Los Angeles lately. I know. Weird. I was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Los Angeles — a town called La Crescenta to be specific. My wife, Marilyn, and I left Southern California for Oregon in 1993 — 29 years ago. So I’ve spent more of my life in Oregon than I did in LA. Yet part of me still thinks of LA as “home,” which is probably the way most of us think of the place where we grew up. Folks are sometimes taken aback w... Full story
Jennifer Sowers has always found herself to be “calm in the eye of other people’s storms.” That makes her well-suited to her role as a mental health counselor. After years working for three counties in Oregon, Sowers launched a private practice — Jennifer Sowers, LPC, in Sisters in January. She’s been living here for five years, working in the mental health field in Madras. She opened her practice in Sisters in part because she sought greater connection to a communi... Full story
A couple of decades ago (ouch!) Erik Dolson and I sat in the courtyard at what was then The Depot Deli, musing on the bland “normalcy” of the day. The Berlin Wall had fallen a decade before, and liberal democracy and economics seemed to have established an unassailable global dominance. We reflected on our sense that we were living in singularly uninteresting times. They got more interesting real fast. The past two decades have been a roller coaster of change and unc... Full story
