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
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
My grandfather was a cowboy. That’s what my family told me when I was a little kid. Of course, that conjured up images of riding across the sage with spurs a-jingling, eating off a chuckwagon, maybe battling a bad guy or two. It wasn’t like that, exactly. Ken Ginter was actually a small rancher in South Dakota. Not the same thing. He and his dad ran cows, but they also grew a variety of crops, which made them as much farmers as ranchers — though they always ide... Full story
Tom Nechville is renowned among instrument makers for his innovative banjo design, creating a line of banjos that are aesthetically pleasing, play well, and — most of all — sound wonderful. They are found in the hands of some of the finest professional players in American music. While his main factory remains in Minnesota, he and his partner, Linda Leavitt, a talented bluegrass and folk musician, have located Banjos West at 411 E. Main Ave. in Sisters. They plan a... Full story
Mike Durre is a lifelong Central Oregon resident, and he feels rooted here. “I just love the area,” he said. That sense of rootedness informs his work with Bisnett Insurance as a producer/agent. For Durre, it’s about relationships with clients. “I’m going to work for them and help them meet their needs and help do what’s best for them,” he said. “I think the biggest thing is consistency.” Durre had been working for Colonial Life when he reconnected with professional coll... Full story
Jon Fogarty is on a mission to get more kids on bikes in Sisters. The coach is building a Sisters-area mountain bike racing team — Deschutes Composite — under the auspices of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA). “I’ve been involved since the league started in Oregon,” he told The Nugget. “It’s cross-country mountain bike racing, similar to the Stampede.” The team is open to youth in sixth through 12th grade. Boys and girls are both encouraged... Full story
While out delivering The Nugget recently, I listened to an episode of the American Spy Museum’s Spycast podcast, featuring Ric Prado. Enrique Prado was a covert CIA operative in Central America in the 1980s, as the Reagan Administration sought to build an insurgency to overthrow the Communist Sandinista regime, which had come to power in a revolution against the brutal Somoza government of Nicaragua in 1979. Prado worked directly with the “Contras” as the count... Full story
Sisters High School science students launched multiple experiments into the stratosphere on Wednesday, May 25, in what has become an annual rite of spring for the Outlaws.... Full story
There was anguish in the voice of Sylvester Van Oort, the keynote speaker at Sisters’ Memorial Day service, held at the Village Green on Monday. He described the terrible fate of Don Bullock, a 17-year-old who lied about his age to join the United States Marine Corps to serve his country in Vietnam. Just a handful of days after arriving in Saigon, he was killed by a satchel charge flung through the window of his living quarters. “We’re sorry, Don, that you had to die so young,... Full story
Adam St. Clair’s story is a classic tale of American entrepreneurism: He had a talent and a passion, saw an unmet need, and set about filling it. St. Clair has launched Three Peaks Computers at 625 N. Arrowleaf Trail, Ste. 106 in Sisters (next to Level 5 CrossFit and Sisters Dance Academy). “I’ve been working on and rebuilding computers since I was about 15 years old,” St. Clair said. There was a strong impetus for the teenager to learn to repair a computer: His broke down, l... Full story
Tyler Cranor, the Sisters School District’s band director, says that the current lineup of the Sisters High School Jazz Band is the “best–sounding band we’ve ever had.” That’s not just a proud teacher’s opinion — it’s backed by the judges at last weekend’s Oregon Music Education Association (OMEA) State Jazz Competition held at Mt. Hood Community College, where the Outlaws took first-place honors in the 4A division. “We got higher marks this year for the whole ense... Full story
Paulina Springs Books has been a community cornerstone in Sisters for the past three decades. The staff and its legion of customers and friends will celebrate those 30 years next weekend. The store will offer a sale with 30 percent off on most of its wares on Saturday and Sunday, May 28-29. On Saturday, there will be free Boone Dog Pizza from noon to 3 p.m. (as long as the slices last) and music from 1 to 3 p.m. by Beth Wood and Dennis McGregor. Even as the staff looks back... Full story
Been doing a little work for the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, one of the most significant events in modern American political history. The aftershocks of the botched political espionage operation that ultimately brought down the Nixon presidency continue to reverberate today, as evidenced by the persistent tendency to attach the suffix “gate” to any political scandal, large or small, that captures our attention (i.e., “Russiagate”). Even for people... Full story
The Outlaws varsity baseball team battled tough competition in the 4A-3 Oregon West Conference. They wrap up league play this week with two games against Caldera. Senior night is Wednesday, May 11. Going into the last week of play, the Outlaws are 8-15 overall; 3-12 in league. It’s not clear whether the Outlaws might get some post-season play. “We’re kind of on the bubble as far as a play-in game,” said Coach Kramer Croisant. The Outlaws’ record reflects a young team with... Full story
Living amid the ponderosa pine forest west of Sisters, homeowners in Tollgate know they are vulnerable to wildfire. Last weekend, the Tollgate Property Owners Association hosted an event designed to help residents take wildfire defense into their own hands. Under a tent on the subdivision commons, representatives of the insurance industry, Oregon Department of Forestry, Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office Emergency Services Coordinator Sgt. Nathan Garibay, and others dispensed i... Full story
Sisters Community Church (SCC) and VAST Church will officially reunite on Sunday, May 22, under the name Sisters Community Church. “It’s going to be a new church,” said Ryan Moffat, pastor of VAST, who will share pastoring duties with SCC’s Steve Stratos. There will be a new governance structure and a new constitution — but both pastors emphasize that this is about a great deal more than formal merging of two theologically compatible churches that grew from the same ro... Full story
Local dignitaries and representatives of the Sokol family of Sisters gathered on Thursday, May 5, to celebrate a singular act of civic generosity. In November of 2017, Cris Converse announced to the Sisters City Council that her family would rescind the $250,000 sale price of quasi-municipal water rights that belonged to Pine Meadow Ranch, which were being sold to the City. In effect, Converse cancelled the $250,000 owed by the City to acquire the water rights, and instead... Full story
