News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 1 - 18 of 18
Sisters is taking the first tentative steps toward allowing commerce in recreational marijuana inside the city. The Sisters City Council agreed in a workshop on Wednesday evening to explore what regulated commerce in marijuana might look like here. The City's business license currently does not allow for medical or recreational marijuana production or sales. That would have to change, and the City Council would also need to adopt regulations regarding time, place and manner (T... Full story
Recently, Wendie and Mike Vermillion were having a quiet evening watching Masterpiece Theatre. It was after 11 p.m. and their outdoor lights were off and their blinds were up. Suddenly, a tall, slender man walked in front of their window. When their eyes met, the man took off running. By the time the shocked homeowners looked out their front door, the man was tearing across their driveway and heading north. "The startling thing was having him emerge from the very dark back of the house and walk along our narrow sidewalk right... Full story
The departure of Sisters Park & Recreation District (SPRD) Director Liam Hughes and the search for his successor will not derail SPRD's bid for a 15 cents per $1,000 local option levy in the May election. SPRD Board Chairman Bob Keefer told The Nugget that "the board still wants to pursue our local option levy. That's going to continue." Keefer noted that Hughes himself recommended that the District proceed. Nor will the District wait to see the results of that election before... Full story
The Sisters High School Aviation Program has received a Modular Flight Deck Advanced Training Flight Simulator - or "sim" in pilot-talk. "I think we are the only high school aviation program in the country to get an FAA-certified sim," said Sheryl Yeager, FAA Certificated Flight Instructor (CFI) and SHS Flight Science teacher. "This will give our students a huge advantage in their flight training." The sim was donated by the Aviation Department at Central Oregon Community... Full story
Alcohol use among women is up - by a lot. According to a study conducted by JAMA Psychiatry rates of alcohol use, high-risk alcohol use, and alcohol-use disorder have all increased considerably among women from 2001-02 to 2012-13. The study also noted considerable increases in alcohol use among minorities and older adults. While there has been a recent spotlight on opioid and prescription drug use, alcohol use has quietly been climbing, and deaths attributed to alcohol continue to rival any other substance. High-risk... Full story
Sisters voters should hold their nose and vote "yes" on Measure 101. Measure 101 would approve temporary assessments - a tax - on insurance companies, some hospitals and other providers of insurance and healthcare coverage to help cover healthcare for low-income families and children and people with disabilities. This is a lousy way to make policy and a lousy way to provide health care coverage. It's nothing more than using duct tape and binder twine to patch up a broken and failing system. It's tempting to just say... Full story
To the Editor: How does this keep happening? In the past several months, countless healthy ponderosa pines have been cut down within Sisters city limits - the most recent on South Pine Street: nine healthy ponderosas taken down by a private resident. As a previous president of an HOA within the city limits, I had more than one request from homeowners to have trees in our common areas taken down. My first response was to call an arborist and have the trees evaluated. If the trees were deemed healthy, no action was taken. I was... Full story
Sisters Folk Festival will bring renowned singer-songwriter Josh Ritter to the stage on Tuesday evening, January 23, in the opener of the annual Winter Concert Series. Showtime is at 7 p.m. at the Sisters High School auditorium. Josh Ritter is an American singer-songwriter hailing originally from Idaho. From an early age, he was a music lover and was influenced by listening to music that his parents played around the house, including Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. In high school,... Full story
Gary (Gus) Gustafson of Camp Sherman has joined the Deschutes Land Trust's Board of Directors. He brings unique skills, expertise, and passion for conserving land in Central Oregon to the Land Trust. Gus Gustafson is a native Oregonian and retired senior regulatory advisor residing in Camp Sherman. Gus obtained his B.S. and M.A. in resource geography from Oregon State University. He has worked in a variety of key management positions, including Director of the Oregon... Full story
Women have been closing the gender gap in all kinds of sports. Fly-fishing is no exception. Women have been casting since the sport began. In the 1400s, an English nun, Dame Juliana Berners, wrote the first book on fly-fishing. Fast-forward to the 1940s and it was a woman, Joan Wulff, who influenced generations of anglers. At 16 years old, Wulff took top honors in the national dry fly accuracy championship. By the 1950s after winning the National Fisherman's Distance Fly Champ... Full story
They are loyal and committed officers of a police force. They are highly trained, intelligent, and truly dedicated. They are the four-legged officers of the K-9 unit, and whether they are searching for missing children or sniffing out suspicious packages, they are part of a long-lived tradition that extends back thousands of years. The Deschutes County Sheriff's Office has four K-9 teams that are assigned to the patrol division. There are three tracking and apprehension teams... Full story
The boys basketball squad lost 67-64 to Madras in their last pre-season game on Tuesday, January 9. They staved off the Lions at Cottage Grove in the league opener on Friday, three days later, with a 50-48 win. Friday's win against the Lions was an intense contest, with lead changes throughout. The Outlaws got an early lead in the first, but at the close of the period the Lions had tied it up at 13-13. CG outscored Sisters in the second, and at the break the Outlaws trailed by... Full story
As is often the case, I planned an extensive vacation trip for late fall to escape the dreary days between hiking and skiing seasons. I returned, however, only to find that the snow season has yet to materialize. So, my hiking friend and I have been out on the trails again; and I've had quite a bit of feedback that indicates we are far from alone in making some lemonade out of a lemon of a snow season. In November of 2016, we were snowed out of a planned hike in the Badlands... Full story
One of the developments I did not foresee when I rolled into Bend on my Harley in 1951 was that in the year 2018 I'd find myself helping trumpeter swans. Trumpeters were once found throughout North America, but by 1933 fewer than 70 wild trumpeters were known to exist. Extinction seemed imminent until aerial surveys discovered a Pacific population of several thousand trumpeters around Alaska's Cooper River. Since then, careful reintroduction by wildlife agencies and the... Full story
Sisters graduate Brandon Pollard started 2018's indoor track season with the second-fastest indoor mile ever run by a Gonzaga athlete. After redshirting last season due to injury, Pollard showed neither his speed or racing tactics had any signs of rust as he moved up steadily throughout his heat of the mile at the UW Indoor Preview at the Dempsey Center in Seattle, to win in 4:08.00. His time was the second fastest of the day by a collegian at the meet (James West of Oregon... 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
Just in case any of you were wondering, yes, I am still here. There have been many times since the last installment of this series that I wished that I wasn't still here, but here I am. I started immunotherapy back in the fall of last year. Keytruda is the latest cocktail they have decided to treat me with. Now, Keytruda itself doesn't do anything to attack or treat the cancer. Keytruda works with your body's own immune system so that your immune system can go after the cancer. Keytruda is not for everyone. It only works in p... Full story
In February of 1519, a mere handful of Spanish adventurers launched the conquest of the massive, sophisticated and populous Aztec Empire in what would eventually become the nation of Mexico. That epic tale of valor and tragedy has been brought to life through the carving of Sisters artist J. Chester "Skip" Armstrong. In the summer of 2012, Armstrong created a massive five-panel depiction of the Mayan creation myth, which is housed at Javier's Mexican Restaurant in the Aria... Full story
