News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 1 - 23 of 23
Headlines in conservation magazines, and even on newspapers have been crying: “Monarch butterflies on the verge of extinction!” And they are, all the way from Maine to California. Their populations have dropped over 90 percent in the West and up to 84 percent in the East. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, which recently added the Monarch to their Red List and designated it as “endangered,” three threats have caused the Monarch populat... Full story
Raise the Deschutes is a series of free monthly seminars being presented over the coming year by the Deschutes River Conservancy, to help educate the public about water management in Central Oregon. The next seminar, scheduled for Wednesday, August 17, is titled “Whose Water is it Anyway? Water Rights 101,” and will focus on water rights in the Deschutes Basin. The subject of water, its scarcity in certain areas of the basin, and how to equitably share it, gives rise to con... Full story
Firefighters stopped progression on the Fly Creek Fire on the Metolius Arm of Lake Billy Chinook on Monday. Firefighters held the fire at 280 acres and increased containment to 25 percent. Dozer line has been constructed around 80 percent of the fire perimeter. Control lines held Monday afternoon, despite being tested by 15 mph winds. Air support dropped retardant late Monday to ensure containment efforts on the ground held. The Level 3 evacuation notice for the Perry South and Monty Campgrounds and the Level 2 evacuation... Full story
Gary Thorson, athletic director for Sisters High School (SHS), is looking forward to the start of the fall sports season. “We are super excited to get fall sports rolling again for both SHS and SMS (Sisters Middle School),” he said. “As we started to come out of the pandemic last year we had a good bump in participation numbers and we are hoping to see that again this year,” he said. And the best part for families is that once again there are no pay to play fees for being involved in sports and activities at either school.... Full story
Steve Orange plays bass guitar. He’s also Timber Sales Administrator for the Deschutes National Forest, Sisters District. Co-worker Mike Boero, an archeologist for USFS, plays drums. Together with Macon Lohning and John Van Heel, guitarists and lead guitar and singer, Jonas Tarlen, they make up the Smoke Drifters band. They took the stage last Friday night from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Eurosports Food Cart Garden who sponsor live music every Friday night in June, July and August. T... Full story
Forest Road 1514, in the Whychus Creek area of the Sisters Ranger District is closed to allow the replacement of a road culvert. The culvert replacement is an important step in providing improved fish and aquatic organism passage in the creek, the Forest Service reports. The road is a popular route because it provides a loop connecting Forest Road 15 and Forest Road 16 in the area of Whychus Creek. The loop offers access to wilderness trails and dispersed camping sites as well as a scenic gravel riding opportunity. With the... Full story
The Guerilla Shakespeare group is no ordinary troupe of actors and actresses. The “guerilla” concept of sweeping into town with few encumbrances and then heading to the next venue sets the acting company apart. The group staged “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on Saturday evening, July 30, at the Fir Street Park under perfect midsummer conditions. It’s the fifth time the group has played in Sisters over the years under producer and artistic director Clinton K. Clark, a Bend native... Full story
Following a public hearing on July 27, City Council approved the adoption of Ordinance No. 525, which amends the Sisters Municipal Code. The ordinance allocates the responsibility for right-of-way maintenance of a property within the City to the adjacent property owner. The ordinance is a change from how rights-of-way have been maintained in the past, with the City Public Works department previously performing the maintenance. Accumulation of debris and junk, overgrown... Full story
Large equipment belonging to M&M Services LLC of Medford rolled into Sisters last Wednesday in preparation for the three-week restoration project of Whychus Creek between the Locust Street bridge and Highway 20. Dump trucks, front loaders, excavators, and utility trailers were neatly assembled in the north end of Creekside Park behind orange hazard fencing. The fencing on both sides of the creek is intended to keep the public away from the construction zone while work occurs.... Full story
Bend-based Latin dance rock band !Chiringa!, will make its first appearance at Angeline’s Bakery in over a decade on Friday, August 5, at 7 p.m., throwing down tropical covers and original funk rock fusion Latin music. The show features special guest Samuel Thompson from Los Angeles on trumpet. !Chiringa! is a four-piece Latin dance rock band that aims to unite people of all backgrounds and spread the love of Latin music. With a smokin’ rhythm section and strong female lea... Full story
The first time I saw Sydney McLaughlin compete, she was about to start her senior year of high school as a 16 year old. I was covering the 2016 Olympic Trials at historic Hayward Field and wondered if this teenage phenom was for real. She had established herself as an up-and-coming track star in the 400-meter hurdles. The question on everyone’s mind was: Can this whippersnapper possibly make the Olympics by placing in the top three at the Trials? The answer turned out to be y... Full story
Walking through central Oregon’s ponderosa forests, the twittering and chirping one is most likely to hear is the Pygmy Nuthatch, feeding on insects while climbing all over the ponderosa and lodgepole pines. The Pygmy Nuthatch (Sitta pygmaea), chatters its high-pitch staccato call year-round, gleaning insects and seeds as it forages the entire tree from trunk to needles. This tiny bird, 3.75 to 4.5 inches, is monogamous, bonding year-round with its mate. Both male and f... Full story
Austin Jenckes always knew that music was going to be a part of his life. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, in a small town in Washington state called Duval, Jenckes played music throughout his life. He started playing guitar as a boy because his dad also played, and he picked it up one day and knew that he wanted to pursue it further. Jenckes grew up playing music at church on the worship music team, and in his young adult days, he played in rock n’ roll bands in high s... Full story
About 60 hearty folks spent a hot evening last Thursday on the Seed to Table (S2T) farm, with thunderheads rumbling overhead. Participants from little ones to senior citizens listened to representatives from The Environmental Center (TEC) and S2T share their organizations’ focus on sustainability. TEC coordinates networking events called “Green Drinks” that focus on their three pillars of sustainability: a healthy environment, economic vitality, and social equity. TEC began... Full story
Sisters Folk Festival (SFF) and Sisters Rhythm & Brews Festival have partnered to present “An Evening with the Blues” concert on Thursday, August 11 at 7 p.m. at Sisters Art Works, 204 W. Adams Ave., Sisters. Grammy-nominated blues, country and gospel artists Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, Jontavious Willis, and Southern Avenue will perform for a special evening celebrating the conclusion of the Summer Concerts at Sisters Art Works and kicking off the 2022 Sisters Rhythm & Brews Festival. The event will mark the first collabo... Full story
Have you ever wondered who are and what are inside the six cottages on the perimeter of the Forest Service’s Sisters District station? Three are bunkhouses, one is storage space, and the other two are for fire-related management. In the three unairconditioned bunkhouses with full kitchens, are nine seasonal workers and two interns. The seasonal hires perform a myriad of forest management work assignments that are not accessible when the snows are deep. They work for periods of... Full story
My parents could not have been more different (one a short, funny, emotional, liberal, feminist, elementary educator, and the other a tall, stern, thoughtful, conservative, paternalistic, civil engineer), and they didn’t agree on a lot of things. However, one thing that they both ardently agreed upon, despite many long-running discussions and arguments about things as disparate as parenting style and politics, was that evidence for your position is absolutely vital, and, when strong enough, evidence provides an excellent r... Full story
Vaccine Safety To the Editor: A new vaccine is promised for the fall that targets recent, highly transmissible Omnicron variants, warranting a frank discussion of vaccine safety. But recent submissions to The Nugget by Dr. Wayne B. Schmotzer and Charles Stephens, meant to convince readers that COVID-19 vaccines are not only unsafe, but will make them sicker, perhaps even kill them, have added little of value to the discussion. Dr. Wayne Schmotzer, DVM in his letter to the editor (July 22) cited a study whose results, he... Full story
Three Sisters Irrigation District serves 129 farms on 7,572 irrigated acres. The 130-year-old district delivers water from Whychus Creek to farmers and ranchers through over 62 miles of canals, laterals and pipelines. Ninety-three percent of those conveyances have been converted to pressurized pipe. The results, 25 years in the making, are measurable. Losses to seepage or evaporation are now negligible. Water delivery has been improved in times of drought by 25 percent. The Di... Full story
Mike Alayon a.k.a. (“Hawaiian Mike”) refers to his medical journey as a rollercoaster, full of twists and turns to hell and back. After 52 days in the hospital, though, he’s now a free man and back home with his family in Sisters. Shuffling out of the hospital with a walker on the morning of July 29, he says the world looked anew. “I’m still on cloud nine,” he said, recalling the moment. Hawaiian Mike isn’t out of the woods yet, but his journey to recovery continues to... Full story
The proposed roundabout at Locust Street and Highway 20, adjacent to Sisters Elementary School, is closer to reality, according to Bob Townsend of Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) Region 4. Townsend told City Council at their July 27 workshop that Sisters has been selected to receive $5 million from the “Enhance” portion of the 2024-27 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). Projects in this category are aimed at improving safety and redirecting con... Full story
With the arrival of August, the constellations of mid-summer are on full display. The group of stars we are highlighting this month has a feature that makes it truly unique among the modern constellations. Serpens, the Serpent, consists of two non-contiguous parts, known as Serpens Caput (the serpent’s head) and Serpens Cauda (its tail). To understand why the serpent is separated into two parts in the sky, it is necessary to introduce another celestial figure, namely O... Full story
Despite the grueling temperatures last week, members of the Sisters Country Pickleball Club (SCPC) came home with medals from the Pacific Northwest Pickleball Classic tournament played over five days at the Pine Nursery courts in Bend. Temperatures every day were well above the 100-degree mark. The court asphalt surface on Friday was measured at 154 degrees. Jim Kane, SCPC, and Stephen Turner, Bend PC, won gold in the men’s doubles for 55-plus, 3.5 level. Tracey Nichols, S... Full story
