News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 1505 - 1529 of 29670
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
After a two-year absence due to COVID-19, the 25th Annual Quilts in the Garden Tour, sponsored by the Sisters Garden Club, will be held on the Thursday of Quilt Show Week, July 7, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. This year’s theme is “Living with Pollinators.” Tickets are available locally at The Gallimaufry and online at www.sistersgardenclub.com for $20. For the first time ever, due to the popularity of the tour, the number of tickets available is limited and must be purchased ahead of ti... Full story
The recent closure of the lab at St. Charles Family Care Clinic in Sisters is just one symptom of a financial crisis engulfing St. Charles Health System. The term is not an alarmist. When The Nugget met with Mike Richards, operations VP for St. Charles Medical Group, and Lisa Goodman, public information and government affairs officer for the parent organization, St. Charles Health System, they used the term “financial crisis” four times in the conversation. They made no eff... Full story
The city of Sisters currently has enough water rights for the next 20 years, according to Public Works Director Paul Bertagna in his report to the joint workshop of the City Council and the Planning Commission on June 15. Sisters’ water supply is 100 percent groundwater from wells drilled in 1975, 1992, 2007, and 2021. Well No. 4 was drilled ahead of schedule because of the water rights gifted to the City by Dorro Sokol’s daughter, Cris Converse. The pump in well No. 4 sit... Full story
Sisters in Sisters held its inaugural gathering on Thursday evening, celebrating Pride Month with a casual get-together including food, drinks, and music. Kids ran up and down the spine of The Barn’s outdoor garden while the band Oregon Fryer buoyed up the atmosphere, playing country-flavored rock and honky-tonk. Co-organizers Stefanie Siebold and her wife, Teresa Laursen, moved to Sisters about five years ago. “We have met some amazing individuals here in this community, fel... 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
Don’t Charge Veterans To the Editor: Give our vets a break. I attended the Memorial Day service in the city park put on by our local VFW Post 8138, the American Legion Post 8, and the Sisters chapter of the Band of Brothers. They needed a sound system for the event this year, and also wanted a piper, so I was happy to help out on both of those fronts as I have a portable sound system from our band that I brought over so all could hear the speakers, and was glad to play the Highland pipes to commemorate and honor the f... Full story
Senate Bill 762, adopted last June, provided legislative direction to the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) regarding the wildland-urban interface, statewide fire risk mapping, and prescribed fire, directing the Department to review and clarify the enforcement of rules pertaining to forestland and baseline standards for unprotected and under-protected lands in Oregon. The ODF is a state agency and the U.S. Forest Service is federal. The ODF fights fires, among myriad other... Full story
Some serious decisions are ahead for Sisters’ volunteer city councilors and planning commissioners. At last week’s joint meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission, members of City staff and consultants from APG-MIG provided the latest draft reports on “efficiency measures” and housing plan updates. These projects attempt to address continuing growth in Sisters, as well as the need to meet state-mandated planning requirements. The consultants and staff were looking... Full story
On a clear, sunny Wednesday morning after torrid downpours of a relentless spring, Sisters was beaming with natural beauty. On the south-facing wall of the public bathrooms in Barclay Park mural artists Karen Eland and Katie Daisy were busy installing a tribute to that beauty. After months of hard work, keen eyes, and careful strokes of the paint brush, their artistic depiction of Sisters Country was put on permanent display for locals and visitors to enjoy. This is the sixth... Full story
On Tuesday, June 21, the summer solstice, residents of Sisters Country are invited by Citizens4Community (C4C) to a Community Celebration from 4 to 6 p.m. at Creekside Park. The community is invited to help celebrate the progress in Sisters Country through the hard work and focus of fellow community members. The City and the Vision Implementation Team (VIT) will be sharing the progress made on a variety of local projects. Over the last several years, a great deal of work has... Full story
The Whychus Creek watershed has undergone an amazing amount of restoration and stream improvement over more than a decade. The riparian areas have been improved and replanted. Old dams and barriers have been removed to encourage fish passage. More water runs in the creek year-round. Millions of dollars have gone into these projects. Local citizens and visitors are enjoying these improvements. However, there have been recent incidences of dumped trash, graffiti, and vandalism... Full story
On Monday, June 13, the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners reviewed proposed criteria to help evaluate potential locations for the County’s new solid waste management facility. There is not yet a list of potential sites under consideration. The County’s only landfill, Knott Landfill, is expected to be at capacity by 2029. As a result, the County is working to identify a site for a new disposal facility to serve the growing region. The County developed the proposed siting evaluation criteria in collaboration with the Sol... Full story
Cycling in Sisters is a big deal and getting bigger all the time. Brad Boyd should know. He owns Eurosports on East Hood, one of two Sisters cycling merchants. He started the business in 1993 and has seen it quadruple in size, estimating that the importance of cycling in Sisters has grown commensurately. He attributes the growth to a variety of factors, citing Sisters Trail Alliance as being every bit as much a factor in Sisters’ tourism as the Rodeo or Quilt Show or Folk F... Full story
More sun, less night. That’s summer solstice in a nutshell. This year, it takes place Tuesday, June 21. Sisters Community Labyrinth invites the community to join in a free gathering at 7 p.m. that evening. Guests are encouraged to wear colorful clothes and hats; some hats will be provided for those who wish to decorate them. Summer solstice is associated with feasts, fires, fecundity, and fairies. Marking the longest day of the year, it’s also called Midsummer’s Day. Shake... Full story
The Sisters Eagle Airport of July tradition this year with a variety of events for all ages. The day begins early Monday, July 4 with the Sisters Rotary Club Pancake Breakfast at 7 a.m., which is offered for a $5 donation. Registration for the Rumble on the Runway 5-kilometer run and walk also opens at 7 a.m., and the race itself commences at 8 a.m. with the “Plane versus Hot Rod” challenge as the starting gun. All registration for the 5k will be done in person, with a cost of $20 per person or $40 for a family. All pro... Full story
The rubber is meeting the road, literally, here in Sisters. The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) announced last week that Sisters has been selected to receive $5 million from the “Enhance” portion of the 2024-27 Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP), to build a roundabout at Highway 20 and Locust Street. Projects in this category are aimed at improving safety and reducing congestion on some of Oregon’s busiest roadways. Highway 20 at North Locust Stree... Full story
After a winter of low snowpack and rainfall, with dire warnings regarding continuing drought and high wildfire risk, Mother Nature has let loose a lot of moisture of late. But she just might be toying with us. For making yearly comparisons, the water year begins on October 1. Sisters is located in the Upper Deschutes and Crooked River basins. On June 1, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Services issued their Oregon Basin Outlook Report, the... Full story
The semiautomatic rifles that have been used in 23 percent of mass shootings in the United States are variations of the AR-15 “assault-style rifle.” According to an NPR report, “In 1963, the U.S. military selected Colt to manufacture the automatic rifle that soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War. It was known as the M-16…Colt ramped up production of a semiautomatic version of the M-16 that it sold to law enforcement and the public, marketed as the AR-15…other manufacturers began makin... Full story
“Wolf, eat me. End my miserable life,” begs Akiko, heroine of an ancient Japanese tale. But the wolf explains that his kind do not eat human beings. Instead, the wolf gives Akiko eyelashes she can wear to see the truth about people. Akiko’s story was one of several relayed by celebrated storyteller Susan Strauss at the Wolf Welcome Committee’s event on Saturday at Paulina Springs Books. An audience of over 40 attendees listened intently to Strauss and author Rosanne Parry,... Full story
If you haven’t spent time with bats, you’ve missed out on knowing some very lovely and helpful animals that share this beautiful old earth with us — our home away from home. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Central Oregon’s bats way back in the early 1950s when I met up with one of our wonderful epidemiologists, scientists who keep an eye on diseases transmitted to humans through wildlife. The Bend paper had run a story on the front page about closing Broth... Full story
Olivia Pulver, a sixth-grader at Sisters Middle School, is training a wild Oregon mustang. Her mustang, Ronan, comes from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land outside Paisley, Oregon. Prior to this training, Ronan had never been touched by humans and had never been out of his wild homeland. Pulver is already making strides with training her mustang for the upcoming Teens and Oregon Mustangs competition that takes place in September. The final competition will include... Full story
Award-winning author Rosanne Parry came to Sisters last weekend to speak about wolves (see story page, page 18). Her middle reader fiction title “A Wolf Called Wander” echoes the travels of a gray wolf known as OR7, a.k.a. Journey, who walked across much of Eastern and Southern Oregon and into Northern California. Fifth-grade student Gusty Berger-Brown interviewed Parry on a walk along the Metolius River, near the habitat of two wolves who have recently begun to call Sisters Country home. Their conversation contains min... Full story
As if by a magic wand, Saturday’s steady and occasionally heavy rains were magically dispersed for the Sisters Rodeo Parade. A few drops, a fine mist made it through the wall of answered prayers intermittently, but not enough to dampen crowd enthusiasm — a smaller crowd than in past years, especially for the last rendition in 2019 which saw parade watchers stand two and three deep. “Hey, it’s Oregon. This isn’t our first time at the rodeo,” quipped Dwight Tully fro... Full story
Balancing the grit and rough-and-tumble of rodeo are the young women who with grace and style promote the sport. They are the goodwill ambassadors for the deeply rooted American tradition of rodeo. They are rodeo royalty. Their roles vary to a degree and they can be found selling tickets, appearing at local Western stores, or marketing rodeo at civic association meetings, schools, 4H, FFA, or just mingling — in full regalia — at community holiday gatherings. They... Full story
