News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 1201 - 1225 of 29581
Sisters Habitat for Humanity is accepting applications for homeownership. At its meeting last Tuesday evening, the Habitat Board of Directors voted to increase the salary threshold to 80 percent of area median income for Deschutes County. The previous salary threshold was 60 percent. Under the new schedule, a family of three with an income between $28,350 and $64,800 may qualify to purchase a Habitat home. Income ranges vary depending on the size of the family. Sisters Habitat for Humanity is dedicated to providing... Full story
Beginning Thursday, September 1, Knife River will begin mobilization for a two-week period of street repairs to take place in Sisters, while the summer weather prevails. All the projects, except for Main Avenue, will begin at 7 a.m., with streets open again to traffic at approximately 6 p.m. Main Avenue work will be done at night. Actual projects will begin September 6, the day after Labor Day. September 6-8: The first project, consisting of grinding and asphalt overlay, is... 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
Kathleen and Jack of Sisters wrote: On Monday, August 22 at approximately 7:30 p.m. two of our dogs, J and Teeter, got on the scent of something and ended up behind the high school. There was a sighting at 8:30 p.m. and they were running at top speed chasing something. The had collars and tags, just not their GPS collars. Our tireless search began. We put an ad on Craigslist as suggested by the Sheriff’s Department. Cat from Pet Evacuation Team (PET) reached out right away a... Full story
Sisters Country folk in numbers headed northeast Friday and Saturday, making the 50-minute journey to the air festival in Madras, more commonly known as Air Show of the Cascades. Among them were three generations of Johnsons — Jace, age 6, Lia, age 8, dad, Gunnar, and Grandpa Andy. “We are having an amazing time,” Gunnar said as he hoisted the kiddos into an Army helicopter. Andy was delighted to have a “boys’ day out,” adding: “This is something all of us like, nobod... Full story
Bernie, our black, 11-year-old Scottie, loves to sit on the rock step to our back door. It’s high up, so that he can survey the acres of land all around him that he loves. He’s at peace there. Watching him on a beautiful summer morning reminds me of the numerous times in the Bible when someone goes up the mountain to find God. “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.” Isaiah 11:9 Peace, joy, health, harmony are all promised to us if we will earnestly search for God. The Bible uses a lot of sacred-... 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
The Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Foundation and The Roundhouse Foundation recently awarded grants totaling $15,000 to longtime Central Oregon nonprofit Together for Children. Grant funds will be used to rebuild programs serving children and families in the local area. Programs to ensure children are ready to learn when they enter kindergarten were suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving many families without the necessary tools and resources to support early childhood development. Together for Children was founded in 1988... Full story
Florida-based Horse.TV has acquired the worldwide subscription video rights to “The Outside Circle: A Movie of the Modern West,” written and directed by Sisters resident Craig Rullman. It is now available for streaming. The movie was filmed over two years, in five western states, and features interviews with acclaimed Sisters author and historian Dr. Larry Len Peterson, western scholar Dr. Jeremy Johnston of the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming, film director and pho... Full story
The most widely spread sandpiper in N. America is the Spotted Sandpiper [actitis macularius]. They live along rivers, lakes, and ponds, bobbing and teetering upon the shoreline to eat many bugs and crustaceans. They are often called a teeter-tail, tip-tail, or perk bird. Their chicks start to “teeter” as soon as they hatch. It is not known what function this serves. Spotted Sandpipers get their name from the dark spots that appear on their white breast during the breeding sea... Full story
The Lady Outlaws competed against tough teams at the Mt. View Invitational held Thursday and Friday, August 26-27. Due to a lack of officials in Central Oregon, the tournament looked a bit different this year. Instead of pool play followed by bracket play, teams just competed in pool play, and each of those games counted. Sisters started off with a win over Caldera in straight sets, 25-21, 25-21. They found themselves down 8-1 in the second set, but climbed back in and earned the win. After a three-hour break, the Outlaws... Full story
The Outlaws football program currently has 40 players on the roster, up 10 from last season. With the added numbers the Outlaws will have a full nine-game JV schedule. Coach Clayton Hall says that having a JV team will be huge for the development of the athletes and the program. The Outlaws varsity squad return 11 experienced players, including seniors Easton Moore, Adam Maddox-Castle, Mason Sellers, Ben Cooper, Gabe Bailey, Hudson Symonds, Jessey Murillo, and Henry Rard, and juniors Scott Henderson, Dolon Pool, and Tony Gonz... Full story
Pictures of Prineville circa 1880 show a sea of grass and very few trees. The landscape drew ranchers by the hundreds to settle in Central Oregon. Today, like much of the eastern and Central Oregon sagebrush sea, the steppe is covered with juniper, and — more worrisome — cheatgrass. The western juniper is native to Oregon, with frequent references to it being a weed. In the 1870s, settlers raised large numbers of cattle that feasted on the native grasses growing... Full story
Sisters Lady Outlaws return six players from last year’s squad that made it to the State Championship game. They came up just short of their goal last year, but are determined to put in the work needed to make another State appearance, and hopefully compete for the big prize. The six experienced, veteran players include seniors Hannah Fendall and Anna Landon, and juniors Gracie Vohs, Gracelyn Myhre, Bailey Robertson, and Mia Monaghan. These girls are very motivated after coming up short the past two years. Coach Rory Rush s... Full story
Black Butte Ranch Rural Fire Protection District is a combination career and volunteer department that serves approximately three square miles, an area almost double Sisters’ 1.88 square miles. The department covers the resort community, which has a year-round population of about 300 residents and a destination population that can be as high as 5,000 during the peak summer months. In addition, District personnel provide advanced life support emergency medical services, v... Full story
Beth Wood, poet and local musician, is releasing her latest full-length album. Wood moved to Sisters from Portland in April of 2020 during the beginning stages of the COVID-19 shutdown. “It was a weird time to move for sure, but I had to move out of the house I was in, in Portland, and I was also realizing that I am not a city girl,” said Wood. Wood has always had a soft place in her heart for the Sisters community after coming here for many years as an artist and ins... Full story
COVID-19 put many local happenings on hold for a long time, one of those being the Tuesday senior lunches sponsored by the Central Oregon Council on Aging at Sisters Community Church. Those in-person lunches have started up again, and the organizers hope to see many familiar and new faces on Tuesdays. Prior to COVID-19, they regularly had about seven tables filled for lunch, and their restart has been a little slow. The meals are appreciated by those who participate, as... Full story
Former 900 Wall chef de cuisine Chris Leyden and wife, Emma Reko, who are owners of The Feast Food Company in Redmond will be preparing the dishes for the Seed to Table Fall Harvest Dinner. The event is on September 10 and takes place at the Seed to Table (S2T) farm. Chef Chris is thrilled to prepare the feast featuring S2T produce and locally grown products. There will be three courses featured in a family-style format. Tickets for the event are still available but usually sell out quickly. The dinner takes place on the S2T... Full story
It started in 2019. Jennie Sharp, local educator and mom, thought that the kids of Sisters Country should have more access to hands-on theater experience. Local schools offered some programming—including the beloved winter performance by Black Butte School students in Camp Sherman, directed by Sharp herself. Beyond school, though, there didn’t seem to be many options other than driving to Bend. Sharp founded Starshine as a way for kids to create devised theater, using pl... Full story
What’s better than a hug? It’s how we greet an old friend, share triumph and compassion, comfort a child, and embrace our significant other. It wasn’t always that way. Think back to March of 2020, in the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We entered a kind of ‘touch desert’ and were instructed not to hug, shake hands, or touch surfaces that others may have touched, in fear of spreading or contracting the virus,” recalls Sisters artist Paul Alan Bennett. People masked... Full story
Jan Baldwin was part of the team that established Sisters Habitat for Humanity in 1991. In 1993, she was asked to help open the Thrift Store, operated to raise funds for the building program and to offer low-cost goods to local families. Baldwin and her husband, Frank, moved to Sisters from Alamo, California in 1989. The couple cherished their family time vacationing in Sisters Country. They knew that eventually they wanted to retire in the area. Jan believes when you move to... Full story
Oregon State Police (OSP) troopers shot and killed two cougars in a neighborhood just northeast of Sisters on Sunday, August 21.... Full story
The complete alternate route around downtown Sisters is closer to a reality as planning and right-of-way acquisition for the Locust/Highway 20 roundabout is ramping up. The third piece of the alternate route involves improvements to Barclay Drive, being designed by Kittleson & Associates. The project began last month, July 2022, with completion of design and bidding tasks expected by March 2023. Construction will occur between March and November 2023. The total cost for... 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
True to plan, M & M Services completed their instream restoration work on Whychus Creek in three weeks. The work involved the stretch of creek from the Locust Street bridge to the Highway 20 bridge where it runs between Creekside Campground and Creekside Park. Four new stone stairways provide designated access to the creek, to reduce wear and tear on the creek banks. The streambed was modified so the concrete that was part of the sewer system is lower in the water and won’t i... Full story
