News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Sorted by date Results 126 - 148 of 148
The world is entering a new era. Human birthrates are falling below replacement levels. “For the first time possibly since the Black Death,” according to a recent article in The Economist newspaper, the number of people on the planet could shrink by the end of the century. Demographic scientist Peter Zeihan is even more specific. Zeihan anticipates the collapse of China in about a decade due to depopulation and a realignment of the world order that has been in place for gen... Full story
I’d been searching for a new author for months and couldn’t find one that kept me interested. Until I read Tracy Clark’s “Broken Places,” the first in her Chicago Mystery series. It’s made even better by knowing that Clark was born in Chicago and has lived there her entire life. She knows the streets, the personalities, and the types of characters that are all over the city. Cass Raines is the lead detective in the Chicago Mystery series — she goes out on her own as a private detective after a tragic experience with the Chic... Full story
After a narrow loss to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer last year, Jamie McLeod-Skinner is “seriously considering” another run for Congress in Oregon’s 5th District. McLeod-Skinner told the Capital Chronicle on Tuesday that she expects to make a decision about whether she’ll run again in early July. She lost to Chavez-DeRemer by just more than 7,000 votes or two percentage points. McLeod-Skinner confirmed the existence of a poll she commissioned with leftover campaign funds. The Capital Chronicle obtained a copy of the polling... Full story
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness -That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to insti... Full story
You'd think that Sisters' winters would be the most amenable time for going on a reading tear, but for me, summer seems to be the season when I really get on a roll - especially with fiction. Part of that is technologically enabled. With audiobooks downloaded to the phone, I can listen to a novel while I'm throwing down a couple of hours of work in the yard, read-tripping with Marilyn, or chucking newspapers on porches through downtown Sisters on a Tuesday night. Part of it... Full story
Last Saturday, I had the honor of joining my fellow songwriters and musicians Lilli Worona and Mike Biggers in presenting "Songs from the Shelf" for the Deschutes Public Library. We spent an hour at Sisters Fire Hall with a wonderful, engaged audience serving up original songs inspired by books. We introduced each song with a little exploration of what inspired them, and how we built them: Greek mythology, history, the etymology of common phrases. I've always been... Full story
I was raised in Sisters by grandparents who instilled in me a love of farms and forests and an appreciation for the importance of managing these resources sustainably. This upbringing led me to a career in forestry. Eighty-seven percent of the forestland in Deschutes County is owned by the federal government, which once supported thriving logging and milling infrastructure until the 1990s, when in an attempt to reverse declining spotted owl population trends, federal forests were all but closed to timber harvest. Less than... Full story
I'm starting to think that the local trout were as eager for warm weather as the local humans. I fish almost every day - and no place is better for a crazed fly angler than Sisters - and I've found trout happily rising almost everywhere since warm weather rolled in. Sure, a lot of local rivers, especially the Crooked and the Lower Deschutes, turned into torrents of coffee-colored water - heavy on the milk - with snow runoff. The good part of this is that we're savoring a... Full story
It’s hard to think clearly when partisan pundits hyperventilate every hour out of every media device. About the Trump indictment: It’s a big emotional, historic, legal, political, divisive thing. It involves complex issues that deserve argument and judicial scrutiny. A trial will take time. And be mostly boring while each side goes through discovery and prepares pre-trail motions and responses. With everything else going on in life, who has time to follow details? It’s easier to pick a side and let commentators do the think... Full story
When I moved to Sisters coming into my freshman year, I was petrified. I was thrown into a new state not only with people I didn’t know, but an environment I didn’t understand. Everyone was so close-knit and connected, it felt hard to find my way into a friend group that didn’t want me. As the summer progressed, my mom encouraged me (made me) try out for the soccer team. Although stepping onto that soccer field made me feel extremely out of place, I would soon discover this would be my family. I connected with my peers... Full story
I attended the most recent Sisters Planning Commission workshop on June 1. On the agenda was the introduction of the Planning Commission’s consideration of the application to tear down and rebuild the Space Age gas station. No public participation of any sort is allowed at Planning Commission workshops so that wasn’t the reason I spent my valuable time just sitting and watching. I went because at their April 20 workshop, at the 4:39 p.m. mark, the Planning Commissioners were told by the City’s hired attorney, Jeremy Green, th... Full story
Given the extraordinary speed of modern information exchange, it can be difficult to properly triage the many hundreds of crisis declarations demanding our immediate and undivided attention. Hyperventilating for attention is no longer just the brief of a four-year-old who doesn’t want to eat his asparagus. It’s everywhere. Just this morning, for instance, while doom-scrolling over a cup of tea, I struggled to triage the Debt-Ceiling Crisis, the Ukraine Crisis, the Climate Cris... Full story
Recently, while purging notes and flip charts from earlier teaching days, I came across the notes from a class entitled “Stay Away from the Rocker.” It was a class for an adult education program, and I was much too young to teach it. Now, being older, and, knowing the median age in Sisters is hovering just under 50, I thought it would be interesting to revisit its premise and see what guidelines it might have. The main idea was that to age successfully you had to minimize the negative physical aspects of your life while opt... Full story
Something happens between a boy and baseball — it’s called true love. I decided to volunteer this spring in the Sisters Little League, and I wound up helping with a team of mostly 11-year-olds. I raised three sons in a baseball-crazy household after growing up in baseball-crazy Brooklyn. I watched a ton of Mets and Yankees games, and I collected a billion baseball cards. Despite a modest career on the diamond, I coached dozens of teams and I even ran my own baseball camp for a decade in Eugene. I am one of those old guys who... Full story
There’s something to be said for staying. And of course, there’s something to be said for leaving, too. My husband and I recently returned from a month-long bucket-list trip throughout Europe and Sweden. But home is the best place, and we just returned to Sisters, a place we’ve called home for over 40 years. On our trip, we visited ancient Roman ruins in Split, Croatia. We went to a thousand-year-old monastery in Spain. We saw priceless art and cathedrals in Italy, reminders that America is a young country. And we saw Swede... Full story
A bit of history goes a long way to explain today’s politics. Abraham Lincoln stood before a crowd at the Illinois Republican State Convention in Springfield, Illinois on the evening of June 16, 1858. The occasion was momentous — an endorsement like no other. Earlier that day, the Illinois Republicans had rallied behind Lincoln, a local attorney and former congressman, declaring him their “first and only choice” in the upcoming campaign to unseat Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent. This endorsement was unprece... Full story
This week I’ve grieved the loss of two lives — one a dear friend here in Sisters, who died at the end of an exhausting few months dealing with ALS as it took away his faculties bit by bit. The second death is someone I hardly knew, yet his death has affected me deeply. This person — whom we won’t name for privacy, and to avoid confusion about his identity — lived out in the National Forest beyond Pine Street in a tent for over three years. He died on Saturday, April 29, at St. Charles Emergency Room. I know more about his... Full story
Old marketing guys like me have an enduring fascination with branding. For the untrained, a logo or slogan is not a brand. Nike is a brand. It's logo is the "swoosh." It's slogan is "Just Do It." Nike is also the name of the company. Not all business names are the brand of that business. Apple is a company and a brand. Apple's iPhone is also a brand. Google is a brand. Its owner - Alphabet, Inc. - is not. People can be a brand. Think Beyoncé or Tiger Woods. You may well have... Full story
We may not think of ourselves as storytellers, but each of us has crafted a unique story that reminds us of who we are, our place in the world, and what we can expect from others. To be human is to be both playwright, director, and lead actor in our own story. We perform a play of our own making, which gives shape to our life and colors our perceptions. But those stories that are constraining can, with a good rewrite, become liberating. We use the structure of our stories to give meaning to the actions and words of others.... Full story
Current culture is what it is, yet I didn’t know how cynical I’d become until something happened that brought me back around. A feeling that took me back, a remembering. I experienced community this Easter weekend, met goodness face-to-face. This story begins with a cat, a dog, and a tree. Not just any tree, an 80-foot ponderosa. Now, I’m a Sisters resident, and have been for years. I know how quickly cats go missing in the wild. I know not to get too attached, but I’d taken in a community cat during pregnancy and kept on... Full story
For many years, I considered Sisters simply a place with slow traffic to get past on the way to one trailhead or another. I drove through town several times while living in Portland and later from the opposite direction as a Klamath Falls resident. I admit, I barely noticed the town, as attractive as it's always been. My limited view changed, fortunately, when I moved to the area last summer. Yes, I was once again drawn by the magnificent landscape with all its hiking, backpacking and climbing options - my passion. But... Full story
It’s great to see much community interest about the future of Sisters, which is demonstrated by the letters to the editor and comments at public meetings. It is important that these conversations are civil and based in fact, so I wanted to clarify several issues raised in the “Choosing Sisters’ Path” guest column in last week’s Nugget. A package of amendments to the Sisters Development Code were considered and adopted by City Council on July 24, 2019 (Ordinance 497). Amendments to the code are a fairly common practice.... Full story
It seems that we are chasing our tails in this ongoing concern about Sisters growth with endless meetings and letters to the editor that accomplish nothing. On one hand, we have a City Council and Planning Commission who are making the attempt to abide by the state land use laws, while on the other hand we have a majority of citizens who feel something is desperately wrong in how we are going about keeping Sisters the special place that all of us feel it is. The City Council and its Planning Commission legitimately say their... Full story
