Sisters salutes...

• A number of volunteers from the Sisters Trails Alliance went out last Friday and picked up dumped items out in the woods. A large trash pile that was the subject of a story in The Nugget last month was cleaned up by recently retired Bill Anthony and his wife Tracy a day before they left for their retirement trip.

• Diane Prescott wrote:

I'd like to thank two Good Samaritans, Scott Foster and Ian Jones, who did something amazingly "above and beyond" Saturday. You may have seen the photo in the Bend Bulletin that morning of the flooding at the intersection of Camp Polk and Trapper Point roads.

Well, these two great guys - NOT county employees, or even immediate neighbors - spent several hours of their own time in the muck and cold digging out trenches and cleaning out the clogged culverts. All this to help clear the blockages that were causing a potentially dangerous situation (which the county seems to ignore, except for putting out warning signs).

Aren't we blessed to have such good, caring citizens and friends who will come out and help "just because it is the right thing to do"? Thank you Scott and Ian!

• John Griffith wrote:

This is a thank-you to Ken Birkes and his crew for amazingly fast and effective help. I came back to Tollgate from Sisters Thursday afternoon, with the strong wind blowing and snow on the ground. I grabbed my paper from the box and headed for the house. Twenty minutes later I looked out the front window to see that a 60-foot ponderosa had snapped off, flattened my paper box and blocked my driveway and several others.

I called Betty Fadeley at the Tollgate office. Then I called a neighbor on her cell because I knew she wouldn't be back until late in the day. It was her tree and it was across her driveway, too. By the time I finished that second call I looked out the window to see that Ken was already at the tree with his tractor, and had begun to limb the tree out. An hour later when I left for another appointment, the tree was gone and the pavement was swept. You can't ask for a much better response than that, especially in the wind, cold, rain and snow.

Thank you, Ken.

• Sheila Hupe and Lainey, her guide dog, say:

Thank you Wanda, from the City of Sisters, for trimming back the bushes and trees on Main Avenue. It makes traveling so much safer.