Deschutes County Health Services sent out their November calendar for the free COVID-19 vaccine clinics going on this month: These are all free walk-in clinics for anyone age 5 and older; if you haven’t gotten the latest booster yet, or if for some reason you haven’t been vaccinated at all, pop in to one of these clinics and get it done! The County’s email notes, “5 and older. 5 to 14 year olds must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Appointments, photo ID, and insurance are not required to receive a vaccine.” Here are the addresses of the vaccine clinics: La Pine Library: 16425 1st St ..read more

The High Desert Droids, the oldest high school robotics team in Central Oregon based at Mountain View High School, is holding its annual fundraising garage sale on Saturday, November 12. The goal is to raise money for robotic parts, entrance fees to competitions, and travel costs (the student club travels to compete in regional competitions). The team will also be accepting donations for sellable items for the garage sale on Friday, November 11th, from 4 to 7pm at the Mountain View High School cafeteria. Every little bit helps! The garage sale itself runs from 9am to 2:30pm on Saturday in the ..read more

To no one’s surprise, I’m sure, the Hack Bend election endorsements are back for the 2022 midterm election. Right now it’s more important than ever that you get out to vote, and if you’re struggling with how to vote, hopefully these endorsements will give you a nudge. These are relevant to the Bend area; I’m not covering Redmond, Sisters, and so on, but if you are looking for information and guidance for those races, be sure to check out The Source Weekly’s election coverage, which I’d consider the best in the region. If you want a spoiler on the candidates I’m supporting—no surprise again, it ..read more

On Halloween weekend, Saturday the 29th, a new beer fest is taking place at the Midtown Yacht Club: Beers from the Dead, a celebration of classic Oregon microbrews. It’s a non-ticketed, pay-as-you-go event featuring the classic styles of the early American craft beer (or “microbrew”) movement, such as golden ales, red/amber ales, porters, and more. In addition, there will be free pumpkin painting (great for the kids) and Bend Ale Trail passports and swag if you’re early. Details: Beerfest Sponsored by Visit Bend Promotes Bend Ale Trail Month Before Oregon was home to roughly 300 craft breweri ..read more

This press release came through recently, which seemed like it might be interesting in light of the wildfires and smoke we had recently, for a lecture series on “Coexistence and Regeneration: Rethinking Fire” taking place in Sisters on September 29. Announcing the final installment of the 2022 Coexistence and Regeneration Lecture Series, presented by Pine Meadow Ranch for Arts and Agriculture and The Roundhouse Foundation, “Coexistence and Regeneration: Rethinking Fire.” Speakers will share the transformative, regenerative and collaborative forces at play in today’s environment, specifically ..read more

Little Pine Donuts is a small-batch, family business that opened up at the beginning of this year, specializing in hand-made filled brioche doughnuts. The business has been wildly popular, selling the doughnuts both online for delivery or pickup, and on Saturdays at the Northwest Crossing Farmers Market (where customers line up for an hour-plus and they sell out in quickly, I’ve heard). Here’s some background from the “about” page of the website: Little Pine Donuts is a local business based in Bend, OR. It was founded through a love for baking, donuts (obviously), and an obsession for finding ..read more

Hard to believe that Bend’s best alt-weekly newspaper, The Source, is a quarter of a century old—but it’s true! The paper was launched in 1997 and turned 25 just this month, which means there have been about 1,300 issues published since then! In many ways, the story of the Source Weekly is the story of Bend—once small and scrappy, now a bit more citified… and populated by a Portlander or two or three. The Source Weekly, dubbed the “Deschutes Source” during its early days in 1997, has survived 25 years of fires, droughts, political upheavals, recalls, opt-outs, walkouts, occupations, media hem ..read more

I thought this might be an interesting feature, to look back on previous years in Bend history, at least as reported in The Bulletin (or other sources if I find them). I added “120 Years Ago” to the usual lineup you’d see because otherwise 100 years ago only gets us to 1922, but since Bend itself officially incorporated in 1905, there’s some early history there that could be interesting too. (Yes, the previous post on browsing historic newspapers online spun out of this one.) I don’t know if this will become a regular thing; let’s see how it goes (it takes some time to pull together). 120 Year ..read more

For those interested in Bend history, did you know there are several sources for browsing old local newspapers online? These are scanned and digitized copies freely available from a variety of sources, and (if the text is legible enough) they are also searchable. As long as you have an internet connection and a web browser, you can peruse these back issues going back over a century from home. Of course, this doesn’t have the visceral experience of paging through binders full of old newspapers at the Deschutes Historical Society, but then again you can’t search for keywords and phrases doing th ..read more

The library system is one of our greatest resources, for us as individuals and as a society, and locally the Deschutes Public Library does an amazing job offering many free services and events. Everyone knows about checking out books, music, and movies from the library, of course. But did you know DPL also lets you borrow even more, “Beyond the Books“? If you didn’t, you do now! Among other things, you can check out: Various kits from the Library of Things There’s a wide variety of kits available, including bike repair kits, knitting and various craft kits, science kits, an Instant Pot kit, an ..read more