Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Category: News

  • Win a café in Eastern Oregon

    You can win a café in Eastern Oregon by entering Ma & Pa’s Café Essay Contest. Really! It’s a diner located in Imbler, Oregon, about 12 miles northeast of La Grande. All you have to do is submit a 500-word essay and $150 entry fee by August 1st, and you have a chance to win the café and $50,000 in start-up cash.

    It’s a prototypical old-school diner in a tiny agricultural town (Imbler only has about 380 people); check out their pictures. Not only would you have to have a burning desire to run such a place, but you’d also have to commit to living in rural northeast Oregon (largest cities are Pendleten and La Grande, at about 16,000 and 13,000, repsectively). It’s certainly an intruiging notion, I’d be tempted to enter just to see, though I think that’d be a tough sell to my family :).

    Still, I notice that there’s no obligation or limit to what the winner can do with the place, and there also appears to be a scarcity of microbreweries in eastern Oregon… that would be an interesting thought.

    Bend.com has a write-up on this, too, with a detailed interview of the couple “selling” the café.

  • Cougar! Reloaded

    The cougar problem will continue, according to the Bulletin. There’s just not enough manpower to devote to it, and in fact there’s only one agent for the “Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services Program” for all of Deschutes County… and he’s tied up with every other wildlife issue that arises.

    And this strikes me as funny:

    “It is so hard trying to run through back yards and jump fences with these dogs,” Spencer said. “And then you have all these domestic animals so you have to be careful because, as far as dogs are concerned, a cat is a cat.”

    Just the image of a guy with a bunch of baying hound dogs running through suburban Awbrey Butte makes me smile.

    Meanwhile, Hillside Park is still closed. Near as I can tell, anyway.

  • Cougar! The Return

    Following up my Cougar! coverage from last night… today on The Peak 104.1 radio morning show, they were having people call in to name the cougar. I missed it, but that’s classic. From the clips they were playing later it sounded like somebody suggested “Mellencamp.” That’s just so wrong it’s funny.

    And from the So which is it? department, all the local news reports are saying if you encounter the cougar, to not make eye contact, back away slowly, never run, etc. However, in the Wikipedia Puma article (cougars are technically pumas), the advice for an encounter is to stand and face the animal and make eye contact (among other things). Huh.

  • Cougar!

    When mountain lions attack! Apparently there’s a young cougar attempting to establish territory in Bend, primarily on Awbrey Butte and possibly Shevlin Park. This is not unusual for Central Oregon, but the way the local news outlets have been covering this story you’d think the world is ending. I actually find all the hooplah amusing.

    Here’s the online rundown:

    The Bulletin actually has the better coverage; makes me long for the days of Barney at Bend.com.

    Speaking of Barney, KTVZ has been covering the cougar nightly, too. I get a chuckle and shake my head every time I hear them talking about it; something about their delivery, maybe, but when one of the items reported is about a sighting that turned out to be a house cat, well, you just have to laugh.

    Look, I’ve lived here most of my life, so to me it’s just not shocking, freaky or worriesome when this type of thing happens, it just gets dealt with. Face it, this isn’t just cougar country, it’s also bear, coyote and rattlesnake country, and that’s not changing anytime soon; this Chicken Little syndrome is getting old.

  • The Bulletin’s reference

    I got a copy of Wednesday’s Bulletin today (the Community Life section) that mentions my blog (see The Bulletin quoting my site?). The article is about both Reynolds Pond and Mayfield Pond, both east of Bend, as little-known oases in the desert. I wasn’t quoted directly, but I got a paragraph:

    Go to www.chuggnutt.com and you’ll find a wistful description of Reynolds Pond written by a person who spent a lot of time out there as a child. On a return visit 12 years later, the author noted that several barren islands in the pond were now covered with vegetation.

    That sounds about right. I don’t know about spending “a lot of time out there” but I did write that I frequented the pond growing up, so that’s fair, I guess.

    Jim Witty, the Bulletin’s travel writer (I think), wrote the article. When we used to get the paper, I enjoyed the accounts of Oregon and beyond he would write for the weekend travel section. Thanks, Jim!

  • The Bulletin quoting my site?

    We don’t get the Bend Bulletin anymore, so I missed this, but apparently yesterday the Bulletin ran an article in their Community section (which they don’t post online) wherein they quoted my blog on the subject of Reynolds Pond (with attribution—to my blog, but not to me by name). I found out today when my mom told me about it, and then someone at work told me they saw it, also.

    I’ll get a copy, and I’ll definitely comment on it when I do, but in the meantime, has anyone else seen this?

  • Bend Bulletin article: Tech Town

    The Bend Bulletin (our local newspaper) has an interesting article online today: Tech Town, a profile of the local computer/tech industry and how it’s pulling “young, technically savvy people” to the area.

    The conventional wisdom is that Bend is a great place to retire, but increasingly it is a great place for young, technically savvy people to live and work, too.

    Bend officials envision an industrial park and university campus at the north end of town. The so-called Juniper Ridge project could become the cornerstone of an invigorated regional economy based on science, engineering and innovation.

    If those companies materialize as planned, they will bring even more skilled workers to the region, workers like Marshall Simmonds, Morgan O’Neal and [Chris] Reese.

    All three pointed to the character of Bend and outdoor recreation as drawing and keeping them here. That foundation, they said, makes the region ripe for new technology companies that will need to attract talented young workers.

    The three people they profile are Chris Reese, technical director for Sony Bend (whom I’ve blogged about before); Morgan O’Neal (“a throwback to some of the early entrepreneurs of computing and the Internet. He has little formal training in technology”—is the Bulletin trying to be complimentary here? jeez), web developer with my old employer, Alpine Internet; and Marshall Simmonds, vice president of Enterprise Search Marketing for The New York Times Company by way of About.com. That’s a pretty diverse group, considering.

    Still, it’s not entirely news that Bend is a high-tech region; technology is one of the industries that’s been growing like a weed for at least a decade (along with tourism) since the older industries like logging have been waning. Even so, this part is intriguing:

    City officials and local business leaders for the last few years talked about bringing more high-tech companies to the community. Most recently, the city has been eyeing the Juniper Ridge project as a potential home for such businesses.

    The first phase of Juniper Ridge development is already in the works, the city having annexed 500 acres it owns on the northeast edge of town. The city will select a master developer for the project, but the council is working with the region’s legislative delegation in Salem to site a four-year university there that can complement a contemplated high-tech industrial park.

    Almost sounds like the play Klamath Falls made for high tech (“Silicon Basin,” anyone?)—the difference being, of course, that Bend is already supporting a viable tech industry. But what’s this about a university? Ah, I see from this Bend.com press release that it appears to be for OSU-Cascades and possibly Cascades Academy of Central Oregon. Interesting.

  • Extending daylight savings time?

    This may possibly be the dumbest idea ever: Congress may extend daylight-saving time. Come on, are you kidding me? What a monumental waste of… well, everything. Jesus Christ, if you really need that “extra” hour of daylight, just get up an hour earlier.

    And that whole “The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use” line is a crock of shit, too. Think about it.

    Yeah, strong feelings against it. I’ve ranted about daylight savings before. I just think the whole concept is buffoonish.

    Wikipedia, as usual, has an excellent article on daylight savings, worth reading.

  • Fireball

    My dad clued me in to this: Fireball sighted over Pacific Northwest.

    A fireball streaked through the night sky across the western half of the Pacific Northwest on Saturday, startling people all the way from southern Oregon to the Seattle area.

    Scientists said the fireball was probably a meteor, and that it likely disintegrated just before any fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean.

    That would have been cool to see; my dad told me a coworker of his saw the fireball Saturday night on the way to work.

    It would have been cooler to have seen this news show up on Bend.com or the Bulletin; the AP story was in the paper version of the Bulletin, but not anywhere that I could find online. Seems like this is something that Bend.com should excel in; did I see a comment on their new design that they were trying to get an AP feed, or am I thinking of something else?

  • Jake’s Diner is moving

    I heard this on the radio this morning, and then caught this article in the Bend Bulletin: Jake’s Diner is moving to the eastside. The spot? The Royal Thai Cafe building, behind Bedmart and Scrap-a-Doodle… which, if anyone keeps track, seems to be a death knell for restaurants. I can remember Sully’s (Italian) was there, and KC’s (Kasey’s?) BBQ, something else, and the afore-mentioned Royal Thai Cafe.

    Jake’s is a Bend institution, seems like it should get better than that. But you know what’s ironic? I’ve never eaten there.