Category: The Grab Bag

Video that surfaced this week, on BookFace, of Sisters Mayor Chuck Ryan in a rant directed at one of his neighbors was certainly evidence of bad behavior, most likely personally embarrassing, and definitely intriguing, but hardly worthy of a 60 Minutes segment. If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you not to bother. The ...

For sheer overwrought political drama, vigorously milked for every last drop of click-bait and ratings potential, last Tuesday was certainly a hoot. Revelations that Donald Trump Jr. “took a meeting” with the mysterious Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya created the largest case of mass apopolexy in the politico-media machine since the final, uninspiring episode of Seinfeld. ...

Occasionally, in the heat of summer, life will throw us a gift. Such a thing happened to me the other night, as I sat on the back porch in the golden light, watching a squadron of swallows dive-bombing around the barn and reading from Ernie Pyle’s magnificent collection “Brave Men.” Many folks know of Ernie ...

Here on the Figure 8 it is the summer of women. I admit to difficulties in the transition. For lengthy seasons in this life I have operated outside the influence of women altogether, marooned entirely alone on the desert, for instance, or crammed into a warship with a battalion of humorless leathernecks. And if anywhere ...

I was among those who thought building a roundabout in Sisters was a good idea. I still do—they work–though some of the motoring theatrics I observed this weekend might cause one to have legitimate second thoughts. For a moment, tourist-watching from my favorite surveillance hidey-hole in the Rays parking lot, the roundabout sounded like lower ...

“No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.”  Calvin Coolidge No sitting governor of Oregon has ever refused to meet with a Medal of Honor recipient. Until now. On June 8, Governor Kate Brown snubbed Master Sergeant Leroy Petry as he stood waiting — at ...

Once, while attending a summer program for young students at UC Santa Barbara, I attempted to skateboard down a long, sloping hill.  I had no business doing that.  I was not a skateboarder.  Where I lived in northern California skateboarding was not a thing because it is very difficult to skateboard on dirt roads.  But ...

The world has known some famous horses. Alexander’s horse Bucephalus, for instance, who had one blue eye, a star on his forehead, and died after the battle of Hyaspes in 326 BC. He was celebrity enough to be buried with honors, to have his tale told down through history, and to this day has a ...

Word has reached me, carried on the wind, that Bruno Selmi, legendary owner of Bruno’s Country Club, in Gerlach, Nevada, has passed on. I had known that Bruno wasn’t feeling well, after stopping in for a visit last year, but am forced to admit that I was nursing a strong, and stupid, hope that he ...

Many of us remember Robert Frost. Typically, we even have enough of his inestimable work committed to memory to recite a few lines: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” for instance, or the notable bit from “Mending Wall” where a laconic neighbor says: “Good fences make good neighbors.” That line may even be true—I ...