Summer Robbins-Sutter

July 24, 2017

This story and my meeting Summer is kind of a dream come true in the timeline of this project. One of the things I hope is that people of this community will feel more connected to each other because of the stories they read here. Summer commented on the story of Brandon and then I reached out to her to ask her if she would like to participate. Despite this being her busy season, she made some time for our chat. During our interview, she talked about "that Backporch guy". She doesn't (or didn't) know him, but she continues to be influenced by his kindness a couple of times each week when she goes to get her coffee. Summer and I share a sensitivity to this world and its happenings and I thoroughly enjoyed my time at her studio with her and the ladies that work with her.

Who are you?

My name is Summer. I am an event floral designer here in Bend. We only do weddings.

Where do you come from?

I come from a lot of places, but most recently I come from New Jersey. I've lived here for two years.

What brought you to Bend?

A new life and a new lifestyle. We had children who we wanted to give a good life to and we didn't want to give them that life where we were living because we felt like it was too expensive. We didn't want our kids to be raised in a place where it was so fast paced and where they had to have a certain type of car and go to a certain type of school. We didn't want them to experience those pressures, so we moved here. And they love it. And we love it.

I always knew about Bend because I used to be an avid rock climber and Bend is, obviously, right next to Smith Rock. But I always worked too much so I was never able to get a chunk of time off to come out to Smith Rock to climb. So Bend was always kind of in my head, but I never really knew enough about it. And then my husband's a skier and he's a mountain biker, so you know Bend is like in every mountain bike magazine. We came out to Portland because I had a job opportunity a few years ago. We loved Portland but it was so grey. I knew that I couldn't live in that much grey - I had to have a little bit of sunshine. So, we went out as far as Hood River, and they were like, Why are you guys here? Basically, we go to a bike shop everywhere we go because my husband's a bike dude. So we went to this bike shop in Hood River and we were just chatting up the guys there and they were like No no no, this is not where you guys want to live. Hood River's great and everything, but you guys want to live in Bend. Bend is really where it's at. So then, you know, the name comes up again and we were leaving the next day, so we really couldn't drive down to Bend, but that was kind of the spark. By that point we had one child and right after that I got pregnant with our second child. So, we had a list of places we thought we might want to live and I started doing the research on Bend. On paper it seemed like the perfect place.

So, we moved here and it was, I swear to god, immediate. It was like immediate community, immediate welcome, immediate people wanting to partner with me and collaborate with me and support me and refer me (because this is a business which you can advertise all you want but if people aren't referring you, forget it, you're not going to do very well). And that's one of the reasons I love Central Oregon because we support our own, you know. I'm the same way. If one of us does well, then all of us do well. If somebody comes to me and hires me for flowers, one of the first things I do is ask them, Do you have a make-up artist? Do you need me to give you some ideas of other vendors that you might like? Do you have a photographer? Do you have a planner yet? I want to be as helpful as possible. I want to make sure that they have the best day that they could possible have, but I also want to make sure that I get to work with all these amazing people who are here in Central Oregon. I believe in community and I was so lucky that these people believed in me, too, right away. Because my business has grown so much within the last... you know I've only been here for two years and we just got a huge award. I couldn't have gotten that award if it hadn't of been for the other vendors voting for me. We are Oregon Bride magazine's Best Florist: Outside Portland 2017. That's pretty awesome. It's not just me that wins; it's all of us.

What does community mean to you?

Support. Supporting each other, lifting each other up. Helping out whenever somebody needs to be helped out. There's so many people like that here, too. Why are you paying somebody to paint your house? I'll come over and I'll paint your house for you. I'll be happy to do it. Just give me a beer. People like that. That's what community means to me. We came from a place where there was no community. We always felt so alone even though we shared walls with people. And even though we were literally never alone. Here that's not the case. So, yeah, support, is probably my definition of community.

Why is community important to you?

I feel like it's important to what I want for my lifestyle and what I want my kids to have for their lifestyle and my husband - for us as a family. I didn't really like being an island back when we were living in New Jersey. You know, I worked in Manhattan and it's just not fun to always be alone. It's important to really get to know people. I think that's the best part of being a human is connecting with other people.

What do you most look forward to here in Bend?

The fresh air. I really love that. I really love how sweet the air is here. You get used to it, so you don't really notice in when you've been here for a little while. But then it will rain and then you'll smell it again. That's something that when we first moved here we noticed right away. I was in the Lowe's parking lot and I was like, Holy shit, it smells amazing! This is so great! And then we went back east to visit family in November. We were in Hoboken, which is where we used to live and where our first son was born and I just remember driving into Hoboken, rolling up the windows, and being like Oh my god, there's so much smog and it smells terrible and our kids are ingesting this! I can't believe we were there giving that air to our kids for so long, but we were just used to it. And now that we're here, it's just, you know, lichen grows here. It doesn't grow in a lot of places - it has to have clean air - and it grows here. And that's super cool. So, yeah, I don't take that for granted at all. That's my favorite part.

What do you wish for the future?

The community, I want it to grow gracefully. Because it has to. It's not going to get smaller. It's an awesome place. People should come here. People should live here. It attracts a certain type of person and the people that live here are awesome. And the quality of life is awesome. It's important for all of us to understand that. There are a lot of people who are pushing against that growth and there's no reason to push against something that is already happening. That will just drive you crazy. I really want this town to grow gracefully. The other thing I love about Bend is that there is an urban growth boundary. So, there's wilderness outside of this. And we can access that so easily. As long as we continue to respect that and respect all the beauty and all the natural things that are given to us here - without us even thinking about it. I think that grace part really has to come in. I hope for its growth, I really do.

Personally, the work/life balance thing is something that I'm working through. I don't come from a lifestyle that had a work/life balance. Here in Bend, that is the culture. You work to live and not live to work. Having my own business, you know, I'm super committed to what I'm doing and I'm super committed to the people who work with me and to our clients, so stepping away from that and also being able to focus on my family a little bit more is what I hope for myself. I also hope that we can actually start growing stuff out here (laughs) and all the rodents stop eating it. I'd like to be able to support my business a little bit more with things that we grow. That's all about being new and figuring out what this climate is. Figuring out the desert and growing things in the desert, which isn't supposed to happen.

Do you have thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

This town has always been growing. It's always been a boom town. Almost always. That's the thing that people, for some reason, don't realize or have short sight of. They're like, Well we've been here for so long and so we're the only ones that are authentic Bendites. This whole town, though, has always been new people moving in. It's always been like, Oh, Them and Us. It's always been like that. That's just the way this town is. I don't really encounter a lot of people that are like, Oh, you're new so we don't want anything to do with you. Everybody I meet is wonderful. Everybody I meet, I get that personal connection right away. That's one of the reasons I love this town is because of that personal connection. That's one of the reasons why we were drawn to this town. Because we came out here to look - to think this might be a great place for us to raise to kids; a much better place than where we came from. We wanted a better lifestyle. Go into the grocery store and people are talking to you. You're standing in line and they're striking up a conversation with you. And whether or not those people are from here or if they're tourists or whoever they are - it doesn't matter! It's like they're just really nice. And that's cool. And I work with a lot of tourists. Those are my customers. This town attracts a certain type of person and wherever they're from, they're just lovely people. It's that personal connection that I think this town really gives me. We moved here for that sense of community. For me it's been immediate. The community has been immediate.

There are a lot of really smart people in Bend. We are going to have to figure it out. It's not going to be sustainable otherwise. My hope is that the right representatives get into City Hall and make the right decisions for the town. I feel like that's not happening right now. That's not a comment on I know how to do it better because I don't. I have to say I would never complain about the traffic because I come from places with real traffic. Even if I start to get a little perturbed about it being a little slower, I just look at the mountains and it's beautiful. This town is really special. I actually am really hopeful. I do think the infrastructure will improve. We're growing so quickly, it has to happen. When you come into town and you see that Welcome to Bend sign and it says 80,995 or something. I mean, that's not real. That's not a real number. The real number needs to be up there. And I think people need to come to terms with what that real number is, too. From the minute that we moved here I knew that was wrong. And that hasn't changed in the last two years and I meet people who have moved here yesterday, last week like every day. That number is swelling. We need to stop ignoring that. Sorry, I got on my soapbox a little bit (laughs).

Bronwen Lodato

July 17, 2017

Dan McGarigle (interview from a few weeks ago) recommended a few choice people to me. Bronwen was one of them and I can absolutely understand why. After a couple of emails back and forth, we made arrangements to meet at her studio. We hit it off immediately and had a great chat while two of her assistants prepared for an upcoming trade show. Bronwen makes beautiful jewelry, which I highly recommend you take a look at. She's also a delightfully warm person. So, keep an eye out for her. And be sure to say hi when you do find her.

Who are you?

I am Bronwen Lodato. I am a free-spirited woman. And a mother. And a spouse. And networker of amazing women friends. And a small business owner. And a creative person that is lucky enough to be making a livelihood out of what's fueling me creatively right now. I'm a Bend girl. I'm an outdoor girl. I do a lot of outdoor things - it's a big part of who I am and who I have always been. That feels like a really true part of my personality and spirit.

Where do you come from?

I was born in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but I grew up in Washington State. Just north, like six hours north, in Wenatchee, Washington. High desert, due north, in a little agricultural valley on the Columbia River. I grew up on a cherry orchard. My dad and mom had met another couple when my dad was in the Air Force - another Air Force couple - and the four of them just fell in love. Which is so rare, for all the chemistry of the four to be equally connected. And they were like We want to go homestead somewhere. Where are we going? So they went to Washington State and they bought two adjoining cherry orchards. The Parlette's ran their orchard and we ran our little orchard. There was a shared dirt airstrip - because my dad and the other gentleman were both pilots. I grew up with limited financial resources but crazy family connection and love and friend love and amazing experiences.

What brought you to Bend?

Right after college, I started working for an outdoor school called Outward Bound and the base camp is here. It was Pacific Crest Outward Bound School at the time. Now it's Northwest Outward Bound because they kind of joined several Northwest schools. And I was interviewed and hired over the phone by a gentleman who is now my husband. I didn't know that at the time (smiling). That was 20 years ago. I came and worked for Outward Bound for several years, doing courses in the Three Sisters and on the Deschutes. It was less of a living in Bend kind of experience and more of a being really familiar with the natural and wild and scenic landscape and rivers and mountains here. We would do long courses - like 30 days, multi-element, half the time on the river, half the time climbing and mountaineering. We'd come into Bend for sushi when we were off course, but really I was at the base camp. Mike (my husband) and I were really good friends for those first two years and by the end of the second summer, we started dating, and decided to spend the off season in Bend. So, we got a little apartment here and I, you know, waitressed in a restaurant and worked as an ambassador at the mountain and just scrapped it together. I started doing a lot of yoga and doing a teacher training and that kind of thing. And got a living in Bend experience. We lived in this teeny little apartment. So then we left in 2000 and just came back a little over five years ago. Through this whole time we've been doing other things - living in Colorado and most recently in Berkeley. We never really saw living in Berkeley long term. We knew that we wanted to have a child and we knew we were not going to buy a house. It was so expensive. It was too busy. We just didn't see it. Through the years we would come back to Bend like every three or four years. Like, Do we want to go back there? We still had friends here that bought houses and had kids and started their whole lives here. Every time we'd leave we be like, Oh, we're not quite there yet. It's not quite ready yet. And then we had our daughter in Berkeley and after like one year we were like, We're out. Where we gonna go? Bozeman? Boulder? Bend? And it was just kind of obvious. My family's in the Northwest. His family is in the Northwest for half the year. It always felt like home. There's no other place that feels homey enough that we would pick up and move. And I felt like I could take my business - we're wholesale mostly - anywhere. I felt like I was going to be able to have the resources that I would need to get to kind of seamlessly - I had a lot of anxiety about it - slide in. I held so much anxiety about the move. I'll miss the farmer's market and the magnolias that bloom in February. How will I ever find an assistant as great as the assistant I have here? All of those stressors are the things I never should have spent half a second worrying about. From the moment that we got here it was just like, Oh yeah. Oh, definitely, yeah! Friends, everything was just right. It's just right that I'm here.

What does community mean to you?

Everything. Pretty much. Really. For reals (laughs). It means that I am here, operating independently in my own space and conducting my life and my thoughts and my feelings and my work and I am completely buoyed and supported by this greater thing that is so very apparent and real to me here. It means that I have several other families that really know my child and love her and will care for her (and do) and will ask me to participate in things that are important to them. It's not even a question. It's just a feeling of wanting to stay plugged into this source, which is, essentially, a group of people choosing to be together and have a shared life. It's what I was missing in California. I grew up with it. I grew up with community, like really strong community. That was always really important to my parents and they created that for us. It's a familiar feeling, so when I haven't had it at times in my life, it's just a very obvious space. It's an empty space. I have it more than I've dreamed. It's so awesome. I would never choose to leave this community right now. Never say never, but... it's huge. If people say, What do you love most about Bend? that's what I'll say - Community. You start getting a shared history with people. Human connections are sort of boundless and they're all up to you - how deep you want to go with human connections and friendships and relationship? I love that people here are not afraid to connect.

What do you most look forward to here in Bend?

Summer (laughs). No, I have to say, I am a four season person, but I love three seasons more than one. That is to say, I love winter and I love it to last three. months. hardcore. Let's ski, let's do all the winter stuff! And now let's get spring! But I love to see the change because it feels cyclical to me and I like that. That's an important rhythm in my life. I grew up with four seasons, so I think it kind of comes back to that. It's the fall now, this the time when, naturally, you're just going a little bit more inward and you're kind of tucking in around yourself a little bit. I guess just how the four seasons, environmentally, kind of affect the interior, emotionally. I love the feeling of change. In life and in my heart. I really like change. That part is really great. You know, there are so many things that I do here outside that are just easy. Hopping on your mountain bike - it's an after work kind of thing. With friends or by yourself or with your partner or with your kid. I do like raising a kid here. It does come back to community. It feels nurturing. Bend is a place that supports you in your path. What are you doing? That's cool. Let's make that happen. And I have to say, not on a daily basis, but at least every other day, I catch myself feeling full and authentic gratitude for how pretty it is here. I still really feel that all the time. I'm not manufacturing this feeling of thankfulness (laughs), I actually really feel this! Whether I'm mountain biking or skate skiing or just taking a walk or if I'm watering the flowers on my porch. To not lose sight of that and not not notice those things. I am person who really holds dear and values beauty - aesthetic and natural beauty. It's important to me. It's my work. Having beauty around me is important. It's here. I totally resonate with the landscape here.

What do you wish for the future?

Well, it is crazy, and I'm not one of the people that's grumpy about how quickly Bend is growing. Although, I have my grumpy moments. Really what I see and what I feel and what I like to participate in creating is I just want to retain the spirit of a small Bend - smallish, medium size. I totally like a medium size town. There's enough people to support you in your endeavors and your business - and they do - and yet it's small enough that community really feels possible and easy. I guess right now, one of my great hopes, however I'm participating in it, is that the planning for the changes of this town are taking into account, of course, my core values which I feel I share with the majority of the people that live here. To also be really open and say, You know, there are so many possibilities here. There's possibilities with change and growth and there's power in that and kind of collectively deciding which way to drive that. But I see staying here. I see my daughter graduating from high school and beyond. I see my life here. I don't know if I'm going to become a little old woman here or anything. I'm a super wide open person. But I sense and I feel that my work is strong and organically flourishing, creatively and financially - meaning all those things in a business sense. I see that continuing, for sure. I see my connections here continuing to broaden and deepen, which they are exponentially. It takes a little while to kind of hone in on who your people are. Everybody here is so kind and there are so many quality, great people here. Honestly, we have so many people coming into the studio... I've met so many of my friends because they're my customers. I'm like, Oh my god, yet again, another amazing lady! But you have to choose. If you're going to deepen this relationship, it's time. Opening and sharing and being willing to invest. That feels super abundant and time-constricted sometimes. (Laughs) What a great problem to have! I feel like there are so many quality people here that are so interesting that it's okay to have broad relationships with people and then kind of hone in on who's the little core that you're going to put right around you and invest deeply in those. You know, it's like concentric circles of friendships. I do see Bend continuing to support my happiness here. I'm really happy here. Super happy.

People are so kind here. That's a thing that people say. I moved from California. Practically everyone I knew moved from somewhere. Most people have moved here from somewhere. I've had friends visit in the past two years that give all these examples of people being seriously, genuinely nice. It's so true. You notice when people are outwardly friendly. I'm Sicilian and (laughs) people are not outwardly friendly. It's a different thing. It makes you feel proud about your town. Seriously, people are really nice here.

Marley Weedman

July 10, 2017

I like to deconstruct how I meet people and how things come about in life. For example, several days ago, I went to one of my favorite local spots - Good Dog - with my dog, Pal. We go there often and I try to walk a different route as often as possible just to keep things fresh. On this day, we ended up at a good swimming hole and I ran into Marley and her friend, Jenny. The three of us chatted while the dogs romped about and I learned that Marley has a rich history here in Central Oregon. She agreed to participate and we made some plans to meet at her place. Would we have met if I went left instead of right or if I had taken longer to chat with those other folks? Who knows? It's fun to think about. At any rate, I'm grateful to have met Marley. Here she is.

Who are you?

I'm Marley Weedman. I am a fourth generation Central Oregonian.

What does that mean for you?

My great grandpa came on a Model T from Ohio. My family grew up in the Klamath/Chiloquin Reservation area on my grandmother's side. So she grew up over there. My great grandpa on my grandfather's side was the mayor of Prineville (laughs). And then we go way back, too. I'm related to a couple outlaws and all kinds of crazy. I was born in Portland. My dad's originally from the Camas/Longview area. So my parent's met in Portland and then they eventually came back when I was two. In these apartments we are sitting in right now, we lived here when I was a baby, just like four doors down (laughs). Yeah, so it's full circle. It's fun. There are certain areas that are more significant than others. Like, these apartments. When I think about home, I think about where I am right now. My grandparents just sold their house of 30 years that they built when my mom was in high school. So move-out date is in a couple of days. I've been trying not to think about that. It's weird. I need to expand. I've traveled, but I need to maybe live somewhere else. But I'll always come back here.

What do you like about Bend?

I like my connection to every place. Like, every place here is not a street -- it's a landmark. Everything reminds me of something. I know it like the back of my hand, but there's always new things to find. You can drive any direction and there's a completely different landscape and it's beautiful.

How do you feel you contribute to the community?

Well I can't go anywhere without someone recognizing me (laughs). I get stopped on the street, people asking if I'm Sue's granddaughter. I haven't seen you since you were this big (laughs). I work in a really highly trafficked area; I work downtown. So I'm forced to contribute every day. I have to show up and represent the community no matter what.

What does community mean to you?

Supporting each other and the environment around us. Continuing to make connections no matter how insignificant they are. I think it's important to just be nice. Because you never know. I've had some really shitty days and sometimes the difference between a tragic ending and making it through the day is just because my barista befriended me or something.

Were you raised with a strong sense of community?

I was, yeah. I grew up a competitive swimmer. I didn't have friendships, I had sibling relationships. You spend six hours a day with the same group of kids every day, you're kind of forced into a sense of community. And then it kind of expanded to different teams around Oregon because every weekend you're together.

Do you have a favorite memory from here?

When I was in high school, the building above Thump used to be called The Poet House. Mosley Wotta started it and it was like a group of kind of significant artists in the community and they built this creative space for teenagers. We were walking through downtown the other night and the bars were crazy and I was like Do you remember when it was 1:00 in the morning and we were 15 and we were the only people downtown? ((Laughs) We used to go and hang out there all the time. There were concerts, there was spoken word - it was just like a fun opportunity for some of the kids that didn't fall into some of the other molds in the community. But, I miss that. It was really nice because it was a safe spot if you wanted to hangout. You could set up your easel or whatever. It was really fun.

What do you wish for the future?

I'm struggling right now. I recently went through a major breakup. I've worked in the same spot for five years. So I'm struggling with kind of wanting to move away. So I'm hopeful that Bend can be left in hands where people are going to take care of it and nurture so that one day when I do come back - with my family, hopefully - it will be better than I left it.

Do you have thoughts on Bend's growth?

Someone came into the store who obviously hated the tourists and she was like Are you having an alright summer? Are the tourists being nice to you? And I said, Of course because I'm being nice to them. If people ask my opinion on moving to Bend, I'm going to tell them the winters are crazy. It's hard to drive in the ice if you don't know how. It gets hot. Like, I'll tell the truth, but I'm not going to discourage anyone. And I like to encourage people who care about the recreation and all the things that make Bend beautiful. I'd much rather have an expansion of people who care than angry people. Like, it just doesn't make sense. That's what makes it hard to live here right now, it's the opposing sides.

A lot of the small town mentality comes with negative things like racism. It's crazy. All of Oregon was built on racism and sexism and it's a good thing that people are moving here. It's a good thing that more ideas are coming together. It's a good thing that gay people live here now. If I didn't grow up the way that I did, with open-minded parents, I would be like half the kids that went to my high school. My parents taught me to do unto others and to love people. Because everybody's going through something and it just doesn't make any sense to diminish anyone. It's stupid. People are always going to be assholes, but that's just too bad for them. (Laughs) If you can't wake up every day and be thankful - like I get to look out to wildflowers. That's awesome! Not everybody gets to do that. It's a different mentality, like you can just take a breath here.

Brandon Harris

July 3, 2017

I went to grab some lunch with a friend a couple of weeks ago. Backporch Coffee Roasters was next door and closed, so we sat on their picnic tables as we ate. This super friendly guy came in and out of the coffee shop a few times, and we had a few small interactions. He was notably friendly, like nearly bubbling over with kindness and wore this giant smile the whole time. We'd traded small talk each time he went in and out. Then, on his way out for the last time, he gave my friend and me each a can of beer. "To lighten my load", he said, as he was about to pedal home. I called Backporch a few days later to attempt to track him down. They gave me the company email address, attempting to filter out the creeps. I wrote, explaining this project and my intentions. I soon got a text message from Brandon. We met again at Backporch for the interview and it was more of the same friendliness, positivity, and big smiles. Keep an eye out for this guy -- he'll brighten your day.

Who are you?

I'm Brandon. Brandon Harris. I was raised in raised in Texas, but born in Idaho, and now I live in Bend, Oregon. It's a pretty rad place. I really like being here.

What brought you to Bend?

I'm a coffee roaster by trade. And a barista. And I knew that the business was thriving here. There are so many great coffee shops with so many great people that I just knew this would be a place where I could really thrive with my craft. And so, that's exactly what I'm doing. For the last year now, I've been doing that. (Big smile)

What do you like about Bend?

So many things: good beer, good music, meeting new people every day, all the coffee, cycling, being able to just hop on my bike and ride wherever I need to go, and then the mountains, you know, the great scenery outside of the town. And there's a hundred waterfalls I haven't checked out yet, either. I knew that coming here with coffee in mind as a job, everything else would follow suit.

What does community mean to you?

I think community is supporting the common idea of just being good to one another and helping out in any way that you can. Whether that be getting somebody's latte because they forgot their wallet in their car, but there's a line and you know that it will back up, or just being nice in a roundabout (laughs) and letting somebody go instead of trying to steal the gap. There's a number of things that community can breed, too, and I think that the most important one is love for each other. And I think in this type of generation, this world we live in, there's a lot of bad. And it gets reported on easier than all the good, but I think this community, with everything between physical activities and professional chefs and professional beer brewers and coffee brewers, with all the like-minded people that fill in the community here, it's a really beautiful thing because that whole idea is moving forward. There's no competition here, that's the one thing I learned about when I moved here. There's no competition in the sense that the person down the street who also sells coffee isn't my enemy; they're just doing it in a different way than I do. And that's cool, to learn about something different, about how we do the same thing. You know? Everybody ties their shoes different, right? We all learned a different way and that came from something, but we still put our shoes on every day and go and serve the community. It's really cool.

Honestly, when I got my first coffee job in Nacogdoches, East Texas, at a coffee shop called Java Jack's. I realized just how integral coffee was every single day, but also the tiny conversations that wrap up the transaction in a neat little bow. I mean, we're not pushing people through just to get them their drink. The person who comes up is not just their drink; they are a person. The saying goes that You could have the best coffee in the world, but if there's a jerk serving it to you, then it's not going to taste any good. But then you could have the worst coffee in the world, but if you've got somebody really nice and passionate serving it to you, it's going to taste like the best cup of coffee. So I learned about community through coffee, through those people who show up in the shop and they haven't seen each other in five years and they give each other a big hug and they go and sit down and they chat all day. You know? That's why coffee breeds love and community, because it's this thing you gather around. Such a small thing to gather around, but it brings everybody together. It's like a campfire, coffee's like a campfire, man; everybody sits around it, everyone talks around it, everyone stare's at it when they're thinking about something. You know? You consume it and it warms you. It's a beautiful thing and that's why I'm so interested in residing in this community for so long. I mean, I've only been here a year, but I don't see leaving. I've moved to a lot of places and none of them were with a damn compared to this. (Laughs) This is great!

I grew up in a Christian home, so with that comes all of the people in your community that stick together and help each other move and go out for potlucks and things like that, you know. That's where it all began, really. I grew up in the suburbs of North Dallas and I mean just meeting up with friends on the block to go play games outside, kick the can, from that onto being in the church with my family and seeing just how family was formed and community and love in that way. And then kind of losing sight of that because I went all individualistic when I moved to college and then regaining that focus once I realized that coffee is this thing that really gets everybody going and everybody can gather around it. Knowing, too, that I'm a personable person and know that I can make a five-minute transaction seem like a great conversation, even though it's such a short amount of time — those are assets that I didn't ever see in myself until I got into coffee. Then I realized I could do that at the register and get great tips (laughs). But, of course, it's not for the tips. I realized that's an asset I have that not many people have and you can't train it, you can't teach it. If you're a personable person, you are, and if not, you're not. And that's okay. Someone's wearing a band t-shirt or someone's saying something about what they're about to go do - mountain biking, skiing — I've done enough things and I've gathered enough things in my life that I can be able to relate to them on a base level and, in that way, we become equal right then, for that second. That's another aspect of community that's so important. Coffee leads to community.

I love roasting, especially on the new machine. Roasting is this scientific dance with the coffee because it starts as green and you put it into this 460-degree machine and, with what I've picked up along the way, it's amazing to know that I have a muscle memory of sorts in my mind about what numbers to hit at what time. And so I love roasting because it's this dance I'm doing trying to keep the bean going on a smooth path without getting too low in temperature or too high in temperature because both of those will become detriments to the coffee. Whether it be slowing it down to create body or speeding it up to create acidity or knowing that after the turn around, up until the first crack, there's the sugar-browning phase and things like that. Just knowing those things keep me coming back, wanting more. Every roast is different, too.

Do you have thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

I've always been a patient person, so if I have to sit in traffic it's just more time I get to myself. That's more time I'm not concerned about anything else. It's more time I'm just sitting with myself. So, for me, it's fine. I see a ton of people talking about Californians or it's too busy or it didn't use to be this way 20 years ago, but I feel like there's no positive progression that comes from those type of thoughts and then you're only highlighting yourself. And then when you're highlighting yourself, you're not thinking about anybody else. And then you're not thinking about community. You're not thinking about these things that brought you here in the first place. It's a beautiful thing to have people move here. I moved here. You moved here. People who talk about Californians probably moved here at some point in time. It's like if you didn't vote, you don't have an opinion. Right? So, if you weren't born here, then, I mean, you really don't have the right to say those types of things. Everybody has the right to their own opinion, truly, but man, keep it to yourself if it's negative. It only takes a tiny rock to create a ripple and one of those days, that ripple is going to reach the shore, whether we see it or not. And if kindness does that, that's great. But if hatred does that, then what kind of shore are we hoping to land on eventually? The aspect of not wanting more people to be somewhere that's so awesome is really selfish. These aren't my mountains, these aren't my bike lanes. I have my own things, I have my own life going on. If somebody's willing to speak negative towards anybody else, then they should probably just open their eyes and see what's around them truly before they decide to speak.

People are busy here. Time is money here. People get tunnel vision. They don't see the reason they moved here anymore because they're so jaded by maybe their mundane routine. Maybe they're not getting out enough. I tell you what, you go hike to the top of Pilot Butte, you don't think about anything. You don't think about anybody who moved here because you're doing something for yourself and you're also letting your mind unwind. But if you spend your whole day behind a desk and then the rest of your free time thumbing through Facebook and then you get home to the person that you sulk with and that's all you guys do, then, those type of people, I really wish they could somehow break that mundane, everyday thing. And not with alcohol, either. With some sort of - go ride a bike. Tourists are going to be here. This is a beautiful town, it's a tourist town. It's just how it's going to happen. Maybe people see other larger cities and their problems and think it's gonna happen, but we have a great local government.

What is the main issue behind there being more people somewhere? It's not like a lack of resources exists in our culture anymore. We're not barbarians. We have all the water, all the beer, all the weed, all the food we could ever use. So what really is more people? It's just traffic. Or waiting in line to get the good you want. But if you're at a place worth waiting in line for, then the line isn't even the issue. You know? You're at a place you have to stand in line for, that means that good is of high commodity. Like coffee, people wait in lines for coffee 10 minutes, 15 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes because it's good. And it's worth waiting for. Even driving on these awesome roads and seeing a cyclist pass you and you're still waiting in your car, you're waiting to get to a good thing. You're home in this great place — Bend.

What do you wish for the future?

For myself I just want to get better at coffee, start taking more time for myself and not focusing on how other people view me. There's a certain issue I've had in my life about inadequacy. And I don't think I'm inadequate by any means, but sometimes, you know our culture is driven to comparison, right? You can see it everywhere. You can see how someone would compare themselves to another and feel inadequate and I think that I've fallen trapped in that. Especially coming from North Dallas, which was very rich. It didn't use to be, but when I left, it was very rich and was very vanity-driven. One of my goals is to continue pushing myself harder and harder within coffee, within my friendships — how can I be a better friend, how can I be a better person to everybody? And also within my physical activities — how far can I go on my road bike, which route am I going to do next when I go climbing? Money's not really a goal for me. I have enough. I save enough. I can take care of people when they need it and then I can take care of myself when I need it. I've never been in a place where that's been a thing. That used to be my goal — to make more money. But now I make enough to where I have some leftover after everything's taken care of and I can take care of others with it or myself. Now my goal is just to get stronger, become happier, serve my community better, get better at coffee.

I hope that for the community that folks can see that we are in a great place and that you'll feel a heck of a lot better caring for someone else or going out of your way to help someone else than you will about sulking about how you're inadequate. Or feeling regret because you didn't do something. Everybody's had that day off where they wish they would've gone out and done something. Or like as a young kid, you wait in line for a roller coaster then you freak out at the last moment and you wish you would have gone. Because it was scary. But getting out there and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone leads to growth and leads to someone being able to teach someone else how to go and do that same thing. There's a number of people I've introduced to climbing and they're climbers now. And it's amazing.

That's another thing, I want to be a better teacher. I think I'm pretty good now, but I think I can get so much better. So much more tactful with the way that I might tell somebody that they're not doing something right. Because it's usually in a busy condition and I don't want to come off as rude, but how else do I tell somebody besides telling them point blank? There's a way to do that that I could get better at as well. A number of goals - drink more water, you know? (Laughs)

Dan McGarigle

June 26, 2017

I came across Pine Mountain Sports because I drive by there on my way out to the adventure lands on a daily basis. Then, I had some friends come to town who needed to rent mountain bikes, and I thought of that shop. Every person in there has been super kind and they do really great work. The whole place has a sense of quality and fairness and friendliness. It's a great reflection of this town. I kept meeting this guy, Dan, who was just so kind and sincere. I eventually asked him to participate and, without hesitating even for a second, he agreed. I later found out that he owned the place. With a boss like this, it's easy to understand why the rest of the staff is so friendly.

Who are you?

Dan McGarigle. I own Pine Mountain Sports here in Bend, Oregon.

Where do you come from? What brought you here?

I'm originally from South Bend, Indiana. Then I moved to Bend, really, on luck. I was supposed to move to Portland. The guy I was going to move to Portland with actually got a housesitting job in Bend for the summer of 1995 and I've been here ever since.

What do you like about Bend?

Love of life, great community, accessibility to the outdoors, great place to be a dad, great place to raise a family. Just, you know, being spoiled rotten to lay it out honestly. Why would you ever leave a place that spoils you as much as this place does? It depends, I guess, on your view of life and your priorities, but overall, I don't think I was supposed to be this lucky to actually live in a place that fits my needs as well as this place does. I just feel really fortunate to be here.

What does community mean to you?

Long story short, where we, especially these days, we follow headlines, we turn on the news, we're bombarded by media from all over the world. I don't believe that those things actually affect us as much as the community around us - how we engage it, how it engages us. They say, think globally, act locally. You know, you can paraphrase it anyway you want, but ultimately, the community that you keep is a huge influence on the quality of your life. You know, Bend's got a great community. Right now, you know, it gets pushed and pulled on a little bit just because of growth and so many new people moving to town, but I really do believe that Bend still is one of the greatest communities in the country. It is as much intoxicating as the accessibility to the outdoors and the lifestyle. You can have those things, but if you've got a dysfunctional community or a community you choose not to participate in, you're missing out. There's that whole other set of resources on why people choose to live here.

My mom was always heavily engaged in her profession, as far as health care and volunteering and being involved with community efforts and things along those lines. Seeing that as an example as a child, it really had a profound impact on me as far as who I am as an adult. I don't really think that the community I grew up in was as engaging and as active as the one in Bend is, but taking that influence and bringing it with me and making that part of who I am, who Pine Mountain Sports is, that's only helped me live the life that I want to live. My mom gave me the tools, that when I did find the community I wanted to be involved with, to get in. To make an impact. To do the things you want to do. To not listen to the people who tell you No, you can't or Nobody does that. We just do what we want to do. Between the community and Pine Mountain Sports, we have a great vehicle. We can actually get a lot of stuff done, which is awesome.

Do you have thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

I would tell you that I don't prescribe to it, personally. I don't understand it. These days things are so touchy and to tell people, Hey, you're from a certain area. You can't move here. That sounds like a big picture thing we're hearing right now. That's not the community that I want to participate in and, more importantly, that's not the community that I'll ever believe that Bend is. Because, simply put, that's not me. That's not my friends. That's not something that I think Bend is or want it to be. You know, I was here first? Come on, that's like the lamest excuse in the world. (Laughs) But I do understand where people are coming from. The direction that I share with people is that if you don't like the way that certain people are acting in the community, or that you believe that the community is going, the only way to keep the community the way you want it to be is actually to be the community that you want it to be. And that means that we, as the people who want Bend to keep the character that it has, the small town feel, the expectations of one another, whether it's treat each other in a certain manner or participate at a certain level, it's up to us as every individual inside it, to be that. If we choose to use other people's direction as ways to allow it to waiver from our own, then that's on us. That's not somebody else's fault. That's on us for changing the way that we view the community that we live in. Because somebody new moved here? It's more so, When in Rome. What we preach as longstanding members of the community, as a small business, as the culture of the outdoor community here in Bend - what preach is what people will follow. You have to believe that. Because you can't beat into people what you want them to be. That just doesn't work. And you can't think lesser of them because they aren't quite used to participating in a community like the one we envision. So, anytime I hear people complaining about the way that things are changing, my constant reminder to them is, Well then don't let it. Then represent what you want our community to be. That's the best way we're going to keep it that way. I honestly believe that a lot of the new people that are moving to Bend are moving out of bigger areas, and I'm sure some people aren't, they come to Bend because of a couple things. As much as it is like for myself, the outdoors and the accessibility, the other portion is that I believe that most of those people want that sense of community. And whether they're so far removed from it they don't know how to participate in it or they simply don't understand everybody's vision for living in Bend, then that's our opportunity to show them. I really do believe that most people move here because it's a departure from the place where you didn't know your neighbor and everyplace looks the same and everyplace is crowded. Yes, that's beginning to happen a little bit here. We're getting a little bit busier. But also, in the big picture of things, it just comes back to that same philosophy of If you don't like what you see, then be something different. Show people how they're expected to participate and be involved and treat each other in the community and they will. If they don't, that's their choice. And your not going to change people. You can teach people anything, but changing them is very difficult. That's my philosophy about it: Hey you don't like what you see? Well then don't be it. Let people know this is what you want to see. Tap somebody on the shoulder and say, Hey, you know, this is our community. This is what we do here. The biggest thing I do, I just urge everybody that I can to get involved with nonprofit volunteer work and setting that precedent for Bend being the Bend that you want it to be. It really is up to us to dictate what we want our community to be.

Do you have a favorite activity?

My favorite recurring activity, as silly as it sounds, it's every year. It is every year I look forward to Oh man, bike season's rocking, we're having a bunch of fun! We're going camping, we're fishing, we're doing this, we're doing that. It started snowing. Let's go skiing. And then, before you know it, as you get tired of skiing or you get a little skied out and weather starts changing, it's spring again. I'm pretty much so stoked for every year that comes around because there's always something to do, there's always something fun out there. I see how my friends that don't live here, how my family that doesn't live here, I see how their lives can be. Ours is a little more exciting. We have some fun. The accessibility that we're afforded in Bend is even unmatched my very few outdoor communities. I don't take it for granted. We're pretty darn lucky. I just feel like a big kid!

What do you wish for the future?

The biggest thing that I hope for the future, as silly as it sounds, is to be a great dad. Have a strong family. Love my wife. Keep that sense of really the three things that are the most important to me right in front of me - to stay focused on that. When it comes to our community, the biggest thing is how much Bend grows, how much it changes, I have no control over that. And none of us as individuals do. As much as we want to talk about We should build a wall around the place or we should just shut off 97 and lock the place down. That's not realistic. What is realistic is actually setting the example. We're going to grow. Yeah, by the time I leave Bend or if I die in Bend, Bend's gonna be 150,000 people. I can't stop that. I can do a lot of things, but I can't stop that. What we've been afforded by building Pine is that it gives us a stronger voice in the community than most. And because it's a small business, we can use it for anything we want to do. If we want to host community events, we can do that. If we want to promote a sale, we can do that. But also, if we want to set an example for what we want Bend to be, how we foresee the Bend community growing and how we can influence it, that's one of the great things about Pine. We've got a great crew here. All of us, I think, believe in these same things - of growth and expansion. We see new customers in the store literally every day saying, I just moved to town. And we're stoked for them. Because of Pine being simply a small business in a small town, it's got a voice. And we can use that voice for a lot of things. As soon as Pine stops being a resource for this community, beyond bikes and skis, we'll close up shop. That's really not who we'll be. But also, because of it, we get this vehicle. It is a spoil to have it. Because we can help whoever we want to help. We can promote what we want to promote. And we can set an example for people to follow. And it's a very visible one. That's kind of what I'm hoping for the future, is that Bend can hold onto its character and its qualities even though the quantity is going to get larger and larger. That's me.

Marlene Alexander

June 18, 2017

I heard of Marlene through Arden and her mom. They spoke very highly of Marlene and I was hoping she would want to participate in this project. It turns out that she did and Marlene invited me to her studio. I went over during Arden's class and observed for about an hour. It was such a privilege to be there! Marlene has a very calming presence and I can imagine her influence stays with her students for their entire lives. In addition to teaching these children, she founded the arts program at St. Charles Hospital here in Bend, manages the Arts in Care Gallery, and gives talks for the National Association for Arts in Health. If you'd like to see some of her work you should make your way to the Oxford Hotel during the month of June.

Who are you?

Hi there. I am Marlene Alexander. I am a children's art teacher, painter, musician, and anything else I want to be.

Where do you come from? What brought you here?

I'm from Missouruh (Missouri) and my husband was actually born in Astoria, Oregon, but came back to Missouruh. His father was on a Navy ship in Astoria and then they came back to Missouruh where I met him in high school, actually. Then he ran track for the University of Missouruh and then joined the Navy after that and became a pilot. And he was a Navy pilot in Vietnam. I graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design. Then I became a stewardess for United Airlines. And he was on R&R in Hong Kong and called and said, "Hey, can we get together?" I hadn't seen him for a year. And we got together. And six months later, we were engaged. And he decided he wanted to come back to Oregon, where he was born, and I'd flown in and out of Portland quite a bit, and he wanted to go back and get his Master's in Journalism at the University of Oregon. We landed in Bend in 1970/71 for a job at the Bulletin. Because Bob Chandler found him at the U of O in the journalism school and liked him and here we are, still in Bend.

How do you contribute to the community?

My huge passion is my children's art school, which I call Creative Arts. I started the school in 1976. I had been a member of the Art in Public Places, so while we were meeting (this is the group that does the sculptures in the roundabouts) several of them said, "Why don't you start those classes you want to start?" And I said, "I think I will." And I did, right here in this room. I just, as an artist with a love for young people and wanting to make strong creative citizens for the future, thought, I'm going to start my classes. And it's just been great. I haven't advertised. Most of the kids stay with me until they're too old to come back. And here I am, still doing it. And I love every minute of it. I get a card every year when I start in the fall from my husband that says, "You've never lost your passion yet for those children." And I haven't. One of the beautiful things is that usually I have every year one or two of my former students that come back to be my assistants. They know how I think, how I feel, and they just pitch right in because they've been here as a student. I not only have my students directly here in class, but I stay in touch with them and they stay in touch with me. And we've just clicked forever, most all of them. And I hear from most all of them all the time.

So the kids come back and they help me and I hear from 'em. And I hear from their parents. I do art history with the students as well and so many of them travel with their parents and the parents always tell me that they'll know a Gauguin, they'll know a Van Gogh, they'll know the title of it, and the parents will say, "Tell me! Teach me!"

I've never ever, that I can remember, been too tired to come into my studio and work with the kids. They just lift me up immediately. If I was tired, I'm not tired when the kids get here. It just goes away. I feel real fortunate. I feel blessed to love what I do.

The closeness of this is really rare and every one has thanked me for this creative background. It doesn't matter what field they go into. Several of them are doctors now. A couple of them are lawyers. Some of them are artists. It doesn't matter to me what field they're going to go into because what I work on are developing early on their senses and their creativity and their out-of-the-box self, sometimes to move forward with some creative thoughts. No matter what the field is, you still need some creativity. I think I've given it to most of 'em and they all appreciate it and know it. It warms my heart to know that I've made a difference. Making a difference with the kids that are your future. It's sad that I won't probably be around to see every single one of them, what they do. That's hard to think about sometimes, but I know they'll do well.

What do you wish for the future?

I don't have any desire to retire from teaching. I love it. I used to teach watercolor at the college for the community ed. I've given a lot of talks up there. I'm just not interested in retiring. I'm interested in staying creative. I want to keep painting forever and keep showing my artwork. And stay active. Stay active with my family, with my grandkids, and the other kids that I know. I just have no desire to stop everything. It just means so much to me to do this.

Another passion is my arts in healing, which is to me, all the same. Everything I have passion for and am compassionate for are all the arts, which are all, to me, the healing arts. Whether it's good or bad, the art touches somebody. That's important to me. My paintings, I hope, touch somebody. Whether it's negative or positive, they've talked about 'em or they've looked at 'em. I like that. I like being productive with the arts. And sharing it, I guess.

I don't see anything changing much in my future. I still like to cross country ski and bike and I shoot competitive pool. I play music, you know, I play my bass. I've just got a lot of activities. I feel fortunate to have them all. I can't imagine not having those.

I know what works with these kids. And I know how important it is to me and to them to get to know each one individually. I don't look at it as just a class. I really know each one in here. And that's important because I can tell when one's having a hard day or one's really happy and I get really sensitive to that.

David Young

June 12, 2017

Garret Caster recommended I connect with David. I spent most of May on the road, so it took a little longer than I planned to connect, but we finally met at his house and chatted for a little while on his back porch in the company of his dogs and the peeping baby birds who provided a lovely background chorus. David and I share a number of things in common (we are similar in age and appearance, share a life outlook and philosophy, and speak in a rather matter of fact manner) and it was refreshing to connect with him over those points. David's got irons in a bunch of different fires. Keep an eye out for him and say hey when you find him. I get the impression he'd be glad to say hi and throw a smile your way.

Who are you?

David Young, Bend native, 35 years old, married to an awesome lady named Erin Young. She's a teacher over at Miller Elementary. I currently own Bend Event Sound, which is an event DJ company. We provide services for Central Oregonians looking for their music and PA (public address) needs. I also am a marketing manager at a local digital marketing company. Yeah. I have a couple other companies, too, but they're just getting off the ground.

Where do you come from?

I'm from Bend, actually. I was actually born in Colorado. My wife was born in Bend. But I grew up here ever since I was knee-high to a duck. So I have a lot of roots in this community. After having left, I am back now. Been back for about five years. I went to school in Seattle.

What does community mean to you?

Community is everything. I believe that we have a strong sense of community in Bend specifically. I lived in several other big cities and I've made a lot of good friends and met a lot of good people, but since this is kind of home to me, it has a little bit more meaning. Community is important for a multitude of reasons. It kind of encompasses a whole lot of things. When you say community, it's such a broad term, but I also feel like when I go out in public, even today with my wife, we're more than likely to see someone we know, which is awesome. Always seeing a friendly face. Just having established connections in this wonderful town where we're able to reach out if we need help or if someone needs us to be a part of something or help moving or just however that looks.

I used to sit on the board for the Bend Community Center and I helped with their senior projects, the food projects, the firewood projects, and stuff like that. Once I had a kid, I had to step down from the board just because it was too much of a time commitment for the new responsibility that I had. Just having your face and having your presence out there and letting people know that you're involved from an integrity standpoint and a personal standpoint has always been super important to me. Even when we were little with my family. We were raised in that way. We would always volunteer down at the Community Center, where I ended up working and being a part of for a little while. My dad would take us down to the Pilot Butte Nursing Center during Christmastime and we'd sing Christmas carols and stuff like that.

Do you have a favorite memory from here?

I don't think it's legal to go there anymore, but Skyliner, which is where the first ski hill was, towards Tumalo Falls, used to be the sled hill. And when it would snow there was a pretty intense black diamond-ish sled hill. But it was littered with people always just because it was such a kick-ass spot to be at. Going sledding there during the winter times and then doing the PPP (Pole, Pedal, Paddle) when we were super little. Just being on the team with all my little friends, when we were like in 5th or 6th grade, was really cool.

Do you have thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

Hey, they're most likely leaving a situation they don't want to be in. So everyone's welcome to experience what we grew up with that we took for granted, essentially. Having lived in different cities and traveled so much, bring 'em on. What are we going to do, say no? Just having a bad attitude towards it is not going to solve any problem at all. I can tell you that the infrastructure of Bend is not made to handle the amount of people that are here, but it will work out some way. So, learn to take the back roads.

What do you wish for the future?

Freedom. I'm coming under some new philosophies as I mature and get a better grasp upon how I see things in the world. Being free doesn't essentially mean having millions of dollars, it means having next to no debt. There is a minimalist-type approach to my life as of late that is super healthy for me. Those kinds of philosophies are super important. That relieves stress which helps you focus on things that are in front of you, which helps you become more present, which helps you become a more engaged human being on a day-to-day basis. Instead of stressing about bills or stuff or anything like that. The freedom to do what you want when you want and just chasing after what you're truly into. It's just a series of asking yourself questions on a daily basis and being on yourself because, if you don't, autopilot kicks on and you're just going to become like everybody else.

I think the community of Bend as a whole, so far, is doing a really good job. That's my personal take. With all of the concerts and events and pub crawls and 5k's and marathons and cycling events and beer events and all that kind of stuff, there's a pretty community-driven effort, for sure.

Anything else you want to put on the record?

Stop wishing, start doing. Decide and execute. 100%.

Betsy Warriner

June 4, 2017

The SOURCE gave Betsy the honor of Woman of the Year. I first met her because they asked me to make portraits of her to accompany that story. I went with the reporter to get a sense of who she was and, as I listened to her talk, two things became very evident: the first was why she was selected as Woman of the Year and the second was how suited she was for this project as she is an example for each of us. I am fortunate to have now had two opportunities to sit in Betsy's home and chat with her and learn from her wealth of experience and get a sense of her caring, compassionate worldview. You would probably like to chat with her, too. Take a peek at her website to find out how.

Who are you?

(Laughs) I'm Betsy Warriner! I'd say I'm a community activist. Mother of two amazing daughters. Best friends with an amazing dog (laughs). And I live in the best neighborhood in Bend. It feels as if I've really found a home here. I'm really interested in people and I'm basically shy.

Where do you come from?

I was born in Philadelphia. Grew up in the East Coast. The place of my heart is the family farm in northeast Pennsylvania. I've lived in Seattle, Atlanta, Ethiopia for two years, Brazil for a month (laughs), traveled a lot. I've been around a lot of different places. I come from pretty much everywhere (laughs). I come from a very conservative family growing up. My brother is highly conservative and we're about as close as two people can be. Which is kind of wonderful that we're able to bridge that gap. My experience growing up, even though it was privileged and protected in a lot of ways, also I saw a lot and kind of had a strong sense of suffering in the world. So, I think I also come out of that with a feeling of - horror isn't the right word -hatred of just how tough things are for most people in the world and a sense that that's not right. I'm committed to doing what I can to make that right. So I come out of a very strong place in that. I spent a number of years involved with the Co-counseling Community, which is a worldwide movement of people counseling each other. The community developed a lot of workshops and conferences on eliminating racism and anti-semitism and adultism and other oppressions. I have quite a number of years sort of being steeped in the language of liberation. And then when I was working at Seattle University, that really enhanced that because the priests and the faculty there, many of them were very involved in the Catholic liberation movements. So! I came out of all of that.

What brought you here?

I was living in Portland and one of my daughters was living here and she kept saying, "Mom, you've gotta move to Bend." And so, finally, I did.

What do you like about Bend?

When I first moved here, I felt just wrapped up and welcomed in the community. There was a group of people called the Network of Volunteer Administrators and they welcomed me to join with them. And I was talking with people at COCC and OSU-Cascades about trying to bring the service learning work that I'd been doing in Seattle and Portland - bring it here. Finally decided that the best way to go was to set up a non-profit organization and there always was a feeling of being wrapped up in community. Then, moving to this neighborhood, not a terribly diverse neighborhood (laughs) in terms of economics, but in terms of perspectives in the world it is. So I felt very much part of the community with that. Very early on I started going to the Deschutes Democrats meetings and that also began to feel like family. And then I joined a hiking club. I'd just go to things. I'd look at the Bulletin at the page of what's happening in the community and I'd go to those things (laughs).

What does community mean to you?

Community means an acceptance of all members. There's the community where you live, but it's not a community unless people know each other and accept each other and do things together. A metaphor and an example of community is when the Criterium downtown - they're going through downtown really fast, just whizzing by, very close to each other - and it goes whoooosh! (laughs) and the streets are completely packed with people cheering them on. Just, you know, five deep (laughs). And the First Fridays, which is sort of like a party - an outdoor party. Those things don't include everybody, so that's a problem, but there's that sense of people coming together - freely coming together. So I guess that's what community means to me is that people want to come together and they do it freely. But then community extends to the whole world. So that's a lot of what we're wrestling with now. There's some community members who don't want to play fair. And we have our own pieces in which we're not playing fair. Community at that level is basically caring about each other.

So where does it come from? I think the book I mentioned was the first step - Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales. And my family was always very - particularly my father - open to people of all walks of life and would always engage with somebody, human to human, no matter what that person's circumstances. I think he was naturally very curious and he passed that on to me. My parents were divorced when my brother and I were very young, and then they each remarried, so we had sort of successions of (laughs) step-parents and step-siblings. But there was one point when my father had a farm in Pennsylvania and when we'd go be with him there, I remember going to a bar with him. I don't know why we were able to go to the bar (laughs). My brother and I would be playing games and we would have a ball doing that and my father would be sitting there at the bar just really engaged with people in this small town in Pennsylvania. You know? I think maybe that's where a lot of it came from. And college, you know, college was really eye-opening and my politics shifted practically overnight from how I grew up to what I was seeing.

Do you have a favorite memory from your time here?

I can think of a couple, but these are just sort of like examples of so many good things. One is seeing a trumpeter swan flying low upriver. Just the power and beauty of that and the magic of seeing that because you usually see them just kind of floating around the water. But a really special time was, I think it was my 75th birthday, my daughters did a party for me. They invited people and they created the food and, in the afternoon, one of my daughters came over and asked for some of the roses that were blooming. So I went over to her house and came in and, first of all, there were pictures all over. They had gotten pictures frames and they had gotten some pictures from me and pictures of my life kind of all over. And then went through the house and out into the garden and, she has a rectangular pond with stones around it, they had set up tables in a big U, and there were roses all around and white table cloths. It was enchanting. My daughter, who lives in San Francisco, Laura, when she was serving food to people, she got up on the rim of the pond, which is about a foot wide, and was walking around, serving people (laughs). It was a beautiful evening and another special birthday. And they asked everybody to say nice things about me, so that's really nice (laughs).

What do you wish for the future?

I'm looking forward to seeing the eclipse. For my personal life, a relationship. With a guy. It's time. Leonard has moved on and it's time for somebody else to come into my life. Or me to come into somebody else's life or both (laughs). And in terms of work, there's a group of us who are creating something called Community Conversations. It's bringing people together to talk about community. The first criterion is that it will be a diverse group of people; in all kinds of meanings of diversity. But all of them will be people who care about community and are involved in some way in the community and have a sense of curiosity and empathy and respect for others. We're very vague about it but it's exciting to think about and plan for. For the community, what I hope for - (Laughs) well, I do hope we don't outgrow our resources. Growth is good and it's good if it's thoughtful and planned and not sprawled. But it brings all kinds of, you know, diversity and wonderful restaurants, and arts, better jobs for people - that kind of thing. So I hope that as we grow in size we also continue to grow in collaboration and finding ways to do things together and create a better community.

I think it's important in looking at our community and our world to maintain rational hope. Not sort of pie in the sky hope, but hope based on the reality of the basic goodness of human beings. People who are doing some of the most horrifying things in the world, their actions can be explained by pain they've experienced in their lives and that if you took one of those violent terrorists and took them back to when they were a baby and there could have been a completely different future for that baby given different circumstances. And that baby could have been one of the people that we most admire in the world. So, I do think that our basic nature is good. And that gives me a lot of hope. Which doesn't mean that I'm not completely dismayed by the state of the world (laughs). We've got a lot of work to do.

Kindra Kennedy

May 30, 2017

Kindra reached out to me after seeing the post that Libby (from a few weeks ago) shared through social media. I've only had a few people volunteer to participate in this, so those interactions feel like brand new territory. I consider it an honor to meet people for the first time through this project and this interaction with Kindra only confirms that truth. I met her at her office at Mandala Midwifery and immediately felt comfortable and calm with her. Kindra is an only parent and I was raised by a single mom and that tends to bring out some very unique emotions in me. So... I have my mom in mind for this whole story.

Who are you?

My name is Kindra Kennedy and I am a lot of different things. Being the only parent of my 5-year old son probably, I hope, takes priority over everything else. And then I am a midwife, which comes with a lot of different hats. I'm a healthcare provider, a counselor in some sort of sense, a janitor sometimes, a babysitter sometimes, a friend a lot of times. It comes with a lot of different roles. I was born at home and then my siblings were all born at home and then I ended up training with the midwife who delivered me. So that was a really special relationship and learning experience and her and I are still in contact. So I have a lot of hope for the babies I deliver. What else? Daughter, sister, cousin, niece, a lot of things.

My mom studied to be a nurse in school before she had kids and so she was exposed to the hospital system and hospital births. It was in the late '70s when midwifery was really becoming kind of like a revolution in the hippie community or whatever. I don't remember if she was studying to be a midwife before she got pregnant or afterwards, but she chose a home birth for her first child who was born in Roseburg, Oregon. And then they moved down to Flagstaff, Arizona, where I was born. When I was born, I refused to breathe for about 13 minutes and the midwife that delivered me had to use her skills and knowledge and save my life, basically. And I'm pretty convinced if I'd have been born in the hospital and my cord was cut right away, I would have probably died. So home birth is pretty close to my personal story. And my mom had three more kids at home and somewhere along the way decided she was too busy to be a midwife. So she was obviously thrilled when I came to her and said, "I think I want to be a midwife." She said, "Of course you do." (Laughs) She's known that about me forever. It's kind of been in my blood.

What brought you to Bend?

My aunt and uncle lived in Bellingham, Washington, and they moved here when their sons were in high school. My grandmother hosted a family reunion in Sunriver. I was pregnant at the time so it must have been about six years ago. Of course, it's like August in Bend, and we all fell in love with Bend - the whole family. We all kind of scattered back to our homes and started researching. I looked up all the midwifery practices and was thinking about where I could get a job. My younger sister got pregnant and decided she wanted to be closer to family but not necessarily back where she was born, so she decided to move here. I remember that night, my mom and I got that phone call, she said, "I'm moving to Bend." So her and I decided we would start making that move towards coming here. Then everybody else, my grandma moved here, my brothers both moved here (laughs), so we ended up with a lot of people here. A couple of my cousins from Illinois have also moved here. So we are kind of increasing the population (laughs) of Bend with our family.

How do you contribute to the community?

I feel like, as a midwife especially, I get deep, deep rooted in communities really fast. I know our community gets accused often of being kind of monocultural where we don't have a lot of diversity as far as race goes. But as a health care provider here, I see a huge range of diversity within our population. And I really appreciate the different cultures that live here - where you have the kind of thriving west side culture and then this whole other culture on the east side of town and another culture down in Deschutes River Woods. We serve people from all over that are rich and diverse in their monocultural-we're-all-white-people (laughs) kind of way. There's a lot of diversity within that. But then that similarity of loving this space and the energy here and the outdoors and that commitment to health is fun to be a part of, fun to watch.

I was born into this heart of service. We talk about that a lot in our practice - being of service to others. And birth work just calls so loudly, I guess, to me - to be of service to families here. To help them grow their own families and really to help them be empowered for their own decision making and their own control as parents. And then, you know, my son lives here. My son is growing here. And so I want this community to be healthy and thriving for him as he grows. For him to have a place where he can be of service to other people, where he can be in a community that respects him and sees him. That's been a fun new adventure this year - trying to find a school for him to go to because he just turned five. So we've been interviewing all the magnets and charters and finding where his community is, which is not always mine (laughs). Coming to Bend and kind of having that community right away of moms, you know, is kind of where I started. Because I had a kid, so I could go to all the moms groups and do all that stuff and start making connections there. And now, of course, I feel like I know a lot of people doing community building and community resourcing and serving this community in all kinds of different ways. It's fun to watch all of their projects grow.

In Flagstaff, I had been a midwife there for a number of years already, and I had a really rich, thriving, female community. But I knew almost no men that I hung out with regularly for my son to emulate. You know? My stepdad was close, but that was pretty much it. And he's a fantastic role model and a really huge presence in my son's life, but here, you know, we were looking at having my uncle, my stepdad, my two brothers, two male cousins, my sister's husband - so I really wanted him to have that rich male community here. I really feel for the single moms who don't have support and really are doing it alone, because I never really felt like I was doing it alone in that way. My mom was there right away. She was the safety net that caught us. And then coming here, living with my aunt and uncle, we have so much support from them.

Do you have a favorite memory from here?

Any time we are on the river are good memories. We go there a lot in the summer with family and friends and getting to see my son get to have that in his life every single day... where I got it a lot when I was growing up in the Southwest, but we certainly didn't have a river in town. We have summer barbecues a lot when the whole family is here. We have a lot family brunches out on the porch in our backyard and that kind of thing. There's also so much richness of the outdoors around here that the solitude is not hard to find if you need it. So we do that, too.

What do you wish for the future?

For myself and my son, within our community, I think more cultural diversity would be welcome. If we could somehow attract, as a community, a more diverse population. Or more integration within the diversity that's here. You know there are plenty of hispanic people here that are sort of isolated, I think, and I wish we did a better job of integrating them. My son is going to go to, I think, the Bend International School, just trying to create more of that global community within our community. Professionally, that is always something we're thinking about as midwives is how to integrate the community between the hospital and home birth communities - how to make that system work better. And how to make it more fluid so that there's not such a separation of not just within the professional community, but within the moms themselves. If you choose hospital but I choose home and that somehow makes us really different. I just hope that there's more understanding and integration in that system professionally. I guess the big answer is integration.

I feel like this community is fantastic. I'm really deeply involved in the parenting community, in the mother community, where there's the Moms Co-op and then there's Moms Meet Up of Central Oregon and there's so many things for moms to do and ways to connect in our community. And, especially as a midwife, I feel like I'm just like resourcing people to all of these place. It's great that there's so much support here for parents and growing families, which is part of why I moved here.

Harriet Langmas

May 21, 2017

Someone recommend that I reach out to a man named David Langmas to talk with him about the project. We met for breakfast and spent an hour or so chatting. He recommended that I reach out to his mother because of her many years of history here in Bend. A few days later I met Harriet at her home. I could have listened to her stories for days. She sure has seen some changes in this community. After we chatted, I asked if she would play something on the piano. She offered to "play me out" and gave me a lovely rendition of "All The Things You Are". I had never been played out before... such an honor.

I'm an Oregonian. I was born in Portland. Moved here, I think I was 23. I'm now 85. It's nice not to have to go to Portland to buy shoes anymore. That's the first thing that popped into my mind. When David was little, to get tennis shoes we had to go to Portland. There weren't any shoe companies in Bend. Well, there wasn't much of anything, really (laughs). The roads weren't paved. 3rd Street didn't go through. You know, 61 years ago. That's over half the length of time there's been a Bend. It was 1904 - or was it 05? - when Bend started. We've lived here a lot longer than half. I came for one year (laughs). To fish. And to teach. We thought we'd give it a year. But then we just kind of fell in love with it. And met some wonderful people, just such great people. Every year we wouldn't even think of leaving. And Sam became Mayor. Well, first Planning Commissioner, and then Mayor. For 16 years he was on the Council, running Bend. When we had our only flood, it was I think '81, he was Mayor. So he was on national TV. It was the fist time that Bend had ever flooded.

Who are you?

I'm Harriet Langmas - Mrs. Sam Langmas. I told about Sam being Mayor. He was a football coach and a teacher for many years and then became a landscaper for the last 20 years of his life and loved that. People would see him maintaining the old grain shed before they tore it down and they'd say, "I'll trade jobs with you." (Laughs) He liked what he did his last 20 years, for sure. I've been a teacher and a piano teacher. And very active in quite a few civic organizations. I was State President of the P.E.O Sisterhood 40 years ago. I'm the oldest SMART reader in the state. They started 26 years ago in Bend and Portland and I signed up to read to the children to teach them to love books. I've also been on the Oregon Symphony Board and the Oregon Literacy Association. And, of course, we were really active in the Presbyterian Church. I think when we joined there were 120 members and now there are 1,000 members. So I'm the oldest member in terms of length of time, not in age. Because I'm only 85.

What brought you to Bend?

As I say, we came to fish. We were coming over here every weekend to fish. We trolled. So we thought, well, we'll just teach in Bend for a year and fish our hearts' content. And then we bought two lots and decided to build a house. So that curtailed our fishing quite a bit (laughs). We came on our honeymoon in '54 and then we moved here in '56.

What do you like about Bend?

Well, the people, I think. That's the first thing that pops into my head. And we were just greeted by 20 young couples our age who were delightful people. They're still our friends. Most of them are still alive, which is pretty lucky. I think the people. It isn’t always beautiful weather. You know? I was probably more inclined to move toward the beach, but Sam was from Pullman, Washington, and he liked the high desert - the dryness. So I was a good wife and moved with him here.

All the people we met when we first moved here were just very interested in being in AAUW and working for Community Chest it was called, now it's United Way, active in church. And we started the AAUW nursery school, which became the AAUW kindergarten, which then turned into the Seven Peaks School, so I'm sort of the great grandmother of Seven Peaks School because I started the nursery school. People thought, Oh what a crazy thing to have nursery school. And we couldn't get too many kids. Now, of course, there are lots of them and it's not such a strange idea. But when we moved here there was no state kindergarten. So that was a real valuable thing that our group effort did was start the AAUW kindergarten. It was well attended. You had to put your name in early, really, to be in that. And, of course, now they don't have it because it's state-sponsored kindergartens. When I moved here there wasn't even a hot lunch program in the schools. It was pack your lunch. Then they built the new high school and they saved room for a cafeteria, but they didn't have financing for it. And I think about 1960, '59 or '60, the community donated funds to buy some equipment for a cafeteria in the high school. And that was the first one. Which is kind of strange because hot lunch programs had been going on for years, but not in Bend. You packed your lunch. A little-known fact (laughs).

We had some doctors here that offered babies to their friends. Our neighbor was Dr. Moody and he already had six children. And so when he was offered another child, he sent it on to us. And then the next one came through a lawyer. So the first one was a doctor and the second one was a lawyer. So it was very common in those days. You didn't go through an agency. Though we had signed up at Boys and Girls Aid for many years and there just weren't enough babies. So we were very happy (laughs). In one week we could have adopted three, so David could have been a triplet. It was the week that we got David, we got two more phone calls. As it turned out, I even had some of those in nursery school that I could have adopted. It was an interesting situation. I don't think that happens very much anymore. Not a common thing. But then it was very easy to adopt a child. There were lots of phone calls.

Do you have a favorite memory from here?

I think probably spending the summers at Cultus Lake. And waterskiing and picnicking and having my grandchildren up there. The first few years that we used Cultus Lake you could just leave your boat on the dock. You know, there wasn't any expense. In fact, there was even a lottery that never happened. But you put your name in to get a lot up there at Cultus Lake. (Laughs) What an amazing prospect that would have been. But then they had this survey that said no more people were coming to Central Oregon, so they eliminated the drawing for lots on the Cultus Lake shores. But there were people that had cabins on Elk Lake and on the Metolius River, but they stopped it. That was probably in 1957. That's when the lottery was going to take place. But they eliminated the lottery and now you have to pay to even park your car in the parking lot up there and you can't leave your boat at the dock for more than a minute (laughs). Just the difference in how many people have discovered Central Oregon. It used to be that almost everything closed in October when hunting season came and then it didn't open up until High Lakes opened up in May, but then Mount Bachelor appeared and also Sun River and that changed the whole chemistry of Central Oregon. And now I'm sure we are very noted for being a destination resort area. Which is good, I like a lot of the changes that have come in 61 years.

What do you wish for the future?

We just need to keep it Bend. Keep the personality of the city. You know, not make it be completely a resort town, but make it with good schools and good hospitals and the infrastructure that makes a community strong. It's nice that we have the tourism also, but we need to improve our roads (laughs). Get them mended so that you don't bounce your car all over. We need to keep our City Council strong, our water system strong, you know all the things that Sam worked for for so many years on City Council. We need to keep them in top notch. That's what I hope. And I hope our college does well. I have a lot of questions about whether it can be sustained in such a tight quarters, but there is land there that will need refurbishing. Personally, I just hope that all my friends last a long time so I can keep enjoying them and enjoying my lifestyle, which couldn't be better. Is that a good ending?

Do you have any thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

I think it's open territory and I've always loved all the Californians. I think they're great people. I live in Mountain High and probably over half of the people here are from California. I call them the California Equity People because they probably sold a house in California for a lot of money and they were able to come to a beautiful place and buy a prettier house for less money than they sold their house for in California. And they all seem to be very good citizens. I don't have any qualms at all. You can't get a negativity out of me. I love all the Californians (laughs). Hope they're listening (laughs)!

Arden Conde

May 14, 2017

I met Arden's mother, Amanda, at a dog park a couple of months ago. She's also a photographer, so we fell into a little shoptalk. We met up again at the park and I learned more about her family. I asked if I could photograph Arden for this project and she agreed. Arden was wonderfully sweet and didn't stop smiling the entire time we chatted. I don't remember what it was like to be 10 years old, but Arden is making it look like a breeze.

Who are you?

I'm Arden Conde. I'm artistic. I like to make a lot of stuff. I have an older brother. I love nature. And I love art. I'm creative. I go to Highland Elementary. I like being with my friends and I've just always liked school. Our school gets to do Storyline, which is really connected with art. We decorate a wall to be the setting. Right now we are learning about Shakespeare and it's good because we don't just read about a book, we actually get to create artwork based on it.

Where do you come from? What brought you to Bend?

I was adopted from Vietnam when I was six months old. I just recently went back to visit my family. It was really cool, but it was a little overwhelming because there was a lot of people.

What do you like about Bend?

I like the nature in Bend and it's a fun place and it's beautiful. I like to draw pictures of the nature and I like to play in it. I like to bake and I like to draw. I usually like making desserts. Probably the best thing I've ever baked is cupcakes with filling. My favorite things to draw are roses and trees. And like drawing people, too.

How do you contribute to the community?

Just recently we started doing a project where we would take trash out of the river and then create art with it. I'm doing that with my Girl Scout troop. Two weekends ago we went to the coast and we went to Washed Ashore. They get trash out of the ocean and build really big sculptures. It's important to keep the Earth safe. We all live in it, so it needs to be healthy and we need to be healthy.

Do you have any thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

Bend is getting more trashed. But, I mean, everyone's welcome here, which is good. I want it to be healthy. The more people that come, the more pollution we're putting into the Earth.

What do you wish for the future?

Me and my friend have this dream of having a cafe together. And we would display some of my art and sell it. And I want the Earth to be healthy and I want our family to be safe.

I look up to my art teacher, Marlene. She has an art class that we go to every Wednesday at her house with six other people. We make lots of cool stuff and she's actually helping with the river cleanup. We make soap and homemade paper, which we're doing today.

Erin Pryor

May 8, 2017

Several posts ago, I wrote about a woman named Sasha who refers to herself as a networker. Since then, she has proved that to be very true by connecting me with many people, all of whom have been very interesting in very different ways. Sasha works with Erin at Humm Kombucha, but recommended her to me because of her work with the Outdoor Women's Alliance. Erin is a hoot. She's got a great laugh and a very healthy dose of that New England grit that I don't see quite as much of these days.

Who are you?

I am Erin Pryor. I am originally from New England, which I'm super proud of. Even though I guess I act like I'm not. The first thing my boyfriend ever said to me before we were together was, "Where are you from because you have a New England accent?" I guess I was angry about it. (Laughs) But the more people I talk to, the more I'm super proud of it. I'm from Connecticut originally. It's a cool place. I mean, the Final Four this year was hard for me, but I think it was hard for everybody, Ducks included. I graduated with a degree in statistics. I'm very STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) oriented. I like math a lot, which is weird, I guess. I'd rather work with numbers than work with literature. I don't know. And then I got bored of that and moved to Korea. I was an English teacher. I was a scuba diving instructor. I traveled all over the place. My dream job was to work with a tour guiding company, which I did for a bunch of years. I traveled all throughout the Continental U.S. and it was super rad. I was a trekking guide in southern Patagonia, which there isn't beauty like Patagonia. Bend's beautiful but something about southern Chile is just mind-blowing. My friend put on Facebook that she needed a roommate or she had an extra room in Bend or if anybody knew anybody in Bend, would they want a room. I just needed a room anywhere and I was at this point 26,27 - a couple of years ago - and I didn't want to move in with my parents. I needed a room anywhere, so I took it site unseen and just moved to Bend (laughs). Yeah, super jumped in. I love Bend. I started running an NGO (non-governmental organization) recently to get women outdoors, which I'm super proud of. It's called the Outdoor Women's Alliance. We just did a big movie at the Tower. I filled the Tower - I was very proud of that. We're doing a writing workshop next week. Bend's super broey, which works for the bros, but it's really intimidating to get started snowboarding or mountain biking or anything, so I just try to get women out. Realizing it doesn't have to be awful. Nobody starts as an expert, as much as everybody in Bend wants you to think they start as an expert. It's super fun. We just got NGO status this year. There are seven chapters and I run the Central Oregon chapter. I have a few other leaders that help out, but I've been doing a lot of work since last July. We go hiking, we have a Pole, Pedal, Paddle team that does pretty well, snowshoeing. It's just a way for women to meet and connect and realize that the outdoors doesn't have to be awful and doing things outdoors doesn't have to be awful. I really like it. I think it's really important, especially in this political climate, where not necessarily that women are getting beaten down more, but I feel like after Hillary lost women are back at "Maybe we can't do things". It doesn't matter what other women are doing, you need to do what you want to do.

What do you like about Bend?

I love Bend. I do love the people. I always describe New England as being a little bit more rat racey, where people are more focused on how they can get elevated in their job and they can become junior partners and, for some people that works, and I just realized it wasn't going to work for me. And I was a mathematician and I thought it was going to work and I just didn't want to. So Bend's a little bit more laid back. I think the best thing about the people here is they always want to do stuff. In Connecticut - I'm not bashing my friends if they ever read this - they are kind of hard to wrangle into doing stuff. In Bend it's always like, Oh, the road's open, we should go hiking. And everyone's like, Yeah, totally, why aren't we hiking right now? (Laughs) I really like that and I like that there's always someone around that wants to do something weird and try something new. I like the plethora of abilities to try something new. I like that people in Bend are into it. Some people are very good at things and some people just want to try a little bit of everything, which is probably the camp I fall in.

How do you contribute to the community?

I work for a start-up, which I think is important. Not that tourism or anything like that isn't because I also work in tourism. I'm also one of those people that got kind of complacent this fall and did vote and stuff, but then things obviously didn't work out the way... not obviously, if you're a Trump voter they worked out for you, but they didn't work out for me. And I kind of think America's taking a step back, so I'm currently getting involved in politics. I'm running for Library Board and if I won I would be the only person that was under 75 to represent people in the library. They are all really old, which is awesome that they're still involved, but I think there are a lot of people that are falling through the cracks of what the library could do. So I'm starting with that and hopefully, I don't know, I want to make Bend a better place. I really just try to make my circle a better place to live in and hopefully people make their circle a better place to live in and hopefully, by the end of it, everyone's circle is an amazing place to live in.

There's just so much garbage in the world and there's so much hate. Have you every read the comments on KTVZ or anything? Just like everybody hates each other. For no reason. No one wants to talk to each other. I don't know, I think it's important that everybody talks to each other. I know lots of people that have lots of different views from me on lots of different things. I'm a very outgoing, vocal person. Everybody will tell you that I'm very brazen. Everybody just needs to take a step back. I don't think anybody's trying to hurt each other. I mean there are sociopaths, but...

Do you have thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

I've been here for two and a half years. I came directly from Santa Rosa, California. So I'm probably one of the Get out, Californians!, which might be why I'm so active in the community. I can be a transplant and still love the community as much as the people that have been here multiple generations. And I have lots of friends that are multiple generations and we get along just fine. And they're cool people to talk to. Well I remember when Shevlin-Hixon and the REI wasn't there. That's rad. I only know it as an REI and I'll probably only know it as an REI. I have so many fun memories and friends. I'm a big boater and I think there's really something to be said for having a long day at work and going to Hosmer (because Sparks is always packed, but Sparks is beautiful as well) and just float around and listen to the fishermen swear at the fish and stuff because they can't catch 'em (laughs). When I'm 80 and look back at Bend, I'm really going to enjoy watching the sunset and listening to the fishermen swear when I'm sneaking around in my kayak.

What do you wish for the future?

I'm probably not very original. I just want to be happy and have my happy dog. I live with my boyfriend and we get along and that's super nice. And I would want to see that go on for a while, if not ever. Lots of things stress me out and there are certain days where I forget about them and I'm on the river or on the water or in the mountain and I just don't and I just like being me. And I wake up in the morning and I'm like, Erin Pryor's a cool person to be! And I like that. I like days like that.

I'd like to see the community grow. I'd like to see the community be less aggressive towards transplants, which I'm probably not the only one to say. I feel like there's this whole Us versus Them and why can't it just be Us? Everybody can get along. And everybody can contribute. And everybody can work and play and be happy. When I first moved here I was frisbee golfing with my roommates a lot. And I'm not very good, but I would just tromp around the woods and there was always this fight with the mountain bikers and the frisbee golfers and whose land it was. I don't know. There's like 50 miles out here, why can't I throw a frisbee the same place you ride your bike? I'm not stationary and you're not stationary, so I don't know why we can't work around each other. Maybe that's a metaphor for Bend. Everybody's kind of moving around. We can all work together and make Bend move with us.

Anything else you want to put on the record?

I'm running for the Library Board. Ballots come out in a few weeks and they have to be turned in by May 16. So, I'm in the middle of a campaign right now. (Laughs) I don't even think anybody knows you can vote for Library Board (laughs).

Jeshua Marshall

May 1, 2017

I became aware of Jeshua through my interview with Greg Delgado. Greg spoke very highly of him, so I reached out. But Jeshua was in Palestine. Several weeks later, I interviewed Sasha Lawless and she also recommended Jeshua. I reached out again and was lucky enough to meet during a 5-day stint of his being home. I heard that he and his band, Larry and His Flask, are local celebrities, but being new to town, I didn't know that. I purposely didn't do much research on Jeshua or his music before meeting with him, though. I just wanted to communicate with him as a member of this community and someone who came highly recommended by other great members of this community. We met at a tiny house that Jeshua is renting and had a really cozy chat on a very bright and warm spring day.

Who are you?

My name is Jeshua. First and foremost I'm a human being. I'm a musician. I consider myself an activist of some sort. I just try to be a genuine person with a worldly outlook to life.

Where do you come from? What brought you to Bend?

I was born in Baker City, Oregon. My father was also born there, but my mother is from British Columbia, so I'm a dual Canadian-American citizen. I've lived in Canada. I spent the last maybe 13 years touring, playing music. Our family relocated to Redmond, actually, in '96. So I went to middle school and high school in Redmond, graduated, and then just started working on my band and traveling first just the U.S. and Canada and then Europe, among other places.

What do you like about Bend?

Definitely the nature was the first attraction, just being able to not be confined in a city. I always grew up in the country and I like the openness. I like the mountains and the clean air. And the people - it's a really good community of outstanding people. Growing up here, I was always just like, Oh, I want to get the hell out of here. I want to go somewhere else. And then, touring and playing music, I'm very privileged to see so many amazing places. But the more I saw, the more I realized that where I live is actually awesome. You know? I always came back and continue to come back. I still find that it's a really great place to live.

How do you contribute to the community?

I try to just give back in positive ways through whether it be music - just to help build a culture of independent art - as well as, I'm somewhat involved politically. That's how I got to know Greg Delgado really well. I was working with him on his campaign last year when he was running for Senate. I just try to do what I can to show that there's another point of view living in Central Oregon. I don't want it to get dominated by a right wing outlook, which, you know, it was. When I was growing up, this was like a redneck place. I have no problem with rural life and farming and everything, but it doesn't need to be covered in hate. (Laughs) You don't need to hate other people to farm or whatever. I just want to try to be as positive as I can and contribute to the community with music, especially.

The first time I worked with Greg was through a nonprofit called Rise Up. Now I'm on the board, but at that point we had just started working with them - playing shows for fundraisers and through different events that they hosted. Rise Up and Greg created an event for Dia de los Muertos, so we got asked to perform at a place called the Poet House that was this art space that Rise Up ran. So we played in there and that was the first time I got to know Greg and work with him. Throughout the years, we've just kind of been acquaintances. He told me he was running for State Senate and I was excited and right away wanted to support him. I performed at his dinner kick-off/celebration party. He asked me if I knew anybody that could help him out in the last couple months of his campaign. At the time, I had been working at Whole Foods and they pulled this corporate card on me and were trying to screw me out of some money. I was over working for a corporation and so, I thought about it for a minute, and was like, Dude, what about me, man? (Laughs) We met up and I jumped on that campaign. It was an incredible learning experience and a pleasure to work with him and get to know him better on a more personal level.

Through playing in the band, we kind of started out as kind of a punk band - I guess we still kind of are punk. At least our attitude (laughs) and the way we do things is pretty punk rock. Just to get our name out there in like a grassroots kind of way we put up these paper stickers. We would go down to the printing spot and make all these paper stickers and just put 'em everywhere. (Laughs) I remember getting an email to the band email from the Bend City Office or something just being like, You need to stop putting stickers everywhere or we're going to fine you $500 for every one. The contrast of being kind of hated by Bend and then growing our fan base and finally coming to a place where I feel like we're respected. And now we play city events (laughs) and stuff.

I went to Palestine to work with Rise Up. They started working on a film in Jordan - in Amman - about this skatepark. It's called Seven Hills Skatepark. It was created by a nonprofit that goes to developing countries - generally places that have high refugee populations. They'll build a skatepark through volunteers. They'll house volunteers, but different skaters from all over the world come and teach, offer workshops and classes to refugee and local kids to teach them how to skateboard. That was a really really incredible experience. For a lot of these kids, that's the one thing they have to do and look forward to and the one time they get to actually leave their camp or their part of town and come and exercise and have fun and skateboard and do something kind of out of their cultural boundaries.

What do you wish for the future?

I just want to remain young at heart and just keep constantly learning and continuing to contribute to society in a positive way. And just to be open-minded and continue to create art and be a positive example, I guess. I would really like to see Bend become more self-sustainable. I think we already are. The community is really great there. We can definitely improve on that, having more of a local economy where we don't need to ship in so much goods from other places when we could create them here. Especially with farming, I think local farms - local stuff - could be embraced a little bit stronger. It's happening, I think. It's already on the positive track to becoming more available, as far resources and stuff. I would like to see our community continue to have open arms to people and not to get in a collective mindset of being afraid of foreigners or Californiansor whatever and be a welcoming place and not a place surrounded by walls (laughs) because that doesn't help anybody.

Kelly McGuire

April 24, 2017

I met Kelly through Sasha. Sasha described her as "the brightest light". That's quite a reputation to live up to, but Kelly did it. She was radiant from the inside out. She seemed blissful to the point of overflowing with her little baby growing inside her. And she was extraordinarily kind to me, but in a way that made me understand she is that way to everyone she interacts with.

Who are you?

I'm Kelly McGuire. I am first a mother, I would say in my personality and my persona, who I identify most with. I'm very maternal. I have been a manager of Mother's cafes in town for the past six years and have recently given my notice. So that's a big change. I'm kind of reestablishing my identity through things that are important to me. I love to learn. I love to grow. I'm super curious about everything. I love animals and kids and outdoors. And I love arts. I'm a really lovey person. If you saw me with my friends or with family or at work, I call everyone Hunny Bunny, or Sugarplum, Love, Sweetie Pie, you know, that kind of stuff. I guess that's me. I was a very young mom. So, it's fascinating kind of experiencing my own evolution. I went from being a really young mom and feeling super grown-up to now I feel more youthful than I did then. I think it's just a matter of learning that it's okay to enjoy things and not have to sacrifice and fight and struggle. It's okay to just kind of slow down and take a deep breath and nurture yourself and learn to love yourself, because that's something that is a life lesson and also a gift. If you can get a little smidgen of it and just reach for it on a regular basis, then it's a good thing. I'm kind of meeting in the middle from feeling really old at a really young age and then becoming pregnant and feeling like a young mom and getting to experience the excitement of it, for really the first time. Because the first time I was so young and I was determined to succeed and be a good mom. And I really was. I was a really really good mom. I got pregnant when I was 14 and I had my son when I was 15. I moved out when I was 14. I got my first apartment when I was 15. I raised my son on my own. I was really raised with this mentality of you work hard for what you get. You don't take hand-outs, so I didn't get on any kind of state assistance. I worked three jobs and tried really hard. Bu there was a lot of stuff I didn't know. I didn't know how to cook. I didn't know how to do anything to take care of myself. I have a really wonderful family, but when I had my son it wasn't a supportive environment. It was just in my best interest to not be there. And then we kind of grew up together, obviously. He's 18 now. So I have an 18 year old and I'm pregnant with my next little baby, which is really exciting. Who else am I? I'm also a student. I've got three new little kiddos in my life that I'm learning a ton from. I also have been a manager for the past six years at Mother's and that's been an incredible learning experience for me and I'm really grateful for it. And I never want to manage again. (Laughs) Ever. Even though I've been told that I'm really good at it and I'm just cut out for it. I can't. I'm an empath and I feel other people, but I also have this really unwavering work ethic that is just diehard. I will do whatever I need to do for the success of something I believe in. But I also feel the pain of the people who are opposed to it or don't agree with how I do it or whatever. And I just kind of push through it and then I feel the backlash and it hurts me inside even though I don't necessarily show it. You know? I love kids. For probably close to six years, I was also on the board for Serendipity West Foundation. I could go on and on and on.

Where do you come from? What brought you to Bend?

I come from the Santa Cruz Mountains in California. When I was 11, I actually ran away from home. And came up here to live with my mom. I hadn't spent a whole lot of time with my mom. It was kind of a new experience for me. I was raised by my dad, a single dad. And then my stepmom and him met when I was seven and married when I was nine. And we're really close now, which is awesome. I ran away from home to be with my mom because I had this fantastical idea of what it would be like. And I got here and it wasn't really the life that I thought it was going to be. But what's incredible about that is once I did move out on my own and separated myself from the situation, I realized how much I loved Bend. I fall more madly in love with it every year. Because you can go an hour and a half in any direction and be somewhere completely different. And it's so full of life. And it's so diverse. It has four seasons. I'm an intense person. I consider myself a very deep person. I like extreme cold and I like extreme heat and I like anything that's just exciting, really. A big snow storm is my favorite or just raining for 10 days is like I love this! (Laughs) The stuff everybody hates. What keeps me here is that it's like my dream land. I still want to experience the world and I want to travel and see everything, but I still feel like I haven't even sunk my teeth in to everything that's here. And there's so much more that is good.

How do you contribute to the community?

I feel like I contribute to the community in a variety of ways. I think that we're connected. We all benefit from recognizing that connection. You know? And supporting each other. I'm a helper by nature. I love to make people feel special and good and I love to nurture. I like to inspire. The most important thing to me is empowering people, making them feel strong and making them feel solid and powerful. One of things that I'm really passionate about is wellness. And one aspect of wellness is nutrition. I came to Mother's for a variety of reasons but the thing that was the seller for me was their mission statement and their value statement, they talked about integrity and wellness and supporting and inspiring and accountability and all these things. That is awesome! I love that stuff! Not because it is what I am, but because it's what I aspire to be. So why not be in a position where you're going to be surrounded by something that is going to support where you want to be? You can't be healthy if you're just eating healthy foods and you're not treating every aspect of wellness. Right? Because it's holistic. I think that everything's connected in that sense, as well. It's just as important to eat healthy, vibrant foods as it is to have fun eating healthy, vibrant foods. And to value and nurture yourself while you eat. And to be kind to yourself when you're doing it. Or if you choose not to eat healthy foods, being accepting of that and forgiving. And supporting other people and enjoying the fresh air because I think that your mind has so much to do with your wellness. If you believe that you're not well, you're not going to be well. If you believe that you have the ability to heal yourself, you have a lot more capacity to do that, than if you don't.

So through Mother's, I was able to create a wellness presentation series, which was awesome. It was health care practitioners and healers in the community that could come together and speak about things that they were passionate about. I did it every week. That lasted all last year. This year we were opening our new restaurant, so I wasn't able to do that, but I do want to do that again. It was an awesome opportunity for people in the community to come to a free event that was about maybe breast exams or eating disorders or the importance of nutrition. One guy came and talked about the different specific values of the full spectrum of color in your diet and what it specifically targets when you eat vibrant reds or vibrant purples. I had people come and talk about cancer and where we're going wrong and what we can do about it culturally and cognitively and how we can reshape our thinking about the world around us. Step away from this lack mentality and step more into more inclusive this is what I do get to experience type of things. I helped spearhead and create a successful juice cleanse business through Mother's. It's doing really really well. That business is fantastic because it basically resets your body. Just eating vibrant, organic, healthy foods in a variety of ways. You're eating incredible foods, but you're also setting that intention to take care of yourself. And you're learning about nutrition. You're opening your mind to something new. Usually when you participate in it, you're participating with multiple people so you're experiencing that sharing of wellness. A lot of times when you meet people, the first thing that you do is try and bond through hardship, right? But it's a totally different experience when you bond through empowerment. It's something different entirely. I see this wonderful thing in you and I want to bring that out. And I want to talk about that. Being able to share those things with other people. And then being able to be the victor. You know? Like, I did that! You're able to experience the full capacity of your willpower and your capacity to heal and your body's natural state of wellness and thriving. I think it is, I think the natural state is wellness and thriving. All these different ways that we get to experience those things.

I did the Challenge Day program with the kids, which blew my mind. It still blows my mind. I mean, to be able to participate in that is mind-blowing. I think that's one of the most powerful programs that anybody can participate in. And it's amazing that it's free. You go and you participate in this and you get your world rocked like you would want it rocked if you paid $300 for a workshop and you go and help out kids and they blow your mind. Really powerful stuff. Through the course of time, I've had a lot of opportunity to support nonprofits in town. Whether it's co-ops or it's working with the LOFT in town. I did some work with the LOFT, which is transitional housing for homeless kids. It basically teaches them life skills, from personal hygiene to how to go grocery shopping to how to have an interview and a resume and all those kinds of things. How to communicate. How to receive affection. Like, all of those basic skills that, it's amazing, you aren't taught in school, so where are you going to learn it if you don't learn it at home? That was a really powerful program. I think that I contribute to the community by being the absolute best version of myself and reaching for that. And I fall way short of that on a daily basis, but to be somebody who wants to be that. Who's maybe in a compromising situation, who's frustrated or upset and can choose to either be valid in my response or choose to be empathetic and understanding. You know? I want to make the right choice. I want to show people what love and forgiveness is. I want to show people what happiness is and thriving, even amongst hardship and contrast. That's something that I think I have to offer because I do really well in contrast. And I tend to look for the silver lining. That's a gift that I can share with people. Help them see that they can choose that to.

What's your favorite activity?

I love cross-country skiing in the winter at night up to snow shelters and wrapping up burritos in foil and putting them on the snow shelter stoves and heating them up that way. That's like, I don't know why, but that's amazing! Surrounded by snow in the dark, out in the middle of nowhere and getting a work-out and then heating up a burrito out there. Food tastes better outside, first of all. That's just the way it is. And then, summers. Summers here are incredible. Everything is perfect. It's green. It's bright. We have the most sun, I'm sure you've heard this from everybody, but we have more days of sun here than Florida. I just love the sun. Water, I love, oh gosh. Okay, I do have a favorite. I actually use this in my meditation. I've had past passions for yoga. Bikram yoga, it's the most amazing thing in the world. Very intense, but I love it. There's a meditation that I do when I'm in Savasana. Laying there, I picture this incredible, pristine lake that I've been to. It's a super secluded lake up the Cascades Lakes Highway. You have to drive like seven and a half miles up this super rocky dirt road that you have to have a big truck that's super beat-up to do and then when you get up there, you hike in like two miles to this perfect lake. It's crystal clear. It's warm because it's semi-shallow. It's only probably 12 feet deep. And it's perfect. It's surrounded by trees. There's these perfect rocks that you can jump off of into the water. Probably one of the most euphoric moments, it was like a dream that I could navigate through. Going to this place, jumping in this water. You gotta go there. It's so good.

What do you wish for the future?

I wish that we would find a way to be a little bit more involved in the community. Because I think we're a community of really incredible people that is really connected. But I think this election and stuff that tends to happen from time to time, you curse the voting system and the political system and all this stuff. A lot of it is stuff that you can start changing right where you are. I think that if we were more involved... people saying this is being cut in the schools and this is being cut in the schools and I can't believe that, but when's the last time you went down to the school and volunteered for an art program? You know? Anybody can go and volunteer and do an art project with a class. This is stuff that you can participate in and make a difference in. Or cutting veteran funding. Or Meals on Wheels and stuff like that. How about we drive things to people who need it? It would be so cool if we were so connected that we could do that. I can name probably 50 people who would be willing to do that, if we just did it. I'm guilty as well. I guess it take a measure of vulnerability and it would take some inspiration and motivation to kick start something like that. That's what I want. I want people to be more connected so if you need something, you aren't afraid to ask. And then you have somebody to help and you're not just relying on a vote for it. That's a form of a copout when you say, well I voted. Yeah, but you didn't do anything. You can have a little bit more ownership in the outcome.

I wish that I will be able to sync into this joyful state that I've been able to kind of tap into with this beautiful man in my life. Be able to fully embrace and experience being a mom without having to work so hard and not being present. I was paying other people to raise my child with my son. I just wish for that. I know the best version of myself is when I'm able to be a mommy. And be able to express my love to the people that I love. And this is my partner and his beautiful babies. And my son, my family, my friends, and then this unbelievably amazing life inside of me that's growing and that this little baby is going to be be healthy and maybe a girl (crosses fingers and laughs). That's what I want. I want to be happy. I want to step out of this workaholic state of being that has become me and I want to create something new and fresh. And I'm ready for it.

Do you have any thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

Bend is this really unique, amazing place that draws people who are excited about life and living. That is what has made it such an attractive place to be. I have a very different opinion than anybody else that I've talked to. I think the growth is fantastic. We have the room. This lack mentality that there's not enough to go around. That if somebody has something amazing it's going to take something away from me, I think that is false. If we were a little bit more sharing and less fear based, we could invite something even more beautiful to evolve. I think that is taking shape. We're beginning to be a bit more welcoming. I love the expression on people's face when they are from out of town and I say, Welcome to Bend! It feels so good. It feels homey and it feels comfortable. The growth is amazing. It invites culture. It invites diversity. It opens up different perspectives. It allows us to grow in so many different ways. It helps us be innovative. One of the things we have struggled with as a culture is like for example, coal. What did we do when there was a coal crisis? Well, we created innovative strategies to create more energy. It's the same thing with growth. We just need to innovative. We need to be smarter about building materials. We need to be more efficient with what we use. Those are all positive things. There's always different ways you can look at it. If it makes you feel better to focus on the positive, then that's what you should do because you're going to be a better person at the end of it.

Libby Nierman

April 16, 2017

Sabrina recommended Libby to me on the premise that she is "amazing and I will love her and I can thank her later". Leota was home "sick", so the three of us chatted in the living room while Libby's mom, Sally, was cooking and wafting lovely smells throughout the house. It turns out that Sabrina was right - Libby and her family are, indeed, amazing.

Who are you?

Oh, god! (Laughs) Who am I? Well, I am a mom. And I do massage therapy here in town. And I teach yoga. So I like to be an active contributor to the betterment of this world. That is what I try to be.

Where do you come from? What brought you to Bend?

I come from the Midwest. And I came to Bend by happenstance, really, seeking new opportunities and a different kind of life. I think the better question for me is What keeps me here? I find there's a really good community here and the access to wild spaces and, as far as raising children, Bend is amazing. There's parks and there's other families. There's just a lot of opportunity here that wasn't where I was in the Midwest. So, initially I came out for work, for jobs. My mom has finally stopped asking me when I'm going to move back. (Laughs) Now the question is, When are you going to move here? I'm here because I want to be here.

What do you like about Bend?

I like that it's small enough that you run into people you know, but it's big enough that you don't know everybody. I think we're at a place where we get to choose what Bend becomes, because it's growing. There's a lot of grumbling about Bend becoming something else that people don't want, but I think this is the chance we all get to make it something even better. Because it's going to happen. If you want to live here, why can't other people live here, too? I try to make this a better place by... (sighs) by doing the work that shows up for me. I try to raise two conscious, thoughtful, little people in the world that are cognizant of their choices and how they impact others. And the work that I do in the world - I do massage therapy - I found myself enjoying it the most because I think that if each person felt a little bit better in their body and more comfortable, how much kinder they are to themselves and then, in turn, to the rest of the people they encounter. You know? And gosh, we need good right now, right? If people could feel better in their body, how much kinder they are outwardly and inwardly. So that is why I do what I do and I am grateful that I get to do that work.

Libby asks Leota, What's your favorite thing to do here? Leota says, Ummm, play. Libby laughs and says, This is probably true!

I am blessed to have two children, a seven year old (Elliott) and a four year old (Leota), which means I get to spend a lot of time at the parks and that's one of our favorite activities. Just to be outside and explore and meet amazing people that are either passing through or that live here. You know, the thing I love about Bend, and I notice when people visit they mention this, is that people will ask you how you are. And mean it. When my family comes from the Midwest to visit they're like, Everyone looks at you and smiles! So that's one of the things I like about Bend. I think it's a beautiful place and so we're more in the beauty of what it is. I think people are happier here because they surroundings are so lovely. Then they're just kinder and more open. People are people everywhere you go, though, but more often than not people are outside being active. I like that.

What do you wish for the future?

For my personal future, I wish to buy a house soon (laughs) so that I can, you know... Bend is so amazing and, yes, people want to be here so the laws of economy apply here as they do everywhere, so supply and demand is happening and more people are coming than there are places for people to be. I wish to have a place that is stable and secure, especially as a mamma, to give my kids a home in this beautiful place so that we can be here and know that we're here and we won't be displaced. We've been displaced twice now just by rising rent and just being on a fixed income.

At this point Leota invites me over for dinner.

And so, I hope to build a home. And I am actually working with Habitat for Humanity, which has been the most incredible experience so far in my life to have a house that love built. Love and action is building. People that don't even know me show up and work and donate and volunteer and donate time, energy, money, resources, whatever it is, to make this happen for three people they don't even know. And then, from there, my children get to have a place to grow and to know they have a place to land when things don't work out. In my future I hope to give them that. And I'm throwing myself into that with everything I have. And it looks like it's going to happen, so that's exciting. And then, for Bend in general, I just hope that those possibilities continue to exist for anyone with a dream and that's willing to work for it. That we don't lose site of what makes Bend Bend, the people. Opportunity, I hope that Bend continues to have opportunities for everyone.

Because Bend is so fabulous, you just kind of think everything should be easy and things should just come to you. Work is still a part of achieving anything and I think this landscape attracts a personality that just wants to have fun. There's an important part of life of enjoying, but I think sometimes hard work and learning the true cost of something gets lost. You know, it's a leisure town. It's built on tourism. And I have gotten to learn to play that balance of yes, I can go skiing, but I also as a mother need to give my children these important things. It's an interesting place to hold the balance of that. It is important to have fun. I come from the Midwest where you just work hard all your life and then you go. So, it's important to have fun and appreciate the beautifulness that surrounds us, but also know the value of hard work and the trust cost of this life and what it means to be anywhere and provide for more than just yourself.

Do you have any thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

I just really think we're at a place where we get to decide what it looks like. And that's exciting. I guess it was like two years ago, they were not putting a cap on the vacation rental permitting through the city. All these little rentals, like what I'm in right now, would be purchased by investors and because you can make so much money renting by the night versus by the month, nobody had homes. I work in the service industry and make like $23,000 a year went to the City Council and told them I'm a human here that works here and pays taxes and my children go to the schools here and I need help protecting the space to live in. Especially this neighborhood that we're in now, every time a house goes on the market it's almost a half a million dollars and nobody with a normal job without an inheritance can make that happen. So they are trying to put caps on people being able to make them into vacation rentals. If they keep them as a rental home, at least that's still contributing to people that are living in the city and working. So that has been a huge issue. But I think it's just the inevitability of how awesome this place is. I don't think the City Council members have an easy job and everyone has an opinion and everyone's perspective is valuable, but finding something that works will be interesting. My thoughts on Bend's growth is that it will happen and being an active part and advocating for what you see and what you want is important. Those are my thoughts.

I love Bend and I'm grateful to be here and we all get a choice. You know? We all get to choose how we move forward. And the attitudes we project onto the people coming. It's easy to go into that being a victim of, Oh a certain population is moving here and it's messing everything up. And some of that is true. It is really happening, but we also get to get involved. If it's really that important to you. Instead of just sitting down, complaining, talk to your elected officials. You know? We have a choice. We all have choices. That's what I've got.

Sabrina Hadeed

April 7, 2017

Tiahna recommended Sabrina to me. After a little back and forth, we met at her home. Sabrina certainly contributed to the sense of community I often feel when I'm invited, essentially as a stranger, into one's home. She made us some tea and we sat in her living room with her dog, Dexter, and chatted pretty casually (notwithstanding the audio recorder). I appreciated the honesty and vulnerability that Sabrina brought to our first conversation. It's obvious she lives the life she encourages her clients to live.

Who are you?

Who am I? (Laughs) Do people often have a hard time answering this question? Can we cheat? Tell me how people begin. Shit! (Laughs) I am a 36ish cisgender, heterosexual female. I am a proud daughter and sister. I have three siblings. I am a dog mamma. I am an auntie. For a living, I am a wilderness therapist and also an adjunct instructor. I have lived in Bend about four years, moved from Portland for a job and also an internship at OSU-Cascades Research Center for a PhD that I finished. I am the daughter of a Syrian immigrant, which has become more relevant for some people. It's been relevant for me my whole life, but for others it's become more relevant. I'm someone that really loves the outdoors and loves holistic health. I think that to live well there needs to be attention to physical health, mental health, spiritual health, connection to nature, that kind of stuff. I'm a pretty active person, which is one of the reasons I live in Bend. I love all the outdoor adventures Bend has to offer. So that's a part of who I am - someone that loves to get out there and play. Maybe I'm also an artist? I paint and I dance and I sing and create. That's what I got so far. That's a hard question.

What brought you to Bend?

I came from Portland. I lived in Portland about seven years. Before that, Seattle. What brought me to Bend was two opportunities. One was to work for the company I currently work for, Evoke, which is a wilderness therapy program. Right around the same time, another opportunity to do my internship at OSU that I needed to do for my PhD. I also really wanted to get out of the grey Portland area. I love Portland in so many ways, but the weather definitely affected me. And I just couldn't do it anymore. I went to all these great lengths to sort of overcome the gloom that I felt (laughs). I got this sunlamp and put it in my bathroom and then I got another sunlamp and I put it next to my desk. Every chance I had, I was next to these sunlamps that were supposed to help with seasonal affect problems. I was also on Saint John's Wort and I was exercising more. And then finally I decided that perhaps the geographical location wasn't the best fit for me and my spirit or whatever. I had been looking at Bend and when the two different opportunities came up, I thought, This is a sign. So, that's what brought me here.

What do you like about Bend?

I like that there's over 300 days of sunshine. I like the high desert a lot. I grew up in a similar climate in eastern Washington State. And then my heritage, I think where my dad's lineage comes from in particular, is very desert like. I think I feel at home in a desert setting. But I also love that, although Bend is high desert, within 30 miles in any direction, you can find something beyond the desert. Like the Ochocos National Forest, well maybe not 30 miles. The Cascade Lakes - so I love the access to water because I like to do water activities, water sports - I love swimming and stand up paddle boarding and kayaking and fishing. The climate, the sun, the water. Really the outdoor heaven of it. I love that there's a time of year where you can do a snow adventure, you can do a water adventure, and you can bike. You know the Pole, Pedal, Paddle event that they have. There's a time of year where you can do all three and I love that. I think it's really fun. I also think Bend draws similar people, people that love the outdoors and find value in interacting with it and disconnecting from the front country technology.

How do you contribute to the community?

Being active and getting out there, I do meet people through the outdoor activities that I do. I'm pretty personable. In small ways, I probably contribute to the community just by being someone that is personable with others. I feel strongly about people feeling empowered to use their voices. I think Bend is a bit of a bubble, but at the same time, it's important to continue to reach out to people to see where we agree and disagree. I wish there were more diversity in terms of opinions and even lifestyle. There's just like one kind of person here and that can be limiting. Not one kind, but it's just not as diverse. The different marches that go on, the different community events - I tend to attend the ones that I think are important. It's a really good question - how to contribute to your community. I'm friends with my neighbors! (Laughs) I think that counts. I'm definitely mindful of local companies, local businesses. For instance, my stand up paddle board is made by a local company. Our company does contribute to the community in that we hire people that come and live in Bend that are phenomenal human beings. We definitely draw quality humans that hold the values that Bend represents, which are to get outside as much as possible and not take life too seriously and be kind to each other. Our clients come from all over and they get to have their transformation - or their journey to be well happens in the great outdoors of Bend and there's something to be said for that. It's magical that they get to tap into this location to do their work. They basically live outdoors for eight to ten weeks in our program.

Do you have a favorite activity?

Paddle boarding Cascade Lakes and floating the Deschutes are some of my favorites. Some of the hikes are incredible here. I would say the Lakes are my favorite. Hosmer Lake is my favorite. I get to do what I love for a living. I'm a wilderness therapist, so I have an adolescent girls group. I work with adolescent girls that are struggling. Usually they are struggling to the point where their parents have tried everything and they're still not doing well. Sometimes substance abuse problems, sexual promiscuity, unhealthy relationships with sex as a teenage girl, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, attempts sometimes even. The girls that I work with are typically really artistic, so I feel really lucky. They are the right-brained people. In addition to struggling, they also come in with these incredible artistic talents ranging from being incredible singers to drawing, dancing, poets, writers, those kind of girls. I feel really lucky that I get to get paid to help them tease out who they are and what the struggle is.

What do you wish for the future?

I really hope that the city planners are going to prepare for the population growth before it grows. More of a preventative model. We live in a culture where we are crisis management, crisis intervention focused. We wait for it to get bad and then we do something about it. So I would like to see Bend not wait for it to get bad and instead, expands the roads and maybe, I don't know, build some more bridges or I don't know what the solution is, but prepare for the growth. Housing is a huge problem right now. Affordable housing, affordable rental housing is a big problem. I want to make sure that the city planners are working with developers to try to address that before it becomes worse than it is. That's what I want for Bend's future. I would love for the East Side to be developed as much as the West Side. The cute development, maybe quaint is a better word, restaurants and bars and businesses are all on the West Side. The East Side has some potential. I'd like to see that happen. More community events, too. More diversity would be nice. In all ways.

I have found that it's really hard to meet a partner in life. I moved here without knowing anyone four years ago and I have been without a partner for a long time. I would really like to find a partner in crime. I would love to have children, as well. I don't know if that's going to happen in Bend, to be totally honest. I don't know if it will. There's hope and then there's also this sadness and longing. I think people really take it for granted when they're partnered up. Especially in my line of work, I hold a lot of space for a lot of people. I'm really good at it. I think that at times it's not obvious that there's this loneliness to what I do, as well. Sometimes I feel a little bit like I'm on an island, if that makes sense. I have found in my own research, having lived here for four years, there are far more phenomenal single women living here than not. I think that men should just start moving to Bend. Particularly mid to late 30s, I think there's a big hole here. Like 36ish! Yes! (Laughs) That would make Bend better.

Anything else you want to put on the record?

I will say I chose to wear these particular pants for you coming over and asking me all these questions because a good friend of mine recently got them for me and they're called Phoenix Rising. I was like, What meta communication do I want to give in this? I really value, and I think I have found that in other people here in Bend, this idea of not pretending that life is perfect, but instead honoring your story and your history and your process and rising, like a phoenix from the ashes, from whatever struggles you have in a way that leaves you more empowered and colorful, like the colors of the pants (giggles). You are more beautiful if you can come out of the things that try to hold you down. I think that's reflected in the work I do - that belief - and who I am as a person. We'll add that to the mix - my pant choice. (Laughs)

Sasha Lawless

March 31, 2017

Garret Caster recommended Sasha to me. They work together on the Community Assistance Program. While raising four children, Sasha, among other things, works in the taproom at Humm Kombucha, heads up their donations program, handles their sales in Central Oregon, and is their representative for Bend’s Makers District. When I first wrote to her, she responded by saying, "I don't know that I'm a great candidate." So, she's got humility on her side, too. We had a great time chatting at her house. She's exuberant and passionate and loves to laugh. I'm glad to introduce her to you.

Who are you?

I'm a mom. I'm an active community member. I was involved in activism and I kind of found that the best way for me to be a solution with things is to be involved in community and network. And I'm really good at networking. I know a lot of people. I can get along with a lot of different people. Something that I've seen in Bend is that you have a ton of amazing groups, like over 400 non-profits, but not everyone's on the same page. Talking to each other, finding out what's going on. That's something that I like to do is find out who I can connect and network 'em and that's just a big part of who I am. That's also part of what kind of legacy I want to leave for my children - helping develop the community and make an impact that's positive. I did history and archeology, so I spend a lot of time doing that, too.

Where do you come from? What brought you here?

I grew up in Idaho in a town of a thousand people, super tiny. I moved to Bend about 12 years ago. I loved it over here because of the sunshine. There's no sunshine in the valley. I lived there for a while. Lived in Astoria, lived in Eugene, did the hippy thing for a little bit. I dug coming here, staying downtown and being able to walk to all the festivals. It was a lot smaller then, so it was doable. It's a little bit harder now. And the outdoors. I'm not a skier or anything. I don't like winter, which people give me crap about all the time, but where I grew up in Idaho, it snows all the time. Way more than it usually does here and that's just never been my thing. But I enjoy hiking and I spend a lot of time in the Ochocos and traveling around here. The sun here just makes it everything. There's so much you can do and see. And history-wise, there's still so much preserved here that is accessible. I think that's awesome. And there's still a community feel here. I like that, too. My ex-husband grew up here, so his family was here. I came over to finish college. I was raising four kids and had attended three different colleges and was trying to work and do all of that at the same time. Coming over here to have the family support that could get me to finish. COCC was great and I went to OSU Cascades as of U of O student, so I got my degree from the University of Oregon. It was better to have the support when I had kids. I was working always and a full-time student and... yeah. And the sun! The sun is a big deal! (Laughs)

What do you like about Bend?

I like that there's a vast variety of people here. I mean there's people here from everywhere because they've all settled. They came through hiking or camping or whatever and then decided that this is where they wanted to be. A lot of people are interested in the outdoors, so they spend a lot of time trying to preserve the outdoors. There are a lot of groups here. I dig that. I love the community scene. We have a little music scene. We have all of our fun festivals. The breweries are super fun to be involved with. There's definitely a camaraderie of people. It's small enough that you can still make an impact in the community. I've been involved with a lot of non-profits that have done great things. The Community Assistance Program to me is amazing because it's going to directly impact our citizens. It's not like it's going into some big pool that's going all over the state or whatever. It's going directly into the pockets of the firemen so that they can put a family up for the night or buy a coat or buy a meal. I dig that. I dig that you can make an impact still that's small enough, but it's also big enough that you have the resources, you know, to do it. It's a good thing that we have these folks that come in from everywhere else and these tourists, even if people complain about the tourism. It brings in the music, the festivals, all the fun stuff. The money that empowers us to do stuff in our community and build it and I like that. I like the surrounding area. We have the diversity as far as from other states, but we don't have it on other levels. It's as big as I would get. I'm much more a small-town person. I prefer to be in a tiny, little town. I love Prineville, but right now this is where the work is and this is where my kids are being raised and I think it's a good place. And the people here are great. A lot of people are really actively involved.

How do you contribute to the community?

Networking. I've done a lot of fundraising and volunteering. I ran an activist club on the campus when I was in college here, which the whole goal was to network nonprofits with volunteers from the campus, get students involved, knowing about what was going on. Like Rise Up International and these different groups that were doing stuff and let those students know that this was a great way for them to be involved with the community, work towards their resumes and their scholarships and things like that. Since then, I've done fundraising. I have a lot of friends that are running non-profits. I think my best way is I try to be aware, try to stay on top of it, and just network people. I love talking to people. I love people. And so I'm always interested in what people have going on and what they're passionate about and then finding ways that I can turn that passion into something that's going to help out the rest of the community.

Do you have a favorite memory from here?

We used to have this awesome punk-rock venue called The Horned Hand. It was so much fun (laughs). Those are my best memories because there's a small group of people in town that were always there and hung out and it was like hanging out in your friend's garage. And so we all kind of became friends. That's always a fun memory. My favorite activity is hiking and finding cultural spots. I go out with a buddy that re-documents them and let's the Warm Springs Tribe know if we find new stuff. I think that's super exciting. It's really cool to come across an arrowhead or a pictograph or something that is anywhere between hundreds to thousands of years old and just be in that presence. You know, that energy. It's just awesome. I think that's probably my favorite thing. The Ochocos is my favorite place in this area. It has it's own climate. It's beautiful. Going for drives is when I'm the most calm. I'm not a meditator. I don't like to sit down and have guided meditations and stuff like that. My mom calls me her hillbilly hippy. But I dig going for those drives because that's how I meditate. Like my time out hiking in the woods and going for long drives and listening to Patsy Cline with my kids is my chill time and when I feel focused and calm. I'm not into yoga and stuff. (Laughs) I hang out with these old hippies and these old-timers that can take me and tell me the history of this stuff. It makes you feel a part of the area, you know? When you get to learn about that stuff and the stories. It just gives you a whole different perspective of what's happening now with the growth. It makes you care when you know the stories and the background. It's how you make roots. We don't have roots anymore, right? Since the Industrial Age, we've been moving around and nobody lives in their hometown anymore. We've all been transported all over the place and it's hard. I think we lose a lot of respect for community and our neighbors and people because we feel like we're this new person here. That's where I think encouraging people to learn about the history and set their roots in and appreciate it makes them feel like they're a part of it. It's a big deal.

What do you wish for the future?

In this community, I would love for people to communicate better. And get a lot of groups pulling together for the community. There is that huge income gap of people that are here and that are servers and that are struggling and then you have the bigger money. And you have a lot of need in these other areas and so many little groups trying to do things, but they really need to connect and talk and communicate and make things happen together. It's getting bigger. For me, personally, I would like to move to the Prineville area. I'd love to have land and a little farm that my kids can grow up on and feel that appreciation to their land and being sustainable and being independent. That's my goal is to kind of get them in a smaller area. As much as I think about that all the time, I can also drop my kids off downtown and get a call or a text from every other business owner that I know down there saying, "Oh, I saw the kids and they're be good." What I like about Bend is that it's still small enough that that community is there to look after my kids, knowing that I'm a single mom, and that I'm doing this by myself. They're always offering to help and people are always there and looking after them. That's the same kind of feel that you'd get in a small town that I appreciate. That's cool. I would love for it to stay that way. I don't know if that's possible. I don't think it is possible. It's going to keep growing in. I don't want to see it turn into Tahoe or something where it's so expensive that all of the people who are trying to live here and raise their families and who've been here get pushed out. That's going to be a major bummer. I don't know what the answer to that is. I think maybe people being more involved in the city and planning would be a big deal. If we can just keep that little community feel and make sure that we're supporting the people that created Bend... There are roots of people that came here and created something super special and if it keeps growing too big and things are happening, those people are getting pushed out because they can't afford to live here. I see a lot of that. I see a lot of families I've know have had to move. And that's heartbreaking. They shouldn't have to, it's still their town. I'd like to see it keep that community feel. A lot of that is up to people, too, to make the choice to connect with people. To spend the time walking downtown or driving through the old streets rather than taking the parkway and going over everything and being in such a hurry. Slow back down, connect with someone. Ask them where they're from. Ask them their story. Spend the time. Add another 15 minutes to every time you go to the grocery store or gas station so you can chat with that person that's in the service industry doing that for you. Spend the time to connect with them and to know your neighbor and have that feeling of neighbor and community because that's the only way you're going to keep it. You know?

Do you have thoughts on Bend's growth?

I know specifically a couple, very good friends of mine, they have four kids. They've been here for 10 years or something. I sat at a bar one day and had another friend who is like 4th generation here, tear her apart because she is from California. "How dare you come here? We don't want you here, blah blah blah." My friend was just in tears. They have four kids and three grandkids, you know? They came here because they wanted to raise their family differently than where they were at in California. They loved this area and loved the community. They wanted to give their children the experience that is here. Not everybody's here from Napa Valley or whatever with a bunch of money, trying to just use it as a playground. You can't always judge. You don't know everybody's story. You don't know what they want. Until you ask them! You ask them. And then you can have your feelings. That's, again, where that connection is. Take the time to find out somebody's story and figure out why they wanted to be here. How they want to become involved with it. If you shut the door on them, Screw you, you're from California!, then they're not aiding our community either. They're not going to feel involved. They're not going to feel a part of it. They're not going to want to take care of our area. They're not going to want to make sure we have community services and environmental protection on our areas and stuff like that. There's no point. We can all have our opinions on people traveling, but again, since the Industrial Age, that's what we do. That's what Americans do. That's what everybody does, right, is look for something better. You can spin your wheels on it, but it's not going to help anything. It's going to happen no matter what, so I think it's a lot better if we spend our time connecting with those people, finding out why they're here, having empathy, having compassion. Right? There's your difference, too. The empathy is you're going to feel it, but the compassion is that you're going to offer a solution, too, to making them feel a part of the community. And empowering them to aid the community and to be a solution in the community, to be active in the community. If you don't let them in, then you are just adding to the problems. And to the hostility. And to the shit that's happening that we don't like. Everything that's wrong in the world today is because of lack of connection. We don't take the time anymore to connect with people and relate and have empathy and have compassion. Everybody has to remember that, no matter what, if they want to actually do anything. To fix anything. To be a solution. It is what it is. You can bitch or you can try to make it better. (Laughs)

Anything else for the record?

I wish I could be more involved in stuff. I used to be pretty active in things, but I guess there's always chapters of your life where you go from being the person that's out there on the front lines to the person that's just trying to support everybody. And as a mom right now, I've got a lot of different places that I gotta be and support. It's hard to let go of that. When you're someone who's always been involved, it's hard to say I'm going to step back. But, in the bigger picture, I'm creating a legacy for them because I'm creating community every chance that I get. Maybe it's just helping gather raffle donations or maybe it's passing on somebody's new business to somebody else or introducing two people, at least that's something. I'm proud of that. It makes me feel a little bit better about not being able to be at rallies or be out volunteering my time. My children have respect for this area. They know the history. I'm definitely raising four children that are going to be impactful. Then maybe they'll be involved and they'll say this is something that I want to work on because it was something that my mom supported. There are just so many freaking phenomenal people in this community that have so much going on to help out and to be active. The bulk of Bend isn't that selfishness that people like to take onto it as the playground. The people that are real community members here have huge hearts and it doesn't take a lot for them to make stuff happen that's positive.

Garret Caster

March 24, 2017

I recently created an Instagram account (@acommunitythread) for this project and I noticed that @bendfirefighters was paying attention to my posts. In my day-to-day, I don't have many interactions with fire fighters, so I saw this as a good opportunity to get to know one. I reached out via Instagram and it was Garret on the other end. We met at a coffee shop and chatted for a couple of hours and then made an appointment to meet at the fire station for the interview and photos. Garret left a strong impression on me. He's a super good guy and one we should all feel lucky to have on the helping end of our emergencies.

Who are you?

My name is Garret Caster. I was born in Corvalis, lived most of my upbringing in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Through a number of different ways, I decided to move to Bend. I first came over here when I was in college and then, later in life, after I got established in my career, I was able to take an opportunity to move over here. And now, this is where we are. I'm currently a Firefighter Paramedic for the Bend Fire Department. When I'm not at work, I really enjoy spending time with my wife, Carlee. She does a lot of stuff with horses, so I find myself at the barn a lot, helping out. I mountain bike, I wake surf, river surf, and snowboard, and hike. Those are my outdoor activities. I try to be a good person and try to have as many experiences and laugh as much as I can.

What brought you to Bend?

I don't know how well you know the Willamette Valley, but it rains a lot and it's gray and foggy and, for whatever reason, that just bums me out. It wasn't until I was in college that I really came over here. On a whim, I just decided to learn to snowboard. I rented a board and drove over here and it was beautiful. The air smelled clean, you have Juniper, it just smells different. People were super nice. I got over here in the evening and it had some alpenglow and it was just gorgeous. I was struck by the beauty of the area. And the people were just incredibly nice. I was kind of hooked right out of the gate. It's sunny, it's clean, it's fresh. You have all these amazing views right in your backyard. That was the first little bit of my exposure over here. I spent the next day snowboarding. Some friends we had just met let us crash on their floor and my buddy, Nick, and I walked around downtown. The city was lit in a cool way in the trees. It was kind of a winter wonderland. All of that blew my mind and made me want to live here one day. I finished up college and I knew I wanted to go to paramedic school and become a fireman. I had a little bit of a gap between when I could actually get into paramedic school and when I finished my Bachelor's degree, so I applied for a job in Sisters, Oregon. I took a job and moved there. That was my first experience discovering the community and culture of Central Oregon. And this was it for me. People are really friendly, there are a lot of people that have similar values. They value our natural resources. All the activities here. The safety of the community, the cleanliness of the community, the sustainability of the community. All of those things kind of permeated the culture here. We were hooked. Eventually, my now wife and I moved together. I was lucky enough, timing-wise, that the fire department here was hiring. I did well enough on the test - got through that. And, yeah, haven't looked back since.

What do you like about Bend?

I like so many things about this town. I like that it's sunny. I like the way that after it rains, it smells really good and also dries up really fast and it's sunny again! I like that we have seasons. And the profound natural beauty that's in your face all the time. But beyond that, there's a really really good local business scene here. Other businesses support each other. In that, you get really cool, high-quality products, whether it's food, entertainment, drinks, local shops. I really like that aspect. There's a decent music scene. And the community keeps investing in itself. I look at the Whitewater Park as a good example of that. That's an expensive project. The community decided that was worth it. The same with the ice skating Pavilion. Stuff like that. The community's like, "How can we make Bend a better place? How can we make Bend more desirable and fit, healthy, active?" There are a lot of like-minded people here and they want to contribute to the quality of life. If I had to whittle it down, the climate is awesome here. The community is friendly and caring. And there's a lot of outdoor activity. And burritos. (Laughs)

How do you contribute to the community?

I work for a public service agency, the fire department. But in that, I care immensely about the people in this community and I've sworn to protect them with the oath I took. Through my line of work, I contribute by answering the call of people's emergencies and trying to help people on a really bad day. In some way I think that if I'm excellent at my job and I can help soften the blow of some kind of tragedy or someone's really bad day where they're in a vulnerable state, then I'm contributing to the life experience people get here in my community. With that, I signed up. If someone's life is threatened, I'm willing to trade mine for theirs. I'm pretty committed to what I do, the place I live, and the people that I serve. Beyond that, we try to be outgoing. My wife and I go out to a lot of different restaurants. Bend has a very vibrant culture and social atmosphere. People come to town and want to meet up, it's kind of second nature to go down to The Lot or down to the park or downtown to walk around. In that, you are having experiences and meeting new people. I don't know if it's an old-timey kind of thing, I feel like in modern day we lose kind of that small-town Hey, how are ya? Tell me about where you're from! kind of thing. If you are outgoing and friendly to people, it's a hallmark of a good community. We contribute by going out and being a part of the social life in the city.

Through my work at the fire department, I got involved with a non-profit called the Community Assistance Program. When we show up to calls, a lot of times we identify other crises that people are experiencing. We show up to someone's call, maybe it's a medical emergency, and we look around the house and see that there are no groceries or they have no basic necessities. It was started by an engineer who worked here and retired not too long ago and got really frustrated showing up to calls and not being able to make that little extra difference. We got you. We're going to go back to the store and provide them with groceries or whatever they need. Or the older couple that can't keep their heat on because they're on a fixed income - we'll pay their month's utility bill. Stuff like that. For a long time it worked. It was sustained by small donations and private donations. Eventually, when he retired, that need was still there, but the effort and energy to keep it running wasn't. When I heard about it, I was pretty excited about it. I've experienced a lot of those situations where I wish I could do something else. A lot of times you can, but it's hard reaching in your pocket and pulling out your money every time it happens because it happens a lot. I started getting into this non-profit and trying to raise money for it and the community was really supportive of it. There's no overhead because we are already out doing our job. It's 100% local and you know it impacts the people in your own community. It's a pretty easy sell. We've experienced quite a bit of success funding that again. I've really been pouring myself into that because there's always going to be people that struggle to thrive and are either living paycheck to paycheck or on the streets or tucked away somewhere in society that can't get by and lack those basic items to make day-to-day life doable. We'd like to grow it to the point where we're doing quarterly projects, bigger projects for families. Instead of a hundred dollars worth of stuff or a couple hundred bucks, it's a thousand dollars or a couple thousand dollars. That's the next goal. Then after that it's to fund a scholarship for people who have a financial need or hardship that also want to get into some public service career in some capacity, whether it's being a firefighter, paramedic, police officer, school teacher, whatever. We'd like to see as much help for that out there as possible.

Do you have a favorite memory from here?

Some of the best times I've had are just walking through downtown with my wife, enjoying a nice night with zero pressure, no commitments, as care-free as we could. Going from spot to spot, getting a little food, getting a little drink. Early fall or early summer, where it's not hot, it's not cold, and it's beautiful outside and you have that sunset painting the town orange - that's among my favorites. Hiking or snowboarding, when you're on the top of a mountain and you're just like, "This is awesome!" When they made the word radical, this is what I imagine. I've got a lot of really good memories at work. Rolling the streets at two a.m., no one else around except cops, firefighters, and street sweepers. It's pretty cool to see the other side of a city where it's just vacant. The Freedom Ride (4th of July) is always really interesting. It's the best people-watching you'll ever experience in this city.

What do you wish for the future?

I want to see Bend grow in a way that is more sustainable for the economy, more sustainable for working class people, and I'd like to see it grow inward and upward a little bit to kind of prevent some of the sprawl. I'd like to see the city develop in a way where you don't have to commute all over town and they have kind of like boroughs. I'd like to see the city grow upwards. Some people really really don't want to see the skyscape change, but this city is awesome and it's going to keep growing. Some people get really discouraged about people coming from other cities and especially California. It's not going to stop, you might as well embrace it and just make room. I'd like to see things grow in a way that's inclusive, sustainable, and hopefully make it more accessible to regular folk like me. Moving here was terrifying. It's an expensive place to live. Housing is crazy expensive. I hope it grows in the way a lot of our trail systems and parks have, where we're just getting more and more really neat stuff that's unique to Bend. And personally, I'd like to see myself continue to grow in my department. Hopefully become more and more involved in the community. I don't know if that will ever lead to any kind of city government kind of stuff. I'd like to live closer to the mountains maybe. Or somewhere with a little more land. I'd really like to nerd out and have a little, super sustainable hobby farm with some solar panels and, knowing my wife, probably some rescue animals. Grow some hops. I'd like to become some kind of fixture in the community or the fire department and continue to enjoy Bend as home base. I'd like to travel and stuff, but I want to do that knowing that when I come back, I'm coming back to Bend, Oregon, which is pretty sweet.

Do you have thoughts regarding Bend's growth?

I guess people are just inherently uncomfortable with change, but all I've known my whole life is I'm either learning something or failing at something or trying something new until a point where it's just like I enjoy change. I enjoy new stuff. For a lot of people, it's outside their bubble, their comfort bubble. I think people see people coming from California as a threat to what Bend is like or what it was like and that's just not the nature of the world. They're making more people (sighs), it's going to continue to grow. If you really have a problem with anything, it's over-population. Bend's going to continue to grow - it's an awesome place - all you can do is keep it awesome by being nice to people. The population's growing, people want to live somewhere cool. The economy's good, so people can move. It's not like it's a secret. Visit Bend is working. We have such an abundance of things people like to travel and go do. Whether it's outdoor activities or food or an insane amount of breweries. It's not going to stop. You might as well just support your... look inwards and try and make your community your community. Make it a personable place. Make it a friendly place and safe place. People like to complain because it's really easy. It's a lot harder to have a really good attitude about stuff. I experience that in my job. You can see it in the community. It's an easy thing to complain about and also bond with someone. But at the same time, let's keep it growing. More money, more people, more passion, and power in the masses to make this place super, super cool. I don't have a problem with it. If it was a bunch of people that sucked, you know, life drains, it would be a different case. But there's a lot of wildly successful people that come here to live here. Whether they're working for themselves or remote for another business, but they saw something in this place and were passionate enough to uproot themselves and move here. So, I'm all for it.

Greg Delgado

March 19, 2017

A friend very wisely recommended that I reach out to Greg. He was quick to respond and enthusiastic to participate and a few days later I found my way to his office. Greg's heart is very big and his passion is almost palpable. He works very hard and donates the majority of his time to the social justice issues that are prevalent across the nation and right here in Bend. The Social Justice Center, where Greg spends much of his time, is bursting at the seams as the host to some 70 different organizations that meet around the well-loved conference room table pictured above. I'm not sure where he found the time, but he also ran for State Senate, losing by a very small margin when you compare the financial resources of each of the candidates.

Who are you?

My name is Greg Delgado. I'm a native of Southern Arizona. My ancestors were Native Americans - Yaqui and Apache and Latino from the Southern Arizona Region before it was the United States, before it was Mexico. I'm very proud to call myself an American of the Southwest and of America, the whole continent. I moved to Oregon about 10 years ago via Estes Park, Colorado. I just found this place to be a very loving, caring community, and I just really embraced it. I was working in food and beverage - did that for about 25 years - and one day in the restaurant somebody said, "If I ever open a restaurant, I'll hire all Mexicans 'cause I can pay them less and they work harder." And that was my "Oh, heck no!" moment. We need to make that dialogue change. To me it was about how we in America can look at people, the color of their skin, and have that dialogue and be okay. The entire crew on the front line that I trained was okay with that conversation and I wasn't. I was actually mopping the floors in the dining room and cleaning the bathrooms to make the extra money and training folks for that kitchen because I had more experience. I felt that, "No this is not who we are as a community and this is not who I am." From there I went to a job in social justice work with a nonprofit called Jobs With Justice. I was a community organizer with them - organizing Latinos around labor issues. That morphed into a lot more community organizing around immigration issues, around the driver card issue, working with people like the United Farm Workers, and the governor's office, doing this type of work. Right now I work part-time for Discover Your Forest, doing outreach with the Latino community. And the full-time work that I do is all non-profit and not paid. I'm on various boards and do a lot of volunteer work in the community around racial justice and social justice issues.

What brought you to Bend?

I just had to get out of Arizona. I found it very oppressive and didn't see a future for myself there. My family's there and I love them all to death, but I just felt I needed my life and my own direction. I moved to Estes Park, Colorado, and had only been there about three years, working in food and beverage, and somebody said they were going to move here to start a business and they invited me to join them and they offered me some work here. But when we got here, that didn't happen. I just found that people here were so friendly and so embracing and said, "You know what? That energy makes me want to stay." So I did stay and it's been a really good community to live in. I live right here downtown and I love being local and I loving having that feeling of community. It's really important to me. I didn't have that growing up in rural Southern Arizona. It was a lot more hostile. It wasn't that diverse and it was very rural and very sparse. The sense of having community is what made me stay.

What do you like about Bend?

The climate, the lifestyle, all of that is wonderful. It's a growing community. One of the similarities I see right now is with this immigration issue that I'm dealing with. Watching that happen back in the '70s and '80s in my community and the immigration of retired people from the Bible Belt into the Southwest and what that took on and how it morphed into something pretty chaotic - I remember that vividly and that's part of the reason I do the work I do now. I don't want to see that happen again. I don't want it to turn into this desert of resort/retirement communities of fear and agitation and dehumanizing the locals and natives that live on the land. That's what happened in Arizona and it created a space where if you didn't work on a golf course or a country club, there weren't any jobs. We should have a little more opportunity than that. I just didn't like that. Minimum wage is still under eight bucks and hour in Arizona. Things change slowly there, so I just had to get out of there.

How do you contribute to the community?

I am on the boards with Latino and LGBTQ organizations, working with worker rights and all sorts of different social justice things. I helped build the Social Justice Center. I am the chair of Central Oregon Jobs With Justice, who kind of leads the work here. Recently we've identified about 70 different groups that we are working and networking together to try to build a more inclusive community. Inclusive socially, and politically, and economically. We are looking at all the aspects of social justice and how to connect those to one another and connect the work we are doing in that way.

Do you have a favorite memory from here?

I am very proud of my favorite memory. We did an action about immigration at Congressman Greg Walden's office. I was arrested in his office, so that was really cool. I was proud I got arrested. As a kid, I was a trouble-maker and had trouble with the law, but this time it was for a good cause, so I'm really excited about that. To turn that whole history around was a lot of fun. Me and several other people asked to speak with him about immigration and they refused to listen to us, so we just sat there until the cops took us away. We've done several actions against Congressman Walden because he doesn't listen to us as a community, especially the minority community. We also did a march that was really touching. We did a peregrinación, (Spanish for a walk vigil) carrying a banner of La Virgen de Guadalupe and wearing butterfly t-shirts that said MIGRANT, from Madras (40 miles away) to Bend just to raise awareness and to tell people that this issue doesn't end. I'm really touched that the community embraces us. We have a Latino community that is in so much fear and to have a community that embraces us and supports us and makes us part of this community makes this community very endearing and very special to me. I'm proud of that.

What do you wish for the future?

What I wish for my future is to someday own my own home or business or both here in town. As a community, I wish that we could work harder to make opportunity equal for everybody. I know the stats. We know that 80% of the Latinos in this community are making under $30,000 a year. That's a challenge. One of the new people that started volunteering with me goes, I'm one of those Californian people that just moved here. I thought that was kind of cool that he gets that there's that tension there, but he approached it in a very common sense way and identified with it. I said, Come on board. You should join us! We know that that dialogue is there. We are a nation of immigrants. How can we say no to people? How can we say no to our fellow neighbors? They say no to people who come from Mexico or California or Maine. Come on. Where do we draw that line? And why should we draw those lines? Why don't we be more embracing? And why don't we build a community that's more embracing of everybody? We should start looking at how to fix those things and not accuse the victims. Opportunity makes people move. We have a right to migrate. That whole issue is a very nativist issue and I don't like the way that sounds. I don't like the way it sounds that we are protecting what is ours because I think we have to look at the bigger picture. It's just disrespecting humans and human migration. We as humans have all migrated at one point. It's just natural.

This is a great town to live in. A lot of warm souls, good people here. It's not as diverse as we like, but the community itself is intellectually diverse. I like the fact that there's a warm, healthy lifestyle. Maybe a mechanism of coping instead of dealing with the homelessness issue or the unemployment issue is to go hiking and biking or go drink beers. There's a very social aspect to this community, but there's also this part that we need to hold up and identify. It's real easy to get on your bike and forget about it. People do that here. They forget about things real easy. It's a great coping mechanism, but there has to be more balance. We have to try harder to build a better community.

How do we put brick and mortar around social justice in our communities to put that balance there? It has so long been a one-sided issue in our communities. It's time to turn that around and make it reflect us as America. Because the truth is America is fast becoming communities of color. We are fighting that. We are fighting how those systems do not represent them. We are still talking about race these days. It shouldn't be about race. It should be about fixing these things. Let's look at the systems that are creating these challenges for communities of color, that are creating inopportunity for low-income peoples. What are we doing to keep local farms active and lively, local businesses active and lively and keep that diversity of community? We're not. We're pushing it away. That's part of this problem, being unwilling to change and unwilling to move with the times. I am proud of the fact that so many people are stepping up to say this is not who we want to be. That's important. It's not about protecting our privileges. I think it's more about being open and diverse in the conversations around building a better community and being inclusive of everybody. We've got to stop doing that hate stuff.

Tiahna Skye

March 13, 2017

I met Tiahna while photographing at an event not long ago. I can't say exactly what it was that drew me to her, but she actually has a good word for it - resonance. There was a resonance there. She accepted my invitation and we put something on the calendar. I met her at her home and had a very warm and calm conversation. She has a very soothing voice and a relaxing and safe energy. And loads of nuggets of wisdom. And a very friendly cat named Shovel.

Who are you?

I'm Tiahna. I am a human. A citizen. I'm someone who lives passionately and curiously and deeply. That's who I am.

Where do you come from and what brought you to Bend?

I most recently came from California. I was actually born on the East Coast. I came to Bend - you could say impulse or instinct - somewhere in between. I'd had a big kerfuffle with a company I'd been working with for 10 years. And I had a friend who had moved here. I asked if I could come visit for a couple of days to clear my head and think about how I wanted to respond to the situation. I came up and woke up the next morning and decided to quit and move here (laughs). My friend is a planner and was pretty surprised and asked if I was sure, if I didn't want to think about it. It just was time. I threw it all up in the air and landed here.

What do you like about Bend?

There's lots I love about Bend. The beauty. The lifestyle. The rhythm here suits me really well. I feel like people are real and in their bodies and, coming from the Bay Area, it's so different how people inhabit their bodies. And there's just like this comfort - physical comfort - here. People are happy. People seem content with their lives. There isn't that constant churning and scratching to keep up with the Joneses. I like that a lot. I've discovered kayaking, which to me is kind of like a direct path to Heaven. Kayaking in Hosmer Lake, I could die now. It is one of the most beautiful places on the Earth. Another favorite of mine - I'm a swimmer - and Lucky Lake in the summer time is, I don't know if I should be saying this publicly because there is never anybody there - I have the whole like to myself, it's so beautiful. And it's warm, it's not a cold lake.

How do you contribute to the community?

I'm redefining myself here. I am a life coach. I have a coaching practice. I actually work with people all over the world because most of it's done by phone. That's sort of my doing-ness here. I believe in contribution. I'm not contributing like on a volunteer basis or in those kind of obvious ways right now. I am contributing in living with integrity. And living with kindness. And being part of what I love about people here and expressing my own contentment and happiness and positivity.

What do you wish for the future?

I think of growth as sometimes we inhale and sometimes we exhale and Bend is clearly on an inhale. My wish for the community would be to be soft in that expansion. And really open to it, rather than create resistance to it. And I'd like for us as a community to really look at not whether or not growth is going to happen, because it is happening, but how we want to embrace that and be with it. And how we want to protect the beauty and the lifestyle here. And the flavor that's Bend. That's what I want for Bend. For me, world peace (laughs), physical comfort. I'm a pretty content person. I enjoy my life a lot. And when I don't, I unravel that until I do.

Change is inevitable and we all have different relationships to it. I try and go with the flow, at the risk of sounding totally esoteric. I have one more wish for Bend, though - just occasionally less beer and gear talk! It's great, but occasionally something a little deeper.

Anything else you want to add?

I want to show up really big in supporting love and kindness on this planet and community. So anybody who wants to use me in that way is welcome to.