Just before 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 13 Laura Deatherage logged on to Facebook and posted a short message on the wall of her boyfriend, Kyle Sonnen.

"i love you more than the world and wish i was in your arms up in heaven, i can't live without you."

Laura said she can't help but believe Kyle heard her message.

"It was just kind of a way to talk to him - that there's this chance that he sees it," she said quietly, maybe still not sure herself what prompted her to leave him a message on the Internet.

At the very least, it was her way to say another goodbye.

Sonnen, 20, and Deatherage, 18, were traveling on the Mt. Baker Highway outside Bellingham, WA., on Feb. 7 when Sonnen attempted to pass another vehicle in a no-passing zone, according to police. Sonnen's 2000 Subaru hatchback slid off the road and hit a tree, killing him almost immediately. Laura suffered several injuries including a broken femur, a broken wrist and a gash on her head that required 22 staples.

A couple of weeks ago on a rainy Tuesday morning, Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury shuffled papers on his desk when his assistant informed him of a discreet caller on the line. It was President Clinton, and this time the phone call wasn't to discuss personal pleasantries. Bradbury worked on Clinton's presidential campaigns in 1991 and 1995, and both of their daughters, Chelsea Clinton and Zoe Bradbury, attended Stanford University together in the late 1990s

The former president was calling Bradbury, one of Oregon's 12 so-called Super Delegates -- there are 796 nationwide -- to persuade him to cast his vote for Hillary rather than Barack Obama

With the election season coming up and candidates beginning to work their ways out of the woodwork, it's hard to say if there's going to be any barn-burning races quite yet. But in the realm of the Bend City Council, there's been some rumblings as past planning commission and budget committee member Don Leonard threw his hat into the ring for the council's Position 4, currently held by Jim Clinton. We chatted it up with Leonard, and here's what he had to say about leadership, affordable housing, and what the public wants from their city councilors.

It's early afternoon on a bluebird Saturday, and the locals and tourists are out in force at the Virginia Meissner Sno-Park off Century Drive. Joseph Rodriguez is just coming off the trails, a pair of skinny skis in his hand.

Towns die for innumerable reasons. Whether changes in transit, the advent of the automobile, railroads or highways rerouted, or natural disasters, floods and fires. Chaos is another cause: Narrows, Oregon, was nearly eaten whole by jackrabbits until a bounty was placed on their ears; early Paisley never quite recovered from a failed payroll robbery that left one dead and the locals shaken. Swallowed by neighboring towns or cursed by events, others cede by choice, communal suicide, with residents agreeing to move on instead of further toil.

Maybe sadder are towns that don't realize they're dead, yet. Youth leaving for better opportunities elsewhere, generations erode until only old-timers sitting on sun-bleached porches remain. More abundant than ghost towns, dying towns receive few tourists; no one wants to view the terminal patient but the wake.

Central Oregon is an inhospitable landscape, making early migrant settlers some of the most stout in American memory. But the arid climate also preserves much of what they left behind - What Remains - on the high desert, hillsides and grasslands. Oregon is speckled with dozens of failed mining and/or forgotten towns, leaving us to wonder why a decrepit barn is so beautiful; have we learned from their mistakes?

Leaving Bend at pre-dawn before a mighty winter storm hits there are tumbleweeds blowing across Highway 97. How cliché - Going on a ghost town tour and Hollywood's symbol of desolation is raking before our headlights. Our goal is to see such places not in spring or summer but winter, when settlers felt the full wrath of Central Oregon. A 100-mile northeastern swoop, weather permitting, we pass the silent Madras stock auction yards at first light.