It was Friday night at the new Ridgeview High School in Redmond and the excited crowd watched the football team overwhelm the opposing team in their first game. The weather was perfect for the game and a “blue” moon was emerging.

It would have been even better had the crowd of fans, noise and congestion from the traffic been located in a more urban setting. Unfortunately, Ridgeview was constructed along the edge of a rural environment. Wheel lines irrigate green pastures within a quarter of a mile of the school. Roads have been widened and sidewalks constructed in anticipation of the traffic that will be generated by the school.

Kerry and Deborah Downs have a nice little spread out in Powell Butte, growing 80 acres of hay. Kerry Downs says the farm grosses about $20,000 a year.

But Downs, who pitches stocks in Bend when he’s not wearing overalls and pitching hay down on the farm, would like to make more. He wants permission from Deschutes County to host as many as six weddings a year in his barn, for about $2,000 per.

It won’t be the first time Downs has tried that route for making a bit of cash on the side. County staff have been working with Downs for several years to bring them into compliance with the county and state land use laws that prohibit mass gatherings on land that has been zoned for exclusively for farming.

Efforts to stop plans to "frack" (i.e. hydraulically fracture) the Newberry Volcano have hit a critical juncture. The help of every concerned citizen is needed now. An Appeal of the BLM’s decision to permit AltaRock Energy, LLC to proceed with a "demonstration" of "new" technology in an "exploratory" project has been filed, but we are not lawyers, so it may not work. There are two remaining permits needed before their plans can be implemented: one to allow the use of the water for this reason, and one to allow the use of the water in this location. The persons responsible for the decisions to issue these permits, or not, welcome public comment at this time.

Members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club have been convicted of offenses including meth trafficking, firearms violations, robbery, assault and murder. The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is described as an organized crime syndicate by the US Department of Justice; the list of its criminal activities is so extensive that it rates its own entry in Wikipedia.

The two clubs have a history of bad blood – literally. In 2002 they had a little disagreement in a Nevada casino that resulted in one Mongol being stabbed to death and two Hells Angels being shot to death.