They say a man is known by the company he keeps. If that’s true, some of the folks that state legislature candidate Jason Conger hangs with might say something troubling about him.

Back in January, a Bend group called Prepare the Way held a “Cities Wide [sic] Prayer Meeting” to support the Republican Conger’s campaign for Democrat Judy Steigler’s House seat.

“We are asking that you share about this gathering with your pastors and Christian leaders,” an announcement of the event on Prepare the Way’s website said. “Help spread the word so we can gather as a City church, letting go of denominationalism, standing together to support a Godly man willing to represent God in a very challenging hour in government.”

Toward the end, the announcement got kind of scary. Introducing a quote from Archie P. Jones, it said: “We must not stand idly by while the enemy takes what is rightfully ours.  Christians have DOMINION on this earth by the blood of the Lamb!” (Capitals in original.)

A little explanation of who Archie P. Jones is and what “Dominionism” means is in order here.

“Dominionism” is a doctrine embraced by many Christian fundamentalists that essentially says Christians have a divinely ordained right – indeed, a duty – to rule the Earth. According to the ReligiousTolerance.org website, Dominionists think the verse in Genesis saying man shall rule over all the creatures on Earth “commands Christians to bring all governments, societies, and cultures worldwide under the rule of the Word of the Judeo-Christian God as they interpret it to be.”

Archie P. Jones is a prominent Dominionist author and scholar. In a 1980 essay entitled “Civil Government: The Neglected Ministry” he wrote that the legitimate role of government is “to enforce God’s law” and that “the ruler, in his pastoring, teaching function, must enforce God's laws, God's moral system and moral teaching.”

(If you’re in any doubt as to which end of the political spectrum Jones believes to be on God’s side, it might help to know that he co-authored a book titled “Born to Lie: From the Birth Certificate to Health Care” that, among other things, tries to revive the discredited smear that Barack Obama isn’t a native-born American citizen.)

When I asked Jason Conger if he agreed with the Dominionist doctrine, he replied: “I have to be honest and tell you I don’t even know what a Dominionist is.” After I gave a brief explanation, he said that “any kind of imposition of a state religion I certainly don’t believe in. I’m a believer in the Constitution and I completely respect the provisions dealing with the establishment of religion.”

Conger explained that the January prayer meeting came about because Stephen Williams, the founder of Prepare the Way, and his wife are “very dear friends of ours.” Stephen Williams formerly was a teacher in Cupertino, CA and became something of a right-wing media celebrity in 2004 when he tangled with the school district over bringing religion into the classroom. He also ran unsuccessfully for the Bend-LaPine School Board in 2007.

Conger says he supports the Constitution, and I have no reason to doubt him. His campaign website doesn’t present any wacky ideas – in fact, it’s pretty bland. And he belongs to Trinity Lutheran Church, which is hardly out there on the lunatic fringe.

But his closeness to Williams and his group makes me wonder where he’d stand if pushed hard on issues such as civil unions for homosexuals, prayer in the schools, abortion rights and Oregon’s Death With Dignity law. Hopefully that will become clearer between now and November.

Editor's note: Frequent Source contributor Bob Woodward has been on the road for several weeks travelling and vacationing in California. Expect to see new posts to his blog by next week. In the meantime, Woody filed this dispatch from Palm Springs where he is gathering sunshine and a pleasant cocktail buzz to share with Central Oregonians.

Ten years ago my wife and I headed south to escape the dregs of winter that had spilled over into March. Starting in San Diego, we decided to wander the Southern California desert. In doing so, we discovered Joshua Tree. Not the small town by that name but the National Park.

The serenity of the place with its spectacular jumbles of impressive granite boulders and ancient Joshua Trees was amazing. We wanted to settled in the Park for weeks but had to settle for a short stay there doing some hiking and bouldering.

There were a few other boulderers, climbers and hikers in the Park but walk fifty yards distance from them and you were on your own.

It was mid-March and it was 65 degrees and sunny. We were in t-shirts; the Californians were in down sweaters

I had such fond memories of this short sojourn to J-Tree that I leapt at a chance to spend some time with friends there at the end of February last year.

Again the weather was in the mid-sixties with a light breeze and under azure blue skies. We climbed, we bouldered, and we hiked. It was a wonderful day topped off by a dinner at a one time local biker bar turned natural foods restaurant on the way back to Palm Springs.

That day fueled a desire to get back to J-Tree this March. We did, arriving on a Friday afternoon expecting to be ahead of any crowds and able to easily secure a campsite.

Wrong. Every campsite was filled, make that packed with tents and camping gear. It was like a cramped camping suburb had sprung up among the rocks of J-Tree.

After a night in a motel in nearby Twenty Nine Palms we headed back to the Park and started off on hike up Mount Ryan. The trail climbs 1,000 feet over 1.5 miles and is somewhat of a grunt.

We met one hiker coming down the trail and were joined at the summit by a young couple.  It was cool on the wind-whipped summit but the 360-degree view out over the vast expanse of the Park was spectacular especially since Mount San Jacinto to the west and the other desert mountain ranges were blanketed with snow.

The couple joining us on the summit turned out to be from Boulder, Colorado and on a similar get-away-from-the-cold-at-home expedition. They’d been able to camp in the Park and weren’t too happy about the experience.

“It was like living in an outdoor tenement last night,” said the young woman. “The noise and the partying didn’t stop until well after two a.m. and then people started getting ready to climb at 6.”

Were they staying on and climbing as they told us they’d originally planned to?

“No,” replied the male, “we’re going into Palm Springs and do some hiking in the canyons.”

And so did we. And the surprise part is how much good, and interesting hiking there is in Palm Springs and environs. In fact, according to a popular local guidebook, there are 140 hikes in the Palm Springs area alone.

And despite what many people think about Palm Springs, the town is a far cry from the toned gated golf communities that stretch to the south. Palm Springs has soul and if you stay near the heart of town, you can be on a hiking trail in minutes.

And if you have a car, you can be at dozens of hiking trail opportunities in about the same time.

My wife hiked with a group from the RV park—no we don’t own one, but camp in our mini-van—that we stay at in the heart of old Palm Springs. It’s an amazing place with roadrunners and hummingbirds as frequent guests at our allotted space and coyotes serenading us to sleep.

Early one morning on my mountain bike heading to a trailhead, I ran into Mr. Coyote loping through a neighborhood apparently on his way back to his daytime hiding place. He looked at me for a split second and then kept to his appointed course.

While I tried to find mountain bike opportunities my wife hiked east of Palm Springs through a lush oasis and then onto a prominent ridge before descending through another oasis. I joined her for a hike in yet another lush oasis in one of the Indian Canyons just south of town. Here vast groves of palms grow along the banks of streams fed by snows high on the peaks above.

The streams tumble over gigantic granite boulders and there’s this sense of being in an air-conditioned haven while all outside of the oasis is boiling in the sun.

While the hiking proved good, the mountain biking isn’t. To get to the local trail system involves a 1,000-foot climb in just over a mile. It’s a lung buster climb and once you get to the trails they’re enjoyable, albeit mostly technical, but totally exposed to the blazing sun.

Luckily I was able to find a locals-only type trail 15 minutes from the RV park. The trail, cut in along a dry wash by years of hikers and runners, is a skill builder demanding all your attention and technical skills. A loop takes twenty minutes and feels like it takes an hour.

Arriving back at the RV park one evening after a ride on the wash trail, I met three young Austrians who had moved into the space next to mine. They, as it turned out, were on their way to J-Tree to climb.

As we talked, I gave them the heads up on the crowds, the camping, and the competition for good routes.

“It’s always the same,” offered one of the Austrians, “a climbing area gets written up in all the U.S. climbing magazines and then in the European climbing magazines and then the hordes come. It’s too bad, but ten years from now, the climbing mobs will have moved on to something new.”

Or maybe something old like Palm Springs, which people are just beginning to look on as a hikers’ paradise—and so far not a very trendy one.

After selling out the Domino Room in October for a show that featured the Bay Area band's front-to-back Americana recreation of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Poor Man’s Whiskey is returning to Bend on Saturday (3/13) for another show at the same venue.

This time around, PMW is playing a show featuring its own bluegrass-meets-classic-arena-rock (yes, this is possible) numbers and will almost certainly draw a sizable crowd of their hardcore Bend fans. This is a good chance to see a band that’s on the rise as of late with opening slots for Del McCoury and a five-night stand at the Byron Bay Blues Fest, one of Australia’s biggest music events.

So catch them now – before they go down under and get bigger than Men at Work.

Doors at 8pm. $12.50. 21 and up.

One of our Picks of the Week in the last print edition was sending you in the direction of the Domino Room tonight where Bend's community radio station, KPOV (106.7FM), is screening the documentary Playing For Change.

The film is an uplifting look into the global unifying powers of music and follows a crew that travels the world recording music with players from different cultures by way of a traveling recording studio. The result are numbers that include musicians from various continents, like the version of Bob Marley's "One Love" you can see below.

The film screens twice: 6:30pm and 8:30pm. $6/GA. $5/KPOV members. All ages. And yes, if you were wondering, beer and wine will be available.

The laws of probability allow even a blind hen to occasionally find a kernel, and the right-wing Cascade Policy Institute to occasionally produce a valuable piece of research.

The institute has come out with a study titled “Oregon’s High School Dropouts: Examining the Economic and Social Costs” that lays out some startling and disturbing facts about the heavy toll the state pays because as many as one-third of its high school seniors fail to graduate.

Among other things, the study found that:

• The unemployment rate of high school dropouts in Oregon is roughly twice that of high school graduates.
• On average, dropouts earn $10,000 less per year than high school graduates and far less than college graduates. Their lower earning power translates into about $173 million in lost state income tax revenue per year.
• More than 40% of high school dropouts receive Medicaid benefits, costing the state another $200 million a year.
• High school dropouts are twice as likely to be incarcerated as graduates. If the high school graduation rate was 100% the state’s prison population could be cut in half.

The study was authored by Emily House and released jointly by Cascade Policy Institute and the Foundation for Educational Choice, an organization originally established in 1996 by conservative economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose “to pro­mote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America.”

The report itself makes no specific suggestions for lowering the dropout rate, though considering the ideology of its sponsors it’s pretty easy to guess that if it did make any they’d involve “school choice” – i.e., vouchers.

But you don’t have to agree with the prescription to be alarmed by the diagnosis – and to understand that Oregon urgently needs to come up with a cure.

A whitewater park in Bend may still be a few years out, but that isn't stopping paddling enthusiasts from celebrating their sport this month. Paddlers announced this week that they are preparing to host the second annual Riverhouse Run slalom championships on Sunday, March 28. The contest begins at 10 a..m outside its namesake venue on the Deschutes in Bend and is expected to draw competitors from around Oregon and Washington.

"The Riverhouse is such an amazing venue to have a race like this because spectators can watch the paddlers up close," said Bert Hinkley, who, along with Alder Creek Kayak owner Geoff Frank, helped to revive the Riverhouse Rendezvous after a prolonged absence.

The one-day race is part of the Northwest Cup slalom series,  a free race competition which is sponsored by the NW Whitewater Racers For more information on the race, contact Geoff, at geoff@aldercreek.com , or Bert at bert@webskis.com.

On the subject of local whitewater, here are some great images from the Middle Deschutes that were recently posted on Yahoo's bendpaddler list serve.

In January, Source staffer Anne Pick wrote a feature story about the CSPAN StudentCam contest, which put cameras in the hands of local students and asked them to put together a video that dealt with pressing national issues.

Several area students submitted videos and now the winners have been announced. One of the third place winners  in the middle school category was Aleczander Reese, an eighth grader at High Desert Middle School. His short film, "What You See and What You Don't: A Neighborhood in Peril," tells of his experiences and those of many Central Oregonians in the ongoing recession. He talks about how foreclosures and unemployment has changed his neighborhood. But rather than read about it, watch the video below. OR you can see it on CSPAN on Friday, April 9.

Another group from Summit High School consisting of Chelsey Hice, Savanna Jones and Emily Strome received an honorable mention for their vide entitled, "Gender Wage Gap: A Thing of the Past?"

The scramble to succeed Ben Westlund as state treasurer is on, with four candidates entered in the competition by Tuesday’s filing deadline.

Bend’s Chris Telfer announced her interest almost as soon as the news of Westlund’s death broke. Telfer, a Republican state senator and the owner of an accounting firm, said in a press release that “if elected she will use the position to advocate for better fiscal management and financial oversight.”

“As a CPA, my priority is more sound and reasoned fiscal management of our state,” Telfer said. “Oregonians are looking for fiscal leadership right now and my background will ensure the Executive Branch has someone who can read a balance sheet, challenge the status quo mismanagement of taxpayer money, and chart a more sustainable financial course for Oregon.”

On the Democratic side, three people are vying for the nomination: State Sen. Rick Metsger of Welches; Jim Hill, who was state treasurer from 1993 until 2001; and Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler, whom Gov. Ted Kulongoski picked to replace Westlund until a new treasurer can be elected.

Oddly, although Telfer put a lot of emphasis on fiscal management in her announcement, the state treasurer doesn’t really have anything to do with fiscal policy, which involves government taxation and spending decisions.

How much revenue is raised by taxes and how it’s spent are, of course, determined by the governor and the legislature, and sometimes the voters. The treasurer’s office, as described on its website, basically functions as the state’s bookkeeper, keeping track of financial transactions, investments and debts.

It also was kind of strange that Telfer – who described Westlund as “a dear friend of mine” – appeared to be accusing him posthumously of doing a second-rate job by talking about “the status quo mismanagement of taxpayer money.” But let’s be charitable and assume that was just a poor choice of words.

It's been in the works for more than a month now, but the lineup has been finalized for the Bend For Haiti concert to take place at the Tower Theatre on March 19. The show is the culminating effort led by Reed Thomas Lawrence, the local pop rocker who will come out of relative live show dormancy to perform at the gig.

The rest of the lineup includes the poppy Oregon funk and reggae act Rootdown as well as Eugene's David Jacobs-Strain, the blues guitarist and songwriter who has a solid following here in Bend.

Eric Tollefson, fresh back from a quick trip down to LA with his band, will also be on the bill, playing solo. Tickets are $35 for the show and $50 for the show and the after party at the nearby Liberty Theatre.

Also, if you can't make it out to the show, you can still make a donation by visiting the Bend for Haiti website.

Here it is, the next installment of Guess Who's Coming to the Les Schwab Amphitheater?

And in this edition, we're announcing a familiar name to the LSA stage, Mr. Willie Nelson. The Red Headed Stranger last played the LSA in 2007 and is touring this summer in support of his upcoming album, Country Music. This year's show is slated for Friday, September 17.

This is the second country artist to make the LSA schedule thus far, joining legend Merle Haggard, who will play on June 20. But last time around, Nelson - as is his habit (or at least one of his habits) - drew much more than the boot-and-hat crowd, bringing in an eclectic crowd.

Here's an odd moment from Nelson's 2007 show in Bend in which he kisses a fan who braved security to get up to the stage.