A2 THE BULLETIN • SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021
The
Bulletin
How to reach us
CIRCULATION
Didn’t receive your paper?
Start or stop subscription?
541-385-5800
PHONE HOURS
6 a.m.-noon Tuesday-Friday
7 a.m.-noon Saturday-Sunday
and holidays
GENERAL
INFORMATION
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
DESCHUTES COUNTY
COVID-19 data for Saturday, March 13:
Deschutes County cases: 6,111 (15 new cases)
Deschutes County deaths: 68 (zero new deaths)
Crook County cases: 786 (zero new cases)
Crook County deaths: 18 (zero new deaths)
Jefferson County cases: 1,990 (zero new cases)
Jefferson County deaths: 30 (zero new deaths)
Oregon cases: 159,392 (365 new cases)
Oregon deaths: 2,322 (3 new deaths)
BULLETIN
GRAPHIC
129 new cases
What is COVID-19? It’s an infection caused by a new coronavirus. Coronavi-
ruses are a group of viruses that can cause a range of symptoms. Some usually
cause mild illness. Some, like this one, can cause more severe symptoms and
can be fatal. Symptoms include fever, coughing and shortness of breath.
130
(Dec. 4)
108 new cases
120
(Jan. 1)
90
new
cases
110
*No data
available on
Jan. 31
due to state
computer
maintenence
(Nov. 27)
7 ways to help limit its spread: 1. Wash hands often with soap and water for
at least 20 seconds. 2. Avoid touching your face. 3. Avoid close contact with
sick people. 4. Stay home. 5. In public, stay 6 feet from others and wear a cloth
face covering or mask. 6. Cover a cough or sneeze with a tissue or cough into
your elbow. 7. Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
100
90
80
50
new
cases
70
60
(Feb. 17)
47 new cases
50
(Nov. 14)
541-382-1811
7-day
average
8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri.
28 new cases
(July 16)
ONLINE
40
31 new cases
(Oct. 31)
30
16 new cases
(Sept. 19)
9 new cases
www.bendbulletin.com
SOURCES: OREGON HEALTH AUTHORITY,
DESCHUTES COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES
New COVID-19 cases per day
20
(May 20)
1st case
10
(March 11)
EMAIL
bulletin@bendbulletin.com
March 2020
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
January 2021
February
March
AFTER HOURS
Newsroom ................................541-383-0348
Circulation ................................541-385-5800
Is there an afterlife?
NEWSROOM EMAIL
Business ........business@bendbulletin.com
City Desk .............news@bendbulletin.com
Features..................................................................
communitylife@bendbulletin.com
Sports ................. sports@bendbulletin.com
NEWSROOM FAX
541-385-5804
OUR ADDRESS
Street .............. 320 SW Upper Terrace Drive
Suite 200
Bend, OR 97702
Mailing ........... P.O. Box 6020
Bend, OR 97708
B
ADMINISTRATION
Publisher
Heidi Wright ..............................541-383-0341
Editor
Gerry O’Brien .............................541-633-2166
DEPARTMENT HEADS
Advertising
Steve Rosen ................................541-383-0370
Circulation/Operations
Jeremy Feldman ......................541-617-7830
Finance
Anthony Georger ....................541-383-0324
Human Resources ................541-383-0340
TALK TO AN EDITOR
City Julie Johnson ...................541-383-0367
Business, Features, GO! Magazine
Jody Lawrence-Turner ............541-383-0308
Editorials Richard Coe ...........541-383-0353
News Tim Doran .......................541-383-0360
Photos .........................................541-383-0366
Sports ..........................................541-383-0359
TALK TO A REPORTER
Bend/Deschutes Government
Brenna Visser .............................541-633-2160
Business
Suzanne Roig ............................541-633-2117
Calendar .....................................541-383-0304
Crook County ..........................541-617-7829
Deschutes County ................541-617-7818
Education
Jackson Hogan ...........................541-617-7854
Fine Arts/Features
David Jasper .................................541-383-0349
General Assignment
Kyle Spurr ...................................541-617-7820
Health
Suzanne Roig ............................541-633-2117
Jefferson County ..................541-617-7829
La Pine ........................................541-383-0367
Music
Brian McElhiney .......................541-617-7814
Public Lands/Environment
Michael Kohn ............................541-617-7818
Public Safety
Garrett Andrews ......................541-383-0325
Redmond
Jackson Hogan ...........................541-617-7854
Salem/State Government .. 541-617-7829
Sisters .........................................541-383-0367
Sunriver .....................................541-383-0367
REDMOND BUREAU
Mailing address ..................P.O. Box 6020
Bend, OR 97708
Phone ......................................... 541-617-7829
A strange soul-weighing experiment in Oregon 20 years ago produced an unusual result
BY DOUGLAS PERRY
The Oregonian
Humans are endlessly fas-
cinated by death. Everyone
wants to know what, if any-
thing, awaits on the other side.
The latest probing of this
subject comes from psychi-
atrist Bruce Greyson, whose
just-published book is called,
simply, “After.”
The volume’s arrival is as
good a reason as any to look
back at one of the more un-
usual experiments ever con-
ducted in Oregon. Here’s the
study’s abstract in its entirety:
“Twelve animals (one ram,
seven ewes, three lambs and
one goat) were studied. At
the moment of death an un-
explained weight gain tran-
sient of 18 to 780 grams for
1 to 6 seconds was observed
with seven adult sheep but
not with the lambs or goat.
The transients occurred in a
quiet time at the moment of
death when all breathing and
movement had ceased. These
transient gains are anomalous
in that there is no compensat-
ing weight loss as required by
Newton’s Third Law. There was
no permanent weight change
at death. Dynamic weight mea-
surements may present a fruit-
ful area of investigation.”
The 2001 study, by Lewis
E. Hollander, Jr., is titled “Un-
explained Weight Gain Tran-
sients at the Moment of Death.”
It attempted to build upon the
work of the late Massachusetts
physician Duncan Macdougall.
The goal of Macdougall’s
original work 100 years earlier:
to prove that the soul existed.
Macdougall’s ambitious ob-
jective turned on the common-
place belief that there is a soul
and that it leaves the body at
the time of death. He figured
that, while the soul surely is a
will-o’-the-wisp, in the modern
Courtesy of Serkan Ates/Oregon State University
Sheep graze in Oregon.
age it must be detectable.
That is, he decided to weigh
it.
The doctor, working at the
beginning of the 20th century,
put a dying tuberculosis pa-
tient on a commercial scale
and closely monitored the
man’s last breaths, figuring a
sudden loss of weight at the
moment of death would be the
result of the soul lifting into the
ether.
Macdougall’s “Patient 1,”
resting on an E. & T. Fairbanks
scale, reached his end in April
1901. When the man died,
sure enough, the scale report-
edly quivered, dropping three-
fourths of an ounce.
“Which is, yes, twenty-one
grams,” wrote Mary Roach in
her 2005 bestseller “Spook:
Science Tackles the Afterlife.”
“Hollywood metricized their
reference to the event for the
simple reason that ’21 Grams’
sounds better. Who’s going to
go see a movie called ‘Point
Seven Five Ounces’?”
(“‘21 Grams’ is a ruminative,
stunned look at life after death
— that is, the existence of the
living after they have been dev-
astated by loss; it’s the after-
CORRECTIONS
The Bulletin’s primary concern is that all
stories are accurate. If you know of an
error in a story, call us at 541-383-0367.
TO SUBSCRIBE
Call us ......................541-385-5800
• Home delivery
and E-Edition ..........................$7 per week
• By mail .................................$9.50 per week
• E-Edition only ...................$4.50 per week
To sign up for our e-Editions, visit
www.bendbulletin.com to register.
TO PLACE AN AD
Classified ......................................541-385-5809
Advertising fax ..........................541-385-5802
Other information ....................541-382-1811
OBITUARIES
No death notices or obituaries are
published Mondays. When submitting,
please include your name, address
and contact number. Call to ask about
deadlines, Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Phone ..........................................541-385-5809
Fax .................................................541-598-3150
Email .......................obits@bendbulletin.com
OTHER SERVICES
Back issues ................................541-385-5800
Photo reprints .........................541-383-0366
Apply for a job ........................541-383-0340
All Bulletin payments are accepted at the
drop box at City Hall or at The Bulletin,
P.O. Box 6020, Bend, OR 97708. Check
payments may be converted to an
electronic funds transfer. The Bulletin,
USPS #552-520, is published daily by
Central Oregon Media Group, 320 SW
Upper Terrace Drive, Bend, OR 97702.
Periodicals postage paid at Bend, OR.
Postmaster: Send address changes to The
Bulletin circulation department, P.O. Box
6020, Bend, OR 97708. The Bulletin retains
ownership and copyright protection of
all staff-prepared news copy, advertising
copy and news or ad illustrations. They
may not be reproduced without explicit
prior approval.
ý
Lottery results can now be found on
the second page of Sports.
math,” The New York Times
wrote when the Sean Penn
movie was released in 2003.)
Hollywood’s decades-later
reinterpretation notwithstand-
ing, Macdougall deemed the
experiment a success. He’d
documented the soul leaving
the body.
Not surprisingly, the physi-
cian received copious criticism
of his experiment, but he held
firm, beating back arguments
that the 21 grams surely were
the result of what’s called in-
sensible fluid loss. He went on
to redo the experiment on a
handful of other humans, and
later on dogs.
Macdougall’s dubious work
captured the imagination of
various scientists and wan-
nabe scientists over the years.
A few of them took up his
soul-weighing experiment, us-
ing ever more sophisticated
equipment. One of them, in
2000, was Lewis Hollander,
a retired physicist living in
Southern Oregon.
Back to Roach:
“(Hollander) rigged a sev-
en-by-three-foot platform to a
Toledo model 8132 electronic
digital indicator, a quartet of
load cells and a computer. His
subjects were eight sheep, three
lambs and a goat, all of which
were sedated and then eutha-
nized, and all of which, he as-
sures us, were headed in that
direction anyway. The animals
were wrapped in plastic to, as
he put it, contain any voiding.
This was important because (a)
voided material might drip off
the weighing surface, creating
a spurious weight loss, and (b)
you try getting sheep urine out
of your load cells.”
But the result of this experi-
ment proved truly unexpected.
The sheep — though not the
lambs or the goat — gained
weight at death for a few sec-
onds. One gained as much as
780 grams. Hollander called
this baffling gain an “anoma-
lous transient.”
He published his results in
2001 in the Journal of Scientific
Exploration, a journal that fo-
cuses on work that is “ignored
or studied inadequately within
mainstream science.”
Hollander’s experiment
sounds about as fringe as
fringe science gets, but Jap-
anese engineering professor
Masayoshi Ishida took the
research seriously enough to
test it via computer model and
then produce his own study,
“A New Experimental Ap-
proach to Weight Change Ex-
periments at the Moment of
Death with a Review of Lewis
E. Hollander’s Experiments on
Sheep.”
It was published, also in the
Journal of Scientific Explora-
tion, in 2009.
Ishida wrote that the “tran-
sient gain of weight” for one
or more of the sheep was likely
a glitch of some sort. “It is
doubtful whether the weighing
system (primarily the four load
cells) functioned normally,” he
wrote.
He added that the study’s
overall result, however, “re-
mains to be explained.”
What did Hollander himself
think of his experiment? When
asked about the sheep’s weight
gain at death, he said:
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
But he does believe it has
something to do with the great
beyond.
“I think that at the moment
of death that little window
opens up,” he said. “I think that
maybe we’re all connected to
something bigger than we are.”
“Creativity comes from
a confl ict of ideas.”
- Donatella Versace
LARISSA SPAFFORD
Northwest wildlife
agencies warn of
invasive zebra mussels
Associated Press
PORTLAND — Wildlife
agencies in Oregon, Washing-
ton and Idaho are urging pet
stores to stop selling a popular
aquarium product after discov-
ering invasive zebra mussels
inside them.
The mollusks breed quickly
and can wreak havoc on nat-
ural waterways. Unexpected
sightings in Northwest pet
stores have wildlife officials
sounding the alarm.
“It would be devastating to
our environment if these ever
got established in Oregon or
the Pacific Northwest,” said
Rick Boatner, the invasive spe-
cies wildlife integrity supervi-
sor at the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife.
A PetCo employee in Seattle
found zebra mussels in “Betta
Buddy Marimo Ball” moss ball
products in February.
“I work in the aquatics de-
partment, and almost every
shipment of these moss balls
that I have unpacked for the
The Oregonian
Invasive zebra mussels can clog
water intake and delivery pipes,
dam intake gates and pipes,
and adhere to boats and other
surfaces.
past two months has had mus-
sels nestled in the moss balls,”
reads a specimen filing with
the U.S. Geological Survey.
Zebra mussels are small but
destructive. They eat algae that
native species need to survive.
The USGS says they can also in-
capacitate native mussels. They
clog storm drains, drinking wa-
ter systems, irrigation and dams.
Zebra and quagga mussel infes-
tations in the Great Lakes region
have cost hundreds of millions
of dollars annually.
103 NW Oregon Ave. • Downtown Bend
541-306-3176 • redchairgallerybend.com
NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY
POLICY AS TO STUDENTS
Northwest Association of Independent Schools Accredited and
Candidate member schools and Subscriber and Affiliate schools
admit students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all
the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or
made available to students at the school. They do not discriminate on
the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of
their educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan
programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.
List of Schools:
Cascades Academy of Central Oregon
Bend, Oregon
This ad placement is to satisfy tax code section 501(c)(3) requiring a Notice of Nondiscriminatory Policy as to Students.
NWAIS member schools have adopted nondiscrimination policies which may be broader than this requirement.