• Rick Levin’s Q&A last week with Chris Hedges, our feature this week on the Valve Turners and this weekend’s Environmental Film Festival in Eugene all fill us with hope and trepidation, not necessarily in that order, about the future of this rapidly warming planet in the current political atmosphere. Read them and weep. Or read them and do something to try to stop climate change.

• Fall is here, the weather is crisp and Duck football fans are all atwitter — or maybe in a twist after Oregon’s loss to Stanford last month. EW’s Henry Houston has been covering the games (when the UO will let him in the press box). Check out his post-game analysis Saturday nights at eugeneweekly.com and his story this week on the $3 million Oregon spent paying lesser teams to play them in nonconference games.

• Kudos to the City Club of Eugene and the Lane County League of Women Voters for staging such a civil and informative exchange between Republican Mark Herbert and Democrat Marty Wilde, candidates for Oregon House District 11 in the November election. The Sept. 28 event was such a sharp contrast to the national political stage — nothing that Saturday Night Live could lampoon (check out Matt Damon as Brett Kavanaugh if you missed it). Good questions from the League brought out more agreement than we expected, but also sharp differences that send us to Wilde. For instance, the candidates’ approaches to environmental issues were starkly different. Herbert wants “less regulation,” always a business-oriented solution. This is retiring Rep. Phil Barnhart’s district, but not a slam-dunk for a Dem, Barnhart says. Wilde and his team have knocked on 20,000 doors so far. That’s what should win this one.

• Congratulations to St. Vincent de Paul’s First Place Family Center, which has helped homeless working families in Eugene for more than 20 years. The center has a permanent home starting this week. “It’s a fantastic development, what our community needs,” program director Eileen Chanti tells a longtime volunteer and EW staff member. Until this week, families in the program, often with very young children, rotated among area churches every week. Central Lutheran Church was the final church to host families in the program. Now families have a stationary place to rest and organize until they can get back on their feet. The new facility is on 4060 West Amazon Drive, the former Calvary/Crossfire Church. It was purchased in December 2017 and renovated with the help of an anonymous $2-million donation.