Lead Stories

As an educator and as an architect, making the case against recommendations to improve Eugene’s schools may seem difficult. Our children deserve the very best facilities and access to the highest quality education. However, the recommendations in a recent 4J Facilities Master Plan study are so flawed that the case against them is quite easy to make. 

In terms of building type, the recommendations ignore overwhelming research on the academic value of small schools and disregard the evidence supporting neighborhood schools. In terms of process, the evaluation metrics are skewed to justify new construction, the effort failed to account for citizen input, and the naïve hope for funding misinterprets Eugene politics. 

The Oregon Country Fair is debuting a new addition: This year revelers can stroll along on the maiden voyage of a new loop that veers off through an as-yet-virginal section of the forested fairgrounds. “It’s taken a huge amount of work to put in the new loop,” OCF General Manager Charlie Ruff says. “We’ve been looking at areas to develop new paths for many years.”

In addition to alleviating congestion as visitors make their way through the Fair’s labyrinthine network of trails to areas such as the Upper River Loop and Wooten Way, the loop promises to carry a special appeal for the younger crowd. “We’re always looking for ways to improve the Fair experience for kids,” Ruff explains. He says there will be great activities for youngsters, “which gives parents a chance to see a show or have a little time for themselves.” 

Sorry folks, there’s actually no definitive evidence suggesting that Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, to whom the reversed title of this story can be credited, ever made it to the Fair, but it didn’t take more than three years — after the Fair’s beginnings in 1969 — for our annual psychedelic parade in Veneta to start taking on other famous faces.

Carlos Castaneda, peyote proponent and author of The Teachings of Don Juan, was reportedly a multiple attendee to the abstruse happenings of the Fair in the early 1970s, but he wasn’t the only icon to grace OCF grounds with his presence.

Randy Lord and Chris Leebrick rolled into town in 1992, their old Buick Park Avenue packed with the worn clothing and stratospheric expectations of young artists. They were fresh out of college and bubbling with an ambitious plan: to create a first-class theater that features only the best actors, produces timeless plays and keeps ticket prices well within the range of us mortals. 

Twenty years later and that plan is still unfolding. With another wildly successful season under its belt and on the brink of opening a new space downtown, Lord Leebrick Theatre Company is celebrating its past accomplishments, while still looking toward the future.

How do you quantify a legend? How Sasquatch is Bigfoot? How Loch Ness is Nessie? In the realm of legend, it’s nearly impossible to gauge magnitude — how golden is Eldorado and how deep is Atlantis? 

In the sports world, where myth and legend remain forever tangled by statistics and star-power, legend status is hard-earned, and just as unquantifiable. Is there a measuring stick big enough to do justice to those giants of athleticism, like Jordan or Seles, who heroically rise above all things mundane and capture our admiration? Such figures seem to transcend our speculations and enter another domain — a pantheon.

Clouds made the eclipse and Venus’ transit across the sun a little hard to see, but we still know summer is under way.

While the rest of the seasons morph through the different shadows of sopping wetness, the knowledge that here comes the sun, it’s all right, chills Eugene right out in the sunshine. Whether your summer is festivaling, floating or vineyarding, the fast and free or lazy and peaceful pace — you pick — of the Eugene’s other season says you have a cornucopia in front of you, so please partake.

There is perhaps no better teacher than Mother Nature. Her curriculum is seasonal and her pedagogy is patience. And though we may at times ignore her lessons, her classroom remains willing to receive us. It is this truth that inspired Lydia Scott and Leela Greensberg to create the Grateful Growers Summer Camp for kids age 5-10.

All summer events in one spot.

With summer comes the weather we all love here in Oregon. Raincoats are removed, flip-flops are slipped on and outdoor patios open up. No one knows this last part better than local winery patrons. Summer is wine time.

And Oregon is wine country. But wine contains alcohol, and this does not mix well with driving unless you want to leave pieces of yourself scattered along our state’s scenic byways or spend a night in the clink. Sure, you could motor out to one of the many wineries and have one, maybe two glasses of excellent Oregon pinot, then safely drive your sweetheart back home. Certain occasions, however, call for more than one glass of wine; more than one bottle of wine; hell, maybe even more than a few bottles. Sometimes the circumstances of celebration call for excess (as well as safety) — and nothing says excess like a limousine.

Minutes after walking away from the oldest coffee tree in the world, Silje Heyland, a German college student studying fair-trade coffee practices in Ethiopia, had a sudden urge to go back. “Perhaps we can eat lunch under the tree,” she suggested. The rest of our expedition party — wet, tired, muddy, hungry — looked at her with unsympathetic eyes and decided it would be better to eat lunch at a nearby village, where there were primitive huts to duck into for shelter against the afternoon thunderstorm.

City Hall was a lauded public building when it was built in 1964, with wood fins symbolizing Oregon’s connection to the forests, a very public terrace and a design that bubbled with democratic values and encouraged a connection between government and citizenry that wasn’t dominated by an imposing tower.

But after years rusting in the garage, Eugene’s own City Chitty Bang Bang might be razed rather than remade into something special.

Et tu, Andy Stahl? Political smears are hardly a modern phenomenon, nor is political intrigue. You can’t throw a stick at the corpus of Shakespearean tragedy without hitting one in which a character is killed or victimized through the evil machinations of another. To the audience of a play, it’s soon made clear who the true villains are, but in politics where we are not just the audience but actually part of the action — all the world’s a stage — who the good guys are can get a little unclear once the mud-slinging begins.