• The Oregon Country Fair is kicking off, and we treasure this quirky annual celebration and all it does to revel in the hippie culture that makes Eugene Eugene. And as with anything we treasure, we have to love it in all its flaws, whether those might be complaints about the dust or the music acts or something more painful such as the Ritz Sauna story pole debacle that hurt and offended native peoples. As the dust settles, we hope we will hear about efforts OCF makes to work with the native community to restore trust and build new bridges.
• The Nation magazine is the latest to have a big piece on our Jeff Merkley, the only senator to endorse Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. Sen. Merkley is mentioned more and more on national media as a possible candidate for president. Why not? Oregon may not be the best base nationally, but our senator does inspire confidence. What a change that would be!
• This is hardly a peppercorn in the pantheon of cruelties the Trump administration is laying on most of the American people, but it does show the “trickle down” effect of the Donald’s proposed budget: Merlyn Hough, director of LRAPA, the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency, told us recently that this federal budget would reduce little LRAPA’s budget by about 30 percent. Add that to all the other environmental erasures this administration is doing and it makes us wonder if they don’t care a whit about the air they breathe, the water they drink, the species they destroy, on and on. They should at least care about the generations that follow us.
• What we’re reading: Double Bind:Women on Ambition is a collection of essays edited by Robin Romm, who grew up in Eugene, the daughter of a lawyer mother and doctor father. The jacket calls it a “necessary collection … examining the concept of female ambition from every angle in essays full of insight, wisdom, humor and rage.” Published in 2017, the essays writers range from Pam Houston and Sarah Ruhl to Molly Ringwald. Now living in Portland, Romm has written two earlier books and many articles. She says this book is “an entry point. The rest is up to you.”