• The fractures in the national Women’s March didn’t dampen Eugene’s inclusive Womxn’s March on Jan 19. We asked a police officer to estimate the crowd when men, women, children and their signs were still streaming in to the Wayne Morse federal courthouse plaza from all directions. She estimated 2,000 then, so it was many more than that on a rainy Saturday morning. Sen. Ron Wyden and his team were there. Crazy fun music and dancing changed the stern face of the courthouse. Certainly these marches that started in 2017 kicked off the great mid-term elections of 2018 and, hopefully, will help bring back our democracy.

• The federal government has long subsidized the arts; Eugene’s Very Little Theatre and Eugene Symphony are now offering to subsidize government workers. VLT is giving free tickets for the Noel Coward comedy Blithe Spirit to federal workers furloughed by the GOP’s government shutdown. The show opens Friday, Jan. 25, and runs weekends through Feb. 9. Idled workers can get a pair of tickets to any performance by calling 541-344-7751 or at TheVLT.com. The symphony has a similar offer for its Jan. 24 concert; call the Hult box office at 682-5000 for tickets. See our story on the shutdown’s local effects in this week’s news section.

• Two Lane County authors received special recognition this week when they were selected as finalists for the 2019 Oregon Book Awards. Mary DeMocker of Eugene, author of The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution: 100 Ways to Build a Fossil-Free Future, Raise Empowered Kids, and Still Get a Good Night’s Sleep, and Noah Strycker of Creswell, author of Birding Without Borders: An Obsession, a Quest, and the Biggest Year in the World, are finalists for the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction. Winners will be announced April 22 in Portland. Strycker just happens to be EW arts editor Bob Keefer’s son.

• Gov. Kate Brown’s smart, upbeat, sometimes sassy speech in Eugene Jan. 22 reminded us here at EW why we put her picture on the cover and strongly supported her in the November elections. Speaking at a City Club of Eugene event on the UO campus, Brown spelled out the actions we need to take in Oregon on education, homelessness, health care, parental leave, climate change, disaster preparedness and more. Several times she pushed the Climate Energy Jobs bill, asking the audience to help pass it. We were left with revenue questions. Where will we get the money? She mentioned a cigarette tax, but that’s not enough.

• Last week, despite an effort to use correct pronouns for Charlie Landeros, the veteran and father who was shot by Eugene police at Cascade Middle School and who used they, their, them pronouns, we allowed some wrong pronouns to creep in. We deeply regret the error. 

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