• On the Friday before our country’s biggest spectator sporting event, the Feb. 3 Super Bowl, Bev Smith and Bobby Green made the case to the City Club of Eugene that everybody should be an athlete. Green was a Duck football player, a coach, an official, plus a City Council member and Lane County commissioner for 14 years.  Smith, now the director of Kidsports, played and coached basketball teams at the University of Oregon and the Olympics and is a fierce advocate for the fieldhouse and playing fields now under construction on the old Civic Stadium site. She said every kid should have at least 60 minutes of physical activity every day and every adult at least 30.  She quoted Bill Bowerman, “If you have a body, you’re an athlete.” About 12,000 local kids play in Kidsports, 4,000 on scholarship, and she wants to be sure that marginalized kids have an opportunity to play.

• Here’s hoping the Oregon Legislature gets its act together and finally passes the Clean Energy Jobs Act, a cap and invest program that might finally show the world how to move forward on a state level on slowing down carbon emissions. Pester your legislators; you can find them at oregonlegislature.gov.

• You asked (some of you even asked nicely) for a better What’s Happening online calendar — and we listened. We know how much our free calendar listings mean to local groups and musicians getting the word out, and to Eugeneans looking for something to do. Check it out at calendar.eugeneweekly.com.

• Local crisis intervention group CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets, and yes, that name’s a little tongue in cheek) has been getting some much-deserved recognition lately starting with a story in the Wall Street Journal in November 2018. Officials from the Portland Police Bureau, Multnomah County and Portland have all come to Eugene to check out the CAHOOTS model, which pairs a medic with a crisis worker who has substantial training and experience in mental health. The group is working with cities from Denver to New York to implement similar models. EW has called CAHOOTS several times to help unhoused people who appear to be in distress, and we’re grateful for what they do!

• Morsels: Hey, Neighbor Pizza House is a new restaurant in what some dare call Eugene’s most urban corner, 19th and Agate. It’s a pizza house and much more. We liked sitting at the beautiful little wood slab bar and watching pizza come together, to be delivered, picked up or eaten right there. Indoor space is tight but that’s OK. You can get them on the phone at 541-505-9302.

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