Payton Pritchard, former Oregon Duck basketball standout now playing for the Boston Celtics, was featured in a long piece in The New York Times on June 4. The championship best-of-seven series continues on Friday, June 10, and Monday, June 13 and Thursday, June 16 (if necessary). We wish Pritchard well, but our team is still the Golden State Warriors. Gotta love a coach, Steve Kerr, who goes after guns in America, and a player, Steph Curry, who has changed the game.

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• What we’re watching: Borgen: Power and Glory. Ten years after Danish TV series Borgen wrapped up, Netflix brought the Scandinavian drama back. Sidse Babett Knudsen returns in her role as Birgitte Nyborg, Denmark’s fictional first prime minister. Non-Danish speakers (of which there are many) will miss out on the Danes’ creative and prolific use of swears, but even with subtitles the drama is gripping. 

• If you want some good news, go to the 2020-2021 Impact Report from St. Vincent de Paul. Executive Director Terry McDonald and Deputy Director Bethany Cartledge spell out the accomplishments: 3,867 residents in SVdP affordable housing; 303,302 meals served; $2,760,435 in COVID rent relief; 1,290 adults sheltered; 20,876,792 pounds of waste diverted from the landfill; and more. We are so fortunate to have St. Vinnie’s in this community in these dark times.

• June is Pride month! While Eugene saves its own celebration of LGBTQIIA+ folks for August, June reminds us to celebrate people of all genders, identifications and orientations year-round. 

• “Welcoming the Displaced: Refugee Resettlement in Lane County” is the City Club of Eugene program Friday, June 10, at the First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street. Christine Zeller-Powell, attorney with the Catholic Community Services’ Refugee and Immigration Services Program, will be the speaker. No lunch will be served at the in-person meeting starting at noon  If you can’t attend, you can watch the live stream or listen on KLCC Monday night at 7 pm.

• What can we do about guns and their damage in this country? This question has come up far too many times, and while every mass shooting seems like it’s the final straw, nothing really happens. The 2012 slaughter of 20 young children and six adults at Sandy Hook didn’t move the needle, nor did the 2017 murder of 60 people at the country music concert in Las Vegas. Our Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley are good on gun control measures in Congress, so we need to send our profound concerns to other senators who don’t seem to care about background checks and red-flag laws and liability for the gun manufacturers. We need to echo President Joe Biden and go after the epidemic of random deaths by guns. Nineteen children and two teachers died of gunfire in Uvalde, Texas, last month, and the mass shootings have yet to stop.

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