Is your urge to garden growing as food prices climb? Well, the city of Eugene has announced that the lottery for new gardeners in the Parks and Open Space Community Gardens program has opened for the new year. Lottery entries will be accepted until Feb. 15. Get more info at Eugene-or.gov/496/Community-Gardens or call Danielle Klinkebiel at 541-682-4831.
• If you’ve had a bad date and want to share it with the world, here’s your chance to profit from your misery. Tell us your story in 150 words or less, and it could run in Eugene Weekly’s Love and Sex issue, out Feb. 9. But wait! It gets better. Your bad date story could win you a $100 gift certificate to Cornucopia and a $50 gift certificate at Art House Theater (formerly Bijou) so you can have a much better date! Send your bad date story to Editor@EugeneWeekly.com by Jan. 27 for consideration, along with name and phone number for verification.
• What we’re reading: Small Things Like These, a splendid little novel by Claire Keegan set in her native Ireland. When we finished it, we took a minute and then started reading the 116 pages for the second time. It is that compelling.
• Want to support your favorite (and only) local alt weekly? All donations accepted! No, seriously. You can contribute directly to our publication by sending a check to Eugene Weekly, 1251 Lincoln St., Eugene, 97401 or go to Support.EugeneWeekly.com (where you can also get a subscription or buy a T-shirt). If you want to make a tax deductible donation to support EW and other local papers in the WIllamette Valley, then please contribute to our TRIPS project — Twin Rivers Institute for Press Sustainability. Call 541-484-0519 and talk to Elisha Young or email Accounting@EugeneWeekly.com.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Portland District has extended the comment deadline to Feb. 23 for public feedback on the Corps’ proposed 30-year plan for the operation and maintenance of its system of 13 dams and reservoirs across the Willamette River Basin. This affects dams from the massive Detroit Dam to Cottage Grove and goes toward determining how the system will be managed for the next 30-plus years. For more info go to nwp.usace.army.mil/Locations/Willamette-Valley/System-Evaluation-EIS/.
• “Reduce, reuse, recycle”: That must be the motto these days at The Register-Guard, which has gone from reducing its staff and the size of the printed paper to actually reusing old stories. At the top of the front page on Sunday, Jan. 8, the RG ran a story headlined “Is Winter Miserable for Wildlife?” by Wayne State University researcher Bridget B. Baker via The Conversation. The RG fails to mention that The Conversation published Baker’s entire story, headline and all, on Jan. 18, 2019. This is what passes for news at Eugene’s once-distinguished daily newspaper? It may be time to recycle some of Gannett Co.’s management.