Define Satire
I’m sure I’m not the only reader who is pleased to see “This Modern World” return as a regular feature of the Weekly, but I’m a little confused.
Didn’t it used to be satire?
Leo Muzzy
Eugene
How To Cope
Volunteering as an activist in the Democratic Party of Lane County (DPLC.org), and writing a Substack. Both keep me centered. I’m doing what I can to keep the world from sinking, or at least to slow its slide (EW Slant, 6/19, What are you doing to stay calm?).
Local activism is important. Some of the latest school board elections in Cottage Grove have been decided by fewer than 10 votes. In Florence, the school board removed a book about problems faced by an isolated child from school libraries. Lane County had very low voter turnout in the May election, and talking to people does make a difference, ultimately to those subject to one or another official decision.
I learned long ago that being in service on a voluntary basis keeps me from running circles in my mind. Running circles doesn’t help me or anyone else. Doing well by doing good is where it’s at!
Larry Koenigsberg
Eugene
Editor’s note: Eugene Weekly asked in a recent EW Extra Newsletter for readers to tell us how they are coping in these turbulent times. Thank you for these replies!
Blackberry Coping
For some of us the Friends of Buford Park’s Native Plant Nursery provides that needed calm — weeding, seed harvesting, in community or solo in every season, and under every kind of sky. The Friends can also use volunteer help with trails — hacking at blackberries can be equally therapeutic.
Maradee Girt
Board of Directors
Friends of Buford Park
Keeping the Spirits Up When Times Are Horrific
This goes beyond coping into the realm of staying elevated:
Breathe deeply and slowly. Let the belly expand on the inhale and contract on the exhale. Feel the expansion extend into infinity, and on the contraction, bring the cosmos back into yourself. Remember at this time, or separately, all you have reason to be grateful for. Combine these two things: the expanded state and remembering what you have. Do you have sufficient funds to give a bit to a cause you care for that’s hurting? Do it. Do you have a skill you can put to use for the greater good? Do it. You get the idea.
I’ve been doing this sort of practice for about 40 years. Didn’t start it with the idea it’d be useful in a time as horrific as this time is. But it helps. A lot.
And when all else fails, I remind myself of the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias.”
“I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things),
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I especially focus on the words on the pedestal. All things end, and 79-year-old males of bloated proportions are likely to end sooner rather than later, all without human intervention. Even the ones who boast they can commit murder on 5th Avenue with impunity.
Blessings,
Siri Kirpal Kaur Khalsa
Eugene
Oregon Has a Chance
If the Big Beautiful Bill passes, millions of poor or disabled people will lose access to health care through Medicaid. Yes, Kristi Noem, we know we are all going to die …
Some of us are not only troubled by this possibility, we also want to get rid of the current complicated for-profit health insurance system, which makes money for investors by denying care to those with insurance. A single-payer system that covers everyone with no copays or premiums, funded by tax dollars. Numerous studies have shown that your tax cost would be considerably less than what you pay now.
Clearly, this is not going to happen at the national level, so long as the Republicans control Congress and most Democrats are showing little spine. But we do have a chance here in Oregon. The Universal Health Plan Governance Board is working on a plan. Check out HCAO.com.
Jo Alexander
Corvallis
More Help for the Homeless, Please
The agencies that help the homeless in Eugene should investigate the empty city lots and check out the tiny homes in Amazon, ranging in price from $5,000 to $10,000. If we can spend $34 million for a bus terminal on River Road that is never used and the extra buses that have maybe one or two riders during the day, we should be able to find the money to invest in helping people who are sleeping on our streets. Perhaps the mayor and City Council can step up and investigate the possibility of really helping these people and not just talking about it and doing little or nothing.
Marlene Pearson
Eugene
Show Compassion for the Homeless
Congratulations Black Thistle Street Aid on five years running. Thank you for all of your loving care and dedication taking care of our community’s unhoused folks. And kudos to the newly created group ISSUE from South Eugene High School.
I was reminded of the engaging read by literary journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder — Rough Sleepers, Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People. This is a tender story, not to mention thoroughly researched, about the homelessness crisis during the Reagan administration and a Harvard-trained doctor who was asked to spend a year building a program in Boston. Dr. Jim never left. Like Black Thistle Street Aid, he built a community of practitioners and went out to find the unhoused so that they could be served.
Last week there was yet another letter talking about the trash left behind by homeless folks. As a long-time bike commuter, I’ve seen plenty of homeless camps with garbage piled neatly in one place. While I heard some compassion in the writer’s voice, we know they’re missing the point. To be without a home is an experience that must take 100 percent of a person’s time and attention. Please withhold judgement of people you see on the streets and let’s continue to press our beloved city to harness this collective energy to solve the crisis. A line from Kidder: “Homeless people have one public power. If they gather in a place, other people tend to avoid it.”
Melissa Ivan
Eugene
Prove Me Wrong
It’s troubling to see Oregon back away from its commitment to universal pre-K, especially under a Democratic governor who campaigned on equity and justice. The recent state budget continues a pattern of inadequate support for early childhood education, including a $45 million cut in preschool funding, despite decades of research proving its long-term value.
Another example is Gov. Tina Kotek’s recent letter to Multnomah County leaders expressing concern that a small marginal tax of 1.5 percent on incomes over $200,000 — meant to fund universal preschool in Portland — might erode Oregon’s tax base. That argument is more reflective of right-wing defenders of wealth than it is of a party committed to equity and justice.
Kotek’s fear of wealthy people fleeing Portland isn’t supported by facts. The number of taxpayers in Multnomah County grew by 16 percent from 2022 to 2023. There is no exodus of wealthy taxpayers due to this tax. In fact, with the wealthiest 1 percent anticipating large federal tax cuts, the time seems ripe for local and state governments to up their game and soak up some of that windfall.
With the Trump administration assault on public services, we need a governor who will lead with courage. Oregon will need to commit more — not less — to support our most vulnerable people.
If Kotek won’t fight for working families, we need a candidate for governor who will. Conventional wisdom says that Kotek doesn’t have to fear a primary challenge. I hope someone who supports working families will step forward and prove that view wrong.
Geoffrey Barrett
Eugene
Answer the Constituents
I voted for Matt Keating. I respectfully wrote to Keating in April 2025 asking what he was going to do regarding CAHOOTS’s defunding. He did not respond once or twice and now thrice.
It’s been months.
Dems need to do better being accountable to their constituents and now more than ever.
Sam Parker
Eugene
Where Do You Stand, Sen. Wyden?
To U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden: We’re Lane County residents against the genocide in Gaza. The U.S. is complicit in this atrocity because it supplies arms to Israel. There are at least seven U.S. laws that forbid our government to give military aid to a country, such as Israel, that commits severe human rights abuses.
The Conventional Arms Transfer Policy; the Foreign Assistance Act; the Arms Export Control Act; the U.S. War Crimes Act; the Leahy Law; the Genocide Convention Implementation Act; the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance; and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976.
On May 20, 2024, a group of local constituents emailed you a letter with information about these laws. We asked you to affirm that you’ll follow them. We only received your usual form letter. Since then we have called and emailed you to use your power to insist that these laws be upheld to support human rights for Palestinians. In April 2025, you voted to send $8 billion more in military aid to the apartheid state of Israel. We commend Sen. Jeff Merkley for his “no” vote for more weapons.
U.S. tax dollars are funding war crimes and environmental devastation in Palestine. This money should support human rights rather than war profiteers and settler colonialism. Events since October 2023 show the world that Israel isn’t a democracy.
We await a specific response from you about these important laws. We’ll share it, or the lack thereof, with fellow citizens who uphold American values.
Christa Knittle
Springfield
War Hits All of Us
Bombs crash on cities half a world away, but the same forces steer them and us. Big states, big armies and big oil bosses treat people like parts in their war machines. When leaders in Jerusalem and Tehran trade missiles, children pay the price. So do the skies, seas and soil we all share.
Some say this fight is far off. Yet every drone is built from metals dug out of wounded hills, shipped on trucks that burn the planet and paid for with taxes that could heal our own streets. While the powerful shout about “national pride,” families run for shelter and rivers run with fuel.
We in Lane County can answer differently. Real safety grows from towns where neighbors meet face-to-face, plan their needs and guard each other’s rights. Let us hold public assemblies on the steps of city halls, in school gyms, under park trees, and demand that our city money leave weapons firms and flow into housing, clinics and clean energy instead. Let us twin with towns in Iran and Israel, sharing seeds and ideas, not hatred.
War is a pyramid with rulers on top and the rest of us crushed below. It is time to flip that pyramid, build a flat commons and say with one clear voice: “Not in our name, not with our labor, and not with our Earth.”
Devon Lawson
Springfield
ONLINE EXTRA LETTERS
A Bogus “Pre-emptive” Attack
At this writing, President Donald Trump just announced the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. Whether this had the intended effect of destroying them will not be known for some time, since Iran has nothing to gain from telling us.
What we do know is that the strike did not affect Iran’s ability to continue to obliterate Israeli infrastructure, which will continue until Iran chooses to stop. The devastation in Israel is much worse than indicated by the mainstream press and can be seen in livestream images.
The whole premise of Israel’s “pre-emptive” attack was bogus as the U.S. attack on Iraq over imaginary WMDs. Iran could and still can effectively destroy Israel without nukes, especially if the Houthis and Hezbollah join in the effort.
The real purpose of the war was to destroy the last functioning government in the region that stands in the way of Israeli hegemony over the Mideast.
Whether Trump initially supported the attack or was just providing Israel cover by claiming to have greenlighted it in advance, the decision to attack Iran was reckless. By putting the survival of Israel at risk, it threatens to lead to nuclear war. It is no secret that Israel has nuclear weapons, and that it will massively retaliate if it decides its survival is threatened.
It is a good thing that Iran has shown much more restraint than Israel in how it responds to threats. Israel and the U.S. have left the fate of the world in their hands.
Rick Staggenborg
Albany
Is There Love and Light Left?
I am heartbroken with the news that our U.S. military is bombing Iran. In the past five months our country has become unrecognizable. The gutting of our government, the bizarre sanctions that have left us with no allies save Israel, the ICE raids and disappearances of many members of our society which leaves millions of people afraid to leave their homes. And now the bombing of Iran.
How can we process and respond to our situation? Protest, speak up, write letters, whatever we can do. After feeling completely overwhelmed I need to go back and ask myself what my beliefs and values are. Not anger, hate and fear. My core beliefs tell me to uphold the principles that guide my life: love, kindness and compassion for all living beings, including myself.
We don’t know what the future will bring for our country and our planet. When the heart breaks it can break open, letting in more love and light. May it be so.
Robin Mix
Eugene
An Opportunity Lost
One particularly tragic aspect of the ongoing conflict with Iran is the lost opportunity it represents for the West to achieve a soft-power coup within the Islamic world.
I recall hearing the renowned anti-war activist Tariq Ali — one of the main organizers of the 1968 protest outside the U.S. Embassy in London that inspired the Rolling Stones’ song “Street Fighting Man” — speak after 9/11 about how 60 percent of Iranians had been born after the Islamic Revolution and were likely to be receptive to liberal values. Moreover, deep within the heart of Shia Islam — of whom the Iranian regime is the most preeminent defender — there survives a strain of scientific and rationalist thought that dates back to the Mu’tazila, the Translation Movement and the Islamic Golden Age.
This intellectual current endures today in the form of Ja’fari jurisprudence, particularly through the concept of ijtihād, or independent reasoning. I fear that when Donald Trump discarded the perfectly serviceable nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama, he not only set a costly and unnecessary conflict in motion, but also squandered perhaps the best chance we had for meaningful rapprochement with the Islamic world. It is therefore incumbent upon us, as citizens, to pressure our government to halt any further escalation of the conflict and to sever all aid to Benjamin Netanyahu’s rogue state.