• Attention all slugs, queens and fans of slugs, queens and SLUG queens. The annual coronation of the Society for the Legitimization of the Ubiquitous Gastropod is upon us! Friday, August 8 at the Downtown Park Blocks Saturday Market Stage the annual celebration of music, silliness, talent, costumes and all that is uniquely Eugene gathers once again to crown the SLUG queen who will lead this town (in a quirky figurehead sort of way) through the next year. Join Raining Queen Sitara T. Slugshine and a bunch of old queens and very old queens and more for music at 6 pm and competition at 6:30 pm. Bring your chair, snacks and sense of humor!
• Today in all the news that’s fit to print (online): At EugeneWeekly.com find Seira Kitagawa’s story on the University of Oregon and Lane Community College production of THEM by Samah Sabawi, directed by UO Theatre Arts Professor Malek Najjar and running at the LCC Blue Door Theatre through August 2, before heading to Portland. The play is about a young couple living somewhere in the Middle East in a war zone. Kitagawa also talked to the mom of a young baseball catcher, Riley Rink, about the Youth Athlete of the Year competition where the winner gets an advertisement in Sports Illustrated and $25,000. Riley’s mom would like you to read it and vote for him. Finally, this week is the USATF Outdoor Championships. Photographer and University of Oregon Professor Dan Morrison is shooting the races for EW and you can check his pics out online!
• President Donald Trump’s assaults on democracy continue — evidence of that locally was at the Lane County Fair this past weekend where the Lane County Republicans sold “Alligator Alcatraz” T-shirts glorifying the troubling Florida immigrant detention center. Fair administrators say they cannot censor free speech on public property — valid, we are big on the First Amendment. But it’s deeply troubling that the local Republican Party would glorify a regime and a detention center that is coming to increasingly resemble the WW II Japanese internment camps that grew from wartime hysteria and prejudice. Thanks to the folks who spoke up and protested.
• Speaking of attacks — the GOP attack on public media hurts KLCC, KRVM, KWAX and other public stations locally, in rural Oregon and across the country that perform a much-needed service. KLCC was the first to report the hours-long traffic jam south of Eugene on July 29 — and that kept some of us from getting stuck on our way to work. Support public media, hell, support all media. Donate to KLCC, support KRVM (and the high school students and others there), take out an ad in the Weekly. No money? No matter! Tell advertisers you read it in the Weekly, tell underwriters you heard it on KLCC, and for the sake of democracy, vote, protest, speak up and be heard!
• Folks have fought back with humor! On a recent trip to Mount Rainier, reader Evie DosSantos took a photo of the giant anti-DOGE Elon Musk bust that’s appeared at Arches National Park and then Yosemite. The head, riding along on a flatbed trailer, bears the signs “Make America Wait Again” and “Now With Longer Lines Thanks To DOGE Cuts!” The National Parks Conservation Association says since January, 24 percent of the National Parks Service’s permanent employees have lost their jobs.