• Feeling civic? City Club of Eugene is back from break! Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson will be interviewed by KLCC Reporter Rebecca Hansen-White at noon Friday, Sept. 5, at WOW Hall, 291 West 8th Avenue. Springfield City Club, which meets the first and third Thursday of the month at noon at Roaring Rapids Pizza, 4006 Franklin Boulevard, is focusing on local media in September. On Sept. 4, digital-only Lookout Local (LOL) Eugene Springfield and rural news outlet The Chronicle will discuss print media. On Sept. 18 it will be KLCC on preserving local programming. Alas, there was not room in the schedule for your favorite local print rag (by which we mean EW), but we might show up and say “Hi!”
• Free speech! We love our opinion writers! Read an online extra viewpoint on electric vehicles this week on EugeneWeekly.com. Also online, a review of the recent Weird Al show at the Cuthbert and more! (Yeah, we like it in print, too —remember the more ads and reader support the merrier the pages!)
• On the opinion tip … A reminder that letters and viewpoints cannot be anonymous — our readers need opinions from verified sources. You can hop on Reddit if you want to hide your name. And speaking of the socials, Eugene Weekly’s Facebook and Instagram followers might notice that sometimes (and especially this past week) it looks like there’s an online comment or two but you can’t see them. Meta hides certain comments it regards as spam, and on our end, we let comments stand unless they are hate speech, personal attacks, misgendering people etc. (Our full policy is on EugeneWeekly.com at the bottom of the Contact Us page). EW was recently the target of some extreme right-wing attacks due to our coverage of transgender issues and it made some of the comments … interesting. On our website itself, Disqus, which is the service that allows us to have comments, regards comments with links as spam. (Sorry conspiracy theorists, we aren’t hiding your legit comments, just stop trying to link to your batshit websites and it will post!)
• A staple of Eugene’s music community for as long as anyone can remember — and a staunch supporter of “good trouble” — Lea (rhymes with “flea”) Jones is going to take a break to focus on his health. Jones takes the stage at 16 Tons Cafe in south Eugene, his favorite venue, 6 pm Friday, Sept. 5, for an evening of tunes, including a new song, “I Am Not A Stranger,” a song that he tells EW is “sort of an inverted protest song about deportation as we know it.” After that, Jones says he’s “gonna hunker down this winter, fight cancer and find more good trouble to get into.” This year alone, he has made signs and gone on social media urging friends near and far to take action against ICE and Avelo Airlines (EW, 7/24). We look forward to more social activism from Jones. Get well, Lea.
• Another staple of Eugene’s music community, saxophonist Paul Biondi, was in a devastating one-car accident on his way back from Florence. In addition to Biondi’s injuries and the car he was borrowing being demolished, his horns were damaged. According to his GoFundMe, Biondi “may have been having a medical incident from Type 2 diabetes, but it’s all a blank to him.” The GoFundMe is raising money for the at least $7,000 needed to repair his instruments. To contribute, search the name Paul Biondi on GoFundMe.com.
• We’re feeling so very musical! Former Eugenean Mat Kearney plays The Hult Center Sept. 5. Some folks know him because he’s the “Coming Home (Oregon)” football song guy. Others of a certain generation who watched (and maybe still watch) too much Grey’s Anatomy know him from all the times his tunes appear on that show. If you are in a Grey’s mood, read Bob Keefer’s interview with Nellie McKay, also a Grey’s tunes frequent flyer, online at EugeneWeekly.com. She plays The Shedd, Wednesday, Sept. 10.
• On Sept. 3, the EWEB board voted unanimously on a three-year extension to its contract with the west Eugene biomass generator formerly owned by Seneca and now by Sierra Pacific Industries. Before the vote, Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club, Beyond Toxics and Breach Collective sent the board a letter expressing “concern about the lack of public process around this decision to extend the contract.”