That House Near Coburg
Kudos to Christian Wihtol for the Wildfang bankruptcy saga. Wow. We’ve long wondered about that unfinished house. Now we know, thanks to this very well-written piece.
Andrew and Beth Bonamici
Eugene
Garden Solutions
Touching on the June Gardening Column by Alby Thoumsin titled “Healthy Soil: Start with good soil to grow good plants,” I want to propose a source for the compost used in the verti-mulching technique. As explained in the article, the soil in most urban settings has been compromised and verti-mulching would be an efficient and cost effective way to solve this issue. With food insecurity on the rise and food waste in the US being among the highest globally, why not use the food we already waste as the source of compost?
Our solution could be a policy that would require businesses to either donate or compost any food that would be disposed of in other ways. With only 20 percent being composted in the state of Oregon, this would be the single biggest source to help solve the soil health issue in Eugene.
Fairly simple.
Thank you Alby Thoumsin for shedding some light on an issue that affects everyone in the Eugene-Springfield area!
Anthony Collins
Eugene
Celebrate Warner and Learn
Kudos to Eugene Weekly for its story recounting the community-based nonviolent resistance to the notorious Warner Creek arson-salvage timber sale (“Learn from the Burn,” August 6). As someone who has too often been featured in media stories about that struggle, I am grateful to see several other activists and community members rightfully recognized in print for their key contributions to that successful forest defense campaign.
The Warner Creek campaign resembled a local social movement that was widely supported because it held the moral high ground righteously opposing the crimes of forest arson and lawless salvage logging. Over the course of five years there were many people engaged in countless collective actions, facing risks and making personal sacrifices, who were also crucial to its victory. As the first draft of history, journalism has understandably failed to cite those unheralded individuals who also deserve public acknowledgment of their civic heroism.
Come to the Warner Creek 30th Anniversary celebration at the WOW Hall on August 24th to hear some action stories never told before along with reflections on what we should learn from the burn of that campaign for a resurgent forest defense movement fighting against awful “lawful” logging today.
Timothy Ingalsbee
Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology
ONLINE EXTRA LETTERS
Republican Fear Mongering
Now that the Republicans are rightfully worried about losing the 2026 midterm elections, they are playing up fear of Communism again in the media, calling the Democratic Party’s left agenda to make life better for working Americans as a socialist path to communism. This is fear mongering, a leftover from the country’s Joe McCarthy’s communist baiting era of the 1950S. The Republicans would have us believe that the current wave of Democratic Socialist candidates winning primary elections could lead to an American Politburo and Moscow-like military parades down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. This has no more validity than the wild Qanon “pizza-gate” rumor or the blind belief that Obama is really from Kenya and not an American.
Left-of-center (not radical) Democrats want to change their sclerotic party, which mostly nibbles around the edges of change while not making waves with big donors. Among the changes the new Democrats want is a health care system that truly serves the nation and would make a major correction to the high cost of living. Universal free health care paid for by our taxes, like the military, would be overwhelmingly positive. Fewer military adventures and tax cuts for the rich alone would easily pay for such a system.
Getting rid of Trump is fine, but removing the huge burden of health care insurance off the shoulders of the working class would be real positive change, no matter what else you want to call it.
Russ Desaulnier
Eugene
Food Insecurity
In 2027 our Oregon state Legislature will be forced to cut SNAP benefits to even more Oregonians due to the implementation of HR 1, the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” The Oregon Department of Human Services says the state will need to allocate $385 million to accommodate changes to SNAP. The reality is that one in seven Oregonians are already food insecure, and budget cuts to SNAP will only put more of our community members at risk.
Food insecurity is not a personal or moral failing. It is a policy issue. If we cannot adequately fund food assistance programs then we must find a policy solution which supports the nonprofit organizations hungry Oregonians will turn to next.
In 2025 our Oregon Legislature considered HB 3018, which addresses this problem by requiring the biggest waste producers in the state to commit to donating or composting their waste. That bill died in committee.
Food insecurity won’t go away without direct action. I hope that in the upcoming legislative session our representatives will work hard to pass a bill similar to HB 3018 to support our nonprofits, keep food out of our landfills and on the plates of Oregonians in need.
Casey Caywood
Eugene
Losing Water
“Water is best,” wrote Pindar prophetically some 2,400 years ago. “But gold shines like fire blazing in the night, supreme of lordly wealth.” Water, the forgotten, defiled, overdrawn lifeblood of both the planet and the global economy, succumbs to the golden lure of shining, lifeless wealth.
World-wide, fossil energy used to pump non-replenishable fossil aquifers has boosted agricultural production unsustainably, and America’s biggest grain producing areas now face plummeting water tables. As water tables drop, crop production falls, and pumping water from ever-deeper aquifers increases production costs. At the same time, irrigation, urban and industrial uses have drained the Colorado River, the Nile and China’s Yellow River dry before they reach the sea, and once-vast freshwater lakes have shrunk drastically or vanished altogether.
Meanwhile, reckless agricultural, forestry, and industrial practices have poisoned what water is left, contaminating both fresh water supplies and the entire marine ecosystem with biological and chemical wastes. In the U.S., the staggering rise of chronic illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, asthma,and hyperactivity disorders is linked to industrial toxins in air and water.
Too obviously, a single human species has demanded more of Earth than she has to give.
To continue on our present course is to plunge with eyes wide open into the fatally interlocked spirals of global warming, global water depletion, global food shortages, economic havoc, escalating competition for shrinking resources and inevitable wars and violence triggered by desperation.
Carol Van Strum
Tidewater
Happiness, Homelessness and Prison via Wikipedia
Finland ranks No. 1 on the world happiness index, .09 percent of its population is homeless and incarcerates 58 out of 100,000 of its citizens.
Denmark ranks No. 3 on the world happiness index, 10 percent of its population is homeless and incarcerates 70 out of 100,000 of its citizens.
The U.S. ranks 23rd on the world Happiness Index, 2.2 percent of its population is homeless and incarcerates 542 out of 100,000 of its citizens.
Finland and Denmark (and Sweden) act on the notion that having a safe place to sleep is a human right.
Rough estimates: The U.S. has 20 times (per 100,000) more homeless citizens than Finland and Denmark and its incarceration rate is more than eight times higher.
Are you happy? If not, vote!