Your Grammar Needs a Wingman

Online dating is a mecca for bad spellers

Dating is hard for me. But I actually feel like my bar isn’t set that high: Writer/professor type ISO decent-looking man who doesn’t mind that my pitbull sleeps on the bed and that I come home most nights smelling like a horse. Must be able to construct complete sentences and spell.  I feel like this last part is where I go awry, and my criteria even seems to offend people. Not the pitbull part — the spelling test. Potential suitors see that caveat and take it as a writer’s form of cock block. Writer’s cock block.  Continue reading 

Global Weirding

The weather has been hitting us with record-breaking warm and dry temperatures recently. It would be nice to greet the recently blooming flowers with joy, but there’s reason for trepidation. These warm, dry days mean, as Julie Koeberle, a hydrologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Services puts it, that “the snow has been elusive.”  Continue reading 

County Commission Talks Goshen Sewage ‘Boondoggle’

Lane County continues to move forward with its attempts to develop the community of Goshen much to the dismay of local land-use advocates. Goshen, just south of Eugene, is a rural industrial area that has been home to several mills and is the site of designated wetlands. Developing Goshen has become a pet project of Commissioner Faye Stewart.  On Feb. 3, a wastewater feasibility study for Goshen done by Kennedy/Jenks Consultants was presented to Lane County’s Board of Commissioners for discussion. Continue reading 

Riverfront Conversations

Could Collaboration bring a healthier Riverfront?

Sit beside the river and sip a glass of wine after a long day at work. Lay yourself down by the river and relax after a long run. Go fishing, go rafting, go wading, go birdwatching.  As winter slowly starts to wind down, our river dreams start to flow. The Willamette River winds through Eugene and Springfield, and the McKenzie flows on the outskirts of town, but how often do we really see it from our urban streets?  Continue reading 

Foster Care for Shelter Animals Helps Them Get Homes

Many Lane County animal rescues are in need of foster homes for the animals

Biggie is being fostered by an EW staffer

Biggie the pitbull was scheduled to be euthanized at Los Angeles County’s Carson Animal Shelter on Dec. 11. He was so shy that no one was interested in adopting him, and the shelter was out of room. But, instead of being put to sleep that day, he was picked up, fed a hamburger and driven to Oregon thanks to a network of animal rescues, animal lovers and people who provide foster homes for pets in need.  Continue reading 

Global Weirding

Those couple days of icy, freezing temperatures last February might stick out in your mind, but while a brief spell of cold days may affect your personal impression of the weather, don’t forget that the climate is heating up across the globe, thanks to rising levels of greenhouse gases.  Overall, 2014 was Oregon’s second hottest year since record keeping started in 1895, according to researchers with the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University. The average statewide temperature in Oregon in 2014 was 3 degrees above the average for the 20th century. Continue reading 

Groups Denounce Eastern Oregon Coyote-Killing Contest

Animal rights groups fighting to stop coyote-killing contest in Eastern Oregon

The second annual Harney Coyote Classic is scheduled to kick off Jan. 16, and animal rights groups and conservation organizations are fighting to stop the coyote-killing contest that takes place in Eastern Oregon near Burns. “It’s horrific, blatantly slaughtering wildlife for no reason,” says Brooks Fahy of Predator Defense. “You don’t eat coyotes.” Continue reading 

UO Memo Details Plan To Quash Union Voice

The memo allowed the UO to have its own board of trustees

 “In the most elemental form, the faculty has traded its voice in internal government and management for the union’s voice, and the union’s only legal role involves terms and conditions of employment for bargaining unit members,” reads a May 2012 memo written by the University of Oregon’s then-legal counsel Randy Geller, calling to abolish the UO’s Faculty Senate and advisory committees that are a part of the university’s “shared governance.” In shared governance, a university’s faculty has a say in how the school is run. Continue reading 

Why is animal neglect not criminal in Lane County?

These cases are handled as code violations rather than criminal cases

Photo courtesy of Strawberry Mountain

In mid-November, Darla Clark began getting frantic calls about Dani, a young Tennessee Walker horse in Lane County who was so emaciated that her spine and ribs protruded through her muddy black hair. Clark, who runs Strawberry Mountain Rescue and Rehab, says people who called Lane County Animal Services about the horse were told an officer couldn’t make it out until after the holidays.  Dani’s condition was so bad, Clark says, the mare didn’t have a week, let alone more than a month. Clark’s rescue took her on. Continue reading