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Camilla Mortensen is the longtime local editor of Eugene Weekly, the area’s alternative newspaper. The paper, which has been in print since 1982 (originally as What’s Happening) continues to print more than 27,000 copies a week in addition to its popular email newsletters and website. Camilla has a masters degree in folklore and mythology from UCLA and a doctorate in comparative literature from the University of Oregon. She has been a reporter and editor at EW since 2007 and teaches journalism at the UO in the mornings before heading to the Weekly’s office. She also teaches newswriting at Lane Community College and advises The Torch student newspaper.
Is Portland powered by Canadian corpses? The Associated Press is reporting that "The Marion County Board of Commissioners in Salem has ordered an incinerator to stop accepting boxed medical waste to generate electricity after learning the waste it’s been burning may include tissue from aborted fetuses from British Columbia." Continue reading
The Lane County Jail announced on April 21 that it will no longer hold inmates on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers without a warrant or a court order. This is in response to an April 11 federal court ruling that Clackamas County violated a woman’s Fourth Amendment rights by holding her in jail for 19 hours after her case was settled in order to let federal immigration agents begin investigating her residency status. Continue reading
Two law briefs that attorney Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center says could affect whether constitutional rights in Eugene and across the U.S. are “silently but significantly” being eroded and “swept under the radar screen” were filed in courts this past week. The briefs involve participants from Occupy Eugene and SLEEPS (Safe Legally Entitled Emergency Places to Sleep) and preexisting cases that deal with the First Amendment right to protest and assemble in what Regan calls “our revered public forums.” Continue reading
Thanks to a federal law enacted in 2005, Eugene gets about 40 blasts of a 96- to 110-decibel horn each time a train passes through town, according to Whitey Lueck. Lueck is an instructor in the UO’s Department of Landscape Architecture who has been involved over the years in trying to implement a “quiet zone” for Eugene’s 10 crossings to protect the ears of city dwellers. Continue reading
UO law prof Rob Illig got a little hot under the collar the other day and his series of emails went viral. As The Oregonian puts it, it's not "cute-puppy viral" either. UO econ prof Bill Harbaugh called attention to rants (and lists the sites that have picked up the story) the on his UO Matters blog. Continue reading
Sombath Somphone is “one of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic’s most respected civil society figures,” according to a December 2013 press statement from Secretary of State John Kerry on the one year anniversary of Sombath’s disappearance. Sombath was kidnapped from a police checkpoint in Laos and has not been heard from since. Sombath’s wife, Ng Shui-Meng, will be speaking about her husband’s disappearance and the challenges to free speech and human rights in Laos and in the rest of Southeast Asia while in Eugene on Monday, April 21. Continue reading
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Fast-forward to 2014, when President Barack Obama signed a Farm Bill into law that relaxed some of the restrictions on growing the crop most likely to have been found on a Deadhead. Michelle Obama won’t be growing hemp in her White House Garden any time soon, but the bill allows research institutions and state departments of agriculture to grow hemp in states where pro-hemp legislation has already been enacted. Oregon is one of those states. Continue reading
Last week, Kathy Jones of Seneca-Jones timber told The Oregonian that the timber company wants to log the Elliott State Forest for " personal reasons" and says of CFD members "“They’re elitist environmentalists, they’re sent from Washington D.C., they’re not about doing anything reasonable.&r Continue reading
When a helicopter flies over Cedar Valley, residents tend to assume it’s searching for illegal pot operations in the nearby forest. That’s what Curry County neighbors John Burns and Kathyrn Rickard thought when they heard the blades whirring over their rural homes. They didn’t think the helicopter flying overhead would be raining toxic chemicals upon their homes, their farms and their bodies. Continue reading
Bob Keefer wrote about art and artists for most of the 30 years he worked for The Register-Guard. Continue reading