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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.
It's not yet clear what's happening on the UO campus this morning (beyond a rally scheduled for 11;30 am in regard to shake up in the diversity office) but UO emergency alerts are warning students to stay away from the Health Center and the latest alert says Agate is closed between 13th and 15the avenues. Another alert told students and faculty that there are intermittended power outages across campus. Continue reading
Every good starship captain ought to have a Twitter feed. If you still can't get your body beamed to other planets at least you can send 140 characters from space. William Shatner (aka Captain James T. Kirk, aka @williamshatner) tweeted to Chris Hadfield, of the Canadian Space Agency "Are you tweeting from space?" Hadfield is the International Space Station's Flight Engineer for Expedition 34, so he is indeed tweeting from space. Continue reading
One minute you're hearing former Eugenean Mat Kearney sing "Breath In, Breath Out" on Grey's Anatomy or it's "Nothing Left to Lose" while you're driving down Highway 58 (avoiding that ammo someone spilled this morning) and the next you're like, "Oh, shit, is that a song about Chip Kelly?&quo Continue reading
“The mountains once were people, our grandfathers used to tell us,” begins a Warm Springs legend of how Eastern Oregon’s Black Butte came to be and how it came to provide the plants and animals used by the Native Americans. Mountains, buttes and knolls seem eternal as they stand sentinel over Oregon’s landscape, but as photographer John Bauguess watched miners dig away at Parvin Butte in the small community of Dexter, he began to wonder what other high places the Willamette Valley might be losing to development. Continue reading
Most of the journalists I know do sit around talking about the news. But we don't sit around talking like the news, even the NPR folks, which is too bad because I would love it if everyone walked around talking like All Things Considered or Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Continue reading
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. Or a wigeon, which is also a duck. Ducks are everywhere in Eugene, but they are so much part of our Oregon landscape that we often walk right by them with barely a second glance. Continue reading
Private citizens, members of Cottage Grove’s Forest Web and former Lane County commissioner Jerry Rust are concerned the decisions about Oregon’s public forests, and specifically the O&C forests that have been used to generate cash for counties, are being made in secret. Rust and Cristina Hubbard of Forest Web held a press conference and delivered letters to Gov. Kitzhaber’s office on Dec. 18 asking him to open his O&C “timber panel” up for citizen participation. Continue reading
The Idle No More movement that has swept across Canada is taking root in Oregon as well, with a flashmob Dec. 23 at Portland's Pioneer Place mall and another round dance flashmob planned for 5 pm Dec. 29 at Eugene's Valley River Center. A Facebook page organizing the VRC flashmob says singers will begin at 5 pm in the middle of the mall and says for participants to gather round, dance and support when the singing begins and to part ways when it ends. Continue reading
The Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza was ordered closed Dec. 11 by Lane County Administrator Liane Richardson after Occupy Eugene offshoot, Eugene SLEEPS (Safe Legally Entitled Emergency Places to Sleep), which has been campaigning for safe places for the homeless to sleep, staged a protest there. Eugene SLEEPS is asking people to write letters in response to statements from Richardson that indicate her belief the homeless protesters created a need for the plaza to be "disinfected." In a recent press release, SLEEPS said: "Ms. Continue reading
The Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza has long been home to, well, free speech. But the R-G is reporting that Lane County Administrator Liane Richardson has signed an order putting the kibosh on free speech at the plaza for now in response to a protest. Continue reading