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WEEDING OUT PATIENTS Marijuana seems more illegal than ever for OMMP [Oregon Medical Marijuana Program] patients needing pain management. I have been an OMMP patient concomitantly with pain medications for five years, and I am currently on Social Security Disability. I was regularly drug-tested with THC in my system, which was never a problem. I then had to switch my primary care and was assigned to one of Lane County’s community health centers. Continue reading
• Mayor Kitty Piercy is concerned about the dozens of unkempt “travelers” sprawling on our sidewalks downtown with their dogs, guitars and harmonicas. We prefer to call them low-budget tourists, but regardless, they can be intimidating and offensive to some, and an irritation to storefront business owners who wish they would go away. Most will go away when the rain and cold returns; Eugene will be left with its regular population of 2,000 or so houseless folks. Continue reading
A car drops down out of the Hunan countryside, golden hour sunlight glancing of a fresh coat of wax. Pulling into the little dealership's lot, Li Qiang basks for a moment in the smell of new plastic and fresh vinyl. Then he climbs out and walks to meet his colleagues. In bold stick-on characters, the sides of the cars read “Energy-saving, environment-protecting EV/Electric Vehicle” in Chinese. Continue reading
It’s a bit odd that in America’s thoroughly corporatized culture we have no national day of honor for the Captains of Industry, and yet we do have one for working stiffs: Labor Day! Where did it come from? Who gave this day off to laboring people? History books that bother mentioning Labor Day at all usually credit President Grover Cleveland with its creation: He signed a law in July 1894 that proclaimed a holiday for workers in Washington, D.C., and the federal territories. Continue reading
HOUSING FIRST IS HERE Contrary to information provided in the Aug. 20 “Housing First?” cover feature, Eugene does have true Housing First, and ShelterCare has been a leader in implementing this effective but not-so-new model since 2006. That year, we used a private grant to launch The Inside Program (TIP), our initial Housing First venture. Continue reading
• Another week, more shootings, more senseless death — and not in some unfamiliar city across the country, but in our in our own neighborhoods. We have heavy hearts over the deaths of John Ramsey Tainton-Platts, 33, and Justin Gardner, 17, who were both shot and killed this past week (Aug. 28 and Aug. 30 respectively) in Eugene. Continue reading
The crisis of our ecology is not like others we’ve dealt with. Its origins are our origins, and it’s taken humanity a while to get its collective head around — enough time, in fact, that we don’t have time to sit and ponder. Climate change has already contributed to social collapse in Somalia and Syria and will continue to convert injustice to crisis as the world’s poorest are left without the economic means to adapt. Continue reading
LOST EUGENE TRADITION Well, I waved goodbye to one more Eugene tradition today. How I’ve loved the annual Eugene Celebration in the past, the crowds, the hoop-la. So Eugene we were! So unique! We were so us. Continue reading
• We keep wondering when the major media and leadership of this state are going to call for significantly more money for public education. Just ask a good teacher. It’s all about more teacher time per student and that costs money. The leadership to get us there is more than political. It’s business, arts, sports — every aspect of the state. Continue reading
Late in the 19th century, we discovered and began to burn crude oil rather casually, as if an epoch-marking discovery of an incredible energy source was a routine event. It wasn’t. Crude oil is an enormous one-time bounty of highly concentrated energy that developed millions of years ago in the depths of the planet, from a soup of anoxic water, alga, sediment, heat and pressure. We have squandered about half of that gift in just 156 years. Continue reading