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“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion,” the Dalai Lama says. “If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” But what does it mean to practice compassion? I sometimes think it’s only a warm, fuzzy feeling towards others, or a New Age trick to subvert my consciousness. Perhaps it’s a sign of weakness and I’ll be bullied. Maybe I should reserve compassion just for a deserving few. Continue reading
As this column goes to print, yours truly will be a whole new person in approximately two weeks. No, no, this isn’t a Bruce Jenner moment, about his transgenderfication and his alleged dedication of his balls to Obama. Continue reading
UNDERMINING RIGHTS As the administration raises pressure on Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority to seal the deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, I wanted to bring your attention to a letter written to Congress by President Obama’s mentor at Harvard, Laurence Tribe, and a group of senior legal experts. In the letter, they raise very serious and real concerns about the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system under TPP. Continue reading
• May special elections tend to have low turnouts, meaning everyone who does vote has a bigger impact than in general elections. Your ballot has superpowers! Lane County’s Vehicle Registration Fee may have trouble passing this time around, but it has people thinking about how we pay (or don’t pay) for street, road and bridge maintenance, not only in the county but also in our cities and small towns. Is there any town in Lane County not struggling to fund street repairs? Continue reading
We could be electing a feminist president, a champion for women — totally awesome! But we’d better brace ourselves. With Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democratic candidate, we’re barreling into an 18-month spin cycle of hateful hype. I’m not talking about our reasonable objections to her stance on climate, fracking, GMOs, Wall Street, foreign policy and real stuff like that. Of course we should be challenging her and pushing her toward greener and more peaceful policies. Continue reading
A BETTER MUPTE The Eugene City Council will soon meet to discuss reviewing and revising the Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption (MUPTE), which enabled the construction of multi-unit housing in the downtown area including the controversial Capstone project, 13th & Olive. I hope the council will either allow MUPTE to sunset or redefine its parameters for mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly, commercial developments. Continue reading
• Kathmandu has been a sister city to Eugene since 1975 and many Eugeneans, including Councilor Betty Taylor, have visited there. The earthquake death toll in Nepal grows by the hour. The best way to help Kathmandu right now is through financial donations. The website kathmandurelief.org has been recommended by the Eugene/Katmandu Sister City Association, but the organization does not currently have 501(c)(3) status, so donations are not tax deductible. See eugeneweekly.com/blogs for updates. Continue reading
This year Lane Community College embarked on a Cultural Competency Professional Development initiative designed as educational programs for faculty and staff about the history, culture and current experiences of diverse peoples and communities. In this context, the Lane Peace Center Committee chose to focus our upcoming 8th annual Peace Symposium on indigenous peoples. Our purpose is to look at the history and culture of the United States from an indigenous perspective, to borrow a phrase from one of our keynote speakers, Suzan Harjo, “Seeing Red.” Continue reading
April 26 through May 2 is National Preservation Week and most people don’t really know about it. We do appreciate the historic places around us. We can appreciate buildings from an earlier age for their quality of construction and materials, their remarkable and memorable shape and form or for what might have occurred behind their doors. Sometimes those buildings sit in the landscape, isolated and unique. Sometimes they’re found together in neighborhoods, or the several neighborhoods that make up a town. Continue reading
EWEB LISTENS Being a public utility means listening to your customers. The Eugene Water & Electric Board did that last October when its elected commissioners adopted the first smart meter “opt-in” program in the nation. Customers who want to take advantage of new services (enhanced energy monitoring, new billing options, remote start and stop of service, better outage and leak detection, etc.) can choose to have a new meter installed to enable enhanced services. Continue reading