We've got issues.
Every lesbian has a story. Not just the very few of us like Ellen and Wanda who have risen to actual stardom, but every one of us regular lesbos who has come out, bucked the patriarchy by being herself and continued to thrive in this male-dominated, misogynist world. We are so totally AWESOME! In case anyone ever starts inducting us everyday dykes into some future Lesbian Hall of Fame, I want to get my application in. Continue reading
HAIL TO THE QUEEN Like many things in life and art, what one person finds boring, many others find fun and interesting. I completely enjoyed the Professor Doctor’s talent show portion in the SLUG Queen Coronation, and the people around me seemed to as well. Continue reading
• The Eugene Celebration showed off a revitalized downtown this year, and we heard lots of positive comments from people walking along Broadway who hadn’t been to our city center for a while. In between dancing, snacking and socializing, we also heard some grumbles about the LCC Downtown Center’s interior courtyard walled off from easy public access (“It could have been a mini-park,” said one observer) and we heard lots of complaints about the nearby concrete parking garage wall on the Capstone project along Olive. Continue reading
The other day, I walked out and got into my car, which takes just plain old regular unleaded gasoline. I drove into town on the asphalt roads, which are a remarkable feature. They’re basically just crushed gravel and tar or pitch (bitumen, technically), which is one of the leftovers from refining oil, and they cover an impressive amount of the surface of the Earth at this point. Less than .1 percent to be sure, but that is still a lot of asphalt. Continue reading
WHEN DISASTER STRIKES Kudos to Camilla Mortensen and Micah Griffin for their scoop [cover story, 8/15] on what’s rumbling through town. After the Lac Mégantic disaster I looked around, too. On tracks off Cross Street, the Carson Oil Co. was filling a truck with ethanol shipped by the Renewable Products Marketing Group, a Midwest distributor. It’s highly flammable. Lots of oil cars were nearby. Continue reading
• The biggest, wildest weekend of the year is about to hit with the Eugene Celebration starting at 5 pm Friday, the big parade Saturday morning, all the activities and music downtown and more. Our Next Big Thing music contest finalists will perform for the judges at 1 pm Saturday at the Eugene Weekly/KRVM Broadway Stage. The Eugene Women’s Half Marathon will be Sunday, along with the ever-popular Pet Parade. Continue reading
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. — Karl Marx Continue reading
I WANT MY UO BACK In years past I have taken great pride in claiming the UO as my alma mater. Sadly, as the UO has morphed into the University of Nike, I am no longer proud. This last gross expenditure of funds on the amenities for the so-called “student-athletes” is merely the latest in a long list of misspent money. Continue reading
• Phil Knight and Nike are hot topics following revelations about the absurd opulence of the new football facilities at UO. Letters are pouring in to local papers, but we don’t hear much about where Knight’s billions came from. Nike’s business model is quite simple, and Uncle Phil has been brilliant at monetizing it: Contract with factories in the poorest parts of Southeast Asia to manufacture high-end shoes and other apparel and threaten or cajole governments to allow those factories to pay workers less than minimum wages. Continue reading
The Occupy Wall Street meme went viral in September 2011. People all over America assembled to oppose the astonishing Wall Street bailouts, which continued after emergency assistance to Main Street dried up. Street drama was electrifying. Looking back, history will show that Occupy was the beginning of a paradigm — shifting people’s reaction to the third structural crisis of American capitalism (after the depressions of 1893 and the 1930s). Both of these previous crises resulted in fundamental rewrites of the operating code of the American political operating system. Continue reading