We've got issues.
Last week in this column we wrote about Barbara’s Soaps, a booth at Saturday Market, and we hear from owner Barbara Hascall that her booth has been banned from the market pending mediation. “We went to the board meeting Wednesday (Sept. 3) and thought we had a sympathetic audience,” Hascall says. “I’m still surprised by this.” The market had gotten complaints about excessive odors emanating from the booth with its 50 soaps, shampoos and lotions. Continue reading
“I always knew, implicitly, that I was a musician,” says Scotty Perey, who took classical piano lessons from age 5 through high school in Billings, Montana. He sang in the school choir and taught himself guitar. He studied engineering for a year in Boulder before leaving that career path to study music at Montana State in Bozeman. He moved to Eugene in 1988 and finished a bachelor’s in music composition in 1994. He started giving music lessons at home in 1990, the same year he joined a new band, The Sugar Beets. “We met at the UO,” he says. Continue reading
Leasing water rights? Logging? What about bringing back Faerieworlds, the Dirty Dash and other events? Lane County’s park system is massive in scope — it encompasses 4,300 acres from the coast to the Cascades, including everything from marinas and campsites to hiking and horseback riding — and also massive is the draft master plan Lane County Parks produced last month. For the first time since 1980, Lane County is updating its Parks and Open Space Master Plan, and the county is now taking public comment on the almost 300-page document. Continue reading
Although statewide results won’t become public until Sept. 17 for the Smarter Balanced Assessment — a standardized test Oregon students took this spring to determine if schools are teaching in alignment with the Common Core State Standards — preliminary results show that around 11 percent of Eugene School District 4J students did not take the test. For local anti-testing group Community Alliance for Public Education (CAPE), this statistic is good news. For school officials on the local and state level, the number strikes a more ominous tone. Continue reading
On Sept. 8, ShelterCare Development Director Lucy Vinis announced her candidacy for mayor of Eugene in the 2016 election, and she said three platforms drive her campaign: education, affordable living and climate change. Vinis, who worked with environmental nonprofit EarthShare of Oregon before her time at ShelterCare, said those three issues have emerged “consistently and repeatedly” as she’s talked with members of the community. “I want Eugene to be a city in which everyone has an opportunity to thrive,” she said. Continue reading
Light streams through large glass windows to fall on each carefully salvaged piece of wood in Jess Pollack’s beautiful remodeled home. Pollack, a humble self-described contractor with an appreciation for the arts, turned an odd ’60s home into a work of modern whimsical art in a 14-year labor of love. Pollack’s home is one of 11 sites on the 2015 BRING tour which, according to Ephraim Payne, BRING’s director of outreach and communication, encourages the community to think about how to bring sustainable living into their homes. Continue reading
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) recently entered into separate settlement agreements with Portland-based Cascade Petroleum Transportation, Inc. concerning a March 2012 truck crash near Westfir that resulted in the release of thousands of gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel to a ditch on the west side of Hwy. 58. The ditch flowed to Deception Creek, which in turn flowed to the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. Gasoline and diesel fuel also ended up in groundwater that supplies drinking water to nearby residents. Continue reading
• Oregon Department of Transportation is currently spraying roadsides. Call Tony Kilmer at ODOT District 5 at 744-8080 or call (888) 996-8080 for herbicide application information. Hwy. 36 near Mapleton and Hwy. 99 near Eugene were recently sprayed. • Sharon Kester, 520-0131, plans to hire Applebee Aviation, 866-311-4354, to aerially spray two units totaling 93 acres near Hawley Creek with Accord XRT II, Arsenal Applicator’s Concentrate, Oust XP and/or Syl-Tac. See ODF notification 2015-781-12122, call Brian Peterson at 935-2283 with questions. Continue reading
Backpacker magazine has a tongue-in-cheek, so to speak, video that is both funny and disturbing. Click on the image below to link to the website. Continue reading
• The Metropolitan Policy Committee, a key intergovernmental panel that makes recommendations on local land use and transportation issues, meets from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm Thursday, Sept. 3, at the Eugene Public Library. On the agenda (wkly.ws/229) is “Springfield Main Street Safety Update.” Contact is Paul Thompson, 682-4405. Continue reading