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The Economic Policy Insitute's Family Budget Calculator "measures the income a family needs in order to attain a secure yet modest living standard by estimating community-specific costs of housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, other necessities, and taxes. The budgets, updated for 2013, are calculated for 615 U.S. communities and six family types (either one or two parents with one, two, or three children). Continue reading
• The Eugene Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee meets at 5:30 pm Thursday, June 12, at the Atrium Building, 99 W. 10th Ave. On the agenda is the Franklin Boulevard update, Better Eugene-Springfield Transit, priority bike lanes, Master Plan revisions and other business. • The Eugene Police Commission meets at 5:30 pm Thursday, June 12, at EPD headquarters, 300 Country Club Rd. Kilcullen Room. Public comments will be taken, and on the agenda is a discussion of emerging technologies. Continue reading
Holy Cow is permanently closing its campus location in the EMU on the UO campus as of June 30. “Deconstruction is in full swing and we cannot afford to keep it open after business went down 50 percent due to construction,” says Kathee Lavine of Holy Cow in an email. “We are open on Willamette and our catering and products are available as always.” Lavine adds, “It is perhaps fitting that we are going out with the OUS system, both of us ending our involvement with the UO on June 30. Continue reading
“I would like to be a useful person and bring a good change to people’s lives,” says Win Min, who grew up in Sin Tae, a farming village in western Myanmar. An avid learner in primary school, he was shocked, at age 11, when his parents told him they couldn’t afford tuition. A year of hard work on the family farm earned him permission to travel to Mandalay, where he learned that tuition was free at the Buddhist monastery’s high school. “I started learning English,” says Win Min, who memorized Myanmar history and became a tourist guide. Continue reading
It’s been a good month for gray wolves so far: The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife documented new wolf pups in southern Oregon, and just across the border, the California Fish and Game Commission just voted to protect gray wolves under the California Endangered Species Act. The pups were fathered by Oregon’s famous OR-7 and are the first pups to be born in the Oregon Cascades since the 1940s. Continue reading
Eugeneans looking for help with odd jobs or more can now turn to residents of Opportunity Village Eugene (OVE), a self-governing community of about 30 people trying to transition from homelessness to stability. Two weeks ago, “villager” Al Hutt launched a website searchable by task being sought or villager’s skill or need. “Sometimes when people come in here they have immediate needs like a toothache or maybe they need shoes. And they can’t get going until it’s met,” Hutt says. Continue reading
Soon after news broke of the Eugene Celebration being canceled last week, individuals and community groups came up with big plans to have a celebration without Kesey Enterprises, the private group that has run the EC and parade for years. The parade might still happen. Brendan Relaford of Kesey Enterprises says that a meeting was held with “various stakeholders” Monday, June 9, and “we are going to make a decision in the next day or two.” An email query was also sent out to organizations that have participated in the parade in the last two years. Continue reading
Sea stars are known for their ability to regenerate limbs, but a vicious disease now sweeping the Oregon coastline is causing sea stars to rot and disintegrate much more quickly than their powers of regeneration can handle. If the die-off continues and we lose Oregon’s iconic orange and purple sea stars, local extinctions could cause long-term trouble for other marine animals. “The way the rate has accelerated, I don’t think most sea stars along the Oregon coast are long for this world,” says Bruce Menge, a marine ecologist with Oregon State University. Continue reading
Jerry Henderson and his wife, Junaida, rent out the first floor of their taupe cedar-sided south hills home to people passing through town. For $60 per night, travelers stay in a private “suite” with a bedroom, bathroom and family room and access to decks that skirt along ferns and wrap around the trunks of 100-foot-tall fir trees. They have rented their extra space to 190 people since May 2010. Jerry Henderson says they have reported all of their Airbnb earnings, which total at least $11,000, to the IRS. Continue reading
This story contains details of alleged sexual assaults that may trigger emotional distress in some readers and rape survivors. EW uses the word “alleges” not to indicate doubt in the survivor but as a legal term for when no charges have been proven in a court of law. Continue reading