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Welcome back, students, to the cold wet winter of your discontent, otherwise known as the dark term before spring break 2016. It’s time to shake the shards of sugarplum fairies out of your sensory-savoring limbic systems and pay attention to politics. The Oregon Legislature returns to Salem in less than a month. Beware! Continue reading
One of the few useful insights I got from college sociology is that societies are complex organisms with their own history and internal dynamics, not simply collections of individuals. Societies shape the lives of the individuals within them. The U.S. is a migrant society, settled by ambitious risk-takers, producing a highly individualistic culture that tends to see everything as personal rather than social. That has a lot to do with our economic history. Continue reading
This community lost a truly stellar human being Dec. 19. Peg Morton, one of the best that the human race had to offer, sailed off into the great mystery surrounded by loved ones, on a courageous journey that started only 13 days before with an intentional fast to end her life. Continue reading
New Year’s resolutions come and go and come back around again. I can’t even count how many times I’ve vowed to improve my eating, exercise and money management habits. Oh, I’ve made progress — I’m gluten free, walking daily and out of debt — for now, anyway. There’s always room for backsliding. So I guess those same old resolutions will be with me (and most other New Year’s resolution makers) again for 2016. Boring, right? Continue reading
360 by Bike Continue reading
A number of letters and comments have appeared recently regarding local developers’ proposal to solve the traveler/transient problem in downtown by filling Kesey Square with a five-story apartment building. Downtown Eugene Inc. and the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce have both come out in favor of this closing of the commons and privatizing of our public land. Continue reading
As Oregonians, we should all be alarmed at the numerous signs of a great calamity to come: the mass migration of Californians to our state. The climate-change-induced drought in that region has pushed California’s 38 million residents to the brink of social collapse, with millions on the verge of fleeing the devastation. Continue reading
Jump Sots From Israel “They didn’t just kill Rabin, they didn’t just shoot the messenger. They killed the concept of peace,” my friend proclaims over Shabbat dinner in Tel Aviv. “The sad part is that they succeeded — the right wing. They killed Rabin and got what they wanted. Look at Israel now.” Continue reading
The Klamath Agreements may to be on their final days. Rep. Greg Walden (R- Hood River) is rumored to attempt to slam through fraudulent legislation for the Klamath agreement this week. The bill as is no longer includes language for dam removal, a primary bargained for benefit to signatory tribes. Rate payers have been charged a fee on their monthly bill from PacifiCorp for a number of years for dam removal. But if legislators have no intention of removing the dams, where did fees rate payers have been charged go? Continue reading
As programmer of the summer film screenings and the All Hallows’ Eugene downtown Halloween event that attract “students, families, Eugeneans of all stripes” (“A Sense of Place” cover story, 11/19), I do not endorse or support any anti-development effort toward Kesey Square. Broadway Plaza is not a well-utilized public space. Instead, it is a remnant of failed urban planning whose greatest defenders lack the imagination and determination to champion a better-conceived common area for political and cultural activity. Continue reading