Eugene Weekly

One saying goes like this, “When you have your health, you have everything!” That is a wonderful sentiment, but I think I could add that having a loving family, a challenging job and enough money to live comfortably — all of those things are part of my idea of “everything.” That said, you should wash your hands and quit smoking. These two things could make a huge impact in our community’s public health. Beyond that, public health could be enhanced by thinking of transportation as a part of public health policy solution. Continue reading →

Forty-eight years ago this month, Lyndon Johnson overcame years of resistance by the medical establishment and signed Medicare into law. It’s as close as this country has ever come to establishing the kind of universal, publicly funded, “single-payer” health care system that prevails in most other industrialized countries. Continue reading →

In a Viewpoint on Aug. 1, 2012, Roy Keene described how Timber Town Eugene buzzes along nearly oblivious to the forest destruction and herbicide poisoning around it. Much like a frog in a pot of water brought to a slow boil, the timber industry relies on what geographer and author Jared Diamond has referred to as “landscape amnesia” — slow environmental degradation that would be offensive if only at a faster pace. The scenario with the Seneca biomass power facility is disturbingly similar. Continue reading →

Millions of Americans have been educated to believe that their psychiatric drugs correct a known “biochemical imbalance,” but they might be surprised to find that this belief is not actually supported by science. In fact, the evidence that psych drugs correct “biochemical imbalances” is so weak that an editorial in Psychiatric Times recently claimed that it is only within “urban legend” that well-informed psychiatrists have ever believed such theories.  Continue reading →

I know you’re slammed with work, debt and episodes of Downton Abbey to catch up on. And I know you feel like an eco-hypocrite jetting to see Grandma and coral reefs before they disappear. Me, too. But if your political inaction on climate change stems mostly from not knowing how to make a difference, Bill McKibben just issued his Tarzan call for your help.  Continue reading →

The revelations of the past month and a half have shone light on system of suspicionless global and domestic surveillance so pervasive that George Orwell would have been stunned. The goal of the NSA is that all electronic communication whatsoever will be stored and analyzed. If “red flags” are raised in the analysis, or if suspicion is raised for other reasons, then a closer look may be had. Continue reading →

When the press reports that the Oregon Legislature adjourned sine die, it does not mean physician-assisted suicide by trigonometric function. Gov. Kitzhaber’s not that kind of doctor. Sine die is Latin for “without a day,” meaning in this case that the 77th session of the Salem Hot Air Society is done for this year, kaput. There will be an additional $1 billion for schools, some half-hearted PERS reform and no additional background checks for guns. Next session, next February, unless there’s a special session. Continue reading →

My friend and former Congressman Jim Weaver, who lives on Seavey Loop Road, called me about a month ago asking what might be done, if anything, about the summer events in Buford Park that seemed to be multiplying exponentially. He told me about an event last year that backed up traffic from the park to I-5 and kept him from getting out of his driveway. Continue reading →

The air was calm, the birdsong brisk, as sunlight slanted through the canopy, spotlighting the Wiley Griffon Historical Monument in the Eugene Masonic Cemetery. It may have been a trick of the light, but Wiley’s bronze eye sparkled. The Preacher and I stood looking out into the forest, overlooking the gravesite on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Medgar Evers, June 12. Continue reading →

Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” is often misquoted by opponents of immigration reform because a portion of the poem reads “Good fences make good neighbors.” As Frost tells it: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder Continue reading →