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A play celebrating the life of Paul Robeson March 8 and 10 at the Lane Community College main campus will benefit the LCC Black Student Union (BSU) scholarship fund. Dr. Stanley Coleman, a director and actor now on the faculty at LCC, plays Paul Robeson in the one-man Broadway play by Phillip Hays Dean. Continue reading
Everyone knows Salem is the official site of the Hot Air Society, and currently all 90 members, both chambers, meet at the state Capitol building. However, Eugene has its own version, called HASSLES, the Hot Air Society of South Lane, Eugene and Springfield. It began in 1806 when two geezers, I mean pioneers — Floyd Frank Prozanski, a former Texas A&M Aggie, and Dr. Paul Kaplan, a semi-retired frontier gynecologist — began their search for the cheapest happy hour beer in Lane County. Continue reading
It’s no big secret that Oregon’s farmer population is aging. On the other hand, increasing demand for locally produced food provides opportunities for a new generation of sustainably minded growers to develop successful farms — if they can get financing, that is. Continue reading
The first “Alternatives” class at the Osher Lifetime Learning Institute (OLLI) began with our watching an informative TED talk by Richard Wilkinson on how economic inequality harms societies. If you look at a long list of health and social problems, such as life expectancy, math and literacy, infant mortality, violence, imprisonment, teenage births, trust, obesity, mental illness, addiction, and social morality, there is little correlation between the wealth of the nations, but a very strong correlation between income inequality. Continue reading
In the 1980s, Eugene elementary school students got physical education (PE) four to five days a week year-round. Today, after years of budget cuts, most elementary schools have a PE teacher on-site just nine weeks a year, with some students getting PE just once a week. Last year, nine elementary schools had no PE teacher. There’s less PE in middle and high schools, too. Continue reading
No more “Insider Baseball.” I’m not an insider any more, and my knees don’t allow for softball, much less baseball. But I continue to watch the Salem political game from afar; shoveling horse pucky here in the south hills of Lane County and reflecting on the days when horse pucky was my day job in the Legislature. Continue reading
At a recent City Club meeting, Oregon’s Chief Education Officer Rudy Crew passed up a great opportunity to peel his hands off a “cow” that’s sacred in some circles — opposition to school choice — and make current investments in public education work a little more efficiently. The last question of the program was, “Can you find ways to make the charter schools in Oregon operate as part of a comprehensive system of public education?” He answered, “No. Charter schools are the competition.” If he looked at the local evidence, he might see things differently. Continue reading
If you’re a hunter who goes into the woods in order to put food on your family’s table, you can relax. Government agents won’t be coming around trying to confiscate your rifle – unless you hunt out of season or without any required licenses. Continue reading
A “no-kill” shelter is run by staff that consistently demonstrates passion for saving the lives of all adoptable and treatable animals. “Kill” shelter managers save some animals, and try to justify to their employees and community why they can’t save them all. In fact, they can. Continue reading
The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and Eugene City Hall is exacerbating this inequity with two separate money grabs. Oregon Center for Public Policy’s research shows that in Oregon the lowest income households pay the highest share of their incomes to state and local taxes, and highest income households pay the lowest share. More than half of Eugene’s 65,631 households earn less than $50,000 annually, with 21,128 earning below $25,000. Continue reading