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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 8, 2007)
Enrollment 2007-2008 TO THE EDITOR Does EW approve of the kidnappings of women or girls forced into sex slavery? Why did the free EW print an ad (back page, 1/25) picturing a woman whose feet and hands were bound? The ad was for a costume bondage/fetish event at a local lounge. I counted five embedded website ad- dresses in that ad that anyone could see, even kids. The websites sell bondage tools like “hemp bondage rope,” for tying people up, and services like: “asphyxiation — breath play,” “electro-torture” and “corporal punish- ment.” Cute. One site advertises a local Eugene “dungeon” hidden in a converted old fire station. No kidding. Their website says that it has one spacious room, a “Japanese in- fluenced bondage room,” and a “medical room” (with a gynecologist’s table) for fun. Cashing in on dehumanizing turn-ons may be lucrative, but it is not good for Eugene. Exploiting fear highjacks the imagi- nation and destroys the capacity for compas- sion. Just when America is caught using torture chambers and the whole world is spinning with images of real human bondage and suf- fering, entrepreneurs without conscience are making trendy parasite industries that teach nothing but detachment and delusion. When EW prints an ad, EW implies en- dorsement. When EW prints an ad, it auto- matically advances it toward the level of nor- malcy – and the young are taking in all of it. Please don’t print ads like that. I will buy one ad space for something else, if you agree. Deb Huntley Eugene ON CG’S WAL-MART I first passed through Cottage Grove on my way to Eugene to visit my mother’s mother’s family way back in the late 1950s. So all the green trees and rural aspects of life in Oregon were imprinted early on. My mother would tell me to look up and watch for mountain lions in the tree-tops. All through the noisy and turbulent 1960s and 1970s I kept Oregon in the back of my mind, and by the middle 1980s I was plan- ning on selling out in California and moving North. Why? I loved California, but the state of orange groves and rabbit-fields all the way from San Diego to Ventura and from Pasadena to Long Beach had become one choked blackberry warren of identical mini-marts, mega-malls, and freeways that stretched from one identi- cal place to another. I drove north on the I-5 because the California I loved was eaten alive by the remorseless and sleepless avalanche of development and super-sizing. Oregon re- mained Oregon because of far-sighted plan- ning and controls on development. I started visiting Cottage Grove in the mid 1980s and moved here in 1992. I bought my very first house, the one I live in, about six years ago. Now I love Cottage Grove because of the same reason people love Oregon. It still has- n’t been turned over to out of state corpora- tions to chew up and turn into California. We have pressing issues here in Cottage Grove to take our time, focus and community involve- ment and financial support: We need to make an environment that draws more downtown small-town busi- nesses and activities. We need to preserve our green surroundings and expand out commu- nity-oriented infrastructure like the bikeways and surrounding lake and recreational facili- ties. We do NOT need to invite overwhelm- ing changes that make Cottage Grove into just another mass-produced bedroom com- munity and freeway off-ramp. May I close by warning you to keep look- ing up and watching for mountain lions in the tree-tops. And remember what Tom McCall, once governor of Oregon, said: “Even the wild creatures of the forest know better than to go back to a trap from which they escaped” Leo River Cottage Grove A GLOBAL MOVEMENT Last month tens of thousands of activists met in Nairobi, Kenya, to present alternatives to the agenda being set by global elites at the World Economic Forum. This was the sev- enth annual World Social Forum, and the sec- ond global meeting in Africa. The Jan. 20-25 meeting attracted delegates from across the world who gathered to denounce social injus- tices that have continued to afflict developing countries. Activists preparing for the U.S. Social Forum this summer in Atlanta (June 27-July 1) attended to learn how key prob- lems were being defined, and how to develop organizing strategies for regional forums elsewhere. The U.S. Social Forum will send a message to other peoples’ struggles around the world that there is an active movement in the U.S. opposing policies at home and abroad. A global movement is rising, and hope- fully Eugene-based organizations can show solidarity by attending the USSF and declar- ing what we want our world to look like. www.ussf2007.org Becky Clausen Eugene O PEN FOR L UNCH & D INNER (Angela Englert & Bill Town’s New Eatery) Presenting: The Village School is a K-8 tuition-free public charter school using Waldorf methods. APPLY FOR ENROLLMENT BY ATTENDING A REQUIRED PROSPECTIVE PARENT INFORMATION MEETING. NO SIGN UP NECESSARY. ONLY TWO REMAINING PROSPECTIVE PARENT INFO MEETINGS LEFT BEFORE LOTTERY ON FEB. 27 2 Special Nights of Dining For You and Your Loved Ones Wed., Feb. 14th VALENTINES DAY 5:30pm & 7:30 Seatings Tue., Feb. 20th MARDI GRAS 5:30pm & 7:30 Seatings Each event is $45 per person Please call for menus. Reservations only. FEBRUARY 13, 12 PM FEBRUARY 22, 6 PM The Village School 2855 Lincoln St., Eugene • 345-7285 village@4j.lane.edu www.happyvillage.org Village School’s enrollment process is separate from 4J and is not part of the 4J School Choice application. 460 Willamette Street • 343-1586 Mon.-Sat. 11-10 • At 5th & Willamette in the Historic Lane Building BROWN MONEY It’s nice that there is a green home show in Eugene (Good Earth Home, Garden & Living Show), but I was very surprised to see a finance company there that was part of Umpqua Holdings. Yeah, Umpua, aka Stumpqua, the nasty bank owned by the clearcutting lumber baron, and whose branch banks regularly get a lot of protesters. What were THEY doing there? Tell me it ain’t so. Ralph Wombat Eugene BE THE PARENT Among other things, my father was an early chronicler of the Nazi mentality. His se- rious conclusion was that they were spoiled children whose parents had failed to teach them self-restraint and that it falls to us to do so. Erstwhile schoolyard bullies, fueled by their own blood-lust, morph into megaloma- niacs. His prescription was to be unafraid of them and to restrain and contain them (this was in early 1941). Sadly, two-thirds of a century later, my fa- ther’s insights still apply. The current occu- pant of the White House fits them to a T. He spent the first half of his adult life as a full- time party animal, and the second half be- coming a world-class war criminal. His “or- dinary guy” persona, plus a ton of money, got him elected. Unfortunately, we know the rest. His parents failed to contain and restrain his sociopathic tendencies. It falls to us to do so. Paul Prensky Eugene FEBRUARY 8, 2007 7
