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