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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (March 29, 2007)
TO THE EDITOR tims of predatory pedophile priests have rewarded the Portland Archdiocese con- spiracy of silence. Financial bankruptcy? Doubtful. Moral bankruptcy? Debatable. Wily strategy? Doubtless. Jerome Garger Yachats SEX IS SACRED In Response to “Savage Bonds,” Beth Olson’s (2/15) letter, I’d like to say I find this column harmful for children and adults. And yes, Beth, I do home school my children. I don’t let them watch television, and I do decide which movies are appropri- ate for their age levels. However, they are in no way “banned from social activities with the outside world.” They get to experience the real world and become real people, not media controlled zombies who forget how to think for themselves. They are involved in positive activities that will shape them into being the beautiful, kind, loving beings we are all meant to be. Sex is supposed to be a loving, sacred act. We can all agree that some of our most beautiful experiences have come through sexual acts. This society has lost all respect for sex and a lot of other things that are sup- posed to be important. Then we wonder why divorce rates are on the rise, teens are having babies they are not ready to raise, or why diseases are everywhere. Disrespectful, sleazy columns belong in sleazy magazines. EW should publish articles that enrich the community, not corrupt it. JoAnne Berger Vida GREED = MESS THE FARMER’S MARKET Should it Grow Roots? Richard Wilen, HAYHURST VALLEY ORGANIC FARM & NURSERY Lotte Streisinger, PRINTMAKER, POTTER, WRITER FRIDAY MARCH 30, 11:50 AM DOWNTOWN ATHLETIC CLUB $3 admission • Free to City Club Members 485-7433 www.cityclubofeugene.org CHANGE NOW I agree wholeheartedly with Shannon Wilson’s letter (3/8) on ideas to help slow climate change. EWEB should invest $90 million into solar energy and conservation incentive programs rather than build a new facility. A year-round covered farmer’s market instead of a parking garage. Common sense moves. How about expand- ing and merging the community garden and school garden projects so we could have community gardens in every school grounds in the summer when school is not in session? Or a “Star Light City Night” project to make it mandatory all unneces- sary lights are turned out in public buildings after hours and in privately owned buildings as well? Lowering the speed limit would immediately save millions of pounds of car- bon from being pumped into the atmos- phere. Clearcut logging should cease. We can’t have a “business as usual” ap- proach anymore, and we have to cut through the bureaucracy. There is money to be made in renewable energy, local farming, new innovations. Not only do we need to help slow climate change, we need to prepare for it. Local farming, energy production and conservation are key. We need leaders who aren’t afraid of blazing new trails, not the too little, too late ap- proach that is currently being promoted. Pamela Driscoll Dexter Exquisite Foods Phenomenal Presentation Superior Service Thinking about owning a home-based business? Already self-employed? LANE MICROBUSINESS offers you free classes and grants you need! CLASSES START IN EARLY APRIL • How to start a business • How to write a business plan • Marketing your web site • Basic bookkeeping • And more! Call for a complete schedule or for more information at: (541) 463-4619 or visit www.lanemicrobusiness.org In light of the outrage over the recent vote by county commissioners to enact a new county income tax, perhaps it’s worth asking the question: “How did we get into this mess?” The simple answer is that we got greedy and squandered our inheritance. When the national forests were created 100 years ago, the federal government agreed to give a percentage of timber sales revenue to county governments to offset lost property taxes. Sustainably managed for timber, water, wildlife habitat and recreation, these forests should have met our needs in rela- tive perpetuity. But we got greedy and logged too much, too fast. In the ’70s the Forest Service and BLM were told by researchers that the spotted owl needed old-growth habitat to survive. They ignored the data, hoping that the spotted owl problem would (literally) go away as they accelerated cut levels. In the ’80s the pro-business Reagan and Bush administrations authorized drastic in- creases to the annual cut levels on federal forestland. In the ’90s the Clinton administration inherited 25-plus years of overcutting and ignored science about old-growth forest systems. The FS and BLM were forced by the courts to obey the environmental laws that they had been willfully ignoring. The Clinton Forest Plan reduced the cut from 14 billion bd. ft. to 2 billion bd. ft., but it was too little, too late. In the short term, many people benefited from the overcutting, but now we’re stuck dealing with the consequences of our short- term greed — kinda sucks, doesn’t it? Loren Brower Springfield Serving Northwest-French Contemporary Cuisine D INNER • W EEKEND B RUNCH Local and French Wines • 4 Ever Changing Beers on Tap Seasonal Cocktails • Catering Available Intimate Monthly Wine Dinners three square southtowne shoppes - 2835 oak street, 284.2825 MARCH 29, 2007 9
