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
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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
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MARCH 29, 2007 9