Eugene weekly., March 31, 2011, Page 10, Image 10

NEWS BRIEFS
West Eugene EmX: We’re listening.
The West Eugene EmX (WEE) project is nearing an alignment
decision and your input is important!
At its March meeting, the Metropolitan Policy Committee (MPC)
requested an additional public hearing to provide the public
ANOPPORTUNITYTOSPEAKSPECIlCALLYABOUTTHE%M8ROUTING
alternatives (including the West 6th/7th/11th Avenue, and West
13th/11th Avenue alternatives), and to the Build or
No-Build decision.
Your voice needs to be heard! Plan to attend this hearing to
provide your feedback. Sign up to speak between 5:30 and
8:00 p.m. - everyone signed up by 8 p.m. will be heard. Written
testimony also will be accepted at the hearing.
to
Plan !
M Public Hearing
MPC
d
atten
T Tuesday, April 5, 6 p.m.
L Lane Events Center
W
Wheeler Pavilion
9 976 W. 13th Avenue, Eugene
American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation
is available with 48 hours notice. To learn
more about the project, visit the West Eugene
EmX website at weemx.ltd.org.
Lane Transit District
These gigantic sea-faring birds also have
a tendency to eat the myriad of plastic
fl otsam that comes off of trash barges.
Safi na showed a picture of a decomposing
bird with nothing but Bic lighters in its
stomach. It takes some albatrosses up to 10
years before they reach sexual maturity, he
said.
Oregon’s Legislature is currently
debating a ban on plastic grocery bags,
another source of ocean trash.
The pH levels of the ocean have been
decreasing as well. This change in acidic
content is dissolving coral reefs, which are
also struggling with massive overfi shing.
Fishermen in these tropical areas have
aided in the destruction by using such
creative fi shing methods as blast fi shing
— using explosives — and poisoning the
water, Safi na said.
The speech discussed in brief a few ways
to reduce the damage being dealt upon our
oceans, focusing more on describing the
problems than offering solutions. Safi na
book-ended his speech with readings from
his new book A View from Lazy Point.
“The worst thing anyone should be able
to say about their life may also be the best:
‘I tried my best.’” — John Locanthi
BOGUS NUKE
BACKGROUND?
Questions about radiation levels in
Japan run the gamut, and responses vary
from residents in Japan opting to stay near
the leaking plants to freaked out Americans
buying potassium iodide because of trace
amounts of radiation detected in Oregon
precipitation.
Recent updates in the media include the
happening people
figure 620 millirems as the average amount
of annual radiation exposure in the U.S.
But portraying this figure as typical is not
representative of normal exposure,
according to Gerry Pollet, executive
director of Heart of America Northwest, a
citizen’s advocacy group working on
issues related to Hanford nuclear site.
Pollet says that including data for
medical treatments like MRIs, CAT scans
and radiation used to kill human cells in
cancer treatments drives up the reported
average. “What’s so misleading is that this
is not background radiation,” Pollet says.
“Essentially these figures show what a
tremendous rise there has been for 15
years or so in terms of the amount of
medical scans in one term or another,”
Pollet says. He says that the decision to
use radiation exposures to diagnose or
treat health problems also acts differently
on the human body than a higher radiation
background level, which is cumulative.
Instead of focusing on average
background levels, Pollet says, the human
health outcomes are important. “Even if
it’s not very much, the important question
is how many additional cancers will be
caused by this level of radiation, which
makes the background radiation totally
irrelevant,” Pollet says.
A UN Report to the General Assembly
on radiation says it is “impossible to make
reliable quantitative estimates of risk”
because of the difficulty in determining the
dose that an individual has received. The
report also states that the thyroid cancers
of individuals exposed as children in the
Chernobyl incident are much higher than
expected, echoing the finding that children
are more susceptible to the effects of
radiation than the adult males that most
BY PAUL NEEVEL
a pint
is just right!
Indra Stern-Hayworth
Dari Mart proudly introduces Lochmead ice cream in a convenient
snack-sized pint.
Count on Dari Mart for the freshest milk and ice cream.
All natural Lochmead ice cream, now in pints!
10 MARCH 31, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
Raised in Chappaqua, NY, the home of Horace Greeley, Indra Stern-Hayworth headed
west in 1972, with a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan, her friend Kat Parker, a dog and two cats, in
her baby-blue Ford van.
“We had a blast,” says Stern, who arrived in San Diego late that year, then discovered
Eugene on a visit to the Oregon Country Fair in ‘73. She returned in ‘74 and found work at
Mama’s Home-Fried Truck Stop, a hub of community activism that hosted meetings for the
OCF and the Community Center for the Performing Arts (WOW Hall). “I was involved in initial
stages of the CCPA. It’s one of my proudest moments,” says Stern, who also served as OCF
staff from ‘76 to ‘84. She met Stan Hayworth in 1978, raised a family and had a long career
as a jewelry buyer for local stores. Stern is a founding mother of two long-lived local arts
institutions, the Radar Angels performance troupe (since 1979) and the Jell-o Art show
(since 1988). This year’s Jell-o Art Show, on view one night only, Saturday, April 2, 5-8 pm,
at the Maude Kerns Art Center, features the Radar Angels extravaganza, “A Toast to Jello,”
at 7 pm. “The event is tongue-in-cheek,” Stern says, “but it’s paramount in any community
to promote the arts, to keep art alive.”
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