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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 21, 2011)
PLANNING VS. NEW RULES ON CLIMATE Local transportation planning is happening in numerous government bodies and committees throughout Lane County and the decisions being made this year will affect foot, bike and vehicle traffic patterns for decades to come. Or will they? A state- mandated decision process next year concerning climate change might derail a lot of this year’s planning — unless those involved in transportation planning make more than superficial changes. What appears to be missing in much of the local planning discussion is the state’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent of 1990 levels by the year 2050, as dictated by HB 2001 and SB 1059 passed by the 2009 and 2010 Oregon Legislatures. Reductions will need to come primarily from “light vehicle travel and transportation,” according to a memo from ODOT dated Jan. 26. Transportation accounts for about 34 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. With all this in mind, County Commis- sioner Pete Sorenson is organizing an Earth Day town hall forum from 9 to 10:30 am Saturday, April 23, at the Campbell Center, 155 High St. in Eugene. He will be joined by Mayor Kitty Piercy, Councilor Andrea Ortiz, Rob Zako of the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission, Kevin Matthews of Envision Eugene, city planner Kurt Yeiter and Brian Orr of Eugene Smarttrips. The town hall will look at the “big picture” of the Oregon Sustainable Transportation Initiative in light of the multiple local planning processes now going on. Eugene, Springfield and Coburg are updating transportation plans; the Lane Council of Governments is working on Springfield’s portion of the Regional Transportation Plan; LTD is working on EmX expansion; Envision Eugene is looking at how to accommodate growth; the Eugene Pedestrian/Bicycle Master Plan is being updated, etc. In addition, ODOT is working on a Statewide Transportation Strategy. “It’s insanely complicated,” says Fergus Mclean, who’s helping promote the town hall. “It’s really quite an important story to try to understand since it’s shaping our next 20 years. And then they are looking at coming back next year to revisit the whole thing through the Oregon Sustainable Transportation Initiative to finally look at the carbon footprints of the plans they’ve just finished.” Mclean says the town hall “seems like a place where some public awareness can really give a quantum boost to the bureaucrats buried in their planning silos.” Even if Oregon significantly reduces greenhouse gases, will it be enough? Peak oil blogger Mark Robinowitz writes about Eugene’s excessive consumption of energy at sustaineugene.org and says, “We are past the point where setting goals for reducing car use over the next two to four decades is necessary to reduce energy consumption, because oil depletion will cut energy use whether the goal is (met) or not … the city of Eugene’s support for about a billion dollars in highway expansion in the metro area suggests that the final report for ‘Climate and Energy’ will be more greenwash to pacify the public while business as usual continues to dominate our public resources.” Kurt Yeiter of the city has an interactive website set up to try to educate local residents on local transportation planning, and encourage involvement. See http:// wkly.ws/11x for a public discussion about a long-range transportation plan for Eugene. — Ted Taylor EUGENE EARTH DAY EVERYWHERE Whether you are looking for a family- friendly day, an opportunity to give back to Mother Earth through a volunteer project, or simply to enjoy some good music, there is something for everyone. Celebrating Earth Day this year is easy in the Eugene-Springfield area with several events to choose from. The UO will be celebrating Earth Day from 11 am to 5:30 pm Friday, April 22, outside the EMU. This free event will feature a trash sculpture contest, music, speakers and the grand opening of the student Sustainabil- ity Center in the EMU building. Also on Friday, if you want to venture out of Eugene, Creswell’s Earth Day celebration runs 9 am to 3:30 pm at Garden Lake Park, 396 Melton Road. The town will receive its first “Tree City USA” award, presented by the Oregon Department of Forestry at 3 pm. Eugene’s 13th annual free Earth Day Celebration sponsored by Lane Transit District, MECCA, Bring Recycling, Lane County, EWEB, and UO among others runs from 11 am to 5:30 pm Saturday, April 23, at EWEB’s River Edge Plaza, and will feature music, crafts and booths. For the first time, the OSU Lane County Master Gardeners Association will be selling plants at the event. “We are thrilled to have them join us this year; we are usually competing against each other,” said event coordinator Emily Evans. If you are seeking a piece of nature to enjoy for Earth Day, the city of Eugene HOT STUFF AT MUSEUM Images by Herbert Acherman are among those in the Kinsey Institute's collections, the subject of a talk Tuesday at UO 8 APRIL 21, 2011 EUGENE WEEKLY Tucked into a special collections library in Bloomington, Ind., is a whole lotta sex. Curator of art, artifacts and photographs Catherine Johnson-Roehr will give a public lecture about the collection at 3:30 pm Tuesday, April 26, at UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Before you whip out the protest signs and megaphones, keep in mind that this is no back-alley peep show; the Kinsey Institute’s collection of sexual imagery exists to further the understanding the span of perceptions of sexuality. The collection covers a worldly spectrum of sexual desire that spans time as well as space. “We have artwork from all over the world,” says Johnson-Roehr, “Many different cultures have created fairly explicit images of sexual behavior.” Johnson-Roehr says it would be impossible to cover the tens of thousands of images in the collection in one talk, but she’ll likely include pottery from the Moche of Peru and pictures from the tradition of Chinese foot binding. Not all images in the collection are old. Johnson-Roehr continues to receive artifacts for the collection. “Sometimes it’s a fairly humble gift,” she says. “Today one of our student employees gave me a little box of three novelty condoms to commemorate the wedding of William and Kate.” The institute relies on gifts like these (and some that are a little more refined) to continue adding to the collection. While Johnson-Roehr and the Kinsey Institute try to make their enormous sexual artifacts collection accessible, seeing it outside of Bloomington is rare. “We want to share the collections. We see no advantage to keeping the collection under wraps until a particular researcher comes along.” Honors College instructor Jennifer Burns Levin says that Johnson-Roehr’s “interdisciplinary appeal” inspired Levin to invite Johnson-Roehr to speak at UO. “What’s fascinating to me about the collection of art and artifacts is that they are not only a record of the time and place where they were created, but also American history of the mid-20th century,” Levin says. That history is not just in the collection, it is the collection. The Kinsey Institute had to sue to defend its right to import the sexual materials into the U.S. — even for research purposes. The discussions of art, history and culture that stem from this exhibit will hopefully congeal to form a delicious First Amendment soup. “When we study images of desire,” Levin says, “we also study what it means to talk about sex in America, and how censorship affects other social structures and continually challenges our nation’s mandate for freedom of speech.” — Shannon Finnell WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
