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
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