• It was a great season for the 13-2 Ducks, but you could feel
the wheels on the wagon starting to come off even a few days
before the Jan. 12 national title game against Ohio State. A drug-
related suspension of the team’s second-leading receiver was
followed by ESPN analysts warning that, despite a high-powered
offense, the Ducks are a scheme-driven squad capable of being
exposed as a one-trick pony. And exposed they were. Even though
QB Marcus Mariota put up decent numbers, the team on the whole
looked outmatched and overwhelmed, begging the question: Will
the Ducks forever be the well-dressed bridesmaid, never the bride?
• Too bad that in this age of information overload, lawsuits seem
to be the best vehicle to gather the most important information.
After months of trying to figure out who knew what when, a lawsuit
has been filed by a female student against the UO and the
basketball coach to find the truth about the sexual assault against
her. The UO says basketball coach Dana Altman, up for $50,000 in
bonuses at the NCAA tournament, didn’t know his player had been
suspended for an alleged sexual assault at his last school, but
according to the lawsuit, the player’s mother says, “We told them
everything.” On with the lawsuits if that’s what it takes to shine a
light on our public institutions.
JUICY TOMATOES ON TOP, HEARTY
POTATOES DOWN BELOW
• When Jason Younker spoke at the City Club of Eugene Jan. 9,
we were reminded how little we and our children learned all through
public school in the West about American Indians, and how much
we really should know. Younker, an assistant vice-president and
advisor to the UO president on sovereign nations, said the UO was
the first university in the state to establish his position. He’s an
eloquent spokesman on the resiliency of American Indians.
• In the wake of the terrible Charlie Hebdo shootings and the
hostage-taking and deaths at the kosher grocery store in France,
the horror of the most recent killings by Boko Haram in Nigeria took
a while to get attention in the U.S. If we believe — and we should
— that #blacklivesmatter, then as a community and as a nation we
need to pay attention to Africa as much as we do to the U.S. and
Europe. The Nigerian government has harassed and detained
reporters covering the terror group, and Boko Haram has killed
several journalists. Reporters in Nigeria are dying trying to get the
word out about events such as the estimated 2,000 people killed in
early January. Let’s make sure we take heed.
P HOTO COUR T E S Y A LICE DOYL E
KETCHUP ‘N’ FRIES HYBRID
SHOWS POTENTIAL OF GRAFTING
Potatoes and tomatoes on the same plant? Perhaps Stephen Colbert on The Colbert
Report said it best by including this wacky concept in his segment: “That’s The Craziest
F#?king Thing I’ve Ever Heard.”
The plant, named “Ketchup ‘N’ Fries,” can be traced to Log House Plants in Cottage
Grove, a wholesale nursery that promotes grafted plants as a natural means to increase
productivity and make gardening more accessible to all.
“It’s one of the few things that’s come through for farmers that uses traditional farm-
ing techniques but is more productive,” Alice Doyle of Log House Plants says about the
technique of grafting.
A plant like Ketchup ‘N’ Fries might be crazy, but the technique used to make it is not.
Grafting makes it possible to mix and match the top of the plant — the scion — and the
bottom of the plant — the rootstock — opening up all sorts of possibilities. Usually, this
technique is used to make heartier, more productive plants, like a tomato plant that com-
bines pest resistance with tasty fruit.
“It’s a natural process, no GMOs,” Doyle says. “You don’t have to be worrying about
chemical residues.”
Grafting is only beginning to take off in the U.S., but it is widely used across the globe
as an eco-friendly way to increase yields and productivity. “In 2011, a billion vegetables
were grafted in the world,” Doyle says. Log House Plants and its partner, SuperNatural
Grafted Vegetables, secured a license from a Dutch company to sell Ketchup ‘N’ Fries in
the U.S. for 2015.
Ketchup ‘N’ Fries can be grown in a 18-to-22-inch container, so any person who is
short on space will appreciate it. “Even though it’s a gimmick, I wanted people who don’t
usually garden to get excited about gardening,” Doyle says.
There is also the Pixie Grape, which Doyle calls “the world’s first dwarf grape.” Like
Ketchup ‘N’ Fries, the Pixie Grape is perfect for container gardening and is derived from
the grape used for champagne — imagine a mini-vineyard on your apartment patio.
Ketchup ‘N’ Fries, the Pixie Grape and other plants are available through Territorial
Seeds, Garden America and other local retail nurseries. — Daemion Lee
WTF?
THIS PECULIAR PARKING LOT
SIGNAGE AT GATEWAY MALL
IN SPRINGFIELD IS BEST
READ WITH 3-D GLASSES.
• Print is dead! Long live print! Media pundits have been
predicting the end of print newspapers for decades and yet we are
printing 10,000 more newspapers today than we did in the year
2000. Our average print run in 2014 was 39,415, and we now have
a record 856 outlets in the region. We certainly don’t expect the
internet to go away as a news source or daily newspapers to regain
their prominence and profitability, but something of a backlash
might be happening against digital-information overload. One clue
is a new website in Scotland called PaperLater.com that allows
readers to select a collection of web content and have it printed out
and mailed to them as a newspaper. PaperLater’s slogan is “No more
clicks. Sit. Read. Relax.”
eugeneweekly.com • January 15, 2015
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