LET TERS
NO HUNGRY KIDS
What does it mean when 53 percent
of children and youth in Lane County are
eligible for free lunch programs (“Summer
Safety Net,” June 8)? With one in five chil-
dren in America living in homes in pov-
erty, this is not just a local problem but a
national one.
And the current response from budget
proposals by the President and the Speaker
of the House is to drastically cut the SNAP
(formerly food stamp) program.
Instead, we need to fully fund this pro-
gram while we deal with the underlying
causes. Our calls and letters to our rep-
resentatives about this dire situation can
make a difference. Have you got five min-
utes to make a call?
Millions of American children are de-
pending on us, along with the future of our
country.
Willie Dickerson
Snohomish, Wash.
of some Alien movie or another (June 1)
compelled me.
First off, I love the juxtaposed irony of
the first letter writer calling him a triggered
liberal and the next one calling him a mi-
sogynist. Very telling of our times, no?
I was just thinking a week earlier that
Levin’s take on Venus in Furs (“Masoch-
ism is as Masochism Does,” May 25)
was one of the most exhilarating, engag-
ing reviews I’ve read in a while. I’ve been
following his writing in the Weekly for
some time, and in both his features and his
reviews, he’s one of the best writers you’ve
got.
There must be many readers who feel
the same way, but I suspect we’re not the
type to write accusatory letters to editors
all that often.
Keep Levin anyway, please.
Bobbi Scully
Leaburg
NO FRIENDS OF PARKS?
DON’T BLAME THE
REPUBLICANS
Mr. Corcoran’s legislative lament is hu-
morous (“No Special Session,” June 8). He
usually is.
However, the failure of the legislative
session has not been caused by Republican
obsession with the 2018 governor’s race,
as he claims, but rather the Democrats’
unwillingness to vote on any important is-
sues.
Last I looked, Democrats outnumbered
Republicans 17-13 in the Senate and 35-
25 in the House. If the Dems really want
to make necessary changes for the good of
the state, they should introduce bills they
think will accomplish those ends. They
have the votes, what’s the problem?
Ah, the 2018 governor’s race…
Rick Roseta
Eugene
DON’T DUMP LEVIN YET
I don’t often write letters to editors, but
the two responses to Rick Levin’s review
-
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Upon discovering trees flagged along
the East Summit trail on Mt. Pisgah last
spring, I inquired with Friends of Buford
Park to find out what was going on. They
relayed that Friends and Lane County
Parks would be logging out about 30 to
40 acres of Douglas fir, oaks and maples
around a few oaks and pines.
I relayed my personal observation of
so-called “oak restoration” that Friends
and Lane County Parks completed on the
adjacent 20 acres in 2012: “It looks like an
Armenian blackberry and Scotch broom
covered clearcut.”
They said, “Well, the timing didn’t work
out for prescribed burning.” Then Friends
stated they’ll likely have to spray poisons
in attempts to knock down the sprawling
exotic plant invasion created by logging.
As a result of my inquiries and input, they
apparently had some public meetings last
summer to discuss this but neglected to in-
vite me even though they had my contact
information.
The logging is now done. It is much
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more extensive than I was led to believe.
For the past several years, my friends
and I have been the only ones maintaining
the East Summit trail and removing Scotch
broom from small meadows.
Now that one of my favorite hiking
places has been severely degraded, I’d ask
Friends of Buford Park and Lane County
Parks to manually remove the Scotch
broom literally taking over the eastern
flanks of Mount Pisgah and maintain the
East Summit trail for now on.
Shannon Wilson
Eugene
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Our civilization is in decline. We’ve
used up the wealth of the land that the na-
tive people tended for millennia. The elite
continue to extract from workers and the
land.
People with money are pouring into
the beautiful Northwest, the last land to
be spoiled, displacing locals. People with
medical costs and other vulnerable people
are losing their houses and jobs. Some start
using meth. Hopeless, desperate Orego-
nians are camping in parks, wandering lost
on the streets, trying to survive.
It might seem counterintuitive, but we
must make life better at the bottom of soci-
ety or we will be living in a degraded, dan-
gerous town. When people have nothing to
lose, when they have guns, when they’re
addicted to drugs, when the only comfort
and family they can find is a gang, we can
try to deal with the problem by locking
them up. But they tend to come out worse.
We spend more energy and money pun-
ishing than it costs to make real change!
We need rent control. We need many
small co-operative camps with communi-
ty centers, with educational options, with
gardens, tools, tiny shops, treatment pro-
grams, performance venues.
We will make the bottom of society
more stable, or we will all suffer.
Turning away, punishing the poor,
kicking our neighbors to the curb, making
gated neighborhoods, will put us all in a
prison-like town.
Kari Johnson
Eugene
BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE
As a Eugene architect, one of my key
goals is designing sustainable buildings for
current and future generations that will live
and work in the structures I’ve created. A
sustainable and resilient built environment
is one of the best solutions we have to
combat the effects of climate change.
That’s why I’m so concerned about
President Trump’s plan to withdraw the
United States from the Paris Agreement. A
total of 195 countries — including the U.S.
— adopted this first-ever universal climate
deal in 2015 that sets out a global action
plan to put the world on track to avoid dan-
gerous climate change.
Architects have a unique role to play in
achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals. Ac-
cording to the U.S. Department of Energy,
buildings are responsible for 73 percent
of all electricity consumption in the U.S.,
with about half of that coming from com-
mercial buildings.
American architects are focused on de-
signing buildings that are energy efficient
and, in some cases, nearly carbon neu-
tral. We have worked hand-in-hand with
the federal government to help make our
profession and country competitive global
leaders in the quest for an energy efficient
built environment.
Withdrawing from the Paris climate
agreement is a major step back for Ameri-
ca’s global leadership in sustainable design.
Jan F. Fillinger
Eugene
SUFFRAGE THE LITTLE
CHILDREN
The city of Eugene has the chance to
lead the nation as the U.S. pulls out of the
Paris Accords. Of course, we should re-
double efforts to meet goals of the Climate