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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (May 31, 2018)
LET TERS REMEMBERING LUNA She loved sitting on the grass lawns and in my garden while I gardened. She loved to sit and wait while I did yard work. She loved going to the river and bathing. She liked going to the parks and going on long walks. She liked to play with leaves, gravel and soil with her hands. She liked old and used jewelry and cloth- ing. She liked loose-fitting dresses and skirts with no undergarments. She liked things that were simple, things with no monetary value. She liked collecting stone pebbles and walking sticks; she liked earth-friendly things. She liked places of peace, quiet and solitude, and not being around big crowds. She liked to carry old used blankets and loved to only walk. She loved brushing her hair and me scratching her back and feet. She loved to go for walks downtown and loved going to the Catholic church and First Christian for breakfast. She loved me tak- ing her to St. Vincent de Paul’s to shop for clothes and to Sweet Life to get her cake. She loved going to White Bird, and she liked calling Cahoots for rides. She had an understanding for other peo- ple who were poor, in poverty and home- less. She gave me gifts of no monetary val- ue, from her heart. We would sleep behind Vanilla Jill’s and under a maple tree behind Tiny’s Tavern where I met her, and other big HOT AIR SOCIETY maple trees in the Whiteaker neighborhood. She loved wearing mits with the fingers cut off them and a sweater shawl, and she loved scarves and high-heeled boots, and shoes, and sandals, and cloth ankle bracelets. She loved to follow me wherever we would go. She seemed to want to be a free spirit and not to be troubled by how her house looked or people’s judgments about her; she wanted to be free from worries. She said that she really loved me, and she loved a feeling of being free and not too tied down to worries. We went to the fairgrounds to have din- ner and went to First Christian Church; she said she loved the pleasant music. She told me she wanted to know of good angels. She loved the necklaces, rings and brace- lets I got her. Joe Schmisek Eugene Editor’s note: Schmisek’s girlfriend, Janet “Luna” Car- leen Resneck, was hit and killed by a train Tuesday, May 15. The couple had stayed at the Community Alliance of Lane County. PARKS ARE NOT COMMODITIES Lane County Park’s latest plan for the 2,200-acre Mount Pisgah Park is to com- mercially log more than 1,000 acres in the name of “restoration.” In 2013 Willama- lane Parks, with $6 million in taxpayer dol- lars, bulldozed and degraded nearly four miles of riparian and wetland habitat for a 10-foot-wide, $1-million-per mile asphalt “path” along the banks of the Willamette east of Dorris Ranch. Yes, humans need public spaces, but ever-diminishing and threatened wildlife must take precedence. The 2016 World Wildlife Fund “Living Planet Report” re- vealed wild animal populations have plum- meted 58 percent since 1970. This oppression and abuse of wildlife on public lands and rivers by city, coun- ty, Oregon and federal agencies needs to stop. Our parks and riverbanks should not be used as a commodity to assure logging industry profits and paving as well as a few bureaucrat’s salaries at the expense of threatened and disappearing wildlife. Shannon Wilson Eugene FIRST PRINCIPLES Does WAR (Wacky Arrogant Reli- gious) define “US” as a people, wallowing around in a quagmire of fear, greed and hate? Where is the consensus in agreement with the republican form of government constitutionally guaranteed? Instead of regulating commerce, com- merce regulates congressional represen- tatives in agreement with dollar-driven megalomania. Those who know don’t tell, and those who don’t know wave the flag for profit — but for the sake of profit they seem to have lost the reasons for the republic. The means commensurate to culturally evolve into the republic for which the U.S. flag stands is a constitutional renaissance. In spite of more than two centuries of thought to the contrary, the original Con- stitution remains common ground. It’s flawed, but context provides insight into its people-based polity, the first principle of which is the consent of the governed. Jon Meadow Reedsport RESTORATIVE JUSTICE To help solve the issue of guns and vio- lence we need to begin with how we edu- cate our children. Let us think about the value of empowerment and how we can better listen to each other. Empowerment equals connection — connection to com- munity, feeling valued by community and feeling indispensable to community. As educators, we offer the suggestion of implementing educational (not judicial) restorative justice in our schools. Edutopia, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, says that “Restorative justice empowers students to resolve conflicts on their own and in small groups, and it’s a growing practice at schools around the country. Essentially, the idea is to bring students together in peer-mediated small groups BY TONY CORCOR AN Progressives and Primaries NOVEMBER IS NEXT! P rimary elections suck for a variety of reasons, especially if you’re a rookie politician. My first primary as a candidate was May 17, 1994. I had no name famil- iarity; I was talking to lobbyists and other moneyed interests I’d never met before who couldn’t give a flyin’ f*** in a doughnut hole about my race, and I was (still am) short, fat and ugly. A “radio face” as my friends politely describe it. The 1994 primary was memorable because (a) It was held on my 45th birthday, (b) I got a speeding ticket on election day going 58 mph on Highway 58 on my way to Oakridge and (c) It took state elections officials three days to determine I had actually won, thus ruining a family vacation! Politics is brutal. The speeding ticket on election day really freaked me out at the time. My imme- diate reaction was: Oh shit — the public’s gonna find out about this today and I’m sunk. Fortunately this was before Al Gore invented the internet. Nobody knew. The day after the primary, my wife, Jeannie, son, Simon, and I escaped for a week to Key West, Florida, because I was convinced I was going to lose. Convinced because two pollsters doing daily trending polls had me dead in the water for the last two weeks of the campaign. I wasn’t surprised by their polls because I was running against a popular mayor from the biggest town in my district outside of Eugene, and there was another “pro- gressive” running in the race as well who would siphon votes from me. That’s why, since then, with my prodigious Irish math proficiency, I have never been a big fan of multiple progressives running against each other when there’s only one conservative opponent in a race. Duh! Flash forward 24 years to our recent primary, specifically the Springfield and East Lane County commissioner races. Teachable moments in math. The good news is that Joe Berney defeated Sid Leiken in a classic “non-partisan” race between one Democratic progressive and one Republican conservative. Because he won a two-way race by over 50 percent, Joe wins in the primary and doesn’t have to run again in November, and Lane County is a better place to live because of it. The other good news is that Heather Buch placed first in a six-way race featuring 4 May 31, 2018 • eugeneweekly.com five progressives against one conservative in the east Lane race. Heather not only beat the other four progressives handily, she got more votes than the conservative Gary Williams. Heather Buch 31.3 percent Gary Williams 30.7 percent Kevin Matthews 19.6 percent Tim Laue 9.5 percent James Barber 7.1 percent Frank King 1.4 percent Do the math. Imagine progressives putting aside single issues and egos to coalesce around one winner. The bad news is she didn’t win by 50 percent and will have to face Gary in the general. This is bad news why? Because we have awakened the angry bears. Reporter Henry Houston pointed out in a recent EW article that if Buch wins it will create a 3-2 progressive split with the two chameleons Bozievich and Farr as the out- liers “that will no doubt bring even more timber and development cash for Williams …” Labor’s not flush with cash. Enough said, roll up your progressive sleeves. Be- tween Heather’s race and a hot governor’s race we’ll have plenty on our plate. So congratulations to all the winners. Thank you Marty Wilde and Kimberly Koops for running wholesome campaigns. In a perverse way I’m even happy for “Radiant” Art Robinson in his fifth attempt to unseat the best man in the House, Peter De- Fazio. As the grumpy cynical geezer observer, my hope as we move forward is that we progressives forget our minor differences and unite behind Buch, Brown, Wilde and DeFazio in the Nov. 6 general election. Speaking of November, Knute Buehler emerged as the Republican candidate against Kate Brown in the governor’s race. His problem will not be raising money, be- lieve me. His problem is probably best exemplified by his Lane County primary num- bers. He didn’t even get a majority of Republican votes against two Trumpophiles, Greg Wooldridge and Sam Carpenter. Lane County barely has a higher proportion of “moderate” Republicans than the state at large.
