News Briefs: New Year, New Politics | Piercy Ends Job atPPHS | Election Update | City Club Does Cops | Slant: Short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes Happening Person: Kiki Metzler NEW YEAR, NEW POLITICS The first weeks of the new year bring several events looking ahead for local government. Eugene will get a new mayor and councilors, the county will get a new commissioner and citizens will speak out on what they see as high priority for 2005. Kitty Piercy will be sworn in as Eugene's new mayor Jan. 3 and will give her first State of the City address. The event will begin at 5:30 pm Tuesday in the lobby of the Hult Center and is open to the public. Piercy says she chose the late afternoon time so that more people will be able to attend. Music and refreshments are planned. "I want to hear your ideas and critical feedback over the next four years," she wrote in a message to her mailing list. "We live in a great community and I promise to do my best to listen hard to diverse voices as we move forward together." A swearing-in ceremony and State of the County address for the Board of County Commissioners is slated for earlier the same day. Commission Chair Bobby Green will outline a five-point plan for the county's success in 2005 as part of the events that begin at 10 am Monday, Jan. 3 at Harris Hall, 125 E. 8th Ave. New Commissioner Faye H. Stewart will be sworn in, along with re-elected Commissioner Peter Sorenson, Sheriff Russel Berger and District Attorney Doug Harcleroad. A reception and music will follow. The fourth annual Citizens State of the City address is scheduled for noon Monday, Jan. 10 at the Tykeson Room, Eugene Public Library. Citizen advocacy groups will once again identify areas of city policy and city practice that are in need of additional attention and improvement. Five topics will be covered: sustainability initiatives, land use, labor, democracy and civil rights, and neighborhoods, according to Lisa Arkin of Oregon Toxics Alliance. Other groups involved include Friends of Eugene, Citizens for Public Accountability, ESSN, Lane County Bill of Rights Committee, River Road Neighbors and the Sustainable Eugene Advisory Panel. — TJT PIERCY ENDS JOB AT PPHS The end of the year wraps up Mayor-elect Kitty Piercy's public affairs job at Planned Parenthood Health Services of Southwestern Oregon (PPHSSO). The non-profit agency provides family planning services for thousands of women and men in Eugene, Bethel, Springfield, Ashland, Medford, Grants Pass and now Cottage Grove and Florence. "We picked up the latter two areas when the county could no longer provide those services," says Piercy. "Our education programs have received local and national acclaim and our Rights, Respect, Responsibility initiative has already engaged thousands of Oregonians in helping our young people make healthy decisions for their lives." Piercy says PPHSSO is a "positive force moving steadily and successfully in opposition to the current administration's efforts to undermine comprehensive sex education and to make access to contraception more difficult both here and abroad." PPHSSO programs are teaching teachers in Romania and the Ukraine how to provide HIV/AIDS education, and the organization is working with Holt International to provide family planning in Romania. "Through Kitty's leadership, Planned Parenthood has successfully forged alliances with diverse faith communities, organizations and state agencies in support of comprehensive sex education for youth and access to reproductive health services," says Mary Gossart, VP of education and training at PPHSSO. "Needless to say, this has not been an easy task. It's certainly a testament to Kitty's stunning ability to inspire each of us to grasp the bigger picture, discover our common ground, and move forward together for the health and wellbeing of young people." In one of her last acts at PPHSSO, Piercy urged the community to support the organization with a year-end tax-deductible gift. For information, visit www.pphsso.orgor call 342-6042. — TJT ELECTION UPDATE A lawsuit filed by the Green Party/Libertarian Party with the Ohio Supreme Court charges that a fair vote count would give the state and the presidency to John Kerry rather than George Bush. Deposition notices were sent Dec. 21 to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to appear and give testimony regarding the legal challenge of Ohio's elections results in the case Moss V. Bush et al. John Kerry is slated to file papers in support of the Green Party/Libertarian Party recount effort. Kerry will be filing a request for expedited discovery regarding Triad Systems voting machines, as well as a motion for a preservation order to protect any and all discovery and preserve any evidence on this matter. Kerry's filing of these requests does not indicate his complete entry into the recount process, but does clearly indicate that he is moving decisively in that direction. The Democratic Party is also quietly putting financial resources into the Ohio recount effort. Blackwell's attorney told the attorneys issuing the notice of deposition and subpoena that Blackwell will not testify under oath. The Republican-controlled Attorney General's Office has labeled as "harassment" any attempt to put Blackwell under oath. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has pronounced Ohio's vote fraud fiasco "the biggest deal since Selma," and has urged Sens. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to stand with U.S. representatives who intend to challenge the Electoral College's expected approval of George W. Bush for a second term. Jackson has also called for a national rally at "the scene of the crime" in Columbus Jan. 3. Another major national demonstration is planned for Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, as Congress evaluates the Electoral College vote. Locally, members of Truthinvoting.org will continue their vigil at Sen. Wyden's office when it reopens and encourages supporters to drop by Wyden's office at 151 W. 7th between Jan. 3 and Jan. 5 to write letters to the senator asking him to challenge the electoral vote. An aide in Wyden's office has offered to forward the letters directly to the senator before the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. A local woman, Sarah Gray, is fasting in front of the senator's office building, also asking Wyden to challenge the vote. She sits at the corner of 7th and Charnelton between 9 am and noon and 3 to 5 pm every day and appreciates any support. For more information, call 514-3267. — Doe Tabor CITY CLUB DOES COPS A year-end special meeting of Eugene City Club will deal with the topic of an independent external review process for the Eugene Police Department. The meeting is planned for 11:50 am Friday, Dec. 31 at the Hilton. Lunch is optional. A follow-up roundtable discussion, also open to the public, will take place at 5:05 pm Tuesday, Jan. 4, at Café Paradiso. Lane County Circuit Court Judge Cindy Carlson will introduce the topic Friday. She will be followed by Tim Laue from the Police Commission and Guadalupe Quinn from Communities United for Better Policing. "In the wake of charges of racial profiling, sexual harassment, and assault by Eugene police, it important that we close out this year with a frank and open discussion of community perspectives and possible solutions," says Matteo Luccio of the City Club in an e-mail. "The speakers will discuss the current state of our police and the different models that could be used for an external review of the police in our community." For more information, visit www.cityclubofeugene.org     SLANT One of our favorite January events of recent years is the Citizens State of the City address that usually follows the traditionally less inspired mayor's State of the City address (see dates in our News Briefs section). This year, the dynamics are likely to be very different, but perhaps even more interesting. Will new Mayor Kitty lay out the progressive agenda item by item, or will she be more moderate as a representative of "all Eugene?" We got a preview of Piercy's inclination to moderation and compromise when she stood by Mayor Torrey campaigning for November's ballot measure to build a new police station — a project supported by city staff, but few others. She tells us she wants "to be respectful of those who came before, even if I often did not agree with them." We predict she will pick her battles carefully. Meanwhile, will the Citizen's State of the City call for more radical changes now that we have a more progressive mayor? Eugene is facing challenges on many fronts and Kitty can only do so much. The energy, the will for positive change — the power — still lies with the people. Regardless of the tone and content of the upcoming state of the city and county addresses, it's great to be looking forward rather than dragging along the past. The R-G and other local media are trudging through their annual end-of-the-year retrospectives, and ranking stories for their importance. It's a media tradition that's long outlived its usefulness. Nobody wants to write these stories, so they are usually assigned to the greenest reporters as an exercise in "getting to know the community." No one reads them. Who wants to relive a year of police rape and dirty politics? It's not all bad news, of course, but it's arrogant for reporters and editors to try to rank the importance of stories, as though there exists some universal standard. We at EW are guilty as well. Each week we tell our readers what we think is important. But for some families a tiny obituary or birth notice buried deep in the daily paper was the biggest news of 2004. For others, a check in the mailbox, a revelation, an illness, a healing, a phone call, an unexpected embrace — these were the biggest events of the year, far surpassing headlined sex scandals, corruption, injustice, elections, wars and even unfathomable catastrophes around the world. In the end, it's not the supercilious media, but rather we humble human beings who decide what has meaning and significance in our lives. We hear from Alder Fuller of ProtoTista fame that he is planning on taking his classes to Portland next year, so winter and spring might be the last time for a while for Eugeneans to soak up the professor's unique lectures and discussions on complexity theory. Fuller operates a small, independent non-profit college based in a west Eugene warehouse. He teaches small classes of all ages on topics of chaos theory, fractals, symbiosis, Gaia theory, climate change and more. He says he's envisioning a regional community college with a small faculty teaching classes in Portland, Eugene, Bend and elsewhere. Winter term begins Jan. 10 with a week of free overviews. For information, e-mail info@prototista.org or visit www.prototista.org In a follow-up to our story (11/24) on Nancy Hughes and local efforts to provide cleaner, safer, more efficient stoves to people in Guatemala, we heard from Dean Still who tells us these stoves were designed by Aprovecho Research Center in Cottage Grove. "We have 11 active stove projects around the world," says Still. Aprovecho just received a $76,000 grant from Shell Foundation to write a consumer's guide to third-world cooking stoves to be published by the EPA, he says, along with a $25,000 grant from the Murdock Foundation to build an emissions testing facility. More information is available at www.aprovecho.net and www.treeswaterpeople.org/Justa.htm One of our loyal readers left a message this week that outgoing Mayor Torrey's last gift to Eugene will be a bag of asphalt. He was referring to an emergency meeting of the Metropolitan Policy Committee requested by Torrey to presumably push through some pet road projects for his developer friends. See Slant last week. The meeting is at 11:30 am Thursday, Dec. 30 at the Springfield Library. SLANT includes short opinion pieces and rumor-chasing notes compiled by the EW staff. Heard any good rumors lately? Contact Ted Taylor at 484-0519, editor@eugeneweekly.com KIKI METZLER Growing up in Baltimore as the daughter of two artists in the 1950s, Kiki Metzler got an early start on her own career. "I saved my money for chalk pastels," she recalls. "I drew murals in the alley." She took classes at the Maryland Institute of Art, where her father taught painting, and, with a friend, she opened a gallery in an abandoned hotel, "where Eraserhead was filmed," she notes. At age 19, Metzler followed her brother west to Oregon, where she has pursued her art ever since, along with raising her six children. For years, she sold her distinctive painted-frame mirrors at the Saturday Market. "They were sent worldwide as gifts," she says. Metzler quit making mirrors four years ago, when she was diagnosed with melanoma, but she has responded to treatment, and she continues to paint in oil and acrylic. She's pictured here at this year's Holiday Market. "I don't like to overwork a painting," she says, "I do three or four in a day." Metzler regularly donates work for sale in local benefit auctions. She has provided illustrations for the Eugene-based publication Midwifery Today since its birth. See a portfolio at www.midwiferytoday.com/friends/kiki
		Table of Contents | News | Views | Calendar| Film | Music | Culture | Classifieds | Personals | Contact | EW Archive | Advertising Information |