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EUGENE'S TREASURES Dear residents of Eugene: I recently spent four months in your city visiting my sister. I arrived in time to see the fall colors and said goodbye just as spring was starting to warm the air and flowers were emerging. I want to acknowledge some very special places and people in your city beginning with the staff of your wonderful library. I've been living in Thailand for three years where I can only trade one book for another. You have a truly fantastic library with a helpful and informative and friendly staff. A big thank you to the entire library staff. Next, the staff of the FOOD for Lane County 8th Avenue dining room. I volunteered there for a few months and cannot praise enough the other volunteers and paid staff. Day after day with care and love and fun they put together hot meals for 80 to 120 people. Thanks, Tracy, for keeping it all together. I recently heard from my sister that the bus drivers went on strike. I hope they got what they wanted because they are a wonderful group of drivers. I've been on buses throughout Thailand, California, Oregon and Arizona. The Eugene drivers are among the most friendly and helpful that I've encountered. Often a driver would call a rider by name and in return many people would say "thank you" when leaving the bus. I volunteered with the Feral Cat Coalition helping with their bi-monthly spay/neuter program. I believe the entire organization is staffed by volunteers. They do a fantastic job and deserve a very big thank you! Finally, I hope you all realize what a treasure you have in the Fern Ridge Wildlife viewing area. Many times I went there to watch the birds, sit by a pond and enjoy the quiet of the wetlands — although I do not think hunting should be allowed in this sanctuary. I only hope that the voters of Eugene reject any development-hugging wannabe scum-bag politician who would even hint at selling off this precious jewel of an urban escape. I'm living in Bangkok and would give my last baht for a quiet walk in nature. Thanks Eugene. I'm looking forward to my next visit. In the meantime send me some coffee from Dutch Brothers and a bottle of wine from Sundance wine shop! Linda Hall, Bangkok, Thailand, msiamsiam@yahoo.com
WORDS TO DIE BY Live and let live, live and let die. Ah yes, people often ask me here in Eugene, "What is life? What is the nature of a life, of a human? What is the purpose?" And I say that it is many things. However, the most propitious use of a human life is to serve other living things that we happen to share life with on the surface of this planet. And they ask, "What is service? What does it mean to serve?" And I say that service is the act of, or life-long endeavor of offering assistance, help, aid, accommodation, or support to another living thing. To serve is to assist, supply, provide for, attend to, or be of use to. We, as a people are a team here on the surface of the planet Earth. Therefore, to serve only oneself throughout the duration of a lifetime is counterproductive to the "team" effort, and will only bring sadness, despair, and failure in the end. Like it or not, we are not islands; we are part of a singular organism, a singular system. I am not of any one particular religion. However, down through history, every great religion has had one top-shelf rule, one prime-directive, and this is true — it varies little from religion to religion. This precept, in all, basically instructs a person to do things to other people that this same person would appreciate being done to himself or herself. What this truth states is to serve other living beings, and to be served by other living beings, always in the most possible of positive ways. The alternative is what creates a living hell on Earth, ultimately, for both the giver and the receiver. Let me conclude with a 75-year-old quotation from Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman: "Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or broken heart is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one." Terry Heintz, Eugene
DON'T DELAY US What a tragedy and abuse of political power that Terry Schiavo's case ended up in federal courts (and the Supreme Court!). Oregon's Rep. Earl Blumenauer said it best: "What people need to think about is how they would feel if Tom DeLay or some other politician decided to second-guess your doctor, or your husband" (or your wife or parents). The last person I'd want to decide whether or not I live or die is someone with the ethics of Tom DeLay! Fortunately, I and many others in our community have already done what we can do to keep legislators, governors, congressmen, and presidents out of our family's private, personal decisions at the end-of-life. We've completed our Advance Directive for Health Care — the legally enforceable document that spells out the type of care we desire when we are near death and cannot speak for ourselves. Save your family from the agony of Todd Peterson, Springfield
GET ON THE BUS For years they told me there was no regular bus service to get from Eugene to the coast. Now I discover there's been one for years! Porter Stage Lines (344-6265) in Eugene, with offices in Bend and Coos Bay. Departs every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas, 7.30 am and 1.15 pm Coos Bay, then goes Reedsport, Florence, Eugene (arrives 3.50 and 9.50 pm), Sisters, Bend, Burns, Vale and Ontario, where it departs 9.15 am and returns. Nice chunky little white buses and mini vans with quirky old fashioned uniformed drivers. What does this mean? Leave the car at home! Take your bike on the bus to Bend and ride! (easier if it's a Eugene's own folding Bike Friday of course). Go to the coast when you're getting cabin fever! Save fossil fuel! The journey is $23-$25 one way, ($25 if you buy it via Amtrak). The company is so small they rarely advertise. They say if they get more traffic they can make prices more reasonable. I hope you publish this in the name of support mass transit and the sense of community it fosters. The car has done enough damage to this society — on all fronts. Lynette Chiang, Eugene
BUY DISTILLERS Do you know anyone who drinks water straight from the tap? I don't, and I see bottled water everywhere I look. For me, fluoride will just be another one of those nasty things left in the bottom of my distiller after I clean the local tap water. John Proctor (3/31) suggested EWEB buy fluoride treatments for the poor instead of dumping it in the water supply. I suggest they buy water distillers for the poor. Greg Daugherty, Eugene
TAKING CHANCES Privatizing Social Security would remove the safety net to keep future generations from possibly becoming destitute. Today millions of seniors, two thirds of older Americans, depend on their Social Security payments for basic living expenses. It has been a successful retirement program with a minimum administrative cost. How can we trade this for a "chance system" that demands high administrative fees — 10 to 30 percent higher? Private accounts are expensive and chancy, just ask my friends and relatives. Changes can be made to ensure Americans that our Social Security system continues for future generations. It can be strengthened with adjustments such as removing the cap on the amount of wages taxed to support Social Security and including all newly hired state and local government workers. Please support future generations, my grandchildren, and keep our Social Security System whole. Contact Sen. Smith and urge him to not privatize Social Security but rather make helpful and fair adjustments. Ruth Duemler, Eugene
SLAVERY I fail to see the logic in Mr. Stutzman's "animal logic" letter (3/17) where he states that human slaughter of farmed animals is natural and no different morally than a mountain lion murdering a deer. If he is so concerned that we not confuse natural codes for moral ones, he ought to realize he is suggesting that it is natural for animals to breed other species en masse, raise them in cages, and then systematically slaughter them on a dis-assembly line. I haven't seen that on a nature show. Animal agriculture is slavery. It isn't natural. While mountain lions are naturally carnivores, we primates are naturally herbivorous. Lions do not have a choice whether or not to kill other wildlife (and at least the wildlife has a fair chance to escape death, unlike our domesticated animal prisoners).When we make a choice to enslave and kill other animals for food/profit, we are not showing the kind of morality that Stutzman says is a gift of our species. Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." As long as some people choose to eat other animals instead of vegetable protein, it hinders us all from progressing morally as a society. See www.whyvegan.com Carrie Packwood Freeman , Eugene
STIGMA REMAINS Society's stale standards continue to bear down on the children, adolescents, and adults living life with a mental illness. As wise to discrimination and as watchful as we are to our political correctness, there still hides a mean tendril of stigma in our public collective that silently damages, restricts, and corrupts those who dare to free themselves of shame. The uneducated treatment many people still impose upon those they feel are "unstable" or "less than professional" does not end in the special education classes back in high school. As a 34 –year-old professional social worker and youth counselor, I am facing the 11th month of my university's imposed education rights/discriminatory gulag. It has been an eye-opening shock that the institutions that teach our future educators continue to keep themselves unaware concerning mental health and the factual reality that people with depression or other illnesses are viable, worthwhile human beings. As the last bastion of discrimination in education, colleges and universities will soon face a dramatic awakening. I am glad I have stood up for my rights, as a graduate student in a program intended to prepare me to educate others. I am glad that I have spoken against unjust actions without shame. To be silent would have been, I believe, irrational and "insane." Jon Young, Veneta
TROOP SUPPORT I need some help understanding what the Support Our Troops stickers mean on vehicles. How should we support them? Monetarily? What should the support look like? Would supporting them mean bringing them home? And one last question: Why can you only have them on an SUV and what is it about putting the sticker on your SUV that automatically makes you drive poorly? Any help would be appreciated. Jared Wolfsen, Eugene
REGRESSIVE POLITICS In modern political parlance, the word "liberal," like Jesus who exemplified it, has been crucified. Only we must not expect its resurrection in our lifetimes. Time is overdue to turn the tables. There is nothing "conservative" about launching wars of choice. There is nothing "conservative" about running record federal deficits and burdening our children with what amounts to a birth tax. There is nothing "conservative" about a largely Republican corporate culture that is polluting our earth and the minds of our children while paying little taxes and sending our jobs overseas. There is nothing "conservative" about selling out our nation's future in hopes that God will someday sort things out. The true "conservatives," honest and civil and fiscally responsible, have been marginalized by regressive Republicans who want our nation to regress to the days when we did not look after our elderly, when abortions were performed in back alleys, and when social justice was the dream of a black reverend. If we are to now call ourselves "progressives" rather than "liberals," in every political conversation, in every letter to the editor or e-mail to a friend, in every sign held up at a protest, I propose we start calling our political opponents "regressives" rather than "conservatives." Let's start calling it like it is. Todd Huffman, M.D., Eugene
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