Eugene Weekly : Calendar : 07.13.06

Even predators need a little TLC once in a while. Yeah, it's no longer medieval times, when the rich & powerful walked around with falcons on their wrists (which, hadn't they ever heard of carpal tunnel? Honestly, health care in the Middle Ages!). Anyway, it's modern times with cars and all, when the they're-so-beautiful-they-take-your-breath-away birds (who have scary-ass claws!) sometimes get hurt and must live at the Cascades Raptor Center. The Raptor Center, frankly, rawks. Um, hawks. Um, anyway, it's cool. You can see merlins, gyrfalcons, screech owls and more at the Center — or perhaps at the Eugene Public Library's super-cool "Feathered Friends" kids' programs this week — but this Saturday you can also help fund the birds' care & feeding when you hit the Cascades Raptor Center Rummage Sale at Sponsors (8th & Blair). Wear your thickest leather gloves, bring cash and do not carry your pet mouse in your pocket! See Calendar. PICTURED: YOUNG WESTERN SCREECH OWL • PHOTO BY TIM GREENFIELD

In the Dar Williams song "The Poignant Yet Pointless Crisis of a Co-ed," a young woman crusades for the Hemp Liberation League at her private college. She's in it for the environmental good of the industrial hemp plant (yes, newspapers used to be printed on hemp paper, which didn't degrade like tree-based paper, but let us not digress into the difference between 100-year-old hemp and 100-year-old wood pulp newspapers — mostly because the latter isn't around much anymore). Her boyfriend ("We used to say that our love was like hemp rope, three times as strong as the rope that you buy domestically") has a slightly different plant in mind. In other words, she's a policy wonk, and he's a pothead. We're not saying which one you could or should be to support this weekend's Emerald Empire Hempfest 2006, but we suspect that big timber, for once, isn't behind this fest's historic problems with the city (Friday's 4:20 start time is so Eugene, n'est-ce pas?) Anyway, put on that hemp shirt you bought in Canada, apply some hemp sunscreen and lip balm, and head out to Washington/Jefferson Park to celebrate the plant of your choice. See Calendar.

Oh, Pink Martini, how much do we love you, even if you produce your magically addictive albums on a glacially slow time scale? Well, for one thing, we like to work out to that song "Lilly," not to mention how often we warble a variety of your eminently memorable tunes as we shower. For another thing, even though we just saw you with the Eugene Ballet, we're totally ready to come back for more, more, more of China, Thomas and all of our other faves. Could you be more romantic? A summer night at the Cuthbert, a little vino, and we'll be ready to speak almost as many languages as you cool cats. See story, page 31, and Saturday Calendar.