Eugene Weekly : Calendar : 08.03.06

Hey, you rockin' social activists: Do you know who's coming to town? The man, the myth, the legend … Bruce Cockburn (that's CO-burn, people, CO-burn). We blame Canada for lots of things, like Brian Boitano and being (shockingly) less into mine safety and less into timber conservation than the U.S., but we lurve Canada for The Bruce and his whoop-ass on nasty conservative policies, not to mention his brilliant songs like "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" (no, Virginia, that is not a Barenaked Ladies song, originally). He's at the McDonald with new Canadian music legend Sarah Harmer opening. We want to kick the darkness with Cockburn, and we know you do too! See Tuesday Calendar.

Dance your way through this month's First Friday Lane Arts Council ARTWalk! Riley Grannan, the suave managing director of the Eugene Ballet Company, leads the way on National Night Out to celebrate safety in downtown. First stop: New Zone Gallery, where there's a whole "House as a Mirror of the Soul" thing going on. Next up: La Follette, where as you may know, there's jazz and food along with the new show called "The Essence of Oregon," oils by Craig Erickson. (We think the ideal essence of Oregon involves things like berries and salmon and lots of hiking, but we want to know what Erickson thinks.) Third stop: White Lotus Gallery, with a stunning show by printmaker Tanaka Ryohei (whose piece is pictured right), who will be on hand during the walk and the opening. The Jacobs Gallery presents Mike Walsh's "Australian Series: Fragile Circles" for the fourth stop, and the walk ends awesomely at Opus6ix, with a solo exhibition by Lavonne Tarbox-Crone and the splendiferous "LOOK! Positive Sexuality in Art," which makes us wish we'd had this show around when we were teenagers. See Friday Calendar.

Springfield's got it going on this weekend, what with festivals popping up like tomatoes. You know all about the Filbert Festival (we heard that 99 percent of the hazelnuts — what filberts are when they're off the tree — in the U.S. come from the Willamette Valley, which is … hey … that's us! Dude!) and its cool Sunday-morning harmonica contest, but did you know there's also the Ukranian Festival on Sunday (we like pysanky eggs, ourselves) and the weekend-long Dorris Ranch Living History Festival? What with the crafts, historical battle reconstructions (pictured below), kids' activities, 19th century fashion show (um, corsets? Thanks, no!) and villages and all, the Living History Festival looks too cool to be missed. We probably don't say this often enough, so hear this: Springfield's the place to be! See Calendar.