Articles

It’s not pot! That’s one of the main messages behind Hemp History Week, says Eugene hemp activist Michael Moore, better known as Papa Hemp. Eugeneans will gather for a free educational event from noon to 10 pm Saturday, June 8, at 267 Van Buren St. across from Ninkasi, and learn more about the plant that can’t get you high.

The Eugene Metro Football Club (EMFC) Azul took on and defeated the Bend Timbers by a score of 4-1 in front of 700 patrons packed in bleachers above the South Eugene High School soccer field. In this season-opening game, fans and head coach Jürgen Ruckaberle got their first peek of Gaia Mastrovincenzo, a touted forward and midfielder from the prestigious Serie A’s Riviera di Romagna in Italy, who stood out in leading her new team to victory.

Eugene and deserts sound like an unlikely combination, but the USDA lists four Eugene food deserts, census tracts that contain a high percentage of low-income people living in areas with low access to fresh, healthy food. For a year, students from the UO Architecture School’s Digital Media Collective (DMC) studied public use of private space and accessibility of healthy food throughout the city, and their final project is the fabrication of food shelving that’s adaptable enough for “pop-up” markets.

• Eugene’s Budget Committee has advised the City Council to adopt a plan that will use various reserves and anticipated PERS savings to prevent cuts to services for a year in spite of a projected $5.3 million budget gap. Now it’s time to focus on the future. Interesting concepts emerged from budget discussions — the need for an independent performance auditor to examine city finances, questioning what services the city should be providing and how we finance big capital projects like rebuilding City Hall.

The Thursday Lane County Farmers Market is moving this summer to Fifth Street Public Market starting June 6. The Thursday market was previously at 28th and Hilyard next to the Amazon Community Center. Hours are 10 am to 2 pm. Vendors include Agrarian Ales, Brandywine Fisheries, Rudy & Amber’s Organic Oasis, Horton Road Organics, Cookie Conscious, Sweet Leaf, Veun’s Garden and Lonesome Whistle Farms. Looks like a good move for the Thursday market that wasn’t seeing a lot of business out on Hilyard. See lanecountyfarmersmarket.org.

“My first attempt at college was a failure,” says Elaine Walters, who fled her unhappy family life in Santa Fe to enter college at University of New Mexico before she’d finished high school. “I had no study skills.” A year later, she was pregnant. She had a son, Kienan, and two years later a daughter, Nitara, but when the children’s father got violent, she gathered the kids again and ran off to another college.

The local paper reported that a collector of Asian art was arrested and held in jail for five weeks before being released for “capacity-based reasons.” His crime was threatening to shoot a man he suspected of knowing about an art burglary. The art collector pled guilty and got three years probation. Lane County voters who approved a tax hike can now rest easy knowing that dangerous art collectors can hereafter be held in jail till the cows come home.