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Viewpoint
: Eugene Can: Boggled by the Bottle Bill.
Letters:
EW readers sound off.
Eugene
Can
Boggled
by the Bottle Bill.
BY
JERRY HARRIS
After living here for two years now, I am thinking
of renaming Eugene,
Ore., to Eugene, Can. Studying cans, can
people, garbage cans, gas stations, and can haters (stores, big and
small), has given me an encyclopedic knowledge of the can returnable
business. No, this hasn't become an obsession with me, but I am getting
wearily there. All of this came to a head not long ago when I tried
to return some cans and bottles to my neighborhood store.
"Can't take them," said the clerk. "Why not?" I asked.
I was given the riot act about the Oregon Bottle Bill, or whatever
it is called, and it appears that I had committed an environmental
sin by bringing my returns in a plastic bag. The clerk backed away,
saying, "Sorry, it's the law. The cans and bottles have to be in a
paper bag." "Oh, really," I thought, as I purchased my goods, went
outside, and took the denied cans and bottles out of the plastic bag,
put them in the paper bag, and went back inside — finally receiving
my refund. Jesus, it's hard to make a nickel these days.
It seems as if every store has their own rules. Another
local store owner, screaming at me in Mandarin Chinese, admonished
me for bringing cans in a paper bag. Her rules demanded that I bring
them in a box. Well, what was one to do? Feed them to the birds?
I was just coming off a Pepsi hangover when my local
Chevron barred me from their premises the other day. There, they absolutely
refused to count them or touch them. "It's 10 cans in a paper bag,"
I said. There was a huge plastic barrel in back of the counter. It
took two clerks to pull it out. They silently pointed their fingers
at the barrel. "Why do I have to go through this every time I come
in here?" I asked. "You're barred sir." I sheepishly left, thinking
that it would be better to keep them and make a can sculpture. First
time I was 86'd from a gas station. Only in Eugene.
Now, I was determined to get to the facts of this
law. I found out some interesting things. Oregon became the first
state to pass a can and bottle law in 1971. The first year, a savings
of $656,832 in trash pick-ups was recorded. The deposit system provided
a steady supply of clean, sorted recyclables that boost recycling
markets. By 1979, the percentage of beverage containers littering
Oregon's roads had decreased to 6 percent. But I found nothing about
plastic bags, boxes, or paper bags.
"You'll learn, kid," said Jim, an experienced collector.
"They (the stores) hate returnables and can people," continued my
friend. Jim has been in the business for 20 years, making about $18
a day. A lot of the can people are idealists. Collecting cans and
not slaving at a job is their mantra. They are the last rugged individualists.
Another can anarchist, Steve, a black dude who carries
everything that he needs on his mountain bike, said to me, "Some stores
will do anything to make the life of a can person miserable." Steve
had given up on the system years ago after teaching African American
history at Kansas State University. "Would you like a sandwich?' he
asked while I sat with him as he read The Inferno by August
Strindberg. The brother was on his lunch break. If I didn't get all
of this hassle from shopkeepers, I might take up this profession myself.
They certainly get paid better than free-lance writers.
I guess the automatic machines has helped immensely.
One doesn't have to go through this nasty business of confrontation
with real people. So, with the failure of my can sculpture, I loaded
up and headed to the Red Apple supermarket. "Do you guys take bottles
and cans?" I timidly asked. "Out back," she snarled. I would have
felt better if she sent me to the real Outback of Australia. At the
machines, I met two can veterans. Each must have had a thousand cans.
My 15 cans didn't have a chance of getting in. "Hey fellows, need
some more cans?" I asked. "Sure, brother," they said.
Everyone has his or her reasons for trying to escape
their private unhappiness, and each of us, to that end, coaxes some
ingenious method from the circumstances. Blessed are those who can
content themselves with dealing in cans.
Jerry Harris is a Eugene sculptor and writer. His
web site is: members.tripod.com/media56
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AUDITOR
NEEDED
It was disappointing to read The
Register-Guard City Beat/City of Eugene section on Sunday (7/13)
indicating that the council decision on not forwarding the city auditor
position to the voters was in favor of a truly independent auditor.
While the R-G's pages are covered with stories
of external auditors (the council majority's preference) for Enron,
WorldCom, Qwest, etc., falling way short of the mark, the best choice
for true independence must be reevaluated.
The current trend, from R-G front page story
today, indicates that these corporate problems "... are all there
in the government's ledgers on a scale even the biggest companies
could not dream of matching." Public perception/confidence would dictate
that the truly independent auditor answer directly to the people and/or
their representatives as CCRC recommended.
Since the City Charter grants authority to contract
to the city manager only, the idea of having contracted audits as
the preferred method of creating independence is painting a picture
to the public that leaves me pondering the question, "What nuances
are involved in truly independent reporting by a newspaper?"
Fortunately, the council majority understood the need
for a full-time performance auditor to assist in evaluating the way
our local government serves it's citizens, but could not agree on
how to proceed. When the dust has settled, independence will continue
to be the critical factor and how to achieve it best-evolved.
Marlene "Mitzi" Colbath
Eugene
SHEEP'S
ZONING
A "mega-child-care-facility" posing as a "small
residential daycare center" is a wolf clothed in sheep's zoning.
Because traffic and parking problems are not taken
care of first, the UO has to leapfrog from Agate Street and Columbia
Street to east Moss Street. The Fairmount Neighborhood Association
passed a resolution 21-5, with three abstaining, to follow the Fairmount/UO
Special Area Study with its essential principle of prohibiting leapfrogging
and stipulating "incremental encroachment."
The land use proposed by the UO for a consolidated
child care facility on such a small acreage (.75 acre) is incompatible
with activities at nearby residences which have combined acreages
of comparable size or are bigger. "Two hundred and seventy persons
converging on a small acreage" is a smaller aggravating traffic factor
in an even greater traffic context concentrating on the neighborhood
daily.
Consolidation of child care is a bad idea. Many child
education advocates and teachers would discourage such consolidation
and support a diverse outlay of child care centers for the reason
that child care is not supposed to have the atmosphere of an assembly
line of consolidated institutionality.
Keeping child care centers small, less conspicuous,
and more convenient is desirable for a child's emotional development
as well as safety. Administration should consolidate while daycare
should logically diversify.
Communication of ideas and the communication of disease
follow similar mathematical analysis: Having so many people jammed
into a small area is good for the communication of disease and bad
for the communication of ideas.
Toby Grant
Eugene
PAY
THE PIPERS
The article on the Oregon Country Fair,
"Countercultural Institution" (7/11), disclosed many facts and figures
about the annual event. However, the author unfortunately left out
the glaring issue of how little the OCF actually pays musicians (8
percent of buget). Oddly, the OCF believes that the event is so cherished
that it's a privilege to perform there and thus they expect performers
to lower their fee.
Want proof? Check out the contracts. This unconscionable
practice only prolongs what musicians constantly face while earning
a living through their art: disrespect and low pay.
A full-time musician devotes years to classes, lessons
and practice, buys expensive instruments and equipment, travels, writes
songs, records, markets and distributes product. It's all hard work
and a constant struggle just to make ends meet.
With rising attendance and a 70 percent hike in ticket
prices over the last decade, the OCF should modify this shameful practice
to reflect the increased revenue and pay entertainers a fair rate
of exchange for their hard work. Maybe they could find the money in
the largest single slice (23 percent) of the budget pie chart listed
as "other." Whatever that means.
It all boils down to this: with assets in the tax
year 2000 listed as $1.8 million and annual budget of $950,000, a
socially responsible organization like the OCF, deeply rooted in our
culture and community, should set an example of fairness (no pun intended)
and do the right thing. Pay the entertainers, some who helped build
the OCF into a thriving business, what they deserve; enough money
to make a living and raise a family. Nothing more, nothing less. Until
then, its reputation as a "countercultural institution" will persist.
Bill Storms
Eugene Musician
BOMBS
OF TRUTH
Let the peoples of the world largely note
and long remember that capital/religious/environmental decadence reached
its peak during the illegitimate reign of U.S. King George II and
of Ashcroft nothing.
We should also note that the beast of greed is most
vulnerable when it reaches outrageous heights of widespread decadence,
for then the spear of reason and truthful reality can easily penetrate
to the core of its despicable blubbery dominion. The bombs of truth
are mightier than the bombs of lies and death. A few more whistleblowers
and the deed is done.
Bob Saxton
Eugene
TIME
IN THE WILDS
I fully support the views of Wild
Wilderness (www.wildwilderness.org) and many other environmental organizations
protesting fees for spending time in our natural wildland heritage.
But I also have my own perspectives.
I was raised on farms. I feel living in the country
went a long way toward developing my character, and helping me to
understand the time-tested "real" world, rather than just the human-created
nuevo-world. The trail fee program makes the "wilderness" seem ever
more like Disneyland. Would the revenue ever cover much more than
the cost of administering it? In any case, after this overhead, trail
fees should be for trail maintenance and little else — especially
not to build more roads, not for most fire prevention, not for buildings
and simple entertainment-type developments, or as a substitute for
logging/grazing/mining fees.
I frequently move branches and small logs off trails,
cut ditches to direct water off trails and pick up litter. I like
to think that one of my main purposes in being there is to survey
and understand nature, which seems pretty close to scientific study,
which I believe is exempt from trail fees. Shouldn't this exempt me
and many others?
I'm an "outdoorsman," but no longer a "sportsman"
in the usual sense. I used to hunt and fish, but I've come to realize
hunting today is less about putting meat on the table, or learning
and practicing survival skills, than about using modern predator technology
for "sport." Fishing in stocked streams is rather like going to a
commercial fish pond. My idea of sport involves some personal risks,
including rock climbing and kayaking.
In my fantasies of a just economic system, where people
are wealthy in proportion to their real and potential contributions
to society, I might support a wilderness fee program based on the
amount of strictly recreational and comfort equipment one carries
into the woods, perhaps mostly by weight, if it were possible to administer
it efficiently.
Dan Robinson
Eugene
THE
LATEST EPIDEMIC
Bernard Nickerson's rather disturbing letter
regarding the Pledge of Allegiance (7/18) is a good example of what's
wrong with our nation right now. The solution to our problems? Defend
your beliefs by insulting the beliefs of others. But isn't that what
started this whole mess in the first place? I say we declare "contradiction"
our latest epidemic.
Alisha Mobley
Springfield
HEAVY
SOLUTIONS
I'm dismayed by your new column "Treadmarks."
Jim Motavalli and E The Environmental Magazine do a great disservice
to the environment by advocating for consumer-heavy solutions to the
planet's ills. His "green car" opinions are a perfect example. We
will not improve our lives, our communities or our environment with
"cleaner" cars. Personal vehicles, highways, parking lots, gas stations,
etc. are a huge problem in our lives that "cleaner cars" will not
fix. We need to abolish cars and everything that comes with them:
drunk drivers, roadkill, air pollution, global climate change, dependence
on foreign oil, drilling in the Arctic (or the Rockies!), etc.
E Magazine is full of similar consumer-heavy
"solutions." Buying more stuff will not clean up the environment or
get us out of the damaged environment we now live in. Stopping buying
stuff will. While we are at it, campaigns with a consumer-boycott
element can be quite effective. Don't like Hyundai? Don't buy Hyundai.
Boycott Sony, E Magazine, Umpqua Bank, The Oregonian,
McDonalds, Henry's "beer," stores in the Broadway/Charnelton Project,
etc. (Too bad we as consumers cannot boycott Wildish, Eugene Sand
& Gravel, Chambers Construction, Papé Equipment, Mayor Torrey,
etc.)
Jim Flynn
Eugene
HUNKERED
DOWN
Gee, George Orwell would be proud of John
Ashcroft for creating the perfect enemy. You can't see them, but they're
always there, waiting to strike, just like in 1984.
The enemy is here, all right, "hunkered down" in
"undisclosed locations" and in corporate boardrooms, plotting the
next strike: more suppression and manipulation of free speech via
media and communications system takeovers, more slave labor jobs in
third-world countries while we flip burgers and park cars for the
bourgeoisie here, more wholesale environmental rape, more police and
military, more prisons.
Oh, and, at the appropriate intervals, more planned
"security lapses" so that cretins with Middle Eastern connections
can blow up skyscrapers and plant "dirty" radiation bombs on buses
and kill innocent people, so we'll hand over our rights.
They're here, all right — they stole the 2000
election in Florida.
Michael Anderson
Eugene
CREATIVE
TAXING
Because it has been pretty much proven that
our sweet government now exists only to serve itself, I decided, what
the hell, why not join them?
Because the cigarette tax seeks to stop people from
smoking, this means that the nature of the public-funded system is
digressive and will disappear. I wish to be the first to stabilize
this ever increasing stealth sales tax by proposing the first "non-smoker"
cigarette tax where the next five people to buy at any given cash
register, after cigarettes are purchased, have to pay a 5 percent
excise tax off their total transaction. Eventually government employees
can take public funds and buy the necessary volume of cigarettes to
keep the fund going forever. They can even smoke them.
Because all public school children are currently viewed
by government as a private company marketing resource, let me be the
first to propose mandatory teen organ donations so that all those
old men in government are guaranteed fresh healthy organ transplants.
Let's also make giving blood for sale to private companies a class
requirement. If any young man or woman wishes to sell one of their
double organs, the money would be put into a government account for
their college fees, letting the government take the interest payment
off the top as a service fee.
I'm sure there are a million other things that we
can think of (a registered anarchist fee, pedestrian tax, household
fresh air tax, homosexual/homophobic registered fee and many others).
Let me know if anyone needs more of them.
Daniel J. Moore
Springfield
THE
REAL GATEWAY
As noted in Melissa Lewis' excellent July
4th column, the latest White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy ad campaign seeks to link the war on drugs to the war on terrorism.
International terrorists have caught on to something Al Capone learned
in the 1920s during alcohol prohibition: There are enormous profits
to be made on the black market.
The illicit drug of choice in America is domestically
grown marijuana, not Afghan heroin or Colombian cocaine. Drug war
bureaucrats know this. So do teenagers. Hysterical anti-drug claims
have zero credibility among skeptical youth. The government's drug-terror
ads are a shameless attempt to garner support for a flawed drug war
74 percent of Americans feel is a lost cause. At the expense of national
unity, drug warriors are trying to convince Americans who consider
substance abuse a public health issue that many of their friends and
family members are threats to national security.
The opportunistic drug-terror rhetoric may lead Americans
to mistakenly conclude that marijuana smokers are somehow responsible
for Sept. 11th. That's likely no accident. Taxing and regulating marijuana
would render the drug war obsolete. As long as marijuana remains illegal
and distributed by organized crime, consumers will continue to come
into contact with hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. Naturally, the
government bureaucrats whose jobs depend on never-ending drug war
prefer to blame the plant itself for the alleged "gateway" to hard
drugs.
Robert Sharpe, MPA
Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org
Washington, D.C.
IN
PRAISE OF BUSH
President Bush has called for vigilant prosecution
of corporate criminals to ensure that investors and workers maintain
the highest confidence in American business. The president is working
to protect small investors with tough new jail sentences for executives
who deceive shareholders and the creation of a task force to make
sure corporate criminals are prosecuted.
While the president offers constructive solutions,
Democrats are trying to score election year, political points and
the American people are seeing through their tactics. The Manchester
Union Leader writes that "Democrats are obviously more concerned
about scoring cheap political points than in quickly crafting legislation
to tighten laws governing corporate behavior." The Washington Post
calls the Democrat attacks on President Bush a "distraction."
The hypocritical and callous political games being
played by the Democrats has now been exposed by recent news reports
that say House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt wants to keep corporate
scandals "on the political radar screen until November." While the
American people continue to see the money invested for their children's
education and their future retirement dwindle due to corporate bad
actors, Democrats are more concerned with their own political gain.
Bush has taken decisive action to prosecute and punish corporate criminals.
The Republican leadership in the House passed corporate reform in
April. It is time for Democrats to put their partisan, stonewalling
aside and help pass real corporate reform.
The fact is the U.S. economy is the strongest it's
been in the last nine years. That should tell you something about
the failed leadership under Clinton, and the the responsible, trusted
leadership we have under Bush.
John F. Marten
Eugene
LETTERS POLICY: We welcome letters on all topics
and will print as many as space allows. Please limit length to 250 words,
keep submissions to once a month, and include your address and phone
number. E-mail to editor@eugeneweekly.com,
fax to 484-4044, or mail to 1251 Lincoln, Eugene 97401.
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