Last week I took a vacation from work and flew down to Medford, Oregon, to take in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The plays were good, the weather was beautiful, and I had a great time...but what I keep remembering is the flight down. The plane was a 36-seater, and small enough that the pilot couldn't take it up as high as a large jet. So naturally we saw a lot of the Cascades...and the checkerboard of clearcuts throughout the foothills. Or at least, that's what I saw--everyone else seemed to be ooh-ing and ah-ing over their first chance this year to see Mount Rainier unobscured by storm clouds or car exhaust. I saw a few other things, too: spider-web-like erosion gullies on the sides of clearcut mountain tops, exposed streams flowing into muddy brown rivers, and logging roads--hundreds and hundreds of miles of them--looping through patches of virgin forest. Of course, those are the patches of forest that Plum Creek Timber Company, Weyerhaeuser, et. al. want to get their hands on in exchange for the bits they've already destroyed. It was educational. Everybody should be able to fly over the Cascades and take a look for themselves.--Maria Tomchick

Which must be what U.S. District Judge William Dwyer has already done. Following his decision to block nine federal timber sales earlier this month (see Nature & Politics, ETS!, 8/18/99), Dwyer ruled last week to block logging on an additional 25 federal timber tracts, because the Forest Service didn't survey these tracts for endangered species prior to their sale, as is required by the government's own Northwest Forest Plan. The timber industry's response was typical: they threatened to sue the government for economic damages. The Forest Service's response was also typical: they will propose changes in the Forest Plan that will weaken the requirements for surveying land prior to timber sales. Interestingly, it was Judge Dwyer who pointed out that closing access to federal land will preserve ecosystems at very little cost to the timber industry; 90 percent of timber harvests in Washington and Oregon are on private and state lands.--M.T.

I haven't been this pissed off in a long time. All it took was a poorly written op ed piece by Marianne Means, a syndicated columnist for Hearst Newspapers. The piece, entitled "Feminist professor is betraying, not serving, women's rights" (reprinted in the Aug. 27 issue of the P-I), lays out her opinion on the forced retirement of tenured professor Mary Daly. Daly, who has taught feminist studies and ethics classes at Boston College for decades, was dismissed when she refused to allow a male student into her feminist studies class. What's usually missing from the media accounts (and Means's article is no exception) is that Daly offered to tutor the male student separately from the rest of the class--a level of individual attention denied most undergraduate students in public or private schools (Boston College is a private, Jesuit college). That the student refused this offer, then went to the right-wing Center for Individual Rights to help him file his lawsuit says volumes about his motives in trying to force Daly to accept him into her class. That he said nothing when Daly was dismissed also shows he had no particular desire to learn from her; what he wanted was access to a women-only environment to sabotage, rather than participate in, any discussion of gender-based power. Marianne Means, who herself can admit "...collectively the male animal still tends to hog the best jobs, resent affirmative action and stick women with the lion's share of the child rearing and household duties," somehow can't tell the difference between women winning access to educational opportunities formerly denied them (i.e., admission to the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute) and the dismissal of Daly (i.e., the destruction of the few remaining progressive courses in U.S. universities). Yes, there is a difference; shame on you, Marianne Means, for not seeing this.--M.T.

Let's hope it's a trend...the Shoreline School District deserves acclaim for its courageous decision last week to ban U.S. Army recruiters from its schools after a series of allegations of sexual harassment of young women by recruiters. In the most recent case, a 16-year-old student told police that a 29-year-old recruiter asked her for sex after giving her a ride to her house. In one of the three reported incidents, the Army courtmartialed the recruiter but cleared him of charges. Spokespeople for school districts in Seattle, Bellevue, Everett, and Edmonds all claimed to have not heard of similar incidents in their school districts, but predatory behavior by men in the armed forces is nothing new. It is, in fact, endemic. How could it be otherwise? The whole purpose of the military and military culture is power and control, which is also the basis of sexual harassment and sexual attacks. The sooner the military is booted from all of our schools, the better.-- Geov Parrish

Interesting to see how local media treats two cases of campaign trail hijinks. There was the case of Brian Derdowski, the widely disliked-- by developers and other folks with money--Eastside County Council member who was accused of an FBI investigation last week. The investigation, it turns out, was two years old and found to be groundless, but nonetheless the smear made it onto local television and both daily papers, almost certainly leaked by Derdowski's enemies two years after the fact but just in time to damage him in this month's primary. Local media focused on the allegation--not on the lack of substantiation or the suspicious leaking of it. Dirty politics, abetted by local media with an axe to grind.--G.P.

By contrast, there's the kid gloves treatment being given City Council candidate Heidi Wills. Wills is the closest thing this city has seen in a while to a Manchurian candidate. She has raised more money than any other candidate, including any incumbent, and has managed to say nearly nothing of substance on the campaign trail. Worse, however--and the bit local media (as well as all the other candidates) knows but isn't bothering to report--Wills is constantly contradicting herself at different campaign stops as she attempts to please everybody. A comparison of Wills' stances at different venues--say, the Apartment Owners Association and Seattle Tenants Union, who have slightly different impressions as to how she stands on rent control-- would be quite educational. The daily papers' campaign reporters are the only ones with the resources to do it. But they're barely reporting the election, let alone mounting critical investigations of the candidates. Unless, of course, it's someone they want to smear, like Derdowski.--G.P.

And credit where credit is due...the candidate with the reputation for not contradicting himself, and saying what he thinks even when it costs him support, is downtown-backed Alec Fisken. Charlie Chong also earns lots of points on this score.--G.P.

Meanwhile--and I promise not to bore you with any more campaign stuff for a while--what has happened to Cheryl Chow? As noted in this issue's endorsement article, she has resorted to a patently untruthful campaign, claiming erroneously to be the voice of the poor and powerless. But she has also nearly stopped raising money in the last three months. In three critical August weeks she raised only $1,500; by comparison, rival Judy Nicastro raised over $11,000 in the same period, and even the flagging Daniel Norton campaign raised $3,500. Chow's fundraising almost all happened in April or earlier. Chow has been backed by Wes Uhlman, major landlord and former mayor, but has not gotten a lot of the downtown backing you'd expect given her record. She's also been pulling down two jobs with the Seattle School District at a time when most candidates are campaigning full time. Does she really want the job? And if she doesn't, would she at least withdraw so as to give two fine candidates (Nicastro and Norton) a shot at each other in the general election?G.P.