From Friendly House, Will Aitchison will lead us through stages of Forest Park, from formation through the adoption in 1995 of the Forest Park Natural Resources Management Plan to restore “ancient forest”, and the city’s subsequent failure to conduct necessary scientific studies of the park. He’ll cover development pressures on the Park from mountain biking and PGE, and list organizations protecting the park, ending with a look to the future. Will Aitchison is a labor lawyer, long-time Willamette Heights resident, and president of the Coalition to Protect Forest Park.

From Friendly House. People often blame the chaotic precarious political landscape in the US on polarization and culture wars, with the wars playing out in the classrooms and campuses. Instead, Whitney Phillips and Mark Brockway argue that the seeming left-right battle is the result of 80 years of densely overlapping religious and secular messages that have transformed how we see education. Whitney Phillips is Ass’t Prof. of Inf. Politics and Media Ethics at the U of O, and author of You Are Here and Share Better and Stress Less. Mark Brockway is Assistant Teaching Professor in Pol. Sci. at Syracuse University.