Sara Miura Zolbrod, coordinator of the 1,000 Hopes project, holds some hopes, dreams and wishes created by local elementary students. She will add about 1,000 of these papers to the fence at the Eugene Public Library by the end of May.
Credit Aubrey Bulkeley
“I remember tying a long white piece of paper onto a tree that had thousands of other pieces of paper on it.”
As a child, Zolbrod thought this was a wishing tree. After some research, she learned it is a tradition called Omikuji where people can pay for a range of fortunes. And all the fortunes tied together, get amplified.
Indicative of shared weird times, Eugene’s National Dance Week will bring performances downtown, a rare instance after more than a year of silence. The long pause does not mean that dancers have been idle, though.
“I was thinking I probably would get a lot of ‘nos’ because it s been COVID and no one s been creating new work,” Eugene Culture Services downtown programs coordinator Jana Meszaros said. “What I found is that nobody stopped in the dance community. Everyone s been finding ways to continue to share their craft.”
Eugene Cultural Services will celebrate its third annual National Dance Week from Friday, April 16 through Sunday, April 25. As Oregon’s only city-wide National Dance Week celebration, vibrant events will activate spaces in and around downtown for cultural enthusiasts of all ages with free participatory tutorials, innovative performances and virtual content.
A pandemic, social unrest and more has amplified the problems that children of color face, especially in schools. The Brookings Institute estimates that two-thirds of minority students still attend schools that are predominantly minority, most of them located in central cities and funded well below those in neighboring suburban districts.
The Early Education Workshop: Supporting Black Children Part 1, led by Hadiyah Miller, and hosted by Eugene Public Library, examines this and advocates for anti-bias practices, equity and access to quality education for all children. Miller is the current president of Oregon Association for the Education of Young Children (ORAEYC) and has a distinguished 20-year career in child education in the Multnomah County area.