When I see, now, those silly smiley faces on Eugene Celebration posters around town, it makes me feel even more deeply the whole surrealistic absurdity of the place where the winds of life have brought me.

What are you smiling for, people of Eugene? What is there to smile about? What is there for you to feel happy or proud about this town, and what is there to celebrate here?

Having a shameless crook in a city mayor's chair who handsomely profits by sitting there? Celebrate the poison-leaking Hyundai monster that emerged here through efforts of such corporate whores governing this city? Or maybe the recent sacrificing of majestic trees in the name of America's sick love for metal coffins on wheels?

Feel happy about a Eugene police force that looks and acts like gestapo with all its violent crackdowns on dissent? Or, on the other hand, maybe about those dreadlocked lunatics turning any public protest here into a kind of a freak show?

Be proud of what? All the human scum, dangerous criminals on the streets, shootings and stabbings almost daily? Homeless transients sleeping under every other bush? Garbage eaters? Downtown full of scary human species calling themselves "mall rats"?

Celebrate what? That a third of the city's population are functionally illiterate? Lice-ridden schools? Refusing to have a new library? Closing parks and recreation programs? Abuse and neglect of children? Celebrate being slaves, working for five bucks an hour?

Well, if you're happy about or proud of it and see reason to celebrate with "miles of smiles," then of course, keep smiling. Blessed are those in the agony of the mind.

September 1997

This article was first published in The Register Guard, September 15, 1996