It was a matter of avoiding -- not just one debate -- to attend a conference, it was actually -all- debates and candidate forums....  and hey, I have yet to find any other reference in her tenure to the importance of "bikes" or other such 'Eugene style' culture.  A seemingly sudden change in interests coincidentally at the time that a virtual non candidate appears.   No matter what else happens here, I think that change is coming.  Maybe not this time, though it is not far off.  Springfield is demographically too young now and has too many advantages to be left to this sort of hardening of the arteries that lacks the agility to innovate and solve the City's poverty and longstanding problems.