Eugene weekly., August 18, 2005, Page 8, Image 8

BREAK FROM
RECRUITING
news
briefs
BUILDER WON’T
SELL FOREST
For more than a year, a neighborhood
group has fought to save a 40-acre plot of
forested land between Dillard Road and
Nectar Way from development. Now, the city
wants re-negotiate a deal to buy the plot, but
it may be too late.
The land in question is one of the biggest
unprotected parcels of high-quality habitat in
Eugene, containing Amazon Creek headwa-
ters, seasonal wetlands, upland wildlife habi-
tat and several endangered plants. City of
Eugene Parks Director Johnny Medlin calls
the plot “the most pristine piece of land out-
side of public ownership in Eugene.” The
Parks Department is interested in incorporat-
ing the land into the Ridgeline Trail network.
The city has tried, and failed, to buy the
plot before. Just as the city was poised to pur-
chase the property in the spring of 2004,
DDA Oregonia sold it to developer Joe
Green. City officials maintain that they made
a good-faith effort to obtain the plot, but
DDA Oregonia local manager Munir Katul
told neighborhood activists that the city never
expressed an earnest interest in buying it.
Regardless, Green won the bid and now owns
8 AUGUST 18, 2005
Local activists are working
to save the Nectar Way
forest from development.
the property. He later refused the city’s offer
to buy the plot at the appraised price of
$430,000.
On July 18, the Eugene City Council
passed a motion to direct the city manager to
re-negotiate with Green about purchasing the
property. Funds could come from city coffers
as well as the neighborhood group working to
preserve the plot, local nonprofits and a fed-
eral grant. Councilor Betty Taylor, who intro-
duced the motion, feels that the city should
do whatever it can to preserve the parcel. “It’s
wooded land with rare growth, the kind of
forest that we don’t have much left of,” she
says.
Southeast Neighborhood Association
President Kevin Matthews says that the land
is especially critical because it contains
Amazon Creek headwaters. “It’s a really im-
portant natural resource area, and we’d love
to see it protected one way or another,”
he says. “I’m glad that the City Council
has endorsed a stronger focus on solving
that.”
But on Aug. 15, Green’s attorney, Mark
Hoyt, wrote an e-mail stating that the devel-
oper is not interested in selling the entire par-
cel; he is only willing to negotiate selling a
portion of the land around the stream corri-
dor. “Without a willing seller, there’s not any-
thing more that we can do,” Medlin says.
If the city’s effort to purchase the plot
fails, Green is likely to pursue his preliminary
plan to construct 105 to 111 new houses on
the property.
For more information about the effort to
preserve the Nectar Way forest, contact Lisa
Warnes at ksl@efn.org — Kera Abraham
How will the teens and young adults in
our community deal effectively with ubiqui-
tous military recruiters in schools and on the
phone? Eugene peace activists are doing
some recruiting of their own for a
regional
counter-recruitment
camp to be held Aug. 29 to
Sept. 1 near Goldendale,
Wash.
PeaceWorks
and
CALC’s Committee for
Countering
Military
Recruitment are promoting
the Northwest “Not Your Soldier”
student activist training camp for
youth age 13 to 22. The cost of the camp
is $25-$250 sliding scale, with scholarships
available.
Registration includes meals, housing,
transportation, activities and workshops.
“The focus of this event is to empower young
people to return to high school and college
campuses ready to oppose military recruit-
ment and work to demilitarize their schools,”
says Phil Weaver of PeaceWorks.
Sessions will include training in nonvio-
lent direct action, basic rights, issues of race
in military recruitment, guerilla theater, pub-
lic speaking, working with adult allies, alter-
natives to the military, student privacy, con-
scientious objection and the draft .
The camps are a joint project of the
Ruckus Society, Code Pink, War Resisters
League, Teen Peace and the Committee
for Countering Military Recruitment. For
more information or to register,
visit www.notyoursoldier.org or e-mail
countermilitary@yahoo.com
or
call
343-8548 ext. 1.
LOGICAL
& PUZZLING
Eugene actuary and puzzler Mark
Danburg-Wyld may be the first person in the
U.S. to personally create brand-new, com-
puter-generated brainteasers called sudoku, a
Japanese word for the “single number” game
that created a frenzy among players in Great
Britain before jumping to America in 2005.
The craze began in the 1980s in Japan and
has spread throughout Asia. Eugene Weekly
welcomes Danburg-Wyld’s Sudoku puzzles
in this issue.
Warning: This game is addictive. Use
a pencil, with an eraser. Logic and rea-
soning, not lucky guesses, are
required. The goal is to fill in
the blank cells on the three-
square by three-square grid that
makes up a sudoku puzzle. In each
of these nine boxes the numbers 1
through 9 may occur once only.
Likewise, numbers 1 through 9 may ap-
pear only once horizontally in each row, and
only once vertically in each column.
Danburg-Wyld suggests that the puzzle
evolved as a “natural progression” from what
are called “Latin Squares,” but in sudoku the
clues (some numbers are filled in) are
“arranged symmetrically.” I don’t know ex-
actly what he means by that, but I am pleased
to note that no math is involved in solving the
puzzle — you don’t add or subtract to get the
values.
Before you dust off your thinking cap and
attempt this brain-stretcher, Danburg-Wyld
has a few tips. First, look at the grid as a
whole and begin working with those numbers
that are closer to being done. For example, if
the puzzle has five out of nine 1’s filled in but
only three 2’s, it may be easier to place the re-
maining four 1’s. To do that, get systematic.
Pencil in all the numbers (values) that could
go into a cell. This will let you see patterns
otherwise not obvious. You may see that in
one box, there is only one cell that could con-
tain a 1. Put it there.
Another trick: When you end up with two
cells in a column that could contain one of
two values, pencil both values in each.
Eliminate these values as choices for the re-
maining cells in that column. (I know: Words
are hard to visualize. But when you try this
trick, you’ll see it in a flash.)
I’m not yet a sudoku addict, but I have
started playing. For a word-addled brain like
mine, it’s reassuring to have nine possibilities