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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 2011)
STOVE TEAM FOUNDER GETS MAJOR GRANT DID HIGH-PRICE SPRINGFIELD JAIL CUT CRIME? To make Springfield safer, the city opened the largest municipal jail in Oregon last January at a cost of $10 million to build and $2.4 million a year to operate its 100 beds. So did violent crime fall with the big new jail? Not according to the city’s numbers. Person crime increased 10 percent last year in Springfield, according to statistics from Springfield police. Property crime stayed about level, and behavior crime was up by 89 percent. That’s despite spending $100,000 per bed to build a jail and $24,000 a year per bed to operate it. The inverse relationship between jail beds and crime isn’t unique to Springfield. In Eugene the number of county jail beds that the city relies on has dropped by 37 percent in the past dozen years, while the violent crime rate in Eugene has dropped by 50 percent and the property crime rate has dropped by 46 percent, according to FBI data. The FBI didn’t report any crime data for Springfield last year. According to city spokesman Niel Laudati, that’s because of a technical mix up and miscommunication between the Oregon Law Enforcement Data center and the FBI. Springfield’s crime data may be less accurate than the FBI’s numbers for year-to-year comparison purposes. Because the city changed the way it counts crimes internally, the behavior crime numbers for last year could be higher than the previous year, but the more serious violent crime numbers are probably comparable, according to Laudati. — Alan Pittman OREGON TARGETED BY ABORTION FOES Personhood USA, a national anti-choice organization based in Colorado, seeks to “strategically restore human rights in 17 different states by amending each state’s constitution.” Oregon is one of these states because a constitutional amendment can be passed by initiative in a popular vote. These amendments are aimed at gaining personhood status for genetic material beginning at fertilization. The historical significance goes all the back to oral arguments during Roe v. Wade. During oral arguments Chief Justice Warren Burger argued that a state could outlaw abortion, “by statute that a fetus is a person for all constitutional purposes.” By asserting that fetuses, embryos and zygotes are people with the unalienable right to life, abortion foes are casting a wide net. Drew Hymer of Personhood’s national office said, “The amendment doesn’t distinguish in any way how a human being comes into existence. If you’re a living human being, the amendment recognizes your right to life. Therefore under the amendment, abortion would not be legal when the pregnancy was the result of rape.” The amendment, though, does clearly state in the third section, “The right to life guaranteed in this section of the Constitution does not apply to any person sentenced to the penalty of death for aggravated murder as set forth in Section 40 of this Article.” Hymer acknowledged that the amendment would ban forms of birth control that acted after fertilization. Katha Pollit writing in The Nation stated that, “unplanned pregnancies have risen from 47 to 49 percent of all pregnancies.” Personhood USA gave no indication of how to deal with the high degree of unwanted pregnancies through out the country. WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM safe stoves in areas where the population suffers Eugene’s Nancy Sanford Hughes of StoveTeam from smoke-related deaths and illnesses. Smoke International got word last week that she is one of inhalation causes about twice as many deaths as five social entrepreneurs to win a $100,000 grant malaria in developing countries, according to Nicole from the Civic Ventures annual Purpose Prize. The Hyslop, a public relations intern with the organization. award is for “making an extraordinary impact in an Hughes founded encore career.” StoveTeam International “I feel humbled,” in 2007 in conjunction she says. “I did not with Southtowne Rotary, choose to do this work with a grant in memory — it chose me. The of her late husband, recognition is great; it Duffy Hughes, who had will enable us to been a physician in leverage StoveTeam’s Eugene for more than 25 expansion and reach years. Hughes had been a even more children volunteer with more than and families.” a dozen nonprofits, Hughes, who is in including Environmental Honduras this week Law Alliance Worldwide, with the StoveTeam Cascade Medical Team, crew, says the Lane County Medical $100,000 will be split Alliance, the Eugene up among half a dozen Symphony and Oregon Rotary districts, which Bach Festival. It was will in turn generate Nancy Sanford Hughes with the Cascade Medical matching funds. The Team in Guatamala that she first observed the burns money will then go to establish stove factories in and ailments associated with open fires in huts. Bolivia, Ghana, Kenya, Paraguay and Fiji. The team StoveTeam has been featured in numerous also plans to return to Mexico and add new stove national and international publications, but got its factories there. first media attention in EW back in 2004. See http:// StoveTeam is a nonprofit organization that sets up wkly.ws/14r and a video can also be found at http:// stove manufacturing plants in developing countries. wkly.ws/14s — Ted Taylor The factories produce affordable, fuel-efficient and happening people BY PAUL NEEVEL JULIA BOWLIN “I had one special dog as a kid,” says Julia Bowlin, who grew up in Twin Falls, Ida. “Spooky was my best friend. She cost $5 and lived for 16 years.” Bowlin started a dog-sitting business in high school, but afterwards left for college at USC and “took a break from dogs.” She studied advertising design but found it “too cutthroat” and went for a degree in sign language. “Visual language fascinates me,” she says, noting that dogs are visual communicators. “They key in on movement more than vocal language. People repeat, ‘sit, sit, sit,’ when all they need to do is step forward.” Bowlin got married at USC and had two kids, moved to Eugene in 1998, became a foster mom to medically fragile kids, and adopted a third child in 2005. She also adopted Caper (at left in the photo, along with Bowlin and Tanner) and studied the training methods of “dog whisperer” Cesar Milan. “I found I had a talent,” she says. “I wanted to help others.” Since 2006, she has worked with 2,500 dogs. “Usually, I can fix things in one home visit,” she says. “Really, I’m training the humans.” Her strongest advice is to keep puppies with their moms at least eight weeks. “The last two weeks are so important,” she says. “Don’t take a dog if you can’t see the mom.” Find her on Facebook at Eugene’s Dog Whisperer. CORRECTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS • In our Best News Personality list of winners last week, Marc Mullins’ name was spelled incorrectly. • The first paragraph of Arjen Hoekstra’s letter last week was inadvertently cut off. The complete letter can be found on our website. EUGENE WEEKLY NOVEMBER 10, 2011 7
