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