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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 30, 2012)
SHOOTING PEOPLE IS A CRIME When Susan Lynette Hughes felt a sting on her buttocks while she stood near East 11th and Mill July 10, at first she thought it was a bee sting. Then the men she was talking to started feeling stings, and she realized they were being shot with BBs. Hughes, who is unhoused, says she had heard of college students shooting homeless people with BB guns, but she and the men standing with her were still shocked and angry. The men and the shooter exchanged shouts, and Hughes says she wanted to prevent the situation from escalating. “I said, ‘Let’s not all go to jail. Why don’t we call the police — because this is really breaking the law — and get it handled?’” Hughes recalls. Hughes called the police, who responded and cited the shooter, UO student Ryan Bax, who received 12 days of she’s got. Some of them go in White Bird — clothes to go in the box. Some of them are for somebody who said they needed or liked a blue sweatshirt and she’s found one. All these bags around here contain things mostly marked for people. She’s always very generous.” Hughes says she still feels pretty safe in the campus area, and that people can get hurt even behind locked doors with weapons. “So having the faith and believing in a higher being, being spiritual and smiling are a lot of the weapons I carry,” she says. “It helps. And when things aren’t right, somebody has to step forward.” — Shannon Finnell road crew and a year of probation. Hughes’ sister, Amber Jade, says she thinks Hughes’ decision to call the police was protective of both the homeless and the shooter. “That could be the very thing that could take this guy from where he was going to go in five years — just a real pivot point,” Jade says. Hughes says she was very satisfied with the police response to the incident. “The other people were so impressed with how the police handled it that it opened up a lot of doors for police communication with the homeless,” she says. Hughes says there’s no good reason the shooting needed to happen. “It’s almost like in all societies you have to have a hate and a worship,” she says, and the homeless are what some people hate. Jade says she thinks that a contributing factor is that people who are homeless are only seen as homeless instead of homeless plus all the other things they are. She ticks off all the things her sister does that are more important than where she sleeps: Hughes trains animals; she taught herself intricate details about exotic plants from a book; she’s competed in track and danced ballet; she humanely traps feral cats to have them spayed, then makes sure they’re fed for years. She says that her petite sister pushes a heavy cart around Eugene, filling it with items she knows others need. “Susan has always done that. You can see the bags that TEMPEST IN THE COUNTY TEAPOT A cut-and-paste error by an attorney was enough to send the conservative members of the Lane County Board of Commissioners into a tailspin and reportedly briefly lock progressive Commissioner Pete Sorenson out of his office. Fellow liberal Commissioner Rob Handy had been locked out of his office for more than 80 days and was only recently let back in, long after an investigation into allegations of financial impropriety by the Oregon Department of Justice had released the office. At their Aug. 22 meeting, conservative Commissioners biz beat NEW FACILITY FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD Saturday Market serves as Eugene’s street-level business barometer and we hear that one indicator, booth fees, are up slightly over last season at this time. “We’ve also been averaging about five brand new Market artisans every Saturday for the past couple of months, which is business as usual,” says Kim Still of the Market. “Also, we’re proud to report that our sustainability team has sent 13,700 lbs. of compost to Rexius instead of the garbage dump, and we’ve kept the equivalent of 43,600 plastic forks out of the waste stream by using metal forks.” Saturday Market and Lane County Farmers Market were open during the Eugene Celebration and big crowds were reported. It was great to see folks dancing with broccoli at the KRVM/EW stage. Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon (PPSO) is busy moving into its new regional Health & Education Center at 3579 Franklin Blvd., in Glenwood, and will open its doors to the public at 10:30 am Tuesday, Sept. 4. The long-awaited new facility consolidates the Eugene High Street center, the Eugene administrative offices and the Springfield Q Street center, but other sites, including the Bethel Express Health Clinic, will remain open. “Opening this new center is a huge asset to our community,” says Marilyn Helton, vice president of patient services at PPSO. “It allows us to provide essential preventive health care services to 50 percent more people throughout the Eugene-Springfield area.” PPSO’s health services include annual exams, birth control, cancer screenings, STD testing and treatment and HPV vaccinating. CEO Cynthia Pappas says this is the first significant new building in Glenwood in 30 years. “We look forward to being part of the transformation of Glenwood,” she says. The new 20,000 sq. ft. center is designed to be LEED certified silver and has many unique green features, including a gray water cistern, geothermal heat wells, a partial green roof and the largest permeable pavement parking lot in Oregon. Carl Sherwood of Robertson Sherwood Architects is the principal architect and Scott Stolarczyk is the project architect. “Our goal was to create a light- filled and open environment, trying to bring in as much daylight as possible and provide views if possible, while still maintaining client privacy,” Stolarczyk says. “Energy efficiency was also an important aspect of the project, and so to that effect the building is energy modeled to be about 22 percent more energy efficient than the already stringent Oregon Energy Code requires.” He adds, “I’ve heard from the staff who have started to move in; they are loving the space.” — Ted Taylor Need cheap office space downtown? Helios Resource Network at 120 W. Broadway has some cubicle space available for $150 to $200 a month that includes wi-fi, utilities, kitchenette and a shared conference space. Other tenants are Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Basic Rights Oregon and Our Islands Conservation Center. Email cdt@efn.org or cal 686-5562. The Western Environmental Law Center hired Erik Schlenker-Goodrich as interim executive director as of Aug. 1, replacing Greg Constello, who recently moved into an advocacy role with WELC after 11 years as executive director. A national search is continuing for a permanent director to head the nonprofit public interest law firm, which began in Eugene and now has offices in New Mexico, Colorado and Montana. PHOTO BY ROBERT J. WILLIAMS Laughing Stock Farm, known for its high-quality organic pork served in restaurants as far away as San Francisco, now has a biogas digester to compost its waste into energy that will replace propane. The 50-acre farm is on Territorial Road southwest of Eugene. Hestia Home Biogas, owned by Warren Weisman and David Rasmussen, designed and installed the $10,000 system that should pay for itself in about four years, Weisman says. “Small farmers are busy people,” he says. “They have a million things to do every day. Paul wanted a digester that was easy to operate and wasn’t going to break down.” In addition to small farm units, Hestia also offers home biogas digesters that operate off kitchen scraps and garden waste. Email weiswar@yahoo.com for more information. 6 AUGUST 30, 2012 EUGENE WEEKLY Corvallis Beer Week begins Monday, Sept. 10, celebrating the craft beer industry for the second year with 39 events over seven days. About 33 businesses and organizations are involved this year, including several Eugene breweries. One of the biggest events is BARREL, a barrel-matured “craft beer experience” from 6:30 to 10 pm Friday, Sept. 14, at the Odd Fellows Hall, 223 SW 2nd St. downtown. See corvallisbeerweek. org for more information. Send suggestions for Biz Beat items to editor@eugeneweekly.com with “Biz Beat” in the subject line. WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
