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