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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 2013)
NEWS The Fun with Fermentation Festival is from 11 am to 4 pm Saturday, Jan. 12, at the WOW Hall, 291 W. 8th Ave. in Eugene. The fourth annual event is a fundraiser for FOOD for Lane County and the Willamette Valley Sustainable Foods Alliance. Admission is on a sliding scale, $10-$20 per person or $5 with two cans of food. Kids 12 and under are free. The event focuses on the many ways fermentation is used in making foods and drinks. Businesses involved include Coconut Bliss, Cousin Jack’s Pasty Co., Falling Sky Brewing, Grateful Harvest Farm, Herbal Junction, Holy Cow, Hop Valley Brewing, Kombucha Mama, Master Food Preservers, McKenzie Mist, Mountain Rose Herbs, Ninkasi, Oakshire, Premrose Edibles, Pure Peppers, Vanilla Jills, Viva Vegetarian Grill and the local chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. See www.wvsfalliance.org Womenspace, the “primary provider of intimate partner violence services” in Lane County, has closed its walk-in advocacy service at its Crisis and Support Center on Pearl Street in Eugene. Domestic violence services will still be provided through the 24-hour Crisis Line. Executive Director Peggy Whalen says she hopes to reinstate walk-in services in the future. She says Womenspace provides services to more than 4,500 adults and children annually, but has seen big cutbacks in both government agency funding and private donations. See www.womenspaceinc.org Local cycling enthusiasts will be gathering for a bike event at 1 pm Saturday, Jan. 12, at the David Minor Theater, 180 E. 5th Ave. in Eugene. Suggested donation is $10 and all proceeds will go to Trips for Kids-CAT, a mountain bike group for youth. The biking film Premium Rush will be shown and prizes will be given away from REI, Blue Heron Bicycles, Co-Motion Cycles, Rolf Prima, Hutch’s Bicycles, Dianne Davis, LMT, Willamette Mercantile and Pauls’s Bicycle Way of Life. Local yoga teachers are offering Yoga Day 2013, a day of classes and demonstrations from 9 am to 2 pm Saturday, Jan. 12, at Willamalane Center, 215 W. C St. in Springfield. Suggested donation for the day is $10 and beginners are welcome. Instructors include Justine Halliwill, Christen Bradshaw, Kate Hirst, Erik Lovendahl and Suman Barkus. The event is a benefit for Suman’s brother in Mongolia who was injured in a car accident. See www.taichiyogacenter.com Feet First! is a new kind of massage studio in the back of Studio 508 at 5th and Blair in the Whiteaker neighborhood. Michelle Wallace practices Ashiatsu or barefoot massage therapy. She tells us she uses “bars overhead for balance and gravity for pressure, the feet provide broad, even strokes that are therapeutic and relaxing.” Call 543-0290 or find Feet First! on Facebook. Lord Leebrick Theatre has received a $50,000 grant from the Collins Foundation for its new West Broadway theater downtown. The gift brings the total raised to $2.15 million, close to the fundraising goal of $2.3 million. The new theater will open Jan. 25 with the Pulitzer Prize winning musical Next to Normal. Last fall the theater also got a $10,000 grant from James F & Marion L. Miller Foundation. To help wrap up the campaign, contact Artistic Director Craig Willis at 684-6988 or email craig@lordleebrick.org The Coalition of Land Trusts has received an unprecedented grant of $4.5 million from the family of John Gray, who died Oct. 19, 2012, according to Joe Moll, executive director of the McKenzie River Trust, one of the beneficiaries of the Gray family’s Yarg Foundation. Gray was a prominent Portland developer and business leader who created the resorts at Salishan, Sunriver and Skamania Lodge, along with the John’s Landing redevelopment in Portland. The foundation plans to invest a total of $10 million over 10 years to support the land trust movement in Oregon. See mckenzieriver.org 8 January 10, 2013 • eugeneweekly.com >>> CONTINUED FROM P. 7 offi ce out of board control. Pat Farr now replaces Handy on the board’s North Eugene seat. Gardner said the 5-0 vote shows that the county counsel “is working better than ever before.” Sorenson was dubious over the original agenda item that called for appointing Dingle as the county’s attorney without a full search. “We should be interviewing people that want to be the legal counsel; there’s a certain degree of fairness, you advertise and interview. You don’t just appoint someone,” he said. Sorenson had also expressed concerns when Gardner was appointed acting county counsel in November 2011 because, he said at the time, he had concerns over possible confl icts of interest. For example if the county legal department were to turn down a public records request, the appeal goes to the DA’s offi ce. Gardner said via email that he had “agreed to accept the extra work without additional compensation, so I could apply the resulting savings to our looming budget defi cit.” He said he was stepping down because the year he agreed to serve was up and that before taking on the functions of the county counsel he ran “several potentially challenging scenarios” by the Oregon attorney general’s offi ce. He cited several other, smaller, Oregon counties that had dual DA/county counsels. At the same meeting the board voted that Sid Leiken would be chair for a second year and Jay Bozievich to serve a second year as vice chair. Sorenson voted against Boziev- ich. — Camilla Mortensen STATE OF THE COUNTY: UNDERFUNDED, PROTESTED Sid Leiken, chair of the Lane County Board of Commis- sioners, put a positive spin on hope for the poor state of the county’s fi nances during his State of the County address on Jan. 7. Leiken focused on the positive improvements in areas such as community health, while members of SLEEPS (Safe Legally Entitled Emergency Places to Sleep) protested out- side Harris Hall to advocate for the homeless. Later that same night a protest was held to call attention to County Administrator Liane Richardson’s controversial de- cision to shut down protest in the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza. Holding signs that said, “free speech has no curfew,” a group of 20 protesters chose not to leave the plaza when police arrived to enforce the 11 pm curfew. Many protest- ers, who had originally planned to get arrested for their First Amendment rights, left the plaza because they found out that as a result of a trespass citation they, like SLEEPS advocate, Occupier and activist Alley Valkyrie, whose citation for pro- testing in the Free Speech Plaza in December spurred this protest, would be unable to attend Eugene City Council or Lane County Commission meetings as a result of her tres- pass citation. The Eugene Police Department reported about 100 peo- ple came to the late-night protest, 18 were cited and two were arrested. The protest was broadcast live on Ustream and the interactions between cops and activists appeared amicable and at times jovial. Arrestees were swiftly cited and released. Among those cited was a recent Army veteran (82nd Air- borne Division) who said he was getting arrested for the right to free speech that he had gone to war for. Two 16-year-olds were also cited and the group ranged from students to a pro- tester who celebrated his 68th birthday by getting arrested for his free speech rights. Earlier that day in his prepared remarks, Commissioner Leiken said: “I am happy to report that Lane County as a government, Lane County as a people and Lane County as a growing, thriving community, chose to use these hardships we were presented with to refi ne us, to shape us and to bet- ter us.” Those hardships have included the recent closing of Wo- menspace’s free walk-in and referral service for victims of domestic violence, loss of funding to key county programs and the weekly releases of prisoners from the Lane County Jail due to lack of funds. Conservative board members have advocated for more logging to boost county funds. Commissioner Pete Sorenson, newly elected to a record fi fth term, said in his prepared remarks that he would work to protect “our veterans, seniors, the unhoused, crime victims and those with disabilities.” He also said he would work to end “systemic discrimination against Native Americans, Af- rican Americans and Latinos — as well as any other group who’s traditionally suffered from discrimination,” and work for for gay and lesbian rights. Sorenson said he would “work to defend freedom of speech and assembly and advance ani- mal welfare and public health. I will work to protect our cli- mate and to reverse the warming trend and damage — doing all I can to get jobs created and restore the environment.” The County Commission’s list of committee and agency assignments that range from public safety to housing was posted on Jan. 8. Out of 38 committees and agencies, So- renson, the longest-serving and most experienced commis- sioner, was listed as being on only two: liaison to the Long Tom Watershed Council and the Law Library Advisory Committee. Though he is listed as serving on the Housing Policy Board, Leiken did not mention the issue of homelessness in his address. — Camilla Mortensen
