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Connie Cazort Tuning Children's Ears She grew up with a mother and grandmother who recited poetry to her. Her dad was a banker, but also a public speaker. "I guess I just had those genes in me," says storyteller and Edgewood kindergarten teacher Connie Cazort.
She uses tales to teach lessons and to open up the world of learning for her kids. Cazort considers storytelling the "gift" she was born with, and encourages her students to build on their own strengths and gifts. Before teaching at Edgewood, Cazort taught kindergarten and camp at Oak Hill. She tells stories once a month at Border's Books and regularly entertains at fund-raisers, auctions and parties. For fun, Cazort hikes, collects children's books and music and seeks out "inspiring teachers" wherever she goes. But some can't imagine a more inspiring teacher than Cazort, herself. Rebecca Kovach, mother of two daughters who have had Cazort as a teacher, says "Connie is an amazing teacher. There's a sign in her classroom that says 'The child is the curriculum.' That's the essence of her approach to teaching. It's very child centered." Kovach adds that Cazort's talents as a storyteller add a magical dimension to her classroom. "I have a good time," says Cazort. "Storytelling and teaching is like play. It gives me energy. I feel it's really important." --Aria Seligmann
Jay Jones Staying Connected Jay Jones has plenty of war stories from his five years with Eugene Free Network. As one of EFN's system administrators, he carries a beeper that sometimes summons him to the machine room in the middle of the night. If the system crashes, thousands of low-income families and community organizations that rely on EFN for e-mail and Internet access are forced offline. When the beeper goes off, he'll drop everything to make sure EFN's clients stay connected. Jones got his techie start in 1978, when one of his math teachers introduced him to a Commodore PET, a primitive computer with a tiny memory. He continued to tinker with computers throughout the 1980s when, he says, he was "one of those many wandering liberal arts types." But it wasn't until he discovered the Internet in 1993 that he became a full-time techie. He went to work at a library helping patrons conduct online research. "There weren't any search engines back then," he says. "It was more of an adventure." When the Internet first hit the mainstream, little local providers sprouted up everywhere, but they were soon bought out by the giants33AOL, Earthlink, and MSN. "EFN just gives baseline network access to people who wouldn't get it otherwise 4 retired people on fixed incomes, working moms with a bunch of kids to feed," says Jones. Jones started volunteering for tech support with EFN in 1996, and picked up so many skills on the job that before long, they asked him to work full time. "Not many people aspire to this job," he says. "You get pulled in. When you notice your sleeve being tugged several times a day, that's a warning sign. You're in danger of becoming a system administrator." Ruth Ann Howden, executive director of EFN's parent organization, Oregon Public Networking (OPN), praises Jones' behind-the-scenes dedication. "He knows his stuff, and what he doesn't know, he learns. I depend on him to be there," she says. "He'll get on his bike in the middle of the night, ride through the rain to the machine room, and fix whatever needs to be fixed to keep everyone online." --Kristina Johnson
Jan Stafl Healing Artist When the Russians invaded the Czech Republic in 1968, Dr. Jan Stafl, then 12 years old, navigated his mother through the back roads of the country with the aid of a topographical map. Stafl helped get his family from Czechoslovakia to West Germany and eventually to the U.S. That journey was foreshadowing. As an obstetric/gynecologist, Stafl uses his medical skill as well as his training in holistic medicine to aid women in navigating their personal journeys through life transitions. Rather than rely solely on Western medicine traditions, Stafl uses the inside roads 4 the body, mind, spirit system 4 as a healer. Stafl learned from practicing medicine that preventive medicine embraces more than diet and nutrition. "It also has to do with the mind-body connection," he says. "Health is the unimpeded flow of life force energy throughout the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual realms," he says. " All four have to be considered for the health promotion of an individual." Holistic medicine, Stafl believes, is the "Einsteinian equivalent" of health care. Contemporary medicine is moving into a more "holistic view where we realize that matter and energy are interchangeable." More than half of his patients are women going through perimenopause, the passage leading into menopause, Stafl says. "This is more than a physical transition," he believes. "It's very much an emotional, mental, and spiritual change." Women in perimenopause notice cognitive changes and memory loss, he says. However, their intuitive skills are enhanced. Valuing and nurturing these skills can empower women and guide them on their journey, he says. Carol Ann Bassett, a UO professor and patient of Stafl's, says, "Dr. Stafl spends a good deal of time getting to know his patients and their individual needs. He also knows a lot about about holistic and natural medicine, two things I find sorely lacking in the world of conventional medicine. I could not have been in better hands." --Elizabeth Pownall Jim and Ginevra Ralph Great Teachers
So they decided to start one. In 1992, with their friend, Roger Saydack, the Ralphs created the Oregon Festival of American music and dedicated it to classic American sounds 4 orchestral, folk, jazz, and more. They found musicians who shared that vision and for the past decade have been presenting some of the Northwest's most exciting and informative concerts and programs. What makes OFAM special is its avowedly educational component (lectures, extensive program notes, thematic programs, and the new American Music Institute for students) and its broad spectrum of musical and visual arts. Like America itself, the festival constantly evolves, and its embrace widens: Blues may be next on the horizon. OFAM co-founder Roger Saydack says "At heart, Jim and Ginevra are dedicated and passionate teachers. If you look at what they do in that light, OFAM is the rich environment to learn and experience what a great teacher creates. Their manner of personal philanthropy not only supports, it inspires creativity, just as a great teacher would. And they see in the arts the opportunity to enable each person to realize the extraordinary potential that is in life, which is the mission of all great teachers." --Brett Campbell
Win Swaford Finding Inspiration Imagine a group of people, chosen at random from all walks of life, asked to discuss problems affecting our community and come up with creative, effective solutions that satisfy everyone. Win Swafford spends a lot of time not only imagining this ideal, but also working to help it become reality. Known to many in Eugene as the founding member of the Alliance for Democracy, Swafford is following a new course to the same goal 4 better democracy and communication in our communities and our world. These days he's working with Tom Atlee at the Co-Intelligence Institute, whose main project is a website: (www.democracyinnovations.org) featuring the latest innovations on ways to be democratic. Swafford's passion has been Dynamic Facilitation, which he compares to brainstorming. It's a lively form that allows people to discuss whatever they're passionate about without the constraints of time. Swafford says it can be chaotic, but it can be effective in helping people reach a meaningful level of consensus and communication. When Dynamic Facilitation is applied to a random group from the community, the group is called a Wisdom Council. Swafford has been trained as a facilitator himself and has been training activist groups in the method, which has been successful in corporations for years. He says that people who have participated have been so impressed with the method that they will accept a solution found in other Wisdom Councils without even knowing what the solution is. Atlee describes Swafford as a curious combination of a Buddhist spiritualist and a left-wing activist. "Win has a strong sense of moral outrage at corporate-sponsored politics, but as a Buddhist he's never personally adversarial." That's not surprising considering Swafford's positive philosophy 4 "We can't let ourselves get too discouraged with human nature. Instead we have to actively seek what can inspire us." --Jennifer Snelling Mark Murphy Living Efficiently
Most people drive their sports utility vehicles, alone, less than 20 miles in town on a daily basis. The Gizmo can accommodate that need while using fewer resources and creating no pollution. Murphy's vision for the future? Families would own one or two Gizmos for getting around town on a daily basis and would only bring out the SUV for the monthly family trip to the mountains or the coast. Possibly (gasp!) we'd just rent a larger vehicle for the occasional times when mass transit can't get us where we need to go. Even with the current energy crisis, Murphy is hopeful that time is on the side of his electrical vehicle. "We have many different ways of creating electricity 4 including solar. But we're quickly running out of oil," he says. "We have to start changing the way we think about our resources and begin living more efficiently." Steve Remington of Downtown Events Management, Inc. says, "We have to be thankful for people like Mark because they question the status quo." So what keeps Murphy going when the world doesn't want to believe? His firm belief that, at least in Northwest, "We still have a fighting chance of creating 'ecotopia.'" And he describes his company as "the first mammals running around the feet of dinosaurs." --Jennifer Snelling Martha Snyder Vision Quest
While working on the Maude Kerns retrospective exhibit at the Jacobs Gallery, it occurred to Snyder, "Gee, it would be sad if I was blind and couldn't see art being an artist, and it hit me that I could somehow be instrumental in making that happen." But she didn't know what, exactly, that meant. She had "just reached a point that I needed to do something more purposeful with my talents and gifts." Having spent her life making her living on the side and not through art, she says "Art for art's sake had just quit resonating with me." But finally, she realized she ought to try. With some money from the Lane Arts Council, Snyder began doing something new: creating bas relief paintings of Maude Kerns' work that could be touched and experienced by visually impaired people. So far, she has finished eight of Kerns' pieces. When showing the paintings, Snyder copies One of the joys experienced by Snyder is not only having blind people enjoy her work, but also kids. "They do a double take when they see paintings that say 'please touch'" says Snyder. "One kid at the School for the Blind in Washington told me 'I can't tell you how wonderful this is. My grandfather is teaching me to carve wood, but I never had a chance to experience art this way.'" Leslie Brockelbank, grand niece of Maude Kerns, says Snyder is "absolutely great. She's great to work with because she's very down to earth and can get things done." And Hilary Moser, Maude Kerns' executive director, says Snyder is "an affable and humorous artist with a remarkable understanding of how people without vision can see."
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2001
