Monday Mailing - Sept 21, 2020 by RARE Program

RARE Monday Mailing Year 27 | Issue 01

21 September 2020 1.

Quote of the Week:

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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Oregon Fast Fact Oregon is for lovers. Her birthday is Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1859.

How Local Governments Can Advance Health Equity through Their Built Environments (Emme Shoup) Goats Take Up the Cause of Fire Prevention in Oregon (Eva Kahn) The Age of Megafires: The World Hits a Climate Tipping Point Helping, Fixing, or Serving? (Emme Shoup) It’s Time to Move On From Community Consensus Oregon Could Better Reach Out to Bike, Pedestrian Groups Before Construction Projects, Audit Finds The West’s Wildfires Collide With Its Housing Crisis The Weather Chills, and Restaurants Face a Choice: Invest in Extending Outdoor Dining or Let the Changing Seasons Shut Them Down How Solar Survives Without Government Backing PODCAST: Serving in Common Purpose

How Local Governments Can Advance Health Equity through Their Built Environments

Urban Institute The buildings we live in, the parks we play in, the streets we walk on, and the pipes that run under our homes are all components of the built environment that influence our health outcomes. Our neighborhoods, our incomes, and our race often determine the quality of the built environment around us. Communities of color and neighborhoods with higher levels of poverty are most likely to experience barriers to accessing quality housing, transportation, parks, recreation facilities, and other health-promoting aspects of the built environment because of systemic disinvestment, racist policies, and a lack of resident input in local decisionmaking. These barriers can lead to health inequities between white communities and communities of color, as well as between neighborhoods with higher incomes and those with lower incomes. Read the full story. RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 1 of 4

2. Goats Take Up the Cause of Fire Prevention in Oregon OPB With thousands of Oregonians forced from their homes and dozens of wildfires burning, reasons for optimism in the state may seem elusive. But one small example can be found in Forest Grove: a herd of 230 fire-preventing goats. For the next week, they’ll be eating the dry undergrowth in a 14-acre grove that someday may be a city park. “It’s something to see,” Leslie Lundquist said recently as she watched the goats jump out of a trailer like so many clowns from a clown car. “Away they go!” she said. “And they’re all different sizes and colors. Fun to watch.” Forest ecologists and wildfire experts have pointed to excess vegetation and undergrowth, often near power lines or among standing timber, as a key potential fuel source for catastrophic wildfires. Removing or reducing those fuels is seen as one way to help reduce the risk or at least minimize the potential spread. Read the full story.

3. The Age of Megafires: The World Hits a Climate Tipping Point Yale Environment 360 From Siberia to Australia to the western U.S., massive fires have consumed millions of acres this year and spawned fire-generated tornados and other phenomena rarely seen before. Scientists say the world has entered a perilous new era that will demand better ways of fighting wildfires. Read the full story.

4. Helping, Fixing, or Serving? Lion’s Roar Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. Service rests on the premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. From the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing. Read the full story. RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 2 of 4

5. It’s Time to Move On From Community Consensus Shelterforce Public meetings often disprove the notion that communities have a unified stance on any issue. With this in mind, we must move past trying to find consensus and focus on uplifting the most marginalized voices. Read the full story.

6. Oregon Could Better Reach Out to Bike, Pedestrian Groups Before Construction Projects, Audit Finds The Oregonian Oregon doesn’t do enough to reach out to bike and pedestrian advocacy groups about how they are affected by massive state transportation projects and those constituent groups are omitted from a powerful state committee that is dominated by freight interests. That’s one of the key findings from an audit released Wednesday by the Oregon Secretary of State’s office. Auditors examined how the Oregon Department of Transportation handled highway and freeway projects during a roughly three-year period ending in 2019. Read the full story.

7. The West’s Wildfires Collide With Its Housing Crisis Bloomberg CityLab Oregon was already short 155,000 homes before fires destroyed thousands more, including a huge share of one county’s most affordable options. Where do people go now? Read the full story.

8. The Weather Chills, and Restaurants Face a Choice: Invest in Extending Outdoor Dining or Let the Changing Seasons Shut Them Down The Counter Reduced-capacity indoor dining alone isn’t enough to keep a restaurant afloat. So restaurateurs are scrambling to figure out how, and whether, to extend their outdoor dining operations, even as the clock ticks and winter gets closer. Read the full story.

9. How Solar Survives Without Government Backing Oregon Business This year Obsidian Renewables broke ground on its planned 400 MW Obsidian Solar Center in Lake County. The solar project is seven times larger than the next biggest solar

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farm in the state, and would not have been possible without government incentives amounting to 30% of the projected cost. Oregon was the first state to have solar panels mounted on the state capitol building. Today between 8% and 10% of Oregon households generate solar energy, a figure well above the national average. Read the full story.

10. PODCAST – Serving in Common Purpose Rebuilding America: A National Service Podcast Today, on the very first episode of Rebuilding America, Ken talks to Pete Buttigieg, former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan, representative from Pennsylvania’s 6th District. The alumni testimonial this week is from Yasmeen Shaheen-McConnell, the Managing Director of Strategic Engagement for Service Year Alliance and an alum of the Arab American Resource Corps. Listen to the full story.

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