Monday Mailing
Year 22 • Issue 05 12 October 2015 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Art of The Rural Oregon’s Outdoor Tourism Headed for Record Levels An Oregon Brewery Is the First Ever to Go “Salmon-Safe” Lunch & Learn Webinar - Latinos in Oregon Part 1: Demographic Trends The Best Ways to Get to Work, According to Science Instructables-Shape What You Make Oregon Officials Replace Human Lookouts With Cameras To Spot Wildfires How to Conquer Public Speaking Fear Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Struggle While Recreational Marijuana Takes Off Protecting the People Who Help Feed Us FEMA Offers Free Online Classes
1. Art of The Rural As a digital platform, Art of the Rural elevates the rural arts field by facilitating rural-urban dialogue and cross-sector exchange. On the ground, we cultivate an organic manifestation of the digital mapping process by engaging the field in conversation, encouraging partnerships, while also activating participation in rural cultural policy and programming. For more information, click here.
Quote of the Week: “Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.” ~John Ray Oregon Fast Fact: The world's oldest shoes, 9,000-year-old sandals made of sagebrush and bark, were found at Fort Rock Cave in central Oregon in 1938.
2. Oregon’s Outdoor Tourism Headed for Record Levels In almost every corner of Oregon, outdoor tourism is on the rise. Despite a summer marked by drought and wildfire, Oregon’s state parks, national parks and federal forestlands all reported increases in the number of people visiting, compared to a year ago. Attendance records through August are on pace to shatter records. This increase is in part due to warm weather that showed up early and rarely left, lower gas prices, an improving economy and a strong marketing campaign from the state’s tourism bureau, Travel Oregon. To access the full story, click here. 3. An Oregon Brewery Is the First Ever to Go “Salmon-Safe” Oregon has a lot of breweries. In fact, according to the Brewer’s Association, Oregon has the most breweries per capita in the United States. But it takes a lot of water to keep all those taps flowing: breweries typically use about four liters of fresh water for every liter of beer. Now a Portland, OR brewery has become the first in the nation to be awarded a Salmon-Safe certification, thanks to their management of storm and wastewater.
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“Brewers are intensive users of resources, especially water … so it’s important for us to understand what it means to use those things and then do something about it,” Christian Ettinger, the founder and brewmaster of Hopworks Urban Brewery tells Alex Dropkin for Hakai Magazine. To access the full story, click here. 4. Lunch & Learn Webinar - Latinos in Oregon Part 1: Demographic Trends The Lunch & Learn webinar series is a fun opportunity for people to better understand and interpret data. In each session we explore topics and data relevant to Oregon in ways that will be useful to all skill levels. The short format sessions (30 minutes) are informal with plenty of time for questions. Latinos in Oregon Part 1: Demographic Trends Tuesday, October 20th at Noon Latinos are one of the largest forces changing the demography and economy of Oregon. Learn about the current state of the Latino population in Oregon, why it's growing so rapidly, and why that change is likely to continue. This is the first webinar in a series discussing Latinos in Oregon. Upcoming sessions will discuss employment, education, and social topics. For more information, click here. 5. The Best Ways to Get to Work, According to Science Commuting affects your mental health, your physical health, and even the way you think about other people. And these changes are more profound than you might think. The average commuter spends about an hour a day heading to and from work, but plenty spend as much as three hours commuting. Those hours we spend in the car can have profound psychological and physical impacts on us. A growing body of research shows that there are far more nuanced problems with driving than the ones you’ve probably heard about. To access the full story, click here. 6. Instructables-Shape What You Make The seeds of Instructables germinated at the MIT Media Lab as the future founders of Squid Labs built places to share their projects, connect with others, and make an impact on the world. One of these early places was a blog Zeroprestige, which was an open source hardware experiment for kitesurfing. Here they documented their hand-sewn kites, plywood boards, and other general mayhem that happens when PhDs and high winds collide. To access this website, click here. 7. Oregon Officials Replace Human Lookouts With Cameras To Spot Wildfires Maintaining a fire tower lookout can be costly for wildfire agencies, but in the West, many towers are still staffed by seasonal employees. Now the Oregon Department of Forestry is phasing out human lookouts in exchange for highly sensitive cameras. These cameras have the potential to change the way fire departments detect fire nationwide. To access the full story, click here.
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8. How To Conquer Public Speaking Fear: By Morton C. Orman, M.D. Public speaking is a common source of stress for everyone. Many of us would like to avoid this problem entirely, but this is hard to do. Whether we work alone or with large numbers of people, eventually we will need to speak in public to get certain tasks accomplished. And if we want to be leaders or achieve anything meaningful in our lives, we will often need to speak to groups, large and small, to be successful. The truth about public speaking, however, is IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE STRESSFUL! If you correctly understand the hidden causes of public speaking stress, and if you keep just a few key principles in mind, speaking in public will soon become an invigorating and satisfying experience For more information, click here. 9.
Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Struggle While Recreational Marijuana Takes Off Donald Morse looked at a former coffee shop in Oregon City when he was planning to open his medical marijuana dispensary. The rent was $3,500 and Clackamas County officials had at the time placed a moratorium on the sale of medical marijuana inside county limits. Morse passed, deciding he'd rather have a more stable business location. A year later, he noticed the spot was on the market again. For the rights to the lease and a medical marijuana retail license, the seller wanted $1.2 million. The price sounded absurdly high. Morse, the director of the Oregon Cannabis Business council, said there seems to be a widespread expectation of making millions off Oregon's newly legalized marijuana market. But that gold-rush mentality is part of what's actually leading medical marijuana dispensaries to close faster than ever. To access the full story, click here.
10. Protecting the People Who Help Feed Us We depend on our nation's two million farmworkers to help provide the fruits and vegetables we feed our families every day. But each year, thousands of farmworkers become ill or injured from preventable pesticide exposure, leading to sick days, lost wages, medical bills and absences from school. Farmworkers deserve the same kinds of protections from workplace hazards that workers in other industries have enjoyed for decades. That's why today, EPA announced stronger protections for workers on farms, in nurseries and in greenhouses. The updated Worker Protection Standard makes sure farmworkers know their rights through yearly training, have improved safety measures and access to information, as well as protection from retaliation for speaking out. To access the full story, click here.
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11. FEMA Offers Free Online Classes In the wake of media reports highlighting seismic hazards off the Oregon Coast, and due to the ongoing destructive wildfire season, the League is reminding city leaders that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers free online courses on disaster preparedness, mitigation and response. There are a number of course options available, however the League recommends city leaders begin with the curriculum found on the National Incident Management System (NIMS). The NIMS approach ensures that all levels of government and the private sector use a common approach to disaster management. For more information, click here.
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