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Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 6 17 October 2016 1.

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Webinar: Planning Transportation for Recreational Areas A Wealth Creation Approach to Economic Development Three Ways To Write Shorter, More Effective Emails Naturalistic Study Pinpoints Route Features That Cause Stress For Cyclists Restore Oregon Resource Directory Thin Ice – Exploring Mount Hood’s Glacier Caves The Inequality of Energy Costs: California Homeowners Get a Break Oregon Ghost Towns: Boyd, Dufur and Friend Farm Commons Webinars - Archive Super Size: The Dizzying Grandeur of 21st Century Agriculture A Mesmerizing Interactive History of the High-Rise

1. Webinar: Planning Transportation for Recreational Areas Friday, October 21, 2016 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm Population growth and increased accessibility of formerly remote destinations have created new needs for planning mobility to and within recreational areas.

Transportation planners studying recreational travel face unusual traveldemand peaks, travelers who are often unfamiliar with their surroundings, and a uniquely important need for traveler and community communication. Planners must consider what characteristics of an individual area make it attractive to visitors, as well as local goals for the special resources of the area.

Quote of the Week: “If we are to succeed in saving the planet, the battle will be won or lost at the local level.” ~Governor Tom McCall Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon has more ghost towns than any other state.

This presentation will characterize unique facets of mobility in recreational areas, and pose approaches to planning transportation systems to serve them.

For more information about this webinar, click here.

2. A Wealth Creation Approach to Economic Development Wealth creation is a relatively new but growing approach to economic and community development (Pender et al., 2012b). Rural wealth creation has been practiced in a number of regions through work funded by the Ford Foundation under the program title WealthWorks.

Building on this work, Rural Development Initiatives, Oregon State University Extension, and other partners launched a wealth creation program in Oregon in 2014 that was funded by three different foundations in the state. Eighteen rural regions across Oregon submitted proposals and six regions were chosen to participate in a pilot program to explore applying these concepts to their regional economy.

To access the full article, click here.

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3. Philanthropic Tools for Self-Determined Communities Most small towns in the rural service area of the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque face serious, chronic challenges: empty buildings on Main Street, declining school enrollment, too few housing options and recreation opportunities, and a deficiency of technical/professional entry-level jobs. Despite these common struggles, there are champions in every community committed to building bright futures with the right tools.

In June 2014, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded a two-year, $150,000 Rural Community Development Initiative (RCDI) grant to the Community Foundation for a project aimed at building greater prosperity and sustainability in five rural communities: Harpers Ferry, Edgewood, Monticello, and Jackson County in Iowa and Jo Daviess County in Illinois. The grant funded work to build the capacity of local nonprofits to inspire and equip community members to work together on a wide range of issues: from grade-level reading help for third graders to health and wellness planning for retirees. Staff from CFGD offered training and technical assistance to nonprofits, empowering them to take charge of their communities’ futures while inspiring others to do the same.

In addition, the project would build a portfolio of philanthropic tools for other rural communities to use on their pathways to greater development success.

For more information about this project and to access the aforementioned portfolio of philanthropic tools, click here.

3. Three Ways To Write Shorter, More Effective Emails Inside each of us there's a little efficiency guru who views every single email within a larger matrix of all the stuff we could be focusing on: the big deadline that needs to be met, the presentation that needs to be prepared, the client conflict that needs to be resolved, the errands that need to be run. I call this the "busy bias," and it colors how much—or how little—attention we are willing to give any one interaction or piece of information.

When everyone is busy, a key part of getting people to pay attention is being respectful of their time.

In the context of composing an email this means being clear, concise, and actionable. You can achieve this by sticking to a few simple strategies for structuring the information you need to communicate To access the full story, click here.

4. Naturalistic Study Pinpoints Route Features That Cause Stress For Cyclists A new NITC report introduces an important tool for safety analysis: a naturalistic method of data collection that can be used to improve the cycling experience.

Before now, most naturalistic studies (studies where data are collected in a natural setting, rather than a controlled setting) in bicycle safety research have been captured by stationary cameras and haven't followed cyclists along a route.

Researchers in this study used first-person video and sensor data to measure cyclists' reactions to specific situations.

To access the full story and NITC report, click here.

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5. Restore Oregon Resource Directory Are you working on a preservation or restoration project? If so, you should check out Restore Oregon’s directory of local, national and international preservation resources.

To access the directory, click here.

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Thin Ice – Exploring Mount Hood’s Glacier Caves On the slopes of Mount Hood, six explorers set off in a line up the Sandy Glacier. Eddy Cartaya pulls ahead of the group, a stony expression on his face.

He’s wearing a white helmet with his name and “Cave Rescue” printed on it. Cartaya is worried because the sun is starting to rise and hit the ice.

His climbing partner Brent McGregor follows at a more reasonable pace. The bearded 60-year-old takes in the morning and smiles.

“One of the best sounds in alpine mountaineering is the sound of crampons and ice axes on good firm snow,” he says.

To access the full story, click here.

7. The Inequality of Energy Costs: California Homeowners Get a Break Energy costs are an important factor to consider when choosing a home to buy or rent, yet they’re rarely included among statistics reflecting housing affordability. And given their seasonal fluctuations in many areas, they can be tricky to budget for. But they’re worth paying more attention to. Here’s why: Energy costs can add more than 50 percent to annual housing costs, especially if you live in the Rust Belt (see chart below), according to energy cost estimates provided by Tendril. People in Ohio and Western New York strongholds Cleveland, Rochester, Cincinnati and Buffalo pay more for energy, relative to their annual housing costs, than homeowners in any of the other 71 metropolitan areas analyzed. Clevelanders spend an additional 54 percent of their annual housing payments on energy.

Seven of the 10 metros where homeowners spend the least on energy, relative to their annual mortgage, are in California. In San Francisco and San Jose, energy bills add just 2 to 3 percent to annual housing costs.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Oregon Ghost Towns: Boyd, Dufur and Friend Driving through the sun struck wheat fields south of Mosier and The Dalles, it’s nearly impossible to believe that the sculpted chasm of the Columbia River Gorge is anywhere nearby. It’s also hard to believe that the ghost towns dotting the map out here were once bustling farming communities filled with immigrants who, like so many of us, followed their dreams to Oregon.

An invisible line divides Central Oregon from the landscape of its river cousin. You can feel it in the shift of color — golden fields of maturing grain against a bright blue sky —and in the heat of this dry country that gets less than 14 inches of rain each year. You can see it in the weathered grey buildings and aging grain silos of little towns that once thrived and are now lingering memories of the 19thcentury small farming communities that faded away in the 20th century.

To access the full story, click here.

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9. Farm Commons Webinars - Archive Farm Commons delivers fast-paced webinars that help farmers move forward on the legal issues that affect their farm operation. Their webinars are engaging and practical- this isn’t just theoretical learning!

To access a list of archived webinars, click here.

10. Super Size: The Dizzying Grandeur of 21st Century Agriculture Our industrialized food system nourishes more people, at lower cost, than any comparable system in history. It also exerts a terrifyingly massive influence on our health and our environment.

Photographer George Steinmetz spent nearly a year traveling the country to capture that system, in all its scope, grandeur and dizzying scale. His photographs are all the more remarkable for the fact that so few large food producers are willing to open themselves to this sort of public view.

To access the full story, click here.

11. A Mesmerizing Interactive History of the High-Rise Told over four parts meant to evoke chapters in a storybook using films, photos, archive materials, text, and miniature games, this "Op-Doc" is a short masterclass in the 2,500-year global history of vertical living.

"A Short History of the Highrise" tells the technical, social, and cultural history of vertical living in a spellbinding series of short films with rhyming narration, intricate animation, and interactive materials. It starts with Roman experiments in apartment living for the working poor made of mud and timber, and continues through the cliff dwellings of Arizona, stacked circular buildings of rural China, and Yemen's medieval "Manhattan of the Desert". An in-depth examination of the modern era of high-rise construction begins with the "game changing" invention of the elevator.

To access the series, click here.

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