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Monday Mailing

Year 22 • Issue 08 09 November 2015

12.

Quote of the Week: “Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle enough to follow the natural paths of the earth, and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world.”

-- Brenda Peterson

1. Port of Newport Receives $2 Million For Facility to Serve Oregon Agricultural Producers 2. How Our Housing Choices Make Adult Friendships More Difficult 3. Ready, Set, Search! The New Natural Hazards Library Catalog Is Online 4. Bike-Friendliness and Walk-Friendliness Are Actually Pretty Different, Study Says 5. How to Have a Board Meeting By Telephone 6. After The Wars, Common Ground in Oregon’s forests 7. A Map of All The Underwater Cables That Connect The Internet 8. New Web Resources From Natural Hazards Center 9. Why The Indoors Could be The Next Frontier For Map-Makers 10. Ten Principles for Responsible Tourism 11. Foundation Center – Grant Proposal Writing Short Course 1. Port of Newport Receives $2 Million For Facility to Serve Oregon Agricultural Producers The Port of Newport has received its first grant toward rehabilitating its international shipping terminal. The $2 million grant from the federal Department of Transportation will be used to leverage more money from state sources to finish a shipping facility, port officials said Thursday.

The international terminal is one of three deep-water ports in Oregon, with the entrance dredged to 40 feet deep. The new terminal, though, has not drawn much business since it reopened in 2014.

While there are pending upgrades to Highway 20, the terminal doesn't have convenient access to them. The $6.5 million shipping facility project would connect the ocean port with the Columbia River and highway.

To access the full story, click here.

Oregon Fast Fact: Reportedly, Oregon has more ghost towns than any other state. Check out Hardman, Sumpter, and Shaniko.

2. How Our Housing Choices Make Adult Friendships More Difficult The topic is a very tricky one as the accuracy for what works best is hard to nail down. While we have some specific techniques that we are using for our own postings and headlines every day, I thought looking at the most cutting-edge research is definitely required.

So I decided to look at all the research we’ve done for the Buffer social accounts and our blog as well as the best research out there and combine this research into one comprehensive guide.

Without further ado, here is a scientific guide to great headline writing on Twitter, Facebook, and your blog.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. Ready, Set, Search! The New Natural Hazards Library Catalog is Online The Natural Hazards Library is happy to announce the launch of HazLib, our new online library catalog. Library users can now explore the entirely revamped, modern interface, which offers robust search options and easy navigation to quickly and conveniently access our extensive library holdings and resources.

Features such as improved search options—including multifaceted searching that allows users to customize results based on author, topic, and other elements—provide just the right resources, while the ability to virtually browse the library’s shelves will expand the breadth of your research.

Other new features include access to full-text copies of certain documents, helpful search tips, and a streamlined ability to save, cite, and export search results. If you still can’t find what you’re looking for, no problem—with one click you can effortlessly connect with our library staff and get help with research questions, catalog searches, resource suggestions, and connecting with disaster experts.

We are constantly adding new holdings, so visit us often and send any suggestions, questions, or comments to hazctr@colorado.edu.

4. Bike-Friendliness and Walk-Friendliness Are Actually Pretty Different, Study Says Portland has a long way to go, but it’s one of the country’s best cities to bike in. Sad to say, it isn’t yet one of the country’s best cities to walk in.

So why do so many people, here and elsewhere, speak as if there’s an activity called “bikingandwalking” that can be encouraged all at once?

Some new research from a recent Portland State University engineering grad helps to disentangle the science of these two awesome activities.

“Highly walkable and highly bikeable environments are quite different,” writes Christopher Muhs (who’s now a transportation engineering assistant at local firm DKS) in his paper. “Two of the most divergent characteristics are travel speeds and distances. … It follows that pedestrians tend to travel much shorter distances than cyclists.”

To access the full story, click here.

5. How to Have a Board Meeting By Telephone Your board meeting is Thursday evening. On Wednesday you start getting the calls. One board member is home recuperating from surgery. Another is traveling. Yet another can’t spare the time to drive in for the meeting. Can they call in via conference call? Most everyone who works with a board or serves on a board has pondered this question. In this article, we give you some tips on how to make conference call board meetings as effective as they can be.

First, is it legal to hold board meetings by conference call?

Answer: In most states, yes, it is legal if everyone can hear one another at the same time. Check with your state charity official to find out about laws in your state. (Click here for a list of state charity officials with links.)

Second, is it possible to have a bad meeting via conference call? Yes! Take a look at our related article, Nonprofit Conference Call Bingo, for some of the ways these calls can be frustrating.

To access the full story, click here.

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6. After The Wars, Common Ground in Oregon’s forests ASHLAND -- This spring’s high school graduating seniors were newborns the last time the U.S. Forest Service proposed a major forest thinning project around here — and the outcome was a disaster. Nicknamed “HazRed,” the controversial fuels-reduction proposal included plans to commercially log large sections of forest, with trees as wide as six feet reportedly marked for removal. In the explosive public backlash, residents bombarded the Forest Service with negative comments, conservation groups filed appeals, a district ranger was fired (then rehired), and years of administrative and legal wrangling undermined the public’s already uneasy trust.

“The Forest Service had a different direction then,” says Marko Bey, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Lomakatsi Restoration Project, which manages forest restoration projects in Oregon and northern California. “There was a lot of contention.

For more information, click here.

7. A Map of All The Underwater Cables That Connect The Internet Cables lying on the seafloor bring the internet to the world. They transmit 99 percent of international data, make transoceanic communication possible in an instant, and serve as a loose proxy for the international trade that connects advanced economies.

Their importance and proliferation inspired Telegeography to make this vintage-inspired map of the cables that connect the internet. It depicts the 299 cables that are active, under construction, or will be funded by the end of this year.

In addition to seeing the cables, you'll find information about "latency" at the bottom of the map (how long it takes for information to transmit) and "lit capacity" in the corners (which shows how much traffic a system can send, usually measured in terabytes). You can browse a full zoomable version here.

To access the full story, click here.

8. New Web Resources From Natural Hazards Center Community Resilience Planning Guide for Building and Infrastructure Systems What do you get when you mix social science, engineering, and public safety perspectives with resilience concepts? This newly released guide from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The guide was created to help communities better weather storms and disasters, with an emphasis on minimizing infrastructure disruption—and the accompanying social harms—in the short and long term. Using a six-step plan, this guide will be useful to governments that truly want to be resilient during every stage of a disaster.

MitigationContributions.org If you need a visual of what the world’s wealthiest countries are proposing to contribute to efforts to mitigate greenhouse gases; this interactive Web site will show you in more than one way. The site lets you choose a country, a mitigation contribution, and one of several allocation approaches. See if you can find a better solution than is currently on the table.

Sesame Street Fire Safety Program You’re never too old to learn fire safety, but with more than half of child fire deaths occurring in ages under four, it’s best to start young. That’s why the U.S. Fire Administration teamed up with the Sesame Workshop in the first place. Now, they’ve updated their offerings with all-new lessons, games, and activities to promote safety in our youngest students.

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Radiation Emergency Medical Management If it’s been a while since you visited this U.S. Department of Health and Human Services site dedicated to helping healthcare providers navigate a radiation emergency, you’ll be pleased with the changes. The revamped site includes interactive clinical tools, guides for patient management, diagnostic tools, reference data, and videos. There’s even an app for your phone, so you’re sure to have all that great REMM info at your fingertips—even if you’re on the scene of a crisis.

Providing Psychosocial Support to Children and Families in the Aftermath of Disasters and Crises Children can be incredibly resilient, but caregivers shouldn’t rely on that trait in the wake of a disaster. This report by the American Academy of Pediatrics gives advice on how to identify adjustment issues, promote healthy coping strategies, and deal with secondary stressors after a child has been impacted by a disaster or emergency.

9. Why The Indoors Could be The Next Frontier For Map-Makers Google launched a rucksack last year. No, it wasn't another piece of Google-branded kit for its longsuffering employees: it was a piece of mapping equipment.

The Cartographer, as the rucksack is grandly known, is a mapping device design to create maps of the insides of buildings. It's, er, quite utilitarian in appearance: As its wearer wanders through a building, the rucksack maps its floorplan using something called SLAM: "simultaneous localisation and mapping technology". The user also marks important information – like room numbers or shop names – on a tablet.

Google has used the rucksack to build up a growing list of indoor maps, viewable here. Most are large indoor venues, museums or shopping centres – places which often offer their own floorplan maps thanks to their size and the number of services on offer. It makes sense that these maps would eventually transfer to the digital arena, just as outdoor maps have.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Ten Principles for Responsible Tourism Where did you go on your last vacation? Was it rewarding and satisfying? Would you recommend it to a friend? Did the destination meet your expectations, or were you disappointed? Did traffic congestion, dirty air, crowded beaches, slipshod service, or excessive commercialism leave you feeling frustrated and cheated?

Tourism is big business. Americans spend more than $800 billion a year on travel and recreational pursuits away from home. Tourism is one of the three largest industries in every American state and a critical factor in the U.S. and world economies.

However, tourism is also a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provides communities with many benefits: new jobs, an expanded tax base, enhanced infrastructure, improved facilities, and an expanded market for local products, art, and handicrafts. In short, it can be an important tool for community revitalization. On the other hand, it can create problems and burdens for local communities such as crowding, traffic congestion, noise, increased crime, haphazard development, cost-of-living increases for residents, and degraded resources.

To access the full story, click here.

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11. Foundation Center – Grant Proposal Writing Short Course The subject of this short course is proposal writing. But the proposal does not stand alone. It must be part of a process of planning and of research on, outreach to, and cultivation of potential foundation and corporate donors.

This process is grounded in the conviction that a partnership should develop between the nonprofit and the donor. When you spend a great deal of your time seeking money, it is hard to remember that it can also be difficult to give money away. In fact, the dollars contributed by a foundation or corporation have no value until they are attached to solid programs in the nonprofit sector.

This truly is an ideal partnership. The nonprofits have the ideas and the capacity to solve problems, but no dollars with which to implement them. The foundations and corporations have the financial resources but not the other resources needed to create programs. Bring the two together effectively, and the result is a dynamic collaboration.

To access this short course, click here.

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