Monday Mailing 111819

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 11 18 November 2019 1. The Present And Future Of Interstate 5 (Michael Hoch) 2. Supreme Court Appears Ready to Let Trump End DACA Program (Katie McFall) 3. The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is a Harmful Lie. As a Native American, I’ve Found a Better Way to Celebrate the Holiday 4. As Rural Groceries Fade Away, Lawmakers Wonder Whether to Act 5. Eugene Unveils Climate Action Plan 2.0: 'Facing Such A Crisis Is Sobering' 6. Portland Street Medicine Takes Health Care To The Homeless: Season of Sharing 2019 (Katie McFall) 7. Illegal Pot Operations In Public Forests Are Poisoning Wildlife And Water (Katie McFall) 8. Volunteering Is the Best Kept Secret for Mental Health 9. AP: At Least 1,680 Dams Across the US Pose Potential Risk 10. WEBINAR – Trends in Creative Placemaking on Problem Properties

1. The Present And Future Of Interstate 5

Quote of the Week:

"Selling is not a pushy, winner-takes-all, macho act.

It is an empathy-led, processdriven, and knowledgeintensive discipline. Because, in the end, people buy from people." -Subroto Bagchi, Co-founder of Mindtree

Oregon Fast Fact #18

Dorris Ranch in Springfield became the first commercial filbert orchard in the state.

As Portland's population grows, bringing more cars, more traffic and more greenhouse gas emissions, what’s the future of the biggest interstate that cuts through the heart of the city?

Nearly half a million people are expected to move to the Portland area by 2035, according to the Metro regional government.

Those people — in addition to the millions who already live here — will need to get to jobs and stores and homes and schools. Many of them will end up on Interstate 5, the most important interstate that spans the West Coast, and cuts through the heart of Portland.

But what will I-5 look like? And what should it look like?

Between new lanes, tolling and a renewed effort to replace the bridge over the Columbia, there are many ideas for how I-5 could change in the coming years.

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is the state agency responsible for those changes. Even as the agency is planning for the immediate future, making efforts to reduce traffic congestion and bottlenecks, there are some significant long-term considerations that have to be taken into account when deciding what to do with the freeway. Chief among them is climate change.

To access the full story, click here.

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2. Supreme Court Appears Ready to Let Trump End DACA Program

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared ready on Tuesday to side with the Trump administration in its efforts to shut down a program protecting about 700,000 young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers.

The court’s liberal justices probed the administration’s justifications for ending the program, expressing skepticism about its rationales for doing so. But other justices, including President Trump’s two appointees, indicated that they would not second-guess the administration’s reasoning and, in any event, considered its explanations sufficient.

“I assume that was a very considered decision,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said of a second set of justifications offered by the administration in a memorandum last year after its decision to end the program was challenged in court.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said he saw little point in requiring the administration to come forward with better or more elaborate reasons. “What good would another five years of litigation over the adequacy of that explanation serve?” he asked.

To access the full story, click here.

3. The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is a Harmful Lie. As a Native American, I’ve Found a Better Way to Celebrate the Holiday

Every November, I get asked an unfortunate, loaded question: “You’re a Native American—what do you eat on Thanksgiving?” My answer spans my lifetime.

I was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s and am a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe. Growing up, I went to a very small country school on the reservation, in the poorest county in the United States. Our school had predominantly Native students, but we were still taught what everybody was about Thanksgiving: It represented a time when “pilgrims and Indians” celebrated together, and it was about being thankful. Only later would we find out that it was a lie.

But as I was taught this story, my family gathered on Thanksgiving at my grandparent’s ranch, where we held a huge feast of very typical recipes, most of them straight out of a circa-‘60s Betty Crocker cookbook. I remember the mingling smells of dishes cooking throughout the day as our moms and aunts crowded every kitchen surface preparing for the large offering. We had the staples, like roasted turkey; mashed potatoes and milk gravy; sweet potatoes with marshmallows; green bean casserole with onion crisps; brand-name stuffing; canned cranberry sauce; an assortment of cold pasta salads, Jello molds, cookies, deviled eggs; and 1950s-style glass platters filled with canned California black olives, pickles and piles of veggies. On occasion, we had Lakota dishes like Taniga (intestine soup) and wojape (chokecherry sauce).

To access the full story, click here.

4. As Rural Groceries Fade Away, Lawmakers Wonder Whether to Act

Nancy McCloud did not have any food industry bona fides. She had never worked in a grocery store; not even a restaurant. And yet three years ago, when her local grocery in central New Page 2 of 6

Mexico closed, she wanted to offer the community (population: 863) the fresh foods they otherwise would have to travel 47 miles to get.

Mountainair, New Mexico, is a popular tourist stop because of its proximity to 17th century ruins that harken to the earliest contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish colonials. It’s known as the “gateway to ancient cities.” But without a grocery store, McCloud feared Mountainair might become another relic of the past.

“When you have a small rural town and the grocery store dies, the town dries up and it just blows away,” said McCloud, who revived B Street Market in 2017 and became its owner. “There are six towns east of here — they just lost the grocery store, then they lost the gas station, and then they lost the bank and now they’re nothing.”

Some states are trying to tackle their rural grocery gaps. Supporters of such efforts point to tax incentives and subsidies at various levels of government that have enabled superstores to service larger areas and squeeze out local independent grocers. Now, dollar stores are opening in rural regions and offering items at lower prices, posing direct competition to local groceries.

Critics see that development as a threat to public health, since dollar stores typically lack quality meat and fresh produce.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Eugene Unveils Climate Action Plan 2.0: 'Facing Such A Crisis Is Sobering'

EUGENE, Ore. - By the year 2050, winter snowpack is a thing of the past in the Oregon Cascades.

The Willamette River flows at less than half the volume it did in 2019.

Thousands more acres of brush and timber burn each summer, clogging the air with dangerous PM 2.5 pollution.

And summer in Eugene is well on its way to resembling Chino, California, outside LA. "Dry months will be hotter and drier with increased wildfires, and wet months will have more rain and flooding with less snowpack," according to Eugene's Community Climate Action Plan 2.0, out this week. "Weather will be more extreme overall, and as the climate and environment changes populations will increase in areas like ours as people move north and inland to milder conditions."

It's a grim vision of the future - and one the City of Eugene isn't going to let happen without a fight.

"How we choose to approach this existential challenge is pivotal," Mayor Lucy Vinis says in the introduction to the Plan. "This plan makes it clear that we will not meet our goals if we proceed on our current path."

To access the full story, click here.

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6. Portland Street Medicine Takes Health Care To The Homeless: Season of Sharing 2019

Susie Orton has been living on the streets for about six years with her husband. But things got a lot rougher about one year ago when in less than three months she lost over half her weight.

Staff at a food kitchen, concerned about the 53-year-old woman, gave a call to Portland Street Medicine, a new nonprofit that provides homeless people with basic health care and tries to get them into the regular health care system. It worked, and Orton finally went to a doctor.

The group has been a part of the couple’s lives ever since. It’s one of eight Oregon nonprofits selected as beneficiaries in The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Season of Sharing holiday fundraising campaign this year.

Founder and retired ER physician Bill Toepper and volunteer Lexi Olson lifted the camo tarp shielding Orton and her husband’s campsite on a cloudy October morning and walked over and past planks of wood, collapsed wheelchairs and buckets on the moist ground to the tent.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Illegal Pot Operations In Public Forests Are Poisoning Wildlife And Water

Water and wildlife in the nation's public forests are slowly being poisoned by insecticides and other chemicals used in illegal marijuana operations, say forest police and researchers. They warn that the potential environmental damage could last generations.

Many of the grows are the work of highly organized drug cartels that take advantage of the forests' thick canopy to help hide their operations. Some sites go undetected for years.

"The true crime here is the fact that they're killing off basically America's public lands, killing off the wildlife, killing off our water," says Kevin Mayer, a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement assistant special agent in charge. "This is stuff that, you know, it's not gonna repair itself."

Now, an unlikely coalition in California — including environmentalists, law enforcement agents, politicians, wildlife ecologists and representatives of the legal cannabis industry — have joined forces to try to reduce these illegal operations and the environmental threat they pose.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Volunteering Is the Best Kept Secret for Mental Health

There are horse barns in New York City. A lot of people don't realize this, but I'm lucky enough to have uncovered this secret through volunteering at a therapeutic riding program for children with disabilities. A couple of Sundays a month, I get up early, drink my coffee on the train to Forest Hills, and spend a few hours helping kids with their riding lessons.

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I'm not saying all of this to get some kind of good Samaritan points. In fact, volunteering is one of the most self-serving things I do, because whenever I help out at the horse barn, my stress and anxiety levels noticeably drop. I feel calmer, more relaxed, and my mind is clear, often for Page 4 of 6

the first time in weeks. It has quickly become one of the most reliable ways for me to destress—I've found it more effective than meditation, medication, or exercise.

It's generally understood that helping out others makes a person feel nice, but that experience goes beyond just the feel-good glow of altruism. Studies have found that helping others has tangible benefits, both mental and physical, from lowering your blood pressure to reducing feelings of depression. And research hasn't found any significant difference in the types of volunteering—any kind of helpful act can create benefits.

To access the full story, click here.

9. AP: At Least 1,680 Dams Across the US Pose Potential Risk

On a cold morning last March, Kenny Angel got a frantic knock on his door. Two workers from a utility company in northern Nebraska had come with a stark warning: Get out of your house.

Just a little over a quarter-mile upstream, the 92-year-old Spencer Dam was straining to contain the swollen, ice-covered Niobrara River after an unusually intense snow and rainstorm. The workers had tried but failed to force open the dam’s frozen wooden spillway gates. So, fearing the worst, they fled in their truck, stopping to warn Angel before driving away without him.

Minutes later, the dam came crashing down, unleashing a wave of water carrying ice chunks the size of cars. Angel’s home was wiped away; his body was never found.

“He had about a 5-minute notice, with no prior warning the day before,” Scott Angel, one of Kenny’s brothers, said.

State inspectors had given the dam a “fair” rating less than a year earlier. Until it failed, it looked little different from thousands of others across the U.S. — and that could portend a problem.

A more than two-year investigation by The Associated Press has found scores of dams nationwide in even worse condition, and in equally dangerous locations. They loom over homes, businesses, highways or entire communities that could face life-threatening floods if the dams don’t hold.

To access the full story, click here.

10. WEBINAR –Trends in Creative Placemaking on Problem Properties

(Thursday, November 21, 2019 9:00am PST)

In the last decade, philanthropic and government entities have invested millions of dollars into creative placemaking endeavors. Within this broad, growing field exists a subset of creative placemaking efforts: those taking place on vacant, abandoned, and underused properties.

Earlier this year, Community Progress, in partnership with Metris Arts Consulting, released a national survey to explore the unique challenges—and also perhaps unique potential for major positive impact – of creative placemaking efforts taking place on vacant, abandoned, and underused properties in communities across the country. The cumulative results of that survey are featured in the recently released report Trends in Creative Placemaking on Problem Properties (2019). Hear about the trends, case studies, and survey responses from practitioners, residents, government officials, nonprofit leaders and many others involved in creative Page 5 of 6

placemaking efforts. We will also offers insight into how communities across the country are using creative placemaking to address problem properties and advance community-centered revitalization—and the challenges that sometimes stymy these efforts.

Presenters • Liz Kozub - Associate Director of National Leadership and Education, Center for Community Progress • Rachel Engh - Conductor of Curiosity, Metris Arts Consulting • Linda Steele - Founder and CEO, ArtUp To register for the webinar, click here.

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