Monday Mailing
Year 21 • Issue 14 08 December 2014 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
The Secret History of Cars Begins With Bicycles Rebranding NASA For a New Space Age December Issue of Local Focus Now Online Bill Nye Takes On A Controversial Issue In A Way That Pretty Much Everyone Can Get On Board With This Graphic Designer Created a Beautiful New Way of Visualizing the Year in Weather. Symphony of the Soil – Free Viewing 4th Annual Women in Agriculture Conference Rural Hospitals in Critical Condition Can Business And Tech Transform The Way Our Government Works By 2020? RAC Launches Rural Obesity Prevention Toolkit
1. The Secret History of Cars Begins With Bicycles When Carlton Reid set out to write his book about the history of how bicyclists led the late-19th-century push for better roads—and later became the vanguard of the motoring movement—he thought it might be of interest to a relatively select few. He posted the project, titled Roads Were Not Built for Cars, on Kickstarter, and hoped for the best. Reid, the executive editor of the United Kingdom trade publication Bike Biz, was shocked when he met his £4,000 goal (about $6,250) in less than 24 hours. He eventually brought in more than £17,000 in pledges, and when he published the book this fall, the first print edition immediately sold out. Quote of the Week: “The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.” ~E.E. Cummings Oregon Fast Fact: The Oregon Trail is the longest of the overland routes used in the westward expansion of the United States. The Trail used from 1840 to 1860 began in Missouri and ended in Oregon. It was about 2,000 miles long.
Fortunately, Reid’s meticulously researched and handsome work is available for the iPad, where it comes with 10 videos and more than 500 fascinating historical illustrations. (A second printing is in the works.) To access the full story, click here. 2. Rebranding NASA For a New Space Age Since the 2011 shuttering of the space shuttle program, NASA has been more aggressively revamping its image as both deep-space pioneer and partner to a burgeoning commercial space industry. Integral to that process is a more strategic use of social media, astronaut outreach, external research and STEM support, pop culture tie-ins, and media production to better educate and more interactively engage the public and its imagination. "Since the retirement of space shuttle, you’re beginning to see the needle move—and not just for Mars, but for our Earth science missions and the International Space Station (ISS)," says Bob Jacobs, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for communications. "It’s a more strategic turning up of the volume on a particular activity. A lot of industries are copying what we're doing in terms of public engagement." To access the full story, click here. Page 1 of 4
3. December Issue of Local Focus Now Online The current issue of Local Focus, the League of Oregon Cities’ monthly magazine, is now available. To access the current issue of Local Focus, click here. 4. Bill Nye Takes On A Controversial Issue In A Way That Pretty Much Everyone Can Get On Board With This is so Bill Nye and I love it. Also, the part that starts at 6:27? That escalates quickly. To access the video, click here. 5. Designer Created a Beautiful New Way of Visualizing the Year in Weather German designer Timm Kekeritz created this innovative way to visualize the crazy weather of 2013. He mapped the year’s weather in different cities around the world as “weather radials”: 365 lines, each representing one day of the year, arranged clockwise in chronological order. The lines run from the daily low to the daily high temperature; the closer the line is to the center of the circle, the colder the temperature of the day. The color represents the daily mean temperature, while precipitation is represented as a larger blue circle that surrounds the temperature line. Above are just a sampling of the 35 cities that Kekeritz has mapped. You can see Mumbai’s searing temperatures and monsoon season, Washington’s prolonged summer heat wave and relatively cold winter, and New York’s wet spring, which led to floods. To access the full story, click here. 6. Symphony of the Soil – Free Viewing From December 5th through December 12th, the Documentary Symphony of the Soil will be streamed for FREE from this page and from the Symphony of the Soil website. This new documentary by Deborah Koons Garcia, director of The Future of Food, is an artistic exploration of the miraculous substance soil. Filmed on four continents, it gives voice to an amazing cast of soil users : from scientists to farmers, activists to policy makers, historians to entrepreneurs featuring esteemed scientists and working farmers and ranchers. It also highlights possibilities of healthy soil creating healthy plants creating healthy humans living on a healthy planet. For more information, click here. 7. 4th Annual Women in Agriculture Conference Mark your calendar and join us for inspiration, knowledge and networking on Saturday, February 21, 2015 for the 4th Annual Women in Agriculture Conference. This year's conference will be held in multiple locations across Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Alaska - on the same day! This multiple site conference format brings the best of national and local speakers to easily accessible locations. Are you ready for something different? We've listened to your suggestions and designed a new, refreshing and engaging conference format. If you are, or want to be involved in any aspect of farming, this conference and networking will be Page 2 of 4
worth your time. Last year we had nearly 600 women at 27 locations - be one of the women in agriculture who attends this year! Successful women farmers will inspire you with the "best ideas" to showcase your farm. You will leave the conference with new skills for marketing, a 60-second spot to describe your business and know where you want to be in five years! 2015 Locations Washington: Bremerton, Cathlamet, Chehalis, Colville, Everett, Goldendale, Montesano, Mount Vernon, Nespelem, Olympia, Pullman, Puyallup, Republic, Sequim, Spokane, Vancouver, Walla Walla, Wenatchee, and Yakima Idaho: Caldwell, Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Salmon, Sandpoint, and Twin Falls Oregon: La Grande For more information, click here. 8. Rural Hospitals in Critical Condition RICHLAND, Ga. — Stewart-Webster Hospital had only 25 beds when it still treated patients. The rural hospital served this small town of 1,400 residents and those in the surrounding farms and crossroads for more than six decades. But since the hospital closed in the spring of last year, many of those in need have to travel up to 40 miles to other hospitals. That's roughly the same distance it takes to get from Times Square to Greenwich, Conn., or from the White House to Baltimore, or from downtown San Francisco to San Jose. Those trips would be unthinkable for city residents, but it's becoming a common way of life for many rural residents in this state, and across the nation. To access the full story, click here. 9. Can Business And Tech Transform The Way Our Government Works By 2020? The rise of open data, crowd-sourcing, predictive analytics, and other big tech trends, aren't just for companies to contend with. They're also a challenge for government. New technology gives public agencies the opportunity to develop and deliver services in new ways, track results more accurately, and open up decision-making. Deloitte's big new Government 2020 report looks at the trends impacting government and lays out a bunch of ideas for how they can innovate. We picked out a few below. There are more infographics in the slide show. To access the full story, click here. 10. RAC Launches Rural Obesity Prevention Toolkit In an effort to help rural communities better address the current obesity epidemic, the Rural Assistance Center has launched a Rural Obesity Prevention toolkit. This toolkit contains resources to help communities develop obesity prevention programs, building on best practices of successful obesity prevention programs. Page 3 of 4
Rural areas in the United States not only have a higher rate of obesity than urban areas, but they also face a different set of challenges when it comes to implementing a successful obesity prevention program. The Rural Obesity Prevention toolkit has the tools to help adapt obesity prevention programs to make them work for your rural community. Content for the Rural Obesity Prevention toolkit was developed by the NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis as part of the Community Health Gateway. The Gateway is designed to help rural communities learn about proven methods of providing rural residents with better access to health and human services. Development of these resources is part of an ongoing effort by NORC and RAC to provide innovative health and human services information to rural America. Funding for this project is provided by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP), part of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). To learn more about the Community Health Gateway and its current toolkits, visit www.raconline.org/communityhealth/.
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