Monday Mailing 120919

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 14 9 December 2019 1.

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Researchers Find A Remarkable Ripple Effect When You Give Cash To Poor Families (Katie McFall) 10 Ways To Accelerate Progress Against Climate Change (Michael Hoch) 1st Supreme Court Gun-Rights Battle In 10 Years May Transform Legal Landscape (Katie McFall) With Waters Rising And Its Population Falling, What Is Venice's Future? (Katie McFall) Crash Course Teaches Women To Run For Political Office Power Struggle Elevating The Role Of The Forest Worker On The Oregon Coast, Turning Pollution Into Art With A Purpose (William Sullivan) 'They're Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.' Small American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction GRANT – The Kresge Foundation’s Arts & Culture Program is Accepting Letter-Of-Intent Applications For Creative Placemaking

1. Researchers Find A Remarkable Ripple Effect When You Give Cash To Poor Families

Quote of the Week:

For so many centuries, the exchange of gifts has held us together. It has made it possible to bridge the abyss where language struggles.

- Barry Lopez

Oregon Fast Fact #9

At 8,000 feet deep, Hells Canyon is the deepest river gorge in North America.

Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in a novel approach to helping the world's poor: Instead of giving them goods like food or services like job training, just hand out cash — with no strings attached. Now a major new study suggests that people who get the aid aren't the only ones who benefit.

Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-author of the study, says that until now, research on cash aid has almost exclusively focused on the impact on those receiving the aid. And a wealth of research suggests that when families are given the power to decide how to spend it, they manage the money in ways that improve their overall well-being: Kids get more schooling; the family's nutrition and health improves.

But Miguel says that "as nonprofits and governments are ramping up cash aid, it becomes more and more important to understand the broader economy-wide consequences."

In particular, there has been rising concern about the potential impact on the wider community — the people who are not getting the aid. A lot of them may be barely out of poverty themselves.

To access the full story, click here.

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2. 10 Ways To Accelerate Progress Against Climate Change

The United Nations reported this week that the world is continuing to drift further off course in limiting climate change, despite growing alarm about the impacts of rising temperatures. With greenhouse gas emissions continuing to increase, even more drastic reductions are needed to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

“Any further delay brings the need for larger, more expensive and unlikely cuts,” wrote Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme in the Emissions Gap Report 2019. “We need quick wins, or the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement will slip out of reach.”

And the impacts of climate change are already here. Climate scientists told us late last year in the National Climate Assessment that the United States is already experiencing the severe and costly consequences of a changing climate. In a separate United Nations report released in October, scientists reported that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require a gargantuan global effort to halve emissions — and that we have roughly 12 years to do it. But how?

Let’s make something clear: The emissions we need to focus on now are the ones at the industrial, corporate level.

To access the full story, click here.

3. 1st Supreme Court Gun-Rights Battle In 10 Years May Transform Legal Landscape

Guns: when and how to regulate them. It's one of the biggest issues across the country. But the U.S. Supreme Court has rarely weighed in on the issue. In modern times, it has ruled decisively just twice. Now it's on the brink of doing so again.

With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, there now are five conservative justices who may be willing to shut down many attempts at regulation, just as the NRA's lock on state legislatures may be waning.

For the past decade, the court has been wary of gun cases. In 2008 the court ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual right. Two years later, the court said that right applied to state laws, not just federal laws regulating gun ownership and use. Since then, however, there has been radio silence as the justices have turned away challenges, one after another, to gun laws across the country. Until now.

On Monday the court hears arguments in a case from New York, a city and a state with some of the toughest gun regulations in the country. Several gun owners and the NRA's New York affiliate challenged the rules for having a handgun at home. They contended the city gun license was so restrictive it was unconstitutional.

To access the full story, click here.

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4. With Waters Rising And Its Population Falling, What Is Venice's Future

The lagoon city of Venice — a unique experiment nurtured by man and nature — suffered heavy damage in November as floodwaters reached their highest peaks in more than 50 years.

But rising sea levels are not the only threat. As Venetians continue to leave their city, Venice risks becoming an empty shell sinking under mass tourism.

Two weeks after the floods, St. Mark's Square resonates with a cacophony of languages — Spanish, Chinese and Russian. Awestruck visitors shriek and marvel as they take selfies in what Napoleon described as Europe's drawing room.

But across the lagoon, Venetians are taking stock of the damage caused by a wave of exceptionally high tides known as "acqua alta" — high water.

Pellestrina is home mostly to fishermen. For centuries, this 7 1/2-mile-long barrier island protected the Venetian lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. But on Nov. 12, a near-record high tide of more than 6 feet, combined with strong winds, made for a perfect storm and washed over Pellestrina's high embankments, flooding the island for a full day. Nearly everything on ground floors was destroyed.

Along the waterfront, trash collectors load now-useless refrigerators and washing machines onto trucks.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Crash Course Teaches Women To Run For Political Office

Gina DuQuenne found out much of what she needed to run for political office was already contained inside her cellphone.

She could mine her wealth of contacts to find people willing to help her run a successful campaign.

“I had no idea the connections I had right in my cellphone,” DuQuenne said.

The Ashland resident learned the handy trick during Emerge America training for women interested in running for political office. The national group aims to increase the number of Democratic women in public office through recruitment, training and networking.

The first group of Southern Oregon recruits graduated this month from six weeks of intensive training in which they met once or twice each week for a full day.

“There were 11 of us. I didn’t know anybody in the room,” DuQuenne said. “When I left, I felt like I’d gained 10 sisters. We all went in green and walked out with a lot of direction.”

The senior sales manager for Neuman Hotel Group, which includes the Ashland Springs Hotel, is planning a run for Ashland City Council in the 2020 election.

To access the full story, click here.

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6. Power Struggle

Early this October about 13,000 people descended onto a poplar casino resort owned by The Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe in Northern California. But the people arriving didn’t come to gamble or play golf — they were there to access the essential ingredient of modern civilization: electricity. As wildfires raged throughout the state, more than a million people on evacuation alert also had to contend with planned blackouts meant to prevent additional fires sparked by downed power lines.

The Rancheria had recently installed their own small-scale electrical supply grid using solar panels and Tesla batteries to lower emissions and make their community more resilient to disruptions. So when the lights went out across Humboldt County, the Rancheria’s green “microgrid” was one of the only places with electricity. The tribe opened their doors to a whopping ten percent of the entire county’s population, who were able to charge electric vehicles, access the internet and buy much-needed ice to prevent food from spoiling. People lined up for 30 minutes to buy gasoline from the Blue Lake gas station. Kids warmed up from the chilly fall temperatures and found light to do homework.

The Rancheria also gave the local newspaper a temporary home in a conference room and even set aside several rooms for people in need of electricity to operate medical equipment — an act that was later credited for saving at least four lives. They provided emergency fuel for a nearby municipal water system and a fish hatchery.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Elevating The Role Of The Forest Worker

This week, Oregon legislators discussed how to address the increasing frequency and severity of wildfire. Legislators, including Senator Jeff Golden of Ashland, are advocating for an increase in funding for wildfire mitigation through forest restoration.

Carefully implemented, ecologically based thinning is known to reduce the risk of severe wildfire. Restorative ecological forestry can also make forests healthier and enhance wildlife habitat.

I hope we’ll see more funding for this important work. It is entirely necessary. And if it comes, you can bet that the state will be looking to Ashland and the Rogue Basin as a model for largescale forest restoration projects.

Here, the Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project has restored more than 11,000 acres in and around the Ashland Watershed since 2010. Part of what has made this such a successful project is the people on the ground.

Working in the woods is not easy. Restoration crews carry chainsaws and gear up steep slopes to thin dense forests and carefully implement prescribed burns. They work in the heat, and they work in rain and snow. Our crew members will tell you it takes a full two or three months to get your body conditioned to this work.

To access the full story, click here.

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8. On The Oregon Coast, Turning Pollution Into Art With A Purpose

At Coquille Point along the remote and rugged southern Oregon Coast, the wind is tumultuous and the sea just as violent. Huge waves crash up against the giant, moss-cloaked rocks perched off the beach.

This particular stretch of the Oregon coastline is famous for being pristine and wild. But train your eyes down a little closer to the beach and sand as Angela Haseltine Pozzi so often does, and even here you'll find bits of plastic.

"I think the most disturbing thing I find is detergent bottles and bleach bottles with giant bite marks out of them by fish," she says.

Haseltine Pozzi is a local artist and longtime art teacher who's made it her mission to collect as much of this shameful garbage as possible. It washes up from Asia, Europe, California and right here in Oregon.

In her gallery in the nearby town of Bandon, where she'd spend summers with her grandmother exploring the wild beaches, she's now taking these plastic invaders and turning them into jawdropping sculptures. The plastic bottle caps, cocktail toothpicks, shotgun shell casings — anything — form life-size garbage creatures of the very marine life threatened by all this plastic.

To access the full story, click here.

9. 'They're Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.' Small American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction

For nearly two centuries, the Rieckmann family has raised cows for milk in this muddy patch of land in the middle of Wisconsin. Mary and John Rieckmann, who now run the farm and its 45 cows, have seen all manners of ups and downs — droughts, floods, oversupplies of milk that sent prices tumbling. But they’ve never seen a crisis quite like this one.

The Rieckmanns are about $300,000 in debt, and bill collectors are hounding them about the feed bill and a repayment for a used tractor they bought to keep the farm going. But it’s harder than ever to make any money, much less pay the debt, Mary Rieckmann says, in the yellowwallpapered kitchen of the sagging farmhouse where she lives with her husband, John, and two of their seven children. The Rieckmanns receive about $16 for every 100 pounds of milk they sell, a 40 percent decrease from six years back. There are weeks where the entire milk check goes towards the $2,100 monthly mortgage payment. Two bill collectors have taken out liens against the farm. “What do you do when you you’re up against the wall and you just don’t know which way to turn?” Rieckmann says, as her ancient fridge begins to hum. Mary, 79, and John, 80, had hoped to leave the farm to their two sons, age 55 and 50, who still live with them and run the farm. Now they’re less focused on their legacy than about making it through the week.

To access the full story, click here.

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10. GRANT – The Kresge Foundation’s Arts & Culture Program is Accepting Letter-Of-Intent Applications For Creative Placemaking Increase Creative Capacity to Shape Healthier Neighborhoods The Arts & Culture Program will accept letters of inquiry for Creative Placemaking activities in neighborhoods and Field Building initiatives that seek to position culture and creativity as drivers of more just communities.

Kresge’s Arts & Culture Program is currently accepting letter-of-intent applications that align with the Program’s focus area, Increase Creative Capacity to Shape Healthier Neighborhoods.

We work to advance creative approaches that empower residents to drive change and restore wellness in their neighborhoods.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to first review the Kresge Arts & Culture Program’s overall funding priorities. Requests that do not align with the Program’s funding priorities are less likely to be funded.

If you have questions, please before applying send to: InquiryArts-Culture@kresge.org.

Applications due by January 31, 2020.

To learn more about the opportunity and to apply, click here.

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