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Monday Mailing

Year 23 • Issue 19 13 February 2017 1.

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Quote of the Week: "The next time your mind wanders, follow it around for a while." ~Jessica Masterson

Oregon Fast Fact: There are nine lighthouses standing along the coastline. Five are still being used; the others are designated historic monuments.

Group Plans Interpretive Center for Old McKenzie Fish Hatchery Site A New Off-Road Biking Area Takes Shape in Scappoose Utah Representative Wants Bears Ears Gone And He Wants Trump To Do It If You Don't Have Obvious Talents, That May Be a Very Good Thing Speak Your Piece: Rural Oregon Provides Laboratory For Innovative Journalism Transportation Seminar: Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps to Model Policy Issues in the Face of Uncertainty and Limited Data - Friday, February 17, 2017, 12:00pm to 13:00pm PST The Top Three Nonprofit Jobs of The Future Run Oregon Run LinkedIn Just Rolled Out A Redesign – Here’s How to Clean Up Your Profile.

Want Middle Class Manufacturing Jobs? Look to Wind & Solar Forget-Me-Nots in Purley: How the Town Became 'Dementia Friendly'

1. Group Plans Interpretive Center for Old McKenzie Fish Hatchery Site LEABURG — The Old McKenzie Fish Hatchery looks very much like it did in 1907 when it was built, says Ken Engelman, president of a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the hatchery.

The Friends of Old McKenzie Fish Hatchery have worked to maintain the hatchery buildings. Now, they want to undertake the vastly more daunting task of raising $43 million to build an interpretive center and museum on the site that would celebrate the McKenzie River and draw tens of thousands of visitors a year.

“We know it’s a very ambitious dream for raising money, but we believe it’s something we can accomplish,” said Eugene attorney Tom Hoyt, a member of the Friends of Old McKenzie Fish Hatchery.

To access the full story, click here.

2. A New Off-Road Biking Area Takes Shape in Scappoose As we bide our time for the City’s Off-Road Cycling Master Plan to be completed and wait eagerly for Gateway Green in east Portland to open up this year (you are going to the Big Dig on Saturday, right?), there’s something worth watching in the small city of Scappoose.

A mere 20 miles north of downtown Portland, Scappoose is known to many adventure-oriented riders for being the home of the CrownZellerbach Trail and gateway to Vernonia, Astoria, and all the great riding in Columbia County. Now it might become home to several miles of new off-road bike trails on a currently vacant 80-acre parcel of land known locally as Vista Park.

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At last week’s monthly meeting of the Northwest Trail Alliance I met Bryan Hammond, a Scappoose resident who has stepped up to make Vista Park a reality. Backed by the Northwest Trail Alliance, Hammond has created a proposal (PDF) for the Vista Park Trail System and has shared it with the City of Scappoose Parks Committee.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Utah Representative Wants Bears Ears Gone And He Wants Trump To Do It Republicans want to eliminate one of the nation's newest national monuments.

Former President Barack Obama created the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in Utah just days before he left office.

At the center of the brewing legal fight is a relatively obscure federal law called the Antiquities Act that dates back to President Teddy Roosevelt, who famously used it early and often. It was meant to protect ancient artifacts and ruins that at the time were being pilfered from western lands. It also allows for a president to protect these sites and the lands around them as national monuments, without going through Congress.

To access the full story, click here.

4. If You Don't Have Obvious Talents, That May Be a Very Good Thing Self-knowledge is a valuable commodity. Demand always outstrips supply.

Meredith Kopit-Levien, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, New York Times, is one of those refreshing people whose professional (and personal) achievements are fueled by a clear-eyed view of self.

Kopit-Levien is the subject of Episode 11 of the Disrupt Yourself Podcast and she reveals that she gleaned this insight while working at a health club late in her teens. On her first day on the job she sold a lifetime membership to the first customer through the door, a membership package that no other employee had sold—ever.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Speak Your Piece: Rural Oregon Provides Laboratory For Innovative Journalism VALE, Oregon – This struggling town literally in another time zone in Oregon would seem like the last place a retiring senior investigative reporter would show up.

As in many rural communities across America, empty brick buildings line the main streets, intermixed with antique stores, hair salons and just a couple of retailers. About 1,700 souls live here, anchored by the county seat and sustained by surrounding onion farms.

Last fall, I retired from The Oregonian in Portland, where I had been senior investigative reporter for years. The departure was to mark the formal end of a journalism career in Oregon spanning more than 40 years. My intent was to work my eastern Oregon ranch, write a book about a dangerous cult once operating in Oregon, and tinker around the edges of my profession.

To access the full story, click here.

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6. Transportation Seminar: Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps to Model Policy Issues in the Face of Uncertainty and Limited Data - Friday, February 17, 2017, 12:00pm to 13:00pm PST Follow this link on the day of the seminar to stream it live.

Planners and policymakers are often faced with the need to make decisions about issues for which there is uncertainty and limited data. For example, transportation planners are now faced with the prospect that new transportation technologies such as autonomous vehicles could greatly alter future transportation system needs. Decisions about these types of issues are difficult to reason about and consequently are likely to be ignored or made on the basis of simplistic logic. Although modeling could be helpful, especially for issues involving complex systems, it is rarely used because models usually require large amounts of data and and handle uncertainty poorly.

This presentation is about how a fuzzy systems dynamic model (FSDM) may be used to model policy issues involving uncertainty and limited data. The FSDM is a type of fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) which is a directed graph that represents concepts of concern as nodes in the graph and causal relationships as edges.

The presentation will cover:    

Background on FCMs and their usefulness for modeling issues involving uncertainty; The mathematical formulation of an FSDM and how it differs from common FCM models; Open source software for building and running an FSDM; and Results of research with ODOT and OSU on modeling the potential effects of new transportation technologies and services using an FSDM.

Brian Gregor has over 35 years of experience in transportation and land use analysis, planning, and policy development in Oregon. He has developed several innovative models including the GreenSTEP model. Since retiring from the Oregon DOT, he operates his own consulting firm, Oregon Systems Analytics, which specializes in the development of strategic planning models to address transportation, land use, and related environmental issues.

If you are live streaming and want to ask a question, send an email to psuseminar@yahoo.com during the broadcast.

7. The Top Three Nonprofit Jobs of The Future For many in the nonprofit world, 2017 kicked off with a bang. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) continues to rake in record donations, including from tech giants, as many look for ways to push back against some of President Trump's more controversial policies. Likewise, Planned Parenthood is currently gearing up to do battle against political foes seeking to curb its funding. But it isn't just the biggest, best-known organizations long stationed in the political crosshairs that are evolving these days, and activism isn't the only reason why.

As community needs change, nonprofits at every level of the sector are searching for better ways to deliver their services. Like every business, nonprofits are also seeking opportunities for scale and efficiency. They, too, are often walking a fine line between the pressures of meeting today’s goals and planning for the future. To do all this, nonprofits will have to invest in both the people and technologies they'll need to fulfill their missions in the future—as many already are. These are three of the top jobs nonprofits will need to fill as that transition unfolds.

To access the full story, click here.

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8. Run Oregon Run We want you (yes, you!) to run for office and get more involved in Oregon. We are committed to finding, encouraging, and assisting those who wish to be the next mayor, do incredible work on a budget committee, or be a representative in the state legislature. Our focus is on Oregonians under the age of 40, people of color, women, those who identify as LGBTQ, folks with disabilities, and more. In other words, we want to see our institutions accurately represent the wide and diverse range of Oregonians who are impacted by the decisions made on a local, state, and national level.

Interested in running or getting more involved? Learn how.

For more information, click here.

9. LinkedIn Just Rolled Out A Redesign – Here’s How to Clean Up Your Profile.

Six Oregon conservation projects have been awarded $22 million in grants from the federal Natural Resource Conservation Service, an arm of the USDA. Almost half the money, $9 million, will fund greater sage grouse habitat improvement on private land in eight eastern and southeastern Oregon counties. Other grants will help restore native oak and prairie habitat, remove fish barriers, help establish carbon markets and improve rangeland.

The Oregon sage grouse work, with local soil and water conservation districts serving as the gobetween for ranchers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has become a national model.

Under voluntary plans called Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances, or CCAA, landowners agree to manage their land in a way that benefits sage grouse. The work includes such things as removing western juniper so that native sage and grasses return, marking fences to avoid bird strikes, keeping cattle out of breeding grounds called leks and putting escape ramps in water troughs.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Want Middle Class Manufacturing Jobs? Look to Wind & Solar Solar and wind made huge gains in 2016, as they have ever since President Obama jump-started the industry in the Recovery Act. It’s so disheartening that the Trump Administration and most Republicans believe “Making America Great Again” means returning to a fossil-based, gas-guzzling economy instead of taking advantage of the potential that’s right in front of our eyes. It’s not only about providing energy, it’s about health – free from cancer-causing chemicals that are wrapped up with fossil fuels.

Solar Job Growth in the US Not only did solar job growth outpace the overall US economy by 17 times in 2016, the growth is spread across 44 states, across job types and across the middle class, according to the National Solar Jobs Census.

260,000 Americans are employed by the US solar industry, a 25% increase from 2015 and a tripling of jobs since 2010. If Republicans don’t undermine the industry, jobs are expected to grow 10% in 2017, adding another 56,000 jobs.

To access the full story, click here.

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11. Forget-Me-Nots in Purley: How the Town Became 'Dementia Friendly' You don’t need to spend long in Purley to realise the town is home to many elderly people. The otherwise unremarkable suburb of Croydon is surrounded by numerous residential care homes, and in Purley Library, staff are used to adapting to the needs of elderly visitors.

While the older generation adds much to the town’s community and economy, there are occasional issues: visitors from the local care homes often forget where they are or what they are looking for.

“We’ve had two already this morning,” one librarian says on a Friday afternoon in January. Another local describes how she notices some people having trouble in shops, struggling to remember pin numbers or momentarily forgetting what they are buying.

In 2012, Croydon determined that 3,300 residents of the borough are living with dementia, above the London average, and set to rise to 4,500 by 2025. So when Purley Bid, the business improvement district, held a meeting to discuss measures to improve the town, much centred on finding new ways to support the elderly population.

To access the full story, click here.

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