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Monday Mailing

Year 24 • Issue 24 19 March 2018

12. Extreme

1. New Netflix Documentary Revisits The Still-Shocking Story of The Rajneeshees in Oregon 2. Energy Transition Framework for Cities’ Unveils Best Practices for a Decarbonized Future 3. How Creative Hobbies Make Us Better At Basically Everything 4. Get GrUB in The Great Umpqua: A Local Food and Beverage Map For Tourism 5. Rural Business Development Grants in Oregon 6. The Subtle Art of Data Story Telling 7. Webinar - Cool & Connected: How Rural Towns Can Revitalize Their Downtowns with Broadband Access – Tuesday, March 20th 8. Webinar - Teaming Up for Urban Forestry: New Tools to Build and Energize Local Sustainability Efforts – Tuesday, March 27th 9. Columbia Riverkeeper Challenges Port Westward Expansion 10. Oregon County Approves Scaled-Back Rural Housing Zone 11. The 25 Best Productivity Apps For 2018 1. New Netflix Documentary Revisits The Still-Shocking Story of The Rajneeshees in Oregon Oregonians who were here when the amazing-but-true story of what happened when Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh came to Wasco County can still remember the shocking twists, turns and revelations about what the Rajneeshees and their leaders were up to.

Quote of the Week: "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving." ~Lau Tzu Oregon Fast Fact: Oregon has more than 7,000 bridges, including 53 covered bridges..

Those who weren't here then can revisit this still-shocking saga in "Wild Wild Country," a new, six-part documentary series that begins streaming on Netflix on Friday, March 16.

To access the full story, click here.

2. Energy Transition Framework for Cities’ Unveils Best Practices for a Decarbonized Future A recently published report surveys 10 pioneering mid-size cities that lead the energy transition around the world to uncover best practices for achieving climate and energy goals.

DNV GL, a consortium of independent energy experts, published a new report into the activities of cities around the world that are driving the global transition to a sustainable, decarbonized energy future. The report, “Energy Transition Framework for Cities,” finds that while megacities attract the headlines, significant innovation and leadership is occurring in mid-size cities, which are more numerous and comprise a greater portion of the world’s population in aggregate.

To access the full story, click here.

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3. How Creative Hobbies Make Us Better At Everything At any given time, I have a side project running.

It’s often a new blog or a Tumblr or a book or a newsletter. Sometimes I try to design WordPress themes. Other times I try photography. This ethos of new projects and new improvements runs throughout our Buffer team. We love to find ways to grow, excel, and improve through side projects and hobbies.

I have yet to create the next Uber or Gmail–million-dollar and million-user enterprises that began as side projects.

The good news: You don’t have to create a million-dollar company to get your time’s worth from a side project or creative hobby.

To access the full story, click here.

4. Get GrUB in The Great Umpqua: A Local Food and Beverage Map For Tourism The Umpqua Economic Development Partnership is aiming to get the word out about Douglas County’s abundance of fresh, farmed, and fantastic food by putting them on the map — literally.

With funding provided by Travel Oregon and the City of Roseburg, the project has been named, “The Great Umpqua Bounty” or “GrUB” for short. According to UEDP, the mission is “to promote the Umpqua Valley as a food destination to visitors, locals and agricultural industry through epicure and cultural experiences that foster economic growth and agri-tourism in Douglas County.”

The first part of the project will be a GrUB Trail map. “It will become a very cool map showing all Douglas Counties wineries, food stands, farmers markets, restaurants, etc...,” said Executive Director for UEDP, Wayne Patterson.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Rural Business Development Grants in Oregon In Oregon, applications will be accepted between March 1 and April 30, 2018. View details in the request for applications to support business and create jobs in rural Oregon.

Are Applications Currently Being Accepted?

Application deadlines vary by state. Please select the state drop down menu at right and contact business programs staff for the application deadlines in the state where your project is located.

What does this program do?

This program is a competitive grant designed to support targeted technical assistance, training and other activities leading to the development or expansion of small and emerging private businesses in rural areas which will employ 50 or fewer new employees and has less than $1 million in gross revenue. Programmatic activities are separated into enterprise or opportunity type grant activities.

For more information click here.

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6. The Subtle Art of Data Story Telling Data never sleeps. To add a constructive view to this statement, a new report from IBM Marketing cloud states the following inference,"90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone, at 2.5 Quintilian bytes of data a day! And, with new devices, sensors, and technologies emerging, the data growth rate will likely accelerate even more".

With the overwhelming flow of data, we must know what we are going to do with it. The goal here is to attain better business decisions and to make comprehensive inferences out of it. But how? Well, there’s no better way to do that, than through the use of stories.

Stories are fascinating .The idea of narrating an incident, be it our little finding or an event, stories have always been able to pique the interest for all. Stories create a visible interconnection with your defined audience and also reduces the complexity to a maximum extent. This article is all about making such stories in a data-driven way!

To access the full story, click here.

7. Webinar - Cool & Connected: How Rural Towns Can Revitalize Their Downtowns with Broadband Access – Tuesday, March 20th.

Whether they’re suffering from farmland erosion, or from the decline of once-booming industries such as mining and manufacturing, rural cities and towns have witnessed dramatic losses in downtown investments along with young residents seeking greater opportunities and more amenities. As information- and technology-based industries become a larger part of the national economy, rural communities with limited broadband connections are struggling to keep pace.

To help rural places get up to speed, Smart Growth America, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Appalachian Regional Commission provided workshops to rural communities through the Cool & Connected program. These workshops helped the communities find new economic opportunities by providing planning guidance for sustainable downtown development and investments in broadband, or reliable, high-speed internet access.

In this webinar, guests from Zanesville, OH and Eastport, ME will speak to their efforts to revitalize their downtowns, talk about how Cool & Connected impacted their communities, and discuss what they've been working on since.

For more information, click here.

8. Webinar - Teaming Up for Urban Forestry: New Tools to Build and Energize Local Sustainability Efforts – Tuesday, March 27th Urban forestry requires many team players. And one of the biggest challenges to growing any community’s urban forest is building that team: not just foresters but professionals from many disciplines, policymakers, planners and the public.

The Vibrant Cities Lab, a new website launched by the U.S. Forest Service, American Forests and the National Association of Regional Councils, is an innovative, multi-faceted resource that can help build, inform and energize that team.

Whatever your job, or whether you just care about your town, trees can help clean water and air, address climate change, improve public health and safety, promote energy conservation, even improve student performance. And that’s just part of the list. Healthy urban forests help grow sustainable communities in many ways, wherever you live.

To access the full story, click here.

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9. Most Columbia Riverkeeper Challenges Port Westward Expansion Environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper has filed an appeal challenging an expansion at Port Westward in northern Columbia County. The land use watchdog organization 1000 Friends of Oregon joined in Riverkeeper’s appeal.

A statement from Columbia Riverkeeper said Port of St. Helens wants to double the size of its rural Port Westward property for “fracked gas-to-methanol refineries, oil-by-rail, and other industrial development.” The statement said hundreds of people, including local farmers and small business owners, had urged the county to protect farmlands and salmon habitats from fossil fuels and other heavy industrial development.

“People value high-yield farmland and strong salmon runs,” Columbia Riverkeeper senior organizer Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky said. “Industrializing rural Columbia County with dirty fossil fuel projects like fracked gas-to-methanol refineries and oil-by-rail ignores the public’s legitimate concerns about health and quality of life impacts.”

To access the full story, click here.

10. Oregon County Approves Scaled-Back Rural Housing Zone Oregon’s Douglas County has approved a scaled-back plan to allow more rural housing on land currently zoned for farm and forest uses.

The change to the county’s comprehensive land use plan would allow 20-acre home sites to be carved out from 22,500 acres in mixed farm-forest zones, down from the originally proposed 35,000 acres.

It’s unlikely the full 22,500 acres will ever be developed due to limitations on water availability, appropriate septic tank sites and landowner consent to sell or divide property, said Keith Cubic, the county’s planning director.

To access the full story, click here.

11. The 25 Best Productivity Apps For 2018 Sometimes the best way to escape from a productive rut is to switch up your tools. Whether it’s a simple word processor, a smarter to-do list, or a more efficient way to transcribe interviews, downloading some new apps can help manage your time and produce better work. Here are some of the best productivity apps for phones, tablets, and computers that launched in the last year or got a substantial upgrade.

To access the full story, click here.

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