Monday Mailing - April 5, 2021

RARE Monday Mailing Year 27 | Issue 29 05 April 2021 1.

Quote of the Week:

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“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.”

- Ken Kesey

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The Double-Edged Sword of Oregon’s COVID-19 Success (Bree Cubrilovic) Federal Education Leaders Reject Oregon’s Effort to Fully Skip Standardized Tests (Katie McFall) How to Combat Virtual Meeting Fatigue Wall Street v. Family Business: New Forest Tax Proposal Warm Springs Seeks End to Water Woes Striving for Solutions – Rural Treatment Centers Combat Opioid Crisis Oregon State Parks Will Spend the Next 25 Years Making Parks More Accessible Oregon Wetland Restorations Provoke Controversy The U.S. is Finally Looking to Unlock the Potential of Wave Energy Survey Shows Rural Urban Divide in Oregon Over Remote Working PODCAST: People Working from Home Permanently Could Transform Rural America

The Double-Edged Sword of Oregon’s COVID-19 Success Oregon Public Broadcasting One year into the coronavirus pandemic, it’s become clear that Oregon has succeeded in containing the spread of COVID-19 in a way that is practically unheard of in most other states across the country.

Oregon Fast Fact Oregon is home to the biggest mushroom (and organism) on earth.

Spanning 2.4 miles in Oregon’s Blue Mountains, the enormous honey fungus is believed to be between 1900 and 8650 years old.

Learn more.

In mid-March, 3.8% of Oregon’s population had tested positive for COVID-19. Only Vermont, Maine and Hawaii had a lower percentage. Washington ranked fifth, right behind Oregon.

This is an accomplishment that can be attributed in part to the willingness of Oregonians to be vigilant in social distancing and wearing masks, but also to government and health officials’ putting often-unpopular social restrictions in place to protect public health.

Read the full story.

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2. Federal Education Leaders Reject Oregon’s Effort to Fully Skip Standardized Tests Oregon Public Broadcasting The U. S. Department of Education has rejected Oregon’s request to completely waive standardized testing this spring.

Two months ago, Oregon education leaders asked to skip the standardized tests. They said testing would not be the best use of the little time students have left in the school year.

And they said the tests may not yield useful information. Instead, the Oregon Department of Education suggested a survey to assess student needs and access to educational resources, and have districts do interim tests throughout the year.

Now the state has received a response from the federal government, offering “initial feedback” on Oregon’s proposed alternative to days-long assessments. U.S. Department of Education officials said the state’s proposal is not enough.

Read the full story.

3. How to Combat Virtual Meeting Fatigue MIT Sloan Management Review Last year, the world of work experienced a huge shift practically overnight as meeting attendees switched from rushing between conference rooms to rushing to find the right Zoom link. While the medium of meetings has shifted for many of us, our need to come together in groups to collaborate, discuss project progress, and tackle work challenges is unchanged and ever present.

In fact, the number of meetings per day has actually increased since many workplaces went completely remote in 2020. A recent “Future Workforce Pulse Report” by Upwork predicts that by 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely — almost a 90% increase from pre-pandemic levels. In short, virtual meetings aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Read the full story.

4. Wall Street v. Family Business: New Forest Tax Proposal Oregon Business A winding, gravel driveway through Zena Forest, 10 miles northwest of Salem, is scattered with pine needles, sticks and leaves. Sarah Deumling, owner and resident of this 1,300-acre commercial forest, has spent many hours clearing the larger debris that fell during an ice storm in February.

She says it will take months to clean up the mess. But most of the damage is not visible through the thick stands of Douglas fir, oak, ash and maple. Sunlight flashes in and out between mossy trunks, illuminating a deep layer of tangled undergrowth.

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The mess left behind from the storm is driving Deumling crazy, she says, but to the untrained eye, it just looks like the kind of forest one might find in a children’s book, full of life and mystery.

Read the full story.

5. Warm Springs Seeks End to Water Woes The Other Oregon On a gravel road in the Dry Creek neighborhood of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, Dorothy Thurby visits the site of a recent waterline break. A pile of mud and pipes is all that remained following days of water leakage.

“This is where the break was,” said Thurby, a staff member for the Warm Springs Emergency Management Team. “They have been working since last week. Water was flooding out on the road. The water was just shooting out.”

The broken pipe under the road knocked out water to more than 80 residents in Dry Creek.

A similar scenario had played out in another neighborhood the week earlier. It’s become a frequent occurrence, with neighborhoods going without water for days. In the summer of 2019, there was a stretch of three months when the entire reservation was without potable water.

Read the full story.

6. Striving for Solutions – Rural Treatment Centers Combat Opioid Crisis The Other Oregon When Amber Latham moved to Pendleton as program director for the new branch of Oregon Recovery and Treatment Center in 2019, there wasn’t a lot of awareness among local officials about the opioid problems the community faced.

She was told by commissioners and emergency responders that opioid addiction wasn’t an issue in this northeast Oregon community. But, frequenting the local Walmart and interacting with locals told her a different story.

“In the past almost two years we’ve been able to highlight there is a need in the area,” Latham said.

Pendleton’s facility is one of the latest opioid treatment facilities to open up in rural Oregon, addressing a need that the Oregon Health Authority has seen for the past decade.

Since 2105, OHA has been actively combatting opioid addiction through education and increasing access to treatment.

Read the full story.

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7. Oregon State Parks Will Spend the Next 25 Years Making Parks More Accessible The Oregonian Signs will be improved, ramps will be installed and bathroom stalls will be widened in an ambitious statewide effort to make Oregon’s parks more accessible to visitors with disabilities, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department announced Thursday.

In a news release, the department outlined what it says a finalized plan to make state parks more accessible by removing barriers that have made enjoying a park difficult or impossible for many visitors.

In all, the department identified 4,872 barriers at 273 facilities. Officials found barriers to access at nearly every part of the park experience, including fee machines that are inaccessible, trails that are too narrow and fire extinguishers that are placed out of reach.

Read the full story.

8. Oregon Wetland Restorations Provoke Controversy Capital Press Clearing blackberry bushes and leveling about 4 acres of land has proven costlier than expected for Oregon farmer Jack Scott.

Though Scott didn’t notice saturated soils or standing water on the parcel, state regulators accused him of destroying a wetland.

Restoring the property to their specifications would cost more than it’s worth, he said. “It would probably bankrupt me to have to do it.”

Lawmakers recently decided against moving forward with a bill that would prohibit Oregon’s Department of State Lands from requiring landowners to enhance wetland areas beyond their original condition after a fill-removal violation has occurred.

Read the full story.

9. The U.S. is Finally Looking to Unlock the Potential of Wave Energy Grist At first glance, waves have the makings of an ideal renewable energy source. They’re predictable, constant, and tremendously powerful. Their energy potential is astonishing — researchers estimate that waves off the coasts of the United States could generate as much as 2.64 trillion kilowatt-hours annually, or the equivalent of 64 percent of the country’s total electricity generation in 2019.

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But capturing the immense power radiating across our oceans’ surfaces is no easy feat — wave energy technology is challenging to engineer, start-up costs are high, and testing in open ocean waters is a regulatory nightmare. That’s why wave energy’s trajectory has been a stop-and-go affair plagued by false starts for decades. But things may finally be starting to shift for the industry: The federal government recently approved the first full-scale, utility grid-connected wave energy test site in the U.S. Read the full story.

10. Survey Shows Rural Urban Divide in Oregon Over Remote Working The Bend Bulletin Residents of rural areas think working from home is temporary and as soon as the threat of the pandemic ends, everyone will return to the office.

What’s more likely to occur is increased flex time, where work is split between the office and home, said Dan McCarthy, High Lakes Health Care regional administrator. Postpandemic, McCarthy said, the company that employs about 350 people throughout Central Oregon will still have remote workers.

“We found that a hybrid approach that balances work from home with office hours is something that will be here to stay,” McCarthy said. “I believe there is something lost when working virtually 100% of the time.”

Working from home misses checking in with each other, developing a sense of community and the dynamic interaction of problem-solving, he said. Virtual platforms just don’t cut it.

Read the full story.

11. PODCAST – People Working from Home Permanently Could Transform Rural America New Hampshire Public Radio Rural New Hampshire was a big destination for people fleeing cities early on in the coronavirus pandemic. If those urbanites make the move permanent, it could help revitalize the region.

Listen to the full story.

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