Monday Mailing
Year 25 • Issue 29 8 April 2019 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Quote of the Week:
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s a day you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it.” - Margaret Thatcher
On Public Lands, Visitors Surge While Federal Management Funds Decline (Michael Hoch) What The New Green Deal Means For The Food On Your Plate (Carolina Negron) Aggressive Drivers See Cyclists As ‘Less Than Human’ (Gabriel Leon) The Rent’s ‘Too Damn High’ In Rural America, Too (Michael Walker) Energy Equity: Bringing Solar Power To Low-Income Communities (Michael Hoch) Unhealthy Diets Now Kill More People Than Tobacco And High Blood Pressure, Study Finds (Emily Bradley) Go Home To Your ‘Dying’ Hometown (RARE Alumni, Maddie Phillips) Rural Crisis Response: How To Lend A Hand In A Way That Helps “Disrupting the Legacy Of Colonialism.” An Oregon Funder Partners With Tribes On The Environment Even If Bigfoot Isn’t Real, We Still Need Him
1. On Public Lands, Visitors Surge While Federal Management
Funds Decline
It’s the boom times in Mammoth Lakes, California, which is wrapping up a winter of record snowfall. Eager to take advantage of it, Donovan Sliman and his two young daughters are lumbering up a snowy trail on the outskirts of town, where the condos give way to National Forest. “I like to get away from everybody else,” says Sliman. “I like to hear the sound of the wind and the snow through the trees.” “We’re also going to go sledding,” adds Grace, one of his daughters.
Oregon Fast Fact #43
Haystack Rock off Cannon Beach is 235 feet high and is the third largest coastal monolith in the world.
Mammoth is completely surrounded by protected federal wilderness or U.S. Forest Service land. Its destination ski resort operates on public land via a federal lease. The Slimans try to visit the Mammoth Lakes area from their home in Orange County at least a half dozen times a year. To access the full story, click here. 2. What The New Green Deal Means For The Food On Your
Plate
Today, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) released their much-anticipated Green New Deal
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with the goal of creating millions of jobs by expanding renewable energy and de-carbonizing the economy over the next 10 years. It’s a sweeping attempt to reorient energy production and shift public resources in an urgent bid to make the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2030. And it comes at a crucial moment, as dire scientific evidence shows the world needs to act fast over the next 12 years to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Food and agriculture, which is responsible for 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, is included in several aspects of the 14-page House Resolution released by OcasioCortez today. Primarily, the resolution notes the importance of “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector” through supporting family farming; “investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health”; and “building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.” The need for a food-system overhaul also gets a shout-out in the closing line of the resolution, which notes that the projects required by a Green New Deal will include “providing all people of the United States with … access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.” To access the full story, click here.
3. Aggressive Drivers See Cyclists as ‘Less Than Human’
A shocking number of people view cyclists as less than human — even likening them to insects — and that those “dehumanizing” attitudes are connected with aggressive driving targeted at people on bikes, according to a new study.
The Australian researchers asked participants about their attitudes toward cyclists — and 31 percent rated cyclists as less than human. The dehumanization was even worse among noncyclists: 49 percent viewed people who ride a bike as non-human, according to the study published in the journal Transportation Research. “Studies have shown that dehumanization is associated with increased antisocial behavior and aggression toward a variety of groups, and that it does so by removing normal inhibitions against harming others,” the author Alexa Delbosc, and her team wrote in their summary. Delbosc and her team used standard psychological tests of the notion of dehumanization — that is when one group views another group as simply less human than themselves. Such tests have been used previously to show dehumanizing attitudes by one group towards others, for example. “Dehumanizing” attitudes were measured by asking people to respond with how much they agreed with statements such as “I feel like cyclists are mechanical and cold, like a robot.” To access the full story, click here. Page 2 of 6
4. The Rent’s ‘Too Damn High’ In Rural America, Too The physical vastness and cultural diversity of the United States can make the country seem more inherently different than it is similar. But what’s broadly true of America in rural and urban areas alike is the persistent shortage of affordable housing. A new analysis by Stateline paints a stark picture of the renewed rental burdens chipping away at the incomes of working- and middle-class Americans in rural communities. “The housing system isn’t working on behalf of a lot of rural residents,” says David Lipsetz, CEO of the Housing Assistance Council (HAC), a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to helping build affordable rural housing. Nearly a quarter of the nation’s most rural counties have seen a “sizable increase” in the percentage of residents spending more than half their income on housing, a scenario the federal government calls “severely cost-burdened.” It’s tempting, but simplistic, to say that rural America’s surfeit of space and relatively low cost of living have allowed it to sidestep the affordability crisis hitting the rest of the country. In many ways, the crisis in rural areas is just as serious as the one in the country’s largest cities. To access the full story, click here.
5. Energy Equity: Bringing Solar Power To Low-Income Communities
Isbel “Izzy” Palans lives in a small cabin nestled among mountain peaks and towering trees in the Colorado Rockies. Her home is often shaded and, during the long winters, buried under heaps of snow. Her monthly utility bills show credits for solar electricity production, but no solar panels are affixed to her roof. Instead, the power comes from a solar array some 60 miles away in a nearby valley. Last year, the panels nearly slashed her energy bill in half. “I’ve been thrilled,” said Palans, a 76year-old retired waitress who relies partly on Social Security benefits to make ends meet.
Palans is a subscriber to a 145-kilowatt solar array project run by Holy Cross Energy, a rural utility cooperative. Built with state funding, the program provides solar credits to more than 40 low-income households in western Colorado that otherwise wouldn’t have the financial or technical means to access renewable energy. The venture is just one of a growing number of socalled “community solar” projects across the United States focused on delivering renewable energy — and the cost-savings it can provide — to low-income households, from California to Minnesota to Massachusetts. Community or shared solar is broadly defined as a project where multiple participants own or lease shares in a mid-sized solar facility, usually between 500 kilowatts and 5 megawatts, and receive credits that lower their monthly utility bills based on how much power the facility delivers to the grid. The sector has emerged as a “bright spot” in an otherwise sluggish U.S. solar market, outpacing growth in new residential and utility installations that has been stymied by fading federal and state incentives and the Trump administration’s import tariffs on solar Page 3 of 6
equipment. U.S. community solar capacity has more than quadrupled since 2016, increasing from more than 300 megawatts to nearly 1,400 megawatts today. That is enough electricity to power roughly 266,000 households. Analysts say they expect another 600 to 700 megawatts to go online this year. To access the full story, click here.
6. Unhealthy Diets Now Kill More People Than Tobacco And High Blood Pressure, Study Finds
Poor diet is associated with 1 in 5 deaths worldwide, according to a new, large study. That's equivalent to 11 million deaths a year, making unhealthy eating habits responsible for more deaths than tobacco and high blood pressure. "Poor dietary habits, which is a combination of high intake of unhealthy foods, such as red meat, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages and a low intake of healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, and seeds, overall causes more deaths than any other risk factors globally," study author Dr. Ashkan Afshin, an assistant professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington, told CBS News. The study, published in the journal The Lancet, tracked trends in consumption of 15 dietary elements from 1990 to 2017 in 195 countries. These included diets low in fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, milk, fiber, calcium, seafood omega-3 fatty acids, polyunsaturated fats, and diets high in red meat, processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fatty acids, and sodium. To access the full story, click here.
7. Go Home To Your ‘Dying’ Hometown
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. — My husband and I bought a new home last fall — a 1910 Colonial Revival on the edge of this central Minnesota town of 14,000 people. Down the hill from our place is downtown, which includes the library and a medical clinic. Go a quarter-mile in the opposite direction, and the houses end. You’re surrounded by wide-open prairie, and beyond that is Interstate 94, which gets you to the Twin Cities in about three hours.
We’re still unpacking boxes as we get ready for our first baby, due in late March. A few weeks ago, searching for ideas for what to name our son, I looked through a family genealogy book. The last 30 pages are a transcription of my great-great-great grandfather Walter’s diary from 1883 to 1907. He came to Minnesota via Canada and England and lived with his wife, Eleanor, and their nine children on a homestead in Clay County, about 40 miles north of where I live now. A family genealogy book includes journal entries from the author's great-great-great grandfather Walter Cook. A family genealogy book includes journal entries from the author's great-great-great grandfather Walter Cook. I read excerpts from his diary out loud to my husband, and we soaked in the rhythm of his life:
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Thurs. June 1, finished planting onion seed, planted potatoes. Went to J. Lamb’s dance. Fri. 2, rain. Finished planting potatoes. Father went to Sabin. Sat. 3. took cattle to herd. Helped Chas. Lamb haul manure. Sun. 4, went over to church. All McEvers S.S. were there. Mon. 5, cleaned out stable. Ploughed for beans and corn. Tues. 6, went to mill. Wed. 7, father called. I planted beets around house. Sat. 10, ploughed for turnips. It was a humble sort of poetry, a reference book for the land he chose to commit himself to. He was a farmer, and he helped establish the area’s first Presbyterian church. And yet it’s strange to know every detail of what he planted, but not what he hoped or feared for his family or his community. To access the full story, click here.
8. Rural Crisis Response: How To Lend A Hand In A Way That Helps
Just after 9 a.m. on Sunday, March 10, the Wolf River Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched to respond to the nearby White Lake fire station. Heavy snow had collapsed the roof onto the department’s engine, tender and attack truck. And all their officers were across the state at a fire conference. So our department rushed to the scene, sized up the situation, and started working to outline a crisis response plan.
This was not our first natural disaster. In 2007, an EF3 tornado tore a path through our service area. You can still see that path on satellite photos. The first communication we received was that “high winds” had hit the resort just over a mile from my house and there were “some broken windows.” When we arrived on the scene, though, the building was gone, the road was blocked, and trees and debris were windrowed along the highway so deep we couldn’t tell if there might be vehicles buried there. We learned a lot from our response to the tornado that served us well at the station collapse. Here are a few of those lessons. To access the full story, click here. 9. “Disrupting The Legacy Of Colonialism.” An Oregon Funder Partners With Tribes On
The Environment
We hear the word equity in the philanthrosphere often these days, at both the local and national levels. In the Pacific Northwest, an area steeped in indigenous history, it’s hard to imagine a local foundation developing a comprehensive equity strategy without working with Native American communities. The Meyer Memorial Trust in Portland adopted equity as its guiding star in 2016, and it recently partnered with local tribes to integrate and honor Native wisdom within its environmental grantmaking. While it has backed Native American-related causes in the past, the round of grants in late 2018 was marked by a purposeful drive to “integrate traditional knowledge into conservation practices.” Where Indigenous, Social Justice and Environmental Giving Converge
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As we’ve covered at Inside Philanthropy, while highly-publicized events like Standing Rock can trigger bursts of focused grantmaking, funding to Native American causes is very low overall. A 2011 report found that just 0.3 percent of total foundation giving went to this area. A 2018 report looking at community foundations in 10 key states found an average of 0.15 percent was directed for these purposes. Despite the high levels of poverty and other social, health and environmental struggles Native Americans face, the disconnect between traditional philanthropy and these communities persists—making Meyer’s newest grants a welcome standout. To access the full story, click here.
10. Even If Bigfoot Isn’t Real, We Still Need Him
I brace myself as I open my email: Another note from someone who listened to my Bigfoot podcast, Wild Thing, and felt compelled to write me. Most of the time, it’s a nice fan letter. Every so often, it’s an outpouring of disappointment or an angry diatribe. And then there are letters like this one: “I know they exist — beyond a doubt, I have been physically touched on the shoulder by one on a mini-expedition in northeast Washington state — doing vortex photography and swapping stories with the sheriff’s department of the local county. They are good folk, the Sasquatch people — they are so much more than a Wild Thing in the woods.”
I’m relieved it’s not hate mail — lambasting me for daring to question Bigfoot, or daring to explore Bigfoot, or just daring to have an opinion — but the letter leaves me cringing, embarrassed, asking why, exactly, I got myself into this. I spent the last two years researching and reporting a podcast on America’s greatest myth, mainly in an effort to understand why a relative of mine, a well-respected professor of anthropology, became obsessed with Bigfoot, putting his reputation on the line in his search for the creature. Now I wonder if I’ve jeopardized my own reputation. I’m a serious journalist who has worked for NPR, covering subjects from foreign policy and politics to technology and literature. I’ve explored a wide variety of scientific topics. I believe in logic and rational thought, not spirits or magic. But then I went chasing Bigfoot. For two years. I talked with wildlife scientists, anthropologists and psychologists. I camped and hiked all over the Pacific Northwest. I attended Bigfoot symposiums and lectures and campouts. My eyes rolled (internally) at some people’s stories, and my jaw dropped at others. And in the end, I could never completely eliminate the idea of Bigfoot from my mind. To access the full story, click here.
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