RARE Monday Mailing Year 27 | Issue 34 10 May 2021
1. Indoor Dining is Back in Oregon, But Where Are the Cooks? 2. Who Pays What? New Study Highlights Forest Sector Tax Burden 3. Follow the Oregon Film Trail 4. Oregon Coast Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency 5. Photos Around Town Tell Local Landscape Story 6. ‘Connection Corps’ Will Put Hometown Leaders to Work on Broadband 7. The Lie of ‘No One Wants to Work’ 8. The Colonial Pipeline Hack is a New Extreme for Ransomware 9. IPRE Wins 2021 Oregon Heritage Excellence Award 10. RESOURCE: Culturally Responsive Practice: A Guide to the What, Why and How
Quote of the Week: “Do not sacrifice yourself to help others. Increase yourself to help others. Your service and caregiving is a gift that should be nurtured and preserved. Be intentional and diligent about your own self-care.” - Beverly Kyer 1.
Indoor Dining is Back in Oregon, But Where Are the Cooks? Oregon Public Broadcasting On the weekends, Tracy Roundy wakes up at 3:45 am to open Gramma’s Corner Kitchen, the restaurant she co-owns with her mother Terri in Milwaukie. On a recent Sunday, she was a flurry of activity in the kitchen: reading order tickets, tending to bacon and sausages on the grill and ladling soup into to-go containers.
Oregon Fast Fact During the Great Depression, North Bend used wooden coins as currency. To this day, the coins are considered legal tender, though they’re coveted by coin collectors and rarely spent.
The restaurant is doing plenty enough business for her to get out of the kitchen, except for one big problem: she can’t find a cook. “I’ve been trying to hire a full-time cook for about three months now,” Roundy said. “Typically, within a day or two I have to pause the ad because I have 15-20 applicants I have to interview. I think I got two or three applicants total in a twomonth period and I had one person show up for an interview.” Read the full story.
RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 1 of 6
2. Who Pays What? New Study Highlights Forest Sector Tax Burden
The Chief The Oregon Forest & Industries Council today released what it calls a groundbreaking report detailing the total tax burden on the private forest sector in Oregon. The national accounting firm Ernst & Young report's primary finding concludes the Oregon forest sector pays more than one-and-a-half times more on average than other Oregon businesses. “By looking at a variety of publicly available tax and economic data sources for fiscal year 2019, we concluded the tax burden on Oregon’s forest industry is greater than other Oregon industries, including the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, and is one-and-ahalf times greater than the overall total Oregon business tax burden,” said Caroline Sallee, project lead on the report and Senior Manager with Ernst & Young LLP’s Quantitative Economics and Statistics Group. Ernst & Young’s report is the first time a comprehensive analysis has looked at the aggregate forest industry tax burden and comes at a time when the Oregon Legislature is considering legislation that would further increase taxes on the sector. Read the full story.
3. Follow the Oregon Film Trail KEX 1190 A new Oregon Film Trail sign has been installed in Oregon City, honoring the town’s starring role as a location in the popular teen drama, Twilight. It sits along the McLoughlin Promenade, overlooking the former Blue Heron paper mill where scenes from the iconic vampire movie were shot. The Mill has also been featured in The Hunted and Grimm. The Works Progress Administration-era Promenade has itself been featured in scenes from The Librarians and Trinkets. The current pandemic situation didn’t allow for a large public dedication but instead, City officials and local tourism advocates attended a photo opportunity with the sign at the dedication. Oregon Film was there to help celebrate and welcome the 27th sign to the Oregon Film Trail. The sign was placed along the Promenade’s walking path, with an extraordinary view of the mill, Downtown Oregon City and the Willamette River. The Downtown has itself been the used in the filming of movies that include Bandits and Homer and Eddie. Read the full story.
RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 2 of 6
4. Oregon Coast Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency The World The Oregon Coast Visitors Association (OCVA) has joined Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency, an international initiative that supports tourism businesses, organizations and individuals in declaring a climate emergency. The initiative takes purposeful action to reduce carbon emissions as per the advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cut global carbon emissions to 55 percent below 2017 levels by 2030. OCVA will be exploring voluntary, private sector solutions to this complex and global issue. According to the Oregon Global Warming Commission’s Roadmap, there is an immediate need for action across all economic sectors. As stated in the 2020 Biennial Report to the Legislature, Oregon is currently ‘not on track’ to accomplish their envisioned progress. It only makes sense that tourism, one of Oregon’s largest economic contributors, is stepping up to support climate change mitigation solutions on the Oregon Coast. Read the full story.
5. Photos Around Town Tell Local Landscape Story Lake County Examiner A project to tell the story of the ever-changing landscape in Lake County is entering its final phase; photographs featuring the County’s unique views are displayed in several businesses and buildings in downtown Lakeview. “Our Lake County” is a project being administered among PLAYA Summer Lake, Lake County Library and the Lake County Resources Initiative. It is being funded with a $6,400 grant from the Oregon Humanities Foundation, and was originally scheduled to end in 2020, but with COVID impacting the ability of the groups to hold meetings and discussions the deadline was extended to June 30 of this year. Carolyn Law, PLAYA Summer Lake board president, has been working on the project for the past two years, and over the past year has been looking at ways to hold the event with COVID restrictions. This has included sending out postcards to over 2,000 residences in the County allowing people to respond about the changes they have seen and areas of concern. So far around 10% have responded. Read the full story.
RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 3 of 6
6. ‘Connection Corps’ Will Put Hometown Leaders to Work on Broadband The Daily Yonder The Biden administration has proposed $100 billion in funding for increased broadband access throughout the country. But there is no universal blueprint for connecting rural communities, and no path to greater connectivity that does not include local advocates and planners. Lead for America and Land O’Lakes, Inc. announced the launch of a new fellowship funding 50 new hometown leaders “working to improve broadband connectivity and digital inclusion” throughout the country. Members of the American Connection Corps (ACC) will be placed with public-serving institutions in their hometowns to help solve pandemic-heightened problems with internet connectivity. The program was borne out of a partnership between Lead for America and the American Connection Project—a coalition of 150 organizations seeking to expand broadband access throughout the country— said Benya Kraus, co-founder of Lead for America. Read the full story.
7. The Lie of ‘No One Wants to Work’ Eater After eight years in the restaurant industry, Estefanía decided she’d had enough. Last summer, she quit her job at a New American restaurant in Chicago where she had worked as a manager and sommelier since 2017. Estefanía, who asked to be referred to by her first name because she is an undocumented worker, said she got COVID-19 in June and took two weeks off to recover and quarantine. When she came back, she noticed a shift in the way her employers treated her. “I came back to be given the silent treatment from the owner,” she told me via email. “He said I abandoned him and that he couldn’t trust me [or] see me as a manager anymore.” Estefanía said the last straw was when a coworker threatened to call ICE on her. She quit the restaurant, got a job as a receptionist, and thought she was done with the restaurant industry altogether. But the pay couldn’t compare to what she was making before, so now, she’s back. Despite her hesitancy to return to the industry, Estefanía just started working at a Mexican restaurant in Logan Square, which she describes as a better experience than her last job. Read the full story.
RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 4 of 6
8. The Colonial Pipeline Hack is a New Extreme for Ransomware Wired For years, the cybersecurity industry has warned that state-sponsored hackers could shut down large swathes of US energy infrastructure in a geopolitically motivated act of cyberwar. But now apparently profit-focused cybercriminal hackers have inflicted a disruption that military and intelligence agency hackers have never dared to, shutting down a pipeline that carries nearly half the fuel consumed on the East Coast of the United States. On Saturday, the Colonial Pipeline company, which operates a pipeline that carries gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas along a 5,500 mile path from Texas to New Jersey, released a statement confirming reports that ransomware hackers had hit its network. In response, Colonial Pipeline says it shut down parts of the pipeline's operation in an attempt to contain the threat. The incident represents one of the largest disruptions of American critical infrastructure by hackers in history. It also provides yet another demonstration of how severe the global epidemic of ransomware has become. Read the full story.
9. IPRE Wins 2021 Oregon Heritage Excellence Award University of Oregon’s School of Planning, Public Policy and Management The Institute for Policy Research and Engagement (IPRE) has been recognized with a 2021 Oregon Heritage Excellence Award for its outstanding community heritage preservation efforts. Oregon Heritage—a division of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department that houses the Oregon Heritage Commission and the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office— awarded IPRE for its research, disaster resilience planning, and the “Resource Assistance for Rural Environments” (RARE) AmeriCorps program. IPRE is a research institute affiliated with the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management. “IPRE’s recent contribution to heritage preservation efforts was incredibly timed in its relevance to recent emergency response and recovery efforts due to historic wildfires in Oregon,” according to the Oregon Heritage awards video. Read the full story.
10. RESOURCE – Culturally Responsive Practice: A Guide to the What, Why and How BECOME Center For decades, people and nations have faced the pain of grim and persistent issues, such as poverty, violence, and health disparities. In the face of profound hardship, many communities also show significant resilience. However, the hardship is quite costly financially, physically and emotionally. Counties, states, cities, and related entities like RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 5 of 6
police, schools, and foundations see the generational evolution of these problems and wonder: What is the key to sustainable solutions? How can we outgrow these tenacious and preventable social problems? Research, science, and experience all tell us that two important variables hold answers to these questions: community and culture. A strong sense of community can create a support system around a person or family that protects and buffers them. Culture can guide, bind, and be a source of pride and worth. Attention to these factors are integral to creating solutions. Read the full whitepaper.
RARE AmeriCorps Program Monday Mailing | Page 6 of 6