RARE Monday Mailing-Issue 34

Monday Mailing

Year 19 • Issue 34 20 May 2013 1.

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Food Pantries Serving More and More of the Rural Poor Why Aren’t Younger Americans Driving Anymore?

Bill Them Later: A Round-Up of Oregon's Energy Measures Development Done Well Is a Community Affair Cyclists Aren't 'Special,' and They Shouldn't Play by Their Own Ancient Mayan Pyramid Destroyed for Road Fill Distillers Seek to Cash in on Craft Libations Nike Employee Grant Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation Another look at Unemployment Among Oregon's Young Workers Olympia Oysters Thrive Again on Oregon Coast Time to Abolish Left vs. Right

1. Food Pantries Serving More and More of the Rural Poor Steven and Jeanne Foster have been living in Lima, Ohio, since their car broke down last summer enroute from Michigan to Florida, where they planned to move. The expensive, lengthy car repair was the first in a series of financially challenging events that included Steven having a heart attack and Jeanne being hospitalized for liver problems. This formerly self-sufficient couple found themselves among the 6.1 million Americans last year that turned to a food pantry when they couldn't afford to put food on their table.

Quote of the Week: "Almost always the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better." ~Martin Luther King Jr. Oregon Fast Fact #559: Multnomah Falls is a 620 foot waterfall in two stages that is the second tallest waterfall in the United States. It is located in the Columbia Gorge along the Columbia River.

"The (Allen County) veteran's food pantry immediately helped us," said Steven, a Vietnam veteran. "The Blue Star Mothers that run it are like saints to us! They even brought us gift boxes of food at Christmas.

They've really been there for us through a rough time."

To access the full story, click here.

2. Why Aren’t Younger Americans Driving Anymore?

Ever since the recession hit in late 2007, Americans have been driving less and less. Was that because of the horrible economy? To some extent, perhaps. But it’s striking that Americans are still cutting back on driving even though the economy is growing again.

Doug Short, who charts financial data, has put together a nice graph that uses the latest Transportation Department data on vehicle-miles driven and adjusts for population growth. Looked at this way, the plunge in driving is even more startling and began back in June 2005.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Bill Them Later: A Round-Up of Oregon's Energy Measures Last week’s Future Energy Conference included plenty of talk about pending legislation that could sway Oregon’s energy outlook.

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A panel that included Gov. John Kitzhaber’s Energy Adviser Margie Hoffmann, Portland General Electric’s Brendan McCarthy and the Citizen Utility Board’s Jeff Bissonnette highlighted many measures. The talk was moderated by Ater Wynne’s Douglas MacCourt.

Here are a few of initiatives energy advocates will watch over the next three months.

House Bill 2106: This land-use bill asks the Oregon Department of Energy to, in partnership with other state agencies, develop a map that identifies areas east of the Cascades that are suitable for energy development. The bill survived several public hearings and work sessions in the House Energy and Environment Committee, and will be transferred to the House Committee on Land Use. To access the full story, click here.

4. Development Done Well Is a Community Affair The era of build-it-and-they-will-come is, if not over, waning. The era of easy financing is dead. And the reaction by developers and planners is, to say the least, mixed. Everyone, it seems, is taking the news a little differently.

The Kentlands Initiative in Salt Lake City is taking a unique approach to the problem by not just polling their community to find out what they want, but actually engaging them in making it happen.

"We just call it crowdsourced development," says executive director James Alfandre.

The Kentlands Initiative is a non-profit spin-off of The Kentlands Company, developers of the heralded New Urbanist community in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The development was highly successful in terms of design and popularity, but met many challenges in terms of politics and financing. Establishing a Salt Lake City office almost four years ago represented a new direction for the developer and a new mission through the Kentlands Initiative, using crowdsourcing to bring the sometimes contentious groups involved in planning together for a common vision. Shortly after setting up shop, they began work in their first project area, The Granary District, a waning rail and warehouse district immediately adjacent to Salt Lake City's born-again Downtown.

To access the full story, click here.

5. Cyclists Aren't 'Special,' and They Shouldn't Play by Their Own Rules The other day, something happened in Chicago that made bicycling a little more boring.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced an ordinance that would double the fine for “dooring” a cyclist. Motorists who open their doors into the path of a person riding a bicycle, one of the most dangerous hazards that bike riders face, would have to pay $1,000. This is good. Dooring kills people, like Neill Townshend.

At the same time, Emanuel proposed increased fines for cyclists who break the law, bringing them from $25 up to $50–$200. This is also good.

It was a move that the Chicago Sun-Times referred to as "even-handed." And at least one major element of the bicycling community perceived it the same way. "Too often we see people on foot, on bikes and driving cars traveling recklessly," wrote Ron Burke, executive director of the Active Transportation Alliance, Chicago’s largest and oldest cycling and pedestrian advocacy group. "Active Trans supports increased traffic fines as an important way to improve safety (along with better education and infrastructure)."

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To access the full story, click here.

6. Ancient Mayan Pyramid Destroyed for Road Fill Three CDFI industry leaders have created the $200MM Communities at Work Fund. A Mayan pyramid that has stood for 2,300 years in Belize has been reduced to rubble, apparently to make fill for roads.

Local media in the Central American country of 334,000 people report the temple at the Noh Mul site in northern Belize was largely torn down by backhoes and bulldozers last week.

"This is one of the worst that I have seen in my entire 25 years of archaeology in Belize," John Morris, an archaeologist with the country's Institute of Archaeology, told local channel 7NewsBelize.

"We can't salvage what has happened out here -- it is an incredible display of ignorance."

The institute's director, Jaime Awe, called the destruction "one of the worse set of blows I have felt philosophically and professionally."

To access the full story, click here.

7. Distillers Seek to Cash in on Craft Libations Brad Irwin is no stranger to a shot of whiskey. He’s picked up a bottle almost every day since the early 1990s when he started tending bar in Bend. Still, it took more than a decade of pouring other people’s bourbon before Irwin realized that his passion wasn’t serving spirits — it was making them.

In 2009, Irwin formally launched what is now Central Oregon’s second craft distillery, Oregon Spirit Distillers, in a small warehouse building just a block or two from the Parkway on Bend’s eastside.

Since then Irwin and his team, which includes wife Kathy, have churned out small batches of gin, vodka and an award-winning absinthe. But the real coup came last fall when Irwin uncorked his first barrel of handcrafted whiskey, C.W. Irwin Bourbon, a three-year aged spirit, named for his younger brother who provided a key infusion of capital when the elder Irwin was still experimenting with mash recipes in his garage.

A decade ago, Irwin would have been considered a pioneer, a renegade just a step removed from a backwoods’ moonshiner. Today, he’s part of a growing class of craft distillers who are catering to the public’s appetite for artisan spirits. This year Irwin plans to move roughly 20,000 bottles of vodka, gin and the aforementioned Irwin bourbon in Oregon alone. He’s also expanded his distribution network to California and several other Western states as well as some East Coast markets.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Nike Employee Grant Fund of The Oregon Community Foundation The Nike Employee Grant Fund was established in 2010 to benefit communities where Nike employees live, work and play. Through this fund, Nike employees work with OCF to award at least $550,000 per year to nonprofits and schools in the Metropolitan Portland region and in southwest Washington. Nike employees not only participate in the review of grant applications, but also volunteer their time and expertise to contribute to the grantees' success.

The NEGF takes an innovative approach to grantmaking, empowering a team of 10 to 12 Nike employees to serve on a committee that reviews funding proposals and develops recommendations.

Grants are one-year awards totaling between $5,000 and $20,000 each, with the following focus:

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80 percent of grant awards support organizations and projects that are creating a world where physical activity, play and sports are highly valued.

20 percent of grant awards support organizations and projects that address community challenges through innovative community-based solutions.

For more information, click here.

9. Another look at Unemployment Among Oregon's Young Workers A new study from a DC-based think tank takes the pulse of Oregon's young workforce. No news flash here-- it's still weak.

Unemployment among young adults in Oregon is more than double the state average. More are working part-time than before the recession. And fewer have any job at all.

Researchers at Young Invincibles, which advocates for youth issues, crunched federal labor data and released the Oregon facts as part of a state-by-state jobs campaign. "The challenges facing Oregon's youth could depress economic opportunity for all Oregonians for years to come," it concludes.

To access the full story, click here.

10. Olympia Oysters Thrive Again on Oregon Coast It was such a delicacy, Oregon's only native oyster was harvested to near extinction more than a century ago.

But after years of hard work, the Olympia oyster is once again thriving off the coast. The recovery took eight years, but today Netarts Bay is once again home to as many as five million Olympia oysters.

A small oyster that, decades ago, was the premier oyster in the Pacific Northwest.

To access the full story, click here.

11. Time to Abolish Left vs. Right Keeping our nation divided is an agenda supported by both Fox News and MSNBC. The media and the politicians both profit from Americans believing they should hate their fellow Americans. And oddly enough, the one thing that unites the traditional “right” and “left” in this country is our hatred for those same media organizations and politicians that make money by regularly lying to us. The best way to beat them is to find the things that bring us together in one common purpose and unite around that.

An article in the Atlantic last week talked about how the dominant liberal narrative is broken. The argument that government is inherently good and is necessary to provide things like Social Security, Medicare and national parks has some truth to it, and worked well for both parties in the midtwentieth century. Democrats and Republicans from FDR to Eisenhower won landslide elections using the good-government narrative. But now that our government is captive to corporations and their lobbyists like the US Chamber of Commerce, Americans of all ideological leanings are united in the belief that our current government, as it stands, is completely out of touch and needs radical change from outside the political system to do it.

To access the full story, click here.

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