Here's a way to help all Oregon, especially rural Oregon: allow Broadband PUDs -- any county or municipality in Oregon should be allowed to form a PUD or municipal utility to operate a high speed internet provider to offer Korean level broadband at cost.
As with health care, people in the US pay the most and have the worst service levels of any advanced country.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/28125-as-cities-push-for-their-own-broadband-cable-firms-say-not-so-fast
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
Monday, January 19, 2015
Sunday, January 18, 2015
As Salem cuts down on recess to make room for more standardized testing
By Angela Hanscom
A perfect stranger pours her heart out to me over the phone. She complains that her 6-year-old son is unable to sit still in the classroom. The school wants to test him for ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder). This sounds familiar, I think to myself. As a pediatric occupational therapist, I’ve noticed that this is a fairly common problem today.
The mother goes on to explain how her son comes home every day with a yellow smiley face. The rest of his class goes home with green smiley faces for good behavior. Every day this child is reminded that his behavior is unacceptable, simply because he can’t sit still for long periods of time.
The mother starts crying. “He is starting to say things like, ‘I hate myself’ and ‘I’m no good at anything.’” This young boy’s self-esteem is plummeting all because he needs to move more often.
Over the past decade, more and more children are being coded as having attention issues and possibly ADHD. A local elementary teacher tells me that at least eight of her twenty-two students have trouble paying attention on a good day. At the same time, children are expected to sit for longer periods of time. In fact, even kindergarteners are being asked to sit for thirty minutes during circle time at some schools.
The problem: children are constantly in an upright position these days. It is rare to find children rolling down hills, climbing trees, and spinning in circles just for fun. Merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters are a thing of the past. Recess times have shortened due to increasing educational demands, and children rarely play outdoors due to parental fears, liability issues, and the hectic schedules of modern-day society. Lets face it: Children are not nearly moving enough, and it is really starting to become a problem.
***
We quickly learned after further testing, that most of the children in the classroom had poor core strength and balance. In fact, we tested a few other classrooms and found that when compared to children from the early 1980s, only one out of twelve children had normal strength and balance. Only one! Oh my goodness, I thought to myself. These children need to move!
Ironically, many children are walking around with an underdeveloped vestibular (balance) system today–due to restricted movement. In order to develop a strong balance system, children need to move their body in all directions, for hours at a time. Just like with exercising, they need to do this more than just once-a-week in order to reap the benefits. Therefore, having soccer practice once or twice a week is likely not enough movement for the child to develop a strong sensory system.
Children are going to class with bodies that are less prepared to learn than ever before. With sensory systems not quite working right, they are asked to sit and pay attention. Children naturally start fidgeting in order to get the movement their body so desperately needs and is not getting enough of to “turn their brain on.” What happens when the children start fidgeting? We ask them to sit still and pay attention; therefore, their brain goes back to “sleep.”
Fidgeting is a real problem. It is a strong indicator that children are not getting enough movement throughout the day. We need to fix the underlying issue. Recess times need to be extended and kids should be playing outside as soon as they get home from school. Twenty minutes of movement a day is not enough! They need hours of play outdoors in order to establish a healthy sensory system and to support higher-level attention and learning in the classroom.
In order for children to learn, they need to be able to pay attention. In order to pay attention, we need to let them move.
Home Solar Investment Returns top S&P 500
Solar Investment Return Performance
http://read.feedly.com/html?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftheenergycollective.com%2Fnrdcswitchboard%2F2183031%2Fsingle-family-solar-power-beats-sp-500-46-out-50-american-cities&theme=white&size=medium
----
Shared via my feedly reader
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
State-Level Data Reveals Earlier Peak Driving than Previously Thought | Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network [feedly]
State-Level Data Reveals Earlier Peak Driving than Previously Thought
| Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network
http://www.planetizen.com/node/73305
http://www.planetizen.com/node/73305
With implications on the narrative of peak driving and on the economic forces that drive the country, a new study reveals that some statewide populations began driving less as early as 1992.
In research presented at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Timothy J. Garceau, a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of Connecticut, and professors Carol Atkinson-Palombo and Norman Garrick, revealed new data about the decline of vehicle miles traveled (otherwise known as peak driving).
Emily Badger reports on the study, which produced significant findings by shifting analysis of vehicle miles traveled from the national to the state level: "Washington state experienced 'peak car travel' all the way back in 1992, and Nevada, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia all did before the new millennium. By this measure, peak car happened in D.C. in 1996."
Badger shares numerous data from the study, before noting another conclusion of note revealed by the study: "Over this same time…car travel has decoupled from economic activity in many parts of the country."
Published on Friday, January 16, 2015 in The Washington Post - Wonkblog
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Ask Tamara: What do you say when… | Lead Safe America Foundation
Lead is far more pernicious and potent than most folks seem to understand. And the era of subsidized and encouraged lead poisoning of children is not over ...
In Salem as everywhere in Oregon, small planes continue to spew tons of lead from "Avgas" into the food chain and our bodies every year, even though three quarters of them can fly on unleaded "Mogas."
http://leadsafeamerica.org/what-do-you-say-when/
And you know what? Your unleaded car gas is taxed at $0.30 per gallon -- but the pilots spraying the fields and sidewalks and streets where your children play and walk only pay $0.09 per gallon for the privilege of poisoning us here in our community, and adding to the burdens our schools face (neurologically impaired kids ... With severe impulse control deficits, which causes higher police and prison spending).
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
In Salem as everywhere in Oregon, small planes continue to spew tons of lead from "Avgas" into the food chain and our bodies every year, even though three quarters of them can fly on unleaded "Mogas."
http://leadsafeamerica.org/what-do-you-say-when/
And you know what? Your unleaded car gas is taxed at $0.30 per gallon -- but the pilots spraying the fields and sidewalks and streets where your children play and walk only pay $0.09 per gallon for the privilege of poisoning us here in our community, and adding to the burdens our schools face (neurologically impaired kids ... With severe impulse control deficits, which causes higher police and prison spending).
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
Thursday, January 15, 2015
The Salem PD should refuse to remain where they are a month longer
 |
| New Police HQ, Coming Up! |
Interesting post over here on the issues about siting a new police fortress on the current civic center site.
What is being lost in all this politics is that we're talking about scores, possibly hundreds of lives lost if the forecast Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake hits tomorrow.
What the chief of police ought to do is inform the Mayor and Council that, based on the seismic studies to date, the police want out of City Hall NOW, and then the council ought to develop a plan to evacuate the police HQ within 30 days by taking over two or three existing structures.
Command level folks, detectives, and administrative support should go into the idle bank building at Liberty and Chemeketa, and there should be a north precinct for patrol officers (say, Portland Road) and a south precinct (on Mission, where there is abundant idle property).
It's still risky leaving police in there another 30 days, and our luck could run out at any moment, but at least our public safety force would not be caught under three floors worth of concrete when the Big One happens.
What is intolerable is making the police remain in the basement of City Hall while we argue about a replacement, and then coming to the voters and saying that we have to build a $70 million building on the existing site or else we're condemning the police to being crushed in an earthquake.
The people who are putting the police at risk are the people who have not followed through on what the earthquake warnings are telling us: Get the people out now, figure out the permanent home(s) after that.
Once the police are safely out of the Big Pancake To Be, then all of us -- meaning all of us, the stakeholders who are supposed to write the checks to pay for it -- can debate the pros and cons of a single site vs. dispersed sites for public safety. We can have the time to build consensus on the buildings.
Most important, for every part of town, we should be thinking in terms of building real community centers, places that serve multiple purposes -- where police, Cherriots, new Library branches, and social service agencies can all share support services (IT, water, sewer, utilities) co-locate in shared facilities with multiple uses that bring disparate folks together instead of insisting on a segregated, separated single-use-only model for all public buildings.
Such facilities would go a long way to combating the isolation and fortress mentality that the current hideous city hall does so much to promote. When you work in a building that Albert Speer would have loved, it's hard not to view your town as conquered territory. What we should want for our police is to have them be parts of the community because they are in and of the community, with easy opportunities for interactions with everyone.
Imagine if the police precincts, located next to public library branches, accessible to all on Cherriots and by bicycles, also had indoor gyms and basketball courts for the police to use -- and that could be shared with residents too. That's the kind of thing that builds connection between community members and police.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
New Orleans Finds Homes for All Its Homeless Veterans -- why doesn't Salem?
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/28026-new-orleans-finds-homes-for-all-its-homeless-veterans
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
Monday, January 12, 2015
Speak Out Against Flushing Tens of Millions Down The Drain
There is no doubt about the need to bring police out of the death trap basement tomb they're in now. What there is plenty of dispute about is that replicating the facility a few feet over makes any sense.
Given Salem's horrendous sprawl and vulnerability to the Big Quake due at any point, the wiser option is to split the force into HQ (which can be anywhere, really) and then into at least two operating precincts, north and south ... Say, Portland Road and Mission St. There is abundant underused space and empty commercial structures available for conversion into public facilities, with plenty of cheap land for surface parking for police vehicles, and quicker access to all parts of the city.
Best of all, the we could think creatively and build (or repurpose existing buildings) for community centers with police, branch libraries, and community meeting rooms and public services spaces to boot -- multipurpose spaces that would foster community policing and engagement instead of isolation and the fortress mentality.
The powers that be seem bullishly determined to build another police fortress at the civic center, but they only get to propose, since it will require a bond. So, THURSDAY NIGHT, come to Broadway Commons and tell the task force that -- like the Third Bridge -- "We're Not Buying It" and that they're going to have to start over with a clean piece of paper if they want any public support when it comes time for funding.
There is NO NEED for a single behemoth police facility in these days of 24/7 connectivity.
(Isn't it odd how these meetings to discuss spendy projects always seem to conveniently avoid being scheduled in locations where CCTV could broadcast them as they happen?)
The next meeting of the Police Facility task force is THIS THURSDAY, JAN. 15, 6-8 pm, at Broadway Commons, 1300 Broadway NE (1 block north of Salem Cinema) in the Keizer room on the Second floor. There is plenty of parking behind the building.The chair will release the "task forces" recommendations at that time. We expect it to say things which would clearly put the police facility back on the civic center grounds (in the middle of Mirror Pond).Please come and bring lots of friends. It is really , really important that the public be there to see and hear what happens. Visitors can also ask for time to speak. This will likely be the first and last time the public will be able to express any opinion on where the police facility should be.The people to write to are theMayor "Anna Peterson (ampeterson@cityofsalem.net)" <ampeterson@cityofsalem.net>City Manager Linda Norris <lnorris@cityofsalem.net>Task Force members:Jim Bauer (jbauer@willamette.edu) <jbauer@willamette.edu>Jason Brandt: Jason@salemchamber.orgSheronne Blasi <sheronneblasi@gmail.com>Monty King: ovda@ordealers.comJohn Latimer: jlattimer@co.marion.or.usGeoffrey James <geoffreyjames@comcast.net>Paul Rice <polar3ice@yahoo.com>Claudia Burton <cburton@willamette.edu>Warren Bednarz <wbednarz@cityofsalem.net>Steven McCoid: SMcCoid@OregonRLA.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
