The Black Bears allow two late power-play goals and settle for a frustrating 2-2 tie.
ORONO — If ever a tie felt like a loss, it was Friday night. The University of Maine broke through for a two-goal lead in the third period against Vermont, only to allow two late power-play goals as the Black Bears and Catamounts skated to a 2-2 tie before 3,365 at Alfond Arena.
Peter Housakos and Canon Pieper scored for the Black Bears, but Ross Colton answered with two slap shots off faceoffs, at 13:26 and 18:17.
A back-and-forth overtime did not settle matters, and Maine is now 5-7-1 overall, 3-4-1 in Hockey East.
The Catamounts are 4-9-2, 1-5-2.
The Catamounts feature the worst offense in Hockey East, and Maine outshot them 43-24. But Vermont sophomore goalie Stefanos Lakkas was the No. 1 star with 41 saves. He made some stellar stops and many routine ones because he positions himself so well.
"He makes it look easy because he tracks pucks very well. He did make some big ones," Vermont Coach Kevin Sneddon said.
Freshman Jeremy Swayman continued his bid to be Maine's No. 1 goalie. Swayman, a Boston Bruins draft pick, made 22 saves in his third straight start.
Maine created numerous chances in the first two periods, outshooting Vermont 28-14.
All the goals came in the third period. Maine took the lead at 5:26 when Cedric Lacroix sent a pass to the far post and Housakos swatted it in.
"I saw an opportunity to break to the net and I got lucky," Housakos said.
With the teams skating 4-on-4, Pieper took a pass from Tim Doherty, left a defender helpless with a nifty move, then skated into the high slot and sent a shot past Lekkas' blocker for a 2-0 lead at 9:11.
But the Black Bears' progress has been slowed by inconsistency and a lack of discipline. They could not stay out of the penalty box, which helped the Catamounts, especially Colton. Seven of his 10 goals have come on the power play.
The two teams play again at 5 p.m. Saturday.


text:
Q: MySQL access subquery column name in main query where clause trying to put a condition in the main where clause that checks a value from a subquery.
SELECT total, (select my_count from x where .. etc) as XXX

FROM sales

WHERE XXX > 0;

I get an unknown column error. Any ideas why?

A: What about
select total, xxx
from (
    SELECT total, (select my_count from x where .. etc) as XXX
    FROM sales
     )
WHERE XXX > 0;

A: This is a really strange query.
Why don't you put the WHERE condition inside the subquery?
SELECT total, (select my_count from x where .. AND my_count > 0) as XXX
FROM sales

And you're getting an error because you can't use the result of a subquery as a column name.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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The bomb threat hoax from Thursday, December 13, 2018 was easily detectable as fraud.
There were several smoking guns that could have quickly identified the bomb threats as bogus. The leading indicator of fraud was the IP block from which the emails were sent. Emails associated with this bomb threat hoax were sent from the 194.58.x.x address range. This address range is well known in Internet security circles as malicious. IP reputation databases show this range was identified as fraudulent as early as March of 2015. Internet traffic originating from this range was commonly known to place fraudulent orders on e-commerce sites. This IP range was also seen often in fake reviews, instances of click fraud, and hacking attempts.
Further investigation of the 194.58.x.x address block shows with near perfect certainty the range was a manually banned, well-known public proxy. Said another way, this IP range was known to be among the worst of the worst, and clearly its originating messages should have been ignored.
Internet security professionals need to use IP reputation services to determine if an IP address is a proxy or VPN. Lookup tables with this information have existed for years. IP reputation services use machine learning and probability theory to infer a trust score on IP addresses. IP addresses with poor trust scores are behaving badly in an automated manner. Online merchants and video streaming services already utilize advanced mathematical and modern data science to identify malicious Internet addresses, and e-mail providers should too.
In the Internet of Things (IoT), with 11 billion smart devices connected, we can't allow hospitals, schools, and emergency services to be distracted because of a dozen rogue devices like this. In life reputation matters, but on Thursday we let a few well-known bogus devices in Russia cause panic and fear.
We can do better — the data already exists.
Service Objects is committed to fighting fraud and bad data wherever we see it. Through our APIs, best practices when handling sensitive data, or through recommendations on clients' business logic, we are here to help enhance data quality and eliminate fraud.
A good example of the latter is educating our customers about how to avoid fraud losses. One way is by paying closer attention to orders using freight forwarders – which are legitimate services that are often misused by fraudsters. At the end of this post, you will find a free resource to make this easier: an extensive list of shipping and freight forwarders that you can use to help fight fraud when fulfilling orders.
Freight and shipping forwarders arrange for the exporting and importing of goods. These companies often specialize in storage and shipping of goods on behalf of customers. In short, they help arrange for goods to get from point A to point B.
Are all freight forwarders associated with fraud?
Absolutely not! There are many reputable freight forwarders that do great work in coordinating the shipping of goods between consumers and sellers. When fraud is perpetrated, they are co-victims along with the seller. That being said, freight forwarders are often a go-to-tool for duping vendors and sellers into footing the bill for fraudulent purchases.
A customer will place a large order, and ask that the product(s) be shipped through a specific freight forwarder.
Often the fraudster will have set up a legitimate-looking website ahead of time to give the appearance of a legitimate and trustworthy business.
After the seller ships the goods and they are picked up by the fraudster, the payment for the shipping fee and the products itself usually falls through, leaving the seller to foot the bill for both the freight forwarder's services and inventory loss.
How do I avoid fraud where freight forwarders are used?
Great question! One of the best and easiest ways to help mitigate this type of fraud as a seller of goods is to pay extra attention to orders using a freight forwarding company's address. For PO's like these, it would be smart to build in business logic for some extra vetting to ensure the purchaser's legitimacy and help prevent fraud from the start.
That is why we are providing a list of all the freight forwarders we could find. We recommend using this list to detect matches between an order's shipping address and a freight forwarder's. To do this, run an order's shipping address through our DOTS Address Validation – US service and use the BarcodeDigits field as a unique identifier for an address. If the BarcodeDigits address matches a freight forwarder's address, the order should be flagged for some additional vetting to verify its authenticity.
Service Objects is committed to helping our clients avoid fraud however we can, and this list and the business logic is just one strategy that can make a real difference. If you need help setting up our address validation tools, please feel free to contact us, we are always happy to help.
Most ecommerce merchants learn the hard way; orders and registrations from fraudulent sources cause financial, merchandise, and time losses. With the rise of mobile ecommerce and the proliferation of high-profile data breaches, you'll need the best information and tools available to combat fraud in your marketplace. The October 2017 Global Fraud Index reported a total of $57.8 billion in ecommerce fraud losses in eight major industries.
Ecommerce fraud continues to grow, and the best way to protect yourself is a good defense. Here are some of the most troubling fraud issues ecommerce merchants face, and how to limit your exposure.
Identity theft is defined as the fraudulent acquisition and use of a person's private identifying information, usually for financial gain. Financial identity theft through credit card fraud is what most people envision when they think of identity theft.
Identity thieves use a person's identifying information, such as name and address, or an existing credit card to make a purchase on your website. Frequently, this data is acquired in a breach or skimming scam and sold on the black market before a victim even knows they've been compromised.
DOTS Order Validation can help identify if a user is who they claim to be by cross-checking the information provided at the point-of-sale, such as Ship To and Bill To address, phone number, and Banking Identification Number (BIN). IP address location is also compared to the billing and shipping addresses to determine if the order should be flagged.
Order Validation assigns individual quality scores to each input and a composite quality score to the overall transaction. You determine your quality score threshold, which is used to flag suspicious transactions for your team to review or reject.
Your team can review and manage flagged transactions before the order is fulfilled.
A chargeback occurs when a customer disputes a transaction and their payment is returned to their account. Sometimes this is referred to as "friendly fraud," meaning it was a misunderstanding on the part of the consumer. Perhaps they didn't read the fine print to see that they were signing up for a subscription with recurring fees, for example.
Frequently, chargebacks are caused by a fraudster either using stolen financial information to make a purchase or by lying and claiming they never received the product. Friendly or not, chargebacks cost your customer service team time, both interfacing with the customer and researching the issue.
Chargebacks are particularly nasty because you lose product, incur shipping costs, chargeback fees AND they hurt your standing with creditors over time. If your business reaches the high-risk threshold for your industry your processing rates will increase, or worse – your processor could drop you.
DOTS Order Validation can again flag risky transactions by cross-checking customer information and location elements through more than 200 proprietary tests, resulting in a quality score based on the validity of the information. Order Validation also provides a record of the order with all the information you need to argue a chargeback should one occur.
Order Validation also helps your customers correct typos in shipping info at the point of entry, so you can avoid chargebacks from misdelivered shipments and any related customer service headaches.
With the rising sales of prepaid credit cards and gift cards, the frequency of scams involving these cards has risen. There are many types of prepaid and gift card fraud, involving both the sale or loading of cards, and using prepaid or gift cards to make a purchase. High risk cards can cost you on either end of the transaction.
High risk cards can also hurt you if your product or service is offered on a payment plan. The first payment on a prepaid card might be approved, but subsequent payment transactions could return insufficient funds. Not only do you have product loss, you'll incur additional costs attempting to collect the debt internally or settle for a fraction of the debt through a collections service, if you can collect at all.
DOTS BIN Validation uses the Bank Identification Number (BIN), comprised of the first six digits of a card number, to identify the issuing bank and card-type, including those higher risk prepaid and gift cards. Cross-referencing the BIN with user phone and address information can help you identify a high-risk transaction.
BIN Validation also provides the name and phone number of the issuing bank, so you can call to verify flagged transactions.
Validation services help your team stop wasting time identifying and troubleshooting fraudulent transactions, and spend more time managing transactions flagged as high-risk before they become a problem.
It's increasingly important to protect your business from fraudulent transactions. Implementing an API can literally stop fraud before it even begins, right at the point of sale, and in real-time. Learn more about how Order Validation or BIN Validation can help you prevent fraud and enjoy the benefits of improved customer satisfaction and more efficient resource management.


text:
package com.zhihudailytest.Utils;

import android.content.Context;
import android.content.SharedPreferences;

import com.zhihudailytest.MyApplication;

/**
 * Created by Administrator on 2016/8/2.
 */
public class SPUtils {
    public static SharedPreferences.Editor getEditor(){
        SharedPreferences.Editor editor= MyApplication.ApplicationContext
                .getSharedPreferences("daily_user", Context.MODE_PRIVATE).edit();
        return editor;
    }

    public static SharedPreferences getSP(){
        SharedPreferences sharedPreferences=MyApplication.ApplicationContext
                .getSharedPreferences("daily_user",Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
        return sharedPreferences;
    }
    public static  SharedPreferences.Editor getThemeEditor(){
        SharedPreferences.Editor editor= MyApplication.ApplicationContext
                .getSharedPreferences("daily_theme", Context.MODE_PRIVATE).edit();
        return editor;
    }
    public static SharedPreferences getThemeSP(){
        SharedPreferences sharedPreferences=MyApplication.ApplicationContext
                .getSharedPreferences("daily_theme",Context.MODE_PRIVATE);
        return sharedPreferences;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Norwegian Cruise Line offers a variety of voyages travelling up and down the East and West coasts of Canada and Alaska. No matter which itinerary you choose, it will be full of unforgettable experiences - there's something to suit everyone on an NCL Alaska cruise.
Choosing which cruise to take could be a difficult decision – would you prefer an Alaska cruise, a shorter hop between America and Canada, or a more extensive tour encompassing New England, Nova Scotia and Quebec? Our Canada Travel Specialists can help you decide on which sailing will create your holiday of a lifetime.
Whether you are cruising alone, as a couple or with family, Norwegian Cruise Line's ships have more than enough activities and excursions to keep everyone entertained. Children and teenagers have their own clubs, giving Mum and Dad the well-earned chance to do their own thing and relax.
Norwegian Cruise Line's Freestyle cruising concept means that you are free to plan your days your way with your own schedule - this includes deciding when you dine and with whom. Onboard a Norwegian Cruise ship, you'll sleep easy thanks to the wonderfully comfortable cabins, and be kept entertained by the plethora of fun activities and entertainment that comes as standard on their ships.
Canada Travel Specialists will ensure that you find the right Norwegian Cruise Line itinerary, no matter whether you are looking for a family adventure, a romantic getaway, a honeymoon that you will never forget, a solo voyage or a trip with your closest friends. We tailor everything around you and take care of every detail. Speak to our experts about how we can help you design your dream cruise to Alaska, Canada and the USA.


text:
Morahan, Christopher (1929-)
One of British television's most accomplished directors, Christopher Morahan has enjoyed an enormously varied career spanning five decades, from the live drama of Emergency - Ward 10 (ITV, 1957-59) to the expensively glossy The Jewel in the Crown (ITV, 1984) and several collaborations with Simon Gray . He has also directed numerous acclaimed stage productions.
Born in London on 9 July 1929, he was educated at Highgate School, where he acted in the dramatic society's production of 'The Doctor's Dilemma'. Abandoning an early ambition to become an architect, he studied at Michel Saint-Denis 's Old Vic Theatre School before becoming a stage manager. Disillusioned with the state of early 1950s British theatre he switched to television, first as an assistant floor manager for the BBC and then at ATV , cutting his directorial teeth on the popular medical soap Emergency - Ward 10 .
During the early 1960s he directed plays for the likes of Armchair Theatre (ITV, 1963-64) and episodes of Z Cars (BBC, 1962-64) before directing the three-part World of George Orwell (BBC, 1965), including a re-working of '1984' (tx. 28/11/1965), with Nigel Kneale updating his own script for 1954's Rudolph Cartier production. Morahan's long-missing version was among some 70 British dramas rediscovered at the US Library of Congress in 2010 , and was marked by imaginative use of studio sets.
More remarkable, though, was the four-part Talking to a Stranger (BBC, 1966), written by John Hopkins and charting the gradual disintegration of a dysfunctional family from the perspective of each of its four members. Morahan's harrowing production was heralded as a coming-of-age for television drama, while its largely theatre-trained cast - including Maurice Denham , Judi Dench and Michael Bryant - re-awakened the director's interest in the stage. With encouragement from Peter Hall he embarked on a dual career in the theatre, with successful engagements at the Royal Court and the National Theatre .
As the BBC 's head of plays from 1972 to 1976 he championed the work of Stephen Frears , Alan Clarke and Alan Bennett . Perhaps the boldest of his commissions was Jim Allen 's Days of Hope (BBC, 1975), a fiercely revisionist historical serial directed by Ken Loach , which detailed the lives of a working-class family between WWI and the 1926 general strike. For the remainder of the 1970s he concentrated mainly on stage work, but returned to television to produce and co-direct the much-feted Raj drama The Jewel in the Crown . Morahan's unlikely follow-up to that success was his first feature film, the madcap Clockwise (1985), starring John Cleese .
His 1987 stage production of Simon Gray 's 'Melon' began a fruitful collaboration which extended into television. 'After Pilkington' (Screen Two, BBC, tx. 25/1/1987) saw two childhood friends reunited in the search for a missing archaeologist; its blend of mystery and black humour won it the best fiction prize at the Prix Italia . 'Old Flames' (Screen Two, BBC, tx. 14/1/1990) was followed by 'The Common Pursuit' (Great Performances, BBC, tx. 8/3/1992), an adaptation of Gray 's earlier stage success tracing the lives of six Cambridge undergraduates over two decades. Morahan and Gray 's last television project was the two-part Unnatural Pursuits (BBC, 1992), with Alan Bates as self-destructive playwright Hamish Partt - a character loosely based on Gray himself.
In the meantime Morahan chilled audiences with Paper Mask (BBC, tx. 14/9/1990), in which Paul McGann 's hospital orderly impersonated a recently deceased doctor to deadly effect, while Ashenden (BBC, 1991) added a mounting sense of ennui to David Pirie 's adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham 's WWI espionage tales.
Later work included The Peacock Spring (BBC, 1996), featuring the screen debut of his daughter Hattie , and A Dance to the Music of Time (BBC, 1997), co-directed with fellow veteran Alvin Rakoff . Feature-length works included Hitchcockian thriller Element of Doubt (1996) and medical satire HR (BBC, 2007). He has continued to work regularly in the theatre, and in 2011 was made a CBE for services to drama.
Richard Hewett
FILM & TV CREDITS
From the BFI's filmographic database
Selected credits
Clockwise (1985)
John Cleese-starring comedy about a headmaster having a very bad day
Long lost remake of Orwell's classic dystopian nightmare
Ashenden (1991)
Spy drama adapted from Somerset Maugham's stories
Emergency - Ward 10 (1957-67)
British TV's first long-running medical drama series
In the Secret State (1985)
Gripping thriller about intelligence and counter-subversion
Jewel in the Crown, The (1984)
Acclaimed drama series set in the 1940s Indian Raj
Talking to a Stranger (1966)
Landmark drama of family tragedy featuring a young Judi Dench
Z Cars (1962-78)
Groundbreaking cop drama introducing new grit and realism
Related people and organisations
Clarke, Alan (1935-1990)
Director, Writer, Producer

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Jeff Jendryk hits the ball against Brazil at the FIVB Volleyball Nations League on June 3, 2018 in Goiania, Brazil.
The U.S. men's volleyball team saw its perfect record fall on Sunday in Goiania, Brazil, at the FIVB Volleyball Nations League tournament, but nonetheless came out of the second weekend of play ranked third with a 5-1 record.
Team USA dropped a close match in five sets to host Brazil, which is now second in the standings, 21-25, 20-25, 25-19, 25-20, 20-18.
The U.S. went up 2-0 on Brazil to start the match. The first set wasn't without controversy, as Brazil got a yellow card for disputing a call. Then in the second set, two-time Olympian Matt Anderson's 11 kills and one ace led the Americans to a second win in a row.
Brazil came back in the third, aided in part by 10 errors committed by the Americans, then took the fourth set as well to force a fifth and deciding set. The U.S. held a 16-15 lead but Brazil scored the next two points. Once again, the U.S. tied it but despite three match points, still fell to the Brazilians. Anderson led all scorers with 23 points on 22 kills and one ace.
Team USA started the weekend's matches against Japan on Friday. A poor start in which the Americans made a total of 25 errors saw them drop the first two sets. Coach John Speraw made a number of substitutions and changes, including bringing in Ben Patch, Kawika Shoji, Thomas Jaeschke and Taylor Averill, and the changes proved to be the right move as the U.S. bounced back to win 23-25, 13-25, 25-18, 25-20, 15-10. Patch led the team with 14 kills and one block and outside hitter Aaron Russell had 11 kills, two blocks and one ace in his first game with the U.S. team following the conclusion of his season in Italy.
Then on Saturday, the U.S. improved to 5-0 in the tournament with a 25-23, 25-21, 25-11 win over South Korea that moved the Americans into second place behind Poland. Once again, the U.S. started slowly but made up a three-point deficit in the first set and continued to battle until 2014 Youth Olympian T.J. DeFalco ended things with a kill off the block.
After making 11 errors in the first set, the U.S. would commit just 12 over the following two sets combined as it finally round its rhythm. The starting lineup consisted of Anderson at opposite, Micah Christenson at setter, Jake Langlois and DeFalco at outside hitter, David Smith and Averill at middle blocker and Erik Shoji at libero.
The tournament now moves to Ottawa, Ontario, beginning June 8 when the U.S. faces Germany.


text:
Q: How to reference one XML document from a second XML document In relational databases, the use of primary keys and foreign keys are commonly used to link records across different tables.  I'm wondering if I can do the same sort of thing with XML documents.  That is, I would like one XML document to contain an element whose value 'points to' the 'primary key' or something similar (maybe the root node?) of a second XML document.  The idea is, it would be a reference (kind of similar to a foreign key) to the second document.
My motivation for this is I don't want to store all the content in a single file/document (for many reasons, including data redundancy) but rather in separate files.  This link more or less describes what I'm trying to accomplish and suggests some alternatives, but it is restricted to having all the content in a single file (which I don't want to have).
Maybe the hierarchal nature of XML is just too different from a relational database that what I'm trying to do doesn't make sense.
Assuming there is a way to do this, by first preference would be to have a solution that uses XML standards of some variety.  Ideally, this would also result in some tooling support (in my case, in an XML editor in Visual Studio would be the ideal case).  Failing a standards based solution, if there is a "Microsoft solution" to the problem that would be okay as well.  Finally, if no standard or MS solution exists, I would be curious to hear thoughts on a custom solution (or even feedback saying what I'm trying to do just isn't going to work).
Thank you!

A: The traditional solution is to use URLs. If the files all live in the same place, relative URLs will do very nicely. Navigating a link is as simple as opening the URL.
If you want to point to things inside the target document, there are W3C standards - XPointer and XLink - but i don't think they're well supported by tools. You might just write such links as a combination of a URL and an element ID or an XPath expression - you could put the ID or XPath in the fragment identifier of the URL.

A: XInclude one document into the other? Last I looked, .NET didn't support XIncudes, but there's an open source XInclude.NET project which adds that support.


If you're using Google Analytics together with Google Adwords, you can create targeted, personalized remarketing campaigns.
Instead of simply running a blanket retargeting ad to all site visitors, you can create micro-segments based on each visitor's behaviors, interests and buyer persona.
It all starts with Google Segments.
In Google Analytics, Segments let you create groups of visitors based on practically any criteria.
For more information on setting up Custom Dimensions with Transpose, view our knowledge base article.
For more information on Segments, view Google's help article.
With your segments created in Google Analytics, you can now share those segments with Google AdWords and turn them into audiences available for remarketing.
Google provides a guide on how to share segments with Google AdWords. We've also provided a screenshot below of how this works.
With Google Analytics, Custom Dimensions and Segments, you can create a powerful, personalized remarketing experience.
What are your thoughts? Have you tried using Google Analytics Segments with Google remarketing?


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Local Government Areas (LGAs): Ashburton, Carnarvon, Cue, East Pilbara, Leonora, Menzies, Morawa, Murchison, Ngaanyatjarraku, Northampton, Perenjori, Sandstone, Shark Bay, Upper Gascoyne, Wiluna, Yalgoo.


text:
Persistent Raids on Clean Energy Fund Set Back CHP Timetable
Tom Johnson | September 10, 2012 | Energy & Environment
Advocates argue that combined heat and power is the most efficient way to develop new power generation
The state's repeated raids on funds meant to spur the building of combined heat and power plants is threatening to undermine an ambitious goal in the Energy Master Plan to develop cleaner and more efficient ways of producing electricity, according to industry advocates.
U.S. Clean Heat & Power Association
Energy Master Plan
State Seeks to Cut Back Aggressive Energy Efficiency Goals
State May Slash Clean Energy Funds by Half
If so, New Jersey will lose an opportunity to reduce some of the highest electric bills in the country, numerous speakers told commissioners of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities at a hearing Friday in Trenton on a revised clean energy spending plan.
The hearing reflected the increasing frustration among business lobbyists over the high cost of the clean energy program, the majority of which is raised by surcharges on commercial and industrial customers. The business community also is unhappy about spending priorities, saying not enough funds are allocated to projects that could reduce their electric and gas bills.
The revised budget is necessary because New Jersey's clean energy funds have been continually diverted to balance state budgets. In the past two budgets, $331.5 million in clean energy funds has been used to plug deficits.
With the Christie administration and Democratic-controlled Legislature diverting funds from clean energy programs to help balance the state budget, one of the areas most hard hit has been an effort to promote CHP, as the technology is frequently dubbed.
In the new revised budget, funding to promote CHP projects is lowered by $21 million. In addition, industry advocates cautioned against shifting financing for combined heat and power from grants to a revolving loan program.
Moving away from grants to a revolving loan program will have a profound negative impact on participation from industry, according to Farley Hunter, speaking for the New Jersey Large Energy Users Coalition. "Ultimately, fewer projects will be moving forward.
If clean energy advocates were hoping to convince the state to put more funding back in the program, BPU Commissioner Joseph Fiordaliso, the presiding officer at the hearing, quickly ruled that option out.
While nothing in the proposed straw budget is "etched in stone," Fiordaliso told those looking for increased funding, "it's not going to happen."
Proponents tout CHP is touted as the most cost-effective way to build new power generation, a step that would reduce energy costs not only for the hospital, institutions and manufacturers who build the plant but for all ratepayers as well. Building the plants would reduce congestion on the power grid, which tends to jack up electricity prices, particularly in times of high demand, such as hot summer days.
That view is also reflected in an energy master plan adopted by the Christie administration, which proposes to build 1,500 megawatts of CHP by 2020, a goal that appears to becoming increasingly difficult to meet. Several speakers argued the state's diversion of funds targeted for CHP projects make businesses more dubious about committing to the cost of such facilities.
Only 38 megawatts of CHP projects have been built in New Jersey recently, according to Gearoid Foley, director of the Mid-Atlantic Clean Energy Application Center for the U.S. Department of Energy. He told the board there is a need to develop a multiyear consistent program for funding CHP projects, suggesting an allocation of $15 million annually over four years.
Andrew Skok, senior director of Fuel Cent Energy, agreed, saying a multiyear and predictable funding scheme is essential as are grant incentives. "Without a grant, no project is economically viable," he said.
Others also criticized efforts to shift from a grant incentive to a revolving loan program, a step anticipated in a proposed new four-year funding scenario for clean energy programs in the commercial and industrial sector, not only for CHP projects.
In 2012, the clean energy budget allocated $133 million in incentives and $20 million in loans. By 2016, the program anticipates allocating $86 million in loans and only $6 million in incentives for commercial and industrial energy efficiency projects.
As in the past, even state officials criticized the program's penchant for collecting more from ratepayers than they spend each year, a practice that has made the fund more susceptible to diversion of money by various administrations and legislatures.


text:
Team Building Humor Strengthens a Team Identity or Spirit
Paul McGhee, PhD, www.LaughterRemedy.com
"Teamwork is when other people do your work for you." Dogbert
A woman was promoted to a managerial position, giving her a position superior to that of former members of her team. Knowing that this would create conflict with team members, she called a meeting to deal with the transition. She said, "Don't think of me as your boss. Just think of me as a friend—a friend who's always right!"
[Adapted from P. McGhee, Health, Healing and the Amuse System: Humor as Survival Training. Call 800-228-0810 to order.]
Most companies emphasize the importance of building a team spirit or team identity at all levels of the organization. The idea is that if individual employees feel like a meaningful part of a larger whole, they are more likely to take the initiative to do whatever is necessary to achieve the goals of the team. This helps assure the success of the team, and successful teams mean a successful company. The challenge of creating dynamic and effective teams that work well together has become greater in recent years, however, as the employees composing teams have become more culturally diverse. Many companies now even have "virtual" teams—individuals who work together at a distance and rarely have direct physical contact with each other.
All managers soon learn that you can set a group of employees up to work as a team, but that doesn't mean they will feel like a team. With the broad range of cultural backgrounds, personalities and working styles represented on the team, conflicts and differences of opinion are bound to occur. This can trigger cycles of negativity and complaining, which generally serve to weaken morale and team spirit and reduce productivity. Managers need to be prepared for this problem and act proactively to create a management style and work environment conducive to strengthening team spirit.
Any professional race car driver will tell you that the race can be won or lost in the pits. Each member of the pit crew must coordinate their work with the efforts of others, and take the initiative to do whatever it takes to deal with unanticipated problems. Similarly, you need the full participation of everyone on your team for your company to come out ahead. This is especially the case in companies that have shifted in recent years to a more horizontal management structure.
Humor is a powerful tool in building more cohesive groups. And this is important, because cohesive groups work together better in pursuing common goals—especially in situations where there are expectations for high performance. Managers in a variety of work settings who initiate humor have been shown to be more likely to become an integral part of a socially cohesive group.1 Status differences with other team members are also minimized by humor. So joking or other forms of humor clearly provide an effective way of breaking down barriers if a manager wants to do so.
A successful team must be flexible, and must know how to reduce the tension that results from conflicting ideas about how to deal with a problem. One plan will eventually be seen as being the best solution, and some may be upset that their approach was not adopted. Humor effectively eases this tension and upset and strengthens employee bonds that are threatened by failure of one's own pet solution.
Teamwork means never having to take all the blame yourself.
A real test of pulling together as a team comes when facing a difficult deadline or other task that requires everyone to work overtime. Paul Malone, a business administration professor, has provided a great example of this in a non-business setting. He tells of an experience he had as a trainee in a U. S. Army Ranger course—a course designed to simulate combat situations.
"Our class . . . had just completed a 60-hour patrol. The patrol had gone poorly. The critiques . . . had been extremely harsh. We were all utterly exhausted and miserable, without sleep for almost three days, and caked with the mud of waste-deep swamps. Our only desire was to rest. To our collective disbelief and anguish, we received the order: 'Prepare immediately for another patrol.' Our sullen group moved slowly into the briefing area . . . [where the briefing ranger told a joke that was appropriate to the situation]. Something almost magical occurred. Slowly at first, the bedraggled group of trainees responded into what became a full minute of hilarious laughter. Suddenly, the environment changed; the Ranger became a fellow man, not a torturer; the men who had laughed together became a team (emphasis added by McGhee) with a revitalized common cause. For at least a while, the exhaustion and discomfort of the group were forgotten."2
Employees in many types of business often have to pull together and work as much overtime as necessary to get the job done—sometimes for weeks. Humor can be used to re-motivate people and lift their spirits, helping produce a frame of mind in which people are willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
If you are a manager, sharing jokes or other humor with members of the team is a great way to break down barriers, but you must be sure that this joking relationship does not cause you to fail to use your authority in situations where you should. There is evidence that this erodes the respect members of the team have for you.3
It is crucial to take steps to assure that only "positive" forms of humor occur within teams. Negative forms of humor can have just the opposite of the team-strengthening effects discussed here. The best general rule is to always avoid any form of putdown humor in work settings (see article at this website on negative humor). Even though you know you're only joking, it's just a matter of time before someone is offended. And this immediately begins to disrupt smooth team performance.
The Problem with Team-Building Retreats
Many companies set up annual weekend retreats or other "fun" events to boost the bonding and sense of camaraderie that generally marks effective teams. The retreat provides an opportunity for people to escape work-related pressures and just relax. Specific fun activities are planned up with the purpose of assuring that the desired bonding process will occur.
Companies realize that this is the kind of atmosphere that best builds the kind of close relationships required to enable fellow employees to work together harmoniously toward a common goal (even on the tough days) when they get back to the office. Thus, even companies which don't normally encourage a lighter, fun atmosphere on the job do recognize the power of fun and laughter to create team spirit and strengthen a team identity.
The problem with weekend retreats is precisely the fact that it is a retreat from the usual work atmosphere and approach to relating to fellow employees. Once they get back in the office, they know that they must leave their sense of humor and the idea of making work fun at the door. Employees are expected to keep the team spirit generated by the retreat alive the rest of the year—but abandon the kinds of behaviors that generated that feeling on the retreat. The predictable outcome is that the emotional connection between employees is quickly lost as they once again get caught up in the daily pressures and heavy work load that automatically go with their job.
When a company realizes that employees who bring a lighter attitude toward their work 1) want to do their jobs well, 2) do not use humor and fun on the job as an excuse for goofing off, 3) generally use good judgment about when any kind of humor or laughter is appropriate, 4) can retain a high level of professionalism and competence while keeping their sense of humor, and 5) become more skilled at sustaining a frame of mind conducive to peak performance and quality service, the resistance to allowing humor and a sense of fun on the job out of the retreat site and into the office generally disappears.
Companies like Southwest Airlines and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream are the best known models for putting fun to work, but a growing number of successful companies are bringing a lighter attitude to the workplace every year. These companies have no trouble keeping team spirit alive throughout the year.
Even managers at IBM have experimented with the idea of making work fun. In 1996, the manager of a new IBM sales unit (consisting of 75 sales people) created an orchestra out of a bunch of musically inept sales personnel and had a 15-minute "concert" each morning in the office. The concerts always generated a lot of laughs, and each salesperson hit a gong when they made their first sale of the day. They also moved a racehorse bearing their picture out of a starting cage. According to the originator of this idea, "I needed to bring a very diverse set of people together around a common goal . . . I had to make it fun." Her unit's sales rose 30% that year.4 This approach gave the manager a company-wide reputation as a real motivator of employees.
How Humor Creates Winning Teams
1) Removal of Barriers that Separate Management from Other Employees
There are certain barriers that naturally exist between managers and non-management members of the team—the most important of which is power and authority. When managers show that they can laugh with everyone else in the group, and—especially—can poke fun at themselves, the barriers come down, and the manager is viewed as a "regular person," like everyone else on the team. This is essential to open communication between bosses and their subordinates (see below).
Research has shown that when the manager initiates jokes and is also occasionally the target of jokes, s/he tends to be viewed as a friend, rather than a boss.5 This friendship, in turn, opens up comfortable and honest communication. The individuals conducting this research argue that the increased group cohesiveness that results from shared humor does result in increased team productivity, but only when performance norms are high. Since performance norms have continued to rise over the past decade, virtually all employees are now confronted with such high performance norms.
2) Emotional Bonding
As noted above, shared laughter and the spirit of fun generates a bonding process in which people feel closer together—especially when laughing in the midst of adversity. This emotional glue enables team members to stick together on the tough days, when members of the team need each other to complete a project and assure quality customer service.
3) Open Communication
A common complaint in many organizations is a lack of good communication with management. A lighter atmosphere, and a manager who shares humor with the team, is a powerful tool in opening up the channels of communication. It frees team members up to communicate openly, without fear of reprisal. This is especially important when an employee knows that his/her opinion differs from that of management.
4) Trust
One of the by-products shared laughter and good open communication is a growing sense of trust. This is also, of course, partly a result of the emotional bonding that occurs through shared positive humor. When comfortable and open communication is lacking, it breeds a sense of distrust, and there is no way that a team can function effectively when this occurs. Without trust, communications can quickly become defensive or distorted, setting up future misunderstandings.
5) Improved Morale
When teams have fun on the job and share laughter, they enjoy their work more; and people who like their jobs work more effectively together. This is an especially important benefit of humor on the job, since employee morale has been dropping in many companies in recent years.
6) Reduced Job Stress
Other articles at this website document humor's power in helping employees manage job stress. By reducing daily stress levels, humor and a lighter attitude help sustain the focused mental state required to do one's work effectively when under pressure; it allows you to get a lot done and get it done quickly. It gives employees the emotional flexibility required to bend without breaking.
Also, as anyone who's ever worked on a team knows, even when it's only a few team members who are experiencing stress, their emotional state can quickly spread to other team members, interfering with the entire team's performance. The greater the percentage of team members who receive the stress-reducing effect of humor, the greater the team's chances of success on a project.
7) Increased Creativity.
Another article at this website shows that humor is a natural stimulus for creativity. It opens up new ways of viewing things and stimulates innovative ideas for solutions to difficult problems. This effect is especially important in team settings, where the ideas of one person can serve to trigger novel ideas for resolving problems in someone else.
As noted above, a lighter atmosphere reduces fear of rejection of one's ideas, making team members more willing to take risks in proposing unusual ideas. Also when your own ideas are not adopted, a sense of humor helps "let go" of the upset we all occasionally feel when someone else's ideas are judged more valuable that our own. This frees you up to work more effectively with the ideas the team puts up on the table.
So you have every reason to Lighten Up! Teams that Laugh, work!
1. Duncan, W.J. Perceived humor and social network patterns in a sample of task-oriented groups: A reexamination of prior research. Human Relations, 1984, 37, 895-907.
Blau, P. The Dynamics of Bureaucracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
2. Malone, P. Humor: A double-edged tool for today's managers? Academy of Management Review, 1980, 5, 357-360.
3. Duncan, W.J. & Feisal, J.P. No laughing matter: Patters of Humor in the workplace. Organizational Dynamics, 1989, 17, 18-30.
4. Lancaster, H. Your career may be a laugh track away from the fast track. Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1996, p. B1.
5. Duncan & Feisal, 1989.


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Keeping Above Water: Is Coastal Living in Jeopardy? Part IX
By: Chantelle Meyer/Siuslaw News and Jared Anderson/Siuslaw News - Updated: 1 year ago
Life in the Siuslaw seeks to find 'its own heartbeat' amidst economic challenges
Jan. 17, 2018 — For Nyra Campbell, life on the Siuslaw has not always been easy. She initially came here to escape expectations placed on her as a high school senior, choosing a relationship and mushroom picking over the option of a four-year college. In her time in Florence, Campbell has found new love, had three children, worked a variety of jobs, owned a business and found ways to "keep above water."
"I'm not a worrier," she said. "I don't worry about things, I guess. I'm more into super positive thinking, which I think has gotten me where I am in this town. With my background, I feel like I am not some major success. But we're above water. And our kids are happy."
Campbell and her husband, Derrick Vanduch, own West Lane Plumbing, and Campbell also works as a server at Waterfront Depot in Historic Old Town Florence.
"My past experience in life has been that things always work out," she said.
Campbell grew up in Beaverton, a city that she says has a lot of options for youth. After her dad died when she was 16, she finished high school and moved to Florence two weeks after her graduation party.
"I just was over the whole, 'Where are you going to college?' question. I was tired of it. I thought I was going to go to Florence and pick mushrooms, because the person I met picked mushrooms and made lots of money. I thought, 'This will be fun for a year,'" she said.
Twenty years later, she is still here.
In many ways, it has been a struggle. From being a single mom to working 14-hour days as a server, Campbell has paid her dues. She had to make new friends as a young person in a new town. She had to learn new skills. She had to find time to flirt with Vanduch, when they both worked long hours and her daughter was still a baby. It took two years before the two actually formed a relationship.
"Derrick worked at the auto parts store, and I needed brake fluid for my jalopy of a car. He was flirtatious and talkative. That was that. He was sincere and sweet," she said. "I needed brake fluid all the time because my car was a total piece, so I would go in there. I had devised a plan early on to get the smallest amount of brake fluid I could so I could see him."
Campbell couldn't visit the "cute parts guy" every day, but it seemed like she stopped in once a week.
"I got lucky I guess. My husband is 11 years older than me, had never been married before, and didn't have kids. So how that worked out is beyond my brain," she laughed. "Most people our age have kids. They've been married. Or they've been through something. I feel like I brought more baggage into our relationship than he did by far. I was young and had a baby."
Once the two got together, they began facing new challenges. They had a son, and then Vanduch switched from the auto parts business to plumbing.
"I would say, at that point, it was a seven-year struggle with on and off jobs with him in the plumbing industry," Campbell said.
She described the apprenticeship process as needing both work hours and schooling. While plumbing can be a consistent business, Vanduch couldn't get an answer to his applications at existing businesses in the area. At one point, he couldn't continue with classes until he got more work hours.
"They basically said, 'You're two years ahead of school with no work hours to show for it. So we're putting your apprenticeship on hold,'" Campbell said. "He'd been applying all over, but all the companies in town just weren't hiring. … He had to write a letter that went to the board. They had a lot of meetings. Everybody within 200 miles within where we live said, 'Oh you need a job, come work here.' But nobody ever came through until he wrote this letter to the board and said, 'Look, I tried but no one in town wants me. They need employees, but they don't want me. I'm trying my best.'"
Vanduch eventually found a plumbing job in Eugene, but that brought its own issues.
"He was working for a company in Eugene, and I just had a baby. He would leave at 4:30 in the morning and come home at 10 at night. By then I had three kids and was working four days a week at a restaurant," Campbell said. "That might have been the hardest year. You just know that you're doing it for … a better life. And that's just what kind of kept us going."
Soon, the two were able to buy their own plumbing company.
"We're localized. We own our own company and we work in Florence. We're doing all right," Campbell said. "The problem right now is that we're really, really busy. We have no employees. And we have no one who wants to stay. No one wants to work. It's impossible to find employees."
Like others in the Siuslaw region, West Lane Plumbing has a hard time finding reliable workers, even when the company has work lined up. For Campbell, it means she does the office work, but sometimes has to help on calls. She regrets this because West Lane Plumbing was able to employ two plumbers when it was just getting started, but both employees are gone now.
"Sometimes I'm setting toilets or crawling under houses or digging ditches. Between raising three kids and dealing with plumbing, my own job, the paperwork for the company, answering the phone and doing the billing … When he springs it on me, 'Oh, nobody showed up today, can you help me dig this ditch, it's got to get done.' It's like, 'Um, I have 15 loads of laundry and a sink full of dishes and 12 people to call back.' And that's the biggest struggle right now. Juggling time."
Now that the kids are growing up — they have a 17-year-old daughter, an 11-year-old son and a four-year-old son — Campbell is getting another view of the Siuslaw as the three go through school and navigate life in a small town.
"It's not like our kids are close in age and I can condense my day around them," Campbell said. "The oldest is in sports and she travels all over. And she as a job and a driver's license. The middle boy just kind of wants to take everything he touches apart, and he's often covered in grease or dirt or something. And the youngest is hilarious and super active. They kind of have me spread out in different directions."
However, she has noticed that her kids have a hard time staying interested in school.
"I loved all my teachers growing up, which is what drove me to do well. I don't feel like that's necessarily the case here. Not to say that the teachers are bad teachers. I just think that my kids are not engaged in the same way."
Campbell is not sure why her kids aren't as engaged. Perhaps it's their personalities. Perhaps it's the lack of programs at the school, cut by funding decreases. Whatever the case may be, getting her kids interested in school will lead them on a positive track for the future, Campbell believes. That may or may not include college, and may or not include the Siuslaw region.
"Parents are the best examples for kids. Neither of us went to college so they don't feel like that's important. I just don't think my kids get the concept that they can do whatever they want. You're always told that as a kid. But only now that I'm almost 40, I'm like, 'Oh, I really could have done whatever I wanted.' And I could still, probably today, if I set my mind to it."
Campbell wants her kids to at least look at options outside the area, even if they eventually move back home.
"The area definitely has its own heartbeat," she said. "Most people I talk to that have lived here move back. And I hear from everyone that they love Florence. They are moving from California or wherever and say, 'We've driven all over and we just like Florence.' Which to me is always interesting."
Its Own Heartbeat
One of those people who moved away and came back is Ellen Huntingdon, who returned to Florence after attending college abroad in Tokyo. She has since established herself as the marketing coordinator at Oregon Pacific Bank and as the chairwoman for Florence Area Chamber of Commerce's Downtown Revitalization Team (DRT).
"I think the area has changed, even in the almost five years I've been here since I finished college," Huntingdon said. "When I first came back, I saw a lot of kids who, after they graduated high school, got jobs in town, which was a great option. Then, in the last couple of years, students I went to school with have been coming back to Florence. I feel like that's almost an upward trend. The hard part is finding housing or decent jobs, which is what this is all about. There's definitely the desire for younger people to move back to Florence, we just need to make sure there's options for them to be able to live and work here."
Through her work on DRT, Huntingdon has tried to bring more focus to small businesses and the City of Florence's upcoming work to revitalize the Florence Urban Renewal District, which encompasses Old Town, Highway 101 from the Siuslaw River Bridge to Ninth Street, and Highway 126 from its intersection with Highway 101 east to Spruce Street. The main component of this is the ReVision Streetscaping Project, which is set to begin in earnest this spring.
"I'm really hopeful for the City of Florence," Huntingdon said. "We're all moving in the right direction. I think ReVision is going to be a great opportunity that is going to make Florence an even better attraction and increase the quality of living for people who are local."
Huntingdon is uniquely positioned to see areas of growth from serving on DRT and working at Oregon Pacific Bank, which has a culture that promotes volunteering and community service.
"I see a lot more young people here," she said. "I went down to do the trick-or-treating in Old Town this year, since I have a niece now, and I was amazed that there were so many young people and families with kids. The streets were just packed. Then we went down for the Christmas celebration and to see Santa. … There are definitely people in town who want to be here and enjoy living in Florence. I think people are gravitating toward places that have quality of life, rather than just having the best high-paying job.
"It would be nice if we could offer both."
Florence City Councilor Joshua Greene has worked with the city and Florence Urban Renewal on the upcoming ReVision project. He also has a small business, The Archives, which restores and markets the iconic work of photographer Milton H. Greene, who is famous for his photos of Marilyn Monroe and other stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
"I would like to see more small businesses in Florence like ours, quite frankly," Greene said. "I think the general reason why we don't attract younger people who do things online, which is what I really am, is we don't have that demographic here. I'm 63. I fit into the retirement scenario. But 20, 30 or 40-year-olds who want to have their business online, they want a hipper area. They're not here, and we're trying to attract those people. I believe that's the wave of the next generation."
Successes such as Siuslaw Broadband and Hyak's fiber-optic network project could make online businesses more attractive and more viable in the Siuslaw region.
"They are going to need fiber and online capability for their functionality," Greene said. "There's a call for these types of businesses, whether it's photography, graphics or gaming. All those things can be done from remote locations. I think we're going to attract those businesses here."
Huntingdon said, "The main thing to focus on for young people is getting more businesses that stay open a little later. We're already seeing that with things that Homegrown is doing, or with City Lights Cinemas. There are businesses that are catering to a younger crowd."
"As we get more and more younger people moving here, more and more services will be catering to them," Greene added. "More restaurants will have different food menus."
These elements work to make the area "hipper," as Greene said, or at least more accessible to people who keep odd hours or who want to socialize in a setting that fits their demographic.
"Now more than ever, there is a place to have small businesses here," Greene said. "Whether it's a product-driven business or a service business, I think that online is going to be a key factor, just like having a thriving highway. With the rebuild of Highway 101, I'm optimistic we're going to attract new investment and development, and Florence is going to grow up a little bit in a positive way. It's coming. I sense it coming more and more now."
Huntingdon agreed.
"I'm hopeful about the future and I think we're in a good path for growth and development," she said.
Growing Up In A Positive Way
A lot of the area's drive for future growth comes from the residents themselves. In addition, those people created the Siuslaw Vision — which came, in its entirety, out of community support and interest.
Siuslaw Vision 2025 Co-Chair Meg Spencer said, "One thing that stood out again and again within the region was the level of agreement around needing a vision. I've never been part of a visioning process like this, even from doing the strategic plan for the library. Something like this is so unusual. I think that's part of why this got so much momentum. There happened to be a lot of need, and need tends to drive action. It was a time of transition, a time of change."
The Ford Institute held an alumni celebration in 2014 to commemorate a rural leadership training it had held in the past. It reunited nonprofit and governmental leaders, volunteers and engaged community members from throughout western Lane County, who realized it was time for a shared vision to bring together the community.
"At the time, there was new leadership in town and new leadership at The Ford Institute, but there were also people who had been here and already had seen how far the region had come. I think it was just a real synergy," Spencer said.
Susy Lacer, a grant professional and Florence City Councilor, also served as a part-time coordinator for the Siuslaw Vision until this past December. "There's power in the Vision. It was a grassroots effort from the beginning and remains grassroots. It is entirely community-led work," she said. "The things that are happening now are because they are important to the community members, who are willing to step up. We provide enough of a framework, a little bit of support, encouragement, validation and those things, but it's entirely community led."
This grassroots group formed from 1,200 community members realizing that the Siuslaw region needed one common, unifying theme as it moved forward into the next 10 years. Of course, there are things Florence struggles with that Dunes City doesn't; Mapleton and Siuslaw school districts have separate needs; Upriver communities like Deadwood may not have a lot in common with Old Town Florence. But the 18,000 people who make up the region have more similarities than differences, especially in regard to the Vision's six focus areas: Working People, Happy People, Educated People, Connected People, Creative People and Active People.
People from all over the region have signed up for projects, including creating a Siuslaw region parks and recreation district, supporting local workforce development, establishing safe and affordable housing options and promoting public art. Every member becomes a Vision Keeper and is encouraged to follow their own passions within the Vision.
"What I love about the Vision is that it gives you that nudge, that little bit of organizational support, that little bit of, 'Hey, yeah, we think you can do this,' that makes it actually possible for people to tackle huge, crazy things," Spencer said. "I think that a big piece of what the Vision does is giving people permission to go out and get stuff done."
The Vision Keepers have "way more goals" for 2018, according to Lacer, and the community will see results in childcare, the parks district, partnership with the city and even a new community farmer's market.
Spencer said, "I've come to think of us as a catalyst. All we are is the tiny bit of yeast at the very beginning that sort of starts that process. I think the things that are happening are happening because there's so much other than the Vision involved. It's passion, community spirit and a little bit of money from donors. All of that adds up."
And the Vision fulfills its goals. The "Working People" category looks at bringing living-wage jobs to the region. The Vision hopes to contract three paid positions for three years, thanks to a $280,000 grant from The Ford Family Foundation.
"The people we hire are going to really step in and make that framework more solid," Spencer said. "I think bringing in grant funds to the area to support these contractors hopefully does a couple things: helping our Vision move forward, and helping us hit more of those marks."
In addition to working on the Siuslaw Vision, both Spencer and Lacer are involved with the Siuslaw Public Library District — Spencer as the library director and Lacer as the president for the board of directors. The library serves as the fiscal sponsor for the Vision.
While the Siuslaw Vision is only in its third year, the Siuslaw Public Library has served the region for 103 years.
Lacer said, "One of the reasons we picked the region that we did for the Vision was one, it matched the library district boundaries and two, it matched the Mapleton and Siuslaw school district boundaries. I don't think that's coincidence. I think it's bringing together everybody, of all ages, from the whole area."
According to Spencer, the two branches of the library serve an average of 500 people each day.
"We bring together that many people — it's like three percent of our region's population every single day. They're getting together, mixing it all up and hopefully taking stuff out the door, hearing a program or whatever. It is a place where people of all ages, all backgrounds, all political persuasions literally walk through the door every day," she said. "To me, that is the thing that helps create community conversation and creates a 'town square.'"
According to Siuslaw Public Library statistics, 95 percent of library patrons still visit the library to check out physical books, but the library provides multiple other resources, including free internet, newspapers and magazines, genealogical research material, language learning lessons, Spanish language books, a play area and reading time for young kids and activities for older kids, as well as space for meetings, movie nights, craft times, tax prep and music jam sessions.
"What I want to do is just increase what people can walk through the door for," Spencer said. "That is an exciting challenge for sure."
One goal of the Vision is to create more community centers, whether that is through a future parks district or a dedicated building. In the meantime, the Siuslaw Public Library continues to take steps into that role.
"In the modern world, books and collection items are so fundamental, but creating community dialogue is also fundamental to what a library is meant to be and do," Spencer said. "It makes perfect sense that we're serving as the fiscal sponsor of the Vision. What has come out of the Vision has really fed into the library, and hopefully vice versa."
Lacer said that community centers are things that multiple groups have expressed interest in, from the library to the schools, and from Lane Community College to area service groups.
"Community centers are one of those things that address all six elements of the Vision," she said.
In 2017, Siuslaw Public Library was named a Catalytic Community Building Organization by The Ford Family Foundation. Twenty agencies across the state were recognized, including several cities, a chamber of commerce, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and social services — but only one library.
Lacer said, "It was kind of a different cohort for a public library to get involved with, but I think it speaks to the strength of our library, its uniqueness and the role that it plays."
Spencer agreed.
"I think that has so much to do with the staff, and so much to do with our patrons. I have worked with some fantastic libraries, but I've never worked for one that is supported the way this one is," she said.
That support will continue as Spencer and the library follow through on goals set in a recent strategic plan. One of those goals is the formation of a library foundation.
According to Spencer, "The plan is to get that started by this summer, with the idea of doing some fundraising around the exciting things that people want to see. If we were to have a space that was a community center, we could triple our meeting space, and have it booked all the time. I'd love to have enough space to bring in really big exhibits, and I think the foundation will help make more of those things possible."
And the library does not just focus on Florence. Just as the Vision looks at the entire region — Glenada, Dunes City, Florence, Deadwood, Mapleton and Swisshome — the Siuslaw Public Library has a thriving presence in Mapleton to serve the Upriver community.
"We are seeing crazy growth out there," Spencer said. "That has a lot to do with staff who are really working to bring the school to the library, book groups, high school interns — and we're going to start showing movies there. A lot of that is our staff members … but it's just everything, and that's awesome."
She added, "Nowhere else Upriver do you have free internet access, or a place where you can come five days a week and see your neighbors. It's pretty cool."
Spencer and Lacer are joined by area artist and business owner Jo Beaudreau as the Vision's second co-chair. Together, the women bring excitement and energy for the new year.
"I think the fact that we share the river and share the library helps tie us all together," Spencer said.
Lacer agreed, saying, "It's a pretty cool time to live in the Siuslaw region."
The City of Florence has spent much of the last three years looking at ways to increase economic stability in western Lane County. One of those efforts was through the Housing and Economic Opportunities Project (HEOP), a group looking into necessary changes to Florence City Code to allow for accessory dwelling units and infill of residential zones, as well as looking at key areas to market to outside development.
Jesse Dolin is the city's economic development catalyst. He works with area businesses, encourages startups and attends many meetings a month with Florence's partners in economic development.
"Part of my learning is just making sense of all the organizations, understanding what they do and how we can best work together," Dolin said. "We need to all come together and understand what everyone is doing so we're not replicating our efforts and so we're sharing the best practices that are out there."
Dolin serves on several boards across the region, but, more importantly to him, he makes connections with people.
"It's really all about relationships and connecting with all our regional partners and beyond," he said, describing the various groups as puzzle pieces that work together within Lane County, the South Coast Development District, the Coastal Caucus and the State of Oregon. "In general, there is a great synergy among our partners, with the tribes and with the port. There's a renewed spirit, like a renaissance of Florence. We're really optimistic for 2018 to bring more opportunities."
New economic opportunities are coming because of the amount of work put in by city and county staff, but also from a community hungry to invite the world to "Come See What We See" — one of the taglines for Florence Area Chamber of Commerce.
Area residents know the joys of living on the Oregon coast, with its temperate climate, positive quality of life, numerous recreation activities and friendly, giving people. As certain demographics struggle with finding housing or jobs, the focus moves to community organizations that can help provide services, such as Siuslaw Outreach Services, food shares in Florence and Mapleton and the Friends of Florence cancer bus. People also volunteer, taking their time, resources and money and plugging them directly back into the community. They get involved with the Florence Master Recyclers, work a shift at the Oregon Coast Humane Society Thrift Store, join a group such as PEO Chapter FQ, Kiwanis Club of Florence, Soroptimist International and Florence Oregon Rotary, serve on a board of directors or city committee, support youth and find countless ways to support their neighbors.
For Campbell, she continues to make the choice to stay in Florence; where her husband and children have a home; where West Lane Plumbing takes in business; and where she can work doing a job she loves.
"It's a small town so everyone you know, knows someone else. Friends are pretty easy to make right away," she said. "When I moved here, it was a comfort zone because it wasn't overwhelming. It was a small town and it was pretty close knit. And it still seems that way today."
In the past 20 years, Campbell did go on to college, at Lane Community College Florence Center. She made her own opportunities, both with the business she shares with Vanduch and by staying for 10 years at Waterfront Depot.
"I love people. At work, I feel like I'm on a stage — I'm there to please. It's my job," she said. "I love the service industry and the whole combination of working with the kitchen and having connections with them and making customers happy on the floor. It's really kind of an orchestra to make sure everything is effective. I love it. I can't say the same for everyone I've ever worked with. In fact, I don't think I've ever met another waitress that loves it as much as me. But whether you like it or not, it's a great job to either sustain your life or get you from one place to another."
She said that working families such as hers or people in her economic bracket "keep this town afloat," but that people at higher incomes might not see it that way.
"There's definitely two sides of Florence. If you don't know the other one, whether it's the low income or the high income, you might not experience it because you have no reason to," she said. "I honestly feel like I'm better off than some of the people I went to school with. Yeah, I'm a waitress and it took me years to accept that this is my career, but I like it."
She has faced her frustration with feeling like there aren't options for her children by volunteering with the Siuslaw Youth Soccer Association to provide more recreation activities for area students and has enrolled her children in Children's Repertory of Oregon Workshops (CROW).
"People forget to look at the bigger picture and that we're a community," she said. "They who were once young and had their own children don't realize we're trying to form young, productive adults. If youth had more opportunity, that would be an option. … I'm on the board of the soccer program in town that Erin Linton, one of my good friends, started. She kind of went on her own to see who wanted to see soccer grow. So she individually went around and found people, and that's been awesome."
She wishes that a community or recreation center could bring more activities for youth, possibly housing athletics and the arts in one place for all ages.
"CROW is a really great group that's captured tons of kids that didn't have any other direction to go in," she said. "It's kind of how theater is in the first place — totally intriguing for people who feel like theater may have been their only outlet. But the group that's in the theater in this town… I mean, my kids are in two of the plays. And that group is just so hilarious. They're all amazing, intelligent people that just want to express themselves in some way."
As for the area, she finds the people friendly and engaging.
"It's a small community, so it is a community. I can't go through Safeway without saying hello to half the people in there. And there are lots of great eateries and we've got a new young scene coming on, it feels like, with newer professionals. That's kind of exciting to see. In addition, I do like the city mayor and the city management right now. They're really making great strides to broaden what they're doing with town. They helped a lot with soccer and that's not the only thing."
According to Lacer, "People are coming out of this time galvanized. When people are passionate, they make change."
Campbell concluded, "In the end, after all is said and done, I really love this town. The people, the scenery, the general small-town vibe. It's open-minded and beautiful, very beautiful. I forget that because I'm too like, work, work, working. But Florence definitely has its own heartbeat."
Editor's note:
This is the final installment in what has been a nine-part series running each Wednesday since Nov. 15. Over the course of the past two months, the series has explored a different topic each week related to the challenges we face as a small coastal community to meet the changing economy; the impacts of the West Coast's affordable housing crisis and its ripple effect on the Siuslaw region; and identifying the issues related creating living-wage jobs to assure the region's future.
In outlining what we determined would be a long-arcing series that would help us understand the issues, how they came to be and, ultimately, their solutions, Siuslaw News decided to focus on each of the following areas: Community and Social Services (Nov. 15); The State of Housing (Nov. 22); How the issues began (Nov. 29) Community Involvement (Dec. 6); The "Volunteer Economy" (Dec. 13); Jobs and the Workforce (Dec. 27); Economic Development (Jan. 3); Education (Jan. 10); and The Future of Life in the Siuslaw Region (Jan. 17).
We'd like to thank everyone who contributed their personal stories, expertise and perspectives — both on and off the record — as well as community organizations, city officials, educators, business owners and area leaders.
If you missed any part of the series and would like to read more, each segment is available under the "Special Series" section on the Siuslaw News website, located here: Special Series Archive
— Ned Hickson, editor
National Child Abuse Prevention Month: Part I
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Labels highlight complex topic of 'Helping': Part II


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Darryl Stephens
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MarchMar 7, 1974 (age 46)
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He had a role in the MTV television series, Undressed.
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Can Innovation beat inequality? Published on "Forum Agenda", June 2014
Published by: Forum Agenda, June 4, 2014
Inequality is the "defining challenge" of our time, according to Barack Obama. In Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty captured the world's attention by explaining why the challenge is so big – and probably getting bigger. Whilst his economic case has been extensively reviewed and mostly endorsed, albeit with questions raised by Chris Giles on his data methodology, the same cannot be said of the book's underlying assumptions. These are: first, economies will stagnate; second, capital will top talent; third, capitalists don't innovate. In short: Piketty is deeply sceptical about innovation as a growth driver and equalizing force in this century. Has innovation lost its punch?
Economies are not doomed to stagnation
As the economist Paul Krugman writes, "Productivity is not everything, but in the long run it is almost everything". If productivity growth is weak, economic growth is going to be weak, too. According to Piketty this is what we are seeing. Pointing to historical tax records he argues that no country at the technological frontier has ever grown at more than 1.5 percent for a lengthy period of time. Overall, growth accelerated in the Industrial Revolution, peaked in the twentieth century, and is now returning to "much lower levels".
Piketty bases his prediction on estimates which see population growth at near zero in the second half of this century. He also cites the Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon who argues that recent waves of innovation had less impact on productivity than others: the invention of electricity, the internal combustion engine and running water between 1870 and 1900 had longer and more radical effects on productivity than the computer and internet revolution, which started in the 1960s and peaked in the late 1990s. As Tyler Cowen put it, "we picked all the low-hanging fruits".
In consequence, Piketty suggests a long-term scenario of 1.2 percent growth in advanced economies. Even this rate is in his view optimistic, requiring "significant technological progress, especially in the area of clean energy". Other leading economists including Larry Summers who coined the term secular stagnation, Tyler Cowen who writes about the great stagnation, or Mohamed El-Erian who introduced the new normal present equally lacklustre outlooks.
As prominent as they are, these views shouldn't be accepted as orthodoxy. In The Second Machine Age, Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue that information technology, like electricity, is a general purpose technology. It spreads through most industries and speeds up the march of economic progress – but only with time: electricity was invented in the outgoing 19th century but big productivity gains kicked in decades later. With the advent of real artificial intelligence and ubiquitous connectivity information technology may now be at a similar point. The digital revolution is not over, it is just starting.
What makes Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee so sure is a fundamentally different concept of innovation: along with new growth theorists like Brian Arthur orPaul Romer, they reject the idea of innovation waves that get "used up". To them innovation is combinatorial: "it is not coming up with something big and new, but instead combining things that already exist". We are not emptying a finite pool of ideas. We are filling an indefinite one. But to identify the most valuable ideas we need many pairs of eyes and a lot of computing power. And that is exactly what the two breakthroughs above may give us.
Capital needs talent
Piketty's second prediction is a capital-labour elasticity of substitution which is greater than one. In normal language that means in this century people will be able to accumulate enormous amounts of capital without reducing returns to zero. Even if individual returns decrease at some point, "the most likely outcome is that the volume effect will outweigh the price effect", so that the amount of capital relative to national income continues to grow. This is great news if I earn my income from capital. If I earn my income from labour it means my income may be at risk.
This is Piketty's most crucial idea, as it means that over a long period of time more and more income will be accumulated at the top. It also breaks with the assumption that human capital becomes more important as economies become more sophisticated. Clearly skill levels have increased markedly over the past two centuries, but the stock of industrial, financial, and real estate capital did as well. We have not "magically gone from a civilization based on capital, inheritance, and kinship to one based on human capital and talent". The shift from "capitalism" to "talentism" is not happening.
But what if Brynjolfsson and McAfee are right and progress is not dead? Most economists argued in the past this would serve us all: whilst individual workers may suffer, new and usually better uses are found for the workforce as a whole. John Clark already wrote in 1915: "the well-being of workers requires that progress should go on, and it cannot do without temporary displacement of laborers". History largely supports this claim: according to the McKinsey Global Institute, all but one 10-year rolling period since 1929 has recorded increases in both US productivity and employment.
Does that mean income inequality has gone down or at least wage earners are better off in absolute terms? Not necessarily. In the US, the gap between average income and median hourly wages has grown since the 1970s. James Surowieckioffers an explanation why: in 1960, the country's biggest employer, General Motors, was also the best-paying. Today, the country's biggest employers are retailers and fast-food chains, almost all thriving on low pay and low prices. As technology improves, new jobs are generated for the workforce – but not always better ones.
The reason is an inherent skill-bias in technological change: the digital revolution dramatically lowered the demand for workers who carry out routine tasks, regardless of whether they are cognitive or manual. This leads to what Daron Acemoglu and David Autor call job polarization: a collapse in demand for middle-income jobs, while non-routine cognitive jobs such as financial analysis and non-routine manual jobs – like retail and fast-food –hold up relatively well. Those whose skills are substitutedby smart machines lose out. Those whose skills are augmented by smart machines, allowing them to achieve better results at lower cost, win. And those who own these machines win, too.
To avoid this trap, Brynjolfsson and McAfee suggest we must learn to complement rather than compete with machines. "The value of human inputs will grow, not shrink", they predict, and with the right skills we will achieve things that could never have been accomplished by unaugmented humans or machines alone. We may not move from capitalism to talentism but without investing in talent, we will end up in a race we cannot win individually, and which slows societies down collectively.
A starting point must be basic education: research shows that in the US, children between 4 and 5 from the poorest fifth of homes are almost two years behind those from the richest, and students from the highest social-class are twice as likely to go to college as those from the lowest. Technological progress, with the skills it demands, will only be an equalizing force if quality education is accessible to all.
Capital drives innovation – sometimes
Piketty's last assumption is the least explicit and the most problematic: capitalists seek profit, not progress. They claim larger slices of the cake yet they don't make the cake itself any bigger. This view flows from the low growth assumption along with the assumption that labour can be replaced by capital at low cost. It also is a consequence of Piketty seeing technological progress as exogenous, an external force, opposed to Brynjolfsson and McAfee who see it as endogenous. Piketty dedicates just half a page of his 700-page tome to technological change, under the title The Caprices of Technology.
This doesn't mean there is no innovation in Piketty's world; it means innovation does not create growth. Clayton Christensen explains this in a more nuanced framework. The Harvard Business School professor distinguishes two types of innovation:Empowering innovations yield new products and services, create jobs to build, sell, distribute and service them, and use capital to expand capacity and inventory.Efficiency innovations reduce the cost of making and distributing existing products and services, almost always reduce the net number of jobs, and liberate capital on balance sheets.
In a healthy economy, Christensen argues, the two innovations operate in tandem. Empowering innovations are essential for growth because they create new consumption. Efficiency innovations are critical as they liberate capital for empowering innovations. What troubles the US economy today is that capital is being reinvested into yet more efficiency innovations.
Christensen blames this on the efficiency focused finance doctrines which emerged after the Second World War, when capital was scarce. "Those doctrines were appropriate to the circumstances when first articulated", he explains, "but we've never taught our apprentices that when capital is abundant … the same rules are the wrong rules". "Continuing to measure the efficiency of capital", he continues, "prevents investment in empowering innovations that would create the new growth we need".
Others go further, speaking of vested interests and political influences. Luigi Zingales warns that lobbying often promotes the interests of existing businesses rather than market competition. Acemoglu and Robinson describe how economic inequality translates into political inequality and from there back into even more economic inequality as the rich stack the cards in their favour. Brynjolfsson and McAfee agree such a scenario is plausible and worry that growing income gaps could hamper progress in the long term.
These views turn Piketty's argument on its head: the problem is not capital accumulation but capital use. Piketty argues that capitalists focus on the slice of the cake because the cake doesn't expand – Christensen and others argue the cake doesn't get bigger because capitalists just focus on their slice.
This is more than semantics. The crucial difference lies in the policy recommendation: Piketty wants a global wealth tax to bring up effective demand: letting the stock of capital diminish until the capital return equals growth would allow for a permanently higher level of per capita consumption, and thus for a better social state.
Christiansen wants to focus on innovation: "it's true that some of the richest Americans have been making money with money – investing in efficiency innovations rather than investing to create jobs", he argues, but if we just redistribute wealth, most of it will just replace consumption with consumption. Instead, "we must give the wealthiest an incentive to invest for the long term".
In the end, both measures are critical. Piketty started a debate on wealth taxation which focuses too much on the numerator and too little on the denominator of the capital-income ratio: technological progress. Christensen pays too little attention to the social implications of skill-biased technological change which are often reproduced across generations. If one truly wishes to found a more just and rational social order, investing in "empowering innovation" won't be enough.
Since the mid-1970s it has been widely accepted that moderate inequality is the price for a dynamic economy. Now a point has come where a dynamic economy is threatened by rising inequality. But putting all hopes into demand-side adjustments misses the point. Only if direct measures to address inequality are met by investments in long-term productivity growth will economies become more equitable.
Image: Workers assemble Android-based tablets from imported components at the Surtab factory in the Sonapi Industrial Park of Port-au-Prince March 11, 2014. REUTERS/Marie Arago
Five debates on our digital future
In der Multistakeholder-Welt


I started the Jog Belfast programme on 1st September 2014 at Woodvale park. Coming from a first time runner prospective i was nervous and doubting whether i could complete the 10 week programme to enable me to run a 5k distance...Well, i did! With the fantastic guidance of the coaches from Albertville Harriers, we all as a large group gradually built up our stamina and graduated in early November 2014 completing 5k run at the Waterworks Parkrun. I can honestly say it was the best decision i made, making a commitment to exercise - not only for my physical health but also my mental health. Immediately after finishing the Jog Belfast programme i went on to join my local running club (Albertville Harriers) and gradually built up my stamina and confidence to enter fun runs and races. So, as of today i have run numerous 5k, 10k, half marathons and 3 full marathons. The friendships, support and confidence i have achieved through running is immeasurable. So for ANYONE uncertain of joining one of the many Jog Belfast programmes on offer at present...DO IT!! You don't have to compete, it isn't a race its a 'journey' of realising 'YOU CAN!!' I arrived on the first night of the programme knowing no-one else there and quickly made friends for life. What better way to end the summer and kick start a brand new chapter of including exercise in your life?
Jog belfast Belfast News 2016 What Jog Belfast means to me?
What Jog Belfast means to me?


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Third suspect arrested in death of Aniah Blanchard
Aniah Blanchard cause of death revealed; suspect's charge upgraded to capital murder
Stephanie Toone, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The prosecutor handling the case of Aniah Blanchard revealed Monday that the man believed to have kidnapped the 19-year-old is now charged with murder.
Blanchard was abducted in late October near an Auburn, Alabama, convenience store, and last week her body was found in a wooded area in Macon County. The cause of death has now been determined as a gunshot wound, Lee County District Attorney Brandon Hughes announced in a news conference Monday.
Since her abduction, three suspects have been arrested. The primary suspect in the case Ibraheem Yazeed, 29, who was initially charged with first-degree kidnapping, is now charged with capital murder, according to a report by AL.com. Hughes said his office will seek the death penalty.
"In the interests of public safety, I can say that the investigation has determined Ibraheem Yazeed to be the lone person responsible for Aniah's abduction and her murder, and he remains in the Lee County Jail without bond," Hughes said during the news conference. "Mr. Yazeed remains innocent of any charges against him until his guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt."
Antwon "Squirmy" Fisher was charged with kidnapping in the case and was denied bond during his court appearance last week. A third suspect, David Johnson Jr., was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on Monday, Hughes said. He is being charged with hindering prosecution. After Aniah's abduction, authorities believe Johnson drove Yazeed to Florida, where he was eventually arrested.
Ibrahim Yazeed appears in court Nov. 20 in Opelika, Ala., for a hearing in the disappearance of Aniah Blanchard. Yazeed, 30, has now been charged with capital murder.
Photo: Hannah Lester/Opelika-Auburn News via AP
Blanchard's stepfather Walt Harris, a UFC heavyweight, put out public pleas on social media when she went missing. After the news broke that human remains were found, Harris shared a heartfelt message on his Instagram addressed to Blanchard, who was a community college student and avid softball player.
"My sweet baby girl... I just wanna thank you for helping me change my life for the better... For teaching me how to be a man and a better father," Harris wrote. "For being my biggest fan win, lose , or draw!
"For always knowing what to say to put a smile on my face and lift me up when I was down and wanted to give up. You light up my world (in) so many ways. This pain is unbearable."
My sweet baby girl... I just wanna thank you for helping me change my life for the better... For teaching me how to be a man and a better father! For being my biggest fan win, lose , or draw! For always knowing what to say to put a smile on my face and lift me up when I was down and wanted to give up. You light up my world I'm so many ways. This pain is unbearable... I know you want me to be strong but it so hard baby it so hard. I'm gonna find away I promise you I will. Right now nothing makes sense and I'm so lost. I just want you back. I hope I made you proud... I'm gonna keep going daddy just needs time. I love you so much. Look after us like you always did. We need you now more than ever. My lil mighty mighty tiger is a angel now. I love you baby girl forever and ever!
A post shared by Walt Harris (@thebigticket205) on Nov 28, 2019 at 6:11am PST
Hughes declined to comment on when Blanchard was shot or the circumstances of the kidnapping and murder. There has been no information revealed about whether Blanchard knew Yazeed. Hughes shared that the abduction happened at a Chevron gas station on College Street in Auburn.
"This case has shaken our community to its core, and I cannot say enough about how the Auburn Police Division —and every other agency involved in this case — responded to the report of Aniah's disappearance," the district attorney said. "From its first moments, law enforcement moved swiftly and methodically to find Aniah's abductor, her murderer, and her. The process of seeing justice done on behalf of Aniah and her family will not be swift, but it will be thorough."