Rural News
Some are taking opioids meant for pets
Boston Globe | Posted on January 17, 2017Law enforcement and veterinary officials are planning an outreach campaign to educate veterinarians about a new frontier in the opioid epidemic: people so desperate for drugs that they take medication that had been prescribed to pets. “The misuse of pet medication has serious safety implications — for people and animals,” said Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan, in a letter that will be printed in the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association newsletter this week. “Educating people about the signs of drug misuse, available treatment resources and how to properly store and dispose of all medications is a crucial part of helping to stem the tide of overdoses and death.”
Dirt Roads Help Some Cities, Counties Drive Down Costs
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on January 17, 2017Some roads in Montpelier, Vermont, have gotten a bit rumbly. Faced with decaying pavement and a long list of capital projects to be funded, officials in Vermont’s capital decided in 2009 to grind up some of the city’s streets and combine the asphalt with underlying gravel. Since then, just over of a mile of Montpelier’s streets have been converted, said Thomas McArdle, the city’s public works director. Residents largely have embraced the change, he said, and it’s projected to save Montpelier at least half of what it would have spent to pave and maintain the roads over the next 20 years. Montpelier isn’t alone. As infrastructure budgets have been hit hard by dwindling gasoline tax revenue that typically funds transportation projects, some cities and counties have abandoned plans to repave crumbling roads surfaced at a time when asphalt and labor were cheaper. There have been about 70 such conversions, stretching along 550 miles of road in at least 27 states, according to a 2015 review of the projects produced by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program.
One New Year’s Resolution Worth Keeping: Empower America’s Youth - Our Future Workforce
Huffington Post | Posted on January 16, 2017According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in the United States, approximately three million high school graduates, and more than a million college graduates, will make up a massive “youth workforce” entering the job market in 2017 - this is particularly relevant as America’s workforce potential is certain to be highlighted this Friday at the inauguration of America’s 45th President, and as a new Congress and administration make a renewed commitment to prioritizing job creation across the country. Although 32 percent of people’s first jobs are in the retail industry, the number of hires these days is not keeping pace with the sector’s growth - due to a skills shortage fed by gaps in education and training. In other words, a lag in workplace readiness. This weighs heavily on an industry that is becoming more sophisticated every day. And that’s why a key focus of this week’s “Big Show” will be discussing companies’ workforce planning priorities, and how retailers can better attract, develop, and retain young talent, to both jobs and all-important internships.
Communities get behind hybrid internet systems
Daily Yonder | Posted on January 14, 2017Google stunned a few communities last June with the announcement that they were taking a break from fiber deployments and considering building hybrid wired/wireless networks. Suddenly, people started to publicly question whether fiber is the Holy Grail that communities assume it to be. Wireless in broadband has been deified, vilified, misunderstood, hyped to holy heaven, and in some circles, just plain ignored. To many, fiber can do no wrong, only become faster. Then came gig fiber. No, wait, now there’s gig wireless. Communities need a reality check! Despite media reports after the Google announcement that anointed hybrid infrastructure the next big thing, these types of networks have been around for over a decade. But they tended to get lost as proponents of one technology or the other tried to get market dominance. Some smaller communities have already deployed hybrid networks tailored to meet their specific needs and resources.
Peter Crabtree photos of rural newsrooms
Daily Yonder | Posted on January 14, 2017I learned about Peter Crabtree’s work when my co-worker, Tim, yelled to me across the office, “Hey, Shawn, come look at these.” On his screen were black-and-white photographs of small-town newsrooms — the cluttered desks, a news staffer taking notes with a phone cradled under her chin, inexpensive wood paneling, police scanners, a writer intently looking at a computer as if her words might pop up on her screen any moment. We scrolled through Crabtree’s photographs and fell to telling stories about our own experiences in newsrooms. The people, the equipment, and the lived-in look even the newest spaces invariably had. It turned out that I actually interned at one of the papers that Crabtree featured, the Santa Fe New Mexican, back in 2000. Though newspapers have had a rough go of it lately, there’s still plenty of print journalism in small towns. There are an estimated 7,500 papers with under 30,000 in circulation in the U.S., according to a Stanford report. I think the ones that thrive have do so because their focus is local. To some extent they provide information that residents can’t get anywhere else. That doesn’t make them invulnerable, but it does perhaps make them irreplaceable. We like these photos so much, we’re going to run some today and then use the rest of Crabtree’s collection as a recurring feature for several weeks. It’s our way of calling attention to an important small-town institution and the people who put out the news.
Hedgehogs, hunting wear and a host of peculiar bills in the Maine Legislature
Portland Press Herald | Posted on January 14, 2017Sen. Eric Brakey wants to allow the unlicensed ownership of hedgehogs as pets. Rep. Mattie Daughtry is seeking legislation that would regulate rabbit production for local consumption. Rep. David McCrea will push for a bill that would allow hunters whose religious beliefs prohibit them from wearing hunter orange to instead wear red clothing. As the 128th session of the Maine Legislature gets underway, these are just a few examples of some of the more unusual legislative requests that will be considered this year. Mattie Daughtry, a Brunswick Democrat, has proposed legislation that would allow farms that slaughter fewer than 1,000 rabbits annually to sell them on their farms, at farmers’ markets, at community supported agriculture outlets, to consumers at their homes, to grocery stores and to locally owned restaurants, all without being inspected. Under her proposal, rabbits can not be transported across state lines and all rabbits would have to be sold whole. The name of the rabbit producer and its address must be visible on a label as well as safe handling and cooking instructions. McCrea, a Fort Fairfield Democrat, is serving his first term in the Legislature. An Amish community in Fort Fairfield and Easton asked him to sponsor legislation that would allow Amish hunters to wear red rather than hunter orange during hunting season. He said the Amish people lead a simple life and try to avoid bringing attention to themselves. Their religious beliefs frown upon them wearing brightly colored clothing such as blaze orange, but their leaders told McCrea they could wear red.
Volunteer Firehouses Struggle to Find Recruits
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on January 14, 2017This all-volunteer fire station and the two others in Shippensburg, a factory and university town of about 5,500 people in a central Pennsylvania valley, are vestiges of the past. Firefighters sit around on weekdays playing rummy, and people gather for bingo Friday nights. Yet, the stations are much quieter than they were decades ago, when they felt like the center of the town. And as the community’s interests have shifted from the fire stations, the number of volunteers has fallen. “Everybody has other things occupying their time,” said Shippensburg Fire Chief Randy O’Donnell. The number of volunteer firefighters has been falling for decades here and across the country, dropping by about 12 percent from 1984 to about 788,000 in 2014. That has spelled trouble for cities and towns — especially smaller ones in more rural areas — that have always depended on volunteer departments to save thousands, even millions, of dollars every year on salaries and benefits. Many have been forced to hire at least some paid staff. The decline in volunteers has become more drastic in the last decade, as young people have moved out of rural areas and into bigger cities.
Sterile screwworms to be released on Florida mainland in effort to prevent outbreak
Miami Herald | Posted on January 14, 2017In the coming weeks, swarms of sterile screwworm flies will blanket parts of the Middle Keys, an army of millions manufactured in Panama to combat an outbreak of the flesh-eating pest attacking the islands’ beloved Key deer. No screwworms have been detected on the mainland, but because so little is known about the dog — a German shepherd — or where it came from, officials want to act aggressively to prevent the spread of the grisly outbreak that has ravaged endangered Key deer. Since September, at least 135 deer, part of the last herd on the planet, have died in the Lower Keys.
Rare foot rot disease may be infecting Kansas deer population
The Topeka Capital Journal | Posted on January 14, 2017An unusual type of contagious foot disease may be affecting Kansas’ deer population at a higher than average rate, and the cause isn’t yet known. Tim Donges, president of the Quality Deer Management Association’s Bluestem branch, said reports of foot rot have been coming in at an alarming rate in recent weeks. As a result, the QDMA is working with the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism to get to the bottom of the issue. “It is new to me this year and has always been said to be a rarity, but it does not appear to be rare this year in Kansas,” Donges said. He said his land was among those that had apparently been hit by the disease. “I have 20 percent of the bucks that use my 200-acre farm as part of their home range that have shown signs of what appears to be foot rot,” Donges said. Shane Hesting, wildlife disease coordinator with the KDWPT, said he is working with a cooperative lab based in Georgia to try and figure out the cause of the high numbers of foot rot reports, and if it is indeed foot rot.
Dubuque, Iowa to install solar panels on fire statio
KWWL | Posted on January 13, 2017Fighting fire and going green. The City of Dubuque is planning to install solar panels on five of the city's six fire stations. The city says using solar energy will help cut electricity costs by more than 30%. The City Council unanimously approved a contract with Eagle Point Solar to install the solar arrays.