Glorious Days, Magical Nights

Another week of glorious days in Oregon. Our weather is the best on the planet right now. Please indulge a little gardening gabby-gabby this time, because there is a plant in my yard that must be shared.

Over the past couple of weeks, our Cestrum nocturnum or night-blooming jessamine has been filling our yard and home and entire block with the most intoxicatingly delightful fragrance every evening. I can't really describe it, you just have to smell it to believe it. It makes for magical nights. All the inhabitants at our address–even the dogs and the chickens–are swooning. If only our website had smellevision. :( I'll get the IT guys working on it.

But we do have plenty of news. Let's get to it:

• We are launching a nomination campaign to identify and recognize everyday Oregonians who go out of their way to make a difference in our wonderful state. The IAmOregon.org drive runs from October 3 through November 14, 2012, and will help build a community for an exciting gift we will give Oregon on our state's next birthday  READ MORE
• Staff members Sally Yee and Aisha McCoy are on the road in the mid-Willamette Valley this week, meeting with nonprofit organizations and community members in a series of TWST events. You can keep up with their blog posts as they make their way from town to town READ MORE
• Program Officer Paul Reich has put together some very helpful information about how MMT evaluates metrics from applicants to our Program Related Investment program, including a really sweet table READ MORE
• Newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows the poverty rate in Oregon grew from 12.9% to 17.5% from 2007 to 2011. The child poverty rate rose to 23.6%, nearly one in four children in Oregon. Poverty is worse for communities of color, in many cases much higher than the baseline 14.8% in non-Hispanic white Oregonians:
      •    Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders: 36.2 percent
      •    Latinos: 29.8 percent
      •    Native Americans: 29.8 percent
      •    African Americans: 29.7 percent
      •    Asians: 19.2 percent
  DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT
• While we are the subject of money or lack thereof, we came upon several interesting articles to bring to your attention about how philanthropy might best be directed in an age of austerity (or what's the best thing to do with billions when trillions and trillions are needed?):
  • How Philanthropists Can Work with Government
  • How To Get Beyond the Lazy S-Curve through Impact Investing
  • Impact Investing (with an Oregon Connection)
• And to continue the subject of calamities, do you know that what we do now will determine our quality of life after our next big earthquake. Are you prepared to survive and recover quickly? Check out the Great Oregon Shakeout on October 18th READ MORE

After all that, thank goodness we've reached our moment of wonder. This one gives me chills, it's Max Schlickenmeyer's audio/video mashup of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's answer to the question, "What's the most astounding fact about the universe?"

May the few moments you spend watching the video and hearing the words inspire you to go immediately to  IAmOregon.organd nominate people who inspire you.

And may your days continue to be glorious and your nights magical.

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