While Waiting for the Sun

The sun is being such a tease right now. First it gives us winter to summer in less than 24 hours, then goes back into hiding. Oh, now I remember. It's Rose Festival week in Portland, we're not ready for predictable, stable summer weather yet. (Image from Alireza Teimoury's photostream on flickr)

But really, our weather changes are nothing. Wikipedia tells us that in Spearfish, South Dakota, on January 22, 1943, the temperature went from -4 degrees to +45 degrees in TWO MINUTES!  I am not making this up! Another impressive turnabout: the temperature in Loma, Montana, rose from -54 degrees to +49 degrees in 24 hours on January 15, 1972. That's 103 degrees people!!

Who among you knows what weather phenomenon was responsible for both these temperature shifts? No fair peeking, just think about when and where these took place to figure out the logical explanation. I'll send a special little prize to the first person providing the correct answer in the comments below and affirming you didn't look it up in Wikipedia :)

Now to the news:

The Oregon legislative session is winding down. How well are budget choices reflecting your concerns? Did the Joint Committee on Ways and Means respond to the letter from Nonprofit Association of Oregon Executive Director Carrie Hoops? We'd like to hear your thoughts and assessment of the 2011 session below.

You might want to spend a few minutes in our image gallery to see the new organizations and projects that have been added, from microloans to housecalls to food systems to innovative communities to affordable housing to wildlife habitat protection to open spaces to innovative mental health treatment to economic development and (whew!) more. Don't forget that you can add your own story of your organization's MMT-funded work to our website.

We have a number of items to offer up in the realm of social media:

• Facebook has a new Nonprofit Resource Center
• Very helpful blog post about nonprofits innovating with mobile technology
• Interesting post about using virtual environments for training, collaboration and meetings
• Overview of how MMT uses social media (presentation I prepared for recent Grant Manager's Network conference in Seattle)

That should be enough to keep us all busy while we wait for the sun to return. I don't know about you, but I could hardly bear to be indoors last Saturday, that most glorious and gorgeous day. I spent almost all of it in my backyard, so much so that it was nearly dark when I finally gave in to a pair of adorable black eyes peering out from a little white face, pleading "Please mom, it's way past our bedtime and I am so very dog tired."

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