Mon, Aug 18, Birding and the Breach Hike 8:30 am, Norton Point Beach, Edgartown. 3-mile over-sand walk, considered strenuous, with The Trustees of Reservations. Free. 508-627-3599.

The Island Plan’s Livelihood and Commerce Work Group has released its preliminary recommendations about the Vineyard economy (attached). These findings derive from a series of inquiries, from meetings with many Islanders (farmers, fishermen, health care workers, school officials, entrepreneurs, employees, and others), and from the work of consultants John Ryan of Development Cycles and Michael Shuman and Doug Hoffer of Training Development Corp. The findings of both consultants are summarized in John Ryan’s Martha’s Vineyard Economic Profile.

Go to Island Plan section for the rest of the Press Release

As a municipal building official, you are charged with safeguarding the safety, welfare, and quality of life within your community through the administration and enforcement of building codes and regulations. By ensuring that buildings are designed and constructed in ways appropriate to their risks from storms and flooding, you can help protect peoples’ property and lives. Following are some tools that may be useful:
Interpreting Flood Insurance Rate Maps and Flood Insurance Study Reports
As a part of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) periodically conducts Flood Insurance Studies (FISs) and uses the results of these studies to produce FIS reports and Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). FIRMs show the estimated extent of flooding during a hypothetical “100-year storm” (also called a 1% storm)—a storm that has an estimated 1% chance of being equaled or exceeded during any given year. (Note: A 100-year storm can occur more than once a century.)

http://www.mass.gov/czm/stormsmart/
hazard_identification/interpreting_firms.htm

This legislative session has been one focused heavily on protecting our environment. From passage of the first in the nation ocean zoning legislation, to the green communities act, to setting stringent caps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, to the passage of an environmental bond bill that invests monies to preserve our local natural resources, the people of Massachusetts should be very proud of what has been accomplished. Contained within the environmental bond bill is a section that started out as legislation and is what I consider one of the most important environmental protection pieces we passed this session.

http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/
index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15752&Itemid=112

BARCELONA, Spain — Blue patrol boats crisscross the swimming areas of beaches here with their huge nets skimming the water’s surface. The yellow flags that urge caution and the red flags that prohibit swimming because of risky currents are sometimes topped now with blue ones warning of a new danger: swarms of jellyfish.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/earth/
03jellyfish.html?_r=2&scp=2&sq=jellyfish&st=cse&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The following is a break down of the collection and distribution of trash and recyclable items for the towns of Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven.

OAK BLUFFS 508-693-5454

If you are a resident you may purchase a $10 sticker and dispose of all your trash in the proper recycling bins at the OB Transfer Station on Pennsylvania Ave. This is a free service for residents, paid for by the town, after sticker purchase.

Go to the recycle section for the rest of the article

An American Self-Portrait
Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007


Mail Order Catalogs, 2008
100x60"
Depicts 115,000 mail order catalogs, the number mailed in the U.S. every minute