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Reposted from SAA
Last week, a major disaster declaration was approved for the severe storms and flooding that impacted Maine in December. Public assistance is available in 9 counties: Androscoggin, Franklin, Hancock, Oxford, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Somerset, Waldo, and Washington. See this map for further location and assistance details: Designated Areas | FEMA.gov. Meanwhile in California, significant rainfall throughout the state this week has resulted in flood warnings and watches. Possible rainfall totals between 3 and 12 inches remain likely across south and southwest facing foothills and mountains. For archives and archivists who've been affected, there are resources available. Please review and share with any affected cultural institutions and organizations!
Response and Recovery Resources (HENTF) Disaster Response and Recovery Guides (FAIC) Save Your Family Treasures (HENTF) Members of the public with questions about saving family heirlooms can contact the National Heritage Responders at NHRpublichelpline@culturalhertiage.org. Request support from the SAA Foundation National Disaster Recovery Fund for Archives (NDRFA). Grants of up to $5,000 are available for immediate recovery needs. To support institutions and archivists affected by these floods, consider making a donation to the NDRFA fund. Review the Documenting in Times of Crisis: A Resource Kit, which provides templates and documents to assist cultural heritage responders and archivists in collecting materials on tragedies within their communities. For direct assistance, contact the SAA Crisis Collecting Assistance Team, which offers remote assistance and general guidance on crisis collecting. CCAT volunteers include expert archivists who have all faced similar situations in leading and supporting their staff through processing and documenting tragedies great and small.
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Reposted from EMR-ISAC
Dr. Sarah McCaffrey, a PhD fire social scientist and 20-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service will present her research in a webinar on Thursday, Feb. 22, at 5 p.m. EST (3 p.m. MST). The webinar, Reflections from 20 Years Examining the Social Dynamics of Fire Management, will explore her wildfire-related research projects that examined the role of risk perception and risk attitudes, social acceptability of prescribed fire, homeowner mitigation decisions, evacuation decision making, risk communication, and agency-community interactions during fires. This webinar is part of the Partner Webinar Series, a monthly series organized by the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF), the Pau Costa Foundation (PCF), and the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE). Visit the Zoom registration page to learn more about the speaker and to register.
Reposted from EMR/ISAC
On Jan. 29, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’) Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) released application guidance for the fiscal year (FY) 2024 cycle of grant funding for the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program. The TVTP Grant Program seeks to fund eligible entities to design and implement sustainable, multidisciplinary projects that enhance targeted violence and terrorism prevention capabilities. State, local, tribal, and territorial governments; nonprofits; and institutions of higher education are eligible to apply for this funding.
The TVTP Grant Program’s 2024 priorities are:
While the official Notice of Funding Opportunity is anticipated to be released in early March 2024, prospective applicants are encouraged to use this forecast and application guidance to begin to register and maintain their accounts with the required grants systems, find project partners, and draft their applications for this anticipated funding opportunity. The forecasted opportunity and application guidance are now available on Grants.gov: https://grants.gov/search-results-detail/352057 DHS CP3 will hold a series of webinars in February. The presentations will cover a general overview of the program, the types of projects funded, resources that applicants can leverage to complete their applications. Each webinar will provide the opportunity to ask questions. The following sessions will cover the same material:
Reposted from TimRICHARDSON
Think back to the last time you had an unexpected and incredible customer service. If you are like me, you may really have to think about it. Maybe the examples you could think of occurred so long ago that it took you awhile to remember them. That was the case for me. The first experience I thought of happened when one of my girls was a baby – about twenty years ago. My wife and I were staying at The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. When we checked into the hotel, we requested a crib and by the time we arrived in our room, the crib was already there. The Grand Hotel also brought us a welcome baby gift for our daughter – a stuffed animal and a bag of baby toiletries. The Grand Hotel anticipated that parents traveling to their unique location in a very uncommon way – by ferry, might not remember or bring all the necessities to care for their young ones. So, they prepared to delight parents who traveled there by welcoming them with something extra.
The second experience occurred while giving a keynote speech in Miami at The Biltmore Hotel. It was during the summer and peak mango season, and I absolutely love mangoes. As I was checking in, I asked the front desk staff where I could buy a few mangos to take home with me. Within a few minutes of arriving at my room there was a knock at the door. When I opened the door, an attendant greeted me with a small beautifully and elegantly displayed plate of sliced mango along with two other mangoes to take home with me. In South Florida, it is easy to find fresh mango as trees are everywhere! But to delight a guest by delivering an unexpected treat, that is an extraordinary and memorable service. Award winning restaurant, Eleven Madison Park in New York has a staff position called Dream Weaver. The job of a Dream Weaver is to pay careful attention to patrons and provide them with way over the top experiences or gifts. Read Unreasonable Hospitality for some amazing examples of this in action. One might assume that a surprise gift would be easy for a luxury hotel or upscale restaurant – the room and meal costs could easily absorb the extra expense to create something extraordinarily memorable. However, the wow service does not always involve incurring an expense – sometimes it is a differentiated experience.
The first time I had a vehicle serviced at Discount Tire, I was absolutely blown away. First, the staff are well dressed in branded red and black, the company colors. They stand out by their friendly and expedient service. They met you at your car to discuss your tire problem. As they service your vehicle, they maintain an impressively positive and energetic attitude. I even noticed a tire technician running around between tasks! They fix leaky tires for free even if you purchased your tires somewhere else. Discount Tire founder Bruce Holle believed that exceptional service was the greatest form of advertising. He was also fond of saying, “you can’t tell people that you a good person, you have to show it.” Six Tires and No Plan is the story of Bruce Holle’s rise from extreme poverty and failure to success in business. As you think about your business, consider these three examples and the unique value proposition that you can offer your customers.
Like The Grand Hotel, anticipate a need and be prepared to exceed the expectations of your customers by offering them something unexpected.
Encourage your team to pay attention to your customers and empower them to create a unique and lasting memory by surprising customers with something personalized like The Biltmore Hotel provided in delivering fresh mangos to my room. Personalized, exceptional service is fun for your team members and a delight for your customers.
Be different. Think about the service your competition provides and stand out by doing something that nobody else does like Discount Tire. Greet them at the door, call them by name, and give them something extra that no one provides in your market.
Reposted from KIRO 7
An art gallery in Pioneer Square caught fire Friday morning, damaging thousands of pieces spanning decades. According to the Seattle Fire Department, the fire was started in the alley behind Davidson Gallery by a person trying to keep warm. The fire spread into the building, which contained an estimated 18,000 works of art collected over 50 years. It also included some major works by artists represented by the gallery. The fire was brought under control quickly, but not before extensive damage was done to the building. According to the gallery, paintings by Pablo Picasso and Rembrandt were among those that were damaged in the fire. According to the gallery, paintings by Pablo Picasso and Rembrandt were among those that were damaged in the fire. In this instance, the gallery was especially vulnerable as it was preparing to move to a new location on Yesler. “We were in a particularly vulnerable position,” Davidson said. “We had lots of inventory laid out, the drawers open, it laid on the floor, so we could transport them to the new location. So, it invited the maximum amount of smoke damage.” He told us it’s impossible to know just how extensive the damage is but says much of it can’t be replaced. “It’s just hard even to assess it,” he said. “The loss for the artists, the loss for the collectors -- pieces that we took in in good faith are now toast.”
Many from the local community stopped by to help firefighters move art pieces out onto the curb and into vans to be transported. “It’s part of the wonderful part of the art community, that they come together when there’s a need,” Davidson said. The gallery had initially planned to open in their new space by February, but that’s now up in the air as they assess the damage from this fire.
Reposted from BBC
Thieves who stole copper and lead from the roof of a Roman fort museum used its scaffolding to strike again. The thefts began in June 2023 at Segedunum Roman Fort, in Wallsend, North Tyneside, which marks the start of Hadrian's Wall. After metal from the roof was first stolen, scaffolding was put up around the UNESCO Heritage Site, but the thieves used the structure to access the roof again. The fort's manager, Geoff Woodward, said the roof will be repaired with material that will be of no interest to thieves. Mr. Woodward said: "We are very frustrated by the ongoing theft of materials from Segedunum’s roof and the damage it is causing to the building. "We have worked with North Tyneside Council to make emergency repairs whilst awaiting funds from our insurers to permanently resolve this issue." He added that recent high winds and rain had "exacerbated the problem". Thefts from the museum roof have been taking place since late June last year, a Segedunum spokesperson said.
In September, the scaffolding was erected to make temporary repairs, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. But despite additional security being put in place, a spokesperson for the museum said the scaffolding "inevitably provided additional access points" to the roof. Wallsend councilor Louise Marshall said: "It is incredibly disappointing that this building is being targeted. “In terms of ongoing damage to Segedunum, I need to take this up further with the police to see what can be done." Segedunum has received almost one million visitors since it opened on 17 June 2000. The site is legally protected and became a scheduled ancient monument in 1982.
The man died at the scene at about at 10:45 GMT despite efforts from emergency services, and a cordon remains in place. In a statement, the Met said the man's death was being treated as "unexpected but not thought to be suspicious". Inquiries are under way to identify the man and notify his family, the Met added. The Tate Modern said the gallery had closed for the day, adding: "We are very sad to report that a member of the public passed away at Tate Modern this morning. "The police are not treating the event as suspicious, but we have closed the gallery for the day as a mark of respect. "All our thoughts are with the person's family and friends at this time."
Reposted from CISA
We would like to take a moment to share some upcoming FREE courses offered by the Office of Bombing Prevention (OBP) for this February. Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT) courses provide general awareness level counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) information to a broad audience through an on-line virtual training experience with a live instructor. Perfect for participants with time availability constraints, they can be taken as stand-alone courses or serve as prerequisites for many of the instructor-led courses provided by the Office for Bombing Prevention (OBP). The courses are free of charge. Please see the PDF attached for a list of these trainings through the month of February and registration information.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its fourth annual Year in Review. The 2023 Year in Review reflects on the agency’s accomplishments across its broad cybersecurity, infrastructure security and emergency communications missions as the nation and the world adapted to technological advances, spillover from international events and other major events. As you will see in our Year in Review, 2023 was an especially productive year for our team and our partnerships. CISA also celebrated its fifth birthday since its establishment in November 2018! The report calls out a number of significant accomplishments including:
Promoting Secure by Design Principles. As part of an Administration-wide push to promote secure software development, CISA launched its Secure by Design campaign in April 2023. This effort strives for a future where technology is safe, secure and resilient by design by encouraging software manufacturers to take ownership of customer security outcomes. In October 2023, CISA and 17 U.S. and international partners published an update to a joint Secure by Design white paper on “Shifting the Balance of Cybersecurity Risk: Principles and Approaches for Secure by Design Software.” Originally released April 13, 2023, this paper urges software manufacturers to revamp their design and development programs to produce only secure by design products. It also emphasizes three core principles: 1.) Take ownership of customer security outcomes, 2.) Embrace radical transparency and accountability, and 3.) Lead from the top.
Reposted from Yale News
As the Yale Peabody Museum prepares to reopen after a major renovation, a team of skilled specialists is helping its smaller fossil exhibits come to life. A pair of prehistoric predators stand together in the preparators’ lab in the basement of the Yale Peabody Museum. Poposaurus, a 200-million-year-old bipedal carnivore, bares its pointy teeth. To its right, Deinonychus, a nimble raptor that roamed present-day Montana 108 million years ago, seems poised to sink its sickle-shaped talons into hapless prey. Both skeletons will reside in the Peabody’s Burke Hall of Dinosaurs alongside refurbished and reposed Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus specimens, among other fossilized wonders, when the museum reopens this spring after a transformative, building-wide renovation.
Deinonychus, whose discovery in the late 1960s by Yale paleontologist John Ostrom helped dispel the notion that dinosaurs were plodding brutes, prowled Burke Hall for decades before the renovation. Poposaurus, a more recent discovery, will make its debut in the revamped space where Rudolph Zallinger’s famed mural, “The Age of Dinosaurs,” still stretches across the south wall. For the Peabody’s preparators, whose work often combines scholarly discipline with artistic techniques to reanimate these and other prehistoric creatures for public view, readying Deinonychus for public display required just a few touch ups. But creating the new Poposaurus skeleton demonstrated the full range of the preparators’ skills. The team’s expertise in excavating and preserving fossils, their mastery of long-extinct animals’ anatomy, and a creative touch bring the predatory reptile specimen to life. But it’s just one example of the work the preparators — Marilyn Fox, Cathy Lash, and Christina Lutz — have done, with the help of a group of dedicated volunteers, to ready the Peabody’s fossil specimens for the museum’s historic reopening. In 2003, Yale paleontologists discovered the Poposaurus skeleton in Utah’s late Triassic Chinle Formation. The excavated bones include the hind legs and feet, the left forelimb, and much of the spine and tail, making it by far the most complete specimen of its kind. To allow for the original fossil material to remain accessible for ongoing research, the Peabody preparators reproduced the skeleton, making molds and casts of the fossilized bones, and carefully crafted reconstructions of the missing pieces based on existing fossils from the ancient predator. The reconstructed specimen — about 14 feet long from the tip of the snout to the tip of the tail — demonstrates the importance of the preparators to the museum’s scientific and educational missions, said Vanessa Rhue, the Peabody’s collections manager for vertebrate paleontology.
The team collected the specimen in Utah, made the field jackets to protect the fossils, removed the bones from the rock matrix that encased them, molded and casted each existing bone, and sculpted the absent components based on meticulous research, she said. No Poposaurus skulls are known to exist, so Lash sculpted one based on the skulls of related animals. “His head and neck had weathered out in the gulley before we got there,” said Fox, the museum’s chief preparator for vertebrate fossils. “Cathy did a lot of research to figure out the most accurate shape for the reconstruction.” Lutz painted the cast portions of the mounted specimen that represent the actual fossils so that they resemble the genuine bones — mottled and cracked — while the remaining components are a flat brown, which will allow visitors to discern the elements based on fossilized bones from those that are not. (A fragment from the end of the snout was the only portion of the skull the paleontologists discovered.) “When you look at this specimen, it’s very difficult to distinguish, even with a trained eye, that it’s not an actual fossil,” Rhue said. “That’s no easy feat. It’s a phenomenal job and every step of it was a product of Yale expertise.” Burke Hall’s exhibits will trace the evolution of life on Earth from the earliest ocean life, through the Permian-Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago — when volcanic eruptions poisoned the air and oceans, killing off most plants and animals — to the meteor strike 66 million years ago that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs. Visitors will learn how animals adapted to life in water and on land, and how scientists believe birds developed the ability to fly. “Roughly speaking, visitors will be traveling through time as they walk through the gallery,” said Chris Norris, the museum’s director of public programs.
The next gallery takes visitors across the extinction boundary to explore the interplay between plants, animals, and the environment, including the effects of a changing climate over the past 66 million years. The final gallery introduces human evolution to the story, examining how modern humans have changed the environment, and how the environment has changed them. Exhibits throughout the three galleries have benefitted from the preparators’ time and attention, said Kailen Rogers, the museum’s associate director of exhibitions. “The preparators are incredibly knowledgeable,” Rogers said. “We’ve had wide-ranging conversations about what is best for the specimens and how they should be displayed. It’s been rewarding to work with them and recognize how they care for and understand these materials.” A skeleton of Hesperornis, a 5-foot-long flightless bird with tiny wings and a beak lined with sharp teeth, offers a sense of the preparators’ role in creating the displays. Discovered in 1876 during a Yale expedition to Kansas (which was led by famed paleontologist Othniel Charles “O.C.” Marsh), the extraordinary fossil provides insight into the evolutionary link between modern birds and dinosaurs. A mainstay at the Peabody since it was mounted more than a century ago, the skeleton has acquired a new and more scientifically accurate skull during the museum’s closure.
During the skeleton’s original mounting, the replaced skull was sculpted from plaster and wasn’t closely based on actual fossils. But a few years ago, Michael Hanson, at the time a Yale graduate student in geology and geophysics (and who is now a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution), used a CT scanner to image fragments of Hesperornis skulls in the museum’s collection. He assembled the scans into a more accurate digital version of the skull, which was then 3D printed at the Yale Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID). “It’s much more detailed, delicate, and accurate than the original reconstructed skull. Every bone is represented,” said Fox, who conserved the specimen and worked with Hanson and the CEID on the skull. “The folks at the CEID did a great job printing it.” The restored Hesperornis will be displayed alongside fossilized remains of other animals that inhabited the Western Interior Seaway, a vast inland sea that split the North American continent in two, including the paddle of a Plesiosaur — a marine reptile with a long neck and small head — and the flattened skull of a Pteranodon, a flying reptile that inhabited cliffsides along the seaway and preyed on the fish that inhabited it. New galleries charting life on Earth after the cataclysmic meteor impact at the end of the Cretaceous Period offer more examples of the preparators’ ingenuity. Plans for the display originally included the fossilized front portion of a skull that belonged to a small, female Arsinoitherium — an extinct rhino-like herbivore with a pair of horns protruding above its snout that inhabited North Africa 30 million years ago. (The specimen was unearthed by Yale paleontologists in the Oligocene Jebel el Qatrani Formation in the Fayum region of Egypt in 1966.) But Rogers, the associate director of exhibitions, thought the incomplete specimen would be difficult for non-paleontologists to understand. “To me, I could look at the fossilized portion of the skull and still have no idea what the animal looked like,” she said. “I suggested we make it easier for visitors to understand what they’re seeing.” To that end, preparator Lutz sculpted the skull’s back section based on existing casts of complete skeletons and the skulls of similar animals. She attached the reconstructed portion with magnets so that it can be easily removed, allowing researchers to access the fossilized portions. Making the reconstructions reversible also allows for the fossil mounts to be revised as more is learned about how the animals looked and behaved, Rhue said. “The foundational conservation the preparators have done on this material allows for individual parts of the skull to be modified if needed at a later date and you can also remove individual portions of the specimen off exhibit for research as well,” she said. “Providing scholars access is very important for the Peabody as a research institution because not a lot is yet known about Arsinoitherium and many of the other extinct animals on display.”
Not far from the reconstructed skull is a hulking skeleton of Megacerops, which inhabited present-day South Dakota 35 million years ago. A behemoth with two blunt horns protruding from its snout, it appears ready to step from its exhibit platform and stride through the gallery. A previous inhabitant of the museum’s mammal hall, the skeleton was completely covered in old paint and adhesives, which stained its bones dark brown. Armed with toothbrushes and ethanol, Fox, Lutz, and volunteers scrubbed the entire skeleton — which is about the length of a pickup truck and composed of hundreds of genuine and reconstructed bones, restoring the fossil’s bright eggshell color. Back in the lab, a state-of-the art facility built during the renovation to accommodate the preparator’s needs, volunteer Joe Peters works to free a fossil — a plate that belonged to an armored reptile called an aetosaur from the Triassic Period — from its matrix, the rock surrounding the specimen. Peters, a retired industrial chemist and engineer who lives in North Haven, Connecticut, uses a small, stainless-steel spatula to carefully scrape away red-colored dirt and rock. “It’s nice to have something to do that is mentally stimulating,” said Peters, who has volunteered at the museum for several years, working as a docent and teaching geology classes in addition to lending the preparators a hand. “This is interesting work.” “It can also be frustrating because fossils are delicate and tend to fall apart,” Fox said. Peters shrugs. “I try not to panic when that happens,” he said. A skull larger than a Thanksgiving turkey rests on a table behind Peters’ workstation. It belonged to a duck-billed dinosaur known as Lambeosaurus, which was collected by paleontologist Charles Sternberg in 1919 from the Oldman Formation in Alberta, Canada. The skull was covered with an unknown adhesive that the preparators cleaned off. Lutz is painting the skull’s reconstructed sections before it returns to the Great Hall. “It’s almost done,” Fox said.
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