Policy on the #NNK

Who knew that preparedness stuff was included in Virginia's sales tax holiday August 3-5? Thankfully, Virginia Department of Emergency Management, and a Lancaster County Emergency Services staffer who tipped me off (thank you, LCES!). The staffer tells me that many hurricane and emergency preparedness products—such as batteries, lanterns, flashlights, tarps, mobile phone chargers, and certain Energy Star or WaterSense items—are eligible for Virginia's tax-free weekend. Eligible items are listed in the VDEM sales tax holiday checklist (PDF).

Tools and Resources If you need to know the date a webpage was published but there's no date in sight, follow the instructions detailed in Find the Date When a Web Page was First Published on the Internet . So cool. So easy. Hemingway Editor is an easy-to-use editor. Drop in already written text or start from scratch and Hemingway will check for adverbs, passive voice, complicated phrases, and hard-to-read sentences. 3 Tips for Writing a Great Survey Hook is a terrific help. Includes examples. (Textizen) Try Make A Gif if you need one that doesn't exist (or just too hard to find!). You can start from a photo, YouTube, or Facebook. You can also use the tool to store your gifs, even if created somewhere else. Free and premium. Okay, so the title is a bit much, but the content is good, with a number of ideas which can be implemented by businesses, nonprofits, and governments alike. So read 13 Extraordinary Marketing Ideas for Entrepreneurs . Some faves: Promote and describe...

Lancaster County Lancaster County is looking to hire a Building Official . Applications are due Friday, August 3. Lancaster County Department of Emergency Services is implementing a new program in September. It will work with older residents who have been transported by ambulance by county rescue to ensure they are prepared for emergencies. "The department's staff will cover such topics as home safety, driving safety, and disaster preparedness. In addition, county emergency services staff members will check smoke detectors and give information on the programs available throughout the county." Contact Interim Chief Matt Smith at (804) 436-3553 for more information. Northumberland County The Northumberland County Board of Supervisors seeks bids (PDF) to install a pre-engineered metal frame building. Bids are due August 20. Richmond County The Richmond County Board of Supervisors is considering changing the hours of convenience centers (waste management) between No...

More than 13 acres was illegally cleared in October 2017 near the Rappahannock River’s edge at the the Virginia True golf and resort development in Richmond County (Newland), Virginia. The above photo was taken in May 2018. – Photo by Robert A. Martin, from Friends of the Rappahannock Friends of the Rappahannock has been vigilant in its scrutiny of Fones Cliffs for close to a year. From Now is the time to speak up about Fones Cliffs : FOR has been closely monitoring the situation at Fones Cliffs since October 2017, when a concerned citizen alerted FOR River Steward Richard Moncure to land-clearing activity on the historically-significant area located a few miles upstream from Tappahannock. Moncure confirmed tree-clearing and bulldozing operations were indeed taking place, and alerted Richmond County officials to the situation. It was ultimately determined that Virginia True had cleared more than 13 acres of land just above the environmentally-sensitive cliffs, prime nesting and r...

Economics professors David Keiser, Gabriel E. Lade, and Ivan Rudik summarize a new paper published in Science Advances in The Conversation (US edition) article Ozone pollution in US national parks is nearly the same as in large cities . In it, they discuss ozone trends over time; the impact of bad air days, including driving people away from parks; sources of pollution; and the reduction in ozone over time; and other important topics. Most startling, as the title indicates, is their finding which contradicts what most of us think about parks as pristine, or at least free from what ails urban and suburban parts of the United States. . . . we analyzed levels of ozone, the most widely monitored pollutant in parks, and their impact on visits to 33 national parks from 1990 to 2014. The sites we studied included popular parks such as Acadia, the Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, Joshua Tree, Sequoia and Kings Canyon and Yosemite. We found that while cities once had more "bad air ...

Photo credit: Dean McCoy Photography on VisualHunt.com / CC BY Life in Virginia changed a bit July 1 with the implementation of some new and modified laws. To learn more, head over to The Virginian-Pilot to read New laws set to go into effect in Virginia on July 1 . The article does not list every change, just notable ones, such as that vets must "submit information about the animal and its owner to the state's prescription monitoring program" if they prescribe controlled substances, and it's now easier for school boards to make recess longer for kids.

AP journo Alan Suderman ( @AlanSuderman on Twitter) recently wrote Public could pay $10 million for redistricting lawsuits . The highlights: The state has already paid more than $6 million in legal fees related to the cases, state officials said. Of that, the GOP-led House of Delegates has paid lawyers about $4.5 million defending the map lawmakers drew in 2011 for state legislative and congressional districts. Those have drawn three legal challenges alleging racial or political gerrymandering: two at a federal level, one at the state. Last month, a federal court ordered Virginia lawmakers to redraw the state’s electoral map after finding that lawmakers had illegally packed black voters into certain districts to make surrounding districts whiter and more Republican. GOP lawmakers are currently appealing that decision. And let's not forget the Republicans blame the Democrats and vice versa. Want to learn the details about the latest redistricting in the Commonwealth of Virgi...

Tools and Resources Has Your School Been Investigated for Civil Rights Violations? Use this tool from ProPublica to find out. You can check by school district or college. 15 Tips to Building a Better Social Media Presence is full of important questions and advice to help organizations of all sizes improve their social media presence. (Sprout Social) HTML Table Generator makes quick work of creating tables for your blog or website. Add the content, change the typeface, add some color, and you're done. Read 6 Free SEO Tools Social Media Marketers Can Use Too then implement. (Sprout Social) If you like data, check out Data Is Plural by Jeremy Singer-Vine. It's "weekly newsletter of useful/curious datasets. Archive available as a spreadsheet here ." At work Read and share Women in the Workplace 2017 . Don't be afraid; just jump right into Why People Make Bad Charts (and What to Do When it Happens) . If you've not made graphs, learn what not to do. If y...

Lancaster County The Lancaster County Board of Supervisors is holding its regular meeting Thursday, July 26 at 7:00 pm . The agenda includes the public input session, a presentation on PamunkeyNet (learn more in PamunkeyNet, then a casino. How an Indian tribe that's been in Virginia for over 10,000 years plans to secure its future. and PamunkeyNet: Enhanced Capacity Building Proposal Synopsis – GO Virginia Region 6 (PDF)), public hearings including on the creation of a broadband authority, review of finances, and board and other reports. The Town of Kilmarnock has issued an RFP (PDF) for the redevelopment/redesign of its official local government website. The RFP is due August 6 at 4:00 pm. No-wake Zone Proposed for Carter Creek (MiddleNeckNews.com) ( Photo credit: MyFWCmedia on Visualhunt / CC BY-ND ) The Town of Kilmarnock Planning Commission is holding a public hearing Monday, August 13 at 7:00 pm in the Kilmarnock Town Hall (1 N. Main St, Kilmarnock). This hearing ...

Tools and Resources A Few Good Tools for e-Advocacy covers tools for social media advocacy, dedicated e-advocacy platforms, and e-advocacy tools built into CRMs. Considering peer-to-peer texting? Start here. does a solid job covering the topic. Lumen5 transforms articles, blog posts, and other online written content into videos in minutes. Add still images and music to make your informative article a thing of social beauty. Free and paid plans. Upload your slide deck (and other document types) on SlideShare for the world to see! Or, peruse what's there to learn from others. Part of LinkedIn. If you need to add a simple social media feed to your blog or website, try Juicer.io . The (forever) free plan allows users two accounts/hashtags and pulls content every 24 hours, among other things. Looking for an advocacy toolkit? Check out the New Tactics in Human Rights' guide . Here's a little something about what you will find: At work 15 Vital Leadership Lessons For ...

Fathers have a significant impact on their children's well-being – an impact that begins even before the child is born. In fact, studies have shown that fathers who are involved during pregnancy have healthier children . It's for that reason that Fathers forgotten when it comes to services to help them be good parents, new study finds is all the more important and compelling. Joyce Y. Lee and Shawna J. Lee from the University of Michigan reviewed 1,353 studies. Of those, only 19 could be considered "father-friendly" where "father-friendly" means "involving or targeting fathers and including outcomes related to fathering, such as father involvement, father-infant interaction and father’s parenting knowledge." And making matters worse, "most programs reviewed in the systematic review lacked evidence of improving key fathering outcomes." There is some good news, however. The authors identify several innovative programs being implement...

Tools and Resources Creating a 30-Day Social Media Plan walks readers through the process, step-by-step, day-by-day. And it's not merely a list of steps. Sprout Social provides details, examples, and links. (Sprout Social calendar, right) HelloBox is an online tool designed to help you build an online community. The tool allows users to add text and tags, attachments, comments, images, and more. Voting is also an option. Free, paid plan coming in the future. Grammar Girl is my go-to grammar resource. There are tips galore and you can search for things like affect versus effect and 'Aggravate' or 'Irritate'? 10 Summer Fundraisers for 2018 Social Media Examiner's 26 Tools and Apps for Social Media Marketers includes several cool tools: PORTRA (transforms images from your mobile into paintings or drawings), Let's Enhance (free online tool that scales images up to 4x without visibly degrading the image quality), and Adobe Capture (find out the exact c...

Lancaster County The Lancaster County Board of Supervisors is holding a work session Thursday, July 12 at 7:00 pm . The purpose is to discuss possible financing options for proposed capital improvement project requests for FY 2019 and beyond. The meeting will be held in the Board Meeting Room at the Lancaster County Administration Building (8311 Mary Ball Rd, Lancaster). The Town of Kilmarnock Planning Commission meets Monday, July 9 at 7:00 pm at Town Hall. The Town of Kilmarnock Town Council meets Monday, July 16 at 7:00 pm at Town Hall. Watch the June 11 Town of Kilmarnock Planning Commission meeting on demand. Watch the June 18 Town of Kilmarnock Town Council meeting on demand. VDOT HOT SPOTS IN THE FREDERICKSBURG DISTRICT, July 8 – 14, 2018 (PDF): Lancaster County Work Zone Route 695 (Chesapeake Drive /Windmill Point Drive) Monday – Tuesday , 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. Expect alternating lane closures and flagging operations for paving work. Expect brief delays near the mobi...