It's an extra short week for me. I am having a ‘no meeting' Friday to take care of a few personal meetings and then catch up before the weekend hits. I look forward to cooler temperatures to make yard work a bit easier. I envy David's trip up north this week where the temps are more comfortable. I was surprised to hear from Lenya about the Monument Fire in Trinity County. As large as it is, I am surprised it hasn't made the news like the other fires have.
The week has entailed a series of 1-hr meetings, a few of which have ended early. Salary advancement conversations have been the purpose of several of the meetings. In addition, I met with National 4-H Council, Extension Foundation, and the Northeast Extension Directors. I am working on my workplan as incoming chair of ECOP, that national Cooperative Extension organization. We are strategizing how to build resources for the system as a whole. Hopefully, I won't spend the year meeting with people through virtual meetings, only. We can only speculate where the pandemic is headed. I continue to keep travel to a minimum, unless I can hop in the car to get somewhere.
One of the recent achievements for the national Cooperative Extension organization is funding from CDC to encourage vaccination. Ricardo, Marcel, Linda, and others have worked hard to develop TV spots targeting non-English speakers. Here's just one of 8 30-second TV spots: Variantes del Coronavirus / COVID-19 variants. Leyla has actively shared some of the other UC ANR activities with the CDC project manager around this topic. I learned today that another, much larger grant with NOAA focused on climate smart communities is right around the corner. Start formulating ideas and how we might partner with Sea Grant to prepare communities across California. We will continue to look for more novel partners and assess how we can work with other states to achieve project goals.
I hope everyone enjoys the weekend!