NRPA and GIS

Next month at the NERR conference (http://www.esf.edu/nerr/), John Confer is going to give a talk about the National Recreation and Parks Association GIS program. See:

http://www.nrpagisdata.org/

According to the website "The GIS Model allows you to make a list (inventory) of all the lands and facilities (assets) that you own, plan, manage, operate, and maintain. By providing standard attributes and values, the GIS Model makes it possible for better local, regional, and statewide management and planning of park and recreation resources."

Sounds pretty useful.

Turks and Caicos News

One of the advantages of the WWW is that you can check out the local press before a trip. I enjoy reading news about foreign countries and typically will seek out newspapers online to find out what is going on.

There are 3 online newspapers for the Turks and Caicos and it seems they have a handful of news to deal with. A sick-out yesterday shut down the international airport (PLS) for the day when civil servants protested. I won't get into that, but it is clear the local citizens are a tad upset.

Any, only two of the papers reported about the airport shut down. Check out the news yourself:

http://www.tcfreepress.com/

http://tcweeklynews.com/index1.htm

http://www.suntci.com/index.php?p=main

Encyclopedia of Worldwide Tourism Research

Always a good site to check out for information. I recall early in may career getting a letter from Prof. Baretje-Keller asking for hard copies of papers on anything recreation or tourism related. My small and modest contribution. Over 150,000 citations are available and indexed. Check it out and see:

http://www.ciret-tourism.com/

Also please find a list of tourism scholars around the world! Good stuff.

Coffee in three days

Lunes, Marzo 21, 2011		Ubicación	Hora
18	Envío entregado - Firmado por: ROBERT	WEST HARTFORD, CT - USA	17:35
17	Envío en ruta de entrega.	WEST HARTFORD, CT - USA	09:10
16	Llegado a oficinas de DHL en WEST HARTFORD - USA	WEST HARTFORD, CT - USA	08:51
Domingo, Marzo 20, 2011		Ubicación	Hora
15	Salida de un centro de tránsito de DHL en CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA	22:46
14	Procesado en CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA	14:20
13	Salida de un centro de tránsito de DHL en MIAMI GATEWAY - USA	MIAMI GATEWAY, FL - USA	13:18
12	Llegada a un centro de tránsito de DHL en CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA	12:25
Sábado, Marzo 19, 2011		Ubicación	Hora
11	Procesado en MIAMI GATEWAY - USA	MIAMI GATEWAY, FL - USA	19:02
10	Proceso de Aduana finalizado en MIAMI GATEWAY - USA	MIAMI GATEWAY, FL - USA	07:58
9	Llegada a un centro de tránsito de DHL en MIAMI GATEWAY - USA	MIAMI GATEWAY, FL - USA	07:58
8	Salida de un centro de tránsito de DHL en PANAMA CITY - PANAMA	PANAMA CITY - PANAMA	03:06
7	Envío en tránsito por PANAMA CITY - PANAMA	PANAMA CITY - PANAMA	03:04
6	Llegada a un centro de tránsito de DHL en PANAMA CITY - PANAMA	PANAMA CITY - PANAMA	00:09
Viernes, Marzo 18, 2011		Ubicación	Hora
5	Salida de un centro de tránsito de DHL en SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	22:33
4	Envío en tránsito por SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	22:31
3	Llegada a un centro de tránsito de DHL en SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	21:42
2	Procesado en SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	21:07
1	Envío retirado/recolectado.	SAN JOSE - COSTA RICA	14:24

It is fun to track the passage of my coffee beans from Costa Rica to my door step.

super moon tonight

We took a break from playing Mexican Train (Dominoes) tonight to enjoy the full moon.

Every once in a while you need to look into the sky and enjoy the view.

Top 15 Countries to Visit US

Seems tourism to the States is down for visitors from the UK, Japan, and Germany, at least over the past ten years. As you might expect the People's Republic of China leads the pack with a whopping 221% increase from 2000 to 2010. India is not far behind with 137%.

The rest of the list includes Canada, Mexico, France, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, and Columbia.

Check out http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/ for more info.

Recreation habits continue into Retirement

The literature notes that participation in recreation activities as a mature adult will continue into retirement. While the rate may decline, older residents in Massachusetts are attracted to rivers, agricultural lands, trails and greenways.

Using Census data from the 2005-2009 ACS research we get this kind of relationship.

Sorry folks 2010 data at the tract level (or Zip Code) ain't out yet.

Medical Mobilities Update

Meghann Ormond has updated her Blog and highlights, among others this website at Simon Fraser University:

http://www.sfu.ca/medicaltourism/index.html

Some good research coming out of this team!

Maple sugar time

Yum yum

NERR program posted

The program for the 2011 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium is available online at:

http://www.esf.edu/nerr/.

Check it out. The three day conference will be held at the Sagamore in Bolton Landing NY.

Earthquake to Tsunami to Hysteria?

first of all, please know that I care about the citizens of Japan. I hope the world comes together to help them (as we should in any natural disaster).

So I wake up this morning, and me, worried about the chance of a flooded basement, turn on the Weather Channel on TV. There I first hear about the chance of a Tsunami resulting from a significant (M8.9) quake in Honshu, Japan. So I quickly flip to other channels on the tube and find CNN has gone to commercial and I won't even bother with the local stations since I am sure they are reporting on the flooding.

I turn on my laptop to get some web info.

Links

http://www.weather.gov/ptwc/

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/

and then, in anticipation of the waves I 'googled' hawaii cams to see if I could some live action of what was predicted to occur in minutes.

All during this, the Weather Channel gave the most (sensational) coverage. I guess I could have changed to Fox News for that.

(now, one hour later 9:15 EST, the other news networks are getting on the bandwagon) So I need to soften my critique of the weather channel. good work Stephanie!

In any case, you may want to stay clear of the area until things get back to normal. And my thoughts go out to people impacted by this disaster.