Congress Tuesday...5 Things You May Have Missed

If you're here in Baltimore at the NRPA Congress or checking out the highlights online from back home, you'll likely agree there is a lot to see, hear and discover...and the event is just beginning. Just a few highlights and sound bytes from Tuesday, October 14...

• "If kids don't use parks, then they won't value them. If they don't value them, then they won't protect them." (on making parks relevant to the "digital generation" from the session Environmental Stewardship Ethic Forum)

• "For millennials, technology is as natural as air. Their hands are in their pockets and they are text messaging."--Maggie Arnold, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair, Ithaca College and session presenter, "Millennials are Coming! So How Do We Nanny These Extraterrestrials?"
  
  

An owl can spot such prey as a mouse, from one mile high (during the birds of prey visitation at the Convention Center lobby. Pictured: bald eagle)

• "There is real data, research to support the economic impact of parks. People will pay more to live in close proximity to parks. These numbers are real; not articially generated."--John Crompton, Distinguished Professor, Texas A&M University - Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, session "Parks, Recreation and Economic Prosperity"
  
  
• "We are facing a crisis regarding the health of our children. Children are leading such sedentary lives that we are finding such diseases as high-blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes in children...diseases that were typically found primarily in adults."--Dirk Kempthorne, Secretary of the Interior