Ashland City Council “listening session,” January 30, 2023. Photo courtesy Bob Palermini (palermini.com). Two years after my husband and I moved to Ashland, inspired by the ways it was not like any place we’d lived before, the pandemic turned this small city upside down. Nostalgia for the Ashland I was just getting to know paired up with nostalgia for the …

“It’s time to secede or succumb,” a retired eastern Oregon chimney sweep wrote in a letter to his local newspaper in 2015. He proposed moving Idaho’s border west to include eastern Oregon and other rural portions of the state.  “Imagine for a moment Idaho’s western border stretching to the Pacific.” Grant Darrow’s job cleaning chimneys once took him into homes across …

I am not one to make New Year’s resolutions, but this year, on the heel of losing my wedding ring — like four out of ten married Americans — I took up a new challenge: encoding. A simpler way to put it is paying more attention.  When it comes to losing things, the main dynamic goes like this. When we’re …

We hadn’t counted on being surrounded by peacocks when we pulled up to the Shady Lady Bed ‘n Breakfast, a tiny outpost in the high desert 30 miles north of Beatty, Nevada (pop. 847).  We had rented Shady Lady’s solo cabin, poised to spend the next day hiking in Death Valley. Last summer, Tony and I had driven the width …

Many of you may know of Parker Palmer, perhaps even his wonderful essay, “Welcome to the Brink of Everything,” which he wrote in June 2018 at the age of 80. An educator and activist, Palmer has published a wealth of books, essays, and poems focused on community, spirituality, and social change. He is currently founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the …

How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? – Pope Francis There are a thousand and one scenarios for how someone’s life can unravel, perhaps over months or seemingly overnight, and discard them onto the streets. Homelessness is rarely …

Tony and I weren’t the first pilgrims to southern Oregon who fell for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and imagined ourselves living here. The wild mushroom vendor at the Rogue Valley  Growers Market and a hike to the top of 7,000 foot Grizzley Peak, with its gracious views of the valley, offered additional charms—along with my best friend from high school, whom …