The winter holiday season is here—it arrived before Thanksgiving if you didn’t notice—and for some of us dedicated to an annual hunt for the best Christmas tree, the debate continues: real evergreen or faux.  The National Christmas Tree Association estimates that more than three-quarters of the Christmas trees on display in 2019 will be artificial. People who prefer artificial trees say they are …

At age 95, Agnes Pilgrim Baker deserves the title “living cultural legend” as much as anyone I almost know. After watching hours of videos of her talking about being a “voice for the voiceless,” I’m a big fan. Grandma Aggie, as she is known, is the oldest living female left of the Rogue River Indians, the Takelmas, who lived in Southern …

Farmers’ markets are the fasting growing segment of the U.S. food marketplace, with over 8,000 nationwide. USA Today just named the Rogue Valley Growers & Crafters Market, “our” market, one of the ten best in the country. I was brought up believing fresh vegetables were sacred, and I’ve always tended a vegetable garden. Just before my husband and I impulsively sold …

In the 1950’s, when I was growing up in New Jersey, Halloween was not a family affair. I couldn’t imagine my father dressing up as Captain America or my mother as a poodle-skirted Dream Girl and getting in on the action—nor, I’m sure, could they.  What I remember, actually, was the night before Halloween, called Mischief Night, when my friends and I …

Central Park is to New York City as Lithia Park is to . . . Ashland. With its 93 acres of curving walkways, woodsy paths, and cascading water, Lithia Park draws a million visitors a year, in a town of 21,000.  Designed over a century ago by Golden Gate Park’s Superintendent McLaren, the park is on the National Register of Historic Places. …

 “That sounds like a crow!” I said to Tony as we entered Ashland’s Starbucks early the other morning. I scanned the room, with its small tables bunched together and a half dozen guests, most familiar to us. We passed Josh, who parks a 1970s Chevy van loaded with his life’s belongings in front of Starbucks every morning, turns his music …

“I’ve often wondered why I didn’t protest more as a teen-ager,” writes Alexandra Schwartz, a child of the nineties, in this week’s New Yorker. “Surely there was a lot to be mad about.” My second day of high school, in New York, fell on September 11, 2001. A year and a half later, hundreds of thousands of people, here and …