“I think you put too much contrast in my eye,” I told my eye surgeon at the one-week post-op visit following my first corneal transplant. Tony and I had driven that morning from Ashland to Portland, where the surgeon, Dr. Mark Terry, weaves his magic. The night before, the air bubble that had been holding my transplanted cornea in place …

Winter storms on the West Coast pack good with bad. In Oregon, where two years of insufficient rain have emptied reservoirs and fueled wildfires, we entered this winter praying for weather: rain in the valleys and heavy snow in the mountains with its promise of spring and summer melt. November, December, and January—typically the wettest months here contributing 9 of the annual 20-inch rain total—failed to deliver.

In the early 1900s, throngs of tourists would detrain at the Southern Pacific Railroad station at “A” Street in Ashland with bathing suits tucked in their bags. A 1915 Southern Pacific Railroad flyer heralded Ashland as a resort city on the “Shasta Route,” midway between Portland and San Francisco, with eight trains arriving and departing daily between the two cities. …

In 2000, the social scientist Robert Putnam chronicled America’s declining social capital in his landmark book, Bowling Alone.Today, it seems we have slid from solo bowling to tribalism, marked by division and animosity based on group differences. My move to Ashland included a large wish for the opposite—to connect. I imagined an expanding circle of nearby friends, built upon differences as much …

We are so lucky. From early spring to late fall, the Rogue Valley Growers Market puts organic, locally-grown produce at our fingertips. In an earlier post, I wrote about this twice-weekly bounty, a feast for the body, eyes, and the soul—also a gathering that brings small farmers and the community together.

In winter, the gears change. For Tony and me and other neighbors who have bought shares in the Barking Moon Farm Winter CSA program,the harvest—now entirely cold weather and root crops—arrives every two weeks in a large plastic box with our name on it. The boxes are stacked at the end of the driveway next to a small house a mile from ours. It’s so low key that we missed the “pick-up” spot the first time. The system is simple: You identify your box, transfer the takings into the canvas bags you (should) have brought, and return your box to the “emptied” stack.

Kinetic installations, sculpture, painting, photography, children’s art, dinosaur bones—you’ll find them all and more in art exhibits in our nation’s airports. Some of these displays occupy airy atriums or corners of baggage claim; others appear on unused billboards or along moving sidewalks. They share the same hopeful goal: to divert and entertain passengers in an environment best known as an anxiety-inducing no man’s land.

Medford Airport, a 20-minute drive from our house and our gateway to the world of airline hubs, is part of this art-as-diversion movement. When Tony and I arrived last April with our four suitcases and two cats and learned that our rental car wasn’t ready yet, I sighed and glanced around the now empty baggage claim area with its lone carousel. High on the wall behind, a parade of huge, colorful, wooden cutouts of migrant field workers caught my eye—and my breath.

The titles suggested a poem: Pulling Weeds, Green Bean Harvest, Reluctant Spring, Love Lies Bleeding, Hollyhocks . . .. I walked the length of the terminal, swept up in these larger-than-life portraits.

On an accompanying placard, local (and world) artist Betty LaDuke explained:

“My sketchbook visits to our local farms orchards and vineyards began during the 2010 harvest season. I followed men and women up and down along the rows of vegetables, berries and flowers quickly sketching their bending and stretching repetitious motions as they gathered the harvest into boxes and buckets.

All spring and summer, until the smoke descended, Tony and I marveled at the ever blue skies here in Southern Oregon. Clouds were rare. Late fall and early winter have changed the script. Every day, now, clouds decorate the sky. “Valley fog” early in the morning lifts to reveal the mountains, still wearing a mantle of clouds. Soon the sun …