As It Was: Eric Allen, Jr. — Southern Oregon Journalist
In 1985, Eric Allen, Jr., the prize-winning editor of Medford, Oregon’s Mail Tribune, retired. His journalism career spanned 44 years, earning him the title, “Dean of Oregon Editors.” Allen’s career...
View ArticleAs It Was: High wheel logging in Northern California
When timber was king in the early 1900s, the tremendous size and weight of the fallen trees required special transportation. One of the unique vehicles was a horse-drawn cart with wheels 9 to 11 feet...
View ArticleAs It Was: Josephine County grows hops for beer
When early pioneers settled in Southern Oregon they missed their beer. They needed hops for the brew, so they planted them.The first hops in Josephine County were set out in 1875 just west of Grants...
View ArticleAs It Was: Valley's first flour mill made way for Ashland park
In August 1909, Judge C.B. Watson eulogized the old flour mill in Ashland, which had been torn down and burned two weeks earlier to make way for what would become Lithia Park.Speaking to pioneers...
View ArticleCar created campground demand
The invention of the automobile required the building of better roads and highways as the number of cars in America increased from 8,000 in 1900 to 40 million by 1930. Touring motorists packed food,...
View ArticleAs It Was: Omar's — Ashland's first public bar
Omar’s, Ashland’s oldest restaurant and first public cocktail lounge, opened in 1946. But what many don’t know is that it got its name by accident.Omer and Hazel Hill, who had run Hill’s Café at...
View ArticleChris Honoré: A darkness of the spirit
A friend sent me an excerpt from a collection of essays written by Mary Oliver titled “Upstream.”She writes:“In the winter hours I am writing about, there was much darkness. Darkness of nature,...
View ArticleChris Honoré: The first 100 days — a long, dark winter
If you are a progressive, the first 100 days of this Republican administration has been an ordeal, sometimes wrenching, as well as exhausting if followed closely.There are moments when it all seems...
View ArticleChris Honoré: ‘Fearless Girl’ and ‘Charging Bull’
In lower Manhattan, on Wall Street, stands a massive bronze statue of a bull, head lowered, its powerful body all sinew and muscle, horns threatening. A matador’s chest-tightening nightmare. According...
View ArticleChris Honoré: All roads lead to Russia
Part OneLast Tuesday, May 9, President Trump fired James Comey, the Director of the FBI, who was in the middle of leading a wide-ranging criminal investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded...
View ArticleChris Honoré: All roads lead to Russia
Part TwoFrom the moment Donald Trump announced his campaign I shook my head in disbelief. His statements in interviews and from the campaign podium were jaw-dropping to reprehensible: John McCain...
View ArticleChris Honoré: The fire and the fire brigade
Part OneWinston Churchill said, during a particularly fraught moment leading up to World War II, “I refuse to be impartial between the fire and the fire brigade.”I would argue that the train of...
View ArticleChris Honoré: Into the weeds: The deep state
At the risk of wandering too far into the weeds, I want to try and define what is meant by “deep state,” a term of art used to describe much of the government Trump Inc. now presides over.To begin...
View ArticleChris Honoré: Silence and our national shame
When Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot, along with three others, while practicing for a congressional charity baseball game, the press and the pundits found themselves facing a dilemma....
View ArticleChris Honoré: Republicans and the safety net
Part OneIn one of his last speeches, Hubert H. Humphrey said, “... the moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the...
View ArticleChris Honoré: Republicans and the safety net
Part TwoFor well over half a century it has been a fundamental tenet of our society that we will provide a safety net for all Americans. To generation after generation, it has been a promise made and a...
View ArticleChris Honoré: ‘If you’re not busy, let’s do coffee’
As I write this, Donald Trump is in France for Bastille Day, at the invitation of the also recently elected president, Emmanuel Macron.But I keep thinking about his trip the week before to Germany...
View ArticleChris Honoré: An irrefutable existential threat
How to write about climate change and convey in the words and sentences the abiding urgency of what is now an irrefutable existential threat? I’m not sure. I do know that in the midst of all the sturm...
View ArticleChris Honoré: There but for the grace of ...
How can any Republican with a shred of decency seriously participate in the Kabuki dance recently performed in the Senate, its purpose to dismantle the Affordable Care Act?To a person they know, absent...
View ArticleExplaining my vote on social grant funding
At our last City Council meeting, we were asked to affirm recommended social service grant funding put forth by the Health and Human Services Commission. At the meeting, I suggested that the...
View Article