Chris 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 ArticleChris Honoré: ‘Like the world has never seen’
According to a report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead that could be placed on top of an ICBM, a missile, according to a recent test,...
View ArticleChris Honoré: Asserting a false equivalency
They came walking out of a dark Friday night on the University of Virginia campus, a long line of young men (and a few women) carrying tiki torches, chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” and “blood and...
View ArticleChris Honoré: POTUS — Once again, unscripted
Three speeches in three days. The first was delivered to an audience of our troops, aides and cabinet members in Arlington, Virginia, and read verbatim by Trump from a teleprompter in an even tone,...
View ArticleGood coffee comes to the Rogue Valley
It used to be hard to get a good cup of coffee in the Rogue Valley and the rest of Oregon. That's all changed. Said one aficionado, "Coffee was watered down ink when I left in the late 1960s. When I...
View ArticleAs It Was: Central Point vs. the Railroad
First it was the Oregon and California Railroad that chose to run its tracks straight as an arrow through the Bear Creek Valley, bypassing the tiny town of Central Point, Oregon, by a half mile in...
View ArticleAs It Was: Hotel Medford met fiery end
The date of Aug. 8, 1988, may ring a bell for those people living in or near Medford, Oregon, for that day is remembered as the day a fire destroyed the Hotel Medford.Built in 1911, the hotel was...
View ArticleAs It Was: Cats eat rats, rats eat cats, everyone gets rich
It is estimated more than 50 million fur-bearing animals, including cats and dogs, are killed each year for their skins, most grown on fur farms around the world. Southern Oregon historian Ben Truwe...
View ArticleAs 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 ArticleFighting prohibition on the Southern Oregon coast
Oregon adopted Prohibition in 1914, six years before the national law. Although illegal, private production and distribution of alcoholic beverages continued in order to satisfy demand. Many stills...
View ArticleJackson County's first home demonstration agent
Growing up at the turn of the last century, Ann McCormick knew two worlds. Raised on a small Oregon farmstead with six siblings, she knew the ways of the old pioneers, but Ann was a 20th century woman...
View ArticleSisters of Providence overcame obstacles to open hospital
Making ends meet in the health care system is not a new problem. It was a way of life for the Sisters of Providence, a handful of resourceful Catholic nuns who, in 1912, opened Sacred Heart Hospital in...
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