Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Gov. Kate Brown made her debut visit to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument Sunday before meeting with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to “relay her strong support for the expanded monument.” However, the one-hour meeting left Brown with no indication of what Zinke’s recommendation might be to President Trump in regard to the monument’s designation and current boundaries. “I urged [Zinke] and the federal administration to not backtrack on the monument and to n
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
ASHLAND — Hal and Mary Townsend's 120-acre piece of paradise overlooking Emigrant Lake has unique madrone groves, firs and oaks, but the dense underbrush was a potentially dangerous threat to their land.   The only thinning the couple had done in recent years was when they cut their annual Christmas tree, so the overgrown brush created more and more fuel for a potential wildfire while slowly degrading their forest. "It was such a mess," Mary Townsend says. "It was overwhelming."
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
The controversial Nedsbar timber sale went unsold today at an auction following a protest by opponents, threats of tree-spiking and promises of civil disobedience against whoever bought the trees for logging. No bids were entered for the first Nedsbar sale at the Bureau of Land Management auction, held at the agency's Medford office late this morning after about 75 protesters railed against the sale they believe would over-log sensitive areas in the Applegate watershed. But that doesn't kill the
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
TALENT — From time to time, Bob Hackett has taken a whack at the bulging sea of nonnative Himalayan blackberries that envelope a stretch of Wagner Creek that runs through his five-acre property. "It's so overgrown and utterly invasive," Hackett says. "I'd love to be able to see what it's supposed to look like." Now Hackett is getting help with those blackberries, and he'll get some native plants and fencing as well, as part of a cost-share program that's helping Wagner Creek landowners wi
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
The U.S. Forest Service is planning on salvage logging later this year in about 8 percent of its acres burned in last year's 191,197-acre Chetco Bar fire in Curry County, a move timber advocates welcomed and one conservation group called "something we can live with." The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest has eyed salvage-logging 13,626 acres within lands already tapped for timber production and where the fire burned more than half the canopy cover, forest documents show. The remainder of the
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
Medford’s youngest charter school is growing into a new phase. The Valley School of Southern Oregon, a Montessori middle school that has operated since 2015-2016, is looking to move into the former home of Living Opportunities, a 2.95-acre property on Valley View Drive. With that move comes an increase in the school’s enrollment: Its new charter with the Medford School District, approved by the Medford School Board June 4, bumps its enrollment cap from 100 to 120. Amy Thuren, executive director
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
An environmental group has filed ethics complaints against state Rep. Sal Esquivel and two fellow Republican legislators claiming they knowingly misrepresented a bill that eventually thwarted the groups' effort to overturn Oregon's delisting of gray wolves last fall. But Esquivel says he was going on what he knew at the time when was stumping for House Bill 4040 during February's legislative session, when he said the bill didn't preclude legal challenges to the delisting decision. While he may h
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-06-29
A group representing the sheriffs in Oregon has joined the chorus of boos for the Bureau of Land Management’s latest forestry plan. In a statement released Thursday, the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association said the bureau’s newly announced Resource Management Plan for southwest Oregon will leave timber-reliant counties empty-handed and unable to pay for law enforcement, among other things. In doing so, the agency has “failed the communities where these public lands are
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
Midway through my first cooking course in college, we came to the pie-making segment. Luckily, I was blessed with two lab partners who were just as interested as I in pursuing the more, shall we say, creative aspects of cookery than the average college freshman. So on the morning when we had to formulate our shopping list for the following day’s pie-making session, Joanne, Margie and I were once again in sync. While the rest of the class continued to pour through cookbooks looking for just the r
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
The short story and cinematic portrayal of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” six decades ago embedded images of a solitary adventurer in many minds. For the more than 800 folks who comprise Southern Oregon Runners, however, that’s hardly the case. Be it partaking in some of the region’s major events or training among a pack of friends, distance running in the Rogue Valley is a communal gig. Laura Kimberly, a transplant from Reno, needed a little coaxing bef
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
“Thou perceivest the flowers put forth their precious odours, And none can tell how from so small a center comes such sweets.” — William Blake, “The Odours of Flowers,” c.a. 1810 Sharing William Blake’s enthusiasm for fragrance, Eagle Point resident Dennis Godfrey told me whenever he looks for roses for his heirloom garden, the “precious odour” put forth by the flowers is first and foremost on his mind. Dennis’s nostalgic flower and vegetable gardens are part of the upcoming annual garden tour h
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
“To have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!” — Dot Peerybingle in Charles Dickens’ “The Cricket on the Hearth,” 1845 In “The Cricket on the Hearth,” one of five Christmas stories written by Charles Dickens, Mrs. Peerybingle believes her house cricket is the family’s guardian angel. She is certainly not alone in thinking crickets are lucky. More than 1,000 years ago, ladies in China captured field crickets and kept them as pets in ornate cages. The crickets lulled the
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
The swamp As I indicated in a missive a few months ago, Trump is a cross between the Manchurian Candidate and Peter Sellers in “Being There.” Need more be said? We have a White House run by Fox News’s “pretty people”, airheads and fabricators, and the swamp has become a cesspool — thugs, criminals, ne’er-do-wells and assorted other nefarious characters with shady backgrounds and their only qualification is adulation of the Babboon and telling him
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
Medical aid in dying Regarding the columns by Dale Meador and Matt Witt: As a physician, now retired, I witnessed many unpleasant deaths despite everyone’s best efforts to alleviate suffering. That’s why I supported Oregon’s 1997 Death With Dignity Act. Data over the past 20 years have revealed no abuses. Pastor Meador seems to fear that letting terminally ill persons choose the time and manner of their deaths will lead to authorities determining if genetically defective bab
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
Jessica Taylor Hale and Michael Hall Lombardi were married June 21, 2014, at the Armour-Stiner Octagon House in Irvington, N.Y. The Rev. Puja Thomson officiated the ceremony The bride is the daughter of Jeannette Hale (Jani) and Steven C. Hale of Jacksonville. She is a 1991 graduate of North Medford High School, a 2002 graduate of Southern Oregon University with a bachelor's degree in art and a 2005 graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City with an MFA in illustration as visual essa
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
Shayla Brooke Grether and Jesse Levi Tanner were sealed on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2014, at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Temple in Central Point. Larry Doll officiated the ceremony. The bride is the daughter of Jobie and Margie Grether of Medford. She is a 2011 graduate of North Medford High School and a 2014 graduate of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a bachelor's degree in special education with a mild/moderate emphasis. The groom is the son of Roger and Lynese Tann
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
Help fine-tune system Valentines Day, Feb. 14, 2018. An orphaned 19-year-old with a troubled past was able to obtain an AR-15 and kill more than a dozen high school students over the span of a few minutes. There are several ways to make this less likely to occur in the future. One of the most fundamental provisions of our constitutional government is that our constitution can be changed. This is not just a theoretical possibility, it is an demonstrated fact. We have done it before and we will mo
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
Juliana Gabriel and Michael LaBelle were married Sept. 30, 2017, in the couple's backyard in Phoenix. The Rev. Kyle Kneen of Florence officiated the ceremony. The bride is the daughter of Jim and Gail Gabriel of Florence and Gina and Dave Salmon of LaPine. The groom is the father of daughters Emma and Hannah and son Logan. The couple prepped for the wedding for six months, doing lots of landscaping and flower planting. The theme was "rustic with burlap and lace." They had a cotton-candy machine
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
“Golf is a thinking man’s game. You can have all the shots in the bag, but if you don’t know what to do with them, you’ve got troubles.” — Chi Chi Rodriguez in “The Giant Book of Golf Quotations,” 2007 In his day, Chi Chi Rodriguez was considered one of the most quotable and entertaining figures in professional golf. In one of his famous quips, he used the common expression “in the bag” to refer to a golfer’s assured success, as long as the player has both a good shot and a good head on his shou
Mail Tribune (Medford, OR — Wayback)
· snapshot 2018-07-15
A voracious tapeworm We have a modest home in Eagle Point. We’ve lived in the valley most of our lives. We are retired with a fixed, modest retirement income. We believe in doing our part in supporting our community. We need a new jail. We support law enforcement and understand the frustration with the “catch and release.” We support schools. We understand the need for a clean, comfortable and maintained school. The county wants a new jail, circa $218 in additional taxes for