Apr 20 Saturday
Southern Oregon Stitchers is a chapter of the Embroiderers Guild of America. It is a non profit organization whose goal is to educate the public about stitching and embroidery. We hold a monthly meeting that offers opportunities to learn all forms of embroidery in a friendly and sociable atmosphere with refreshments, raffles, and updates on the organization’s activities followed by members showing off their finished work. Each moth a program is offered that teaches a new project with various stitches and techniques.
Rogue Valley Mentoring (RVM) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization located in the heart of Southern Oregon. We provide mentoring to youth as a proactive measure to improve youth mental health, assist in Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), improve academic achievement, and create thriving communities. Youth Leadership Advisory Board, which brings together a group of youth each week to discuss their ambitions, hopes, concerns, and experiences. Each Spring, this group of youth share about themselves and how they interact with our community, at RVM’s Youth Panel event.
Apr 21 Sunday
We are having a visit from Panayoti Kelaidis, who currently serves as President of the North American Rock Garden Society.
On Sunday, April 21st, Panayoti will present a program on "South African Plants Well Suited to Southern Oregon Gardens." Meeting takes place at the United Church of Christ's Lidgate Hall, 1801 E. Jackson St., Medford. We'll begin at 2:00 p.m., with refreshments and a short business meeting to follow.
In our society, which is currently deeply polarized on political (and other) grounds, conversation across our ideological divide can feel impossible. Is this sort of talk worth pursuing? If meaningful interactions can take place, what would they be like?
Bruce Borgerson, who is active with the national organization Braver Angels (http://www.braverangels.org), will join us as we discuss values and strategies for open conversations that bring people together, instead of rehearsing or sharpening our divisions. What can we learn from each other? How might we understand each other beyond stereotypes, form alliances where we can agree, and reduce the vitriol that poisons our civic culture?
This event is part of the Salon series of The Jefferson Center, a Rogue Valley non-profit focused on critical thinking using secular humanist values to understand and engage with issues important to our community. See https:thejeffcenter.org for more details on this and other events.
Apr 25 Thursday
Introduction to Teaching at OLLI
In April, OLLI will hold a course dedicated to learning more about teaching at OLLI. Participants do not need to be a member of OLLI to register.
The course is not required in order to teach at OLLI, but it will provide a lot of information that will be helpful in creating your course and completing your first course proposal form.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to teach an OLLI course yourself? This three-session course is designed to answer that question and to help you prepare a course. We’ll talk about OLLI demographics and the OLLI learner. You'll hear from experienced instructors about teaching online and in the classroom, and the art of lecturing and leading discussions. Seasoned instructors will also help you with your own course design during the final session. This course will be led by the OLLI Curriculum Committee and will include some distinguished guests. Join us to see how your dedication to lifelong learning can include the creative endeavor of course design and teaching. Join us to learn how sharing your passion can bring joy to yourself and others.
The facilitators of this course are the co-chairs of the Curriculum Committee, Ginny Blankinship and Anne Coleman. Support for teaching this course also comes from committee members who specialize in technology or a specific curriculum area. Many of these are also OLLI instructors who love sharing their skills, knowledge and enthusiasm with OLLI members, and who look forward to sharing their teaching experience as well.
Apr 26 Friday
Join us for our new 2024 Community Playwriting Retreat taking place April 26-28 in beautiful downtown Ashland, Oregon.
Retreat tickets include playwriting classes, a playwright's tea, wine reception, Q&As with renowned playwrights and viewings of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Born With Teeth and Macbeth.
Apr 27 Saturday
We will meet at 9:00 AM at the Rite Aid in Ashland and make our way into the Monument from there. Carpooling is optional.
The quote, "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over" has been attributed to Mark Twain and frames the controversy over western water policies. Euro-American settlement of the west cannot be separated from the moving of water from sources to distant mines, farms, and cities. While California is the most plumbed of all states, Oregon has a fair share of dams, ditches, and water diversions -- including in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
Western water development went into high gear with the 1902 passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act. Under the act, the Bureau of Reclamation began development of projects all over the west, including the Rogue Basin Project. This project saw water storage on both sides of the Cascade Crest and deliverance of a secure supply of water to the orchards and towns in the Rogue Valley. Many projects also include flood control and hydroelectric power generation. This presentation will look at the overall history of western water development up to the current removal of dams on the Klamath River. On our hike, we will explore some of these structures in person in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, including locations such as Hyatt Lake
John Schuyler is a retired forester who received a B.S. in forestry from the University of California at Berkeley. During his 32-year career with the USDA Forest Service, he worked on national forests in Oregon, California, and Arizona -- working in timber management, recreation, minerals, planning, and administration.
The Friends of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument's mission is to support the protection, restoration and conservation of the Monument through service, advocacy and education. Our Hike and Learn programs are designed to introduce the public to different topics and locations within the Monument. Hike and Learns are co-created with local scientists, historians, artists, students, and more.
April 16 is National Healthcare Decisions Day when it’s a good time to turn our attention toward Advance Directives and preparing end of life documents. It’s true we can’t plan for everything, but we can talk about what is most important – in our life, and in our health care – with those who matter most. Talking together can bring us closer. It also helps create the foundation of a care plan that’s right for all of us – a plan that will be available when the need arises. The Conversation Project wants to help us talk about our wishes for care through the end of life, so those wishes can be understood and respected. Join this session to learn ice breakers, tips and tricks, and ideas for how to have these conversations with the important people in your life. We’ll cover examples of how to bring up this topic with people who might be nervous to talk about it, ideas for how to address complex family situations, and suggestions for how to talk with the health care team. You’re not alone – we’ll figure this out together.
May 01 Wednesday
In the second half of the 19th century, a group of Indigenous women survived the 1868-69 smallpox epidemic and avoided removal to reservations more than once. These women and their white husbands eventually left the mining camps on Kanaka Gulch and Forest Creek for the lush valley of Big Applegate, as interracial couples were often not accepted in Jacksonville. Presenter Laura Ahearn will share the surprising stories of these women, their descendants, and others who joined the vibrant community that became known as Watkins before it was destroyed in the 1970s to build the Applegate Dam. These stories are based on the photo albums and family lore of descendants who still live in Jackson and Shasta Counties, corroborated and sometimes corrected by intensive research into governmental records and newspaper archives.
Presenter Laura Ahearn moved to the Applegate Valley in 2017 after a career in environmental law and seventeen years traveling the world in a sailboat. She is President of McKee Bridge Historical Society, researcher/writer for the Society's Facebook page, curator of the Virtual Museum at www.mckeebridge.org, and a frequent author for local newsmagazines.
The monthly Windows in Time lunchtime lectures feature well-known writers and historians and bring alive the people, values, and events that shaped our southern Oregon heritage. Lectures are jointly sponsored by the Southern Oregon Historical Society (SOHS) and Jackson County Library Services. Programs are presented in Medford (first Wednesdays, in-person and online) and again in Ashland (second Wednesdays, in-person). Recordings of Medford presentations are available on the JCLS Beyond YouTube channel.
May 02 Thursday