John Baxter

Who would come to see a play with the actors just standing and reading off a script?  Lots of people, it turns out.  Especially if the plays are new works still in development. 

The Ashland New Plays Festival presents four plays (twice each) to packed houses every October. 

ANPF returns Wednesday, October 17th through Sunday, October 21st, with another slate of plays, plus workshops. 

Fall down and hurt yourself, and there's a good chance someone will come to your aid.  Develop a mental illness, and the circumstances are different. 

Society still misunderstands and even fears mental illness.  Southern Oregon Compass House in Medford works to ease club members into society, and shares stories with us every month in a segment called Compass Radio. 

This month we meet Mihn and Dan and hear about their struggles with both mental illness and blindness. 

Oregon Senate District 3 is a hot commodity.  The switch of the seat from Democrat to Republican in a special election two years ago changed the course of business in the Oregon Legislature. 

Incumbent Alan DeBoer chose not to run again, opening the door for Democrat Jeff Golden and Republican Jessica Gomez. 

They join us for a candidate forum co-sponsored by JPR and Southern Oregon University, held on the evening of October 11th. 

California continues to pass laws--like the recent net neutrality bill--that challenge the rest of the nation to keep up.  With a huge chunk of the country's population, the state is in a position to lead. 

So it could be highly influential in healthcare legislation.  Should the state stick with the battered Affordable Care Act, or could it set up a single-payer system of its own? 

These are questions Richard Scheffler mulls; he is a healthcare economist at the University of California-Berkeley. 

For 25 years now, people enthusiastic about keeping birds on the planet have celebrated World Migratory Bird Day.  One teensy little problem: birds don't all migrate at the same time, so the day has been observed on different dates in different parts of the world. 

So many organizations just observe the Year of the Bird.  Klamath Bird Observatory in Ashland works to protect birds and educate people about them. 

California is one of just a handful of states that allows rent control, but the price caps on rent are limited by the Costa-Hawkins act of the mid-1990s. 

So it should surprise no one that the limits on rent control are being challenged in the November election.  Proposition 10 would repeal Costa-Hawkins, allowing more flexibility for cities to put controls on rents. 

The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Yes on Prop 10 campaign support the repeal. 

The current version of Oregon's 2nd Congressional District has never elected a Democrat to represent it. 

The district stretches from Grants Pass to the Idaho state line, and contains far more registered Republicans than Democrats.  But Jamie McLeod-Skinner is putting great effort into capturing the congressional seat from 20-year incumbent Greg Walden. 

McLeod-Skinner joins us to talk about her qualifications and positions.  

The numbers and reports about the Earth's temperature are fairly grim.  By the most recent accounts, there's little chance we can avoid having temperatures rise sharply this century. 

But that doesn't mean we should not try.  BF Nagy is all for the effort, and he takes a practical and positive approach for people to follow, in his book The Clean Energy Age: A Guide to Beating Climate Change. 

Nagy says he doesn't want to shame or scold, just make some progress in arresting the change. 

Rogue Retreat has several programs in place to get people living on the streets into housing.  And it recently got approval from the City of Medford to expand Hope Village, its tiny house community. 

To help raise awareness and money, former Hope Village residents and volunteers are spending a night each in one of the tiny houses, parked at the Rogue Valley Mall in Medford.  The Overnight Challenge runs through October. 

After a long and costly fire season, few people want to talk about burning trees.  Unless it's their job to do so. 

We're reminded frequently that fire is a natural part of life in our forests, and the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership is right in the middle of its annual training exchange, or TREX. 

The 13-day event involves controlled burns and many other activities related to fire-adapted ecosystems. 

We probably all have farming in our family backgrounds.  Once upon a time, more than 80 percent of the American population was involved in agriculture. 

Jania Schiefer-Wolff can name her ag ancestors, because they include her parents.  Jania herself is a farmer, with Not-So-Mini Pigs and Vogel Dairy. 

She is our focus in this month's Stories of Southern Oregon, curated by Maureen Flanagan Battistella. 

People are still reading a book written 2,500 years ago.  But the Tao Te Ching can be dense and difficult to understand in today's world, where the time to let its lessons soak in can be lacking. 

Francis Pring-Mill addresses the concern in the book In Harmony with the Tao: A Guided Journey Into the Tao Te Ching. 

Pring-Mill's book includes a complete and well-regarded English translation of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell, along with some guidance to understanding the meaning. 

How bad was last summer for tourism in the region?  Millions of dollars bad, with cancellations and actual destruction from fire and smoke reaching new levels. 

California, Oregon, and Washington tourism officials have banded together as the West Coast Tourism Recovery Coalition, with one major goal: convince potential visitors that it's safe to visit here.  That might be tricky, especially since longtime residents have their own complaints about the quality of life in the summer. 

Visit California and Travel Oregon officials are assembling plans and approaches. 

50 years ago, kids looked forward to Columbus Day, because it usually meant they got October 12th off from school.  Times and attitudes toward Christopher Columbus and his "discovery" of America have changed. 

Now the day--the second Monday in October--is often observed in honor of the people Columbus found upon his arrival; it's called Indigenous Peoples Day.  Southern Oregon University is one of several places that hold special events to mark the day. 

Banks and post offices took the day off, calling it Columbus Day.  Other people choose to observe the (approximate) date of Columbus's arrival in the "new world" with Indigenous Peoples Day. 

Our knowledge of Columbus and the effects of his discoveries is known better over time.  Which raises the question for educators and society at large: how teach the story of Columbus and what he wrought? 

Jefferson Greene is a cultural liaison at the Confederate Tribes of Warm Springs. 

We get voices blended in the studio all the time, but not usually blended in song.  So it's a rare treat to have some barbershop quartet singers pay a visit. 

The Rogue Valley Harmonizers are the host group for "Hee Haw and Harmonies," Saturday at the Craterian in Medford (October 6th). 

And the other artists include the group Main Street, international champions a year ago.  How do they make such harmony, with no instruments and not so much as a drum? 

The world is aware of the conversion of forest to farm in many places.  And governments and businesses have dedicated themselves to stopping deforestation for commodity production. 

A recent scientific report shows that much more work is needed; the rate of deforestation has not declined.