The Jefferson Exchange

It wasn't that long ago that we explored the concept of dual-use farming with solar panels. The idea is that the panels co-exist with crops, and it works in many places. Oregon State University agriculture researchers were not trying to create a dual-use farm, but they discovered that an installation of solar panels provided shade in which certain grasses grew on dry farmland without irrigation. Even better, the grasses that grew were the kind that livestock like to eat.

By the time they get to high school, young people seem capable of eating just about anything. But even if they're not very discriminating, the people who prepare their food can be mindful of health. Schools have been pushing healthier menus in recent years, with the backing of governments that help provide food service. Ashland's schools are keeping an eye out for local suppliers, to instill the locavore spirit at an early age.

When a Republican Congress and a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, ended "welfare as we know it," millions of Americans were thrown off the welfare rolls. The reform focused on work requirements, and made it impossible for a recipient to receive funding for more than five years. Author Felicia Kornbluh argues that these reforms fell especially heavily on the backs of poor single mothers, especially mothers of color. Her book with Gwendolyn Mink is Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in...

Veterans Day came and went, but the Go Vets program continues at the Rogue Valley Transportation District. The name is almost self-explanatory; it's about helping vets find mobility through riding RVTD buses. And mobility can lead to so much more... jobs, friends, shopping, and more. The program includes training for vets in making full use of the system. Go Vets recently won an award for the Transportation Options Program of the Year through the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Who's a good boy? We have many ways of motivating our pets to behave as we wish, and some of them actually work. Rogue Valley dog trainer J.P. Parrett has developed a knack for getting inside a dog's head (and finding his way out again). His skillset for dog training includes neither treats nor scolding. So what does he use?

From bacteria to cockroaches to black mold, our houses can be home to some unappealing invaders. The market for pesticides, fungicides and antibacterial cleaning products is enormous. But for Rob Dunn the household is a whole ecosystem, and many if not most of the non-human life in the house may actually be beneficial to human health. He wrote a book explaining it all, Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets and Honeybees: The Natural History of Where We Live . Rob Dunn...

Ashland-based Project A started helping businesses and other organizations put up websites and expand their technology before many of us had even seen the web. The success of Project A has allowed co-founder Jim Teece to branch out into other ventures. Those include buying a business called Art Authority , which makes high quality prints for notecards and other products from the art of museums around the world.

There's a certain sense of virtue that comes from flinging an item into a recycle bin. "At least I'm not throwing it away," you might think. But even before China clamped down on the recyclable materials it would accept, we were lagging behind other countries in recycling. About 34% of our materials get recycled, a much lower rate than, for example, Germany's 65%. Why don't we recycle more? Confusion is one reason, suggests Beth Porter. She runs a website on recycling and just put out a...

Cannupa Hanska Luger grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, the scene of many a protest over the Dakota Access Pipeline. He is an artist, but incorporates activism into his work as well. One of his creations is the "seed bomb," a combination of clay and native plant seeds broken on the land to help restore native habitats (they are NOT explosive). Cannupa Hansker Luger gives a workshop in making seed bombs as part of a visit to Eugene this weekend (November 17).

Maybe it's because our live broadcast falls between breakfast and lunch, but we like talking about food. In fact, we like it enough to launch a regular local segment about food. It starts here... under the name "Savor." The segment features a new partner: food aficionado William Smith. And a guest: Regan Emmons of the Rogue Valley Food System Network . They get into some of the details of getting more locally-sourced food into our diets, especially in Thanksgiving dinner.

It's always nice to get home after a full day at work or school. We know the place, but perhaps not the concept. Think about it... can you think of other animals that have anything more than a simple place to sleep? Anthropologist John S. Allen says turning our sleeping space into a habitat is a major feature of being human. He demonstrates in his book Home: How Habitat Made Us Human .

Some of the stigma has come off of getting paid for sex, but not all. Everyone knows who Stormy Daniels is, but not everyone reserves judgment on her work as an actor in adult films. There are some very basic questions for and about people who work in the field: what are their rights? That is the domain of the ESPLER Project (Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research).

"Call Her Ganda" is a new documentary from PJ Raval, an award-winning Filipino-American filmmaker from Austin, Texas. The film is about the controversy surrounding the murder of Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman, by an American serviceman in the Philippines in 2014. "Call Her Ganda" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. The screening is sponsored by the Queer Resource Center and Women's Resource Center on the Southern Oregon University campus, by the SOU Student Film...

America's independence from England wasn't just fought on the battlefield. Early Americans insisted on a new way of speaking that would be a distinctly American variation of English. Linguist Rosemarie Ostler, who lives in Eugene, has traced the evolution of American English, and the cultural mix that produced terms like "gerrymander" and "gnarly." She lays them out in her book Splendiferous Speech .

Siskiyou County is a big county with very few people; something like seven people per square mile. But they have issues that need attention, as in any community. Providing needed services can be tricky, so the five far-flung family resource centers in the county joined forces this year as the Siskiyou Community Resource Collaborative .

You can count on two events after any major forest fire: 1) life returns to the forest, and 2) someone suggests salvage logging as a way for the forest to grow back like it was. A recent study that involved scientists from Oregon State and Portland State focused on the Klamath region on both sides of the state line. And with one tree species in particular, the famous Douglas fir, the study found the tree grows back well without any salvage logging.

We have so many pathways to communicate with people now... phone, text message, email... and that's before we even enter the realm of social media. Just the same, studies indicate people actually feel more isolated in this age of hyper-connectedness. Dan Schawbel makes his living advising businesses on helping employees work well together, he's the research director at Future Workplace. And he looks at how managers can help co-workers feel authentic connection, in his book Back to Human: How...

Flying passengers into small cities can be a tricky business. Not the flying part; the keeping the airline in business part.

The City of Ashland owns a big chunk of property across Interstate Five from town, and there are always ideas floating around for uses for the land. The Imperatrice property, as it's known, has been proposed for the location of electricity-generating solar panels, among other ideas. Which thrills people who favor renewable energy, but poses some issues for bird fanciers. Because the land is home to a colony of grasshopper sparrows, a bird species that has mostly disappeared in some parts of...

Kiese Laymon has had an interesting life, to put it mildly. Fortunately, he's a good writer, too, so we get to read about his life and how he's dealt with a number of challenges. They include issues with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and gambling. He presents the challenges, and how he overcame them, in his memoir, titled simply Heavy . Rob Goodwin, the host of our segment The Keenest Observers, returns to host Kiese Laymon.