Most of this summer has been relatively mild, but memories of large fires and widespread smoke are still fresh from the last two years. Jackson County commissioners put some money and political muscle into a campaign to convince the federal government to fully supress all wildfires. The feds own more than half of all the land in the county. The campaign includes video components and a petition to Congress.

Governments are not fond of admitting mistakes, you might have noticed. It often takes a while, as it did with the federal government and the decision to lock up American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. The program was controversial even in its times, but the government still chose to document what it was doing. The result was a collection of photographs by some of the best photographers in the business, now contained in a book called Un-American: The Incarceration of Japanese

The goal is a lofty one: get 50,000 electric vehicles registered in Oregon by 2020. That's next year. And the state is celebrating passing the halfway point. Officially, Oregon puts a lot of effort into increasing the EV fleet, with rebates for car purchases and a growing list of places to charge EVs.

Conversations about race are not always comfortable in America, but it's clearly necessary to have them. Rogue Valley residents Mike and Emily Green really have to talk about race, as a biracial couple with a blended family. And they hold public sessions to help members of the community talk to their own children about race.

It's a grim anniversary, but certainly one worth noting: the arrival of African slaves in Virginia in August, 1619. So 400 years since the door opened wide for the slave trade that marked the development of what became the United States, and that still shows as a scar on the national psyche. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is one of many organizations observing the 400th anniversary. Rob Goodwin takes up the issue in this month's edition of The Keenest

Managing a river is no easy feat. Consider the needs for water released at Shasta Dam into the Sacramento River: salmon need cold water, sturgeon need warm water, and irrigators just need water. Recent research shows that all three needs can be met in all but the most drought-stricken years . How?

Marijuana is now legal for recreational use in both California and Oregon, but the illegal market persists. Off-the-books cannabis grow sites take water from streams, leave trash on the landscape, and poison sensitive animal species. Public lands, including U.S. Forest Service lands, have been especially hard-hit.

It's really just three words contracted to two: "I'm sorry." So there's no great expenditure of energy in saying it. Physical energy, anyway; psychic energy is another thing entirely. Harriet Lerner, clinical psychologist and author of many books on relationships, examines how hard it is for so many of us to say the words and mean them sincerely. Lerner's book is Why Won't You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts .

The hemp industry was bound to grow and grow quickly, given the decades of pent-up demand from federal controls. Now hemp, marijuana's non-stoner sibling, is legal to grow. And Oregon alone is now growing something like 50,000 acres of the stuff, mostly for the CBD oil it contains. Hemp industry analysts--they DO exist--say the price is likely to crash because of overproduction.

The Bureau of Land Management's amendment of its Southeastern Oregon Resource Management Plan is not only closely followed by the Oregon Natural Desert Association , it is the result of action by ONDA. The conservation group took issue with earlier BLM decisions, and took the agency to court. Now public comments are being taken on the plan amendment--focused on grazing, off-road vehicle use, and lands with wilderness values--until August 28th. The land in question includes the Owyhee Canyonlands