Have a cup of coffee with a goat, just to say thanks. One story of the origin of coffee is that a goatherd noticed how frisky his goats got after eating the coffee berries; the goatherd tried them himself. That's a long time and a long way from driving up to a window and ordering a double macchiato. But Mark Pendergrast gets a lot of detail into his book Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World . The book is a re-release, the first edition came out 20 years ago.

People have known about the benefits of visiting the ocean since long before there was even language for the idea of "tourism." U.S. Army veteran Paul Kirby noted the salutory effects he got from sea kayaking after he'd been dealing with PTSD and depression. And Kirby told his story in a student film produced at Southern Oregon University, "Lodestar." The film has been accepted for screening at a half-dozen film festivals; Kirby's desire to share his ocean therapy with other vets is the focus of

Members of the region's tribes have a long history of collecting food from the land and water nearby. But that history has been interrupted by white settlement, and now rates of food insecurity are higher for Native Americans than other group in the country. Part of the problem is legal limits to access foods that are still available naturally, from acorns to deer. University of California-Berkeley researchers tracked the food insecurity of the members of the Karuk, Yurok, Hoopa, and Klamath

Any discussion of forestry in Oregon usually gets around to old growth forests. As you follow the debate over cutting or preserving them, you may wonder how to FIND them. The group Oregon Wild and one of its staffers address that query, in the book Oregon's Ancient Forests: A Hiking Guide . Author Chandra LeGue provides details, pictures, and more on places with ancient trees, from the damp forests of the coast to the high and dry areas further east.

Blanket, sunscreen, shades, cool drink: check, check, check, and check. But what will you bring to read on your summer excursion? That's a question we provide some answers for, in our weekly segment Summer Reads. Independent booksellers from around the region join us, and this week it's Bloomsbury Books in Ashland.

The biggest change in Oregon agriculture in the last ten years involves the explosion in the growth of the wine and cannabis industries. Both of those--at least the cannabis that gets people high--are under the regulation of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission , OLCC. OLCC spends a chunk of July and August holding meetings around the state, to take input from the wine and marijuana industries on issues and concerns. Sessions in our region start Wednesday in Ashland and Medford.

You can be forgiven if you hear the news about methamphetamine and think "I saw this movie already." Methamphetamine trafficking is a major concern once again for the Oregon-Idaho HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area). In fact, it's generally the top concern. But opioid-based drugs are also prevalent in the region, and pose concerns for law enforcement and other entities.

Having the Senate Republicans walk out of the Capitol--twice--took up a lot of headlines. But there was more to this year's session of the Oregon Legislature than that. Legislators have now had two weeks to sleep off the effects of the session, and we want to catch up with them about accomplishments and missteps. Democrats from both houses join us here, when Sen. Jeff Golden and Rep. Pam Marsh , both of Ashland, visit.

We wouldn't have these jobs if we didn't believe in the power of audio. Craig Black got to a similar place many years ago, deciding to start a company that specialized in what we then called "books on tape." The tape is gone, but the books are not, and what became Blackstone Publishing is thriving. We get the story on the birth and growth of the company in our regular business segment, The Ground Floor.

Archaeology on the ground is easy to understand: dig in the ground, find something, carefully--very carefully--remove it from the ground, analyze, repeat. But that's not the only kind of archaeology in an age of technological wonders. Insteads of shovels, we talk satellites with Sarak Parcak, the author of Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past . If you're thinking "how can satellites see underground?", they can't. But they can detect patterns and shapes of human settlements that