Don't let the name fool you. Wilderness Poets is not actually about poetry; the Ashland-based company is in the food business. Its nut butters and other products are made from the harvests of organic farms in the region, and the company has been at it for more than a decade. Wilderness Poets is our focus in this month's edition of The Ground Floor, our business/entrepreneur segment.

The name is only four letters long, but the issues with it can take volumes to explain. PERS, Oregon's Public Employee Retirement System , has billions of dollars on hand to pay to retired public workers. The trouble is that there's a gap between what it will need to pay workers in the future, and the projections for its income. The gap is more than $26 Billion, and closing the gap requires ever-larger payments into the system by state and local governments. Former Oregon AFL-CIO president Tim

Mental illness is better understood than it once was. But people who have lived through mental illness and people who work with them say there is still a long road ahead. The regional chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, NAMI-Southern Oregon, works to bring stories of mental illness to a general audience with a Movies For Mental Health Film Fest , this weekend (May 18-19) in Ashland and Grants Pass.

We admit to thinking about dessert while we start a meal. So it's always right up our alley when discussions of food turn to sweeter offerings. Those include honey, featured this weekend (May 18th) at the Oregon Honey & Mead Festival in Ashland. Will Smith, our partner for a monthly food segment we call Savor, returns to take up the subject. Festival boss Sharon Schmidt also visits. And we bring in another guest, Marla Bull Bear, who runs a honey-making project with young people at the

Oh, the smells from the kitchen. They can fire up the heart and brain, in addition to the stomach. Paul Graham celebrated food in life and in his writing... and then the celiac axe fell, and forced him to cut gluten out of his life entirely. He described the process of coming to grips with his new reality, in the book In Memory of Bread . Paul eventually realized he was the same person, just fed differently.

Food comes to us from a lot of places on the planet. But we assume most of those places are actually in the business of agriculture, not, say, the sidewalks of Oakland, California. But Oakland is exactly one of the places where researchers found edible greens growing wild. And even though some of the surroundings--residential and industrial--were a bit bleak, the plants didn't seem to care. Even plants grown in soil with potential contaminants could be washed and safely eaten.

It is more than a pun to say that Ashland will be buzzing this weekend (May 18-19). Because the Oregon Honey (and Mead) Festival returns, along with another bee-based event, the Feminine Legacy Beekeeping Conference. Amanda Shaw will be in town; Mandy runs the swarm-catching business Waggle Works and is the president of Portland Urban Beekeepers . Her PUB duties include hosting the podcast "Beekeeper Confidential."

Events came quickly on the vaccine front in Oregon, over a matter of days. Demonstrations against a legislative bill that would end most non-medical vaccine exemptions for children reached a fever pitch, just at the time the Senate Republicans vanished, stalling Senate business. Their return for a vote on new taxes was arranged in exchange for the dropping of two bills, one on gun controls... and the vaccine bill (HB 3063, which had already passed the house). Senator Jeff Golden of Ashland, who

We connect with other humans in ways that could only be imagined years ago. No, we don't have telepathy... not yet. But we do have all kinds of social media and ways to communicate on personal devices. Plus other kinds of media only now coming to the fore, as demonstrated at EMCON, the Emerging Media Conference at Southern Oregon University. Caz Crozier is the student coordinator for EMCON, which is part of the University's annual SOAR event (Southern Oregon Arts & Research).

If you're thinking about building a home with high insulation value, you don't need to think high-tech. With enough land, you can grow your own walls over a growing season. Straw bale construction provides some real benefits in energy saving and soundproofing, with walls 18 inches thick. Jim Reiland builds straw bale homes through his business, Many Hands Builders . He is also the managing editor for a new book, Straw Bale Building Details: An illustrated Guide for Design and Construction.