The fires swept through and the government agencies swept in soon after to provide support for fire victims. But rebuilding after a major fire takes quite a while. So groups including the Salvation Army and the Shasta Regional Community Foundation have joined forces in NorCal CRT (community recovery team) , designed to provide long-term support to people who lost homes and more in the Carr and Delta fires last summer.

We've come a long way in a short time on the issue of race in America, and it's been an ugly journey. It was a surprisingly short journey from thinking of ourselves as a "post-racial" country to the calls of "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville in 2017. None of this surprised the writer Vegas Tenold, because he spent years buddying up to white supremacists and their fellow travelers. It resulted in a book, Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America

In an area as prone to wildfires as ours, we have many discussions about defensible space. It's the practice of clearing flammable material away from a home, to keep fire from burning the house. And it's not just for rural dwellers; people in town can do it too. Deschutes County's success with Project Wildfire --no houses lost to fire for 15 years--drew the attention of the New York Times. Similar efforts are going on in Ashland, with the FireWise program set up to defend residential areas from

Webster Young calls the Rogue Valley his home, but his work is heard all over the world. Young is a composer of symphonic music, ballets, and operas. His Fifth Symphony was performed last summer in Ukraine, and the event is a subject of a documentary film coming soon to the Ashland library.

They dress like they're going to a KISS concert, but they're really Oakland Raider fans. They take their shirts off in frostbite weather. They name their pets for their favorite athletes. Is this you, or someone you know? We'll revisit our discussion about sports fans going over the top, as described in Superfans: Into the Heart of Obsessive Sports Fandom .

The idea of buying a home with no down payment sounds too good to be true. But such a thing does exist, particularly for veterans under the housing assistance program backed by the federal Department of Veterans Affairs , the VA. Statistics show the use of the loan program to buy homes has increased sharply in Oregon over the last five years. Veterans United Home Loans tracks the numbers.

Thanksgiving started things off... this time of the year, LOTS of people cook lots of things to celebrate the holidays. Including cabbage. That's right, cabbage, the versatile vegetable that takes on many flavors and provides some of its own. This month's edition of our food segment, Savor, brings back segment partner and food stylist Will Smith, and a guest, Courtland Jennings. He is the founder and CEO of Pickled Planet , an Ashland-based maker of sauerkraut and other cabbage-based fermented

Food seems to be everywhere during the holiday season. Which foods do you gravitate to? And more importantly, why? That's the question British food writer Bee Wilson took up in a book examining how our food habits develop, from mom's breast forward. The book is First Bite: How We Learn to Eat .

Oregon is working to reduce the misuse of opioid pain medication, like a lot of other states. But in the eyes of one state agency, another state agency that could be helping is getting in its own way. The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) in the Oregon Health Authority was recently the focus of an audit by the Secretary of State's office. The audit found people getting prescriptions from multiple medical providers, and getting combinations of prescriptions that can be deadly.

Our regular archaeology segment, Underground History, branches out a bit this month. Consider this the first edition of its alternate: Underwater History. Because we meet Jennifer McKinnon from East Carolina University, a specialist in underwater archaeology, like on World War II battle sites in the Pacific.