The raw facts about the Vietnam War are hard enough to take: 58,000 Americans died protecting a country that ceased to exist soon after we left. Historian Andrew Wiest took a more intimate approach in his research, talking to the women and girlfriends of a single Army unit that fought in Vietnam. The result is the book Charlie Company's Journey Home . As you'd expect, those journeys range from bumpy to harrowing and beyond.

Consumed any media lately? The flood of news and ads that comes with any major election seemed relentless of late. But that gives us plenty to talk about in our monthly survey of the media landscape, Signals & Noise. Andrew Gay and Precious Yamaguchi of the Communication faculty at Southern Oregon University keep tabs on many events in media, and we talk them over with your input.

It just seems like magic. A machine uses wood chips and a few other ingredients to pull moisture out of the air, to produce water. 30 gallons a day, in the smallest unit. The name is apt: Skywater ; it just won the XPrize competition by perfecting a technology to provide fresh water to places that need it. David Hertz is the co-founder of the Skywater/Skysource Alliance.

Remember how fun Thanksgiving was after the 2016 election? Not so tranquil across some dinner tables, we hear. And the same thing could happen again this year--well any year, really--because our relatives share meals, but don't necessarily share politics. Marla Estes and Rob Schlapfer, who encourage people to converse across the political divide in Bridging the Divide , offer a special program for Thanksgiving called "Holiday? Or Hollerday?"

The mid-term election, anticipated for two years, is finally over on Wednesday morning. There was a lot for voters to consider, everything from immigration to school funding, governors to city council members. So now let's talk about what happened. We follow the election with the return of our "Two Cents Day" segment... numbers and analysis, to be sure, but also a chance for you to vent on the results and how they do or do not match your hopes and expectations. Put your voice out there-

Nike co-founder Phil Knight gives away a lot of money. Sometimes, there are strings attached, like when he offered half a billion dollars to Oregon Health & Science University for a cancer center... and OHSU had to come up with matching money. Fast-forward to September, when the Knight Cancer Research Building opened in Portland. Yep, they matched the money.

A man with a mallet at the Eiffel Tower. Should we call the police? No, because he has government permission to whack on the tower. Confused yet? Joseph Bertolozzi is a composer and percussionist, and he marveled at the range of sounds produced by the most visible symbol of Paris. So he took a variety of strikers to a variety of surfaces, recorded the sounds, and ended up with an album called "Tower Music." It will be performed in public live for the first time on Thursday at Southern Oregon

Rogue Valley artist Marigny Goodyear brings a lot of skills to her work; she's an artist with a business degree. Her usual modes of expression are abstract painting and essays. And one of her recent essays packed a wallop: it was an open letter to all the men who took advantage of her sexually in her teen years.

Even when we're not uttering malapropisms, we may not be using the exact words we intended. Charles Harrington Elster can help; his voluminous knowledge of the English language has led to nearly a dozen books. Those include the new How to Tell Fate from Destiny . It's not about religion or philosophy, just the terms themselves.

Oregon's tallest peak, Mount Hood, can be a dangerous place. It has demonstrated its treachery in the past, notably in the spring of 1986. That's when a group of students and teachers from Oregon Episcopal School went up the mountain and got caught in a blizzard. Nine people, seven of them students, died. Pauls Toutonghi lives in the Portland area and wrote a new account of the disaster for the new edition of Outside magazine, with details not previously published. The school requested that the