Maybe you're not quite ready to duplicate the trip Cheryl Strayed took in "Wild": hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert to Washington. So you could be a "section hiker," taking trips on shorter sections of the PCT. Philip Kramer has a book for you, his newly-released Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail: Northern California Section Hiking from Tuolumne Meadows to Donomore Pass . It's part of a series that lays out the whole PCT in sections.

The days are longer, the weather is (mostly) warmer, and the outdoor concert season is not far away. About a month away, it seems. But there are plenty of arts events to see, hear, and celebrate in May. And we provide airtime to talk about them in our First Friday Arts segment. It's what the Web calls "user-generated content"... we open the phone lines at 800-838-3760 and invite people to call with details on events large and small, on stage or in galleries, in the month of May.

Josh Gross is a musician, but we dare not ask who his influences are. We might be listening all day. Safe to say that Josh loves music in many forms, and he gets to demonstrate it by making his own AND by covering the music of others in his work for the Rogue Valley Messenger . We plug Josh into the Exchange once a month in a segment we call Rogue Sounds.

Maybe the details become murky over time, but just the name of America's most complicated war says volumes: Vietnam. 58,000 people died fighting for the United States, and the country itself divided sharply over the war, leaving a permanent scar. Elizabeth Partridge protested the war as a teenager in Berkeley; she offers an overview of the war to a new generation in the lavishly-illustrated book Boots On The Ground: America's War In Vietnam .

The "silver tsunami" is well underway. Children born during the American baby boom are all in their mid-50s and older now, many looking for places to spend their time after retirement. Does a "senior center" even appeal to them? The country has plenty of them, and they provide a variety of services. Oregon's State Unit on Aging keeps tabs on many programs available to seniors.

It is possible that additional doses of vitamin D could reduce the risk of babies being born prematurely. But nobody who makes or sells vitamin D can make that claim; the federal government has not approved it. With mounting evidence, the Organic & Natural Health Association recently petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to allow vitamin D products to claim reduced risk for pre-term birth.

The imprisoning of Japanese-Americans in prison camps during World War II is an enduring stain on the country. We still struggle to understand the actions and motivations of the time. Much of the attention focuses on people leaving their homes and living in the camps. But what happened after they were released? That's the approach taken in the book Life After Manzanar by Naomi Hirahara and Heather Lindquist. People released from camps got 25 dollars and a bus ticket.

Latinos are California's largest single minority group. But Latinos can be hard to find among the faculty and administration of California's public colleges, both two- and four-year. And that's not the only group under-represented. 69% of students are diverse, but 60% of college faculty and senior leadership are white. The Campaign for College Opportunity documents the trends in a recent report .

Our society oscillates in our approach to criminal justice, between punishment and rehabilitation. The concept of "restorative justice" takes rehabilitation a step further. It involves healing the harm done by crime, when possible, and re-integrating offenders into society, sometimes with face-to-face meetings between people on both ends of a criminal act. The Resolve Center for Dispute Resolution and Restorative Justice in Medford (formerly Mediation Works) organized the upcoming Northwest

We're urged to "think globally, act locally," but climate change is still a massive thing to wrap our minds around. How DO we express our concerns at the local level in ways that make a difference? Mary DeMocker , co-founder of the Eugene chapter of 350.org, has a few ideas for you. She is the author of The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution: 100 Ways to Build a Fossil Free Future, Raise Empowered Kids, and Still Get a Good Night's Sleep . You might tell from the title that the book is both