Our monthly hit of contemporary music, Rogue Sounds, steps up a notch for December (yes, we're a day early). Because Josh Gross of the Rogue Messenger, our music curator, is also the organizer of a CD of local bands and a party to release it, coming up next week. So Josh will treat us to a souped-up collection of songs, just in time for the holidays.

We wonder sometimes when Robert Arellano sleeps. He's got talents as an author, teacher, and musician (among other skills), and has just cranked out his sixth novel. Havana Libre is the sequel to Havana Lunar, his critically acclaimed book from 2010. Bombs, terrorists, and spies populate the new book, which is set in the Cuba of 20 years ago.

There's a good chance that if you set a shovel to the ground in a place where people have lived for a long time, you'll find SOME kind of artifact. This is what keeps archaeologists busy and provides content for our monthly Underground History segment. This month: the excavation of Yreka's old Chinatown, dug up when Interstate Five was built. There's a good collection of artifacts , but the documentation and interpretation were never completed. Sarah Heffner is working to update the information

Where once methamphetamine labs concerned police, now it's BHO operations: butane honey oil labs. Pretty name, but volatile process; it extracts the main "high" chemical from marijuana through the use of butane or propane. You could flunk chemistry and know those substances are prone to explosion. Josephine County's sheriff and other police agencies report 10 lab seizures and two explosions this year. The seizures are tops in Oregon, and a cause for concern for both police and fire agencies like

Jere Van Dyk knows Afghanistan well from decades of covering the news there. But his vast knowledge did not protect him from kidnapping; he was taken in 2008. 45 days later, he was free... and not sure why. He decided to investigate the odd circumstances of his release, a story he tells in The Trade: My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping . The title is not applied casually... kidnapping is indeed a business in Afghanistan.

It's called the "prairie chicken," but nobody really intends to eat a sage grouse. The bird is a focus of controversy in Oregon's high desert, with conservation groups seeking greater protection for it and resource-use groups trying to reduce regulations. The latter category includes the Oregon Farm Bureau . Mary Ann Cooper from the Bureau visits. Tom Sharp is a rancher and the chair of the Oregon Cattlemen's Association's Endangered Species Committee. They join us with the farmer/rancher

The State of Oregon recently reported on the numbers of homeless students in the state. And the figures were not encouraging: of the five districts with the highest rates of student homelessness, four are in our listening area. Butte Falls tops the list. The Maslow Project works to assist homeless students in both Jackson and Josephine Counties, and seldom has to look far to find people to serve.

The Rogue Valley's Nisha Burton has many artistic interests and outlets. Her latest short film is part of a project called "The Separation Myth," and is an an exploration of what it is like to be non-white and live in the Rogue Valley. She is our guest in this month's installment of The Keenest Observers, hosted by Robert Goodwin.

Dungeness crab season is a big deal on the West Coast. It's become a big deal for whales, too, but not in a good way. The numbers of whales and other marine mammals tangled in devices meant to catch crabs has been climbing to record levels in recent years. The Center for Biological Diversity already sued the federal Fish and Wildlife service over the entanglements earlier this fall; now CBD wants the feds to declare that crabbing is dangerous to whales.

It turns out small birds can lead to large and heated debates. Think spotted owl, marbled murrelet, and sage grouse. The grouse, the so-called "prairie chicken," is a candidate for federal protection, but the feds declined to put it on the Endangered Species list. And now the Trump administration wants to make sure grouse protection does not get in the way of economic activity in the West. A deadline for comment on federal plans comes on December 1. The Oregon Natural Desert Association is