It's getting late in the Oregon legislature. A budget is due when the fiscal year begins July 1st, and there's not enough money to pay for all existing programs. So agencies large and small are still unsure about what their funding will be. Large as in: all the school districts in the state. Small as in: the Farm to School program, which teaches kids about where food comes from AND provides local food to their cafeterias. One version of the budget would cut funding entirely, another would cut

Vacuum action on Oregon streams moves from temporarily banned to permanently prohibited. Both state House and Senate have passed the Suction Dredge Reform Bill (SB 3), and Governor Kate Brown signed the bill on June 14th. Long a project of the late Senator Alan Bates, the bill prohibits suction dredge mining in Oregon streams where it would disturb sensitive fish habitat, while allowing the practice in areas where it will do less harm.

Frances Stroh had it all growing up. She was a rich kid, the heiress to the Stroh Brewing fortune. Then the economy of urban Detroit collapsed, beer tastes changed, and the family's fortunes went quickly south. It got ugly, a story Stroh tells frankly in her memoir, Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss .

It's not uncommon for a piece of land to be used for a business, then the business closes and the site is left vacant. But not empty. Hazardous substances or other pollutants can be left behind, with no one responsible for the cleanup. These are designated "brownfields" by the federal EPA, and an EPA grant to the Rogue Valley Council of Governments will help identify brownfields in the Medford/Grants Pass area.

"A home." That short phrase, uttered by senior citizens, is not a pleasant concept. The majority of senior citizens would rather live their later years in their own houses, not "a home." The national Senior Companion program pairs seniors who need some assistance at home--their own homes--with other seniors who are prepared to help. And the Lane County Senior Companion program is seeking volunteers.

The late John Kenneth Galbraith is generally regarded as a liberal economist, but his story is quite a bit more complicated than that, and more than 97 years long. Galbraith served under four presidents, wrote dozens of books, and worked for half a century at Harvard. And now we get to read his mail, courtesy of a Southern Oregon University professor. Economics professor Ric Holt is the editor of The Selected Letters of John Kenneth Galbraith , epistles to world leaders, journalists, famous

There are those who walk in the forest, and those who walk in the forest and recognize what grows there. Scott Kloos is firmly in that second category. He is the founder and managing director of The School of Forest Medicine. So you can probably guess what his new book is about. Yep, it's called Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants , a guide to foraging and finding wild herbs, which Kloos says are superior to the herbs you could grow in a garden.

The academic year is drawing to a close at the University of Oregon , but the work never stops. This month we visit with Leslie Leve from UO's Counseling Psychology and Human Services Department. She updates us on the University's Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact , UO's $1 billion initiative fueled by the Knights' $500 million gift last fall. Dr. Leve will talk about her own research and how the Knight Campus' approach will help.

It started with a pencil, but it became so much more. Adam Braun came face-to-face with a little boy in India who wanted a pencil. It was really symbolic: what he really wanted was an education. So that incident led to the formation of a group that has now built hundreds of schools all over the world. Adam Braun told the story in The Promise of a Pencil and joined us on The Exchange to talk about it three years ago.

Nicole and Jonas Maines are identical twins; they were born with identical bodies. But their minds viewed those bodies and their lives differently, and Nicole knew from an early age that she was fated to be female, not male. The transition from Wyatt to Nicole involved many obstacles; legal and political and personal. Nicole Maines and her father, Wayne, are traveling the country telling their family's story. They visit Rogue Community College in Medford today (June 9).