In Ashland the students presented their findings to four nonprofit enterprises: the Ashland Independent Film Festival, Talent Maker City, the Institute for Applied Sustainability and Film Southern Oregon.
Ashland and Guanajuato have been sister cities for 55 years. They’ve sent delegations each year to Ashland’s Independence Day celebrations except for those of 2020 and 2021, curtailed at the height of the COVID pandemic.
The Ashland Amigo Club, supporter of the Ashland-Guanajuato alliance since its beginning, reports 16 University of Guanajuato students have come to Ashland this year to work on projects with their university student counterparts.
Entre Amigos: The annual Amigo Club dinner/fundraiser on Dec. 2, the sixth overall and first after a three-year forced suspension, grossed some $15,000 in donations.
Entre Amigos: The Ashland Amigo Club will offer the community its sixth annual Guanajuato Nights dinner and auction to raise funds for University of Guanajuato and Southern Oregon University exchange student scholarships. The fundraiser will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 2, in the Rogue River Room of the Stevenson Union building on the SOU campus.
Entre Amigos: Sister City Guanajuato sent a delegation to continue its participation in Ashland’s Fourth of July parade and festivities this year.
Entre Amigos: Two professors and nine business administration students from the University of Guanajuato arrived in Ashland Saturday for a week of collaboration with SOU students, analyzing and evaluating three small businesses in the Ashland area.
The Ashland Amigo Club has selected two Guanajuato scholarship recipients who will study winter and spring terms at Southern Oregon University as part of its Amistad student exchange program with the University of Guanajuato.
Juan Carlos Romero Hicks and his wife, Frances “Faffie” Siekman, who will receive Southern Oregon University’s prestigious President’s Medal next week, have connections with the university and Ashland dating back 44 years. Romero Hicks campaigned unsuccessfully to be president of Mexico in 2018 and is seeking his party’s backing again for the 2024 elections.
Entre Amigos: Sister City Guanajuato, Mexico, sent its summer festival queen and five other representatives to Ashland to participate in Ashland Fourth of July celebrations, resuming a 50-year tradition derailed in 2020 and 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic.
After a successful production of “The Vagina Monologues” and raising more than $2,000 for Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon, Ashland actor and director Lia Dugal intends for “The Climate Monologues” to premiere in Oregon in late 2025 or early 2026 at the Bellview Grange in Ashland.
It’s complicated.
Herbert Rothschild: Whether visualization and intention by themselves can effect broad social change is impossible to determine, but the question merits sustained consideration.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz said he is willing to return to in-person town halls if decorum and safety can be guaranteed. He specifically called out the group ORD2 Invisible, which Bentz said has orchestrated disruptions at meetings. The group pushed back, and said Bentz is scapegoating the organization to avoid accountability.
KS Wild will celebrate their annual dinner event Saturday, Sept. 27, at the historic Ashland Armory, 208 Oak St.
Rabbi Jackie Brodsky: As many seem to have forgotten or denied, the current war in Gaza was started by Hamas terrorists breaking a ceasefire on Oct.7, 2023, when the worst attack on the Jews since the Holocaust took place.
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