Ashland resident Diarmuid McGuire died Sunday after being hospitalized for a fall. A well-known figure in the environmental community and married to state Rep. Pam Marsh, McGuire was 80.
Hundreds turned out for a vigil on Ashland Plaza on Jan. 6, the one-year anniversary of the insurrection at the nation’s Capitol.
Gov. Tina Kotek called a special legislative session Thursday to come up with $218 million to pay outstanding balances from the 2024 wildfire season. Lawmakers voted 25-2 in the Senate and 42-2 in the House to pay that bill by sending $191.5 million to the state forestry department and $26.6 million to the Office of the State Fire Marshal.
Millions of western monarch butterflies once visited Oregon and other Western states each spring to drink flower nectar, pollinate plants and lay their eggs after wintering in forests in coastal California. But today just a couple hundred thousand make the journey. To help curb their decline, a federal wildlife nonprofit has granted nearly $760,000 to improve the monarch’s habitat.
Relocations: “I don’t think there are any other artists (besides Richard Serra) who worked with the level of ambition, exactness and vision to create something on such a magnificent scale that changes human experience.” — Sarah Roberts, head of painting and sculpture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Obituary: Ruth Bell Alexander, 80, a pioneering women’s health advocate, writer, and community leader, died Dec. 4 in Ashland. In 2005, Ruth Alexander was elected to the Ashland School Board, where she served two terms as a vocal advocate for equitable education and student engagement. She organized the whole town into a one-week television hiatus called “No TV Week” in the early 1990s.
Mt. Ashland Ski Area’s first new chairlift in more than three decades will open this weekend. The Lithia Chair will open at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 14, giving skiers and snowboarders greater access to easy and intermediate slopes, according to a release issued Tuesday from the nonprofit ski area.
Review: This year’s production of “A Christmas Carol,” playing at the CTP and directed by Tommy Statler, is original, imaginative and lighter than last year’s production of the same. The story of the miserly curmudgeon who finds redemption in the meaning of Christmas keeps with the spirit of the season.
(It’s free)