Pepper Trail: As we celebrate Thanksgiving, let us imagine the world we share with every living thing. Let us give thanks for this planet, this blue and green ball spinning in a lifeless void, holding us all and making possible our every heartbeat, our every breath.
Pepper Trail: This is the constant dissonance so many of us face. That is, the lucky ones, like myself, who are citizens, who are white, who are not in economic crisis, who live surrounded by beautiful wild places that nurture our souls and provide refuge from the daily deluge of nightmarish news. What are we to do?
Pepper Trail: The idea that species can be conserved by picking up the phone to “call Colossal” and order up a few genetically engineered survivors is a delusional and disingenuous fantasy.
Riva Duncan: The Trump administration’s vaunted effort to “trim the fat” from the federal government and curb “waste and fraud” reveal one terrible — but not surprising — fact: The cost-cutters have no idea how government works or who does what in the federal workforce.
Talent councilor Jason Clark: “People all over the world want a negotiated solution that provides peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. More military aid just provokes more resistance and makes a negotiated solution harder to achieve.”
Pepper Trail: As one species after another dwindles away, the structure of the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth is weakening.
Pepper Trail: “This stretch of Interstate-5 in Southern Oregon is a known killing field for wildlife and dangerous for motorists. The highway cuts through a critical connection for wildlife moving between two mountain ranges and home to the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, which is the only national monument specifically established for the protection of its rich biodiversity.”
Matt Witt: “Consumers could make it a point to patronize local stores and food producers, and also ask why a company like Costco can afford to set its minimum wage at $17 an hour when Walmart says it can’t.”
Pepper Trail: “I’m not ready to declare myself a citizen of the post-apocalypse. We don’t have to live there. Instead, let’s accept that humanity and the whole planet are ‘apocalypse-adjacent.’ The apocalypse is before us and we can see it clearly. But the world is not yet ruined.”
Matt Witt: “Communities in the rural West can stand up to giant outside gas companies, if they work together despite their differences. That’s how the Jordan Cove gas pipeline project was finally killed in Oregon by a coalition of conservative ranchers and farmers, climate activists, Indigenous tribal leaders, anglers and coastal residents.”
A six-acre, 1.4 megawatt (MW) solar energy development proposal just outside the north end of Ashland on the east side of Highway 99 is set for public hearing at the county on Monday, Dec. 1. The proposed project on one parcel of a much larger area owned by Medella Bison Ranch, was initially denied approval by county planning staff based primarily on impacts to agricultural lands.
Eighty volunteers prepared and distributed approximately 300 meals on Thursday for the 10th annual Thanksgiving Community Peace Meal organized by Southern Oregon Jobs with Justice. This year’s gathering was the largest yet, with meal deliveries doubling compared to last year.
State employees packed boxes of food to be distributed throughout the state to help low-income Oregonians. But it’s not just to give out immediate food aid, it’s an exercise the Office of Resilience and Emergency Management will use to prepare agencies to help respond to major emergencies.
Oregon is co-leading a group of Democratic attorneys general in suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its leader Brooke Rollins over abrupt cuts to food assistance for refugees and asylum seekers. The cuts could affect up to 3,000 Oregonians who rely on SNAP.
Herbert Rothschild: We aren’t appreciably safer now than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis. What else can we conclude but that nuclear policy simply mustn’t be left in the hands of the warmakers? Either we give peace a chance or we continue to chance self-immolation.
Despite early forecasts of a punishing 2025 wildfire season, Oregon escaped relatively unscathed. Less than 400,000 acres burned in 2025, only one-fifth of the 2 million acres ravaged the year before and well below the 10-year average of 680,000.
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