Curtain Call: Abigail Mace is the artistic director and conductor of Jefferson Baroque Orchestra, a position she assumed last March. Jefferson Baroque’s upcoming concerts will be December performances of Handel’s “Messiah,” a beloved holiday tradition.
After nearing what they call their “bottom line,” Providence Medford nurses say “nothing is off the table” after a Tuesday bargaining session failed to end in a new contract with hospital administration. A strike authorization vote date is pending for Medford registered nurses represented by the Oregon Nurses Association.
Oregon’s keystone plan to regulate fossil fuel companies and reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution will be reinstated in early 2025 after being derailed for nearly a year by a gas industry lawsuit. The Environmental Quality Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to approve the program.
After years of increasing staffing even as enrollment declined, Ashland School District needs to reduce its 2024-2025 fiscal year budget by more than $2.2 million by mid-2025, according to a review by a statewide education official. Superintendent Joseph Hattrick is asking staff and the public to weigh in on a district plan on how to move forward with cuts.
A series of technical restrictions that has long bedeviled Ashland city staff seeking to stand up a winter shelter may be solved enough to provide an interim shelter as soon as next week, according to a presentation by City Manager Sabrina Cotta at Tuesday’s council meeting. Council also voted unanimously to support the proposal of a six-month pilot program to provide long-awaited storage facilities for the dusk-to-dawn sleeping area.
Cancer patients may soon see safer, more effective treatments thanks to groundbreaking research by a team that included Dr. Dawn Lemanne of Oregon Integrative Oncology in Ashland. Her team won first prize and a $50,000 grant at an international mathematical oncology competition in early November at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida.
“Floreana” is the title of Ashland author Midge Raymond’s latest novel, a captivating tale of love, loss and murder with an environmental twist. You can join Raymond for an author talk at the Ashland Public Library at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 3.
A series of first readings for ordinances to amend and extend the city of Ashland’s Enhanced Law Enforcement Area (ELEA) before the Ashland City Council at Tuesday’s business meeting were unanimously deferred for further discussion at a later meeting.
After months of continuous work, members of the 2200 Ashland Street Ad Hoc Master Plan Committee presented a plan to Ashland City Council for the first time Monday, leaving the council to begin the difficult conversation of how to fund the plan’s recommendations.
Ashland-based Two Sisters Writing & Publishing has published two new books addressing how to live your best life and ways to overcome harms from religious and other life experiences. “Joyously Free” provides “stories and tips to live your truth as LGBTQ+ people, parents and allies,” and “Healing Religious Hurts” offers “stories and tips to find love and peace.”
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)