Jefferson Journal JAN/FEB 2024 by Abigail Kraft

January/February 2024

How Homelessness In Oregon Started, Grew And Became A Statewide Crisis

The Members’ Magazine of Jefferson Public Radio

41 S T A N N UA L

Wine Tasting A Celebration of Wine, Food & Community Friday, February 9 · 6–9pm Ashland Hills Hotel & Suites Over 40 regional wineries and restaurants participate in our event with live music by the Danielle Kelly Soul Project. This year we are bringing back the JPR Wine Pull + the JPR 50/50 Raffle. So, arrive solo or bring a date ... either way, join JPR staff and friends for a spectacular night out as the community comes together to celebrate the bounty of the region and public radio!

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Ashland Hills Hotel & Suites is offering courtesy room rates to JPR Wine Tasting guests. Call 541-482-8310 and ask for the JPR Wine Tasting discount.

Tickets and details available at ijpr.org/winetasting or by calling 800-782-6191.

JEFFERSON

JPR Foundation Officers Ken Silverman – Ashland President Liz Shelby – Vice President Cynthia Harelson – Medford/Grants Pass Treasurer

Don Matthews Classical Music Director/ Announcer Geoffrey Riley Assistant Producer/ Jefferson Exchange Host Erik Neumann News Director/Regional Reporter

Andrea Pedley – Eureka Secretary

Dave Jackson Music Director/Open Air Host

Ex-Officio

Danielle Kelly Open Air Host

Rick Bailey President, SOU

Soleil Mycko Business Manager

Paul Westhelle Executive Director, JPR

Angela Decker All Things Considered Host Jefferson Exchange Senior Producer

Shelley Austin Jefferson Live Executive Director, Ex-officio

Directors Eric Monroe – Medford Ron Meztger – North Bend Rosalind Sumner – Montague Dan Mullin – Eugene Margaret Redmon – Redding Karen Doolen – Medford

JPR Staff

Charlie Zimmerman JPR News Production Assistant Zack Biegel JPR News Production Assistant Calena Reeves Audience & Business Services Coordinator Liam Bull Audience Services Assistant Vanessa Finney All Things Considered Host

Paul Westhelle Executive Director Darin Ransom Director of Engineering Sue Jaffe Membership Coordinator Valerie Ing Northern California Program Coordinator/Announcer Abigail Kraft Business Support Manager/ Jefferson Journal Editor

Roman Battaglia Regional Reporter Jane Vaughan Regional Reporter Milt Radford Morning Edition Host

January/February 2024

JOURNAL

FEATURED

6 How Homelessness In Oregon Started, Grew And Became A Statewide Crisis

By Alex Zielinski The path out of Oregon’s homelessness crisis isn’t simple, nor is it direct. But solutions do exist. To uncover them, it’s important to first understand the origins of this crisis.

12 Rogue Valley Entrepreneur Turns Food Waste Into ‘Black Gold’

By Roman Battaglia Your food scraps leftover from cooking aren’t garbage. The community composting program of one Rogue Valley entrepreneur is turning that waste into a commodity.

5 Tuned In | Paul Westhelle 17 JPR News Focus: Law & Justice | Jane Vaughan 19 Press Pass | Erik Neumann 21 JPR News Focus: Arts & Culture | Brian Bull

Dave Young Operations Manager

24 JPR Radio Stations & Programs

Josh Raines Network Engineer

27 Inside The Box | Scott Dewing 29 JPR News Focus: Science & Environment | Jane Vaughan

Programming Volunteers Jacqui Aubert

Noah Brann-Linsday

Crystal Rogers

Jack Barthell

Autumn Micketti

Raymond Scully

Derral Campbell

Peter Pace

Shanna Simmons

Craig Faulkner

Krystin Phelps

Lars Svendsgaard

Ed Hyde

Frances Oyung

Traci Svendsgaard

Alan Journet

Laurell Reynolds

Robin Terranova

JEFFERSON JOURNAL (ISSN 1079-2015), January/ February 2024, volume 48 number 1. Published bi-monthly (six times a year) by JPR Foundation, Inc., 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Periodical postage paid at Ashland, OR and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to The Jefferson Journal, 1250 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR. 97520 Jefferson Journal Credits: Editor: Abigail Kraft Managing Editor: Paul Westhelle Poetry Editor: Amy Miller Design/Production: Impact Publications Printing: Oregon Web Press

cover: A man sits outside his camp in Southwest Portland, Ore., Sept. 30, 2021.

PHOTO: KRISTYNA WENTZ-GRAFF / OPB

Jefferson Public Radio is a community service of Southern Oregon University. The JPR Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports JPR’s public service mission.

Jefferson Public Radio welcomes your comments: 1250 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520-5025 | 541-552-6301 | 1-800-782-6191 530-243-8000 (Shasta County) | www.ijpr.org · jprinfo@sou.edu

BID. WIN. SUPPORT.

JANUARY 22-31 INFORMATION AVAILABLE AT WWW.iJPR.ORG/AUCTION Thanks to the incredible generosity of our regional business community and those bidders who go all-out, JPR’s Online Auction is now a winter tradition! Bidding for the 2024 Online Auction begins on January 22.

Don’t miss this opportunity to bid on amazing donations from these generous contributors... 7 Devils Waterfront Ale House 7 Devils Brewery & Tap Room Art Bop Beer Company Ashland & Medford Cycle Sport Ashland Electric Bike Ashland Hardware Ashland Hills Hotel & Suites Ashland Springs Hotel Bar Juillet Be Cherished Bella Union Restaurant & Saloon Berryvale Grocery Bloomsbury Books Britt Music & Arts Festival Camelot Theatre Company Cascade Theatre Claire Burbridge Cocoa + Craft Cocorico Country Willows Inn Domain Rogue Freakonomics Fry Family Farm Grizzly Peak Winery Harana Cafe Harry & David

Hearsay Restaurant, Lounge & Garden Hither Jerry’s Rogue Jets JPR Kate Jack Jewelry Kixx Larks Restaurant Laurie Sager and Associates Landscape Architects Le Mera Gardens Little Creek Ranch Magic Man McCully House Inn Medford Food Co-op Melody Jones Miller Paint Mix Bakeshop Morrison’s Rogue Wilderness Adventures and Lodge Mount Ashland Ski Resort Neuman Hotel Group Noble Coffee Northwest Ceramics Oregon Cabaret Theatre Oregon Shakespeare Festival Parkhurst Cellars

Paschal Winery Pomodori Osteria & Bar Porters – Dining at the Depot Prestige Barbershop re*mix coffee bar Redwood Coast Music Festival Redwood Coast Music Festival Rogue Creamery Ruby’s of Ashland Ruby’s on Genessee Running Y Ranch & Resort Runnymede Farm Shepherd’s Dream Shooting Star Nursery Simple Machine Steelhead Water Tan Republic The Butterfly Club The Websters Trader Joe’s Turtle Bay Exploration Park Valley View Winery Walkabout Brewing WBEZ This American Life Weisinger Family Winery WNYC – On The Media Yala

JPR is grateful to those who contributed! More donors are listed on our website that we were not able to include due to print deadlines. 4 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

TUNED IN PAUL WESTHELLE

Press Forward is an attempt to reverse the significant decline in local news coverage in many communities around the country which organizers believe is linked to “an increasingly divided America and weakening trust in institutions.”

Pressing Forward

his past September, a coalition of 22 donors announced a national initiative to strengthen communities and democracy by supporting local news and information with an infusion of more than a half-billion dollars over the next five years. The initiative is called Press Forward, and its initial funders include major philanthropic institutions like the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The goal of the initiative is to support local journalism at an unprecedented level to “re-center local news as a force for community cohesion; support new models and solutions that are ready to scale; and close longstanding inequities in journalism coverage and practice.” Press Forward is an attempt to reverse the significant decline in local news coverage in many communities around the country which organizers believe is linked to “an increasingly divided America and weakening trust in institutions.” The initiative is also a response to the reality that since 2005, approximately 2,200 local newspapers have closed, resulting in 20 percent of Americans living in “news deserts” with little to no reliable coverage of local news. In announcing the program, MacArthur Foundation president, John Palfrey, emphasized the interconnectedness of a healthy media system to addressing a broad range of community problems stating, “The philanthropic sector recognizes the need to strengthen American democracy and is beginning to see that progress on every other issue, from education and healthcare to criminal justice reform and climate change, is dependent on the public’s understanding of the facts.” I couldn’t agree more and believe Press Forward is a pivotal step in the right direction. In response to the decline in the local news ecosystem, and consistent with public media’s foundational belief that a well-informed public is crucial for the health of our democracy and strength of our communities, public radio has taken important steps to expand its commitment to local news coverage. Here at JPR we have quadrupled the size of our local reporting staff since 2013 and more than doubled the size of our newsroom to support these journalists. In January, we welcome the newest addition to our newsroom when Justin Higginbottom joins us as a regional reporter. Justin has spent the past year reporting from Thailand, India and Myanmar where he covered the Myanmar civil war—he’s also been a contributor to NPR, CNBC, The New Republic, and Deutsche Welle (Germany’s public media organization). In addition to expanding local news coverage, public radio stations have become hubs for journalistic innovation and civic engagement by creating opportunities for community-based problem solving while also providing a growing array of digital journalism products including apps, digital news sites, email newsletters, social media content and podcasts. These efforts are designed to expand access to local news to younger audiences who consume news mostly on digital platforms. I believe public media outlets around the country, and JPR here at home, are ideally positioned to help increase both the breadth and depth of local journalism by supporting dynamic local news ecosystems in the communities we serve, fostering collaboration, coordinating coverage, and connecting other local newsrooms. With an existing network of 3,200 journalists rooted in communities across all 50 states, public media offers a strong framework to build upon as philanthropists, community organizations and others reimagine how people across America receive local news. We look forward to the work ahead and are deeply grateful for the ongoing support listeners like you provide year-in and year-out to make it possible.

Paul Westhelle is JPR’s Executive Director.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 5

How Homelessness In Oregon Started, Grew And Became A Statewide Crisis By Alex Zielinski

6 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

The path out of Oregon’s homelessness crisis isn’t simple, nor is it direct. But solutions do exist. To uncover them, it’s important to first understand the origins of this crisis.

andi Silvis spent the past three years always thinking about her next move: Where will she find dinner? When can she get a shower? How was she going to get to her doctor’s appointment? Will she be able to find a safe place to sleep? Silvis, 51, spent most of her days addressing her basic needs, using alcohol to dull the anxiety that came with living without reliable shelter. “I was just constantly trying to take care of myself,” Silvis said. “Whatever that looked like.” Silvis became homeless in Washington County after fleeing an abusive relationship. With little of her own money to rely on, she immediately applied to a litany of housing providers and services for help. She was told to wait. In the meantime, Silvis slept in her car, at homeless shelters or returned to stay with her abuser. After three years of living unsheltered, Silvis received a rental assistance voucher through Washington County. That voucher, which is available for older adults experiencing homelessness, covers rent for up to 10 years or until the recipient starts making a regular income. Since moving into her new apartment in Beaverton in August, Silvis has discovered goals that stretch beyond her daily survival. She’s applying to job training programs, creating artwork, working on her sobriety and taking care of her new kitten, Milo. She’s much less anxious. “It’s surreal,” she said. “I can go for a walk and know that I have something to come back to. I feel like I have a future.” Silvis is one of the nearly 18,000 Oregonians who experienced homelessness in 2022. Her story reflects some of the biggest factors contributing to the state’s growing crisis. Long wait times, due to underfunded and understaffed housing programs, often lead to people living unhoused for far longer than anticipated. According to 2022 U.S. Census data, Oregon has the nation’s highest rate of chronic homelessness—a term for people who’ve been homeless for more than one year or multiple times over several years. Homelessness can also be harder to escape when paired with other personal challenges, like addiction or domestic violence.

A man sits outside his camp in Southwest Portland, Ore., Sept. 30, 2021. KRISTYNA WENTZ-GRAFF / OPB

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 7

CADEN PERRY / OPB

As rents skyrocketed in Oregon cities in the past decade, some people experiencing homelessness moved to smaller Oregon towns seeking affordable housing and work — which didn’t always pan out.

Candi Silvis looks out at the park in the middle of her new apartment complex in Beaverton, Ore., on Sept. 1, 2023. Silvis moved to this apartment three weeks earlier after experiencing homelessness for several years. “For two years they would tell you ‘in two weeks’ over and over,” Silvis said about applying for supportive housing. “It won’t be given easy. You have to count on yourself.”

The most effective solution to homelessness is housing. Yet Oregon has failed for decades to develop enough housing to meet its growing population. Oregon has the fourth largest homeless population per capita in the country, after D.C., California and Vermont, according to the census, and it’s growing at an above-average pace. Its impact is felt across the state. Oregonians are struggling to stay housed—and public officials are struggling to find solutions. As the homeless population grows, so do the unique needs of people seeking to escape homelessness, making the crisis appear even more intractable. The path out of Oregon’s homelessness crisis isn’t simple, nor is it direct. But solutions do exist. To uncover them, it’s important to first understand the origins of this crisis.

History Oregon’s homeless crisis began in its cities. At the end of the 19th century, Portland relied on low-wage migrant workers—employed as loggers, warehouse workers, longshoreman and more—to keep its economy afloat. But these workers couldn’t afford to buy a house in Portland. So the city constructed short-term lodging houses, which became known as single room occupancy hotels (SROs), to house them for cheap. 8 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

These hotels offered single rooms for around 35 cents a night ($12 in 2023 rates) with communal kitchens and bathrooms. As migration slowed, and longtime laborers moved into more permanent housing, these hotels became more permanent rest stops for the poorest Portlanders. Some impoverished Oregonians at the turn of the century also moved to poor farms—or institutions run by counties for “indigent citizens” who were unable to take care of themselves. But in the 1950s and ’60s, Portland began tearing down these hotels as part of a national shift toward urban renewal, where cities leveled poor and minority neighborhoods to make way for higher-end housing, businesses and other development meant to spur economic growth. According to an inventory created by the nonprofit Northwest Pilot Project, downtown Portland lost more than 2,000 rental units affordable to minimum-wage workers between 1978 and 2015. Many of them were SROs. The nonprofit estimated that, in 2015, around 3,100 apartments with rent below $481—affordable for a minimum wage earner at the time—remained in downtown Portland. Most of those buildings were operated by Central City Concern or other publicly-funded housing programs. It’s not clear how many of those units remain nearly a decade later. This mass destruction of low-income housing came as the federal government flip-flopped on public housing. In 1968, the Housing and Urban Development Act established programs that help low-income people buy homes and afford mortgages, along with a rental assistance program for low-income tenants. Just five years later, President Richard Nixon issued a moratorium on all public housing spending. The dismantling of social service programs for low-income families paired with back-toback recessions in the decade to follow only worsened the outcomes for low–income Oregonians. These multiple blows to public and affordable housing programs “created a direct path to mass shelters,” according to Ed Blackburn, the former executive director of homeless service provider Central City Concern. The nonprofit was established in 1979 to help preserve SRO buildings and turn some of them into recovery housing to address the growing number of people with alcohol addiction living on downtown streets. Blackburn first joined Central City Concern in 1992 as the director of the Hooper Detoxification Stabilization Center, the nonprofit’s inpatient substance abuse treatment program. Through his more than a quarter-century with the nonprofit, Blackburn said he saw a confluence of issues accelerate Portland’s homeless problem. Oregon began shutting down its large psychiatric facilities and poor farms in the 1980s and ’90s after reports revealed inhumane treatment of patients. The state’s plan was to replace these institutions with smaller, community-based treatment

Multnomah County’s Hillside Poor Farm, circa 1898.

facilities. That never happened. Instead, rising housing and health care costs forced many people with serious mental illnesses into homelessness. Then came the heroin epidemic. The largely religious-based homeless shelters that opened after the low-income hotels were razed generally tolerated people with alcohol dependencies. But they began creating zero-tolerance rules for visitors addicted to heroin. “So we started seeing more and more heroin-addicted people living and dying on the streets,” Blackburn said. The 1990s also saw a surge in Black Americans entering homelessness, in Oregon and beyond. This was spurred by the federal government’s war on drugs, which disproportionately incarcerated Black Americans, and gentrification of Black neighborhoods, splintering families and communities. “If you have a social network intact, and you run into a situation where you lose a job, or you can’t pay your rent,” Blackburn said. “Your ability to rely on family members or other community members to step in and help you out through that crisis keeps most people from experiencing homelessness. The Black community no longer had that.” For a while, service providers like Central City Concern were

COURTESY MULTNOMAH COUNTY ARCHIVE

able to help people get off the streets—whether into a temporary hotel stay or an apartment lease. Up until the 2010s, Blackburn said, “there was a lot of slack in the housing market,” making it affordable for a nonprofit to cover rents. Those vacancy rates began to dip as Portland saw its population balloon by nearly 100,000 between 2005 and 2015. As rents skyrocketed in Oregon cities in the past decade, some people experiencing homelessness moved to smaller Oregon towns seeking affordable housing and work—which didn’t always pan out. Others born and raised in smaller communities simply found they could no longer afford rent or a mortgage in their hometown, and moved into a tent or car. Like in cities, this crisis was worsened by a lack of housing. Available housing evaporated as formerly affordable homes turned into lucrative vacation rentals in small coastal towns. It continued to shrink when new construction failed to bounce back in small communities after the 2008 recession, despite population growth. While homelessness first appeared in Oregon’s larger cities, it’s now taken root across the state. In 2022, Oregon ranked among the states with the largest rural homeless populations in the country, with an estimated 3,208 rural Oregonians living outside on a given evening. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 9

APPLEGATE VALLEY OREGON “But Aside from the excellent Applegate wines I’ve had from Willamette producers, the wines of one producer, Troon Vineyard, made such an impression on me over the last few years that I drove seven hours from the Mendocino Coast in July to pay a visit to Applegate Valley, While I admire the way Troon farms and its empirical attitude, the proof is in the wines, which are invariably fresh, lively and expressive,” —Eric Asimov The New York Times

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troonvineyard.com | Social: @TroonWines 541-846-9900 Winery: 1475 Kubli Rd., Grants Pass, OR | McMinnville: 620 NE Third St., McMinnville, OR

There are many factors that contributed to Oregon’s current homelessness crisis. But most agree that the blame largely falls on one problem: the state’s affordable housing shortage. “It’s not rocket science,” said Marisa Zapata, an urban planning professor at Portland State University. Zapata is also the director of PSU’s Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative, which studies the factors that lead to homelessness. “It doesn’t really matter what lens you look at it through,” she said. “Escalation of housing values and rising rents is what causes homelessness.” According to state analysts, Oregon’s current housing supply is short roughly 140,000 homes to meet the demands of its population size. This places the state fourth in the country in terms of under-producing housing. This shortage has taken a toll on low-income Oregonian renters. Because of the limited housing inventory, landlords are able to keep rents high. This has allowed Oregon to become one of the states with the lowest supply of rentals affordable to people at or below poverty levels. Oregon’s precarious housing situation isn’t always obvious to those not at risk of losing their home. It can be easier to assume someone’s homelessness is rooted in individual failures or circumstances. But while mental health, drug addiction, and poverty can influence a person’s housing status, they aren’t a direct cause. Cities with high poverty rates, like Detroit and Philadelphia, have some of the lowest homelessness rates in the country, while wealthier cities like Seattle and San Francisco have some of the highest homelessness rates. At the same time, states like West Virginia rank highest in drug overdose deaths, while having one of the smallest homeless populations in the country. “If you simply look across the country and you see where the rates of homelessness are the highest, they’re in the parts of the country that have allowed their housing markets to overheat,” said John Tapogna, a senior policy analyst at economic consulting firm ECONorthwest (Tapogna is a member of OPB’s board of directors). It’s more likely that personal challenges like a mental health crisis, job loss or a personal injury act as a turning point for people who are already facing housing instability. For Illene Burns, it was her husband’s death that pushed her into homelessness. “I just didn’t care anymore… I just gave up,” said Burns, 60, who became homeless in Portland in 2019. “I was getting ready to lose my place anyway, so I just put all my stuff into storage and hit the streets.” Burns spent most nights sleeping in her car or on the sidewalk by herself. She said it was hard to ever get a full night’s sleep, as she was always worried about thieves. She avoided staying in mass shelters because she was receiving treatment for stage three cancer while living outside during the COVID-19 pandemic. She waited four years to move into housing. Chronic homelessness is uniquely challenging to interrupt because of the effect the experience has on the way a person thinks. Living in constant high alert can put someone in a constant state of “flight, fight or freeze,” where their brain’s fear center is overactive. This dulls the brains’ prefrontal cortex, which regulates critical thinking and emotions.

KRISTYNA WENTZ-GRAFF / OPB

How people become homeless

Tents along Southwest 13th Avenue in Portland in April 2022. Many campers stay in this area because of the close proximity Outside In where they are able to access support services.

Brandi Tuck has seen how that mindset impacts people experiencing homelessness. Tuck is the director of Path Home, a Portland nonprofit that operates a shelter for homeless families and helps move those families into permanent housing. “When someone experiences homelessness for days, weeks, months or years, our brains stay in that chemical stress response the whole time,” Tuck said. “We can’t show up to appointments on time. We can’t keep a job. We can’t even understand the rules of a shelter that are being told to us because our cognitive brain is offline through this chemical reaction.” It’s even worse for children. This fear response can stunt brain growth, sending a child back years in development. “We see kids sometimes who will be potty trained or a kid will know maybe 250 words or something… and then, when they experience homelessness, they lose all their words or they start having accidents,” Tuck said. Oregon is home to an estimated 3,373 homeless people who are in families with children—a population that surged by 27% between 2020 and 2022. And Oregon has the nation’s highest percentage of homeless families that are living completely unsheltered—meaning they aren’t sleeping in a shelter, hotel or other temporary housing while experiencing homelessness. Tuck says she can see people’s cognitive abilities to shift after they enter housing or even a shelter. That’s why she’s certain that Oregon’s homeless crisis is curable. “I believe there is a solution to homelessness,” she said, “and it’s helping people move back into housing.”

lex Zielinski covers Portland city politics. Prior to joining OPB, A Alex covered city government for the Portland Mercury. She’s also worked as a journalist in San Antonio, Texas, and Washington, D.C. Alex grew up among the California redwoods and graduated from the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 11

ROMAN BATTAGLIA/JPR

Rogue Valley Entrepreneur Turns Food Waste Into ‘Black Gold’ By Roman Battaglia the results of his composting process. These worm castings, or worm poop, is an effective, environmentally friendly alternative to conventional fertilizers.

right: A bin full of food waste from Market of Choice in Medford. Hotley says the stickers and other plastics mixed in can get sifted out after the food is done composting.

12 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

ROMAN BATTAGLIA/JPR

photo above: Thomas Petersen from Evers Ridge Farm shows

ROMAN BATTAGLIA/JPR

ehind the Market of Choice grocery in Medford, Ore. three big, gray bins sit at the loading dock. Peek inside, and you’ll see a whole mess of fruits and vegetables. Adam Hotley pulls up in an old silver pickup truck he calls ‘The Equalizer.’ “When people get into a discussion about what we do, I think they imagine that we have a big fleet of trucks, you know, nice big white trucks,” he says. “It’s really a pickup truck and two minivans.” Hotley is the founder of Rogue Produce. It started as a community composting service in 2011 with the goal of helping people dispose of their food scraps in a more environmentally-friendly way. Along with around 300 residential customers, mostly in Ashland, Ore. Hotley and his team also pick up from some businesses, like Market of Choice. Hotley opens up the lid on one of the food scrap bins, revealing what looks like mostly edible fruits and vegetables. “Looks pretty good, right?”

What’s in these bins is known as “pre-consumer waste,” Hotley says. That includes produce that didn’t look appealing, or stayed too long on the shelf and started going bad. Rogue Produce charges customers to pick up their food scraps and donates them to local farms. Unlike larger cities such as Portland or Seattle, there are no residential food waste services offered by local trash companies in the Rogue Valley. Hotley says his service helps farmers by keeping them from having to go around collecting food scraps themselves. “I’ve learned a lot about farms and farmers over the last 12 years,” he says. “I tried a little bit of farming myself, and wow, it’s not easy.” Hotley says some local grocery stores have farmers collect the scraps. Rogue Produce doesn’t pick up from the Ashland Food Co-op because a pig farmer takes the food scraps to feed their pigs. “Those farmers like to feed their animals the very best,” Hotley says. He rolls the bins to his pickup truck and slides them in JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 13

Your food scraps leftover from cooking aren’t garbage. The community composting program of one Rogue Valley entrepreneur is turning that waste into a commodity.

alongside others from Rooted, a vegetarian restaurant in Medford. A large pineapple rind sticks out from the top of one bin. Hotley says his business has continued to grow because of the work of his partners and the way they’ve expanded the collection of food scraps. “Everyone who hears about it loves the idea and finds some way to contribute or spread the message or help facilitate its growth in some way,” he says. Alongside direct home pickups, they’ve now started neighborhood drop-off points, and food scraps are collected for free at local farmers markets, including the Rogue Valley Grower’s and Crafter’s Market in Ashland.

Turning leftovers into black gold Just outside of Medford, Thomas Petersen stands in his barn at Evers Ridge Farm. This 106-acre farm has small fruit trees, sheep and chickens. Evers Ridge Farm became operational a year and a half ago. Petersen and his wife Hannah say they wanted to connect people to where their food comes from. “What better way to do that than to build a farm that’s close to town that is accessible for the public,” he says. “And what better way to get involvement than to get hold of people’s food scraps.” Evers Ridge Farm is just a stone’s throw away from Griffin Creek Elementary School. Petersen says they’ve brought students over to show how the farm works, and teach them handson lessons about the food cycle – how food and energy moves through an ecosystem. Petersen accepts food scraps from Rogue Produce for their organic farming business. Behind the barn, Petersen steps in front of three long, shallow pits lined with concrete blocks. There are wood and wire mesh frames covering the tops to keep out rodents. He lifts one of the frames off the pit. Inside is a mixture of leaves, wood chips and all kinds of food scraps. Living among the debris are hundreds of thousands of worms, slowly eating their way through the piles of compost. Petersen and Hotley carry a bin full of squashed tomatoes, lemon rinds and wilting lettuce and dump it into the compost pile. “They’re gonna turn these food scraps into what they call black gold.” Petersen grabs a handful of the fine, dark brown compost. “It’s just very nutrient-dense compost is all it is.” Also called worm castings, this compost helps in many ways. It can be used instead of commercial fertilizer on Petersen’s farm, which saves him money. He can also sell the leftover worm castings for extra profit. His compost pile breaks down food scraps, including citrus that some people warn against adding to compost. 14 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

Adam Hotley, the founder of Rogue Produce, talks about the expansion of his business at Evers Ridge Farm, Oct. 18, 2023

Rogue Produce can’t accept items like meat scraps, bones and fats, which don’t break down in a traditional compost pile like those at Evers Ridge Farm. Another company, Ashland Community Composting, employs the Bokashi composting method. It involves fermenting the food waste with special microorganisms that can break down those hard-to-decompose scraps, which is then mixed in with a traditional compost pile.

Shifting perspectives Petersen says starting this farm changed his perspective on food waste and the food cycle. “I thought, it’s just like garbage. It goes in the trash and it just goes away, and it gets used somewhere else,” he says. “The fact is, it doesn’t. It just goes to a landfill and it’s not helpful.” Petersen says closing the food cycle is important to reducing food waste. “It blew my mind to think, what if the food scraps were actually the key to our farm,” with the base for his crops being people’s garbage, he says. Normally, Petersen says, leftover food goes to the landfill, where it’s taken out of the food cycle. Because food breaks down in a different way in that environment, it releases methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. An October report from the federal Environmental Protection Agency shows that in 2020, around 55 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents were emitted from food waste in landfills.

Thomas Petersen dumps a bin of food scraps into one of his compost pits. The worms inside the pit will then begin making their way through the waste, transforming it into compost.

Adam Hotley arranges the empty bins in his pickup truck after delivering the food scraps at Evers Ridge Farm, Oct. 18, 2023

That’s the equivalent of 50 million gas-powered passenger cars. Conventional farming also means fertilizers full of nitrogen and phosphorus need to be imported, which can end up damaging waterways. If washed into lakes, rivers or oceans, these nutrients create an overgrowth of algae, known as algae blooms, that starve water bodies of oxygen.

food goes when they’re done with it, and how food waste can be used to help local farmers and the environment. And if he has to go out and pick up people’s leftovers, he’s happy to help. “Not everyone has a yard, right?” Petersen says. “So it’s exactly the reason for the need for this system is that you don’t have to want to [compost]. And if you can’t, then there should be ways that you don’t have to just put it in the trash.”

Collecting more food scraps Hotley hopes to expand his composting service further, by setting up partnerships with cities like Ashland. He says he’s not worried about having too many food scraps to collect. “We often get inquiries from other farms that are looking to start or that want the scraps or, like Thomas was saying, that want to come pick it up,” he says. “So we’re really not too concerned with that at this point.” Rogue Produce plans to continue collecting food scraps at the Rogue Valley Grower’s and Crafter’s Market in Ashland on Tuesdays for free. And with the help of a grant from the Ashland Food Co-op, they plan to begin food scrap collection at the Thursday Rogue Valley Grower’s and Crafter’s Market in Medford. The outdoor season markets open in early March. Hotley says the farmers market collection points are a way for people to keep their food scraps out of the landfill even if they can’t afford to pay for residential pick-up, which ranges from $15-$24 a month. Hotley says his service helps to change people’s perspective on food waste. He wants them to learn more about where their

Roman Battaglia is a regional reporter for JPR News.

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NEW ENERGY EFFICIENT HOMES STARTING AT $495,000 14

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JPR NEWS FOCUS

LAW & JUSTICE

JANE VAUGHAN

Federal DOJ Weighs In On Brookings Lawsuit About Church Feeding Homeless People

t. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in the South Coast communiBrookings adopted an ordinance to allow benevolent meal serty of Brookings, OR, has been serving food to those in need vices to continue in the City, including those currently served for decades, sometimes as often as six days a week. by St. Timothy’s.” The conflict started in 2021, when city officials received a The city says St. Timothy’s could continue its meal services complaint from neighbors called the Petition to Remove Homeelsewhere in the city in a commercial zone. less from St. Timothy Church. It asked the city to “prevent the “What this case is really about, is St. Timothy’s belief that congregation of vagrants or undesirables.” they are beyond the reach of any regulation that may impact The city says it then determined that the church’s kitchen when, where, or how they engage in their activities. Their posiwas classified as a restaurant, which is not allowed in residention that none of their actions in a residential zone can be regtial areas. ulated is legally incorrect,” the city wrote in its response to the “The St. Timothy’s soup kitchen and others like it were alchurch’s complaint. ready violating long-standing city land use ordinances,” accordIn an emailed statement on Wednesday, Rt. Rev. Diana D. ing to the city’s motion for summary judgement, Akiyama, bishop in the Episcopal Church in filed in October. Western Oregon, wrote, “We welcome the DOJ’s In a statement As a result, the Brookings City Council creatinterest in our lawsuit and join numerous other of interest filed ed an ordinance in October 2021 that required a religious organizations who are fighting the supon Nov. 21, the permit for such meal services in residential zones. pression of religious expression in order to conDepartment of The ordinance also says meals can only be served tinue serving those in need.” two days a week. In its statement, the DOJ says the city’s ordiJustice said the St. Timothy’s sued the city in January 2022. nance does not further the city’s interest in procity’s request to “The City suddenly claimed that St. Timothy’s moting public welfare and safety. decide the case long-established use of its property—which is, by “The issues with noise, aesthetics, and crime should be denied. that prompted the ordinance are byproducts of the City’s own Land Development Code, a lawful nonconforming use— did not comply with the homelessness and poverty that would persist in City’s zoning laws. And when Plaintiffs did not accept the City’s Brookings regardless of St. Timothy’s meal service—and indeed suggestion that they stop engaging in Christian acts of service may even be made worse if St. Timothy’s were forced to curtail for the Brookings community, the City decided to rewrite the its meal service,” the statement of interest reads. laws in an effort to force them to do so,” the church’s complaint Briefing on this case is expected soon. After that, the court reads. could decide to make a judgment or the case could continue. Father Bernie Lindley said the city is prohibiting the church Since the lawsuit has been filed, St. Timothy’s has continfrom exercising its religious duty to serve the poor. ued to provide meal services four days a week. “When the city of Brookings said that we were going to be restricted to two days a week, we said, ‘We can’t do that.’ We can’t apply for a permit to only feed people two days a week Jane Vaughan when they may or may not need to be fed by us much more is a regional often than that,” he said. reporter for JPR News. Alli Gannett, director of communications the Episcopal Church in Western Oregon, said this ordinance adds restrictions to the church’s work. “Our ultimate goal is to not have any restrictions on feeding those in need. As Jesus calls us to serve the hungry and to care for those who are sick, any sort of restrictions put on that ministry prohibits us from fulfilling our call as Christians,” she said. Heather Van Meter, one of the attorneys representing the city, said in an emailed statement Wednesday, “The City of JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 17

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PRESS PASS ERIK NEUMANN

It’s The Housing, Stupid

he following are headlines from a few local news sites on a recent Sunday. In Ashland: “City Council to vote on camping ordinance, consider funding to extend emergency shelter operation.” In Medford: “Medford council worries about draining last federal dollars to help homeless people.” In Grants Pass: “Parents, superintendent want fence between school and homeless campers.” Besides all being about homelessness, there’s another similarity in these stories. None talked about the lack of housing in the Rogue Valley. News outlets, JPR included, are generally not the best venues for connecting the dots with problems as complex as homelessness. We’ve reported stories about local homeless service providers, alarming fentanyl busts in the area, and the challenges for communities to provide mental health care. News stories can better describe discrete slices of bigger issues, rather than providing a holistic view. That’s why I was intrigued when I read about a recent book that zoomed out on this issue, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns. Published in 2022, it’s by Gregg Colburn, an associate professor in the Runstad Department of Real Estate at the University of Washington and data scientist Clayton Aldern. The book sets out to answer the following question: why do some cities have huge homelessness problems and others don’t? Their finding is as obvious as it is fascinating: that the biggest predictor of homelessness is cost and availability of housing. Other factors like drug use, mental illness and poverty make people vulnerable to losing their housing, but it’s housing markets – rents and availability of homes – that are the biggest drivers. While the authors live in Seattle, Washington, it’s hard not to see parallels in Oregon. According to the state, approximately 140,000 housing units are currently needed to accommodate the general population of Oregon. JPR reporter Jane Vaughan recently reported that Grants Pass needs to grow its housing by approximately 4,000 units between 2020 and 2040 to accommodate population growth. That’s an increase of nearly 28% of its current number of households, according to its 2023 Housing Production Strategy. In the meantime on the homelessness front, Grants Pass and Josephine County officials are waiting to find out whether a case involving the city of Grants Pass will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, Johnson v. Grants Pass, involves Gloria Johnson, who was homeless in the Southern Oregon city. The lawsuit was brought by the Oregon Law Center on behalf of Johnson and other homeless individuals. It considers whether Grants Pass can punish people who are involuntarily homeless for camping in public if low-barrier shelters are unavailable. It argues that the city’s ordinances aimed at restricting homeless camping violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions of cru-

el and unusual punishment. The outcome could have national ramifications for cities’ ability to police public camping. In the past year, JPR has reported on Rogue Valley cities that are severely rent burdened, a phrase the state defines as: the “share of households that spend more than 50% of their income on rent.” Here are the percentages of households that are considered severely rent burdened in cities in Southern Oregon, according to the state: Grants Pass: 32.3% Ashland: 32.2% Klamath Falls: 32.1% Medford: 28.5% Coos Bay: 26.5% Simply pushing homeless people out of town, denying them a place to sleep or objecting to a homeless shelter in your neighborhood – whether you consider those tactics cruel or not – just seems unproductive given how tight the housing market is. As long as housing is unavailable, people will be homeless. Colburn and Aldern consider other individual contributors to homelessness like mental illness, poverty and drug use. But, Colburn writes, they’re not the biggest predictor of why some cities have large homeless populations. “Cities with higher rents and lower rental-vacancy rates (i.e., tighter housing markets) see higher per capita rates of homelessness. This is where a fuller picture comes into view. Individual risk factors help account for who in a given city might lose their housing at any given point in time, but housing markets – rents and vacancy rates – set the context in which those risk factors are expressed.” Basically, the likelihood of someone with these risk factors becoming homeless varies depending on where they live. “The consequence of being poor in Seattle, for example, is very different than in Cleveland.” According to the national advocacy organization Mental Health America, Oregon ranks near the bottom nationally – 48 out of 51 – for adults with “a higher prevalence of mental illness and lower rates of access to care.” Take a tight housing market like the Rogue Valley’s and overlay poor access to mental health services and an increase in drugs like fentanyl, and making progress on homelessness becomes a three-dimensional chess game. In a discussion about his book, Colburn questions whether our current investments in homelessness are helping us in the short- or long-term. One promising investment in the Rogue Valley is coming from the Ashland nonprofit OHRA, or Opportunities for Housing, Resources and Assistance. OHRA runs a resource center and transitional housing program out of a renoJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 19

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vated hotel. According to Executive Director Cass Sinclair, they see about 65 people per day in Ashland. Half are families that are one paycheck away from eviction. The nonprofit housed 78 families experiencing homelessness in 2023, as of this writing. Maybe more significantly, they kept 158 families from being evicted and potentially falling into homelessness over the past year. In this way, OHRA is going upstream to help address homelessness before it becomes an emergency. The headline of this column was taken from a classic health policy article titled “It’s The Prices, Stupid,” by Princeton health care economist Uwe Reinhardt. It studied another complex problem: why the U.S. spends so much more on health care than other countries. The researchers found that Americans just pay more for the same health services than people in other parts of the world, despite the fact that our health outcomes are not better, and in some cases are worse than other industrialized countries. Colburn and Aldern present a similarly obvious finding when it comes to addressing homelessness: making progress will require creating much more housing.

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JPR NEWS FOCUS

A January 2023 ProPublica report found that there were over 110,000 remains that had yet to be returned by many prominent museums.

ARTS AND CULTURE

BRIAN BULL

Indigenous Movement To ‘Decolonize’ Museums Forges On Across Oregon And The U.S.

istorically, museums across the U.S. have taken a detached, scholarly, and archaic view of Native Americans. But over the past decade especially, there’s been a push by Native advocates and their supporters to “decolonize” -- or alternately, “Indigenize” – these institutions, including here in Oregon.

All in the family

BRIAN BULL/KLCC

Near the pow-wow grounds in Grand Ronde recently, tribal member Stephanie Craig sorted items in the back of her vehicle, including several that are more than a century old. She’s a traditional basket weaver, who had just returned from a presentation at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene, where she also studied while working on her B.A. in Anthropology of the Pacific Northwest. “This is my daughter’s maple bark ceremonial skirt. It’s got white buckskin hem and abalone shells on it,” said Craig, presenting the garment. She said her daughter will wear this for ceremonies held either in a longhouse or plank house. She then shook an intricate baby rattle with willow root on the handle. “We use the willow on the handle part because it has natural aspirin in it,” explained Craig. “So when the baby’s teething, they get aspirin for their gums.” Other items included a basket made by her great-greatgreat grandmother, Martha Jean Sands, which is nearly 110 years old. Her wedding veil features old Chinese coins, abalone, dentalium, and brass and glass beads.

BRIAN BULL/KLCC

Stephanie Craig of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde shows her daughter’s maple bark ceremonial skirt.

JEREMY ALFORD/UNSPLASH.COM

Craig shows several decorative elements of her wedding veil, which include metal Chinese coins, brass and glass beads, and dentalium shell.

Outside the Scottsdale Museum of the West in Arizona, a cowboy statue sounds outside the entrance, flanked by two large photos of Native Americans, including Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce (left) whose band resided in the Wallowas area of eastern Oregon before the War of 1877. Native advocates and supporters have pressed institutions like this one to portray Indigenous people as active and present tradition-bearers, instead of defeated or extinct.

You can call these items “beautiful” or “practical.” Just don’t call them “artifacts.” “I hope people will start looking at things more as belongings,” explained Craig, gingerly putting the veil back into its container. “You don’t call your family’s items ‘artifacts’ or ‘relics.’ They’re family heirlooms, and that’s the same for us.” Craig co-wrote an article with Yoli Ngandali, a member of the Ngbaka Tribe from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for the Society for American Archaeology’s latest journal. The piece challenges institutions to rethink centuries-old terms, practices, and philosophy when it comes to handling Indigenous items. This includes taking them out from behind the glass or curator’s drawer, to serve their function. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 21

JPR News Focus: Arts And Culture Continued from previous page

“It’s important for these belongings to still be handled and touched, because the exchange of energy,” Craig told KLCC. “They once were living and we’re living. And in order to keep the energy flowing and the good energy going, they need to be touched. They need to be appreciated.”

22 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

A display case shows works by Steph Littlebird, an artist, writer, and curator with the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde. Provocative and defiant parodies of Native American imagery in pop culture push back against appropriation of Indigenous culture, as well as asserts the land’s original inhabitants.

A shift towards inclusion and collaboration

BRIAN BULL/KLCC

Over the past 200 years, institutions including colleges, universities, and churches pillaged burial sites or confiscated items from Native American communities for their collections. Between 1860 and 1873, the Smithsonian Institution alone accrued more than 13,000 items. Many curators assumed they were gathering relics from a dying people. That narrative is being increasingly challenged. “We’re still here, we’re still creating, and continuing with our culture through our artistry,” said Phil Cash Cash, as he handled several old garments and pieces of jewelry at the High Desert Museum in Bend. Cash Cash also played one of two handcrafted flutes he made for a recent exhibit, titled Creations of Spirit. The focus was on contemporary artists, who carry on traditional culture. “When I play the flute, I play it for our land, in our Earth, rather than for humans,” he said. “And so it’s almost like a prayer that goes out to the world.” Phil Cash Cash holds two carved Cash Cash is of Nez Perce elderberry flutes he made for and Cayuse heritage, and has a recent exhibit at the High Desert Museum. Of Nez Perce worked as a consultant with the and Cayuse descent, Cash Cash High Desert Museum for five helps give cultural context to years. In a lower level reserved items that may elude non-Infor collections, he explained dian curators, historians, and the significance of several Na- anthropologists. tive items which included a woman’s choker made of dentalium shells and dark blue beads, with a unique adornment. “This pair of baby moccasins, she’d wear this in hopes that she would bear children later in life,” he said, noting that the miniature foot coverings would have likely been worn behind the neck and under the woman’s hair, to keep her wishes private. With a man’s beaded vest, Cash Cash noted a number of elements that gave it a special meaning. “Here you see the deer and the foliage and flowers on the base, implying there’s Earth and a growth in the deer there on the earthly plane,” he said, before gesturing to the upper half. “Above it is flying a golden eagle, and even higher is a star and crescent moon. So if you can imagine three different realms being connected, the earthly realm, the realm of air, and then the realm of stars or light forms, there’s all this deeper significance on linking to the light. We are part of this bigger realm of life and are contained.”

BRIAN BULL/KLCC

Centuries of plunder

For many years, non-Indian curators were either denied insights like these by untrusting Natives, or ignored them out of arrogance. But with more Native Americans becoming involved with interpreting their culture, this traditional knowledge has been gaining ground in institutions. “There’s been a real shift in the entire field to incorporate Indigenous voices and perspectives. And it’s long overdue,” said Dana Whitelaw, executive director of the High Desert Museum. She told KLCC that her museum doesn’t have any Native American staff, but consults with about ten advisors from regional tribes on projects. Whitelaw says a collaborative renovation is being planned for By Hand Through Memory, an exhibit that opened in 1999 and was curated by Vivian Adams of the Yakama Nation. This updated exhibit will depend on past outreach and trust-building with tribal partners. “We started working with the museum at Warm Springs in 2017, sharing meals and visiting exhibitions together,” recalled Whitelaw. “And there are awkward moments and missteps, but with that relationship building comes trust, and colleagues and partnerships.”

Hits and misses The National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989, and the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 have spurred much of this reform. But in the 30 years since these landmark regulations were enacted, many institutions have not followed through on returning stolen items and remains to tribes. A January 2023 ProPublica report found that there were over 110,000 remains that had yet to be returned by many prominent museums. Other places criticized by Native Americans include the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, which was supposed to be a bicultural, re-enactment program that balanced the early story of

BRIAN BULL/KLCC BRIAN BULL/KLCC

early European settlers and the Indigenous peoples. But last year the Wampanoag community blasted the “tone deaf ” handling of the presentation, and called for a boycott. And Chicago’s famed Field Museum recently unveiled an overhaul of its interpretive displays and programming, which seeks to address decades of inaccurate and Eurocentric information. At the Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene, a multimedia station lets visitors watch videos. One shows members of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians paddling their traditional canoes. “We call ours ‘deer nose’ canoes, with the tail, so it, it looks like a deer coming down,” explains a man in the video. Ann Craig is director of public programs at the MNCH. She said an earlier version of this exhibit area was done with tribes. “And at the time, that was really progressive,” she said. “But the hall had previously been all sepia tone. So even if there was a historic image and a contemporary image, they were both sepia tone. So it made Indigenous people in the exhibit all look historical.” The museum’s executive director, Todd Braje, says they’ve been receptive to tribal concerns. For example in 2014, some items were removed that a Cow Creek member deemed inappropriate for display. Braje says they also strive to keep Natives in the present tense. “Rather than museums being set up to be sort of mausoleums where we put artifacts from the deep past into a case and we talk about deep history, what you see in this case, are weavings that are thousands of years old, next to contemporary baskets,” he said. “It shows this connection between present people and deep tradition in Oregon.”

A closer look at items can reveal details that may say something about the artist’s intentions or life. While the cluster of green beads in the eagle’s talons may be just from a shortage of white beads, it can also be deliberate, says Cash Cash. In this case, it could serve as the artist’s signature. left: Several feathered bonnets on display at the High Desert Museum.

Looking ahead Some institutions like the Five Oaks Museum in Portland have incorporated exhibits curated by Native Americans, or have included them to consult on programming. Native advocates say there’s still room for improvement, both locally and afar. While the Smithsonian says it’s repatriated roughly 5,000 remains since 1989, it still has about 2,000 more in its collection. Grand Ronde tribal member Stephanie Craig said that she’d like to address issues overseas, as many tribal materials were sent back to Europe by missionaries, traders, and explorers. “I would love to go to the British Museum and look at everything that they have from Oregon and Northern California and Southern Washington,” said Craig. “Because a lot of things are misidentified. It’s not until you look at that the actual belonging itself and doing research where you can really determine where the belonging comes from.” While doors and ears seem more open than ever to Indigenous perspectives, Craig said getting the time and money to travel over the pond is the biggest barrier. But if she can, she’d like to study the items on hand and also explore how complete their reputed inventory is.

Brian Bull reports for KLCC.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 23

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Un Ballo In Maschera by Giuseppe Verdi 24 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

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AI Gets Personal P

“

ersonal AI” is artificial intelligence technology that is personalized to you. It learns about you, models you, remembers your memories, advises you. In its current form, personal AI is an interactive personal assistant, but has the potential to become a digital extension of yourself, an intermediary between the physical you in the real world and the digital you in the virtual world of the Internet. I keep hearing that personal AI is the “next big thing” and I hope it is. If it’s not, the universe will descend into a morass of machine-generated content that will self-optimize until genuine human creativity is obliterated and all art becomes a bland panoply of monotonous mediocrity. Okay, maybe it won’t be that bad, but it’ll be pretty bad if we stay on our current AI trajectory where “generative AI” has been all the rage. Generative AI systems produce content in the form of text, images, audio, and video. It uses other technologies like natural language processing, neural networks, large language models, and deep learning to generate content. OpenAI is the current leader in the generative AI marketplace with its flagship ChatGPT that can produce complex written content on most any topic. Since the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, talents. If you are a writer, your personal AI will make you a many other AI companies, including both small startups and better writer. If you are a scientist, your personal AI in conjuncestablished big tech companies like Google and Microsoft, have tion with existing generative AI research tools will make you a been vying for the generative AI crown. Every day there are more capable and productive scientist. This news stories about this or that advancement Personal AI has the list could go on and on: musician, teacher, atin generative AI and tech pundits (present torney, doctor, investor. Think of it this way: company included) debating whether or promise of making us not generative AI can surpass human intellibetter human beings by generative AI learns about the world while personal AI learns about you. In a future argence and become an Artificial Superintelliapplying AI tools to each riving soon, the intersection of those two AI gence and, if so, then what? of our specific lives and models is where genuine human creativity I don’t know if we will ever achieve an will continue to blossom. Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), that is, “a unique talents. While advances in generative AI co-opted hypothetical state of AI that is capable of surthe tech news headlines last year, advances in personal AI were passing human intelligence by manifesting cognitive skills and happening mostly quietly. In April, the startup company Nomic developing thinking skills of its own”. AI released “GPT4All”, which could be installed on a personal Advancements in generative AI have certainly brought us computer and run without an Internet connection. much closer but that alone is unlikely to morph into an ASI. In a posting on X, technologist and AI expert, Brian RoemThe more likely scenario is that generative AI will become more mele, heralded Nomic’s creation of GPT4All as the “first PC” integrated with humans in the form of personal AI to advance moment for personal AI: each of us into being more intelligent beings. At least I hope that’s how this all plays out. I hope AI makes us all smarter and This is the “first PC” moment for Personal AI and with not dumber, that it makes us better human beings rather than it will be limitations just like when the first Apple 1 was something that is less than human. produced in a garage. You are a pioneer. Today private Personal AI has the promise of making us better human beand Personal AI is available to anyone. ings by applying AI tools to each of our specific lives and unique

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 27

Inside The Box Continued from page 27

While personal AI is now available to anyone, it is not yet usable for everyone. Like the introduction of the personal computer, it will take some time before personal AI becomes readily available and usable for all. Like the development of computing, it will take some time before it becomes ubiquitous with everyone carrying around powerful personal AI devices in their pocket. Roemmele is not alone in hailing the potential of personal AI. Bill Gates has long been touting the transformative impact of “personal agents” as far back as his 1995 book The Road Ahead. In a recent posting on his blog GatesNotes, he wrote: To do any task on a computer, you have to tell your device which app to use…And even the best sites [and apps] have an incomplete understanding of your work, personal life, interests, and relationships and a limited ability to use this information to do things for you… In the next five years, this will change completely. You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do. And depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will

be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life. In the near future, anyone who’s online will be able to have a personal assistant powered by artificial intelligence that’s far beyond today’s technology. In 2024, I predict (and hope) that there will be a shift away from the hype of generative AI toward personal AI and the development of AI systems that have the purpose of making each of us better human beings rather than replacing us.

cott Dewing is a technologist and writer. S He works with and writes about high tech from his home office located inside a low-tech barn in Carver, Oregon.

Elizabeth Letz, Merlin · 1979 Dodge Van “This 1979 Dodge Van, B 200, 360 engine, V-8, 36-gallon gas tank is my baby. I never called her that, but she is. When I read Anne McGaffrey’s Dragon of Pern series, I called her Silver Dragon in my head, never out loud. That V-8 still liked to haul ass and take on hills, even as late as 2019. Having a vehicle without a computer, nor electronics has been a joy. Open the windows and vents for air. Now, forty-three years later, I’m retired. But the Dodge Van will come out of retirement as a donation to JPR.”

Thinking about selling your car, boat, Avoid the hassle and get a tax deduction motorcycle, truck or other vehicle? by donating it to JPR instead! Simply call 844-577-2886 or fill out the web form at www.jprauto.org and we’ll take care of the rest, including pick-up, at no cost to you.

JPR NEWS FOCUS

SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT

JANE VAUGHAN

As the temperature of the lake has warmed due to climate change, the number of crayfish has exploded, threatening the newt’s existence.

Environmental Nonprofit Seeks Endangered Species Protection For Crater Lake Newt n Nov. 16, the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity submitted a legal petition for protection of the Crater Lake newt under the Endangered Species Act to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Crater Lake newt only exists in the rich, blue waters of the Oregon national park. Its population has been declining in recent years, mostly due to growing numbers of signal crayfish. The crayfish are predators of the newt that were introduced to the lake in 1915 as a food source for fish, which were added in the late 1800s to attract visitors. Chelsea Stewart-Fusek, an endangered species attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the crayfish have a number of negative impacts on the newt. “The crayfish will eat just about anything. So they’ll eat the invertebrates, which newts would ordinarily consume, as well as the newts themselves. They’re both predating on the newt and also competing for resources, for food and for cover as well,” she said. The Crater Lake newt, also known as the Mazama newt, is a subspecies of the rough-skinned newt and has no predator defense mechanisms. As the temperature of the lake has warmed due to climate change, the number of crayfish has exploded, threatening the newt’s existence. Crater Lake’s surface temperature during the summer has increased by 3.2 degrees Celsius since records were first collected in 1965, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The Crater Lake newt only exists in the rich, blue waters of the Oregon national park. Its population has been declining in recent years, mostly due to growing numbers of signal crayfish. The crayfish are predators of the newt that were introduced to the lake in 1915 as a food source for fish, which were added in the late 1800s to attract visitors. Chelsea Stewart-Fusek, an endangered species attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the crayfish have a number of negative impacts on the newt. “The crayfish will eat just about anything. So they’ll eat the invertebrates, which newts would ordinarily consume, as well as the newts themselves. They’re both predating on the newt and also competing for resources, for food and for cover as well,” she said. The Crater Lake newt, also known as the Mazama newt, is a subspecies of the rough-skinned newt and has no predator defense mechanisms. As the temperature of the lake has warmed due to climate change, the number of crayfish has exploded, threatening the newt’s existence.

PHOTO: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

The Crater Lake newt, also known as the Mazama newt.

Crater Lake’s surface temperature during the summer has increased by 3.2 degrees Celsius since records were first collected in 1965, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. According to the petition for ESA protection, “newts in Crater Lake are morphologically, genetically and physiologically distinct from populations of newts outside of the lake.” Their crayfish predators currently occupy up to 95% of the lake’s shoreline. Scientists estimate they will occupy all of the shoreline in as little as two years. Stewart-Fusek said the loss of the newt could predict future problems for the national park. “Amphibians are a canary in a coal mine pretty classically in terms of ecosystem function. So we’re seeing this species go extinct before our eyes. Up to 95% of them have been lost, it appears, based on crayfish expansion in 95% of the lake,” she said. The growth of the crayfish also threatens Crater Lake’s famous clarity; they eat the lake’s native invertebrates that consume plankton, thereby increasing algae growth in the lake. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 29

JPR News Focus: Science & Environment If protection for the newt is granted under the ESA, that would mean more funding for crayfish removal efforts and the development of a comprehensive recovery plan for the newt. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to respond with an indication of whether the news might warrant a listing under ESA. The Center for Biological Diversity has requested that the petition be considered on an emergency basis “due to the imminent threat that introduced crayfish pose to the newt’s continued existence.” “It’s kind of a perfect example, what we’re seeing with the Crater Lake newt, of how quickly things deteriorate as a result of short-sighted actions by us humans and of what happens when existing human-caused threats are exacerbated by the effects of climate change,” Stewart-Fusek said.

Jane Vaughan is a regional reporter for JPR News.

This image shows the underbellies of a Mazama Newt on the left, and a rough skinned newt found in Oregon, on the right. The dark ventral indicates a lack of toxin in the Mazama newt.

PHOTO: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Continued from previous page

JPR NEWS FOCUS

GOVERNMENT

JANE VAUGHAN

Josephine Community Library Pursues Legal Action After Residents Opt Out Of Tax District he Josephine Community Library District is pursuing legal action after the county’s Board of Commissioners allowed a couple to opt out of the library’s tax district in early December in an unprecedented decision. On Dec. 6, the commissioners allowed a Grants Pass couple, Mike Pelfry and his wife Winnie, to have their property removed from the district, meaning they no longer have to pay that tax. The couple argued their property does not benefit from the library. Now, according to the agenda for this week’s meeting, four more residents are asking to have their properties removed from the district as well. Rachele Selvig, the library district’s board president, said these withdrawals could have financial consequences for the library, adding that she thinks this effort is an attempt to shut libraries down by defunding them. “The library is not flush. It’s obviously dealing with issues all the time regarding funding. We do a lot of fundraising to help support a lot of the library as well. So the more that withdraw, the more of an impact it is going to have,” she said. The district was created by voters in 2017. It provides funds for the library through an additional property tax of $0.39 per $1,000 of assessed value. The district spans areas of the Illinois Valley, Williams and Wolf Creek, as well as Grants Pass and Cave Junction. It provided a lifeline for the Josephine Community Library, which had closed in 2007 due to a lack of funding. Residents had voted down both a tax district and a levy to fund the library before finally approving this district in 2017. In their recent discussion, the commissioners expressed confusion about the state statute that outlines the rules for withdrawing property from a district. They debated what they said is a lack of clarity in the statue and whether the library provides services to the property itself or to the people who own the property. Now, attorneys for the library, which is represented by Hornecker Cowling of Medford, are working on filing an injunction to stop these withdrawals from occurring. They’re also asking the Josephine County Circuit Court to interpret that state statute. Selvig is concerned about the precedent this decision might set for special districts around the county, including the recently approved law enforcement service district. “My real concern, too, is that this is really a way to undermine what people vote for. People vote for these districts. And

PHOTO: JOSEPHINE COMMUNITY LIBRARY WEBSITE

The Josephine Community Library in Grants Pass.

now all of a sudden, people can pick and choose what districts they want to belong to, regardless of what their neighbors have voted for,” she said. The statute covers 28 types of districts, including water control, fire, hospital and water. Attorney Mike Mayerle, who represents the library, had raised a similar question at last week’s meeting. “Are we gonna do this year to year, whether you want to be opt in, opt out? If you have your grandchildren come up, can you opt in for a day, pay a day’s worth of tax, and then use the library?” he said. Mayerle, the commissioners and other representatives for the library did not respond to requests for comment.

Jane Vaughan is a regional reporter for JPR News.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 31

JPR NEWS FOCUS

ENERGY

ALEX BAUMHARDT

A coalition said the company should publicly disclose to consumers the health and climate risks of natural gas-burning appliances

Lawmakers, Advocates Ask Oregon To Investigate NW Natural For Misleading Claims About Natural Gas

ore than two dozen environmental and social justice groups, as well as several current and former state representatives, are asking Oregon’s attorney general to investigate the state’s largest natural gas utility for spreading misinformation about the health and climate risks of gas-burning stoves. In a letter sent on Dec. 11 to Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, the coalition—including the Eugene-based nonprofit Beyond Toxics; the NAACP of Eugene and Springfield; Eugene Mayor Lucy Vinis; and state Reps. Mark Gamba, D-Milwaukie; Khanh Pham, D-Portland; and Farrah Chaichi, D-Beaverton – asked that Rosenblum use her powers under Oregon’s Unlawful Trade Practices Act to investigate and sue NW Natural if appropriate. “We write again to encourage you to take immediate action against NW Natural’s communications around the air quality risks of gas appliances,” the letter said. They said the company, despite understanding the health and climate costs of burning natural gas in homes, continues to downplay risks to consumers at the expense of their health. NW Natural did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The group had previously asked Rosenblum to investigate the company in August 2022 over what it said was false advertising in newspapers and school workbooks about natural gas being a “clean energy” and that natural gas appliances were safe. Natural gas is almost entirely methane – a potent greenhouse gas responsible for at least one-third of global warming today, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Recent studies from universities in Europe, Australia and the U.S. have found natural gas stoves increase the risk of respiratory problems and asthma in kids.

Big tobacco’s playbook The coalition wants the company, which serves about 80% of Oregon’s natural gas customers, to disclose to customers via mail, email and the company’s website the health risks of gas appliances and the role natural gas and methane play in global climate change. “Gas companies have a moral and legal obligation to accurately represent the risks their products pose to consumers. Unfortunately, they have continuously and egregiously failed to do so,” Gamba of Milwaukie said in a news conference. The lawmakers accused NW Natural and the industry of using tobacco industry marketing tactics to mislead customers

about the health risks. Gamba repeated the January revelation from the New York Times that NW Natural had hired a toxicologist linked to big tobacco to testify in favor of gas appliances in front of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. He said the company continues to spend a significant amount of money trying to defeat proposed natural gas bans in Eugene and Milwaukie. Recent reporting from the Virginia-based nonprofit Climate Investigations Center revealed that natural gas companies have known since at least the 1970s that the combustion of gas indoors, and specifically from nitrogen dioxide that is emitted when it burns, is not healthy. Pham of Portland expressed concerns that gas pollution from appliances is disproportionately hurting people who lack safer alternatives. “We know that low-income families and families of color are more likely to rent their home, where they have little or no control over their fuel source, and 90% of rental homes do not have adequate ventilation to remove gas stove emissions, according to the National Center for Healthy Housing,” she said.

lex Baumhardt has been a national radio producer focusing on education A for American Public Media since 2017. She has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media, and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post. This story was originally published by the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 33

UNDERGROUND HISTORY CHELSEA ROSE

History That Can Kill You

PHOTO COURTESY OF AVERIE FOSTER

rsenic in green dresses? Lead in make-up? Mercury in feather hats? Oh my. The Underground History podcast has recently been chatting with experts on the many ways toxins and dangerous—and sometimes just gross—things can make their way into museums or even our homes. Archaeologists are always pulling up bottles or jars with mystery sludge, and all sorts of curios end up in museum collections (one of my favorites being a 19th century pickle on display at the Oregon Historical Society). While the containers themselves can provide temporal information or clues to what types of products people historically bought or used, they are sometimes repurposed or otherwise not what we expect them to be. We spoke with University of Idaho archaeology professor Mark Warner and chemistry professor Ray von Wandruszka about archaeochemistry and their recent publication tantalizingly titled, “Urine on the Shelves, Odious Materials in Archaeological Collections.” A quick Google search will take you to the article its entirety. It describes some of their most noteworthy finds over the decade plus they have been analyzing slimes and slurries—including a bottle of “whisky” on a popular Seattle museum’s shelf that turned out to be… urine. These analyses are not only providing useful information for the archaeologists and curators tasked with preserving and interpreting these objects, but they also provide a cautionary tales about the potential dangers hidden in old bottles. We also spoke with Oregon OSHA occupational health consultant Averie Foster about her project aimed at identifying workplace hazards related to historical artifacts. She was primarily targeting lead, mercury, and arsenic, and the potential for exposure through touch or airborne contamination when storing or working with collections. To do this, Foster has been traveling around the state like a modern-day ghost bust-

PHOTO COURTESY OF AVERIE FOSTER

Feathered hat with low levels of detectable mercury vapor.

Souvenir Pillowcase WWI, the felt contains mercury. 34 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

er armed with high tech equipment that measures vapors and particulates instead of ectoplasm or electromagnetic fields. Like Warner and von Wandruszka, Foster’s work is helping folks better understand historical items, and how best to care for them. While not all antiques are trying to kill you, harmful toxins can make their way into collections in a variety of ways. Mercury (Hg) was used in mirrors, and was also used in felted and feathered hats, as well as a variety of cosmetics. In particular, mercurous chloride, or calomel, was popular with those seeking a “pearly glow.” Arsenic (As) is commonly found in old taxidermy specimens, a staple of many museum collections, and was used in green dyes until the mid-19th century. Lead (Pb) can be found in old paint, ceramic glazes, and bullets, and can flake and become airborne with age. Lead was once intentionally added to cosmetics as a whitening agent, and still can be found in makeup as an unintended contaminant today. While it is easy to shake our heads at the foolishness of the past, safety missteps continue—just look at the microplastics and forever chemicals we have been inundated with over the past decade. Foster’s work has helped institutions devise safety protocols and better risk assessments for new or existing collections. The bottom line is wear gloves, opt for good ventilation, and stay away from green dresses. After talking with Foster I ran home and put all the fancy feathered and felted hats I had inherited into tightly sealed plastic bags, where they will remain until I can confirm they will not poison me (and, if I am being perfectly honest, they don’t fit my giant modern head anyway). Over the years we have sent dozens of bottles and miscellaneous containers to von Wandruszka and his students for test-

Skippy Peanut Butter Jar artifact:

Glass jar with lid and content Jenna LeCates location: Britt Gardens, Jacksonville, OR date: 06/10/16 analyst:

PHOTO COURTESY OF AVERIE FOSTER

Appearance of Artifact

Foster has been traveling around the state like a modern-day ghost buster armed with high tech equipment that measures vapors and particulates instead of ectoplasm or electromagnetic fields.

ing. The students got experience with a variety chemistry techniques, and we received reports of their findings. These reports identified Traditional Chinese Medicines in bottles and vials from the Jacksonville Chinese Quarter, shoe polish, paint, hair dye and shampoo from an early 20th century site in Ashland, and even a jar of peanut butter from the Britt Gardens. We also had several samples that were just dirt or rust. Luckily, in our case, none of them were particularly toxic. While we might have been able to figure out some of these products the old fashioned way (i.e. by clues on the bottles or jars themselves), finding something as mundane as shampoo or peanut butter on an archaeological site does help to humanize and make the people we study more relatable. It can also help us recalibrate the ways in which we think of the past—for it can be exciting to romanticize a long-lost bottle full of whiskey from the Wild West, and sometimes it is actually just pee.

Chelsea Rose is an archaeologist with the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology (SOULA) and host of Underground History, a monthly segment that airs during the Jefferson Exchange on JPR’s News & Information Service.

The artifact was a medium sized glass jar (Fig.1), about 8 cm in diameter, with a long crack along one side. The jar was closed with a lid that was firmly rusted in place, but still showed some of the original printing on top (Fig. 2). The words “…urned’ and “easier spreading” could be discerned. The jar contained light and dark brown colored flakes of papery texture.

Fig. 1 The artifact

Procedures and Results The appearance of the container and the writing on the lid indicated that this was an older jar of Skippy peanut butter, made in the period 1930– 1940. Images of intact labels of this type of peanut butter were obtained from the internet (Fig.3). The task at hand was to determine whether the contents of the jar were in fact peanut butter. To recover the material the lid was removed, which caused the cracked top to separate from the lower part of the jar. A sample of the contents was placed in a muffle furnace at 800° C for 8h and was found to have lost 96.2% of its mass. The inorganic remainder (ash) was dissolved in conc. HCl, diluted with water, and analyzed for calcium, magnesium and potassium. It was found to contain 0.0% Ca, 0.179% K, and 0.147% Mg (calculated on the basis of the original weight of the sample). The phosphorus content of the material was measured by the molybdenum blue method, but no P was found to be present.

Fig. 2 Top view of lid

Fig. 3 Preserved labels of Skippy peanut butter of the 1930–40 period (internet). Peanut butter, smooth style, without salt

Discussion and Conclusion

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)

The typical mineral content of modern fresh peanut butter is shown in Fig. 4. The percentages of the present material were of course determined on a highly desiccated and chemically altered sample, so the numbers produced are not comparable. It is, however, noteworthy that no calcium was found in the sample, which is rather unexpected. Even more remarkable is the fact that no phosphorus was found.

Minerals Calcium 54 mg Iron 2.2 mg Magnesium 179 mg Manganese 1.5 mg Phosphorus 335 mg Potassium 649 mg Sodium 0 mg Zinc 2.7 mg

Presuming that the contents of the jar were inFig. 4 Mineral content of deed left-over peanut butter—which is strongly current day peanut butter suggested by observation that the dried-out remnants intimately adhered to the side of the jar, indicating that they were originally sticky—it is difficult to explain that there was no P at all. One could speculate that microbial decomposition of the bulk of the peanut butter involved some highly reductive processes, converting the P to phosphine (PH3, a gas). This would be analogous to the conversion of sulfur in rotting tissue to H2S gas, but it is more difficult to reduce P than to reduce S. However, studies have shown that natural P can be gasified in this manner,1 making this a real possibility in the present case. Finally, also considering the high weight loss of the material when heated, it is reasonable to conclude that the material tested was in fact a remnant of peanut butter. 1. Matthew A. Pasek, 1 Jacqueline M. Sampson, and Zachary Atlas Redox chemistry in the phosphorus biogeochemical cycle, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Oct 28; 111(43): 15468–15473

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 35

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The idea is to confuse and distract — anything to keep the bugs from finding each other and mating.

DOWN TO EARTH JES BURNS

A New ‘Pied Piper’ Robot Protects Oregon’s Vineyards From Pests With Some Good Vibes

incent Vaughn-Uding has a brown marmorated stink bug in a cup, and he’s trying to convince it to leave. “This one’s deciding to be difficult,” he says, gently coaxing it out onto the branch of a holly bush sitting in a vase in the Oregon State University undergraduate’s lab. “In general, bugs are annoying. They’re very finicky.” Vaughn-Uding needs the stink bug to stay relaxed so it won’t fly away — and so it’s not too freaked out to strike up a conversation with the other stink bug already hanging out in the holly. “We put a male and a female on a plant and … we hope for the best that they start talking to each other,” he says. The bugs don’t talk the same way we do, but they do communicate — with vibrations. The plan is to record the insect communication so farmers can use the sound against insect pests. Since there was agriculture, there were agricultural pests — and farmers trying to control them. For insects, growers mostly rely on pesticides, which we know can have real consequences for wildlife, people and our environment. But if Vaughn-Uding’s new insect-mimicking robot is successful, it would provide farmers a targeted way to control pests without the use of toxic chemicals. “Our big thing,” he says, “is reducing how much pesticides need to get used.” The device they’ll use to achieve these goals is called the Pied Piper. “There’s a really well-known story of a village that has a pest problem,” says Chet Udell, director of the Openly Published En-

vironmental Sensing Lab (OPEnS) at OSU, which is developing the device. As the story goes, a stranger shows up offering to help. The Pied Piper plays his pipe, and all the rats in town are lured away. “We thought that was a really appropriate thing for what we were trying to accomplish with the bugs,” Udell says. “And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.” — Excerpt from “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” by Robert Browning

DAN EVANS / OPB

Insect conversations

Oregon State University undergraduate Vincent Vaughn-Uding selects a stink bug to record in the lab in May 2023. The bug’s call will be utilized b a new pest control device dubbed the “Pied Piper.”

The Pied Piper works by taking advantage of how some insects communicate. Many do this by using chemical signals called pheromones, but others rely heavily on vibrational communication. “They experience vibration more the way we experience sound,” says Rex Cocroft, who studies insect communication at the University of Missouri. “It’s a very big part of their sensory and social world.” Cocroft says the vast majority of animal sounds on Earth are the sonic and vibrational songs of insects and spiders. Humans have evolved to pick up airborne pressure waves, which our brain interprets as sound. “But once it becomes vibrations traveling through a solid surface, then we have to touch it with our hands to pick it up, or some part of our body. And our senses aren’t really designed to capture a lot of information [that way],” Cocroft says. But insects use vibrations to communicate many things — where to find food, when predators are around, territory — but the most common use of vibrational communication is to help them find mates. “It’s all about saving energy. The females must use as little energy as they can so that they can produce as many eggs and many offspring as they can,” says OSU entomologist Vaughn Walton, who leads the Pied Piper project. Saving energy means being as efficient as possible in finding a mate. Some insects do this by playing an elaborate game of telephone. They vibrate their abdomens and the sound travels through whatever they happen to be standing on. “The mates will find that signal, they will zone in on them and they will be able to mate,” he says. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 37

Down To Earth Continued from previous page

DAN EVANS / OPB

Protecting Oregon vineyards

This video still shows two star-crossed treehoppers, hopelessly in lust. The insects use vibrational communication to locate each other and mate.

The Pied Piper device does something very similar — it will play an insect’s call to lure other insects in. “We’re sort of training this little robot musician, right? To sit out in a vineyard and listen for these bugs and do something very typical in music, which is call and response, the Marco Polo,” says Udell. Walton is testing the device on an insect called a treehopper at an experimental vineyard plot at Stag Hollow Winery in Yamhill, Oregon. The treehoppers themselves only do minor damage to grapevines, but they’re carriers of a much more sinister plant virus called red blotch. “With red blotch, we’re seeing reduction in photosynthesis in the plant itself,” Walton says. “What that translates towards wine making is that you have less of these volatiles that we as humans love in wines … And the perception is that the quality of those wines are not as good.”

The Pied Piper is not pretty. It’s essentially a computer in a small dry box, with a stiff wire and a microphone coming out the side. The electronics are protected by a larger, open plastic housing. But looks can be deceiving. “With Pied Piper, we’re trying to find an environmentally friendly way without using any toxic pesticides,” Walton says. Walton and Stag Hollow owner Mark Huff approach a row of grapevines at the edge of a field. “This one right here,” says Huff, pointing to a grapevine with a small cluster of young BB-sized grapes. “Why this one?” Walton asks. “It’s doing well, therefore might attract the insects,” Huff responds, laughing. For Huff, dealing with pest problems is constant work. “Every grower of grapes in Oregon, from the moment that the grapes unfurl from their buds, you are thinking about it all the time,” he says. “And if you’re in the organic business, like we are here, you have a very limited amount of tools in the tool chest [to control pests].” Walton attaches the device’s microphone and wire speaker to the grapevine, where it will listen for treehoppers. “[When it detects a pattern it recognizes,] the computer will send a mating signal through this wire back onto the stem. And so if the insect senses the signal sent from the computer, it will eventually, in theory, walk back on this wire,” he explains. Then the Pied Piper snaps a photo of the bug, allowing the farmer to confirm the presence of the pest. Luring treehoppers out into the open is a bigger deal than it may seem. They’re experts at staying hidden and difficult to detect. But testing of the Pied Piper has shown that treehoppers can’t resist the charms of a sweet-talking mechanical mate. The researchers have been able to capture photos of treehoppers lured in by the call. “Having a sensitive measure to know when that species is there is very useful in and of itself. One of the goals of pest management is to apply controls only when and as you need them,” say Cocroft, who isn’t involved with the project. But while detection is important, Walton and his team have even grander aspirations for the Pied Piper.

DAN EVANS / OPB

Birth control, but for bugs

In this video still OSU entomologist Vaughn Walton (right) prepares to install the Pied Piper in May 2023 at the Stag Hollow Winery. Owner Mark Huff (left) holds the device he hopes will eventually help Oregon wineries better control pests. 38 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

The hope for the Pied Piper robot is to use the device’s communication with treehoppers and other insects to keep them from making babies. It’s a technique called “mating disruption.” “Mating disruption is kind of like birth control,” Walton says. “You have an adult female that… should lay eggs within three or four days of its early life cycle. If you can delay that, you can cut the [reproductive] capacity of this insect sometimes in half, sometimes by 90 percent.” The idea is to confuse and distract — anything to keep the bugs from finding each other and mating.

DAN EVANS / OPB

This video still shows the majestic brown marmorated stinkbug going through its pre-flight checklist. Though a relatively new arrival, the stink bug is increasingly becoming a nuisance to farmers.

Mechanical vibrations could be used to compete with living males. “You would need to know how the males sound, and … replicate that sound, that vibrational pattern. That will compete with the live males for the females’ attention. Or it could confuse the female,” says Dowen Jocson, a pesticide safety educator in Washington State University’s Department of Entomology. Another strategy could be to drown out all of the communication. “I equate this to being in a bar or a club with very, very loud music. You can’t have a conversation, you can’t get people’s names, you can’t get people’s numbers,” she says. Mating disruption that utilizes the vibrational communication of insects is a relatively new field that is showing promise. “I do see it as being a solution to a lot of the pesticide resistance treadmill that we’re in,” she says. “If we use this vibrational mating disruption and lower the population just by a bit, I think that’ll help a lot.”

Learning new languages It’s been OSU undergrad Vincent Vaughn-Uding’s job to train the Pied Piper to recognize treehopper calls. Now with the stink bugs, he’s expanding its repertoire. “We’re working on getting the devices to work for brown marmorated stink bugs, which are another pretty major agricultural pest,” he says. The stink bugs are recent invaders in the Pacific Northwest and they’re starting to cause damage to hazelnut crops. But to speak to stink bugs, Pied Piper has to know the language, and that starts with recording their communication — with a vibration-sensing laser called a vibrometer. “It can measure just vibrations in a thing you pointed at … with very high accuracy,” he explains, focusing the instrument on the holly branch.

“We can get recordings that the [Pied Piper] can play back later in order to lure the insects towards it. And it’s also how we can figure out how we need to tune our detection algorithm — like what dominant frequencies and harmonics we need to look at,” Vaughn-Uding says. With the two stink bugs on the branch and the vibrometer focused in, the recording — and waiting — begins. “They usually take a little while to get acclimated before they start doing stuff,” he says. He turns towards his laptop and hits record. The waveform of the recording scrolls out on the screen — a visual representation of the vibrations being converted to sounds humans can hear. Suddenly a defined blip appears. “I think we already got a chirp,” he says quietly. He plays back the recording, and a wall of static plays over his laptop speakers. But under it all, a weird descending ‘whaaomp’ — the glorious song of the brown marmorated stink bug. With this recording, the researchers will be able to program the Pied Piper to interact with stink bugs in the wild. And since the Pied Piper would only be speaking the specific language of the stink bug, Walton says no beneficial insects or other organisms will suffer. “I think the key thing here is that it only affects the target insect, and it will not affect anything else,” he says. “It’s cleaner for everyone that lives here. It’s clean for the environment, better for our salmon and our rivers.” And going forward, the more insect songs the Pied Piper learns to play, the more pests it could mesmerize and lead astray. Jes Burns works for OPB’s Science & Environment unit as a science reporter and producer of the Northwest science show “All Science, No Fiction.” JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 39

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RECORDINGS DAVE JACKSON & DANIELLE KELLY

All That’s Fit To Play The Danielle List In no particular order, an inconclusive list of ten of my favorites in 2023:

Free Creatures featuring Marv Ellis (vocals and beats), Emily Turner (vocals and upright bass), and Skyler Squglio (guitar).

PHOTO: RICH ZELLMAN

I found myself particularly sensitive to the tragedies in the global news this year and have been finding relief and refuge in more and more instrumental music in my life soundtrack. For this reason, King Canyon, Eric Krasnos’ new project with Son Little, was a welcome distraction for me. Bluesy psych rock goodness that lets me just be with my thoughts, still delivering enough energy to keep me on top of my house chores! I was super stoked to cheer on Southern Oregon’s own Free Creatures new full-length release While We Can. I’ve long been a fan of the hypnotic vocals of Emily Turner, Creature’s lead vocalist and bassist. Her grooves mesmerize me. Teamed up with Skylar Skuglios’s psych guitar riffs and special sauce a la Marv Ellis melds into a winning dance around the house/car recipe for me. Susto took over my home stereo for months when I heard the single “Rock On” from their full-length album My Entire Life. I was a fan before, loving past singles like “Feel Alright” and “Get Down” from Time in the Sun, but this album with its vulnerability and catchy lyrics and hooks took me on a trip with them. Meeting the gang and hearing about this album firsthand in a JPR Live session made that album magical for me. If we are gonna talk about rock stars though, Grace Potter gets my vote. She’s funny, fun and fantasy-full in her new record

Susto with Danielle Kelly in the JPR Live Session performance studio.

Danielle Kelly, host of Open Air

Mother Road, but she’s no joke. “Lady Vagabond” has been a serious sing-along anthem for me in the halls of JPR this year. From “Good Time,” who wants to argue with lyrics like “There’s got to be a way that we can turn this ship around Uh, ’cause you can’t keep a good time down.” Speaking of earworms, Emily King was majorly repeatable for me. It’s her Grammy-nominated perfect pop sensibilities, soft gentle voice singer Emily King and charm behind confidence and feminism that works for me. When I hear Special Occasion, I’m taken right to a passenger seat, windows rolled down cruising and taking in a summer time scene, (my favorite vibe). JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 41

Recordings

Continued from previous page

Go By,” Danielle Ponder’s “Some of Us Are Brave,” Bahamas “I’m Still,” Mick Flannery with “Goodtime Charley” Bailen’s “Tired Hearts” and the guitar riff in Killing Cortisano’s “Drunk Man.” With Chronicles of a Diamond, The Black Pumas delivered once again my favorite blend of soul and psych rock. “More Than a Love Song” sits on my top played just like “Colors” did from their debut self-titled release. Heavy and uplifting simultaneously. Honorable mentions: Elisapie, for reinventing classics and making them sound even cooler in her indigenous people’s language of Inuktitut, especially with “Taimangalimaq” (Time After Time). Kurt Vile for remaining the loveable king of rambling stoner rock. Fruit Bats with River Running To Your Heart for a record I like to play from the beginning track straight through to the end.

The Dave List Fever Ray’s Radical Romantic wins the JPR Open Air creepiest album art award but the music tells another tale.

Hozier’s Unreal Unearth makes another point in my argument that he’s at least part space alien. It’s intellectual and spiritual, pulling from the text of Dante’s Inferno, yet easily accessible with infectious hooks, and as always, the vocals are goose bump-inducing good. Fever Ray’s Radical Romantic had me doubting as we opened the mail and found the creepiest album artwork in the Open Air library to date. And the track names weirded me out too. But like my affinity for the film “The Shining”, I couldn’t help but replay and dive deeper each time despite how uncomfortable it is. The instrumentation, production, lyrics and melody are so unique. I probably won’t turn it on for relaxing at bedtime, but it’s definitely given my brain some food for thought. Both Taj Mahal’s Savoy and Amos Lee’s Sings Chet Baker delighted the jazz vocalist in me. I love the role the Savoy music hall played in jazz history, and for a giant of roots/jazz/blues music like Taj paying homage to the space and music made famous there is simply wonderful. Likewise, Amos Lee dusting off a few of my favorite in- Taj Majal, Savoy trospective, brooding Chet Baker standards had me falling sentimental for the songs all over again. I’m a sucker for clever lyrics and defenseless against a powerful hook. As far as single songs I couldn’t get out of my head, here are the offenders: Parker MIllsap’s “Front Porchin,” Jenny Lewis’s “Puppy and a Truck,” Slaid Cleaves’ “Teriligua Chili Queen,” Love, Dean’s “Fool,” Kassi Valaza’s “Watching Planes 42 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

The Finalists: boygenius(SIC) – The Record. The first full-length release from the supergroup made up of singer/songwriters Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers took the world by storm, and earned several Grammy nominations. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram – Live in London. The Gen Z bluesman is poised to make the first half of the 21st century his own. Blues guitar heroes come and go, and every once in a while, we get a new player who rises above, like Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan. Kingfish joins Derek Trucks and Joe Bonamassa as the guys blazing new trails in an old art form now. Margo Cilker – Valley of the Heart’s Delight. A member of the Pacific Northwest Americana circuit released an album produced by Sera Cahoone, with help from Jenny Conlee (Decemberists) and Caleb Caudle. I hear throwbacks to Emmylou Harris and Iris DeMent. Kassi Valazza – “Watching Planes Go By.” Also from the PNW, and joined by Portland band TK and the Holy Know

Dave Jackson, JPR music director and host of Open Air

PHOTO: MATT GRUBB

boygenius’ Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus , and Phoebe Bridgers.

Margo Cilker’s new album Valley of Hearts Delight does not disappoint.

Nothing, Valazza’s album Kassi Valazza Knows Nothing is classic ’60s-style folk. “Watching Planes Go By” sounds a bit like The Carpenters and Jefferson Airplane and reminds me of the song “Walk Me Out in the Morning Dew.” Sufjan Stevens – Javelin. The melancholy themes are hard to take, but heartfelt, and reward listeners with a beautiful, tear-jerker of a record. Stevens wrote the songs for Javelin in the aftermath of the death of his partner in the Spring. The collection of songs about love often blur the lines between romantic love and his Christian faith. It’s part confessional and part mourning and elegantly showcases his ethereal, indie-folk roots. Killing Cartisano – “The Drunk Man.” Italian singer/songwriter/composer/multi-instrumentalist Roberta Cartisano is Killing Cartisano. “The Drunk Man” is a rocker with a huge guitar hook that sounds like something that could have been performed by Led Zeppelin and Alabama Shakes. Jenny Lewis – “Puppy and a Truck. It’s an almost perfect pop song. It’s cute and catchy. The sound is a little like “Margaritaville” (minus the steel drums) and it opens with the line “My forties were kickin’ my ass, and handin’ to me in a Margarita Glass” and like the Buffett classic, seems to be about coping and living your best life. For Lewis though it’s more about self-empowerment and solace via a puppy and a truck.

Portland-based Kassi Valazza’s haunting lyrics stay with you.

Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway – City of Gold. This album was produced with Jerry Douglas and features co-writes with Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. Golden Highway is made up of some of the best string-players in the genre. The sum of City of Gold, somehow manages to be greater than even those parts. Free Creatures – While We Can. If I had to pick one favorite, it’s this. Additionally, they released a groovy cover of Van Morrisons “Moondance.” The Southern Oregon trio with upright bassist/vocalist Emily Turner, MC Marv Ellis on vocals and beats, and guitarist Skylar Skuglio, blends jazz, world beat, hiphop and funk with conscious lyrics for a sound they call “Umami Music.” It’s catchy and accessible with enough depth to keep those digging for more interested listen after listen. Honorable mentions: Jaime Wyatt – Feel Good, Cat Power – Sings Bob Dylan: 1966 Live at the Royal Albert Hall, Della Mae – “No Rain”, Taj Mahal – Savoy, Eric Bibb – Ridin’, Ruen Brothers – Ten Paces, Stephen Marley – Old Soul, Dave McMurray – Grateful Deadication II, Danielle Ponder – Some of us are Brave, Rodney Crowell – The Chicago Sessions, Liv Warfield – The Edge, Natalie Merchant – Keep Your Courage, Sunny War -Anarchist Gospel, Iris DeMent – Workin’ on a World, and a series of nicely interpreted cover tunes by Southern Oregon’s Alice Di Micele. We’re already excited to share what’s coming next year. A more detailed version of this list is at ijpr.org.

Danielle Kelly hosts Open Air, weekdays on JPR’s Rhythm & News Service.

Music Director Dave Jackson hosts Open Air, weekdays on JPR’s Rhythm & News Service.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 43

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MILK STREET CHRISTOPHER KIMBALL

THAI-STYLE COCONUT AND CHICKEN SOUP

om kha gai is a Thai soup rich with coconut milk but balanced with chili heat and lime, plus the tropical flavors and aromas of galangal, lemon grass and makrut. Chicken and mushrooms give the soup substance without dulling the aromatics. In Bangkok, chef Piched Kaewhem taught us how quickly and easily tom kha gai comes together. We set out to develop a recipe modeled on the Thai classic, but using readily available ingredients. We opted for lime zest in place of makrut leaves and ginger instead of galangal—imperfect substitutions, but good enough to make a flavorful, fragrant broth. A couple tablespoons of store-bought Thai roasted chili paste—called nam prik pao—brought savory background notes. But the coconut milk was a challenge. We tried many brands of canned coconut milk and got mixed results—from watery brews to curdled messes. Ultimately, we made our own coconut milk by blending dried coconut with water and straining the puree; we then fortify it with canned coconut cream (a more consistent product than canned coconut milk) and coconut water. If you like, serve jasmine rice alongside.

Don’t mistake cream of coconut for coconut cream. The former is a syrupy, sweetened mixture typically usedin desserts and cocktails. The latter, a higher-fat version of regular coconut milk, is what you want. Coconutcream is sold in cans and aseptic packages of varying sizes. A 13.- to 15.-ounce can is fine here, or eventhree 5.4-ounce cans. A few tablespoons more or less of coconut cream won’t matter. MAKES 4 SERVINGS | 45 MINUTES

Ingredients

2½ cups unsweetened shredded coconut 3 cups warm water 2 limes 1 13½- To 15½-ounce can coconut cream (about 1¾ cups; see headnote) 2 cups coconut water 3 stalks lemon grass, trimmed to the bottom 6 inches, dry outerlayers discarded, bruised and cut into 2-inch lengths 1 1½-Inch piece fresh ginger, peeled, thinly sliced and bruised 1 medium shallot, halved and thinly sliced ⅛ teaspoon ground turmeric kosher salt and ground white pepper 4 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and thinly sliced, oroyster mushrooms, trimmed and torn into large bite-size pieces 1-1¼ pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced crosswise about ¼inch thick 3 tablespoons fish sauce, plus more if needed 2 tablespoons thai chili paste (see headnote) 1½ tablespoons packed light brown sugar 1 fresno or serrano chili, stemmed and sliced into thin rings Roughly chopped fresh cilantro, to serve

Directions 1. In a blender, combine the shredded coconut and warm water. Let stand untilthe coconut begins to soften, about 5 minutes. Blend on high until creamy, 1to 2 minutes. Pour the mixture into a fine-mesh sieve set over a largesaucepan. Press on the solids to extract as much liquid as possible; discard thesolids. 2. Using a vegetable peeler, remove the zest from the limes in strips; removeonly the colored portion, not the white pith beneath. You will need a total ofabout 10 strips, each 2 to 3 inches long; add them to the saucepan. Juice thelimes; you will need 3 tablespoons; set aside. 3. To the saucepan, add the coconut cream, coconut water, lemon grass, ginger,shallot, turmeric, ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon white pepper. Bring to asimmer over medium-high, then reduce to low and cook, uncovered andstirring occasionally, for 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat. Using aslotted spoon, remove and discard the solids. 4. For oyster mushrooms, tear them into bite-size pieces. For shiitakes, stem andthinly slice them. Stir the mushrooms, then bring to a simmer over medium. Add the chicken, fish sauce, chili paste, sugar and ⅛ teaspoon white pepper.Simmer, uncovered and stirring occasionally, until the chicken is opaquethroughout and the mushrooms are tender, about 5 minutes. Offheat, stir inthe lime juice and sliced chili. Taste and season with salt or fish sauce andwhite pepper. Serve sprinkled with cilantro. Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street in downtown Boston—at 177 Milk Street—is home to the editorial offices and cooking school. It also is where they record Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street television and radio shows. Milk Street is changing how we cook by searching the world for bold, simple recipes and techniques. For more information, go to177milkstreet.com. You can hear Milk Street Radio Sundays at 3:00pm on JPR’s News & Information service.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 JEFFERSON JOURNAL | 45

POETRY MARGARET LOKEN

Scabs and Scars

Berry Picking on Sauvie Island

When the skin tightens and itches there’s an uncontrollable urge to pick, to rid oneself of a reminder of mistakes. A need to smooth the surface and pretend no harm has happened. Slip of a knife, prick of a rose, scrape of a cherry tree limb.

The best ones are like a pitch low and inside. Hiding from rain and dew, thriving in filtered sun. June light awakens aromas of rasp and strawberries. They will be first then on to marion and blueberries. Such abundance on this flat, fertile alluvial plain the size of Manhattan. The bounty soon to be transformed into jam, crisps, cobblers. Best, though, straight off the vine.

Some can resist opening old wounds. Most need to replay the pain of hurtful words and bad decisions as if going over the same sore ground will bring understanding of things unintended: a marriage that went wrong for all the right reasons, a love affair so right it had to be wrong. Once the crust is gone, a scar will testify to what tore flesh or heartstrings but no lessons learned. The scarred will again dash too enthusiastically into the garden, rush dangerously in the kitchen or into another’s arms.

Margaret Loken is a former English instructor who has taught students in high school, community college, ESL abroad, and the University of California, San Diego. She resides in Ashland, where she gardens, plays tennis, and hangs out with a great group of talented friends.

This plot of mountain run-off deposited for millennia tells an old story of wonderers, explorers, exploiters, native people diseased into extinction. Later land-seekers from the Midwest eager to stay and work the soil. Their descendants provide a profusion for all who wish to gather it. Apples and peaches will be next, delicious but not as redolent as the succulence in my hands. Squash, cauliflower, beans follow— firm with no perfume. Summer fruit is best, most perishable and precious. As I pick, inside and low, I breathe the earthiness of newly turned fields. Thoughts of the confused world beyond disappear.

Writers may submit original poetry for publication in Jefferson Journal. Email 3–6 poems, a brief bio, and your mailing address in one attachment to jeffmopoetry@gmail.com, or send 3–6 poems, a brief bio, and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Amy Miller, Poetry Editor Jefferson Journal 1250 Siskiyou Blvd Ashland, OR 97520

Please allow eight weeks for reply.

ca 46 | JEFFERSON JOURNAL JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024

R E D D I N G’S H I S TO R I C

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BRINGING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH THESE TIMELESS EXPERIENCES!

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