The Jefferson Exchange

Oregon voted to enshrine marriage in the state constitution as a one man/one woman transaction nearly ten years ago. 

With the tide of public opinion changing, a campaign is mounting to reverse that earlier vote.  The Oregon United for Marriage Campaign wants to broaden the definition to include either two men or two women.

Maybe our predecessors could not imagine cell phones or cars, but they certainly spent some time thinking about life. 

And many of their thoughts about how to approach it are still valid. 

The Meals on Wheels program for seniors is popular in Klamath County. 

Maybe a little too popular for its own good.  The program that delivers meals to seniors has a waiting list... and not much money to make that list shorter. 

College-bound high school students can get a leg up on their post-secondary education by taking Advanced Placement (AP) exams and classes. 

But a recent national report shows many Oregon students do not take advantage of the AP offerings. 

There's not a lot of in-between in mass media depictions of Native Americans. 

We often get either the Hollywood depictions of noble warriors from the movies, or the news stories about alcoholism and poverty on the reservation. 

Some people think of retirement as a set of sunny years playing lots of golf. 

Some other people might find that concept of retirement to be something straight out of hell. 

Drop a bag of clothing off at Goodwill, and you'll get a receipt and a potential tax credit. 

But farmers who grow extra acres of food and donate the produce to food banks get no such tax credit in Oregon.  And they used to. 

They can be two of the most chilling words you'll ever hear in combination: “trust me.” 

But we can't simply rely on ourselves and our own judgment for everything in life.  At some point we have to trust somebody else. 

"Retrenchment" is not a word used lightly on the Southern Oregon University campus.

It is the term required when the university considers program cuts that would result in faculty jobs being lost.

What will it take to make college more affordable in our country?

And those nifty electronic or "E-cigarettes": should we regulate those like the old-fashioned cigarettes? 

Those are the key questions in our weekly VENTSday segment.