A quarter century ago, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians started a bingo hall in Canyonville.

Imagine turning a blind child’s seeing-eye dog away at the school house door.

Umpqua Community College needs more funding. So it’s understandable that UCC recently announced a modest tuition hike would start this summer.

Today is the one day a year that we celebrate those who made us into who we are — our mother(s).

Imagine what our schools could have accomplished with the $220.8 million the State Land Board just threw back in the faces of Lone Rock Timber Management and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians.

Library lovers in Roseburg made their views abundantly clear in the November election. Unlike the county as a whole, the majority of Roseburg voters said they wanted to save their library by forming a countywide library district.

We have a problem.

Truth, by its very nature, should be indisputable, rock solid and resolute.

We are glad to hear that the city of Roseburg intends to move ahead with putting a splash pad at Fir Grove Park.

Hundreds of bills are proposed in the state legislature each session. Some will make it over the hurdles one-by-one — first surviving a committee hearing and vote, then the House and Senate, and finally a signature from the governor.

Attracting educators to Douglas County has been a problem in recent years.

Forty-thousand dollars seems like a lot of money to most of us. That’s how much the city of Roseburg and the Douglas County government plan to spend, collectively, investigating whether coaxing developers to build an expensive hotel downtown aimed at rich tourists would make sense.

W olves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995. Four years later a single wolf was sighted in Eastern Oregon. And then in 2011, OR7, a radio-collared wolf, made his presence known in the Southern Cascades. He probably set foot in eastern Douglas County on his travels.

Police photos involving dead crime victims would be exempt from public records laws under Senate Bill 508, which unfortunately was passed by the Senate Committee on Judiciary last week on a unanimous vote.

Sue Shaffer had a dream. And she was one of those rare and valuable people who had the gumption to take her dream and make it a reality.

It’s always discouraging to be ranked near the bottom on anybody’s list, but it’s all the more distressing when the ranking concerns our health.

College sports fans have something to cheer about in Oregon.

Whether you use it to look up recipes for dinner, to assist with homework, reading the local newspaper or perhaps even use it as the scripture in church, the internet has become ever-present in the daily lives of most Americans.

Recently members of our staff had the opportunity to interview a handful of the immigrants who live and work in Douglas County.

On Oct. 1, 2015, our community suffered a tragedy that for many of us was simply unthinkable. A deranged young man murdered nine people, and left others with scars that will last them a lifetime. Some of these scars are visible. Some are not.

Thank goodness two members of the State Land Board kept their heads last week when pushed to decide between a last-minute change of heart by the governor and moving ahead with the Elliott Forest sale.

Transparency is one of those things that can be easy to promise, but tough to deliver.