JPR's online silent auction is underway

Jefferson Public Radio launches first virtual silent auction fundraiser

/in

Jefferson Public Radio is inviting the Southern Oregon University community and others to participate in its first JPR Online Silent Auction, featuring a variety of getaway packages, wine bundles, one-of-a-kind items, fine dining certificates and more.

“JPR is grateful to everyone who has contributed and is participating in this new exciting venture,” said Sue Jaffe, one of the organizers for the auction. “Our ultimate goal is to raise $20,000 by Feb. 4. Thanks to the generosity and creativity of our local donors and community partners, we are offering hundreds of fun items to bid on.”

The JPR Virtual Online Auction opened Jan. 24 and runs through Feb. 4, with  almost $14,000 already raised. Supporters of SOU’s National Public Radio affiliate are encouraged to raise a glass or raise a bid, and help raise    funds to support the JPR programs they love.

More than 50 businesses and individuals – from The Websters knitting supplies to Rogue Creamery to the Mt. Ashland ski area – have donated items, services and opportunities that can be bid on in the silent, online auction. There are about a dozen prizes from wineries and breweries, and another dozen from restaurants.

Jefferson Public Radio, now one of the country’s largest regional public radio networks, began at SOU in 1969 with the station KSOR – which remains the network’s flagship. JPR is owned and operated by SOU and supported by the fundraising efforts of the JPR Foundation. It broadcasts to a potential audience of more than a million people in southern Oregon and northern California with its network of translators and stations.

JPR operates from its studios adjacent to the SOU Theater Building on the southwest edge of campus.

geriatrician to speak at SOU

Leading geriatrician to address SOU audience

/in ,

(Ashland, Ore.) — Dr. Louise Aronson – a leading geriatrician, writer and educator – will lecture on “Aging, Ageism and the Future of Elderhood” in a Jan. 10 event presented via Zoom by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Oregon University in partnership with SOU’s Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Aronson is the author of the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist “Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine and Reimagining Life.” Her SOU lecture will begin at 3 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 10, and will be available at https://sou.zoom.us/j/81261161853. A question-and-answer session will follow.

The presentation is intended to challenge how people think about aging and will include suggestions for how both individuals and organizations can improve aging and the lives of older people. Aronson says that aging and old age have changed dramatically in recent decades, but that not all changes have been for the better. For example, she points out that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the resilience of older people and the importance of social connections, but also has demonstrated the ageism that is built into key social structures.

Aronson is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco. She has received the Gold Professorship in Humanism in Medicine, the California Homecare Physician of the Year award and the American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year award. She currently leads the AGE SELF CARE program and serves as an advisor to the state of California on COVID-19 in elders and eldercare settings, in addition to her clinical practice and teaching.

Her website points out that Aronson was born at the same medical center where she now works – “a fact that sometimes leads her to comment that she hasn’t gone very far in life, just down 15 floors and over a building or two.”

She has written for the New York Times, Atlantic, Washington Post, JAMA, Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, and has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, TODAY, CBS This Morning, NBC News and the New Yorker.

-SOU-