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6:50 KARIN TANABE & VICTORIA KELLY, featured in documentary ATOMIC ECHOES: UNTOLD STORIES OF WORLD WAR II
Marking the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing, Atomic Echoes: Untold Stories of World War II, a new documentary from Blue Chalk Media, will air on public television stations nationwide beginning the week of August 1. The film includes rarely seen archival footage and interviews with 100-year-old American veterans who were eyewitnesses to the devastation in the immediate aftermath of nuclear warfare. See it at www.AtomicEchoesFilm.com
7:15 Haley McNamara, Executive Director and Chief Strategy Officer at National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
More About Haley https://endsexualexploitation.org/about/staff/haley-mcnamara/
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography. www.EndSexualExploitation.org
Congress Needs to Enact AI Safeguards Given Meta Policies Allowed AI Bot to Have “Sensual” Chats with Children
WASHINGTON, DC (August 15, 2025) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) called on Congress to prioritize commonsense safety regulations for Artificial Intelligence in light of shocking new details that Meta’s policies over its AI chatbot allowed it to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.”
“Meta demonstrates that this is exactly why we need commonsense AI safeguards. Without them, profit-first AI will chase engagement over safety and lead to bad practices like Meta’s sex chats with kids and X’s sexualized chatbot, instead of real scientific or productivity breakthroughs,” said Haley McNamara, Executive Director and Chief Strategy Officer, National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
“Elected officials must take the reigns over creating guardrails for AI. Many states have already began enacting legislation to curb AI’s ability to cause harm. At the federal level, Congress must act affirmatively to curb the ability for AI to groom children or to cause sexual exploitation and abuse of users. We are already seeing how AI can facilitate sexual exploitation, it’s time to take action before more harm occurs,” she said, adding that, “We are supportive of a Congressional investigation into Meta.”
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the
7:35 Kevin Starrett, Oregon Firearms Federation www.OregonFirearms.org
Max Bernstein at Oregon Live writes a story detailing the Malheur Hostage Rescue Team getting all sorts of awards from the FBI. What the…?
8:15 Dr. Dennis Powers, retired professor of business law at SOU, with today’s “Where Past Meets Present”
Celia’s House in Holmes Park
By Dennis Powers (SOHS Lifetime Member, Researcher, and Writer)
Wealthy Sam Rosenberg, who built the luxurious Seattle Hotel Sorrento in the early 1900s, sold it in 1910 to buy the 240-acre Bear Creek Orchards in Jackson County with its Comice pear trees for $300,000. First hybridized in France in the 1700s and renowned for their fine texture and flavor, the Comice flourished in this area with its rich soil and sunny climate that proved better suited then even their French birthplace.
Educated at Cornell’s School of Agriculture, sons Harry and David took over the operation following Sam’s death in 1914. Driving carts pulled by mules, workers harvested the fruit. Local women packed the wooden boxes with ice and the fruit, as the full boxes were shipped by rail to their destinations. During the 1920s, they bought more orchards and successfully marketed their Comice pears as a luxury item. The depression of the 1930s, however, put a cruel dent in their operations, including their overseas exports.
When Harry’s experiment with direct mail in New York City proved successful, the company created a four-page flyer that they mailed out. Selling 6,000 boxes of pears in 1934, their shipments reached 15,000 in 1935; having renamed their pears as “Royal Riviera pears” and a brand name, these were sold in more quantities overseas and throughout the country. Continuing to buy land from struggling orchard owners, Bear Creek Orchards expanded its acreage during the late 1930s. They then began selling year-round with the world’s first “Fruit of the Month Club” and changed their family name from Rosenberg to Holmes (their father-in-law’s) to end the anti-Semitic boycott of their products in Germany. (Note: Over time, the company acquired Jackson & Perkins Roses, went thru different ownerships, and is now a subsidiary of 1-800-Flowers.)
In 1937, Harry married Elizabeth nee Hunter, who was a Chicago executive with the prestigious J. Walter Thompson Advertising Company, and the Holmes’s purchased 20 acres on what’s now South Modoc Road that was near their Bear Creek orchards. The couple hired the African-American architect, Paul R. Williams, who designed homes for the rich and famous in Southern California.
Orphaned at age four, Williams spent the rest of his life overcoming obstacles. Designing from luxury hotels and public schools to churches, commercial buildings, and Hollywood mansions, he was best known for his residential projects. Frank Sinatra hired Williams to design a Beverly Hills bachelor pad and Lucille Ball for her ranch-style Palm Springs retreat. Others included Tyrone Power, Johnny Weismuller, Lon Chaney, Cary Grant, and Audrey Hepburn—to name a few.
Although not licensed to practice in Oregon, Paul Williams quickly established a collaboration with the respected local architects Frank Clark and Robert J. Keeney. In 1939-1940, Williams designed a California Georgian style home for Harry and Eleanor, and the 6,260 square-foot mansion had five bedrooms with 6½ bathrooms. With rooms showcasing views of the surrounding hills, swimming pool, and mountains (Mt. Ashland or the Siskiyous), it included a curved driveway with a grand entry featuring an elegantly curved staircase. A gated, curved, paver driveway led past manicured gardens and oaks to an impressive frontcourt entrance with a portico of pediment and columns; a swimming pool (one of the first here) with more landscaping was in back with prominent mountain views. Williams created a city home with “the illusion of being out in the country,” as chronicled by a Medford Mail Tribune article.
The home was as the “ideal backdrop” for their family and entertainment life—whether in the afternoon for the Medford Garden Club, the Red Cross, or the Contemporary Book Club in the evening. Eleanor died in 1948 and Harry in 1959. Their son, John, sold the house on 1.7 acres in 1963. He donated the remaining 18-plus acres to the City of Medford in 1973–and which led to the creation of Holmes Park.
The Holmes Park Hospice House story began when a tiny resale boutique (Hospice Unique Boutique) opened on Ashland Street in Ashland in 2009. From the start, there was a shared vision that one day the Southern Oregon Friends of Hospice (“SOFH”) would have a hospice house in Southern Oregon.
Medical, governmental, and community leaders joined together, as SOFH searched for a park-like property between the two major hospitals in Medford, Rogue Regional and Providence Medford Medical Center. The colonial revival-style mansion was purchased in April 2016 for $1.3 million from Jay Beckstead, a Medford pathologist, and his wife, Paula Stenberg, who had owned the property for 18 years.
Embarking on a $4 million fund drive, SOFH raised the moneys to transform the estate by mid-2018 into hospice care. A compatible new wing added eight private rooms, each with a patio or small balcony, plus quiet sitting rooms and kitchenettes. Many of the ground-floor rooms have wide doors opening to the outside with an upstairs “treehouse” sunroom. Today, the Holmes House is now a 12-bed, stand-alone-residential care facility dedicated to hospice and comfort care. The grassroots, volunteer-driven nonprofit SOFH provides round-the-clock care to people who are terminally ill as well as private spaces for families to say goodbye.
With the 4,797-square-foot addition, the home includes places for families to spend time and even nights, as if they were at a home. The organization estimates that 180 patients will be served annually, with an average stay of 14 days. Six of the beds are subsidized through funding by hospital grants, Medicaid, donor scholarships, and the nonprofit’s Hospice Unique Boutique. Patients and/or their families will pay to use the other six.
Asante, Providence, and Signature provide hospice care. The care team includes a hospice nurse manager and certified nurse assistants trained in hospice care. Volunteers trained in caring for families and sitting at bedside provide support, as well as a key role in running the house, kitchen, and gardens.
In 2017, Williams was awarded the prestigious American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, posthumously, for his more than three thousand projects. (Frank Lloyd Wright also received AIA’s Gold Medal.) He was the first licensed African-American architect west of the Mississippi and overcame cultural barriers over his 50-year career. His redesign of Saks Fifth Avenue and renovation of the Beverly Hills Hotel are among his signature projects, not to mention the Los Angeles County Courthouse and Los Angeles Airport. Eight of his works have been named to the National Register of Historic Places.
In December 2018, the Holmes Park House was renamed to Celia’s House in Holmes Park, owing to an extraordinary donation of $1 million dollars by Jed and Celia Meese. As stated on its website, “The name ‘Celia’ means ‘heavenly beauty’ in Latin, fitting for both our hospice home, ‘Celia’s House in Holmes Park,’ and a special benefactress.” Next, their foundation gift of $342,000 in 2021 provided for the final payment on its outstanding mortgage.
With a strong thanks to everyone with the Southern Oregon Friends of Hospice, we now think differently about environments for end-of-life care programs. And the talents of Paul Williams with his clients, Harry and Eleanor Holmes. This is an extraordinary story of the changeover of an exquisite mansion to an independent hospice-care facility.
Sources: Dennis Powers, Where Past Meets Present, Hellgate Press: Ashland, 2017, The History of Harry and David and Bear Creek,” Pp. 95-98; Janet Eastman, “Harry & David mansion by famed architect becomes hospice facility,” The Oregonian, May 31, 2017, at its website; John Darling, “Holmes Mansion converts to hospice,” Mail Tribune, May 16, 2016; see https://www.sofriendsofhospice.org/history/, https://www.paulrwilliamsproject.org/ (“Holmes House)), and also https://thepaulrwilliamscollection.com/.