I met Nella Mae Parks more than six years ago at Oregon State University’s Small Farm Conference. She was a young farmer from Cove, Ore., who was also a freelance writer interested in doing stories for Capital Press, our agriculture publication.

We spoke briefly, but long enough for her to give me her back story. After college and a stint in the wider world, she returned to Cove with her husband to take over part of her family’s farm.

After we started The Other Oregon, I was looking for someone young and smart who could talk about the rural-urban divide from the perspective of a rural Oregonian who left and came back. She was apprehensive at first, but she came around once I explained why we thought it important to tell the story of rural Oregon from the point of view of people who live there.

It was something she had felt for a long time, and she thought she’d have something to contribute. She’s been working to bridge the rural-urban divide through her essays ever since.

When we spoke shortly after the election, her thoughts were on the partisan divide that splits communities, families and friends across the state.

Her solution: Find trust and understanding by joining your neighbors to work on the little problems close to home. National electoral politics doesn’t mean a hill of beans when you’re trying to get a pothole filled.

Kathryn Brown is no longer publisher of The Other Oregon. She took on the role shortly after we started the magazine. She was one of the owners of EO Media Group, the family newspaper company that traced its roots to 1908 and the East Oregonian in Pendleton.

The company has been sold, and so Kathryn takes her leave. I will miss her enthusiastic support of The Other Oregon and its mission.

— Joe Beach