4 Summer 2017 Applegater
•••BIZ bits•••
The Good Earth Organics Supply. Good Earth Organics operates southern Oregon’s
largest premium soil-manufacturing yards and two full-service
gardening supply stores. For over a decade they have served the
Illinois Valley, and now they are excited to open a new location
in Murphy. All soil ingredients are locally sourced and tested
to insure the highest quality blends. The knowledgeable staff
at Good Earth Organics will happily help you with all your
gardening and soil needs. 6891 Williams Highway, Murphy
• 541-592-4855 • thegoodearthorganics.com.
• • •
Spa E’vie. Pamper yourself at Spa E’vie. Esthetician Cheri Veritch and masseuse
Suzie Wagner blend their talents to create unique skin care and body therapies, even
wildcrafting organic potions for special treatments. Spa E’vie
has an infrared sauna, a Zen Den (salt room), and a recently
added special pedicure area and boutique hair salon, open
by appointment. With this recipe for success, it’s no wonder
Spa E’vie just celebrated their fifth anniversary! Applegater
readers receive a 15 percent discount with this BizBit.
550 SW 6th Street, Suite E, Grants Pass • 541-479-3176 •
grantspass-dayspa.com.
BizBits highlights businesses new to the area, holding special events, or offering new products. If you are a
business owner, let us know when you move into the area or to a different location, hold a special event, expand
your business, or mark a milestone. Email Shelley Manning at manningshelley@icloud.com.
Dress up for the
McKee Bridge
Centennial Celebration
We sure hope this isn’t
the first you’ve heard about
McKee Bridge’s first Centennial
Celebration, but if so, check out
the cover of the spring Applegater
(applegater.org) for the details.
Then dig into the back of the
closet for those old fashions from
back in 1917 and come on out
on Saturday, June 10, dressed for
the occasion and the time period.
Prizes will be awarded
throughout the event for those
who dress up for it. You don’t
want to miss it!
Fo r m o re i n fo rma t i o n ,
contact Paul Tipton at 541-
846-7501 or mckeebridge1917@
gmail.com.
BOOK REVIEWS
IBM and
the Holocaust
Edwin Black
Is there anyone who hasn’t
heard of the Holocaust?
When Germany liquidated
six million Jews along with
gypsies, homosexuals, and
whomever else they deemed
undesirable?
I’ve heard of folks who
believe that the Holocaust never happened.
They may be the same folks who believe
that the earth is flat, the sun rotates around
the earth, the moon landing was staged,
and aliens live inside Mount Shasta.
They should read Edwin Black’s book. It
sheds a blinding light on the Holocaust and
International Business Machine’s (IBM)
involvement with the Nazis. In addition
to being an author, Edwin Black has been
an investigative journalist who specializes
in corporate misconduct.
This is one of the most amazing books
that I have ever read on corruption.
IBM, one of America’s once-greatest
corporations, now has me thinking that
the words “corporation” and “corruption”
might be one and the same. Even worse is
that Black uncovered many other American
corporations that aided the Nazis.
Can you guess why? Money! Thomas
S. Watson, IBM’s chairman at that time,
was dreaming of trainloads of money, while
Hitler had other plans for his trains.
What got Black interested in IBM’s
connection to Hitler and his Nazi killing
regime was a 1993 visit with his parents to
the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, DC. Both of Black’s parents
were Holocaust survivors from the same
camp in Poland. His mother managed to
escape from a boxcar on a train headed
to Treblinka, a camp in Poland where
people were immediately exterminated by
gas chamber. Unfortunately, she was shot
while escaping and buried in a shallow
mass grave.
Black’s father had escaped earlier from
a guarded line of Jews. Afterward, he saw a
leg protruding out of the snow from a mass
grave. The leg belonged to Black’s mother,
and she was still very much alive. He pulled
her out, and together they managed to
evade the Nazis hunting for them.
On the day of the Black family’s
visit to the Holocaust museum, the first
display they saw was an IBM Hollerith
D-11 card-sorting machine. The only
explanation attached was that it was used
by the Nazis to organize the 1933 census
that first identified the Jews
in Germany.
After staring at this
machine for an hour, Black
turned to his parents and
promised them that he’d
find out more. It took him
years, with the assistance
of more than one hundred
different people in America
and Europe, to gather 20,000
pages of information to put
the puzzle together.
In his book, Black lays out the history
of IBM, founded in 1896 by Herman
Hollerith, a German inventor, as a census-
tabulating company. He also tells of
Thomas Watson’s history, which shows
him to be a very calculating, self-absorbed,
power-hungry, money-grabbing predator.
Hitler had personally awarded Watson
the highest medal that the Nazis had
for a non-German, the Merit Cross of
the German Eagle with the star, due to
Watson’s “Promethean gift of punch card
technology that enabled the Reich to
achieve undreamed of efficiencies both in
its rearmament program and its war against
the Jews [and] for his refusal to join the
chorus of strident anti-Nazi boycotters and
isolators and instead open a commercial
corridor the Reich could still navigate.”
The medal ranked second in prestige only
to Hitler’s German Grand Cross.
When America went to war with
Germany, Watson was torn about what
to do with his pride and joy that Hitler
had bestowed on him. When he asked his
friend President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Roosevelt told Watson to return it. (If
Roosevelt had only known about the
ongoing connection between Watson
and Hitler!) Reluctantly, Watson sent his
trophy back to Hitler, but he made sure
that the Nazis had the IBM tabulating
machine and the cards to feed it until the
end of the war. The cards were especially
important because they enabled the Nazis
to be extremely efficient in identifying
Jews, keeping their trains running with
phenomenal precision, and keeping track
of troop movements.
IBM and the Holocaust is better than any
spy book. I can’t recommend it enough. In
fact, I think some of the information about
IBM should be taught in any class about
World War II.
While the Holocaust would have
happened with or without IBM, the
number of people murdered would never
have approached six million without its
support of Germany.
J.D. Rogers • 541-846-7736
Up Sterling Creek
Without a Paddle
Paul Fattig
If you’re a long-time resident and read
the Medford Mail Tribune, you may be
familiar with Paul Fattig’s writing—punny,
loquacious, and nostalgic about the history
of the land and people (and critters) of
the Applegate Valley and all
things local. You’ll find that
and more in this memoir of
a late-in-life move by Paul
and his wife, Maureen, to a
long-abandoned property near
the long-abandoned town
of Sterlingville. It seems to
me that Paul is “recovering”
from the constraints of print
journalism and enjoying
the freedom of “real-life”
journalism.
His lively storytelling combines his
journal of years spent rehabilitating the
burned-out cabin, in which he and his wife
now live, with a generous dose of digging,
literally, into local history—like the old
mine adit and ancient vehicle graveyards
on the property. His grandparents once
lived in the Applegate. He weaves in
references to lots of dogs and cats and the
interconnected lives of people living and
working together in the rural canyons of
the Applegate River drainage.
A strong sense of family is evident
throughout, from Paul’s upbringing (well,
his parents attempted it) in the little town
of Kerby, Oregon, with tales of juvenile
derring-do, as well as reminiscences of
interesting relatives. (Due out soon is
another book, Madstone, about Paul’s
draft-dodging uncles hiding out in the
Kalmiopsis area during World War I.)
Several generations of his family get a
thorough examination, counterpointed
with tales of the new generation, the
combined children of Paul and his ever-
suffering wife.
Building or restoring a
house has destroyed many
a marriage, and the charred
eyesore the Fattigs started with
could have dissolved several
marriages. In the end, this is
partly a love story as we follow
these childhood sweethearts
through all the trials and
tribulations of creating “a silk
purse from a sow’s ear.” It’s
a testimony to their mutual
commitment that they seem to come
through all the hard times by finding the
humor in almost any situation. Neither
ghosts nor rattlesnakes nor midnight
strangers at the door seem to keep these
two from enjoying their piece of paradise
up Sterling Creek, still looking for that
#**&!^ paddle. If you like local history,
you need to read this book.
Paul Tipton • ptipton@frontier.com
Full disclosure: This reviewer was employed
by the Fattigs during their cabin restoration.
His name is noted in the book, and his picture
is in the centerfold photos. But it is a good
book. Honest. Read it. —PT
Why we care
The creek sounds swirl and dance behind me. I lie on a fallen tree in the dead heat of
summer. The air is still clear in mid-July, for the fires have not yet started. The trickles
and splashes that lull me suddenly transpose into footsteps and snapping twigs; a person
is present, but I do not jump or startle. I get up with ease to greet him, a familiar stranger
with a loyal hound. I do not feel threatened or worried because this is a community.
Two years later, I find myself on a winding trail deep in the public lands surrounding
my home. The wildflowers, some taller than my own waist, have erupted over the marshy
landscape surrounding the mountain lakes that attracted me to the site. For all of my
hike, I am alone and see no sign of any other humans. It isn’t until the dusk is greeting
the day on my way back to the trailhead that I hear a commotion. In the distance I am
able to make out two daughters and two fathers with armloads of sleeping bags and
small camping supplies. Smiling, I thought of how wonderfully fortunate we are to live
in a place where children are raised so close to nature and where we feel safe enough to
bring our children to remote places such as this.
We trust and love and gather. We are drawn together by the splendors of nature that
surround us in our small valley. Our home is what links us together. I feel just as safe with
the people I meet at Williams Creek or on the Bigelow Lakes Trail as I do with my own
family because we have an understanding. We respect the land and respect each other;
to be stewards of our environment is to be stewards to ourselves. May we continue to
see our community flourish with trust, and let us never forget the interconnectedness
of our natural and social environments.
Chloe Lindgren • lindgrenc@sou.edu