4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL July 22, 2015 O PINION LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Racism and hate in Cottage Grove is alive and well This is not necessarily a letter to the editor so much as it is a bit of shaming of something we Grovians seem all too compla- cently willing to overlook and ignore. Yes, it's good to let folks be who they want to be and do what they want to do so long as it isn't hurting someone else... but therein lies the rub. How do we know if the ac- tions of one are or are not hurt- ing another? In light of the recent shooting at the church in South Carolina, the heinous, cowardly and hate- ful burnings of churches known in the media as "black", the ac- knowledgement by most of the rest of the country that our racist past ( and present) is not some- thing of which to be proud and blatantly fl aunt, and yes, terror- ize folks about with symbols of slavery, lynchings and more hate; I fi nd it personally hurtful and certainly not characteristic of a supportive and loving com- munity in which I wish to reside that the organizers and adminis- trators of Bohemia Mining Days and presumably the City Of Cot- tage Grove would condone the sale of space at that festival to two known vendors who at their booths so rudely were display- ing and selling the Confederate Flag. I am as white and all-Ameri- can as any sun deprived, grey- sky-loving Oregonian can be and so should be immune to or able to ignore such rude- ness. However, I promptly left the festival with my family and my money (money I may have otherwise spent at one of the vendors there yesterday) after seeing those two booths. It was a particularly ironic scene since it was Sunday, and seemingly God-loving Christians were at- tending church services and Gospel music was happening on the nearby stage. To add insult to injury, there were African- American families playing on the adjacent playground. So there, right off the bat, I count at least seven or eight folks either directly or indirect- ly, fi nancially or emotionally hurt by BMD and CG's deci- sion. The explanation I received from organizers of the festival was that legally they had to al- low them there. I cry fowl. If the entire government of the state of South Carolina can mandate the removal of such a hateful sym- bol from their Capitol grounds, then surely the powers at BMD and the City of Cottage Grove aren't above that same action regardless of whether they may or may not be faced with legal action from a bigot. Poor form, bad manners and really just plain sad, BMD. I will not be back to any of your events in the future. Stacy Lee DeHart Cottage Grove Offbeat Oregon History Amateur stagecoach robber turned out to be Joaquin Miller’s son BY FINN J.D. JOHN For the Sentinel I t was early on a Sunday morning, a little after dawn, in 1891, and the Eureka-to-Ukiah stagecoach was slow- ly working its way up a steep grade when a man stepped out from behind a tree. He was a young man, tall and blond- ish. He was wearing a duster, heavy boots and a mask made of blue calico. He was gripping a fancy Ballard rifl e — and his hands were shaking. Nobody was interested in calling his bluff, though, if that’s what it was. It was all over in a few minutes. The driv- er, upon being ordered to do so, threw down the express box and mail bag and was sent on his way. Behind, in the road, the young man was bashing his way into the express box. Inside, he found a pair of baby shoes and some waybills. “Not a cent did I get for my trouble,” the young man said, some months later, when confessing to this crime. The young bandit had chosen a particularly bad time to get in on the stagecoach-robbery business. By the 1890s, the big money — company pay- rolls, gold shipments, that kind of thing — was no longer being sent on the easy-to-rob stagecoaches. As soon as railroad trains came to the West Coast, treasure shipments started going on them. One guy, armed with a fl intlock musket or even a bow and arrow, could step out in front of the horses and rob a stagecoach; but train robbery was much more complicated and dangerous, and any treasure was usually locked away in a vault not much less secure than that found in a bank. By 1891, the days of rich hauls from stagecoach express boxes were a memory. The youngster had also, it seems, chosen a bad county in which to pull this, his fi rst heist. Driver Charles Lam- bert, after leaving the scene, whipped his team into a lather and raced to Ukiah, 19 miles away, where he found Sheriff J.M. Standley and told him all he’d observed: the fancy Ballard repeating rifl e, the calico mask, the boots, the duster. The sheriff thought for a moment. Someone had, a day or two before, burgled a house near Wil- lits and stolen a fancy Ballard rifl e and a blue calico dress. Leaving the scene of the robbery un- inspected, the sheriff headed straight for Willits. There he learned that a tall, young, athletic stranger with blondish hair had been hanging around the area looking for work. Standley followed the stranger’s trail from one lumber camp to another. He soon learned his name: Joe McKay. Armed with that, he went to the post offi ce to see if Mr. McKay was getting any mail. He was. The letter he found was from George B. Miller — the son of famous/ notorious Oregon poet Joaquin Miller (the “Poet of the Sierras”), who was then living in Oakland Heights, Calif. At the Miller home, Standley found Joaquin gone, but George was there. In the ensuing conversation, George acci- dentally let the cat out of the bag: Joe McKay’s real name was Harry Miller — George’s younger brother. He had adopted the alias Joe McKay and moved to California because the police in Oregon were looking for him. Harry had been the last child born of Joaquin Miller’s marriage to fellow poet Minnie Myrtle (real name: The- resa Dyer), the “Sweet Singer of the Coquille,” just a year before they sepa- rated. He’d grown up with his mother, in Portland, and later his aunt on a ranch in Coos Bay. His mother died of consumption in 1882. In his late teens, hoping to make of himself a man of letters like the father he’d never really met, Harry reached out to Joaquin and was invited to come stay with him in California. But Harry had quarreled with his old man after learning Joaquin didn’t intend to pay him for work he was doing around the property. So Harry had taken Joaquin’s best horse and ridden forth to fi nd his own way in the world. That had been four years before the robbery. This adventure hadn’t ended well for Harry. He’d wound up in Portland, in the company of an opium addict named Webster. The two of them, busted fl at and getting hungry, had broken into a house and stuffed themselves with the food they found there. While they were at it, they’d stolen a pocket watch from the bedroom. When they’d later tried to pawn the watch, the pawnbroker had recognized it and called the cops, and Harry had been sent up for a two-year stretch in the Or- egon State Penitentiary. Six months into his sentence, Harry had somehow got his hands on the clothing of a carpenter, an outside con- Please see OFFBEAT, Page 5A What is vitamin K2? Do I need both K1 and K2? BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD For the Sentinel V itamin K is essential for the process of blood clotting. In fact, vitamin K was named for this important func- tion; the scientists who discov- ered the vitamin named it using the fi rst let- ter of the German word ‘ko- agulation.’ In addition, we now know that vitamin K $ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM 116 N. Sixth Street · P.O. 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In foreign countries, postage extra. No subscription for less than Ten Weeks. Subscription rates are subject to change upon 30 days’ notice. All subscritptions must be paid prior to beginning the subscription and are non-refundable. Periodicals postage paid at Cottage Grove, Oregon. Postmaster: Send address changes to P.O. Box 35, Cottage Grove, OR 97424. Local Mail Service: If you don’t receive your Cottage Grove Sentinel on the Wednesday of publication, please let us know. Call 942-3325 between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Advertising ownership: All advertising copy and illustrations prepared by the Cottage Grove Sentinel become the property of the Cottage Grove Sentinel and may not be reproduced for any other use without explicit written prior approval. Copyright Notice: Entire contents ©2015 Cottage Grove Sentinel. also promotes bone health and heart health via interactions with calcium. Vitamin K allows the body to utilize the calcium needed for bone and tooth for- mation. Many studies have as- sociated low vitamin K status with a higher risk of hip fracture or low bone mineral density. There are two forms of vita- min K; Vitamin K1 is easy to obtain when following a high- nutrient (Nutritarian) diet, since it is abundant in leafy green veg- etables. Kale, collards, spinach and mustard greens are some of the richest sources of K1. Vita- min K2, on the other hand, is produced by microorganisms and scarce in plant foods; high K2 foods include dark meat chicken, pork and fermented foods like cheese, so K2 is more diffi cult to get from a Nutritar- ian diet. The human body can synthesize some K2 from K1, and intestinal bacteria can pro- duce some K2, but these are very small amounts. Studies report that a causative factor of the low hip fracture incidence in Japan was natto, a fermented soy food, rich in K2. Following this observation, several studies found supple- mentation with vitamin K2 to be particularly effective at im- proving bone health. A review of randomized controlled trials found that vitamin K2 reduced bone loss and reduced the risk of fractures; vertebral fracture by 60 percent, hip fracture by 77 percent and all non-verte- bral fractures by 81 percent. In women who already had osteo- porosis, Vitamin K2 supplemen- tation was also shown to reduce the risk of fracture, reduce bone loss, and increase bone mineral density. A vitamin K-dependent pro- tein binds up calcium to protect the soft tissues—including the arteries—from calcifi cation. Vitamin K2 in particular helps to prevent the artery wall from stiffening and maintain elastici- ty. Coronary artery calcifi cation is a predictor of cardiovascular events, as is arterial stiffness. Higher vitamin K2 intake has been linked with a lower likeli- hood of coronary calcifi cation, however the same association was not found for K1. In 2004, the Rotterdam Study revealed that increased dietary intake specifi cally of vitamin K2 sig- nifi cantly reduced the risk of coronary heart disease by 50 percent as compared to low di- etary vitamin K2 intake. In this study, Vitamin K1 had no ef- fect. Similar results were found in another study conducted in 2009. Furthermore, a system- atic review of several studies in 2010 also found no associa- tion between vitamin K1 intake and coronary heart disease, but higher K2 intake was associated with lower risk. Therefore tak- ing in vitamin K2 in addition to K1 is likely benefi cial to help protect against vascular calcifi - cation. Ongoing research on vitamin K is revealing new ways that vi- tamin K acts to maintain good health. There is some evidence that vitamin K is involved in insulin metabolism, and higher intake of vitamins K1 and K2 are associated with lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Remember, leafy green vege- tables provide generous amounts of vitamin K1, and getting K2 from a supplement is likely ben- efi cial if your diet is low in K2. Dr. Fuhrman is a No. 1 New York Times best-selling author and a family physician special- izing in lifestyle and nutritional medicine. Visit his informative website at DrFuhrman.com. Submit your questions and com- ments about this column directly to newsquestions@drfuhrman. com. The full reference list for this article can be found at DrFuhrman.com. Letters to the Editor policy The Cottage Grove Sentinel receives many letters to the editor. In order to ensure that your letter will be printed, letters must be under 300 words and submitted by Friday at 5 p.m. Letters must be signed and must include an address, city and phone number or e-mail address for verifi cation purposes. No anonymous letters will be printed. Letters must be of interest to local readers. 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