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
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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.
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