4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL November 18, 2015
O PINION
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The next voice you
hear
Ben Carson pronounces an ut-
ter contempt for all who are not
like him or America — the silent
majority have a voice at last?
Seldom has anyone spoken so
nakedly of a sense of USA Su-
periority in all ways because of
exceptionalism as this. His words
are a concise Bible of arrogance
and unfeelingness toward others:
“Have you ever noticed there’s
an American way, an American
dream?” asked Carson, a retired
and decorated brain surgeon.
“There’s no French dream.
There’s no Canadian dream. This
is the most exceptional nation in
the history of the world.”
— Ben Carson
That attitude behind such a vi-
sion as his is really my concern.
That he speaks for many. It deep-
ly targets the U.S. as a people to
whom all the world are peopled
by the invisible workers at a Siz-
zler.
Leo Rivers
Cottage Grove
Parks
Well, here we go again. Cot-
tage Grove is becoming just like
Eugene. More and more we must
ban any playing in the park — no
playing tag; someone could re-
ally get hurt. We better include all
beverages.
The music in parks must go
as well. We should build a fence
around the park to keep people
out. We got to get ourselves off
their planet. Then all would be
good.
Oh my Lord, and those leaves
on the sidewalks; someone is go-
ing to slip and sue the City or ho-
meowner. Gotta get the trees cut
down so they don’t cause a prob-
lem. Do you notice the people
you vote for turn on you? Liberal
wack-jobs are the nation’s most
dangerous problem to the hu-
man race. Probably coming soon
— no praying in the park — and
I will be the fi rst there to do so.
And I will have my Washington
Redskins not on TV.
Let’s go get them, Mr. Trump.
One more thing: basketball must
be stopped at the park; people get
hurt, and I am NOT a smoker.
Mike Ritter
Cottage Grove
Offbeat Oregon History
Keeping Tillamook Rock Lighthouse running
was hard, and expensive
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
Q
uite often, during his precious
days of shore leave, lighthouse
keeper James Gibbs Jr. would meet
people who envied him his job.
“Must be nice,” they would say, “to
have such a cushy government job. Re-
laxing at the coast, surrounded by sce-
nic beauty, nothing to do but trim wicks
and make sure nothing breaks…”
It’s tempting to wonder how long
such critics would have lasted on Til-
lamook Rock Light, where Gibbs was
stationed at the time.
When the lighthouse closed for good
in 1957, only one person had ever been
killed on it — British master mason
John Trewaves, who slipped off the
rock in 1879 while scouting the site
for the lighthouse. But the number of
people who, at some time while on
the rock, sincerely believed they were
about to die — that number is consid-
erably larger. In fact, it’s probably very
close to 100 percent of everyone who
ever set foot on the tiny island. Condi-
tions there were frequently terrifying.
After the lighthouse started work-
ing, in 1881, the sea wasted little time
in trying its best to wipe the stout little
lighthouse and everyone inside it from
the face of the craggy bluff. In 1883,
a huge gale tore a big chunk of ba-
salt loose from the bluff and hurled it
through the roof of the foghorn house;
three years later, another mammoth
storm ripped out a half-ton hunk and
lobbed it into the lighthouse yard — a
full 100 feet above sea level.
In 1887, the biggest storm yet
slammed into the light. Waves were
reported continually breaking over
the top of the light, 134 feet above the
sea; most likely this meant not that
the waves were 134 feet high, but just
that the spray hurled over the light by
the waves’ violent impact was heavy
enough to look like solid water.
But the waves weren’t the real hazard
to lighthouse keepers, tucked securely
behind their walls of two-foot-thick
stone blocks, pinned together with cop-
per rods and anchored securely to the
rock. No giant wave could dislodge it,
although it did tremble disconcertingly
with each coup de mer during the big
storms. No, the real hazard was the fl y-
ing boulders.
Most likely these were chunks of the
bluff that had been loosened just a bit
by the blasting that had been required
to level off the construction site for the
lighthouse. So the weather got really
heavy, the waves would slam into them
and fi nish the job, then pick them up
in their crests and hurl them over the
top of the bluff with tremendous force,
directly at the lighthouse.
If these fl ying boulders struck the
stonework, all would be okay; the
fortress-thick walls could take it. But
every few winters, a couple of storm-
driven stones and boulders were hurled
through the heavy windows at the top
of the light, sometimes letting colossal
amounts of seawater into the building
to douse the light and fl ood the place.
Of all the storms that struck the light-
house, none would ever top the great
Pacifi c gale that stalked across Oregon
and Washington on Oct. 22, 1934.
According to Gibbs, the seas were
so colossal on that day that they liter-
ally submerged the entire station. The
winds were recorded at 109 miles per
hour and were probably considerably
higher on the rock itself. On that day,
the boulders hurled at the structure
weighed well over 100 pounds — in-
cluding one that was driven like a can-
nonball through the glass lantern win-
dow at the top, shattering the priceless
French-made hand-ground Fresnel lens
into a thousand pieces and putting out
the light.
The lightkeepers worked all night,
struggling to keep the auxiliary light
burning and protected, just in case
any ship might be out in the hurricane
— and dodging as best they could the
rocks and giant boarding seas that con-
stantly thundered into the broken-out
window panes, fi lling the lantern room
with seaweed and small fi sh.
Meanwhile, chief keeper William
Hill was trying to get through on the
station’s telephone line so that ships at
sea could be warned that the light was
out. No dice: the storm had torn out the
wire.
Luckily, one of the assistant keepers,
Henry Jenkins, was a sort of gadget
wizard. Scavenging bits of the broken
telephone and pieces of the foghorn ap-
paratus, he built a primitive radio trans-
mitter that could be tuned to shortwave
frequencies and started trying to reach
a ham radio operator on shore.
Exactly why Henry Goetz of Seaside
was operating his shortwave radio set
at the time isn’t known, but most likely
he was searching for any sign of ships
at sea caught in the storm. The gale had
caused tremendous damage all over the
state, ripping roofs from some houses
and toppling trees onto others, killing
22 people. It wasn’t hard to imagine
what might be the fate of any mariners
caught out on the open sea during that
storm.
But Goetz didn’t hear from any
ships. Instead, he found himself talking
to a lighthouse — and then calling the
Lighthouse Service in Portland to let
them know the light was out.
The main light stayed out for fi ve
days — the only time in the light-
house’s operational history this hap-
pened. The storm damage came to
more than $12,000. Plus, the loading
boom was broken, so the supplies had
to be landed using a taut hawser and a
bo’s’un’s buoy — a zipline, basically.
And the seas were still enormous, and
another big weather system was on its
way in.
Somehow, the crews got it all done.
They replaced the now-irreplaceable
Fresnel lens with an electric beacon
protected by a heavy metal cage around
the windows. Although this didn’t al-
ways keep the rocks from breaking the
windows, it kept the rocks, seaweed
and fi sh from actually entering the lan-
tern room.
Nonetheless, the lighthouse suffered
so much damage over the years that re-
pairs and maintenance formed an outra-
geous expense — more than $15,000 a
year throughout the 1950s. So in 1957,
when it was fi nally possible to dupli-
cate the lighthouse’s protection with an
automated buoy and radio beacon, the
Coast Guard jumped at the chance to
walk away from the whole thing.
And at the stroke of midnight on Sept.
1, 1957, the last head lighthouse keeper
threw the switch and the old lighthouse
went dark, for the fi rst time since the
storm of ’34 … for real this time.
The lighthouse and rock were auc-
tioned off as surplus two years later
and snapped up for deceptively small
amounts of money by several buyers
in succession, all of whom eventually
realized the extreme limits of its use-
fulness because of its exposure to the
weather and inaccessibility. Eventually
it was bought by a company intending
to make of it a columbarium — a fi nal
resting place for the ashes of cremated
bodies. Currently, the lighthouse holds
the remains of several dozen people,
but the state has revoked the operator’s
permit in 1999, citing some needed
improvements to the facility; as of late
2015, the situation hasn’t yet been re-
solved.
(Sources: Gibbs, James A. Tillamook
Light. Portland: Binford, 1979; Noble,
Dennis. Lighthouses & Keepers: The
U.S. Lighthouse Service and its Leg-
acy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press,
2014; Portland Morning Oregonian:
22, 24 and 25 Oct. 1934)
Enjoy the fall apple harvest, and reap health benefi ts
BY JOEL FURHMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
C
risp, juicy apples are a fall
tradition. Take advantage
of the bountiful selection of ap-
ples available this time of year.
There are hundreds of variet-
ies to sample. They range from
red to yellow to green, crunchy
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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to tender,
sweet to tart
and simple
to complex.
Apples
contain a
wide vari-
ety of phy-
tochemi-
cals, many
of which have been found to
have strong antioxidant activ-
ity. They are particularly high
in quercetin, a fl avonoid anti-
oxidant. Epidemiological stud-
ies have linked the consumption
of apples with reduced risk of
some cancers, cardiovascular
disease, asthma, diabetes and
obesity. Not only can eating an
apple a day help keep the doctor
away, an apple a day might keep
the pounds away too; adding ap-
ples to the diet has been shown
to enhance weight loss. To op-
timize phytochemical content, it
is important to eat the pigment-
rich apple skin. Choose whole,
organic apples over applesauce
or apple juice.
Apples are also a rich source
of pectin, a type of soluble fi ber
that is found in plant cell walls
and tissues. This soluble fi ber
works to lower cholesterol by
reducing the amount that is ab-
sorbed in the intestines. Studies
have shown that the pectin in
apples interacts with other apple
phytonutrients to achieve an
even greater reduction in cho-
lesterol. Researchers have also
discovered that apples can boost
intestinal health by increasing
the numbers of good gut bacte-
ria which feed on apple pectin.
Portable and easy to pack,
apples are great to include in
your on-the-go meals. For an
easy dessert, enjoy them baked
with a sprinkle of cinnamon and
nutmeg. I like to dice an apple,
toss it with baby greens, some
chickpeas, maybe a handful of
walnuts or pumpkin seeds and
then top it off with a fl avored
vinegar or perhaps a nut/seed-
based dressing.
Experiment with the many
different varieties of apples to
discover which ones are your
favorites. Have fun seeking out
your local organic apple grow-
ers, farm stands and farmers
markets and look for different
types of interesting apples. They
do not have to look perfect. The
smaller and more imperfect they
look, the better they taste. If you
go apple picking and get lots
of them, don’t worry; you can
store them for several months.
Just wrap each apple in a pa-
per towel to prevent them from
touching each other and store in
a closed cardboard box in a cool
place such as the basement or
garage.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New
York Times best-selling author
and a family physician special-
izing in lifestyle and nutritional
medicine. His newest book, The
End of Dieting, debunks the fake
“science” of popular fad diets
and offers an alternative to di-
eting that leads to permanent
weight loss and excellent health.
Visit his informative website at
DrFuhrman.com. Submit your
questions and comments about
this column directly to news-
questions@drfuhrman.com. The
full reference list for this article
can be found at DrFuhrman.
com.
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