Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (May 18, 2016)
4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL May 18, 2016 O PINION LETTERS TO THE EDITOR No more games? So how many people besides myself are really mad that Cottage Grove Safeway ran out of Monopoly tickets weeks before the end of the game? I have been playing since Feb- ruary, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was just ONE TICKET away from winning several of those prizes! Shame on you, Safeway — I’m not playing any more of your games. I think you should go directly to jail without passing “Go.” Nancy Etzel Cottage Grove Leave the park alone It appears that (City Planner) Amanda (Ferguson) and her city planners just won’t give up tearing out and leveling our award-winning Opal Whiteley Park in the All America City Square. The problems they have cited are modest, due most- ly to the city’s own lack of routine maintenance there over the years. These problems can easily be addressed and certainly don’t justify a radical redesign or elimination of the park as they are again apparently proposing. I would be happy to show the city how. But the real underlying problem with the park is that it does not fi t in with Ferguson’s vision of a barren 1930s pseudo-historic downtown devoid of all trees and greenery. As the city proceeds with its stealth elimination of trees, the results are unfolding: a streetscape that looks like someone with their teeth half pulled without a welcoming smile, leav- ing barren facades looking a little shabby and forlorn without their trees. We will see how this latest highly scripted design charrette develops. It’s possible Ferguson may change her view and bow to public opinion. She professes to love the park. But it may be the kind of love we can best do without. Save the park and save the trees. Marston Morgan AIA Cottage Grove Offbeat Oregon History “Jackson County Rebellion” grew out of newspapers’ fi ght BY FINN J.D. JOHN For the Sentinel T o call Llewellyn F. Banks a swin- dler was overselling things a bit; he seems to have really believed in what he was doing. To call him a would-be fascist was simply wrong. Sure, he wanted to seize power, but he had no interest in starting a nationalist collectivist autocracy. Still, after May 21, 1933, you could at least call him a convicted murderer. The story of Llewellyn Banks’ time in Jackson County is one of the weirder tales to come out of Southern Oregon. It started benignly enough, with his arrival as a wealthy newcomer to the prosperous regional cosmopolis of Medford. But by the time it ended amid murder and chaos, it had nearly all of Jackson County in an almost revolutionary uproar – a mostly forgot- ten episode that became known as the “Jackson County Rebellion.” Llewellyn Banks was an Ohioan by birth, but he’d made his fortune in citrus orchards in Riverside, in south- ern California. He was an articulate, charismatic entrepreneur who seemed to lead a charmed life, always leaping from risky move to risky move, some- how landing butter-side-up every time. But he also had a mammoth ego bol- stered with an unshakable faith in his own abilities, and that led – as it so of- ten does – to a kind of endemic para- noia. When something bad happens to most of us, we put it down to either bad luck or a mistake on our part. But for a man like Banks, bad luck didn’t ex- ist, and mistakes were something other people made. That left the action of unseen enemies, as the only acceptable possibility when things went badly for him. Even during the good times, that paranoia occasionally led to trouble. In the mid-1920s, it led to a bitter feud with the Riverside growers’ cooperative that prompted him to sell his orchards, leave Southern California and move his operations to Medford. During the bad times, in his new Southern Oregon home, it would lead to considerably worse things than that. Banks arrived in Medford driving a fl ashy, ostentatious Cadillac touring car with his wife, Edith, and their daugh- ter, Ruth, around 1925. The little fam- ily settled into a beautiful Tudor-style home in the swankiest part of town. Banks soon found a kindred spirit in a local real-estate developer named Earl Fehl, who owned and edited a lo- cal weekly newspaper, the Pacifi c Re- cord-Herald. Fehl was also a perennial candidate for political offi ce. Through- out the 1920s Fehl had run for mayor of Medford at every opportunity and, when he lost, blamed the local political establishment, which he called “The Gang.” The fi x was in, he constantly reiterated (in voice and in print) and the wealthy swells from back east were running Jackson County for them- selves. In this view, Fehl found himself speaking for a vast majority of the peo- ple who dwelled outside of Medford, in the hills and woodlands, working min- ing claims or farming small patches far from town. Most of these people had lived in Jackson County all their lives, and they remembered what the place had been like before the rich families from back East had moved into the area and taken over, about 20 years before. They remembered, and they resented the social demotion and loss of local infl uence that had followed. And they also resented, bitterly, the ever-rising property taxes, county fees and espe- cially the vigorous Prohibition enforce- ment that they were getting from their new self-appointed leaders in Med- ford. And things were only getting worse. As the years rolled by, the “roaring twenties” were particularly good to Medford’s social elite as the worldwide market for luxury goods such as the re- gion’s famous Winter Pears grew and strengthened; but the benefi ts largely passed the backcountry folks by. Their resentment simmered on quietly, ig- nored by the ruling elites … until Fehl got involved. Fehl was soon joined by Banks in pandering to this audience. Banks’ ef- forts to get himself accepted into elite Jackson County society had not worked out, and he was already clashing with other growers who wanted to form a marketing cooperative like the one he’d feuded with in Riverside. Soon Banks and Fehl were allies and friends. And soon they also became col- leagues. In the fall of 1929, Banks got the opportunity to buy one of Medford’s two daily newspapers, and he jumped at the chance. Now, at last, Fehl and Banks were in perfect position, ready to launch the media propaganda cam- paign that would, they hoped, propel them to political power by giving the disenfranchised country folk of Jack- son County a ticket to vote for. Fehl and Banks got started immedi- ately with a campaign of savage, divi- sive editorial rabble-rousing aimed at energizing the rural Jackson County residents whom they had identifi ed as their base constituency. They planned to keep it up for a couple years, whipping Please see OFFBEAT, Page 11A Eggs may promote colon cancer BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD For the Sentinel E ggs have been a contro- versial topic in nutrition for many years. Starting in the 1970s, a heavy focus was placed on reducing dietary cholesterol, and eggs were considered dan- gerous, since eggs are the most concentrat- ed source of choles- terol in the American diet. Over $ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM 116 N. Sixth Street · P.O. Box 35 · Cottage Grove, OR 97424 ADMINISTRATION: JOHN BARTLETT, Regional Publisher.............................. GARY MANLY, General Manager................942-3325 Ext. 207 • publisher@cgsentinel.com ROBIN REISER, Sales Repersentative...............942-3325 Ext. 203 • robin@cgsentinel.com TAMMY SAYRE, Sales Repersentative......... 942-3325 Ext. 213 • tsayre@cgsentinel.com SPORTS DEPARTMENT: SAM WRIGHT, Sports Editor...................942-3325 Ext. 204 • sports@cgsentinel.com CUSTOMER SERVICE CARLA WILLIAMS, Office Manager.................942-3325 Ext. 201 • billing@cgsentinel.com LEGALS.............................................................942-3325 Ext. 200 • legals@cgsentinel.com NEWS DEPARTMENT: JON STINNETT, Editor......................................942-3325 Ext. 212 • cgnews@cgsentinel.com GRAPHICS: RON ANNIS, Graphics Manager (USP 133880) Subscription Mail Rates in Lane and Portions of Douglas Counties: Ten Weeks ............................................. $9.10 One year ..............................................$36.15 e-Edition year .......................................$36.00 Rates in all other areas of United States: Ten Weeks $11.70; one year, $46.35, e-Edition $43.00. 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. time, the association between dietary cholesterol and heart disease was questioned, and the research suggested that for healthy people, eggs were only harmful in large quantities. Findings from the Physicians’ Health Study published in 2008 found a 23 percent increase in risk of death (from any cause) in those who ate more than one egg per day, and additional studies reported similar results. These risks were magnifi ed in diabet- ics, whose risk started to climb at a smaller quantity, about fi ve eggs per week. A more recent study linked higher egg consumption to in- creased atherosclerotic plaque area and suggested that eggs could be harmful in small- er quantities than originally thought. Subjects eating more than three eggs per week had signifi cantly more plaque area in their carotid arteries than those eating less than two eggs per week. Other studies linked similar amounts of eggs to prostate can- cer risk. An 81 percent increase in the risk of lethal prostate cancer was found for men eat- ing 2.5 or more eggs per week compared to those eating less than half an egg per week. Now, a new analysis of data from 44 studies focuses on gastrointes- tinal cancers (esophagus, stom- ach, colon and rectal cancers), and found that eggs are strongly linked to these cancers as well. The collective analysis of 44 studies, separated over 400,000 participants into groups who consumed less than three, be- tween three and fi ve or greater than fi ve eggs per week. As egg consumption increased, so did the risk of gastrointestinal cancers. Compared to no egg consumption, there were 13, 14 and 19 percent increases in risk for the less than three, three to fi ve and more than fi ve eggs per week groups. When look- ing at the specifi c cancer sites, the authors noted that the stron- gest correlation was present for colon cancer. For colon cancer specifi cally, the less than three and 3-5 eggs per week groups had similar increases in risk – about 15 percent – and the group eating more than fi ve eggs per week had a 42 percent increase in risk. Why might eggs contribute to cancer? Eggs are very rich in choles- terol and choline, each of which may have cancer-promoting properties. Higher blood choles- terol and choline are both linked to increased risk of prostate cancer. Cholesterol is enriched in tumor cells and cholesterol infl uences cell proliferation and migration, processes that are vi- tal to cancer development. Cho- line is also enriched in tumor cells and has been implicated in colorectal cancers. Similar to carnitine from red meat, choline from eggs is metabolized by gut bacteria into a pro-infl ammato- ry compound that may contrib- ute to chronic diseases, cancer included. Plus, egg whites are a highly concentrated source of animal protein, which carries its own risks by elevating circulat- ing IGF-1, a hormone associ- ated with cancer promotion. How many eggs can we eat safely? Those with diabetes, cardio- vascular disease or cancer (or who are at risk of these condi- tions) should not eat eggs. This new research has identifi ed a risk associated with only 1-2 eggs per week, demonstrating that eggs are more harmful than we previously thought. There- fore, even for healthy people, eggs, like other animal products, should be limited. Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New York Times best-selling author and a board certifi ed family physician specializing in life- style and nutritional medicine. Visit his informative website at DrFuhrman.com. Submit your questions and comments about this column directly to news- questions@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. Personal attacks and name calling in response to letters are uncalled for and unnecessary. If you would like to submit an opinion piece, Another View must be no longer than 600 words. To avoid transcription errors, the Sentinel would prefer editorial and news content be sent electronically via email or electronic media. Hand written submissions will be accepted, but we may need to call to verify spelling, which could delay the publishing of the submission.