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
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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
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