4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL October 5, 2016
O PINION
Rumors of our demise...
Debunking the ‘newspapers
are dying’ myth
BY DAVID CHAVERN
For the Sentinel
I
magine waking up in a world without
newspapers. You say, I haven’t gotten
a newspaper in years. But I’m not talking
about just the paper delivered by carriers
or the postal service. I’m talking about the
news online, the links on social media, the
email newsletter, the source cited in the tele-
vision broadcast and the push notifi cation on
your phone. The word newspaper no longer
refl ects the media industry encompassed by
the word.
It’s time to debunk the idea that Newspapers
Are Dying.
The newspaper business has changed a lot.
But so what? Lots of industries go through
ups-and-downs as technologies and custom-
er preferences change. Name an industry
— cars, airlines, energy, retail, accounting,
transportation, construction and the under-
lying economic drivers look a lot different
than they did in the 1980s. That doesn’t
mean they are dead businesses. People want
and need the underlying products and ser-
vices and the industries adapt to be success-
ful in the new world.
We are living in the age of information. Ac-
cording to a University of Southern Cali-
fornia study, Americans are absorbing fi ve
times more information a day than in 1986.
And as the demand for quality news grows,
storytelling evolves. I think that we have
only just begun to explore the incredible
upside of new tools in telling compelling
news stories. What if we could not only tell
people about Syria but also put them there
(virtually) to experience some aspects for
themselves?
All evidence shows that people of all ages
want and consume more news than ever. We
need to focus on new ways to address the
needs of audience. Legacy newspapers are
considered trusted sources of information;
we must continue to keep that trust as we
experiment in the digital age. Live stream-
ing, social media and video are just tools
for better stories as journalists fi ght to keep
readers in the know.
This week, we celebrate the 76th National
Newspaper Week, where we celebrate news-
papers as the Way to Know. It is a time to
be grateful for the news carriers that trudge
through the streets hours before you’ve had
your fi rst cup of coffee to deliver you the
news. We take this week to realize that what
we know comes from hardworking editors
and journalists, who decide what informa-
tion to put in front of us each day. We cel-
ebrate that we can count on them to go into a
tragedy and bring us back hope. They make
politics human and science easy to read.
I don’t want to imagine a world without
newspapers, do you?
David Chavern is President and CEO of
News Media Alliance.
Offbeat Oregon History
Lake County feud ended with double murder by
masked assassins
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
I
n the old Linkville Cemetery in
Klamath Falls, if you should fi nd
yourself wandering through reading
headstones, you just might stumble
across one near the east entrance that
features the most startling epitaph
you’re ever likely to read:
“LEE and JOE, Children of H.C. &
M.T. LAWS,” it reads, “murdered by
masked assassins. June 24, 1882; Aged
19 Years; Aged 15 Years.”
The gravestone is a relic of a grim
and dark time in Oregon, and the West-
ern range country in general — a time
of rustlers and vigilantes, of six-gun
justice and lynch mobs. It all took place
so long ago that documentation is of-
ten scant, and what remains is usually
slanted in favor of the side of the argu-
ment that won (or survived).
This cryptic gravestone is the only
physical evidence remaining of a short
but hot family feud that left four dead
and several more wounded — a sort of
condensed frontier Oregon version of
the Hatfi eld-McCoy wars.
It started with a man named Henry C.
Laws, who, in the late 1870s, was the
leader of an outfi t called The Bonanza
Regulators — a gang, essentially, dedi-
cated to keeping newcomers and out-
siders from grazing their livestock on
the federally owned rangeland in west-
ern Lake and eastern Klamath counties,
which the Regulators wanted to use ex-
clusively for their own herds.
But it wasn’t outsiders that Laws was
destined to have trouble with; it was
other locals — specifi cally, William
Calavan (sometimes spelled Callaghan)
and his sons. Calavan, one day, found
what he thought were his own cattle in
Laws’ herd and moved to take posses-
sion on the spot. Laws reacted by grab-
bing a club and letting Calavan have it,
causing a lasting injury (although of
what type I haven’t been able to learn).
After that, tensions between the two
families grew steadily until fi nally,
one day in late winter of 1882, Laws,
driving a herd of cattle up a path in
the snow, met Calavan’s two sons,
Frank and Jimmie, on horseback. The
two lads refused to move off the path
to let the horses through. Words were
exchanged, then angry shouts, and, fi -
nally, hot lead.
It’s not clear who started the shoot-
ing. Both sides, of course, blamed the
other. But when the gunsmoke had
cleared, Henry Laws had been shot in
the calf, Jimmy’s horse had been shot
out from under him, and 15-year-old
Frank Calavan had taken a bullet some-
where important. He made it home on
his horse, where he died shortly after
his brother arrived on foot.
Laws was arrested, of course, and
taken to Alturas, Calif., for possible
prosecution. But from the very start,
there was a good deal of confusion as
to who had jurisdiction; the crime had
happened almost right smack on the
state line between Oregon and Cali-
fornia, and of course neither state was
eager to go to the trouble and expense
of doing another state’s legal duty.
California, having been handed the
opportunity to make the fi rst ruling,
predictably decided it had happened
in Oregon, and sent the case packing
northward.
A month later, in March, a prelimi-
nary hearing was scheduled in the town
of Linkville — which today is known
as Klamath Falls — to sort through this
and other questions. Linkville having
no dedicated Hall of Justice back in
1882, the hearing was to be held in a
hotel — referred to in various sources
as the Linkville Hotel, the Greenman
Hotel and the Lakeside Inn.
Whatever the hotel’s name was, it
soon proved its inadequacy as a hold-
ing facility for accused murderers.
That night, a gang of about 18 masked
men slipped into the lobby with cocked
shotguns in their hands.
Rumors of the gang’s plans had pre-
ceded them, and the sheriff had put
out the call for locals to defend Laws
from the lynchers; the hotel was full
of armed defenders. When the masked
men stepped into the lobby with drawn
guns, they got the drop on everyone in
the room; but the presence of so many
men with guns in the lobby seems to
have unnerved the lynching party con-
siderably.
“Where is Laws? Someone show
us Laws,” barked the leader of the
gang, according to the recollections of
Linkville resident Rufus Moore, one
of the defenders, 40 years later. Turn-
ing to a young boy, he repeated his de-
mand: “Take this candle and show us to
Laws.” But the boy stood petrifi ed with
fear, apparently unable to move.
So the leader took the candle in one
hand and his gun in the other and started
up the stairs. And that’s when someone
opened fi re on him from the top of the
stairs, obviously aiming at the candle.
“The leader backed away from the
doorway and said, ‘Stand your ground,
boys,’” Moore recalled. “But his men
all stampeded and several shots rang
out in the room. The concussion extin-
guished all the lights. I heard a man cry,
‘Oh!’ followed by a sound like running
water. It was blood, we later learned.”
It was indeed blood. The gunshots
had been accidental discharges; when
the panicked lynch-mob members had
broken and run, many of them had
forgotten the cocked heaters dangling
from their trigger fi ngers. Several of
them actually dropped their weapons
in their panic, and the impact when it
hit the fl oor set off at least one shotgun
— it was found on the fl oor with one
barrel fi red and the other at full cock.
And apparently its full load of shot had,
by sheer bad luck, hit Deputy Sheriff
J.F. Lewis in the leg. The close-range
blast had torn away Lewis’s femoral
artery. In seconds his body had drained
itself of blood and left him dead on the
fl oor.
Now in full panic-stricken retreat,
the would-be lynch mob members were
racing for their horses, their shotguns
lying forgotten on the fl oor of the hotel
behind them or dangling forgotten (but
still cocked) from their hands. Several
more accidental discharges resulted,
including one that removed a hat and
a shock of red hair from one of the
mob members and another that slightly
wounded the local justice of the peace,
William A. Wright. But no one ever fi g-
ured out who any of the masked men
were.
The next day the hearing was held,
as scheduled. But because young Frank
Calavan had been shot in a gunfi ght, it
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 10A
Eat plant protein to live longer
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
P
rotein from meat, eggs
and dairy products (ani-
mal protein) is different than
protein from vegetables, seeds,
nuts, beans and whole grains
(plant protein). The protein it-
self is different: animal protein
is
higher
in essen-
tial amino
acids than
plant pro-
tein; animal
protein and
plant pro-
tein both
provide us
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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with adequate amounts of all of
the amino acids, but because an-
imal protein is more concentrat-
ed and higher in essential amino
acids, it increases the body’s
production of a hormone called
IGF-1, which is associated with
aging and an increased risk of
several cancers. Also, the pack-
aging that protein comes in is
different; the nutritional compo-
sition of animal foods compared
to plant foods. Animal foods are
calorie-dense and contain pro-
infl ammatory and pro-oxidant
substances, whereas plant foods
are rich in fi ber, vitamins, min-
erals and phytochemicals.
A recently published article
in JAMA Internal Medicine in-
vestigated the relationship be-
tween (animal vs. plant) protein
sources and mortality risk based
on almost 30 years of follow-up
from the Nurses’ Health Study
and Health Professionals Fol-
low-up Study, which together
included over 170,000 partici-
pants.
Interesting fi ndings came out
of one particular question the
researchers asked: What would
happen if the participants re-
placed some of their animal pro-
tein with plant protein?
They analyzed the data to es-
timate how participants’ risk of
death from all causes over the
follow-up period would change
if some of the animal protein
sources (equivalent to 3 percent
of total daily calories) were re-
placed with plant protein sourc-
es:
Replace processed red meat: 34
percent decrease in risk
Replace unprocessed red meat:
12 percent decrease in risk
Replace poultry: 6 percent
decrease in risk
Replace fi sh: 6 percent de-
crease in risk
Replace eggs: 19 percent de-
crease in risk
Replace dairy: 8 percent de-
crease in risk
What’s wrong with animal
protein sources? In addition to
elevating IGF-1, which is linked
to increased cancer risk, car-
nitine and choline from meat
and eggs are converted by gut
bacteria to a pro-infl ammatory
compound called TMAO that
promotes cardiovascular dis-
ease. Meat, especially red meat,
is a rich source of heme iron,
which in excess is an oxidant
that contributes to cardiovas-
cular disease and Alzheimer’s
disease. Animal products are
also high in arachidonic acid,
a fat that promotes infl amma-
tion, and may increase can-
cer risk. Certain carcinogenic
compounds are also commonly
found in animal foods, such as
heterocyclic amines, polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons, and N-
nitroso compounds.
Higher animal protein intake
also promotes weight gain. In
fact, a recent study compared
meat availability, sugar avail-
ability and obesity rates in dif-
ferent countries and found that
sugar and meat had similar cor-
relations to obesity rates. This
result suggests that availability
of meat contributes to obesity
just as much as availability of
sugar.
This is the latest of many
studies to link greater meat con-
sumption to a greater risk of
death. In contrast, plant protein
sources are associated with bet-
ter health: for example, seeds
and nuts reduce the risk of
cardiovascular disease and are
linked to longevity, and micro-
nutrient and fi ber-rich beans are
linked to improved blood pres-
sure, LDL cholesterol, body
weight, insulin sensitivity and
enhanced lifespan.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New York
Times best-selling author and a
board certifi ed family physician
specializing in lifestyle and nu-
tritional medicine. The Eat To
Live Cookbook offers over 200
unique disease-fi ghting deli-
cious recipes and his newest
book, The End of Heart Disease,
offers a detailed plan to prevent
and reverse heart disease using
a nutrient-dense, plant-rich eat-
ing style. Visit his informative
website at DrFuhrman.com.
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