4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL October 26, 2016
O PINION
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Boone for Mayor
Thank you, Jon Stinnett, for your
outstanding endorsement of Jake
Boone for Mayor. I completely
agree with everything you said.
When I moved to Cottage Grove
10 years ago, I wanted to be an in-
volved citizen, so I attended every
City Council meeting for months. It
didn’t take long for me to realize
nothing I said would ever matter
to that group. Every recommenda-
tion from the Planning Commission
got rubber-stamped. It was pointed
out that one issue clearly violated
state law, and the contents of said
law were read. There was no fur-
ther discussion, and they passed it
anyway.
When some citizens held a pub-
lic meeting to organize against the
Downtown Revitalization Plan, I at-
tended to learn about the issues. It
was a large gathering and most, if
not all, in attendance expressed feel-
ing disenfranchised. That is where
I met Jake. He was on the Coun-
cil and had come not to oppose the
plan but to hear what people’s con-
cerns were. I was stunned because
it was the fi rst time, to the best of
my knowledge, that anyone from
the Council showed any concern
about what we the people thought.
I was so impressed that I knew we
needed him to be our mayor. Now
we have that chance.
Jake has called for having town
hall meetings. He already seeks out
people’s concerns and opinions. He
delves into issues and makes deci-
sions based on what he thinks is
best for our community, and I doubt
fi rst came to my attention as an ad-
vocate for LTD bus service to Cot-
tage Grove. This was a contentious
issue that created some divisions
in our community. While opinions
were very strong at times, Mike
presented a calming infl uence to the
discussions.
In addition to almost 10 years’
service as a city councilor, Mike
has participated in numerous addi-
tional public service arenas. He has
served as a planning commissioner,
and on the City budget committee.
He has been a resource for organi-
zations such as the Lane Council of
Governments, Lane Regional Air
Protection Agency, League of Or-
egon Cities, Habitat for Humanity,
CG Community Foundation, South
Lane Fire and Rescue, South Lane
Community Broadcasting, Lane
Area Commission on Transporta-
tion, Lane County Public Safety
Coordinating Committee and the
Region 2050 Committee. Mike has
also served as president of the CG
Hospital Foundation and the Rotary
Club of Cottage Grove.
Mike has also been very involved
with leadership training over the
years. He graduated from the Ford
Family Foundation and Pacifi c Pro-
gram leadership programs, then
went on to become a community
trainer for Ford Family classes.
Councilor Fleck has clearly dem-
onstrated that he has the commit-
ment to devote any and all efforts to
preserve and enhance those precious
values our community enjoys.
that he will ever rubber-stamp any-
thing.
A vote for Jake Boone is a vote
for accessibility and inclusiveness.
This election is a momentous op-
portunity to move away from busi-
ness as usual and move toward a
new model. Why would anyone
settle for less?
Jan Ogsbury
Cottage Grove
Mike Fleck for
Mayor
The City of Cottage Grove has
a horrible housing shortage. The
Cottage Grove Board of Realtors
is endorsing Mike Fleck for May-
or. Mike understands the problems
Cottage Grove faces with afford-
able housing and will work hard to
solve the problem.
Darin Hemenway
President-elect, CG Board of
Realtors
To my fellow
‘Grovers’
This election season has given us
three very capable mayoral candi-
dates. Each has demonstrated his
unique abilities to provide reasoned
approaches to the many complex is-
sues that challenge our city.
I believe one candidate has risen
above the others in his overall ser-
vice to our community. Mike Fleck
The day Andy Warhol pranked
Oregon college students
O
n the evening of Oct. 5, 1967,
students were pouring out of the
doors of one of the biggest rooms in
Oregon State University’s Erb Memo-
rial Union.
It was a big day. The one and only
Andy Warhol was scheduled to appear
for something he called an “illustrated
lecture.” For the students, it was a once-
in-a-lifetime chance to see and talk to
one of the most infl uential characters in
the art world … or, so they thought.
At last, the man of the hour stepped
out on the stage with already-legend-
ary fi lm director Paul Morrissey. With
his crazy-cut white hair, his ever-pres-
ent Ray-Ban Wayfarers and his stylish
cigarette, the speaker was instantly rec-
ognizable as Warhol.
"It is diffi cult to understand these people who
democratically take part in elections and a referendum,
but are then incapable of democratically accepting the
will of the people."
Gary Williams
Former Cottage Grove Mayor
Offbeat Oregon History
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For the Sentinel
This week's
special guest
cartoonist
is Cottage
Grove's Dave
Davis.
Almost immediately, the lecture got
off to a rocky start. The two men on the
stage started an “art fi lm” showing a
young black man in jeans and T-shirt
running through crowds in New York
City yelling, “I love you! I love you!”
to everyone whose eye he could catch.
The fi lm, of course, had no narrative
arc or plot — the absence of any such
bourgeois conventions was de rigeur in
the avant-garde art of the day — so ba-
sically it was just several dozen minutes
of that sort of thing, until the fi lm ran
out of the spool. Then the lights came
up, and Morrissey asked if anyone had
any questions.
The questioners started out curious,
but soon they were sounding baffl ed,
and by the end of the evening, some of
them were actually angry.
“I don’t know how to say what my
meaning is,” he told one student. “I
guess it means to me that I fi lm it,
mostly.”
“That is one of the big questions,” he
told another, after being asked why he
made fi lms. “Let’s just say we do it to
keep us off the streets.”
As the questions got tougher and
more specifi c, Morrissey started break-
ing in and fi elding them, to the annoy-
ance of students who had wanted a re-
sponse from Warhol.
By the end of the event, the students
from the School of Journalism were
starting to make their presence known,
fi ring zingers at the white-wigged
swinger on the stage. “Sir, do you give
a damn?” one of them demanded. (For-
mer students and colleagues of the late
legendary journalism professor Bill
Winter will instantly recognize the
pedigree of that question.) The by-now-
beleaguered speaker replied, hesitantly
and vaguely, “Sure … (about) all kinds
of things. It changes all the time.”
The Oregon students didn’t know it,
but they were looking at one of their
own up there on the stage: A Univer-
sity of Oregon-trained actor named
Allen Midgette who was now one of
— Jose Saramago
Warhol’s cronies in the Factory art loft
in New York City, dressed to look like
Warhol and sent out to do a series of
four college lectures for him. Warhol
himself had never left New York.
The University of Oregon appear-
ance was the second stop on the tour,
and it represented a distinct turn for
the worse. At the University of Utah,
where it had started out, the reception
had been warmer; but almost as soon as
he’d left, faculty members were won-
dering if it was really Andy Warhol.
The student newspaper there stepped
up and started pulling together evi-
dence, including a shot that one of their
photographers had snuck of him during
the visit — “Warhol” had been very
insistent that no pictures be taken, but
someone had anyway, likely intending
it only as a personal souvenir. Close ex-
amination had left them convinced that
unless Warhol had had a nose job, the
speaker had been someone else.
And so it was that the day after “War-
hol” spoke, Oregon Daily Emerald
Entertainment Editor Chris Hougham
got a phone call from an editor at the
University of Utah’s student newspa-
per, the Daily Utah Chronicle, asking
if there had been any suspicion of War-
hol’s identity. Hougham assured her
that it had been Warhol who appeared
at the U of O; but after the phone call,
Emerald staffers started connecting the
dots as well.
By this time, of course, “Warhol” was
well away from the scene of the crime,
and moving on to his next appearance,
at Linfi eld College in McMinnville.
There the reception was considerably
less hostile, according to the recollec-
tions of Mt. Angel College art profes-
sor Leland John, who traveled to Mc-
Minnville to attend. This was clearly
due in part to the fact that, mindful of
the trouble his vacuous answers had
caused at the fi rst two stops, Midgette
had adopted the tactic of responding to
most questions by simply issuing an
ironic laugh or giggle.
Then it was on to Montana for one
fi nal appearance at Montana State Uni-
versity, and home once again to New
York.
Meanwhile, back in Eugene,
Please see OFFBEAT, Page 10A
The best foods for healthy eyes
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
For the Sentinel
A
s
This may be because carrots
(and other orange and yellow
vegetables and fruits) are abun-
dant in beta-carotene, which is a
provitamin A carotenoid, mean-
ing it is converted to vitamin A
in the body. Vitamin A is impor-
tant for eye health, especially
for night vision as it helps to
produce a pigment called rho-
dopsin in the retina, which helps
a
child, you
probably
heard that
carrots are
good
for
your eyes.
$ PUUBHF ( SPWF 4 FOUJOFM
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the eye detect low levels of light
and allows us to see at night. Vi-
tamin A defi ciency is known to
cause night blindness.
However, beta-carotene is
not the only carotenoid that
contributes to healthy vision.
Out of about 600 known ca-
rotenoids, 20 have been found
circulating in human blood, and
only two are found in the eye.
They are lutein and zeaxanthin,
which cannot be synthesized
by the body and are primar-
ily found in green leafy veg-
etables. Once consumed, these
two carotenoids accumulate in
the macula, the inner portion of
the retina, which has a high con-
centration of photoreceptor (or
light receptor) cells. The typical
amount of lutein and zeaxanthin
in the macula (called “macular
pigment”) is quite low among
Americans, due to low intake
of leafy greens. The retina is
the most metabolically active
tissue in the body, and lutein
and zeaxanthin provide antioxi-
dant protection. Furthermore,
macular pigment reduces glare,
enhances contrast and visual
acuity and acts as a fi lter to pro-
tect the macula from blue light
damage. Blue light is a part of
visible light (and sunlight), and
electronic devices and energy-
effi cient lighting increase our
exposure to it, especially in the
evenings.
The idea that leafy greens
benefi t vision began to gain mo-
mentum about 20 years ago in
research on age-related macular
degeneration (AMD), a disease
in which the photoreceptors in
the macula are progressively
damaged or lost, causing im-
paired vision. This degeneration
is the leading cause of blindness
worldwide. In 1994, a study on
AMD found that higher total
carotenoid intake was associ-
ated with lower risk of the dis-
ease, and lutein and zeaxanthin
were the specifi c carotenoids
most strongly associated with
decreased risk. When looking at
foods, higher intake of spinach
and collard greens (rich sources
of lutein and zeaxanthin) were
also associated with decreased
risk. More studies followed,
many reporting that higher
lutein and zeaxanthin intake
was linked to lower AMD risk.
Supplementation trials in AMD
patients also reported increases
in macular pigment (more lutein
and zeaxanthin in the eye) and
improvement in visual perfor-
mance.
These results sparked the
marketing of eye health supple-
ments containing lutein and
zeaxanthin. However, previ-
ous fi ndings on isolated carot-
enoid supplements should urge
us to be cautious; several trials
of beta-carotene supplements
have reported an increased risk
of lung cancer, cardiovascu-
lar disease, or overall mortal-
ity. This is an unacceptable risk
for a nutrient we can easily get
from foods, which have no risk.
These nutritional benefi ts are
also enhanced by accompany-
ing phytonutrients in green veg-
etables that have further benefi ts
to the entire body.
The typical American diet is
dangerously low in leafy greens,
and the average adult’s intake
of lutein and zeaxanthin from
foods is a meager 1.5 mg per
day. Just a single cup of cooked
spinach or kale contains more
than 20 mg of lutein + zeaxan-
thin, and collards more than 14
mg; commercial vision supple-
ments commonly contain 10-20
mg of lutein plus two mg or less
zeaxanthin. So, a healthful diet
actually supplies more of these
benefi cial nutrients for the eye
than supplements do, and of
course leafy greens have several
advantages over supplements, in
particular a huge variety of ad-
ditional carotenoids and other
benefi cial nutrients, with no risk
of excess.
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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