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Monday 06-23-25 Bill Meyer Show Guests and InformationTues
Podcasts on www.BillMeyerShow.com
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6:35 Melissa Henson, VP, Parents Television and Media Council
Children who are addicted to screens are at higher risk for suicidal behaviors, according to a new study published in JAMA.
The New York Times reported, “The researchers found addictive behavior to be very common among children — especially in their use of mobile phones, where nearly half had high addictive use. By age 14, children with high or increasing addictive behavior were two to three times as likely as other children to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves, the study found.”
Parents Television and Media Council VP Melissa Henson discusses what parents, educators, and tech companies can and must do to protect children from screen addiction.
7:10 Dr. Carole Lieberman, M.D., M.P.H. known world-wide as America’s Psychiatrist and the Terrorist Therapist, is the host of Dr. Carole’s Couch on VoiceAmerica.com, and The Terrorist Therapist® Podcast. She is a forensic psychiatrist/expert witness, bestselling-award-winning author of 4 books – 2 on terrorism and 2 on relationships.
“If Trump hadn’t given the order to ’nuke Iran’s nukes’ the world would be a much more dangerous place! Iran is run by radical Islamists who believe to greatest feat they can do is destroy Israel, kill Jews… and YOU! They want to kill ALL nonbelievers in Radical Islam – not just the Jews! They’ve been screaming “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!” for over 40 years. They weren’t kidding. They were enriching uranium to nuke us!” warns Carole Lieberman, M.D., M.P.H., known worldwide as America’s Psychiatrist and The Terrorist Therapist® (www.terroristtherapist.com)
8:10 Dr. Dennis Powers, www.DennisPowersBooks.com with today’s “Where Past Meets Present”.
Grants Pass
By Dennis Powers
The growth of Josephine County and Grants Pass was based on gold mining and the railroad. Learning about the newly discovered gold finds in Jacksonville in 1852, sailors deserted their ship near Crescent City and found rich gold deposits in the Illinois Valley, 25 miles south of present-day Grants Pass. Known as “Sailor Diggings” (then in Jackson County), its population of several thousands made it an important mining center. Later named Waldo, numbers of the miners left six years later for British Columbia’s Frazier River with the news of its gold discoveries. Gold mining centers in the Illinois Valley as Sailor Diggings, Althouse, and others vanished over time with little remains left behind.
With its importance as a gold mining region, however, Josephine County was carved from a portion of Jackson County in 1856; it was named for Josephine Rollins, the first non-Native American woman to settle in Southern Oregon. Before the easy-to-find gold was exhausted, Sailor Diggings became the first county seat, and later when renamed as Waldo. The settlement was naturally rustic and remote; for example, the courthouse was a log house bought from a local settler. By 1857, however, the population center had shifted to Kerbyville in the Illinois Valley, a town settled earlier by James Kerby—and the county seat again moved.
By 1873, the county’s population was said to be 1,500 and only seven towns were listed: Althouse, Kerbyville, Leland, Slate Creek, Waldo, Williamsburg, and Wolf Creek. Most commercial activity centered on gold mining and supplying the miners with their needs. A few hotels existed but more saloons as tent cities were a basic part of every town; and the miners came and left based on where the gold was.
Orson Gilbert had settled on a donation claim in 1854 that later became Grants Pass. The small village was first named Perkinsville, and was then a little more than a stagecoach stop in the 1860s; however, the coming of the Oregon & California Railroad (“O&C”) changed everything. The stop was located centrally on the railroad’s path, on the Rogue River, and as building track was very expensive, the surveyed line lined up nicely with the settlement of Rogue River, the next selected station stop.
The O&C line was completed to Grants Pass on Christmas Eve, 1883. With the railroad in place, businesses sprang up to serve the train passengers and those who decided to make it their new home. Hotels, stores, saloons, and churches appeared in wood structures along Front Street, or what is now “G” Street. Within five years of the railroad’s coming, the population doubled from 2,500 residents to nearly 5,000.
A leading citizen, Henry Miller, soon built an extensive saw mill that covered nearly 10 acres in the town’s middle; this operation became its largest employer with some 300 employees. Miller then spearheaded the move to make Grants Pass the county seat in 1896 and was successful. He also lobbied the state for an appropriation of $7,000 to build the first bridge that spanned the Rogue River, downstream from the current Caveman Bridge.
Tradesmen, farmers, lumbermen, and orchardists over time settled around the city and replaced the transient miners who moved on. With its location and transportation network, Grants Pass became the county’s trading center. By the 1890s the city had its own opera house, the first of several bridges crossing the Rogue, a water company, and light and power, generated from a dam a few hundred feet west of the present Caveman Bridge.
The town’s name was in honor of General U.S. Grant’s capture of Vicksburg in 1863. When this news reached the area, the nearby stagecoach station was so named. Once Ulysses S. Grant became the 18th President of the United States (1869 to 1877), the name was a fixture. With the railroad’s coming, the post office moved to near the depot, taking the name with it. Even into the 1900s, the town retained the original spelling of “Grant’s Pass,” using the apostrophe—before finally dropping the punctuation.
When gold mining played out, Grants Pass’s fortunes fluctuated with the economics of the timber industry. With the opening of the Oregon Caves to the public with a 1920’s road completion, Grants Pass was on the route to the Pacific Ocean and became more tourist-centered. After the Great Depression, World War II, and into the 1980s, the timber industry had its ups and down but then stagnated. With its fabled Rogue River fishing, river explorations (as the growth of Hellgate Jet Boats), and outdoors becoming popular, the city became more retiree and tourist-oriented, joining farming, dairying, and even planting vineyards as economic activities.
The population of Grants Pass is presently 39,000, or roughly 45% of Josephine County’s 88,000, and a vast improvement from the mining camps that had once been the county seat–and still the center for Josephine County.
Sources: Stacy Stumbo and Patti Richter, “First County Seat was Sailor Diggins, later called Waldo,” Daily Courier, March 11, 2010, at Grants Pass History; Patti Richter, “In this Section: Indians, Gold and a Newspaper’s Birth,” Daily Courier, March 11, 2010, at Additional History.
8:40 Kevin Starrett at Oregon Firearms Federation – www.OregonFirearms.org
A last-minute effort to kill some gun bills – details here: https://www.oregonfirearms.org/down-to-the-wire