Mountain Town News
Welcome cancelled for POW
HAILEY, Idaho – Balloons had been ordered, 1,825 of them to represent the days that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had been held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan. A company had agreed to donate the helium, and Carole King, who lives near Hailey, in the Ketchum-Sun Valley area, had agreed to perform.
Then, Bergdahl was released, and “bring him home” returned into “welcome home.” Now, the carpet has been rolled up amid questions about how Bergdahl was captured and whether his freedom was worth the exchange of five prisoners held in Guantanamo.
“In the interest of public safety, the event will be cancelled,” said a press release issued by officials in Hailey, a town of 8,000. It is 12 miles from the smaller but better-known towns of Ketchum and Sun Valley.
The Idaho Mountain Express explains that precipitating cancellation of the event were plans by an anti-Bergdahl group from California to send 2,000 protestors.
Bergdahl grew up in Hailey, working at Zaney’s Coffee House before he enlisted in 2008. The Wall Street Journal talked with soldiers who served with him in Afghanistan.
“Like many soldiers heading into a war zone for the first time, the 22-year-old Army private was eager to get into the fight….The bravado didn’t last,” reported the Journal. Fellow soldiers say he began spending time with Afghani soldiers and then, in June 2009, disappeared. His disappearance came as little surprise to his fellow soldiers.
“It seemed like he was this die-hard, Rambo-esque soldier who wanted to kick a– and take names who then became this Peace Corps kind of guy who wanted to help the people,” said Zach Barrow, a 27-year-old Army gunner who rode in the same truck as Bergdahl.
In Hailey, police chief Jeff Gunter, a close friend of the Bergdahl family, said he was besieged by calls and e-mails after Bergdahl’s release. “The emotions felt five years ago when he was captured have now been reversed. Women have called saying they have not been able to put their makeup on because they can’t stop crying.”
Then came the national discussion about whether the soldier had, in fact, been a deserter. Norco, a medical supply company, withdrew its offer to provide helium for the balloons. Miss Idaho’s visit to the event was cancelled. And Debbie O’Neill, an organizer, said she got threatening e-mails. “One of them said there will be ‘consequences’ if we proceed,” she told the Mountain Express.
Interviewed by CNN reporters, Pam Morris, publisher of the Express, said she and her staff were waiting to know the facts of the case from Afghanistan.
“We do not believe people should be tried by sound bite or by social media, in which there is no accountability,” she said. “This is a military matter and a matter for serious consideration, and we believe all the facts should be gathered before we indulge in character assassination.”
Telluride bans hash manufacture
TELLURIDE, Colo. – Telluride has banned the manufacture of hash oil, and a similar ban is contemplated in broader San Miguel County.
The ban is a response to reports from elsewhere in Colorado of explosions and fires since sale of cannabis for recreational consumption became legal on Jan. 1.
One way to make hash oil is by packing the leaves and stems of cannabis plants into a pipe, pouring highly flammable butane through it, then heating it to burn off the liquid fuel. The result, explains the Telluride Daily Planet, yields an oil of up to 80 percent THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.
Council members indicated that they will likely revisit the marijuana regulations by the end of 2014 to see if further changes are needed.
Lone bookstore for sale … again
ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen’s celebrated Explore Booksellers is on the sales block. The store occupies a prime location in downtown Aspen and the asking price of $6.5 million presumably reflects that value, not the revenues of a bookstore.
The store had been established by Katherine Thalberg in 1975. But after she died in 2007, it wasn’t clear the store would remain in business. Finally, Sam and Cheryl Wyly, part-time residents in Aspen, stepped forward.
At the time, the Wylys described their purchase of Explore as an act of stewardship.
But that was then. “For many years, it was a labor of love. In the business world, that’s what you call an investment that provides a greater good to the community which far outweighs any story the balance sheet tells.”
Wyly was recently in the news as the result of a federal court decision that found him and his late brother guilty of violating federal securities law, pinning them with the thievery of about $500 million.
