Planet Jackson Hole 12.6.17

JACKSON HOLE’S ALTERNATIVE VOICE | PLANETJH.COM | DECEMBER 6-12, 2017

P.11

Former FLDS members fight for their families and homes.

PLUS: | > > SAVING THE REAL JACKSON HOLE P. 8 | > > BEST PRE-SKI EATS P. 24

2 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE | | OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

JACKSON HOLE'S ALTERNATIVE VOICE

VOLUME 15 | ISSUE 47 | DECEMBER 6-12, 2017

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11 COVER STORY WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE CHURCH COMES FOR YOUR KIDS? Former FLDS members fight for their families and homes.

Cover photo by George Frey

18 MUSIC BOX

8 OUTSIDE IN

20 DON’T MISS

9 THE BUZZ

23 STREAMING

16 CULTURE KLASH

24 EAT IT

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BY METEOROLOGIST JIM WOODMENCEY

December usual delivers either very cold temperatures or lots of snow. Last December, we got both. During month of December 2016 we had twice the average snowfall, with a total of 34 inches in town. The snowiest December we have ever had was in 2008, with just over 47 inches of snow. The wettest December ever, back in 1964, saw almost six inches of precipitation in town. Over half of that fell as rain during the three days prior to Christmas.

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WHAT’S COOL

WHAT’S COOL

Average low temperatures this week are now in the single digits, averaging just 9-degrees.

Record low temperatures are quite a bit colder, with the coldest day of 40-degrees below zero, dating back to December 11th, 1961. Last December we had a string of 20-below zero days in Jackson, early in December, during this exact same week. On the coldest of those days, the temperature dropped to 24-degrees below zero, on December 8th, 2016.

Average high temperatures this week are right around 30-degrees. Anything warmer than that, consider it a bonus. In December 2016, when it was 20-below in the morning, the afternoon highs were only in the single digits above zero. Not as balmy as the record high temperature in town this week of 61-degrees. That happened way, way back on December 12th, 1921. That record which has stood for the last 96 years and it is still the hottest December day ever in Jackson.

NORMAL HIGH 30 NORMAL LOW 9 RECORD HIGH IN 1921 61 RECORD LOW IN 1961 -40

THIS MONTH AVERAGE PRECIPITATION: 1.52 inches RECORD PRECIPITATION: 6 inches (1964) AVERAGE SNOWFALL: 17 inches RECORD SNOWFALL: 48 inches

Jim has been forecasting the weather here for more than 20 years. You can find more Jackson Hole Weather information at www.mountainweather.com

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 3

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THIS WEEK

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

JH ALMANAC

DECEMBER 16-12, 2017

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4 LETTERS

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| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

4 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

Uphill Battle

On Monday, November 20th, I went to the Town Council Workshop regarding the Snow King Leases and their decision or desire to charge $75 for a season pass to uphill traffic.

While I can understand a desire and even a need to earn money from everyone using the ski area, it is difficult to see how making people pay to hike or skin uphill really makes sense.

However, despite the fact that every ski resort is a for profit business, Snow King pays only $1,200 per year in rent for its use of the mountain. It seems as though this extremely low rent should enable Snow King to at least break even.

Unfortunately, charging for uphill access will have multiple effects on the Jackson population.

The first one will be to kill a desire to skin or hike up the mountain in the winter. Only those willing and able to pay for uphill access will do so, creating an “elite” effect in the town of Jackson.

It will create difficulties for those, like

ABBY MOORE

FROM OUR READERS

me, willing to hike A view of opening day at Grand Targhee on the other side of the Teton Pass. Unlike Snow King, which recently started charging $75 a season for a pass to ski or hike uphill, Targhee does not charge for uphill access. up and wanting to try out touring skis. certain incentives. These could be in the new one. Grizzlies are solitary animals I will spend money to rent touring skis and have to spend form of rentals included with the pass who mostly eat nuts, berries, fruit and money to buy an uphill ski pass. This (split board/skis), lift ticket discounts or roots. They don’t like being surprised or will cost over $150. That’s a lot to spend perhaps a discount at the restaurants when humans come between a mother and her cubs. There’s simple way to keep to hike or skin up a mountain. This is operated by the resort.

Finally, it is my belief the Snow King safe: Treat bears with respect, not as money I would prefer to spend on local eateries and other businesses, or perhaps Resort is a core element for locals within targets.

When are these bullies going to just save for a trip home. Understandably, the town of Jackson. It is an area we claim winter sports are expensive. All the nec- as ours that is fun to use as a recreation come out and say that they get their kicks essary gear needed to perform winter area. Do not alienate part of the popula- from slaughtering animals and destroysports safely is expensive. By charging tion by charging for uphill access please. ing their families?

Sincerely, for uphill access, you would be taking Julien Hass, Jackson resident Craig Shapiro away money that some of us would need PETA Foundation to purchase the gear to have fun safely.

“Threatening” Grizzlies 501 Front St. Safety is an issue as well, understandDear Editor: Grizzly bears get taken Norfolk, VA 23510 ably mentioned during the meeting. off the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 757-962-8259 Many resorts in the U.S. allow uphill “threatened” list and the National Rifle access with rules and regulations. Aspen Association and Safari Club International does it and so does Targhee, among oth- fall all over themselves to make the same Submit your comments to editor@ ers. I fully agree that there should be a tired, discredited arguments for killing planetjh.com with “Letter to the waiver for all uphill access hikers.

Editor” in the subject line. All letters them.

If Snow King was to implement this are subject to editing for length, But improving public safety? That’s a content and clarity. uphill pass, I believe it should come with

SNOWPACK REPORT Over Thanksgiving week — from November 20th to the 27th — the above-freezing temperatures and rain melted the snow. The snowpack’s surface then refroze as a thick crust with a variety of softer layers and crusts below it.

In many places above the tree line, the crust is four to five inches and is so strong you would need a saw to cut through it. The warm spell stabilized the snowpack by morphing snow grains together but it also formed a persistent weak layer.

This persistent weak layer was first buried on November 28, and the most recent storm that occurred last Sunday and into Monday arrived warm and left cold. New snow covered the crust enough to soften the skiing and form soft slabs in localized areas like high ridge lines. Mostly there was just good powder skiing.

As high-pressure sets in, we are lucky for the low sun and cold temperatures, which will preserve the cold, dry

SPONSORED BY HEADWALL RECYCLE SPORTS

snow. Valleys still remain snowless and ski area snowmakers are working around the clock so skiers and riders can reach the base.

The winter solstice is still weeks away so there is still plenty of time to practice and increase your snow sense and backcountry travel skills.

This week, there are a few talks to help do just that.

On Wednesday, Sarah Carpenter, owner and instructor for the American Avalanche Institute, will be speaking at Headwall Sports. This event starts at 6 p.m. and food and beer will be provided.

The following night (Thursday)., Yostmark will be hosting an Avalanche Awareness Night. The event will start at 7 p.m., and both events are the perfect way to wrap up a day of skiing.

- Lisa Van Sciver

DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS Project Falsitas D.C. prosecutors introduce James O’Keefe’s sting video in the case against inauguration protesters just as the Washington Post reminds us again just how shady he is

BY BAYNARD WOODS @demoincrisis

A screenshot from a recent Project Veritas video “sting.”

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 5

Abbie Boudreau, who never got on the boat, causing the explosively bad idea to backfire.

He was later accused by one of his own operatives of drugging her when she refused his romantic overtures and then enlisting an army of rightwing trolls, including her former friend Andrew Breitbart, to harass her when she tried to expose him (listen to this week’s podcast with Chris Faraone, Dig Boston editor and author of “I Killed Breitbart” for more on this).

But, as Moore’s campaign shows, that’s the way the far right works now.

If you’re on their side, they will defend almost anything. A couple weeks ago, I wrote a story for the New York Times arguing that Charles Manson was alt-right.

“Charles Manson wasn’t the inevitable outgrowth of the Sixties. If anything, he was a harbinger of today’s far right,” the Times Op-ed page tweeted with a link.

Laura Ingraham, the far-right radio host who appeared to give a Seig Heil to Trump at the RNC last summer, tweeted a response. “‘Far right’? You mean ‘right so far,’ as in @realDonaldTrump has been right so far abt how to kick the economy into high gear.”

Ingraham’s tweet is the perfect emblem of the senseless mass prosecution of protesters. It is senseless.

And maybe that is why Trump retweeted it. PJH

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

obtained by the Real News shows a U.S. Park Police officer in D.C. ordering a protester to follow the orders of a militia member because “he works for me.”

Two of the officers who testified in the trial were from D.C.’s 7th district.

The officers who raided the home of a man based on his alleged presence in the Project Veritas video were also 7th district.

In July, an officer from the guns and drugs “powershift” unit of the 7th was photographed wearing—and may have designed—a T-shirt with a grim reaper, white-power symbols, and “Powershift,” “Seventh District,” “MPDC,” and “let me see that waistband jo”—this last a reference to searching inside the underwear of citizen in “jump out” corner-clearing drug busts.

These D.C. guys have the same view of policing as Trump, who urged officers to be violent with suspects—or at least not to shield their heads when putting them into a car or van.

And Trump, of course, also tweeted false, O’Keefe-esque videos from Britain First in an attempt to stoke up anti-Muslim sentiment, or as Sarah Huckabee Sanders put it, “elevate the dialogue.”

So it is no surprise that federal prosecutors in D.C. are willing to stoop as low as O’Keefe to further their dissension of protest.

The last time O’Keefe tried so hard to sting the media, it involved dildos, hair grease, a boat, and a CNN reporter,

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Project Veritas, the creepo undercover right-wing sting team run by James O’Keefe, spent months trying to fool the Washington Post into printing false accusations against theocrat and alleged pedophile Roy Moore in order to undermine the real allegations made by women that he was sexual inappropriate with them when they were minors. Moore, a twice deposed former judge, is the only man alive who might make Luther Strange and Jeff Sessions, the two previous occupants of the Alabama Senate seat he is vying for, look almost normal.

Jaime Phillips, the woman trying to claim that Moore impregnated her when she was underage and then urged her to have an abortion, was spotted by Post reporters walking into the offices of Project Veritas. They confronted her on cameras of their own.

“The Washington Post seems to want a Nobel Prize for vetting a source correctly,” O’Keefe later said in response.

On the same day that the Post story broke, prosecutor Jennifer Kerkhoff introduced a Project Veritas video into the trial of the first six of the 193 to be charged under the federal Riot Act for protesting during the inauguration.

It came during the testimony of an undercover officer who infiltrated a Jan. 8 meeting in a church where various groups coordinated Inauguration Day activities. Kerkhoff asked the officer if he recorded the meeting and he said that his supervisors told him not to. But, he said, MPD later obtained a video of the same meeting.

It was filmed by a Project Veritas operative. And here’s where it gets really

fucked up. We don’t know how much the Project Veritas video was edited.

“I’m not aware of any edits or any thing,” Kerkhoff said in court. When the judge asked her who provided the video to the MPD, she replied: “a third party.”

Even worse, we don’t know how many Project Veritas operatives were in the room, saying things that may have colored undercover officer Bryan Adelmeyer’s perception of the events. So it taints his testimony as well. Despite the Veritas in its name, O’Keefe’s organization is built on deceit—and may in fact lose non-profit status in New York because he failed to disclose his criminal record, for using false premises to enter a federal building in an attempted Watergate/ Bob the Builder cosplay self-sting.

By contrast, Alexei Wood, a photojournalist who is one of the defendants in the current trial, is almost radically transparent about the live-stream video, which occupied much of the motion hearings over the past several months, that he filmed during the protest.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I livestreamed myself from beginning to end, and the entire world can decide whether I incited a riot,” he said. “It’s out there for the whole world to decide, and I’m glad it is.”

The government, on the other hand, is not only using Project Veritas’ unauthenticated video, but they actually edited the videos in order to obscure the identity of the still-unknown Project Veritas operative, as if he were an officer.

This is further evidence of the deep connection between law enforcement, government officials and right-wing movements. We know that an MPD communications officer provided a list of names of the defendants to far-right conspiracy site Got News. And video

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| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

6 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

DANIEL MAYER

THE NEW WEST

The Ballad of Action Jackson When the Hole’s controversial folk hero turned buffalo rancher

BY TODD WILKINSON bigartnature

I

n his heyday, some considered him a local folk hero in government uniform. Others were not so smitten.

The name Robert Bob “Action” Jackson still summons mixed reactions across the Greater Yellowstone region.

Jackson, a retired backcountry ranger who spent more than 30 years in Yellowstone, became best known for fighting wildlife poachers in the remote Thorofare district.

Today his name still remains a cuss word for Wyoming outfitters he claimed were illegally dumping salt licks next to Yellowstone’s southern boundary to lure trophy elk out of the park and onto the firing lines of their fat cat hunting clients.

But that is old history. It turns out that

for most of the time when Jackson served as a part-time ranger in America’s oldest national park, he was also (less triumphantly) growing his own bison herd on the tallgrass prairie of his native Iowa.

Between the observations he made of bison in Yellowstone and his own raising of animals for profit and putting healthy meat on dinner tables, he said he had an epiphany. Not a single lightning bolt moment, but several.

Paying attention to how bison organize themselves on the landscape, he started recognizing patterns of order.

He noticed subherds within herds, satellite groups spinning off from the main mass of animals and distinctive family structure.

Clanship, Jackson said, serves as a nucleus for holding herds together and shaping bison behavior. Wildlife biologists who regard bison as soulless creatures, devoid of emotion, a longing for kinship and distinctive ways of relating to home territories have got it all wrong, he said.

Jackson said that scientists, and by extension their employers, need to open their minds to thinking about bison beyond cold, analytical empiricism.

Like Jackson’s previous indictment of big game outfitters, his claims about bison, now aimed at government land management agencies, the livestock industry, land grant universities and fellow bison ranchers are sure to spark public debate.

Jackson said that if the National Bison Range, National Elk Refuge, Grand Teton Park, Yellowstone, the state of Montana and private ranchers were willing to restore “Bison Culture” into herds, there would be fewer conflicts.

Jackson said that if the National Bison Range, National Elk Refuge, Grand Teton Park, Yellowstone, the state of Montana and private ranchers were willing to restore “Bison Culture” into herds, there would be fewer conflicts.

It isn’t wise to hunt bison populations willy nilly, he said. Non-strategic targeting only results in added chaos and stress. He said that across the West today there are only a couple examples of true Bison Culture left.

Jackson claims that one bison subgroup in Yellowstone, the Mirror Plateau-Pelican Valley herd, still maintains its original behavior characteristics that predate the slaughter of bison on the Great Plains in the 19th century.

Discussions about one day depopulating Yellowstone of its bison in order to create a buffalo herd that is free of brucellosis is a serious threat to the integrity of the Mirror-Pelican animals, he said.

Jackson said that any attempt to eradicate brucellosis from a wild ecosystem while failing to consider the abundance of the organism in elk and other animals is pure folly.

Only part of Jackson’s critique is scathing. He explained how while raising 400 bison on his ranch he developed a thriving business, and he shared insights to prove that there is an emotional

component in the relationships between bison mothers and calves, aging siblings and elderly “grandmothers” and “grandpas.” He also addressed how he gets past the apparent ethical contradiction of bonding with his animals and then killing them to feed humans.

It’s the kind of stuff one never reads about in scientific papers, perhaps for good reason. Yet for ranchers who claim to have a special attachment to animals in their herds, what Jackson said may hold some resonance.

“What I am talking about is attaining a sense of peace with the idea of consuming an animal that, in many ways, we are equal to and to a certain degree dependent upon,” he said. “I want a marketplace that has a conscience.”

At the very least, in light of the political morass affecting many public bison herds and the desires of some to restore bison across the Great Plains, debating Action Jackson’s ideas can’t hurt. PJH

Todd Wilkinson, editor of mountainjournal.org, is author of Grizzlies of Pilgrim Creek (mangelsen.com/grizzly) about famous Jackson Hole Grizzly, 399 featuring 150 pictures by renowned local wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen.XXXXX

TWENTYTWO 360 Saluting Season During the holdays, we say thank you…but then what?

BY YVES DESGOUTTES

T

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 7

have I done or not done, or what I should do and not do, to be on the right side of empathy?

My journey helping my fellow men and women came later in life. I was shown the way by my two teenage daughters in the 1980s, when one was volunteering in a senior center while the other was helping children with terminal illnesses. They came home with stories that were touching and also had smiles on their faces.

Their compassion made me ashamed that I had never done anything of the sort.

The long and short of it was that because of them, I volunteered in a psychiatric ward for detoxing patients at a hospital in Connecticut, where I lived at the time. I had to follow an education program in order not to be a hindrance to the nurses. It was hard, tough and sometimes frightening.

I have absolutely no idea if I ever helped anybody. After a while, I understood that trying to evaluate if I made a difference was superfluous — all I had to do was just show up every Sunday morning.

At the time, I was the type of person who thought that I had gotten to where I was because of hard work and persistence. One day, the light bulb went on and I realized that being at the right place at the right time played a significant part in my life. Basically, I had no conscious role directing how my life had unfolded.

In my volunteer role, I realize that I made some people unhappy, but I hope I helped some too. I would not put myself in the categories of people I saluted above.

Being compassionate and acting so is a work in progress for me.

Compassion is a work in progress for a lot of people, but it’s the “work” part that we seem to be lacking in many ways. The world we live in — either as a nation or simply the being citizens of the earth — is full of people have no compassion and want immediate gratification, often without any thought about the future. It seems to be the norm.

Perhaps that trickles from the top down. It is disparaging to witness our supposed leaders behaving in such a way, with the truth constantly baffled and bad behaviors revered. It is an insult to common decency. The United States of America — where are you going?

I firmly believe that saluting those of us who go beyond the norm is the least we can do. There are, after all, so few of them, and so many of us. PJH

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he first round of turkey eating is over and as the tradition warrants, we humbly showed our gratitude.

In ideal circumstances, that act should help ground us to the real values of life.

What a great concept!

That being said, if the bird was really big, we also have to deal with the leftovers for days. By the time they are dispensed, we have to think about ordering a new one for the upcoming holiday.

Buying a turkey is not an easy act these days, as we have to make sure that the fowl has been raised in a sane psychological environment, fed the proper natural food and slaughtered in the least cruel way. I do have a problem with “slaughter” and “least cruel” being words in the same phrase.

Saying “thank you” is wonderful, but I believe that to salute somebody, a cause — an action — are worthier. In my view, to salute is to give a formal sign of respect.

The people I have to show respect for are legions.

The instances deserving respects are numerous.

Formally or informally giving praise is a nice gesture as long as it is sincere, heartfelt and humbly delivered and without ulterior motives.

There are other forms of salutes, such as a ritual of greeting without forgetting the military salute, among others.

I salute any actions and people involved in acts of selfless courage and endeavors.

Inside our community, we have folks who help those among us who lack fundamental necessities: health care; food; clothes; mental help; protection against predators; safeguard against violence — especially for women and children; preventing and dealing against any type of addictions. The list of hardships, destitutions and deprivations is long.

To answer the call for compassion to try to alleviate the above, we have among us people who have made it their careers and join organizations and services.

Those who have answered to a medical vocation, such as nurses and doctors,

EMTs, search and rescue, police and sheriff departments and fire brigades.

It might be their jobs, but they usually reach beyond their duties. Those people have to ask a lot from their families. It is not a simple act to put the common welfare above one’s relatives. I salute you all.

For the volunteers who give more than money, who donate the most precious commodity that one has — that is to say, time — I salute you.

For those who work in social services month after month, year after year; I salute you. I just do not know how you can achieve it, how you can be confronted with poverty, hardship and violence of all kinds and remain sane. I salute you.

For the ordinary persons who get up each morning and trudge along in a job they hate because it is their obligation to look after their household: I salute you.

For the founding ancestors of Jackson Hole who came to settle more than 120 years ago and fought the harsh environment, not knowing from year to year whether they would outlive the long and unforgiving snow and blizzards: I salute you.

I cannot omit the members of the armed forces. Since 2001 we have had our soldiers involved in combats in Afghanistan and Iraq. Because we have a professional volunteer Army, Navy and Air Force, their numbers are too slim to fulfill all the missions there are assigned to. The consequences are the repeated deployments.

It is hard for us civilians to understand that in the thick of the confrontations, the adrenaline and endorphins are running so high that soldiers experience feelings and carry out actions that stay in their mind for a long time afterwards.

Some of their recollections are positive, some are negative and some are haunting. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is common for those men and women, and it is difficult to deal with.

Our willingness to help them is limited by many factors, some of them not very noble.

Our fearless leaders who send them to battle while sitting in the safety of their towers in Washington D.C. have dubious standards. They do not seem to value life of others or any life, except perhaps their own. For all men and women in uniform sent into the fray, I salute you. Let us give you the attention you deserve to heal you.

Writing those lines I have to look honestly at what, if anything, I have done compassionately towards my fellow human beings. I have to take an inventory. What

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| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

8 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

OUTSIDE IN Without housing and a workforce, there is no quality of life in Teton County

BY ANGELICA LEICHT @writer_anna

L

et’s talk about the fight over affordable housing in Teton County, shall we?

Earlier this month, the Town and County Planning Departments released their final policy direction and recommendations for affordable housing in Teton County. The directives address ongoing issues like employment criteria for renting or purchasing restricted homes and what assets to include when calculating whether a person qualifies for affordable housing.

I spent quite a bit of time researching the proposed direction and what the changes would mean for Jackson’s workforce for this week’s Buzz 1 on page 9, which you can turn to for more on the topic.

During that research, I came upon the website for “Saving Historic Jackson Hole,” a nonprofit focused on “preserving the last of the “Old West.” The tagline got my attention.

According to SHJH’s website, “Jackson Hole is the ‘Last of the Old West’ and we think it should stay that way. We advocate responsible planning and development, strong community values, and respect for nature. We support our local neighborhoods in their desire to keep their character. We want to remain a sustainable community not dependent on growth.”

I’m admittedly a relative newby to JH — just under three months and counting — and Jackson is certainly more rural than many of the other cities I’ve lived in.

Still, I’m not entirely sure I understand what’s left of the Old West to protect.

I have seen nary a shootout or even a horse on the road, making me immediately suspect of SHJH’s mission statement.

I have seen an inordinate amount of cars, snowboarders, and the inside of Lucky’s Market, though, and while those things

Teton County any different?

In turn, it isn’t feasible to impose the bulk of housing regulations on businesses in Teton County. Smaller businesses — restaurants, bars and even this paper — would likely struggle to keep the doors open with the burden of providing housing in an area where housing is cost prohibitive Guess we better start stockpiling antibiotics and for most people. birthing kits in Jackson Hole.

Even if it forced the closure of a bring pain and suffering to Jackson Hole handful of smaller businesses in the area, it would still just as it has every other place it’s been vastly change Jackson and the surround- tried from Venezuela and Cuba back to ing areas and compromise that “livable” the Bolshevik revolution.”

Guess we better start stockpiling antiatmosphere SHJH is fighting for. biotics and birthing kits from other counThe fight against affordable housing tries, because apparently shit’s about to is reiterated in the nonprofit’s “Housing get real in JH. The fall of the Teton pseuFake Crisis” column from October 2017.

In it, SHJH states that the “false nar- do-nation is coming.

The ad also states that the “well-inrative that sees subsidized housing as a tentioned people who champion affordbe-all, end-all solution for what ails us able housing think they are smart enough in Teton County rings of manipulation, not crisis. The 2015 Housing Supply Plan to micromanage Jackson Hole into a estimates the community needs to add Utopian society. A place where everyone about 280 units annually. That’s about gets what they want, and somehow no one 700 people a year, 3.3% of all the people pays for it. Do we want to keep sacrificing in Teton County. At that pace, in 20 years our deep-rooted community values like we’ll have doubled our population with open space and wildlife at the altar of subsidized housing alone. More people housing?” (Emphasis mine.)

The phrase “altar of housing” should will then live in government housing than not exist. Housing is not a luxury. It is a free market housing.” basic need and community values should There are a couple of issues here. The have a place for helping less fortunate resfirst is that affordable housing is not a fake crisis in Teton County. It’s a real crisis idents and the owls.

While the fight for preservation by because people need housing — yes, even SHJH is understandable — change is difpoor people. ficult, and investments need to be protectThe second is that while idea of goved — what seems to be missing from the ernment housing outpacing free market housing might sound harrowing, allow equation is that the community is made me to remind you that the free market up in part by people who run the shops, housing in Teton County has a median open the restaurants and teach the kids. list price of around $650 per square foot, Those are the folks who can’t afford $4,000 with the average home price clocking in rent, yet they are the ones who help in at about $1.5 million. That pricing is maintain the much-revered quality of life absurd, and without “government” hous- in Teton County. They make this town run ing, Teton County isn’t likely to sustain a from the ground up.

Why would anyone, SHJH or othermiddle class or a workforce. Or, in turn, wise, want to make it harder for them to a town. survive here? Without them, there is no In that same ad, SHJH also inexplicably compares Jackson’s housing plan to “livability” to JH and no heartbeat to your town. Seems pretty counterintuitive to Venezuela. me.

PJH “The ‘Utopian’ dream local officials are pushing makes no sense. If enacted, it will SOFIA CIFUENTES

Saving the Real Jackson Hole

are unruly at times, none are quite as raw and lawless as the old.

Still, I don’t have to grasp the analogy to understand that folks in Jackson are concerned that the community’s explosive growth will threaten the town’s character.

I watched it happen firsthand in Houston. As more people migrate to an area for jobs, more housing is needed, and the desirable inner city areas are snatched up by wealthy swaths of people who want to live and work in the metro area. In turn, the minority communities who once resided in those neighborhoods are pushed into the fringes of the city in search of affordable housing.

Transportation, access and marginalization become issues, and the displacement of the vibrant minority communities is disastrous for the colorful “character” of the city.

But as I dug through SHJH’s website, I realized that is not what we’re talking about here.

The fear of preservation in Jackson Hole is not stemming from gentrification; it is a concern about the loss of “historic” Jackson due to growth of the town’s population, and, in turn, the erection of taxpayer-funded affordable housing.

Don’t believe me? Just take a peek at SHJH’s weekly column, “The Other Side,” which they characterize as an ad focused on the “alternative side” of the big issues.

In the Nov. 22 column, “Housing Mitigation,” SHJH focuses on mitigation in Jackson.

Mitigation, or the housing provided by employers, is currently required at 25 percent in Teton County, which means that employers must house 1 out of every 4 employees.

According to SHJH, that number should be raised to 100 percent.

“Going to 100% helps preserve what’s left of the Old West. It’s a vote for a ‘livable Jackson Hole’ … Higher mitigation rates will put the burden of housing lower-income employees squarely on developers and big business owners where it belongs, instead of on taxpayers,” the ad reads. “A ‘real’ 100% mitigation requirement is a huge step in the right direction, so detractors already are claiming the high mitigation rate is onerous to developers and will stifle commercial growth. We say thank goodness. It’s about time!”

Given that Teton County is the wealthiest county in the nation, it seems laughable that there shouldn’t be a responsibility among taxpayers to help fund affordable housing. Even the towns and counties in the nation help fund housing for lower-income residents; why is

Affordable housing rules are getting an overhaul in Jackson and surrounding

BY ANGELICA LEICHT @writer_anna

A

Burning village painting at encampment for Darfur.

rent out spare rooms in their units.

The Council and Commissioners also decided on an alternative lottery system regarding the buying and selling of affordable housing. The process will allow households who meet the minimum occupancy for the unit to have a chance to be selected first in the lottery, and the amount of entries in the lottery a household receives will be based on the amount of points they have. This lottery process will be used for both employment and affordable housing, with points given for years working in Teton County and Critical Services Providers.

While none of the directives are a huge departure from the status quo, some of these changes are a step in the right direction. Teton County shouldn’t be punishing families who don’t have citizenship or resident paperwork, and the removal of the restriction is the right thing to do.

What the directives don’t — and perhaps can’t — address is how to handle the massive, and ever-growing, list of Teton County residents who are waiting for an open unit. Most, if not all of the affordable units across the Teton Pass are also full, and this is the slow season in the area.

Bigger changes are necessary to help accommodate the swelling population in Jackson and surrounding Teton County, but for now, these will do. PJH

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 9

Renters will also continue to prove they still qualify at lease renewal under the new directives, but a big change is coming for homeowners who purchase restricted housing.

As with rentals, homeowners who purchase restricted housing will now be required to provide employment and income verification annually. That’s a significant departure from the previous policy in which buyers of affordable and attainable units were only required to qualify at the time they purchased the home.

But it’s not just qualification restrictions that are changing under the new directives. There are also changes coming to the way rental rates for JTCHAowned units and employee housing units are determined.

Home valuation for resale will now be capped at 3 percent, which is an increase of about .5 percent from the prior valuation.

But while the rules for valuation and qualification are cut and dry, the renting and subletting directives aren’t as clear. The commissioners did not vote on the options presented to them, and instead voted to allow rentals and subletting in both affordable and employment-based units as long as a fee or some portion of the rent is returned to the Housing Department.

That option will require approval from the Housing Department, and would presumably allow renters in affordable units to sublet apartments or

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

ffordable housing changes are a’comin’ to Teton County.

If you’re one of the (unlucky) ones on the mile-long list for affordable housing in Teton County, you should know that the rules may be slightly different by the time you get your name and number called.

The Housing Department has been working with the Town and County Planning Departments since May on a number of new affordable and employment-based housing changes, and the final directives were issued earlier this month.

The changes, meant to address lingering questions about affordable housing in Teton County, will dictate who qualifies to live in affordable, employment-based, attainable, employee and workforce homes and what restrictions apply to living in a Housing Department home.

The directives will also be used to draft new Housing Rules and Regulations, which means that these changes are pretty darn important.

Prior to the new directives, the requirement for qualification was that one person in the household must work at least an average of 30 hours per week in Teton County.

The new directive keeps the 30 hour per week average, but retirees will no longer be eligible to purchase or rent a restricted home.

The new directives also state that it is no longer required for one person in the household to be a U.S. Citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident to rent a restricted unit, which should make it easier for Teton County residents without citizenship or resident paperwork to qualify for affordable housing.

The types of assets used to calculate eligibility for restricted housing are also changing, and anything worth more than $500 can be counted. Retirement accounts are still off limits when calculating assets, though, and only liquid business assets will be included.

Residential property within 150 miles of Teton County must also be sold for an applicant to qualify and the asset limit is twice the income limit for a 4-person household.

Prior to the new directives, the time households were required to occupy a unit varied: 10 months for affordable, 9 months for attainable and 10 months for employment-based housing.

Under the new directives, occupants are required to stay in the units 10 months across the board.

The 30 percent rule — or the rule that 30 percent of a household’s income should be spent on housing — will remain in place.

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Housing Hassle

FUTURE ATLAS VIA FLICKR CREATIVE COMMONS XXXXX

THE BUZZ

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| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

10 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

News That Sounds Like a Joke

NEWS OF THE

WEIRD

White people living in Lawrenceville, Georgia, had the chance of a lifetime on Nov. 16 to attend a “Come Meet a Black Person” event sponsored by Urban MediaMakers, a group for filmmakers and content creators. Cheryle Moses, who founded the group, said she read in a 2013 study that most white people don’t have any nonwhite friends. “I want to do my part to change things,” she told The Washington Post. “I have never met a black person,” one person commented on Moses’ Facebook post. “What do you recommend I bring that they would like?” Later, WXIA-TV reported that more the two dozen people showed up to share chili and cornbread, but fewer than a half-dozen were white.

Unclear on the Concept

The Detroit Police Department got a little carried away on Nov. 9 while trying to address a persistent drug problem on the city’s east side. Two undercover special ops officers from the 12th Precinct were posing as drug dealers on a street corner when undercover officers from the 11th Precinct arrived and, not recognizing their colleagues, ordered the 12th Precinct officers to the ground. Shortly, more 12th Precinct officers showed up and the action moved to a house where, as Fox 2 News described it, a turf war broke out as officers from the two precincts engaged in fistfights with each other. An internal investigation is underway, and the police department has declined comment.

By THE EDITORS AT ANDREWS MCMEEL said he was only doing “air bagpipe,” and a search of the car did not turn up the instrument. He was released with a warning, but Johnson urged other drivers to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.

n The Hopkinton, Massachusetts, Police Department cited an unnamed driver of a Buick Century on Nov. 12 for making their own license plate out of a pizza box and markers. The plate, which reads “MASS” at the top and sports a sloppily rendered six-digit number, prompted police to post some helpful warnings to creative citizens on its Facebook page and resulted in charges including operating an uninsured and unregistered vehicle and attaching “fake homemade” plates.

Crime Report

In the wee hours of Nov. 5, before the McDonald’s in Columbia, Maryland, had opened, a woman reached through the drive-thru window and tried to pour herself a soda, but she couldn’t reach the dispenser. The Associated Press reports that, rather than driving down the road to a 24-hour restaurant, she can be seen on surveillance video squeezing herself through the drive-thru window, pouring herself a soda and collecting a box full of unidentified items before taking off. The thief remains at large.

Oh, Canada

A family in Vero Beach, Florida, were rudely awakened early on Nov. 11 when Jacob Johnson Futch, 31, climbed onto their roof to, as he later told authorities, carry out a meeting with an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

WPTV reported the family didn’t know Futch and called Indian River Sheriff’s deputies to say that someone was stomping on their roof, yelling and howling. When asked, Futch admitted injecting methamphetamines earlier that morning. He was charged with trespassing and held in the Indian River County jail.

Montreal police may win the Funsuckers of the Year award after pulling over 38-year-old Taoufik Moalla on Sept. 27 as he drove to buy a bottle of water in SaintLaurent. Moalla was enthusiastically singing along to C+C Music Factory’s song “Gonna Make You Sweat” when a patrol car pulled behind him with lights and sirens blaring. Officers directed him to pull over, and four officers surrounded Moalla’s car. “They asked me if I screamed,” Moalla told CTV News. “I said, ‘No, I was just singing.’”

Then he was issued a $149 ticket for screaming in public, a violation of “peace and tranquility.” “I understand if they are doing their job, they are allowed to check if everything’s OK,” said a “very shocked” Moalla, “but I would never expect they would give me a ticket for that.” His wife, however, said she wasn’t surprised and would have given him a ticket for $300.

The Continuing Crisis

Awesome!

Rude Awakening

An unnamed man in Frankfurt, Germany, called police 20 years ago to report his Volkswagen Passat missing, believing it had been stolen. In November, the car was found just where the driver had left it, according to Metro News -- in a parking garage that is now scheduled to be demolished. Police drove the 76-year-old to the garage to be reunited with his car, which is unfit to drive, before sending it off to the scrap heap.

Flying Solo

Office workers at Cambridge Research Park in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, England, feared the worst as they rushed outside on Nov. 13 after watching a hot air balloon crash into a fence in their parking lot. Strangely, no one was in the basket of the balloon, although the gas canister was still running. Eyewitness Jack Langley told Metro News: “Either they had bailed out and jumped out before crashing or the balloon escaped from its mooring lines.” Cambridgeshire Police later discovered the balloon had taken off when the pilot got out of the basket to secure it to the ground.

Bright Ideas

Dunedin, New Zealand, police Sgt. Bryce Johnson told Stuff.nz that he’s seen people reading newspapers, putting on makeup and using their mobile phones while driving, but pulling over a driver who was playing bagpipes while driving, as he did on Nov. 15, was a first for him.

“His fingers were going a million miles an hour,” Johnson said. The driver, who admitted to being a bagpipe player,

Indian computer coder Suyash Dixit braved perilous terrorist-infested territory and drove six hours in early November to plant his flag and declare himself king in the last remaining unclaimed habitable place on Earth -- Bir Tawil, a border area between Sudan and Egypt. “I am the king! This is no joke, I own a country now! Time to write an email to U.N.,” he told The Telegraph. King Dixit has also created a website for his new nation, where he is encouraging people to apply for citizenship. However, Anthony Arend, an international law and politics scholar, scolds that “under international law, only states can assert sovereignty over territory.”

The Litigious Society

The Canadian Press reports that Lorne Grabher of Nova Scotia, Canada, is suing the Transport Department to keep his vanity plate, which reads GRABHER. The retiree has sported the namesake plate for 27 years, but in January it was revoked for being “inappropriate,” and authorities denied the reason was because of its similarity to a suggestive comment by President Donald Trump revealed during his campaign. “I am increasingly dismayed by the hypersensitivity of some people who are ‘offended’ by every little thing they encounter,” Grabher wrote in his affidavit. He went on to say that he is proud of his Austrian-German surname. Grabher’s case is scheduled to be heard in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in September 2018.

Send tips to weirdnewstips@amuniversal.com

BY SARAH SCOLES, HIGH COUNTRY NEWS | PHOTOS BY GEORGE FREY

“This is not real,” former member Sheldon Black remembers thinking. “This is a bad dream.”

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 11

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n 2011, the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaimed what some in their community would come to call the “Dishrag Revelation.”

Church authorities demanded that the faithful give all their property — down to the dishrags — to the church. The authorities would then redistribute to each family what they needed, according to the judgment of those same authorities. If someone brought in two flashlights, for example, they might get only one back, and not necessarily one of those they gave away.

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

Former FLDS members fight for their families and homes.

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What happens when the church comes for your kids?

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| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

12 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

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nd then it got worse. Black, talking to me in his shop in June 2016, says church leaders called him to the meetinghouse in Hildale, Utah, in June 2012. He walked down a dark hallway toward the one illuminated room. Inside sat religious leaders Isaac and Nephi Jeffs, Rich Allred, and Nate Jessop.

They made him wait outside for 30 minutes, with only a hymnal for company. He paged through it, scanning notes and lyrics that he’d sung his whole life.

When they finally called him in, they had a special revelation for him: According to Warren Jeffs, the prophet whose dictates were church doctrine, he and his second wife, Cindy, had committed “abortive miscarriage.”

Black knew that hadn’t happened. “I lived my whole life trusting these people, and now they’re shoving this lie and telling you it’s God’s truth,” he says.

But Black also knew that he had to give this room of illuminated figures exactly what they wanted: submission, acceptance, a humble “I guess.” He’d always said “yes” to church leaders — yes, I will give you my dishrags and my paycheck. Yes, I sustain you as prophet. Yes, I will marry the girl you chose for me.

So, after some hesitation, he agreed to the false accusation, too. And to the subsequent excommunication. Like the hundreds of others the Jeffses have excommunicated in recent years, he would have to leave town — the only home he’d ever known, the house he’d built, his two wives and all of his children.

He would not be allowed to speak to or see any of them.

Along with every other FLDS member, he had previously signed custody of his kids over to the church, a state of affairs detailed in numerous court cases and confirmed in interviews with ex-FLDS members and their legal representatives. FLDS parents have “stewardship” over their offspring — and husbands have it over their wives — but members are told that both women and children “belong” to the religious organization. Parents are to care for their families, but when the prophet decides to transpose family members — a wife swapped to a new husband, kids sent to a different caretaker — the people say yes.

They walk away from their marriages and watch their children move into different houses. They turn their backs on their town.

Black went home, knowing that Cindy would soon get a phone call, telling her about the miscarriage she had not had. The leaders would send her away.

Their children would be “redistributed”; his first wife, Angela, and their children would be “given” to caretakers, or to a new husband and father figure. As Black tells me this story, Cindy sits next to him, silent and nodding.

When Cindy’s call came, Black looked across the room at his thin, gray-skinned wife, malnourished from church-mandated food restrictions. He thought of her alone in the world, an alien place. He imagined her dying out there and wondered what would happen to their kids. He pictured himself, alone.

Later, as the spouses prepared to leave, separately, church officials said to Black, “We’ll take the children, if you will.”

The prophet who giveth may take away. But some of the people he taketh away from aren’t putting up with it anymore, another sign of cracks in what had been, for more than half a century, an impenetrable and opaque world.

And he thought, but did not say: “What if I won’t?”

He and Cindy agreed to leave together, and take the children with them. And so in secret, in the middle of the night, they all left in their van.

When the Blacks entered the world outside of their polygamous enclave — the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Arizona, collectively called Short Creek — the children were horrified. They put pillows up to the windows so they wouldn’t have to see the nearly naked pedestrians with their bare limbs, a far cry from the long-sleeved shirts, long-legged pants and modest prairie dresses that were pro forma in Short Creek.

The family sojourned in Flagstaff, Arizona, then in Nevada, Salt Lake City and Idaho, assisted by alreadyout family, other former FLDS members, and an organization called Holding Out HELP. Soon enough, their children stopped shielding their eyes. They even watched their first movie. “They didn’t smile or anything,” Black tells me, although he smiles himself at the memory. They just stood up and looked closer at the screen, trying to decipher this technological magic.

But the magic couldn’t last. Black soon heard that back in Short Creek, his first wife, Angela, had also been sent away. Her kids — his kids — were living alone with his adult son, Sheldon Jr. “I had two underage daughters, and I knew what they were going to be getting into,” Black says: meaning, potentially, forced relations with older men. Now he was asking, “What if we just take the children?”

Black is not alone in asking that question. He represents a growing demographic: former FLDS parents who have returned to Short Creek to try to wrest their children away from the church, often with the help of lawyer Roger Hoole, who prepares and serves the legal documents and contacts helpful law enforcement.

The prophet who giveth may take away. But some of the people he taketh away from aren’t putting up with it anymore, another sign of cracks in what had been, for more than half a century, an impenetrable and opaque world. With its leaders in legal trouble, population booming in the nearby metro area, and former exiles returning, Short Creek is secularizing, and the FLDS hold over the town is loosening at last.

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he Blacks’ former religion is a controversial offshoot of Mormonism, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The mainline Mormon Church officially espoused polygamy in 1843. Its founder, Joseph Smith, married as many as 40 wives, according to Mormon leaders. His successor, Brigham Young, took 55 wives. But their fellow citizens in the American East and Midwest had strong objections to their polygamous and quasi-theocratic communities — towns like Nauvoo, Illinois, a place not all that dissimilar to Short Creek.

So, like unhappy misfits since America’s founding, the Mormons headed West. In the 1840s, Young led around 70,000 settlers to the Utah Territory’s Great Basin. It was the perfect spot: bounded on the east by the wall of Wasatch Mountains, sitting next to the huge but useless Great Salt Lake — and, at that time, beyond the reach of United States law.

Polygamy went unpunished until the Utah Territory was acquired from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. U.S. leadership attempted to rein in the Mormons and separate the church and the soon-to-be state. For a while, polygamy survived, and church leaders dispatched the faithful to set up polygamous outposts across the West, including in Short Creek. But then came the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which prohibited polygamy, disincorporated the LDS church, and allowed the government to confiscate its assets.

Three years later, citing nothing less than the will of the Lord, then-prophet Wilford Woodruff declared that the LDS church would abandon the practice.

Many Latter-day Saints saw this declaration as terrestrially, not celestially, motivated. And in the far-flung settlements across the West, men continued to marry multiple women. Short Creek, in particular, became a known “safe space” for polygamy. Like Salt Lake City, it had both natural and manmade protections. It straddled the Utah-Arizona state line, complicating law enforcement. The Vermillion Cliffs rose on one side, and the Grand Canyon fell 40 miles away on the other. No one would bother them here.

Short Creek’s polygamy-practicing members were excommunicated from the official LDS church in the 1930s, and the area took on its own religious identity, which later became the more official FLDS church.

And for a long time, life was, if not idyllic, at least less Orwellian than it is now. I spoke to former members who remember their childhoods fondly, and think of Short Creek past as a pleasant place. In those days, church members could watch movies, ride bicycles and hold public festivals, without the constant threat of excommunication. Problems existed, of course, especially for women, who were still married off at young ages and had little control over their lives. Children worked long days to support the church and its businesses.

For the most part, until the past decade or so, the federal government let the FLDS live undisturbed in the Arizona Triangle. Turning a blind eye, living and letting live — choose your own cliché to describe its lack of response. But there have been notable exceptions. In 1953, for example, the Arizona National Guard raided Short Creek, arresting 36 men and taking 86 women and 263 children into state custody. It took up to two years for some of the men to be released on probation, after they promised to give up polygamy — a promise they swiftly reneged on.

It’s an incident that looms large in FLDS culture, a documented historical event that justifies the sense of persecution. In local Cottonwood Park this June, I came across a rock memorial to the event. Carved like

T

that had built them, but that they had been evicted from. But that means kicking faithful FLDS members out of the houses in which they’ve been living, forcing them out of the area they’ve called home for generations. “You have one group of people that might be celebrating the changes in the town,” says Christine Marie Katas, one of the few non-FLDS people that FLDS members will talk to, “and you have another group of people that are in a state of psychological crisis because they believed this was their religious heritage.”

That demographic shift has begun to secularize Short Creek and opened it to outside influence even as its geographic isolation is ending. Nearby St. George is the fifth fastest-growing city in the nation, drawing retirees and sun-lovers who don’t adhere to even mainstream Mormonism. More mountain bikers are riding the trails on Gooseberry Mesa, just north of Hildale. And Zion National Park, a mere 10 miles or so from Short Creek, has become so popular that officials are considering creating a cap on the number of visitors. A town that was once on a road to nowhere is now on a highway with REI-recommended destinations.

Visitors are rarely harassed as they once were. In the two visits I’ve made, I have experienced none of the harassment — stalking by church security or hostility at local businesses — described in earlier accounts like Under the Banner of Heaven and Prophet’s Prey. When I arrived in town on a May trip and needed a sandwich, the gentile-owned local Subway gladly obliged. And in June, while I was waiting for an interview, I took a hike up Maxwell Canyon.

A group of girls in prairie dresses — current FLDS members — were getting water from pumps near the trailhead. They shyly walked up to me, played with my dog, and asked where I was from and if I thought it was pretty here. I watched a group of truck-driving men silently tow a tourist’s stuck car out of a ditch,

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 13

Kristyn Decker, who grew up in a parallel polygamous sect called the Apostolic United Brethren, says she doesn’t know of a single intact family. Decker, who founded the Sound Choices Coalition, also assists Holding Out HELP, the organization that helped the Blacks find refuge. She believes that the crisscrossing of kin — and the constant anxiety of wondering who will be next, and when — furthered one of Warren Jeffs’ goals: Everyone’s strongest attachment would have to be to him. “He’s ripping people’s hearts apart,” she says. “People are getting to the point, even the elderly people, where they can’t love someone.”

Hoole estimates that the Jeffses have excommunicated hundreds of people. While census-style data are not available, local organizer Terrill Musser estimates that between 1,000 and 1,400 FLDS members remain — way down from the heyday of 10,000. Many have left or been forced out, while others have moved to a new headquarters in Texas. Musser says between 100 and 200 of the excommunicated people have returned to Short Creek.

But Jeffs’ grip is loosening. He’s in jail, after all, and the leadership of the church is uncertain. He issues decrees, but so does Lyle Jeffs. Members of the church — and people who are excommunicated but still faithful — may hear about the crimes of those in charge and feel the leadership vacuum. Warren Jeffs has said he was never a prophet; he has also said he is absolutely in charge. And now Lyle Jeffs is on the lam, and Nephi Jeffs is the new bishop. The Short Creek residents I spoke to said they did not know how to reach church leaders, who are largely jailed or in hiding and who are, in any case, forbidden to speak to infidels from outside like me.

The FLDS faithful are also now surrounded by former members, who are now considered apostates.

The state of Utah took over the church’s financial arm, the United Effort Plan Trust, in 2005. In 2014, the state-run trust began returning houses to the exiles

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

rouble truly began when a prophet named Rulon Jeffs began to age, in the late 1990s.

As Rulon’s health declined, one of his sons, Warren, started to siphon power away. In 2002, when his father died, Warren Jeffs assumed the presidency.

Children and women were church-owned property, to move around whenever he wanted. That had always been true to some extent, but Warren Jeffs was the first to fully flex the muscles just beneath the skin of the hierarchy.

He began marrying adult men to underage girls.

His flight from prosecution landed him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in late 2005. The authorities caught him in 2006 and jailed him for 10 years to life in 2007, but the Utah Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2010. The next year, though, he was sentenced to life plus 20 years for two counts of sexual assault on minors.

During his tenure, Jeffs, with the help of on-theground leadership, banned toys and pets; televisions and internet access; any interaction with outsiders.

Dishrags sat on shelves in the communal storehouse.

After Warren Jeffs’ sentencing, his brother, Lyle, continued his policies. The Jeffs brothers could pluck a woman from her husband and force her into another relationship, seemingly at random. They could send the children to a different house entirely. They could excommunicate either or both parents, and send the kids to a caretaker. They exiled boys who might be marital competition and sent away business-owners to minimize their influence.

The FLDS faithful are also now surrounded by former members, who are now considered apostates. The state of Utah took over the church’s financial arm, the United Effort Plan Trust, in 2005. In 2014, the state-run trust began returning houses to the exiles that had built them, but that they had been evicted from.

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a formal commandment into it are the words: “We must never forget how the Lord blessed us in restoring our families taken in the 53 raid.”

But in ’53, the threat to FLDS families came from outsiders. Now it comes from insiders — some of them among the innermost.

A woman does yard work at an FLDS store and storehouse in Hildale, Utah.

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| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

14 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

Activist Terrill Musser, who left the church at age 18, has returned to Short Creek with his wife, Heather, and they’re raising their family in this Hildale home — built by Heather’s grandparents — they acquired through the United Effort Plan Trust.

and I saw a long-sleeved boy ride a bicycle down the street.

There is talk of a new grocery store. Last year, the town held its first public festivals since Jeffs banned them. The old church storehouse is now a public high school.

Federal intervention has also forced Short Creek to be friendlier to outsiders. In March 2016, a federal jury ruled that the town discriminated against nonFLDS members, denying them basic services like utility hook-ups and building permits. In December 2016 closing court arguments, the Justice Department said that the local police force should be disbanded, suggesting the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office could soon take over local law enforcement entirely. In April, though, the judge ruled against that, instead requiring revised procedures and an independent mentor. “It takes a long time to build up the trust with the victims for them to feel safe enough to come to outside agencies for help,” says Buster Johnson, a Mohave County supervisor. “This should have happened years ago, but government agencies have protected the abusers in Colorado City.”

On top of all this, an ongoing federal fraud case alleges that 11 top leaders, including Lyle Jeffs, ordered church members to apply for food stamps, which were then relinquished to the church. With the eyes of so many judicial agencies on the FLDS, the era of “live and let live” seems to have died.

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ut the growing influence of the outside world has pushed some members, as well as the leaders who control them, to double down, according to Musser, who left the FLDS when he was 18 and returned to his Short Creek house last year. If there’s anything that binds together a religious group, it’s a persecution narrative. It was true in 1840s mainline

Mormonism; it’s true in the 2010s fundamentalist offshoot.

Black knew that his still-faithful adult son, Sheldon Jr., was currently caring for the children Black had had with his now-excommunicated first wife, Angela.

He did not want his children raised in the FLDS culture. Parentless kids, forbidden to attend public school, are sometimes sent to work, says longtime Short Creek activist and former FLDS member Andrew Chatwin. He has photos of children welding at New Era Manufacturing Inc., which machines components for the aerospace and medical industries, and of girls driving around at midday, sitting four across in the front seats of delivery trucks. As he and I drove around town in June, we passed just such a crew, stopped in front of us at an intersection. The Department of Labor has multiple ongoing investigations against the church for child labor, according to regional director Juan Rodriguez.

Sometimes, leaders send the “orphaned” kids to “houses of hiding” scattered across the American West, Canada, and Central and South America, in a network detailed in a Department of Justice fraud investigation. The FLDS have also set up more outposts, like the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas; a colony in Bountiful, British Columbia; and, most recently, one in Pringle, South Dakota. But the Texas site has already been raided by federal authorities and is now in the crosshairs of the Department of Labor, and the residents of Pringle are not quiet in their concerns about the newcomers. Starting a secluded town in the 21st century is even harder than keeping a once-secluded town cloistered in the face of creeping secularism.

Black knew that girls are sometimes trafficked between compounds for sex. Today, intercourse is only allowed between about 15 high-ranking “seed

bearers” and whichever FLDS women (or girls) the choose, according to custody hearing document filed by Lyle Jeffs’ estranged wife Charlene. Blac didn’t want a “seed bearer” choosing his daughters So he went back to Short Creek to rescue them.

When people like Black want to reunite with thei children, they talk to Hoole. “My work has been bas cally to respond to parents who come to me and say ‘You know what, I’ve woken up. I’ve got to get my kid out of there,’ ” he says.

That may be straightforward legally — petitionin for custody if one parent actually lives with the chi dren, simply exercising existing custody rights if bot parents are out of the church. But it’s not that easy i practice: The still-loyal parent will “fight like crazy says Hoole, to keep the kids away. Caretakers wi resist. In Short Creek, local law enforcement may no cooperate. And the kids are rarely still living wher the parent left them. Sometimes, they’re in the hous es of hiding; other times, they’re behind the 10-foo walls that buttress faithful FLDS houses. Returnee catch glimpses of their family members in cars, th drivers’ identities hinting at where their offsprin now live. Sometimes they find out their family location by accident, as returnee Art Blackwell did He went to tune a neighbor’s piano and heard hi kids’ voices drifting through the slats in the fence He couldn’t see them, or speak to them. But he stoo outside their fortress for an hour, just listening.

Hoole first has to find the kids and figure out how to contact them; then he has to find the appropriat law enforcement and serve the legal papers. “An then we swoop in and try to get those kids,” he says Invariably, though, church members try to stop them When Black was ready, he asked the Mohav County Sheriff’s Department and sympathetic loca friends to accompany him to his old house. His knoc

to them as he did — unless he was willing to press charges against a family member.

“This is somebody you’ve been married to for 30 years, and now she’s your enemy,” Black says. He adds that Lyle Jeffs, not Angela, is the person he’d like to charge with a crime.

So Black let the girls go. And after he retreated, the FLDS snatched the girls from Angela and sent them back to Hildale. Black is now there, too, and he moved from his shop back into his house in December 2016.

He knows his daughters are nearby, but no matter how close he gets, there is always something between them — a fence, a relative, the God he gave them.

Deprogramming a child is possible. It just takes time. Adults — with their fully developed frontal lobes — often take years to slide from sincere belief to doubt. So it makes sense that the children who have grown up with the Jeffses’ authority, all the edicts and absolutes, who have never known anything but this town, would have trouble adapting to life in the outside world.

Give them time, and let them get used to freedom, says former FLDS member Lawrence Barlow. In the two years between when his daughters moved back in with him and when we spoke last summer, the kids have settled in to their new world.

They still wear their prairie dresses to school, but that’s fine, says Barlow. He wants them to feel how they feel, to do what they want, to make their own choices. He wants to give them what their religion could not.

“They’ve found out it’s OK for them to just be,” he says. PJH This story was originally published at High Country News (hcn.org) on May 1, 2017.

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 15

work at the town’s new dentist’s office. A year before, newly exiled, he still believed it all. Then, click by click, his faith washed away. He had returned to his Hildale house six months earlier, hoping to make it a nice place for the two youngest of his 17 children, who are still minors. He plans to go find them soon.

But the church’s continuing influence strains relations between parents and returned children. Parents feel like they are saving their kids from labor, forced marriage and mind control. Unfortunately, they often find out that their children don’t want to be saved.

When Black brought the kids home, things went smoothly for a little while. Then his daughters started getting phone calls from the FLDS. One daughter said they’d been told to fight for their rights. The other said, “Just fight.”

The girls put a picture of Warren Jeffs on the wall, “I LOVE YOU” scrawled on it. Black worried they would try to convert his and Cindy’s kids — who now understood that movies weren’t magic and who wore the kind of clothes that had once scandalized them — to “Warrenism.”

The new girls started pulling increasingly malicious pranks — raisins in their father’s bed, cat food in his shoes.

“All they wanted was to come back here,” he says, referring to Short Creek. “I just got so tired.”

One morning, Black and Cindy woke up to find that the girls were gone.

The FBI soon tracked them down. They had returned to Sheldon Jr.’s house, so Black decided to try to take them back — again.

But after the FLDS got word of Black’s plans, they had his daughters call Angela, the girls’ sent-away mother, to say they had nowhere to stay. Soon, the Arizona police called to let Black know the children were in Angela’s custody. She had just as much right

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

T

he church keeps an emotional clamp on the excommunicated — both disaffected ones like Black and those who are still enmeshed in the faith. But after the revelation of their leaders’ criminal practices, after they talk to other apostates, after they see the outside world isn’t so bad, most of them start to see the Jeffses in a new light. The online world is perhaps the best abettor of apostasy.

“If they get on the internet, for example, which is a no-no, and start looking at what’s happening,” says Hoole, “then they start having the pieces of the puzzle come together, and a lot of them will realize, ‘My heavens, I’ve left my children in that mess, and they’re being trained by somebody else for who knows what, and I’ve got to get them back.’ ” They come to understand that their children belong with them and that the custody they supposedly signed away is actually still theirs.

“Once you start reading, it’s like a flood,” Art Barlow told me in June, as he paused his landscaping

Now, she’s left the church and gained ownership of the property through the United Effort Plan Trust, and is seeking financing to convert it to a commercial enterprise.

| WELLNESS | DINING | A & E | NEWS | OPINION |

went unanswered, so he walked in, thinking no one was home. But he found his daughters standing in the kitchen. They froze, silent and still and white.

Out of an interior room walked his son, their caretaker. When Black told him he was here to get the girls, Sheldon Jr. produced the church’s custody papers. The sheriff pointed out that a parent had a legal right to his children.

Black’s children, though, no longer wanted him.

They had been told that he was evil, an apostate from their faith. “Look who’s breaking up the family now,” his son said.

“I started to feel wicked,” confesses Black. He wondered, “Am I hurting these people who have been so programmed against us?”

He put the girls in his car and drove away anyway.

Briell Decker stands in the industrial-sized kitchen of the Hildale compound where she once lived as one of the wives of FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs.

TETON COUNTY LIBRARY

| OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

16 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

CULTURE KLASH

Stories are Everywhere Brave storytellers set to divulge a little somethin’ at Cabin Fever Story Slams

BY KELSEY DAYTON

I

f Jeff Moran has learned anything from hosting the Cabin Fever Story Slams, it’s that stories are everywhere.

Moran, the chief marketing officer for the Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club, has emceed Teton County Library’s regular storytelling events since the event’s beginnings in January 2014. He always shares his own story to kick off the event. To make sure he has one for each theme he keeps a running list in his phone any time a childhood memories pops into his mind, or something hilarious happens with his friends. Life, it turns out, is made up of stories and they bring people together, he said.

The library will host the next story slam at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Pink Garter Theater. The theme is “the last time.” Those brave enough to share a story should arrive early to throw their

The stage sits ready for those brave local storytellers at the last Story Slam.

name in a drawing that will take place prior to the show.

Moran will draw the first name after his story and each storyteller will subsequently pick a name for a total of 10 storytellers (not counting Moran).

Each person selected will have five minutes to share their true story without the aid of notes.

Leah Shlachter, the adult program’s coordinator at Teton County Library, started the event after seeing one at Pacific University.

“It was magical,” she said.

The intimate event captivated her attention. There was nothing like it at the time in Jackson and she thought the community would embrace the format.

“It was incredibly simple,” she said. “Here is a microphone and here is a person telling you a story and then what transforms is so cool.”

Live storytelling connects people, she said. She worried people wouldn’t be brave enough to share, or they wouldn’t understand the format, but the event quickly grew. The library holds several story slams a year and usually more people volunteer to share stories than time allows.

People shouldn’t over think their stories, Shlachter said. People naturally know how to tell a good story. It needs a conflict and resolution. Start in the action and don’t give too much backstory, she said.

“And it’s not group therapy where you are just pouring your heart out,” she said.

Yet there is some soul baring, Moran said. The best stories are thoughtful, but not over-polished. The best storytellers aren’t acting or playing a part.

“They are just telling an authentic story,” he said. “When people tell a story where they are part of it, and it all has to be true and it’s about what they experienced – it’s really cool to see how the crowd embraces that and supports that authenticity.”

There are often stories of travel adventures and mishaps. Some stories are tragic, while others are light and accompanied by laughter. There’s always a story about meeting the person of your dreams, or that dream relationship falling apart, or a combination of the two, Moran said. Some stories are embarrassing. A surprising amount of stories deal with bodily functions — no

“And it’s not group therapy where you are just pouring your heart out.”

matter the topic.

The story slams are technically a competition but for most people, both those who share and those who come just to listen, it’s not about winning a prize. It’s about sharing a perspective or listening to someone else’s.

When Moran agreed to emcee the first Cabin Fever Story Slam, he didn’t really understand the event. He was nervous when he learned he’d need to tell a story himself. It was exhilarating and humbling, and he felt vulnerable and exposed, he said. But he also felt connected to the people who listened.

He’s told dozens of stories since, but that fear is still there.

“It’s still a little terrifying,” he said.

“I want people to know I’m terrified of telling a story too, but that’s part of the excitement and the energy.”

And the audience is always supportive of people who are sharing their true experiences, he said. The slams are an important reminder that storytelling is an ancient art form that still holds importance today.

“People baring their soul opens everyone up to being more accepting of each other,” he said. PJH

Cabin Fever Story Slam will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Pink Garter Theater.

THIS WEEK: December 6-12, 2017

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6

SEE CALENDAR PAGE 20

n Dance & Fitness Classes 8:00am, Dancers’ Workshop, $10.00 - $16.00, 307-733-6398 n AMSOIL SnoCross National at Snow King Mountain 8:30am, Snow King Resort, n Open Hockey - Weekday Morning 10:15am, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $10.00, (307) 201-1633 n All Ages Story Time 11:00am, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Public Skating - Weekday 12:00pm, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $5.00 - $8.00, (307) 201-1633 n Bo DePeña Winter Tour 2017 3:00pm, The Trap Bar & Grill, n Read to Rover 3:30pm, Valley of the Tetons Library,

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9

n AMSOIL SnoCross National at Snow King 8:30am, Snow King Resort, n Virginian Craft Fair 10:00am, Virginian Convention Center, Free, 3078806626 n Home For The Holidays Adoption Drive 11:00am, Animal Adoption Center, Free, 307-739-1881 n Winter Wonderland 11:00am, Teton County Library, n Tuba Christmas 12:00pm, National Museum of Wildlife Art, Free, 307-733-0618

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 17

n Dance & Fitness Classes 8:00am, Dancers’ Workshop, $10.00 - $16.00, 307-733-6398 n Books & Babies Story Time 10:00am, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Storytime - Youth Auditorium 10:30am, Teton County Library, n Story Time, Victor 10:30am, Valley of the Tetons Library,

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8

n Fun Friday - Youth Auditorium 3:30pm, Teton County Library, n Film Friday Victor 3:30pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, n FREE Friday Tasting 4:00pm, Jackson Whole Grocer & Cafe, Free, 307-733-0450 n Friday Tastings 4:00pm, The Liquor Store, Free, 307-733-4466 n Game Night 4:00pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Winter Bazaar and Health Fair 5:30pm, Medicine Wheel Wellness, n Jamie Marie -solo 6:00pm, Driggs City Center, n Open Gym - Adult Soccer 6:30pm, Teton Recreation Center, n Teen Night at the Library Youth Wing 6:30pm, Teton County Library, n ALICE 7:00pm, The Center Theater, $15.00 - $30.00, 307-733-6398 n Bo DePeña 7:00pm, The Trap Bar & Grill, n Art Opening :: Emily Boespflug :: Chasing Light: A Year in Paintings 7:00pm, Pink Garter Theatre, Free, n FREE Public Stargazing 7:30pm, Center for the Arts, n Dave and the Gin Mill Gypsies 7:30pm, Silver Dollar Showroom, Free, 307-732-3939 n Friday Night DJ featuring: Richie Beats 10:00pm, Pink Garter Theatre, n UP IN THE NIGHT BAND Million Dollar Cowboy Bar,

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7

n Teton Toastmasters 12:00pm, Teton County Commissioners Chambers, Free, n Public Skating - Weekday 12:00pm, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $5.00 - $8.00, (307) 201-1633 n Open Gym - Adult Basketball 12:00pm, Teton Recreation Center, n Writer’s Club 3:30pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Eli Williams, The Cougar Fund - Youth Auditorium 3:30pm, Teton County Library, n Open Build 5:30pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Great Books Discussion: “The Doctor” by Ann Hood, and “My Date with Neanderthal Woman” by David Galef - Meeting Room 1 6:00pm, Teton County Library, n Open Gym - Adult Soccer 6:30pm, Teton Recreation Center, n Jackson Hole Community Band 2017 Rehearsals 7:00pm, Center for the Arts, Free, 307-200-9463 n Pat Chadwick Trio 7:30pm, Silver Dollar Showroom, Free, 307-732-3939 n Salsa Night 9:00pm, The Rose, Free, 307733-1500

Compiled by Cory Garcia

| WELLNESS | DINING | A & E | NEWS | OPINION |

n Dance & Fitness Classes 8:00am, Dancers’ Workshop, $10.00 - $16.00, 307-733-6398 n Toddler Gym 10:00am, Teton Recreation Center, n Story Time 10:00am, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Open Hockey - Weekday Morning 10:15am, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $10.00, (307) 201-1633 n Public Skating - Weekday 12:00pm, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $5.00 - $8.00, (307) 201-1633 n Tech Time 1:00pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, Free, 208-787-2201 n Read to Rover 3:00pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, Free, 208-787-2201 n Art Association of JH Youth Auditorium 3:30pm, Teton County Library, n Intuition: Your 7th Sense 6:00pm, Medicine Wheel Wellness, n Planning Ahead for Standardized Testing - Youth Auditorium 6:00pm, Teton County Library, n The Swap Meet: Mayor Pete Muldoon 6:00pm, Teton County Library, n Open Gym - Adult Basketball 6:30pm, Teton Recreation Center, n Big Gigantic & Brasstracks 7:00pm, Pink Garter Theatre, n Big Gigantic with support from Brasstracks 9:00pm, Pink Garter Theatre, $36.00 - $71.00,

| OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

18 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

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Country Dubstep and EmoEDM Big Gigantic proves that with a little innovation, dance parties can always get better

BY CORY GARCIA @cfaust

I

spend far too much time wondering why there isn’t a country music/ dubstep act dominating the charts.

I acknowledge that’s a weird thing to think about, especially more than once, but I can’t help it: it’s one of those things that seems so obvious to me I can’t actually understand why someone smarter and with more resources than me hasn’t taken it all the way to the bank. Like, add some drops in-between all those rap drum patterns you’re already ripping off and cash in. You could even call it twostep -- yes, I realize that 2-step garage is already a genre, but we’re going to relabel that one truestep -- for extra laughs.

I just want more interesting sounds in music. It’s not that all pop music sounds the same, it’s just that pop music takes things that are interesting and then squeezes as much blood from the stone as it can get. It’s a real shame too, because until pop music became so streamlined, there was plenty of room for outsiders to get their random burst of fame by being catchy while being different.

“Mambo No. 5” was a hit song in 1999 for crying out loud. It’s not that Lou Bega couldn’t have a hit in 2017, it’s just more likely that today someone would have heard “Mambo No. 5” before it was a chart hit, put some pop gloss on it and handed it to Robin Thicke first. Anything that’s vaguely cool gets coopted, processed and spread out between four or five artists for a few months until the next thing comes around.

And so I return to my dreams of twostep, of banjos and breakdowns, of songs more interesting than what Avicii tried on True, bless his heart. Yes, I can dig deep into the genres of the world, and find interesting bands you’ve never heard about, like Deafcult and Jlin, but it’s nice to have stuff that’s interesting that might also get played at the grocery store. EDM could be that great musical melting pot.

Consider trap music. Yes, mixing dance music and hip-hop is one of the most obvious things in the world, but that doesn’t change the fact that, for a while

WEDNESDAY Big Gigantic & Brasstracks (Pink Garter) THURSDAY Pat Chadwick Trio (Silver Dollar) FRIDAY Jamie Marie (Driggs City Center) SATURDAY Dave and the Gin Mill Gypsies (Silver Dollar)

TUESDAY Bluegrass Tuesdays with One Ton Pig (Silver Dollar

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 19

Big Gigantic graces the stage at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 6 at Pink Garter in Jackson. Tickets start at $36.

MONDAY Hootenanny (Dornan’s)

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

that it’ll only be a matter of time before we start getting all matter of EDM crossover genres. Whether that manifests as some sort of faux-Nine Inch Nails industrialstep or someone finally gets a deathstep (death metal meets dubstep) song on the charts, I’m just hoping there’s someone out there willing to upset the balance a little bit.

What I don’t hope for is more emoEDM. You laugh, but what else what you call that Chainsmokers/Halsey song no one could escape last year? Call me a hypocrite if you must, but as much as I love new sounds, I don’t need the worst pre-breakup Blink-182 record stripmined and resold to me in a less interesting package. Hell, even Halsey admits she’s kind of sick of it, and it’s the reason she toured arenas this year.

But trust me on this country music/ dubstep thing. If Dee Jay Silver can tour the country barely remixing country songs into something vaguely dancy, anything is possible. Twostep is just too good a name not to use. PJH

SUNDAY Champagne Galaxy (Silver Dollar)

| WELLNESS | DINING | A & E | NEWS | OPINION |

at least, it seemed like anybody with a Serato was throwing trap songs into their sets because that’s what the masses wanted. Yes, it was a bit overdone, but it was fun, and it meant what festival lineups weren’t just made up of white dudes with silly hair, which is always a plus.

Jazz also plays surprisingly well with dance music. Nothing makes me happier than going to see a dance music act and there being a sax player involved. There’s nothing wrong with the robotic beats of most dance music, but I’ve always found that live instrumentation takes sets to a whole different level. Adding a human element to your average dance party almost always makes things better.

Colorado’s Big Gigantic, over at the Pink Garter Dec. 6, prove my point. Their songs are already bangers, but live drums and the occasional sax solo make them one of the can’t miss shows of the month.

Yes, it would be enjoyable if it was just two guys and some laptops, but prerecorded drums never feel as good in your chest as live drums.

Put on Big Gigantic’s “Good Time Rolls” for an example of what I mean about dance music’s melting pot potential. There’s a lot going on there, and hopefully there are some more interesting sonic experiments going on in bedrooms across the nation. With technology making it easier to produce music than even, I’m keeping music fingers crossed

PLANET PICKS

| OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

20 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10

n Messiah Sing-Along 4:00pm, Our Lady of the Mountains Catholic Church, Free, (307) 690-5015 n ALICE 4:00pm, The Center Theater, $15.00 - $30.00, 307-733-6398 n Open Gym - Adult Volleyball 4:00pm, Teton Recreation Center, n Off Square Theatre’s 2nd Act Short Readings & One Act Play 4:00pm, Black Box Theater, $8.00, 307-7333021 n Stagecoach Band 6:00pm, Stagecoach, Free, 307-733-4407 n Local’s Appreciation Party with Champagne Galaxy 7:00pm, Silver Dollar Showroom, Free, 307732-3939

MONDAY, DECEMBER 11

n Dance & Fitness Classes 8:00am, Dancers’ Workshop, $10.00 - $16.00, 307-733-6398 n Toddler Gym 10:00am, Teton Recreation Center, n Open Hockey - Weekday Morning 10:15am, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $10.00, (307) 201-1633 n Public Skating - Weekday 12:00pm, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $5.00 - $8.00, (307) 201-1633 n Engage 2017: Housing, Parking & Natural Resource Event 1:30pm, n Movie Monday - Youth Auditorium 3:30pm, Teton County Library, n Movie Monday 3:30pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Hootenanny 6:00pm, Dornan’s, Free, 307-733-2415 n Beginning/Intermediate Jazz Dance 6:15pm, Dancers’ Workshop, $25.00 - $55.00, 307-733-6398 n Open Gym - Adult Basketball 6:30pm, Teton Recreation Center,

SEE CALENDAR PAGE 23

Queen of Our Hearts The fantastical world of “Alice” comes to live this weekend in the Hole

BY KELSEY DAYTON

A

queen of hearts dancing in ballet pointe shoes; a white rabbit leaping through the air; and a massive caterpillar, far larger than a single person wiggling across the stage: “Alice” pushes the audience through the rabbit hole and into a whimsical and fantastical world created by Dancers’ Workshop.

Moving set pieces, bold costumes and 120 dancers bring to life Lewis Carroll’s classic story “Alice in Wonderland,” this weekend at the Center Theater. Dancers’ Workshop presents its original production at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and offers afternoon shows at 2 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday.

The show is magical, said Caroline Kucera, a senior at the Jackson Hole Community School. Kucera, 17, plays the eponymous Mad Hatter, bringing to life along with the other dancers a world of make-believe on the stage through movement.

“It’s really wild,” Kucera said. “’Alice’ is already a really crazy story.”

Every year, Dancers’ Workshop presents a holiday show, and often bring in professional companies from elsewhere and work with local dancers. But in original productions like “Alice,” all of the dancers are local and older members of the Junior Repertory Company, the school’s pre-professional dance company, perform the lead roles, said Kucera.

But it is some of the younger students that steal the show, she said. One of Kucera’s favorite moments in the ballet is a croquet game where the youngest dancers, about 6 and 7 years old, act as the hedgehogs the Queen Hearts uses as balls during the game.

There are a ton of people on stage, including dancers on pointe dressed as flamingos, as the little hedgehogs roll around. It’s emblematic of what Kucera loves about the show as a whole.

“There’s just a lot going on,” she said.

Dancers’ Workshop last produced “Alice” in 2009, said Michaela Ellingson, director of the Junior Repertory Company.

Ellingson was a senior in high school that

PHOTO BY SYDNEY BRYAN

n ALICE 2:00pm, The Center Theater, $15.00 - $30.00, 307-733-6398 n App Time - Study Room 4 2:00pm, Teton County Library, n Crochet at Your Library - Youth Wing 2:30pm, Teton County Library, n Open Gym - Adult Soccer 6:30pm, Teton Recreation Center, n ALICE 7:00pm, The Center Theater, $15.00 - $30.00, 307-733-6398 n Off Square Theatre’s 2nd Act Short Readings & One Act Play 7:00pm, Black Box Theater, $8.00, 307-7333021 n Dave and the Gin Mill Gypsies 7:30pm, Silver Dollar Showroom, Free, 307732-3939 n Teton Serenade 8:00pm, Dornan’s, $15.00, n UP IN THE NIGHT BAND Million Dollar Cowboy Bar,

DON’T MISS

year and played Dancers’ Workshop’s Junior Repertory Company, the pre-professional company , will be performing as part of “Alice.” the white rabbit.

Since that Local actor and director Bob Berky time, Dancers’ Workshop has made substantial changes worked with all the students as theatrical to the show, adding onto some scenes and director for the show. He coached everycutting others while creating new cho- one from the young mushrooms to the reography to new music and even intro- senior leads to make sure their physicality ducing new characters. This year they conveys the story.

The show features students of all added mushrooms, played by some of ages, some as young as 6 years old, along their youngest dancers. with members of Contemporary Dance “They are so hysterical,” she said.

What hasn’t changed, though, is the Wyoming, the professional modern dance company in residence at Dancers’ magic of the story. “’Alice in Wonderland’ is all about Workshop. It also showcases a variety of imagination and this mystical and fan- dance from ballet to modern to a little hip tastic world that Alice finds herself in,” hop and even some ballroom, Ellingson said.

Ellingson said.

“I think the story about ‘Alice in The show opens in a quiet and subdued scene, but once Alice, played by Wonderland’ is such a journey through Moran May, falls down the rabbit hole, imagination and it’s so absurd and it’s just everything bursts into high-energy and so out there,” Ellingson said. “What I’m excited about is for people to just come color, Ellingson said.

The set, designed by John Wayne Cook and take the journey with us and just and Dancers’ Workshop Artistic Director enjoy all the students’ hard work and the Babs Case, features massive moving parts hysterical characters that weave in and like doors that open like portals to reveal out of the storyline alongside the gorgeous sets and costumes.” other scenes and worlds.

“Alice” is not a holiday story, but “The sets are a huge part of this proDancers’ Workshop’s annual big production,” Ellingson said.

Unlike plays, there are no words in duction brings the community togeththe dance production. Each character has er, Kucera said. She’s always amazed at its own unique movement vocabulary to how many people attend the winter dance production. bring it life, Ellingson said.

“It’s turned into a holiday tradition,” The white rabbit, played Annie Estes, is always rushed. Estes’ moves are quick and Kucera said. “It doesn’t really matter what precise, with lots of jumps and a fusion of show it is.” PJH classical and contemporary dance.

Dancers’ Workshop’s “Alice” will be perHailey Barlow plays the Queen of Hearts and dances on pointe with a formed at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday. The cost quirky repertoire.

“It’s very balletic and technical, but of admission is $28 adults, $18 students for Friday, Saturday evening and Sunday also hilarious,” Ellingson said.

Dania Sinzu plays a dodo bird and a shows and $23 adults, $13 students for the jabberwocky. Her dodo bird is sweet and Saturday matinee. A “Meet the Characters” seems to float. (She also rides a giant tri- autograph session will occur on stage following the Saturday matinee. cycle on stage.)

Her jabberwocky takes a dark and almost sinister turn, though, as it haunts Alice’s nightmare.

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JACKSON HOLE

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Saturday, January 6 | 4 - 9 p.m. | The Center For The Arts $10 tickets at the door

JACKSON HOLE SNOWBOARDER MAGAZINE

VENDOR AND SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES ARE AVAILABLE. EMAIL SALES@PLANETJH.COM OR CALL 307-732-0299

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 21

PRESENTED BY

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

Plus pizza and cocktails.

| WELLNESS | DINING | A & E | NEWS | OPINION |

Get your grubby hands on the freshest gear from various vendors, grab a beer from Melvin and Snake River Brewing and get down to music from a local DJ.

| OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

22 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

A24 FILMS

CINEMA

Fresh Turkey The Disaster Artist does more than re-create a famously bad movie.

BY SCOTT RENSHAW @scottrenshaw

T

he 2003 drama The Room has been alternately celebrated and reviled as one of the worst movies ever made—and I’ll just have to take everyone’s word for that. Unlike many who find a perverse fascination in spectacular awfulness, I’ve never carved out time for the cinematic equivalent of someone saying “ugh, this sour milk is disgusting, here, smell it.” And allow me to assure those of you who are similarly The Room virgins that The Disaster Artist requires no such background to be delightful.

That might seem counter-intuitive, because in one sense The Disaster Artist is built on a grand act of impersonation. James Franco—who also directed—stars as Tommy Wiseau, the enigmatic writer/director/star of The Room whose vaguely Eastern European accent, cascade of rock-star hair and apparent obliviousness to his complete lack of dramatic talent make him a fascinating figure. All it takes is watching

TRY THESE

a few clips of Wiseau on YouTube to get a sense of how Franco has embodied the sheer alienness of this guy beyond his fractured syntax and heavy-lidded self-confidence. But can the movie work if you’re not so familiar with Wiseau’s rhythms that the performance seems uncanny?

The fact that The Disaster Artist does transcend its potential simply to be a remarkable simulacrum comes down to a savvy structural decision by screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, adapting the memoir by Greg Sestero. Like Ed Wood and Bowfinger—two other comedies about determined but delusional film auteurs—The Disaster Artist is mostly a buddy movie built around a relationship between two oddballs who need one another. Dave Franco plays Sestero, who is a 19-year-old wannabe actor in San Francisco circa 1998 when he meets Wiseau in an acting class. The scene is one of the movie’s most hilarious bits—the uptight Sestero watching dumbstruck as Wiseau shrieks his way through the “Stella!” scene from A Streetcar Named Desire while literally climbing the set—but it also sets the stage for the nature of the central relationship. Sestero admires Wiseau’s complete commitment, even to looking ridiculous; the solitary Wiseau seems happy just to know that somebody believes in him.

Ed Wood (1994) Johnny Depp, Martin Landau R

The casting of the Dave Franco and James Franco in The Disaster Artist Franco brothers could have felt like a stunt, but and sympathetic when people do laugh instead, The Disaster Artist gets a lot in his face. The key scenes are effecof mileage out of the natural chemistive—whether it’s an awkward attempt try between them. Dave falls naturally to meet Judd Apatow in a restaurant, into a deferential younger-brother role, or Wiseau’s reaction to the unintended as Wiseau becomes not just Sestero’s laughter at The Room’s premiere—but friend, but also his patron as he financthe focus is so much on Wiseau’s bizarre es their mutual move to Los Angeles behavior that it’s not always easy to see to pursue their acting dreams. And it’s a real person underneath it all. also important that Dave provides a Yet there’s still a charm to celebratgrounded counterpoint to James’ showing The Room as a sheer act of will, ier performance, serving as an audience albeit one backed by Wiseau’s mysterisurrogate for the idea that, sure, Wiseau ously bottomless bank account. When is weird, but maybe he’s an admirable the credits roll with shows side-by-side kind of weird. comparisons of scenes from The Room It all builds, of course, to centerand James Franco’s own version of ing much of the movie’s second half those scenes, it feels like an unnecesaround the production of The Room in sary sop to The Room’s cult of fans who 2002, and the set pieces here are truly might be impressed by the duplication. inspired. From the seemingly endless Even if you’ve never seen The Room number of takes Wiseau requires to before, it’s clear that The Disaster Artist remember a single breathless, ridicuis best not at emphasizing re-creation, lous string of lines—that Wiseau himbut honoring a work that was like absoself wrote—to Wiseau’s insistence on lutely nothing else. PJH making himself the centerpiece of a sex scene, The Disaster Artist serves as a wonderful chronicle of someone with THE DISASTER ARTIST an undeniable vision. The notion that this vision is jaw-droppingly misguided BBB.5 James Franco never even occurs to him.

It becomes a tricky balancing act for Dave Franco James Franco to maintain the delib- Seth Rogen erate mystery around Wiseau, while Rated R also making him recognizably human

Bowfinger (1999) Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy PG-13

The Room (2003) Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero R

Spring Breakers (2012) Vanessa Hudgens, James Franco R

KICKING & STREAMING

Neutralizing the Net

BY CORY GARCIA @cfaust

I

FOR COMPLETE EVENT DETAILS VISIT PJHCALENDAR.COM

•••••••••••

HAPPY HOUR

1/2 Off Drinks Daily 5-7pm

••••••••••• Monday-Saturday 11am, Sunday 10:30am 832 W. Broadway (inside Plaza Liquors)•733-7901

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 23

Come check out your favorite NFL/College team on our 10 HD tvs!

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

t’s easy to know when moments are special. The kiss you’ve longed for, unwrapping the perfect gift, the right song bringing a tear to your eye ... special moments stir something deep inside us that we can’t ignore. We’re very good at appreciating what’s right in front of us. What we’re less good at is appreciating when the state of things around us is good.

If you’re left-leaning, 2017 has most likely been a reckoning for how you’ve viewed the world. How many times have you read on Twitter someone feeling like they’re living in a broken form of reality?

There is not enough time nor words in this paper to talk about the general society weirdness of the year.

And now comes the battle over net neutrality, and if you’re just now realizing how scary things could be for your internet usage in the future, welcome to the party. Not to sound smarter than you, but I’ve long known that we’re living in the golden age of the internet and that it was only a matter of time before the good times would come to an end.

Babies being born right now won’t realize how good their parents had it. Sure,

THEODOR MOISE

Have you started asking yourself how you’ll prioritize your internet budget there was a time once Net Neutrality is dead? when getting online meant To pick one example out of many, realfloppy discs found at Target and hoping ly think about what Netflix does for a that no one picked up the phone while moment. Off the top of my head, this one, were messing around online. But it got still reasonably priced service: allows us better, and pretty quickly too. to binge watch shows without having to Just think about all the wonders you’ve sit through commercials; lets us feast on been taking for granted. From the wild our favorite TV comfort foods; is making days of illegal mp3 downloading to playthe stand-up comedy special meaningful ing video games with strangers across the again; brings indie films to people who world to porn without having to go into don’t live in cool cities; allows Americans that weird room behind the curtain at to watch programming they’d otherwise the video store to not having to go to the miss from around the world; and it’s an mall to shop to being able to hand your excellent babysitter that you won’t have to kid a tablet with Netflix installed so that worry about seducing your partner. It’s not you can get a few hours of quiet, a free and magic, but it’s close. open internet has made your life better in And that’s just one of many services out countless ways. there. Hulu and Amazon are both conThe good times couldn’t last forever. tenders to Netflix, but if you look past the That’s not how capitalism works. The giants there’s a whole world of cool stuff people in charge of the technology that out there that more than justifies cutting has changed your life are in the business the cable cord. You’ve got Shudder providof making money, not making sure liting horror viewing that used to be damn tle Bobby doesn’t break anything in the near impossible to find in the States. The waiting room. There’s gold in them digital WWE Network and Powerbomb.tv are hills, and by god they’re going to mine revolutionizing how we view professional it. We, as always, will have no say in the wrestling. The Great Courses can expand matter. your mind and there are plenty of options Have you started asking yourself how if you’re looking to reduce your body. Once you’ll prioritize your internet budget once you get your time machine built, go back Net Neutrality is dead? I’m not here to tell 10 years and tell people they’ll be able to you how to spend your money, but this watch HBO without a pricey cable TV submight be just what you need to take that scription package and watch their brain long-needed vacation from social media leak out of their ears. you keep promising yourself. ISPs are Change is coming, you can be sure of going to make so much cash in the future that. But until the day comes that we’re by letting people buy “access to [site type]” paying pennies so we can get our tweets gift cards. Just you wait and see. out, let us enjoy the fall. That’s what this Me, I’m going all in on video streaming. column is going to do at least. Streaming Sure, the rest of the internet is important is wonderful, and I’m going to poke at all for sure, but of all the things it does for corners. Join me: You know there’s nothme, I find the most value in the near limiting good on TV anyway. PJH less options of entertainment provided by streaming video.

n Dance & Fitness Classes 8:00am, Dancers’ Workshop, $10.00 - $16.00, 307-733-6398 n Public Skating - Weekday 12:00pm, Snow King Sports & Event Center, $5.00 - $8.00, (307) 201-1633 n Open Gym - Adult Basketball 12:00pm, Teton Recreation Center, n Theatre with Nicole Madison - Youth Auditorium 3:30pm, Teton County Library, n Our Lady of Guadalupe Procession 6:00pm, n Teton Valley Book Club 6:00pm, Valley of the Tetons Library, n Open Gym - Adult Volleyball 6:30pm, Teton Recreation Center, n Cabin Fever Story Slam: The Last Time Pink Garter Theatre 7:00pm, n Bluegrass Tuesdays with One Ton Pig 7:30pm, Silver Dollar Showroom, Free, 307-73239394:30pm, Mangy Moose,

| WELLNESS | DINING | A & E | NEWS | OPINION |

As the Internet party comes to an end, it’s time to save all your pennies for video streaming

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12

| OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

24 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

PHOTO VIA PEARL ST. FACEBOOK

EAT IT!

Mangy Moose Restaurant, with locally sourced, seasonally FRESH FOOD at reasonable prices, is a always a FUN PLACE to go with family or friends for a unique dining experience. The personable staff will make you feel RIGHT AT HOME and the funky western decor will keep you entertained throughout your entire visit.

Reservations at (307) 733-4913 3295 Village Drive • Teton Village, WY

www.mangymoose.com

Breakfast of Snowy Champions Where to eat before hitting the slopes

BY HELEN GOELET

W FAMILY FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENT PIZZAS, PASTAS & MORE HOUSEMADE BREAD & DESSERTS FRESH, LOCALLY SOURCED OFFERINGS TAKE OUT AVAILABLE Dining room and bar open nightly at 5:00pm (307) 733-2460 • 2560 Moose Wilson Road • Wilson, WY

A Jackson Hole favorite since 1965

ell, it’s that time of year again.

While winter hit a month earlier than normal this year and eliminated any chance of and Indian Summer — let alone much of a Fall season — it still managed to sneak up on me. As a result, evolution and animal instinct have taken over my body and are forcing me to crawl into the warmth of my bed earlier.

More noticeably, though, are the firing of neurons in my brain that cause me to crave hot, heavy, insulation-building (that extra cushion can’t be bad if its a matter of survival…) food.

Pearl St. Bagels is an institution that should be visited on the regular.

With the ski seaYour doctor would totally agree. son upon us, I started to think about how important Pearl Street Bagels breakfast is to our avid ski community.

Whether you’re heading from east Whether it’s a grab-and-go egg sandwich Jackson to the village and want a quick or a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast covered in coffee and bagel sandwich to go, or you’re syrup, gravy or both, everyone in Jackson heading up the pass for an early morning has a favorite pre-ski fuel up spot. lap, Pearl St. Bagels is an institution that But for those who are new to town or should be visited on the regular. Lucky for just looking to change things up new to you there are two locations — one in the town, here’s our guide to the winter’s top middle of town on Pearl Street and the spots. other in Wilson — where you can snag some sweet breakfast sandwiches made BEST GRAB-AND-GO OPTIONS every morning with fresh bagels. Whether Sweet Cheeks Meats you’re into bacon, egg and cheese or sauOn the corner of Scott and Alpine Lane sage, egg and cheese — or even bacon/ sits this small butchery, which features sausage, egg and no cheese — they’ve got a daily breakfast sandwich for $5 which you covered. Just be sure to get in early, will absolutely not disappoint. Served because these babies fly off the shelf fast. on house-made biscuits and made with house-cured and butchered meats, they Hole Grocer offer everything from Royales (basically If you’re looking for food to keep you a burger with cheese, an egg and some- pushing (or floating) through a powder times pickles), to Sunnyside Swines (think day, Hole Grocer’s breakfast burritos are ham and eggs) and the occasional break- your ticket. They’ve got bacon, sausage fast burrito. Don’t miss their excellent and veggie options and all of them are selection of house sauces. This place is a loaded. As a bonus: If you’re having a must for breakfast sandwich aficionados. slow morning, head over there after 10

®

Open nightly 5:30pm

733-3912 160 N. Millward • Reservations recommended Reserve online at bluelionrestaurant.com

Large Specialty Pizza ADD: Wings (8 pc)

Medium Pizza (1 topping) Stuffed Cheesy Bread

$ 13 99

for an extra $5.99/each

(307) 733-0330 520 S. Hwy. 89 • Jackson, WY

a.m. and you’ll find that they’re only $5.

South Cable

BEST SIT DOWN OPTIONS Picnic

HAPPY HOUR Daily 4-6:00pm

307.201.1717 | LOCALJH.COM ON THE TOWN SQUARE

Nora’s Fish Creek Inn Yet another institution in Jackson, Nora’s is known for their all-American breakfast, which is killer. Located in Wilson, it’s a great option for brunch after those early morning pass laps and a good fueling station before heading to the mountain.

Their pancake stacks and banana bread french toast are the very best, as are the huevos rancheros. If you head before 9 a.m., they’ll even poach your eggs.

Or, if you’re looking for a boozy brunch, they’ve got you covered with bloodies and mimosas. We won’t judge.

Pearl Street Market While Pearl Street Market is a little off the radar for breakfasters, it really shouldn’t be. The market serves excellent and filling breakfast, and their breakfast tacos are loaded with deliciously spiced eggs, veggies and your choice of sausage or bacon. They also offer pancakes, traditional bacon and eggs with toast, and whatever else will please your fancy. PJH

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

This gem is in West Jackson down by the new post office and offers fare for all types of eaters. Looking for a grain bowl or veggie/vegan/gluten-free yet energy-boosting breakfast? This is your spot.

Or, are you looking for a huge breakfast burrito covered in verde sauce, or a gravy-covered biscuit with ham? This is also your spot. Though it’s usually busy, the service is excellent and food comes out quickly. And if you don’t feel like sitting, you can always grab it to go along with a handful of their delicious pastries.

They’re a great mid-mountain snack.

Lunch 11:30am Monday-Saturday Dinner 5:30pm Nightly

| WELLNESS | DINING | A & E | NEWS | OPINION |

In the new Caldera house in Teton Village, South Cable offers croissant breakfast sandwiches made with fresh croissants, eggs bacon and cheese and pastries. They’ll go great with that boozefilled beverage you can also attain at Caldera. That’s right — if you’re in need of some hair-of-the-dog, their sloshies are deliciously fresh.

Local is a modern American steakhouse and bar located on Jackson’s historic town square.

Serving locally raised beef and, regional game, fresh seafood and seasonally inspired food, Local offers the perfect setting for lunch, drinks or dinner.

Free Coffee with Pastry Purchase Every Day from 3 to 5pm

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 25

1110 MAPLE WAY JACKSON, WY 307.264.2956 picnicjh.com

| OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

26 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

H O L I D AY G AT H E R I N G FRIDAY, DECEM B ER 15 TH

3 P M - 6PM

1155 S HIGHWAY 89 JACKSON, WY 83OO1 | OPEN DAILY: 7AM - 1OPM | 3O7-733-O45O | JACKSONWHOLEGROCER.COM

THE LOCALS

FAVORITE PIZZA 2012-2016 •••••••••

$7

$5 Shot & Tall Boy

LUNCH

SPECIAL Slice, salad & soda

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••

TV Sports Packages and 7 Screens

Under the Pink Garter Theatre (307) 734-PINK • www.pinkygs.com

Featuring dining destinations from buffets and rooms with a view to mom and pop joints, chic cuisine and some of our dining critic’s faves!

ASIAN & CHINESE TETON THAI

Serving the world’s most exciting cuisine.

Teton Thai offers a splendid array of flavors: sweet, hot, sour, salt and bitter. All balanced and blended perfectly, satisfying the most discriminating palate. Open daily. 7432 Granite Loop Road in Teton Village, (307) 733-0022 and in Driggs, (208) 787-8424, tetonthai.com.

THAI ME UP

Home of Melvin Brewing Co. Freshly remodeled offering modern Thai cuisine in a relaxed setting. New tap system with 20 craft beers. New $8 wine list and extensive bottled beer menu. Open daily for dinner at 5pm.

Downtown at 75 East Pearl Street. View our tap list at thaijh.com/brews. 307-733-0005.

CONTINENTAL ALPENHOF

Serving authentic Swiss cuisine, the Alpenhof features European style breakfast entrées and alpine lunch fare. Dine in the Bistro for a casual meal or join us in the Alpenrose dining room for a relaxed dinner experience. Breakfast 7:30am-10am. Coffee & pastry 10am-11:30am.

Lunch 11:30am-3pm. Aprés 3pm-5:30pm.

Dinner 6pm-9pm. For reservations at the Bistro or Alpenrose, call 307-733-3242.

THE BLUE LION

A Jackson Hole favorite for 39 years. Join us in the charming atmosphere of a historic home. Serving fresh fish, elk, poultry, steaks, and vegetarian entrées. Ask a local about our rack of lamb. Live acoustic guitar music most nights. Open nightly at 5:30 p.m. Reservations recommended, walk-ins welcome.. 160 N. Millward, (307) 733-3912, bluelionrestaurant.com

PICNIC

Our mission is simple: offer good food, made fresh, all day, every day. We know everyone’s busy, so we cater to on-the-go lifestyles with quick, tasty options for breakfast and lunch, including pastries and treats from our sister restaurant Persephone. Also offering coffee and espresso drinks plus wine and cocktails.

Open Mon-Fri 7am-5pm, Wknds 7am-3pm 1110 Maple Way in West Jackson 307-2642956www.picnicjh.com

ELEANOR’S

Enjoy all the perks of fine dining, minus the dress code at Eleanor’s, serving rich, saucy dishes in a warm and friendly setting. Its bar alone is an attraction, thanks to reasonably priced drinks and a loyal crowd. Come get a belly-full of our two-time gold medal wings. Open at 11 a.m. daily. 832 W. Broadway, (307) 733-7901.

LOCAL

Local, a modern American steakhouse and bar, is located on Jackson’s historic town square. Our menu features both classic and specialty cuts of locally-ranched meats and wild game alongside fresh seafood, shellfish, house-ground burgers, and seasonallyinspired food. We offer an extensive wine list and an abundance of locally-sourced products. Offering a casual and vibrant bar atmosphere with 12 beers on tap as well as a relaxed dining room, Local is the perfect spot to grab a burger for lunch or to have drinks and dinner with friends. Lunch Mon-Sat 11:30am. Dinner Nightly 5:30pm. 55 North Cache, (307) 201-1717, localjh.com.

LOTUS ORGANIC RESTAURANT

Serving organic, freshly-made world cuisine while catering to all eating styles. Endless organic and natural meat, vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free choices. Offering super smoothies, fresh extracted juices, espresso and tea. Full bar and house-infused botanical spirits. Serving breakfast, lunch & dinner starting at 8am daily. 140 N. Cache, (307) 7340882, theorganiclotus.com.

MANGY MOOSE

Mangy Moose Restaurant, with locally sourced, seasonally fresh food at reasonable prices, is a always a fun place to go with family or friends for a unique dining experience. The personable staff will make you feel right at home and the funky western decor will keep you entertained throughout your entire visit. Teton Village, (307) 733-4913, mangymoose.com.

MOE’S BBQ

Opened in Jackson Hole by Tom Fay and David Fogg, Moe’s Original Bar B Que features a Southern Soul Food Revival through its awardwinning Alabama-style pulled pork, ribs, wings, turkey and chicken smoked over hardwood served with two unique sauces in addition to Catfish and a Shrimp Moe-Boy sandwich. A daily rotation of traditional Southern sides and tasty desserts are served fresh daily. Moe’s BBQ stays open late and features a menu for any budget. While the setting is family-friendly, a full premium bar offers a lively scene with HDTVs for sports fans, music, shuffle board and other games upstairs. Large party takeout orders and full service catering with delivery is also available.

VIRGINIAN SALOON

Come down to the historic Virginian Saloon and check out our grill menu! Everything from 1/2 pound burgers to wings at a great price!

The grill is open in the Saloon from 4pm - 10pm daily. (307) 739-9891. 750 West Broadway.

SNAKE RIVER BREWERY & RESTAURANT

America’s most award-winning microbrewery is serving lunch and dinner. Take in the atmosphere while enjoying wood-fired pizzas, pastas, burgers, sandwiches, soups, salads and desserts. $9 lunch menu. Happy hour 4 to 6 p.m., including tasty hot wings. The freshest beer in the valley, right from the source! Free WiFi. Open 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. 265 S. Millward. (307) 739-2337, snakeriverbrewing.com.

ITALIAN CALICO

A Jackson Hole favorite since 1965, the Calico continues to be one of the most popular restaurants in the Valley. The Calico offers the right combination of really good food, (much of which is grown in our own gardens in the summer), friendly staff; a reasonably priced menu and a large selection of wine. Our bar scene is eclectic with a welcoming vibe. Open nightly at 5 p.m. 2560 Moose Wilson Rd., (307) 733-2460.

MEXICAN EL ABUELITO

PIZZA DOMINO’S PIZZA

Hot and delicious delivered to your door. Handtossed, deep dish, crunchy thin, Brooklyn style and artisan pizzas; bread bowl pastas, and oven baked sandwiches; chicken wings, cheesy breads and desserts. Delivery. 520 S. Hwy. 89 in Kmart Plaza, (307) 733-0330.

PINKY G’S

PIZZERIA CALDERA

Jackson Hole’s only dedicated stone-hearth oven pizzeria, serving Napolitana-style pies

Find out in our 2017 Winter Dining Issue!

Whether your guest is a vegan, a meat head or a particularly picky partner, join us as we uncover the valley’s best places to feed your dietary-demanding friends.

Plus, we’ll dish on the best places around town to find dinnerware, decor and more for feeding and entertaining on your turf.

Serve your message to more than 10,000 hungry readers who know this special issue as the go-to guide for staying fresh on the valley’s dining scene.

FIRST TASTE

20% OFF

DISCOUNTED RSVP’S ARE DUE 12/15 @4 P.M.

SECOND COURSE DISCOUNTED RATES

ON STANDS DECEMBER 20

BOOK NOW FOR BEST RATES!

ART DEADLINE 12/18 @10 A.M.

CALL 307.732.0299 OR EMAIL SALES@PLANETJH.COM

DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 27

using the freshest ingredients in traditional and creative combinations. Five local micro-brews on tap, a great selection of red and white wines by the glass and bottle, and one of the best views of the Town Square from our upstairs deck. Daily lunch special includes slice, salad or soup, any two for $8. Happy hour: half off drinks by the glass from 4 - 6 daily. Dine in or carry out. Or order online at PizzeriaCaldera.com, or download our app for iOS or Android. Open from 11am - 9:30pm daily at 20 West Broadway.

307-201-1472.

Where do you take the picky eater visiting town this ski season, and how do you cater to the friend who crashes your dinner party?

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

The locals favorite! Voted Best Pizza in Jackson Hole 2012-2016. Seek out this hidden gem under the Pink Garter Theatre for NY pizza by the slice, salads, strombolis, calzones and many appetizers to choose from. Try the $7 ‘Triple S’ lunch special. Happy hours 10 p.m. - 12 a.m.

Sun.- Thu. Text PINK to 71441 for discounts.

Delivery and take-out. Open daily 11a.m. to 2 a.m. 50 W. Broadway, (307) 734-PINK.

DINNER

| WELLNESS | DINING | A & E | NEWS | OPINION |

Serving authentic Mexican cuisine and appetizers in a unique Mexican atmosphere. Home of the original Jumbo Margarita. Featuring a full bar with a large selection of authentic Mexican beers. Lunch served weekdays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Nightly dinner specials. Open seven days, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. 385 W. Broadway, (307) 733-1207.

GUESS WHO’S CO M I N G TO

| OPINION | NEWS | A & E | DINING | WELLNESS |

| PLANET JACKSON HOLE |

28 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

SUDOKU

Complete the grid so that each row, column, diagonal and 3x3 square contain all of the numbers 1 to 9.

No math is involved. The grid has numbers, but nothing has to add up to anything else. Solve the puzzle with reasoning and logic. Solving time is typically 10 to 30 minutes, depending on your skill and experience.

We Clean Everything!

307-690-3605 Residential Housekeeping • Daily • Weekly • Monthly • Small & Large Office • Commercial Facilities • Carpets & Upholstery • Windows • Power Washing • One Time Deep Cleanings • Move Outs • Real Estate Closings Closing Cleanings

L.A.TIMES “IT’S AMAZING” By C.C. BURNIKEL

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2017

ACROSS

1 /, on some score sheets 6 Herbal tea 12 Premier League powerhouse 19 Ascended 20 Calligraphy container 21 Top-seller 22 Tehran tinderbox for 14-plus months 24 Getting on in years 25 Asthmatic’s device 26 Super, slangily 27 Batman after Michael 28 Google : Android :: Apple : __ 29 Got the word 30 It borders three oceans 32 Resort near Boston 34 Making the Guinness Book, say 38 Wander (about) 41 Took charge of 44 Long stretches 45 Netflix alternative 46 Down tune 48 Ocean rings 50 Earned 51 Some charges 54 Investment firm T. __ Price 55 World Cup events 60 Plummeted 61 Ne’er-do-well 63 Catch of the day, perhaps 64 Inc., in Toronto 66 Euro divs.

67 Workout addicts 69 “That’s no kidding” 72 Sault __ Marie 74 Pull 75 Jerry-rigged, in a way 79 Ekberg of “La Dolce Vita” 82 Crime scene figure 84 Recycling center item 87 Stable baby 88 National summer sport of Canada 90 Luanda is its cap.

91 Mourning on the court 93 Distant 94 Sudden attack 96 Dish alternative 99 Lush 100 Lady Tigers’ sch.

101 Log holder 106 More offensive 108 Queen in “Frozen” 109 Lackluster finish 113 And the like: Abbr.

114 Sweetie 115 Mother of Castor 117 Choice word 119 Get going, as an oven 121 It’s not all good ... and it’s literally found in this puzzle’s circles 123 Roll call discovery 124 Figure of speech?

125 Oddball 126 Agreement often reluctant but still respectful 127 Mischief-makers 128 Thrills

DOWN 1 2

Teahouse treat Lara’s husband in “Doctor Zhivago” 3 Wedding settings 4 Genuine article 5 Barely beat (out) 6 It may be nervous 7 Reduced to rubble 8 Aspen traveler’s item 9 Cathedral recess 10 Detective fiction genre 11 Movie makeup dept. creations 12 Inferior 13 Cry out loud 14 Flight takeoff fig.

15 ’60s protest 16 What a Facebook post might draw

17 Fish trapped in pots 18 Adams of “Her” 19 __ Tzu 23 Sister of Clio 27 Space devoid of matter 31 Lust, e.g.

32 Dopey frame, e.g.

33 Short lines at the post office?

35 Hardy’s “Pure Woman” 36 Now, in Nicaragua 37 Climbing aids 39 Mole, perhaps 40 Classroom array 41 Shenanigan 42 School since 1440 43 Violet Crawley’s title in “Downton Abbey” 47 Uncertainties 49 Impose, as a tax 50 Bug catcher 52 One-named Tejano pop star 53 This, to Picasso 56 Plains folks?

57 Belgium winter hrs.

58 Social division 59 Remark to the audience 62 Pro with a siren 65 Paternity test letters 68 Uses elbow grease on 70 Comfy slip-on 71 Skinny 72 Impact sound 73 Dabbling ducks 76 Thin as __ 77 Important animal in ’70s U.S.-China diplomacy 78 Future chicken 80 “Unexpected blends” tea brand 81 Heaps 83 Golf course figure 85 Ben of “Roots” 86 Film lioness

89 92 95 96

Send-__: farewells “Hmm ... “ What “4” may mean: Abbr.

Porcelain with a pale green glaze 97 Justice Dept. bigwigs 98 Beaning aftermath, sometimes 102 Odysseus’ kingdom 103 Revolting sort?

104 Formally give 105 Takes courses at home?

107 Felt the pain 110 “Hot corner” base 111 Ministers 112 Cartesian connection 113 Kathryn of HBO’s “Oz” 115 Old Parmesan bread 116 Eye __ 118 Adheres (to) 119 Settle up 120 Biloxi-to-Mobile dir.

121 Like Twiggy’s style 122 Places to crash, in ads

HALF OFF BLAST OFF!

COSMIC CAFE WITH CAROL MANN

A Cherokee Teaching for Our Times

T

FEEDING THE GOOD WOLF IN DIFFICULT TIMES

BE A NEUTRAL OBSERVER

HALFOFFJH.COM

BE MINDFUL OF WHAT YOU SAY IN CONVERSATION It can be so tempting when you are upset, stressed and in disagreement with what’s going on, to complain, criticize and commiserate in conversation with friends about how awful a person or situation is. Talking with others in these ways spreads the energy of the bad wolf in you and in others.

The high road here is to clearly and objectively express your concerns and ideas without reliving and/or reviving another round of emotionality. When you are with like-minded people, further feed the good wolf by sharing a positive vision for what’s possible and generating actions to support this.

PRACTICE WARMHEARTEDNESS Another way to replace knee-jerk negative reactions and judgments is by shifting your emotional reactivity from anger to warmheartedness. By being mindful, you can immediately move your awareness out of your head and into your heart. As you change the channel from contraction to warmheartedness, you’ll feel so much better about yourself and not so triggered about them.

FEEDING THE GOOD WOLF IS THE NEW PARADIGM Practicing feeding the good wolf as consistently as possible is how we are all empowered right now to contribute to a collaborative and inclusive world reality in which separation and negative polarities no longer rule the day. Feeling you are too insignificant for your attitudes and behaviors to make a big difference? Here’s a great answer to this concern from the Dali Lama: “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito!” PJH

Carol Mann is a longtime Jackson resident, radio personality, former Grand Targhee Resort owner, author, and clairvoyant. Got a Cosmic Question? Email carol@yourcosmiccafe.com

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DECEMBER 6, 2017 | 29

Journalists and yogis have learned the valuable skill of observing people and events objectively with no judgment. They see what is. This perspective allows them and

If you find yourself focusing obsessively on gloom and doom, be aware this only creates more of the same.

By the laws of attraction, you are informing the universe/unified field of consciousness that you are fascinated by the negativity.

The universe has no opinion about this, and simply brings into your experience more of what it notices you appear to be interested in. In the face of disturbing events, the good wolf practice is allowing your emotions to pass through like weather. Acknowledge them, feel them and let them go. You’ll feel better right away and regain both your positive center and mental clarity.

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It’s always easy to feed the good wolf when all is well in your world and in the world at large. The skill is learning to feed the good wolf in challenging, stressful and chaotic times. Right now the world is very volatile, and the Earth itself is changing rapidly.

As if this was not enough, holiday season brings its own pressures. Knowing how to nourish the good wolf right now will benefit your wellbeing and upgrade the big picture too. By doing this, we take charge of our collective human destiny by contributing our positive energy so the good wolf can win in our world.

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his is one of my favorite wisdom teachings because the universal truth is so simply and beautifully shared. Whether or not you are familiar with this ever-so-relevant Native American wisdom, it is always worth revisiting and taking it to heart.

A wise Cherokee grandfather sits surrounded by his grandchildren and offers this teaching.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he says to the wideeyed children. “It’s a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is negative and destructive – I am calling him the bad wolf. He is all about anger, envy, self-pity, sorrow, regret, greed, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.” The grandfather continues. “The other wolf is positive and constructive; I am calling him the good wolf. He is all about joy, peace, love, hope, forgiveness, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, generosity, truth, and compassion. The same fight is going on inside each of you, and inside every other human being, too.”

At this, the children pause and reflect for a minute.

Then with great concern they anxiously ask the grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

“The one you feed,” their Cherokee grandfather quietly replies.

you to stay centered, to keep an open heart and to make informed choices for your highest good. This makes it possible to care deeply about what’s going on and to not react by absorbing distress and spreading more fear.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) As far back as ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece, people staged ceremonies to mark the embarkation of a new ship.

The intention was to bestow a blessing for the maiden voyage and ever thereafter. Good luck! Safe travels! Beginning in 18th-century Britain and America, such rituals often featured the smashing of a wine bottle on the ship’s bow.

Later, a glass container of champagne became standard.

In accordance with the current astrological indicators, I suggest that you come up with your own version of this celebratory gesture. It will soon be time for your launch.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) You may feel quite sure that you’ve gotten as tall as you’re ever going to be. But that may not be true. If you were ever going to add another half-inch or more to your height, the near future would be the time for it. You are in the midst of what we in the consciousness industry call a “growth spurt.” The blooming and ripening could occur in other ways, as well. Your hair and fingernails may become longer faster than usual, and even your breasts or penis might undergo spontaneous augmentation. There’s no doubt that new brain cells will propagate at a higher rate, and so will the white blood cells that guard your physical health.

Four weeks from now, I bet you’ll be noticeably smarter, wiser, and more robust.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) It’s one of those bizarre times when what feels really good is in close alignment with what’s really good for you, and when taking the course of action that benefits you personally is probably what’s best for everyone else, too. I realize the onslaught of this strange grace may be difficult to believe. But it’s real and true, so don’t waste time questioning it. Relish and indulge in the freedom it offers you. Use it to shush the meddling voice in your head that informs you about what you supposedly SHOULD be doing instead of what you’re actually doing.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) The astrological omens suggest that now is a favorable time to deepen your roots and bolster your foundations and revitalize traditions that have nourished you. Oddly enough, the current planetary rhythms are also conducive to you and your family and friends playing soccer in the living room with a ball made from rolled-up socks, pretending to be fortune-telling psychics and giving each other past-life readings, and gathering around the kitchen table to formulate a conspiracy to achieve world domination. And no, the two sets of advice I just gave you are not contradictory.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) In accordance with the long-term astrological omens, I invite you to make five long-term promises to yourself.

They were formulated by the teacher Shannen Davis. Say them aloud a few times to get a feel for them. 1. “I will make myself eminently teachable through the cultivation of openness and humility.” 2. “I won’t wait around hoping that people will give me what I can give myself.” 3. “I’ll be a good sport about the consequences of my actions, whether they’re good, bad, or misunderstood.” 4. “As I walk out of a room where there are many people who know me, I won’t worry about what anyone will say about me.” 5. “I will only pray for the things I’m willing to be the answer to.”

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) To discuss a problem is not the same as doing something practical to correct it. Many people don’t seem to realize this. They devote a great deal of energy to describing and analyzing their difficulties, and may even imagine possible solutions, but then neglect to follow through. And so nothing changes. The sad or bad situation persists. Of all the signs in the zodiac, you Scorpios are among the least prone to this disability. You specialize in taking action to fulfill your proposed fixes. Just this once, however, I urge you to engage in more inquiry and conversation than usual. Just talking about the problem could cure it.

Go to RealAstrology.com for Rob Brezsny’s expanded weekly audio horoscopes and daily text-message horoscopes. Audio horoscopes also available by phone at 877-873-4888 or 900-950-7700.

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TAURUS (April 20-May 20) The members of the fungus family, like mushrooms and molds, lack chlorophyll, so they can’t make food from sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. To get the energy they need, they “eat” plants. That’s lucky for us. The fungi keep the earth fresh. Without them to decompose fallen leaves, piles of compost would continue to accumulate forever.

Some forests would be so choked with dead matter that they couldn’t thrive. I invite you to take your inspiration from the heroic fungi, Taurus. Expedite the decay and dissolution of the worn-out and obsolete parts of your life.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) The coming months will be a ripe time to revise and rework your past—to reconfigure the consequences that emerged from what happened once upon a time. I’ll trust you to make the ultimate decisions about the best ways to do that, but here are some suggestions. 1. Revisit a memory that has haunted you, and do a ritual that resolves it and brings you peace. 2. Go back and finally do a crucial duty you left unfinished. 3. Return to a dream you wandered away from prematurely, and either re-commit yourself to it, or else put it to rest for good.

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ARIES (March 21-April 19) You may get richer quicker in 2018, Aries—especially if you refuse to sell out. You may accumulate more clout—especially if you treat everyone as your equal and always wield your power responsibly. I bet you will also experience deeper, richer emotions—especially if you avoid people who have low levels of emotional intelligence. Finally, I predict you will get the best sex of your life in the next 12 months—especially if you cultivate the kind of peace of mind in which you’ll feel fine about yourself if you don’t get any sex at all. P.S.: You’d be wise to start working on these projects immediately.

CANCER (June 21-July 22) The brightly colored birds known as bee-eaters are especially fond of eating bees and wasps. How do they avoid getting stung? They snatch their prey in mid-air and then knock them repeatedly against a tree branch until the stinger falls off and the venom is flushed out. In the coming weeks, Cancerian, you could perhaps draw inspiration from the bee-eaters’ determination to get what they want.

How might you be able to draw nourishment from sources that aren’t entirely benign? How could you extract value from influences that you have be careful with?

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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) You come into a delicatessen where you have to take a numbered ticket in order to get waited on. Oops. You draw 37 and the counter clerk has just called out number 17. That means 20 more people will have their turns before you. Damn! You settle in for a tedious vigil, putting down your bag and crossing your arms across your chest. But then what’s this? Two minutes later, the clerk calls out 37.

That’s you! You go up to the counter and hand in your number, and amazingly enough, the clerk writes down your order. A few minutes later, you’ve got your food.

Maybe it was a mistake, but who cares? All that matters is that your opportunity came earlier than you thought it would. Now apply this vignette as a metaphor for your life in the coming days.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20) I’m guessing you have been hungrier than usual. At times you may have felt voracious, even insatiable. What’s going on? I don’t think this intense yearning is simply about food, although it’s possible your body is trying to compensate for a nutritional deficiency. At the very least, you’re also experiencing a heightened desire to be understood and appreciated. You may be aching for a particular quality of love that you haven’t been able to give or get. Here’s my theory: Your soul is famished for experiences that your ego doesn’t sufficiently value or seek out. If I’m correct, you should meditate on what your soul craves but isn’t getting enough of.

32 | DECEMBER 6, 2017

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