sun Hailey
•
Ketchum
•
Sun Valley
•
Bellevue
•
the weekly
Carey
•
s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o
Poignant and Funny Describe Upcoming Playreading Page 3
Wipe Out Boredom with the Valley’s Most Comprehensive Calendar PageS 8-9
Van Horn Reviews Richard Ford’s, ‘Canada’ Page 14
J a n u a r y 9 , 2 0 1 3 • V o l . 6 • N o . 2 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
to your health
Leaning Toward The Light BY ROSEMARY CODY
C
hinese medicine invites us to embrace and celebrate paradox. Winter, in this ancient healing tradition, is associated with kidney energy, the water element. It is the darkest, coldest, the most restricted season—and also contains the beginning of light and warmth and expansion. Our kidneys are our deepest, most protected organs. Their purpose, in this season, is to direct our energy down to our core, down to our most essential resources. And although darkness and depth remind us of loneliness and isolation, this energy actually holds our most primal genetic material, our DNA, our link with ancestors and future generations. At this level, where life begins, we are deeply connected. We are all different—and all the same. We are not alone. This is the coldest season, the most frigid element. And yet the area between the kidneys houses the Ming Men Fire, the “pilot light” point in acupuncture, the “gate of vitality.” Activating this point, with an acupuncture needle or by simply keeping your low back warm and protected, sparks our will and determination—and warms all of our essential biological processes. Kidney energy is associated with our bones. It takes us down to the bones, like winter trees stripped of adornment, storing life force for its explosion of growth in the spring. Says author Wallace Stevens: “After the leaves have fallen, we return to a plain sense of things.” We find our essence. The emotions that may be provoked at this season are fear and anxiety, the most primitive emotions of survival. The paradox is this: Courage follows fear. The courage to take the next step is present, even when we aren’t aware of it. Black, often reminding us of endings or death, is the associated color of this cycle. But black is actually the absorption of all light. Without light, there is no darkness. From darkness, light returns. Light is reflected, restored, recreated, and reborn. Reeverything starts here. In the unsettling darkness of winter our eyes are forced to adjust. We see the light in the shadows. We find our courage. In the silence, our ability to hear is heightened. In the stillness, we hear the still small voices that guide us. We begin to sense that all of life is a dynamic dance between light and darkness. We begin to be empowered by the words of author/mythologist Joseph Campbell: “Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light.” Keep leaning. Keep choosing the light. Rosemary Cody is a licensed acupuncturist with offices in Hailey and Ketchum. She can be reached at tws 720.7530.
Ice Skating Brings Big Smiles and Offers Diversion from Skjiing
read about it on PaGe 5
Nye Wright’s Cartoon Career “There’s only one way to go. But everything ust before in the media he turned tells us that’s de30, Aneufeat—something rin Nye Wright gone wrong. found himself Americans don’t in what he calls die—they un“God’s waiting derachieve. It’s room.” as if we mess Ostensibly, up if we die,” it was a trailer Wright noted. home in a trailer Wright credpark—a trailer its his parents home his father for his talent in had remodeled drawing and to look like a writing books. penthouse. But His father, it was also the Neil Wright, last stop—the came from west place where his Texas to Sun father—Sun ValValley to work ley architect Neil on a project Wright—had gone for the Janss to die. Corporation. It was a surreal When the projexperience living ect was done, in a retirement rence valle y writers’ confe he decided Photo: barbie reed, courtesy sun home trailer park say Lucero—and their to stay since with his wife—graphic designer Lynd full of elderly and, Engl ton, Brigh in lives ht Wrig Nye Valley reasonably regularly. there were Sun to people waiting to back it es mak he But .” “little munchkin no architects breathe their last here then. breath, especially The senior Wright was ingiven how antiinteresting so I turned myself into a troduced to Kate, a London writer who architect it was. Minotaur and my father into a rhino. would become Nye’s mother, on a blind It got even weirder the day that the He loved being transformed into a blue date set up by Mary Hemingway. The hospice worker, health care worker and rhinoceros and, I think, he loved the idea couple held their wedding reception in the nurse all showed up at the same time. of being immortalized in art,” Wright Hemingway house overlooking the Big “My sister was visiting, too, so we had reflected. Wood River. all these cars outside. I took out the trash “Still,” he added, “the whole thing was “Dad always drew because he was an and the neighbor said, ‘Hey, did somebody bizarre. You’re sitting around waiting for architect so I picked up his pencils and die? That’s the only time you get this something to happen, but you don’t want started doodling,” recalled Nye Wright. many cars in front of the trailer is when it to happen. It drives you a bit mad. It “Then, when I was six, I saw ‘Superman.’ someone’s died.’ ” changed me for the better, though. Things I came home wishing I could fly. I figured For six months Wright dispensed 40 I worried about before became irrelevant. out I couldn’t fly but I could draw pictures pills and 15 breathing treatments a day It made me think about who I wanted to of people flying—that’s where my cartoon and disinfected tubes from the nebulizer, be and how I treat people.” work began.” which produced a cloudy breathing balm Wright’s book has been well received— Wright went on to get a Bachelor of in the room. he even presented it at the Sun Valley Arts degree in English literature from And he called on his wry sense of huWriters’ Conference this past summer. Yale University. He got an A-minus on mor to turn the experience into the book, It was a heady experience for a 38his senior thesis when he turned Shake“Things to Do in a Retirement Home year-old man who had graduated from speare into a comic book. Trailer Park,” which came out this past The Community School, a couple stones’ After teaching English literature and year. throws from the site of the conference. drawing in Australia, he attended the What makes it so unusual is that it He had volunteered at a conference 12 Pratt Institute in New York where he looks like an adult comic book, in which years earlier, driving presenters from the focused on animation. the characters look like superheroes. Nye airport to the conference. He directed a cartoon sequence called appears as a Minotaur; his father, a rhiIronically, one of the presenters at that the “Short History of the United States,” noceros; and his father’s social workers, conference was Mitch Albom, who had a cartoon sequence in Michael Moore’s sea turtles. written “Tuesdays with Morrie”—his Academy Award-winning documentary, “I realized I needed to do something to own story of spending time with a profes“Bowling for Columbine.” He wrote a avoid going out of my mind. So I started sor as he dealt with debilitating illness a visual diary about my life with him in and death. this park. Drawing myself is not very continued, page 10 BY KAREN BOSSICK
J
Order tickets now: 726-6456 ei@expeditioninspiration.org www.expeditioninspiration.org
For Breast Cancer Research Friday, FEBrUary 15 5:00-8:30 pm • The Valley Club