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A u g u s t 3 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 3 1 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Carey
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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 Frederic Boloix will be showing this Quantum Woman sculpture by Julian Voss-Andreae during this Friday’s Gallery Walk
read about it on PaGe 6
Summer Symphony Seeks Your Smiles Page 4
Kane reviews box office hit: Crazy, Stupid Love Page 10
David Francis speaks at Hailey Library about the search for his son, Jon Page 16
Photos & Story By KAREN BOSSICK
B Paul Thorn at the Neighborhood Theater in Charlotte, N.C. COURTESY PHOTO: rich singer
Paul Thorn Plays Bellevue this Tuesday By RIAN ERVIN
M
usician Paul Thorn will be performing on Tuesday, August 9, as part of the Bellevue Labor Day Celebration at the John Alan Partners Outdoor Pavilion in Bellevue. Hailing from Tupelo, Mississippi, the home of Elvis Presley himself, Thorn was inspired at a young age by the various types of gospel music he heard during church. Thorn writes all of his own songs, and his music is a combination of blues and rock. As I spoke with Thorn, he was sitting on his porch enjoying his last day at home before embarking on a busy touring schedule. Thorn’s latest album, “Pimps and Preachers,� is a testament to the opposing adult figures he had in his life while growing up: his father, a Pentecostal minister, and his uncle, a pimp. “The time I spent around both these men as a child, seeing the bright side and the dark side, kind of made me realize that everyone has dark and light in them. I’m not quick to judge anyone,� says Thorn. “Pimps and Preachers� is Thorn’s ninth album, and is unique in the fact that it is very autobiographical. Thorn began writing music at a young age, composing his first song, “Maybe Tomorrow I Won’t Hurt So
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illy relishes the idea of “Take-Your-Kidto-Work Day.� Especially when it means an all-expenses-paid working vacation in Sun Valley. Billy Goat is one of 670 goats munching their way along an 18-mile stretch of the Wood River Trails bike path from Bellevue to Ketchum. His mission: to mow down noxious weeds like knapweed, rush skeleton, leafy spurge and toadflax under the watchful eyes of goatherds who monitor his weed eating. No kidding. Four-legged weed whackers like Billy are the chemical-free solution to the weed problem, said Kathryn Goldman, campaign director of the newly formed Pesticide Action Network of Blaine County, which collaborated with the Blaine County Recreation District to hire the goats. “They show up, rain or shine, and they’re hungry 24 hours a day.� Billy doesn’t care so much about keeping toxic chemicals off the two-legged kids that use the bike path. He just knows that he prefers weeds over grasses because of the high protein content of the weeds. “I’d even eat poison oak if there was any here,� he said between chomps of weeds. Billy is the property of Ray Holes, a horse and cattle rancher near White Bird, Idaho. Holes purchased 450 head of goats in the late 1990s to control yellow star thistle, which had inundated the steep hillsides overlooking the lower Snake River canyon. The goat weeding proved so successful that he began renting goats out in 1997, charging about $100 per acre. Today, Holes’ 8,000 biological control agents with their four-chambered stomachs constitute the largest contract grazing company in the Pacific Northwest—perhaps, in the nation. The four-legged eating machines have worked on Heyburn State Park, the Flying B Ranch on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, the Weiser River corridor, fire burns in California, and ranches and farms in Montana, Oregon and Washington. Ray’s wife Lisa says Billy got his taste for certain foods inside his mother’s womb since his mother was a working nanny who munched weeds while pregnant. But
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Ray Holes had planned to bring more goats to the Wood River Valley, but determined that the Valley was not as heavily infested with noxious weeds as originally thought.
Billy had to learn to acquire a taste for knapweed as he started this job along Gannett Road because his mother hadn’t included that weed in her diet while pregnant with him. Not a problem, said Billy: “I’ll taste just about anything that resembles plant matter to decide whether it’s good to eat. But the idea that goats eat anything, including tin cans? That’s a myth. You’re confusing us with the Donner Party.� Billy isn’t much on unionizing, despite the fact that his is no eight-hour-a-day job. After all, he says, he’s hungry 24 hours a day. But he does take naps and he beds down at night as three guard dogs stand vigil, before returning to work at the crack of dawn. Billy doesn’t lose any sleep worrying about wolves—his owner has only lost one goat to wolves in 13 years. Billy, whose family is made up of crossbred goat breeds such as Boer, says he’s aware that he’s gotten the goat of a few impatient bicyclists who are miffed by the Cocoa Puff-like turds he sometimes leaves on the bike path. And he knows some people are concerned that he and his cohorts are mowing down everything in sight. He finds his strokes in people like Hailey resident Dan Karlovich and his 9year-old daughter Shelby who stopped to take pictures of him in Bellevue.
“I’ll taste just about anything that resembles plant matter to decide whether it’s good to eat.� –Billy Goat Wood River Trails Weed Eradicater
“We don’t have to put 80 gallons of herbicide on this and that’s cool,� said Sweetwater’s Project Manager Paul Hopfenbeck, as he watched Billy lunch on a weed-filled lot adjacent to Sweetwater. Billy says he hopes people don’t count on him to eradicate the weeds after one smorgasbord. He’ll stop the plants he’s eating right now from going to seed. But as Billy walks through the weeds, he’s pushing old seeds into the ground where they will likely germinate. It takes three to four years to eradicate the weeds, said Ray Holes, who is under a three-year contract here. “But, hey,� says Billy, “my digestive tract breaks down more than 95 percent of the knapweed seeds I eat. So you won’t see my droppings taking root.� tws
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