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Make Your New Year’s Eve Plans in the Valley
the weekly
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Desiree Fawn presents her Phantom Wolves film at Community Library Tuesday
Friday’s Gallery Walk Features Bark Art from Australia
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Sun Valley Documentary Airs on KTVB Saturday Page 15
D e c e m b e r 2 8 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 5 2 • w w w.T h e We e k l y S u n . c o m
Voluntary Simplicity Class Offered BY KAREN BOSSICK
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hen Pam Matey went to buy wood for her new home, she got on the Internet and found some redwood beams that were once used to hold railroad tracks as they crossed the Great Salt Lake. The smell is terrific because of the minerals in the wood, the Hailey woman said. But, more importantly, it’s a way to recycle resources. “We can make a difference even if small,” she said. The inspiration for Matey’s action was a simple living course titled Voluntary Simplicity. The class, offered several years ago by the Environmental Resource Center, is being offered again beginning Jan. 10. Participants spend about 45 minutes each week reading a chapter out of a workbook. They then use that chapter as a springboard to discuss how Americans’ consumer habits and hectic schedules complicate our lives and changes we can make to lessen the negative impact on ourselves and our environment. “The classes are very easy to do and very inspirational,” said Jeanne Liston. “And they give you a little more resolve,” added Heidi Bynum. The Voluntary Simplicity and Sustainable Living classes are the brainchild of former Portland, Ore., lawyer Dick Roy and his wife Jeanne who were able to live so simply that they were able to turn their back on Dick’s six-figure salary and start the Northwest Earth Institute. The Roys, who raised their three children without a clothes dryer, recycle so effectively that the family amasses just two bags of garbage per year. The couple sprinkles anecdotes and quotes throughout their books trying to convince readers that to live more simply is to live more purposefully with a minimum of needless distraction. Choosing a simpler life allows you to invest more time in family and friends and in volunteer and civic work because you don’t have to work as much to pay for unnecessary things, they say. “Riches prick us with a thousand troubles in getting them, as many cares in preserving them, yet more anxiety in spending them and guilt in losing them,” they offer up a quote from St. Francis of Assisi. None of those who participated in the discussion groups last time it was offered have achieved the degree of simplicity that the Roys have. But they were intrigued at discussing why they bought something they didn’t need. They were disgusted at a society that told Americans that buying a washing machine was a blow against Communism and now tells them that shopping can help defeat terrorism. And they were challenged by such questions as, “Is our time being spent on what we value most?” “There’s a lot of shocking stuff,” said Carolyn Baird. “The idea, for instance, that if Americans reduced meat consumption by 10 percent we would save enough grain to feed 60 million people.” For Bynum, making changes meant cutting back on buying frozen foods
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read about it on PaGe 17
As told by The whittakers – Vince Lombardis of the Climbing World PHOTOS & STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK
LEFT: Lou, right, was at a ski trade show in Los Angeles when news traveled halfway around the world that an unidentified American had topped Everest. He knew right away that it was his brother, even though the man’s identity would not be revealed until a week later in those days when climbers didn’t carry satellite phones with them. “He used to do a lot of deep-sea diving. So we always thought his climbing record should be recorded from the top to 200 feet deep,” said Jim, who has also journeyed to Antarctica.
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early 50 years ago, Jim Whittaker crawled onto the jagged pinnacle topping Everest and pounded a metal stake holding an American flag into the ice. “Now you don’t have to climb it. We know you can do it, too,” the first American to top the world’s highest mountain told his identical twin brother Lou upon returning to the United States. “Being identical twins, we have pretty much the same ability. We figure that if one twin does something, the other can, too,” explained Lou, who has spent winters in Sun Valley since the 1960s. Eighty-two years after they were born, it’s still difficult to tell the twins apart. Come across the two at Starbucks or Tully’s and chances are you’ll think Jim is Lou and vice versa. But anyone who follows mountain climbing can’t fail to recognize that they’re a Whittaker. “They’re the Vince Lombardis of mountain climbing,” said Elephant’s Perch sales clerk Nappy Neaman, who once accompanied Lou up Mount Rainier. “Climbing with Lou is climbing with a super-hero. It’s spell-binding listening to his stories. And it’s unimaginable to think how many lives he’s touched. He’s totally revered in the climbing world.” The Seattle natives have gravitated toward the mountains since they began climbing under the tutelage of a Boy Scout leader who instilled in them a lust for wanting to see what was on top of the next spire. “Mom and Dad both loved nature and were always telling us to go outside and play,” said Lou. “I wonder if we would’ve done the same thing today, given the video games and things kids do today. Nature is a great teacher—our motto should be, ‘No child left inside.’ ” The two were 16 when they first reached the summit of 14,410-foot Rainier in 1945. Six years later they were recruited to lead clients up the mountain. But there weren’t many clients, save a few doctors and lawyers, willing to pay $28 to stake their claim to the top of the mountain in those days. And so in 1955 Jim became the first full-time employee of REI, selling pitons out of a room no bigger than the living room of Lou’s Ketchum home. Becoming just the tenth man in history to climb to the earth’s highest point opened doors for him. He danced with Jackie Kennedy when he was summoned to the White
RIGHT: Lou Whittaker carved this mountain climber while recuperating from surgery that gave him new knees. Lou quips that he and his brother used to do a lot of deep-sea diving. “So we always thought they should add 200 feet to the 29,000 feet he climbed ascending Everest,” he said.
House to receive a medal for his climb. He taught Caroline and John Jr. how to snowplow on skis. He became an answer on a Jeopardy question. And he guided Robert Kennedy up a previously unscaled peak in the Yukon Territories that had been named for President Kennedy. “He ran up and down the stairs to get in shape for that climb. Turned out he was in great shape from all that football playing. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him,” recalled Jim, who was with the senator the night he was assassinated. After scaling the world’s tallest mountain, Jim took his children out of school and spent four years sailing around the world in a 54-foot sailboat. “People said, ‘Aren’t you afraid of pirates?’ ” said Jim, who now lives in Port Townsend, Wash. “I’d say, ‘Don’t you know how dangerous it is in middle school?’ ” Lou declined joining Jim on his 1963 Everest trip in order to open a sporting goods store. But after his brother’s
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“Mom and Dad…were always telling us to go outside and play. I wonder if we would’ve done the same thing today, given the video games and things kids do today. Nature is a great teacher — our motto should be, ‘No child left inside.’ ” –lou whittaker
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