Them on Us: Sanctuary Jackson; Hemingway here; plane skids

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

By Jake Nichols

House Bill 0062 died in committee and at least one Torrington resident is peeved.
“I’m deeply disappointed,” wrote Cathy Simons in a letter to the editor of the Torrington Telegram. The failed bill would have made illegal so-called “sanctuary cities” that provide safe haven for the hiring and harboring of illegal aliens. Simons singled out Jackson as one of these sanctuary cities, where, she says, greed is to blame.

“The argument that illegal alien workers are “valuable” contributors to the state economy and that they do the jobs that citizens will not do would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic,” Simons wrote. You know the ones who should really be up in arms? The citizens ... on whose backs it falls to pay for the health care, welfare and education for their illegal alien neighbors!”

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Some legislation actually works. Last year, Wyoming Legislature passed a bill that paved the way for a more “Hollywood friendly” Wyoming and it is already working, according to Michell Howard of the Wyoming Travel and Tourism Department. The legislation allows the tourism office to rebate back 12 percent to 15 percent of the money a filmmaker spends in Wyoming as long as the amount spent here is more than $500,000.

Prior to 1940, 32 movies were shot in Wyoming, according to cineWyo historian Walt Farmer. The last movie filmed in Wyoming was “Meet the Deedles,” shot around Cody in 1998. Howard said four upcoming, large budget films are scouting locations in Wyoming. Howard told the Gillette News Record she can’t name them, but did confirm one production company has narrowed its focus to the Dubois area, and another to the Jackson.

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Another “skiing is great this year” AP story is making the rounds. We found it in South Mississippi’s Sun Herald. “Skiing is available in nearly 75 percent of the states in the U.S.,” said Leslie Downey, director of communication for Travelers Advantage. The star of the piece, however, was actress and author Mariel Hemingway, who said her favorite places to shush were Sun Valley (her hometown), Jackson Hole, and Grand Targhee.

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The overshot of the Ted Airlines (United subsidiary) airbus A320 at the Jackson Hole Airport last week was big news in air travel trades around the country. Professional Pilot News was our favorite for most informative. They reported a pair of investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made a preliminary finding of all kinds of technical pilot mumbo-jumbo that amounted to pilots could not get flight 267 whoa’d down.

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Wes Smalling wrote a nice feature in the Casper Star-Tribune on Jackson’s extreme snowboarder Stephen Koch. Koch, 39, has never met a mountain he hasn’t shredded – he is the first and only snowboarder to ride all slopes of the Seven Summits. The longtime Jackson resident has conquered the toughest hills from Antarctica to Alaska to the Himalayas.

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The Missoulian ran a comprehensive story on the strange case involving Mike Meadows and Kenny Richard that police are investigating as a homicide. Their story focuses more on the victim of what Richard calls an act of self-defense against Meadows.
Tristan Scott was able to track down a third friend, Brandon Mageli, who received a drunken phone message from Richard and Meadows just hours before Meadows was killed. “They sounded pretty messed up on the message, but, you know, happy,” Mageli told the Montana paper.

Mageli spent much of last summer with Richard and recalls his friend had a pill-popping habit. “Basically, any pill he could find that was an anti-depressant or a painkiller, Kenny was on over the summer,” Mageli said. “He cried in my arms for hours after [a 2007 DUI crash] because he had gotten hooked on pills.”

Courtesy photo
Mariel Hemingway shushes in Jackon.

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Them on Us: Sanctuary Jackson; Hemingway here; plane skids | Planet JH News Article: General News

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