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T HURSDAY, NOV EMB E R 1 , 2 00 7
• ONL I NE AT WWW.WEST L I NNT I D I NGS . COM • VOLUME 40 , NO. 4 4 •
7 5 C E N TS
Time to fall back
Daylight savings time ends a week
later this year. Don’t forget to set
your clocks back Sunday at 2 a.m.
HOLLYWOOD
comes to West Linn
STAFF PHOTO /
VERN UYETAKE
Lake Oswego resident and actor Taylor Jahn, 24, holds up a pay stub receipt from his day of filming on Jennifer Aniston’s
movie titled “Management,” which recently filmed in the city as well as at several locations in West Linn. Jahn spent three
hours on a Spider ride at Oaks Amusement Park for a scene and was paid $100. Aniston is one of his favorite actresses.
The movie ‘Management’ — starring Jennifer Aniston —
gives locals a glimpse into the glamour of the film industry
By NICOLE DECOSTA
Staff Reporter
Glossy pictures of Jennifer Aniston
ripped from magazines look worn and tat-
tered.
Lake Oswego resident Taylor Jahn, 24,
isn’t all that embarrassed to show his
sweet spot for the film and TV actress —
she’s much of his inspiration for begin-
ning a career in acting. So the pictures,
testaments to Jahn’s admiration of Aniston
have gone with him from high school and
to his college dorm room, will accompany
him to Los Angeles as he takes a shot at
starting a film career of his own.
But first he got a taste of working with
his idol close to home.
“She seems like a person you could be
friends with,” Jahn said.
Over the past few weeks, many film
enthusiasts in Oregon have had a chance
to come face-to-face with their favorite
“Friend,” as she is filming her upcoming
movie “Management” in the Northwest,
including filming sites in Lake Oswego
and West Linn.
Also starring Steve Zahn, the film is
about Aniston — a traveling art sales-
woman — who tries to shake off a flaky
motel manager, Zahn, who falls for her
and won’t leave her alone, according to
The Internet Movie Database.
Stephen Belber — who was nominated
for an Emmy in 2002 for writing “The
Laramie Project” — wrote the film. This
is Jahn’s first feature film.
Renaming Oregon
Oregon is depicted as three different
cities in the film — Portland is Baltimore,
Md., a house in West Linn and downtown
Oregon City is Aberdeen, Wash., and
Madras will represent a small town and
motel in Arizona.
Jahn was by Aniston’s side, well sort
of, for a day of filming Oct. 11 at Oaks
Amusement Park in Portland. While
Aniston’s character chatted with Zahn —
smoking fake cigarettes — Jahn whizzed
by on an amusement park ride in the
background — for three hours.
“Yeah, I felt sort of sick after a while,
but it was worth it,” Jahn said.
Amid a sea of extras,
Jahn volunteered him-
self for the long stint
on the “Spider ride.”
“I wanted to make
the most of the day.
Every time I went
around the corner,
the camera was right
there,” he said of the
scene with three
other main
extras.
He later got
to talk with
Aniston briefly
Auction fails
to fetch buyer
for meteorite
By DAN ITEL
Editor
The price tag for the 30-
pound
chunk
of
the
Willamette Meteorite recently
up for auction in New York
was apparently too far out of
this world.
The hunk of space rock,
taken
from
the meteorite
found in 1902 on farmland
just outside of West Linn
which has been steeped in
own e r s h i p
controversies
ever
since,
was
with-
drawn from
sale
after
bidding
at
the Bonhams
a u c t i o n
house ended
at $300,000,
according to
news reports.
It was put up
for auction at
an estimated
value of $1.3
million.
The bulk
of
the
3 1 , 0 0 0 -
pound mete-
orite
is
housed
at
the
American Museum of Natural
History in New York.
The potential sale of the
celestial
mass
sparked
renewed controversy among
tribal groups that claim the
meteorite is sacred and was
sent to Earth by the Sky
People.
“We are deeply saddened
that any individual or organi-
zation would be so insensitive
to Native American spirituali-
ty and culture as to traffic in
the sale of a sacred and his-
toric artifact,” said Siobhan
Taylor, public affairs director
of the Confederated Tribes of
Grand Ronde. “As a tribe, we
do not participate in such sales
and auctions. We view them
with dismay.”
The Confederated Tribes
of Grand Ronde several years
ago requested that the mete-
orite, which is believed to
have struck somewhere in
Montana and swept thousands
of miles by the Missoula
Floods thousands of years
ago,
be
returned by
the
American Museum of Natural
History.
Their request was rejected.
The
small
piece was
offered at auction by Darryl
Pitt, curator of the Macovich
Collection, the world’s largest
collection of space rocks, who
traded the American Museum
of Natural History a Martian
rock for the Willamette chip in
1998.
Pitt told the Associated
Press that the fact that it went
unsold was “not really a sur-
prise.”
He
said
he
anticipates a
lot of inter-
est
from
prospective
buyers in the
future.
In 2002,
two
small
pieces of the
m e t e o r i t e
were placed
on the auc-
tion block.
One, which
m e a s u r e d
about
six
inches long
and weighed
3.4 ounces,
sold
for
$11,000 in Tucson, Ariz. A
smaller half-inch slice collect-
ed $3,300 for its seller.
Today, all that’s left of the
meteorite in West Linn is a
replica, compliments of the
1962
West
Linn
Old
Fashioned Fair Board.
“I wish that piece would
somehow make its way back
to Oregon, perhaps in a public
venue such as a museum or a
place where it could be seen
by the public,” said Mark
Buser, West Linn resident and
founder of Lower Columbia
Floods Chapter and the Ice
Age Floods Institute.
“In a perfect world,
I
would love it if an Oregonian
would buy it and turn around
and
donate
it
to
the
Confederate Tribes of Grand
Ronde. Think of
the
tax
deduction.”
Buser said he regrets not
bidding on the sections of
meteorite in 2002 but said hav-
ing a piece of the brownish,
iron hunk has never been a goal
of any of his organizations.
“My work is bringing the
stories
that
surround
the
Willamette Meteorite to the
public,” Buser said.
STAFF FILE PHOTO
This replica of a meteorite sits in
the Willamette area of West Linn.
The original, found on farmland
outside of town in 1902, weighs
15.5 tons and is housed at a
museum in New York.
See FILM,
page A12
WL-WV teachers
receive high marks
By JIM HART
Staff Reporter
Even
though
there are
stringent federal guidelines
identifying teachers that the
No
Child
Left
Behind
(NCLB) Act calls “highly
qualified,” a local school offi-
cial says he would rather
emphasize what he calls
“effective teachers.”
Thayne Balzer, assistant
superintendent of the West
Linn-Wilsonville
School
District, says helping students
learn requires more than tak-
ing the proper classes in col-
lege. To be effective, he says,
a teacher must create a proper
learning environment and fos-
ter relationships with individ-
ual students.
Balzer, who has led staffs
at the primary and middle
school levels, says he uses
more subjective criteria than
NCLB to evaluate the quality
of teaching.
WL teachers above
average
NCLB now counts
the
number of classes that are
being taught by teachers who
are certified by the state to
teach in their specific subject
areas.
State certification includes
earning a bachelor’s degree
with a major in the subject
area, taking a specified num-
ber of units in a specific sub-
ject area or passing an exam
on the subject.
School district leader
says a teacher’s
effectiveness more
important than his or
her knowledge
See TEACHERS, page A3
SUBMITTED GRAPHIC
/ CITY OF WEST LINN GIS
This map shows areas that have been approved by
voters to be annexed to the city since 2005.
Annexations drive
West Linn growth
By JIM HART
Staff Reporter
Water is the most limiting factor
for the survival and growth of the city
of West Linn, according to West Linn
Planning Director Bryan Brown.
Residents fear the worst-case sce-
nario,
Brown
said,
which has
landowners of undeveloped city land
walking into city hall within a short
time and asking for water meters to
build homes.
“We wouldn’t be able to give all
of them meters,” Brown said. “If
there are too many meters, then some
would not have enough pressure to
meet the city standard or enough gal-
lons per minute for fire flow through
the hydrants.”
The problem isn’t the subdivisions
and individual homes now under con-
struction, Brown said. It’s those that
are not built.
“We have a lot of existing lots
without houses on them,” he said,
“and some new subdivisions that
have been approved but not built.
And if every one of those came in
and asked for water meters we could-
n’t issue them all.”
So the city will not go there. It
will not issue so many meters that the
demand would cause its reservoirs to
be overdrawn and the pressure or vol-
ume to fall below minimum stan-
dards.
That means that until the Water
Master Plan is updated and storage
infrastructure is enhanced, West Linn
growth has a ceiling, according to
Engineering
Manager
Dennis
Wright.
Until the recent water infrastruc-
ture was installed in the Rosemont
Summit neighborhood, Wright said,
that area was vulnerable. But now,
the city’s water system is connected,
and water can be piped from any
reservoir to any area of the city.
See GROWTH, page A3
WL football hot
The Lions wrap up the second
playoff spot in the TRL
— See Sports, A14
Patty Darney
West Linn Advertising
503.546.0774
Ralph Fuccillo
Real Estate Advertising
503.546.0775
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