·      Barton Hospice’s Light Up a Life Ceremony is Dec. 13 from 6-7:30pm at Edgewood Tahoe’s north room. This is an opportunity to celebrate the memory of loved ones. This nondenominational event is intended for anyone feeling the loss of a loved one, not just those served by hospice. For further information or to share an honoree, call 530.543.5581 or email Tina Bruess at tbruess@bartonhealth.org.

·      South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue will be hosting a blood drive on Nov. 27 from 9am-1pm at station No. 3 located at 2101 Lake Tahoe Blvd. To schedule an appointment, contact Kim George at 530.307.9596.

·      Douglas County sheriff’s Capt. Dan Coverley is running for sheriff.

·      The Tahoe Choir and Lake Tahoe Community College Chorus holiday concert will be in the LTCC Duke Theatre Dec. 1 at 7:30pm and at St. Theresa Catholic Church on Dec. 3 at 3pm. Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for students and seniors, free for children under 5.

·      Find handmade unique holiday gifts at the Tahoe Art League holiday boutique from Nov. 25-Jan. 1 at 3062 Lake Tahoe Blvd., South Lake Tahoe.

Tahoe Institute for Natural Science we will be hosting another birding big year in 2018. Registration opens Dec. 1.

Participating birders, local and visiting, will attempt to find as many bird species as they can within the set boundaries (essentially the Lake Tahoe Basin and north to include the remainder of the California side of the Truckee River watershed), and then logging observations of each new species on a website created for the event.

A total of 314 bird species having been documented in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Through the year, new species will continually arise, with migrant species arriving, departing, or simply passing through the Tahoe region.

Tahoe big year is free and open to anyone. Sign up for the Tahoe big year newsletter online.

With the rainy-snowy season here, South Lake Tahoe is reminding residents that sand bags are available at no cost year round.

Sand and sand bags are available at the city’s public works yard located at 1160 Rufus Allen Blvd. as well as South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue Station No. 3 at 2101 Lake Tahoe Blvd.

Residents fill their own bags and transport back to their own residence. Try to limit the number of bags to 10 per visit.

Veterans residing at Barton’s Skilled Nursing Facility, from left, Gaston Mariolle, Richard Elder, Ray Goodenough, Gale Parsons, Frank Duff and Chuck Newbre. Photo/Barton Health

By Kathryn Reed

“I think the military is one of the proudest things this nation has. It did more for me than I did for it.”

Those are the words of Ray Goodenough.

He is one of six veterans living at Barton’s Skilled Nursing Facility who was honored Nov. 10 – an early Veterans Day tribute. Also recognized were volunteer Jim Carpenter and hospital staff.

Being in the military is a life-changing experience for almost everyone who serves. It doesn’t matter if they did so voluntarily or were drafted.

For the 88-year-old Goodenough, the Navy taught him discipline and how to be a man. At 14 he had run away from home in Lockport, N.Y. He lied about his age, trying to join the service. At 17 they let him in; this was after the bombs had been dropped on Japan.

World War II was a popular war for young men; where they saw a purpose and something worth fighting for, where the enemy was real and the cause understood. A sense of patriotism permeated the American culture in the 1940s.

Ray Goodenough wrote “Parallel Journeys” with his daughter, Kathy Rem. Photo/Kathryn Reed

Goodenough stayed nine years – until 1955 — which put him in the Korean War, too. He had plans to make a career of the military, but his wife at the time wanted a different life. Plus, they had two kids.

Mostly he worked on aircraft carriers where he had to manage the arresting gear to stop the planes as they landed. And while one time he got hit by a wire and flew 4 feet in the air, he was lucky not to be thrown overboard.

It was in 1972 that he moved to Tahoe. While he had met his second wife, Callie, just as he was leaving Orange County, it was two more years before they were married and they both called South Lake Tahoe home. Together they founded Sierra Council on Alcoholism, Tahoe Turning Point, and both worked for O.P.E.N. — Ordinary People meeting Extraordinary Needs. She died earlier this year.

Nov. 11 is Veterans Day. Photo/LTN

Most of the residents at the SNF are WWII era vets – Gaston Mariolle was in the Navy from 1943-46, Chuck Newbre in the Army Air Corps from 1942-46 and Frank Duff in the Navy from 1944-46. Gale Parsons was in the Marines from 1968-71, and Richard Elder in the Army from 1957-59.

They each received a plaque noting their service that will be placed in their rooms.

For Jim Carpenter, it was having his mom sign for him at age 17 after high school to join the Air Force in 1962 that changed his life. He wasn’t a bad kid, but lacked direction. For the last eight years the veteran has been volunteering at the SNF.

In the military he was a crew chief – a jet mechanic – working on fighter planes. He served from 1962-66. Six months of that he was deployed, the rest of the time he was at Travis Air Force Base. He worked in the “alert barn” where with five-minutes notice he had to have the planes ready to be airborne.

In 1974 he moved to South Lake Tahoe with his wife and son. He worked in body shops; now he spends his summers detailing boats.

For Carpenter and Goodenough the military is still something they are proud of. Without hesitation they would recommend it for young men and women.

Like many who have served, talking about the experience takes some prodding, and even then the stories are limited. And that’s OK. They and those they served with know what they did. Theirs is a kinship that crosses military branches and generations.

Today, though, is when the rest of the country has the opportunity to acknowledge their service.

To the community,

The next election is around the corner and civic life in America is as fragile as our generation has ever seen it.

Let’s decide now to rally around leaders who prioritize care for others above personal gain or party lines. Let’s rally around caring for our earth, for people, for communities.

Annie Davidson

This feels like a new idea because care challenges the perverse rationale of greed and the foolish habit of partisan divisions we are so used to. We must actively resist the messages of the market that say we need to stay hooked on getting more things to be happy. We must remember that it is through belonging and care that we are strong and happy. Children know this!

We are right now lost in a forest of greed and loneliness. We must find our way back to the America we want: a place for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — for all. We must remember how to be in community, how to listen across difference, how to care for strangers, how to welcome the weary immigrant and the lost child. We must remember we are a human nation first, made by and for our best human selves.

We are not just corporate America, not just political parties, not just gender or race identities, not just projections of ourselves on Facebook. If you are not welcome, I am not welcome.

Join me this year in actively supporting any brave leader running – or already in office – who fights for the value of care at the local level all the way to Washington. Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders. John McCain. Brian Sandoval. Wendy David. Elizabeth Warren. Jerry Brown. So many others who are in office, who are throwing their names into races, and those who have yet to surface. Let’s find those people to support.

Let’s support and celebrate those leaders in office who are brave against coercion or temptation – regardless of party. Let’s tell the parties to get out of the business of dividing us. To do this, we can each support brave, generous people across party lines, even if we don’t agree with everything they stand for. Let’s vote for the most important things. Let’s show love will win this year. Let’s go win elections with the ideas that bind us and free us. 

Annie Davidson, South Lake Tahoe

By Christopher Mims, Wall Street Journal
 
If you have ever ordered a burrito or a Hawaiian poke bowl through a food-delivery app, you may have been the patron of a virtual restaurant.

No, you don’t need to put on a VR headset to experience one, and the food is quite real. What makes these new restaurants virtual is that you only find them online.

Tucked inside industrial parks, commissary kitchens and refitted basements in cities like New York, Chicago and San Jose, these restaurants have no dining room, no wait staff, no takeout window and no signage. (They still have to pass inspections from health boards, though.) Many don’t take orders over the phone and are accessible only through online services like Grubhub , GRUB 2.24% DoorDash or Postmates.

Read the whole story

By Marissa Payne, Washington Post

One small step for man, one giant quad cork 1800 for mankind.

While Team USA’s Olympic snowboarders will only need to travel to PyeongChang, South Korea, to compete in next year’s Games, they’ll look ready to go to the moon thanks to Burton’s astronaut-inspired uniforms. Unveiled Thursday, the uniforms appear predominantly white with red detailing and feature what looks to be a NASA-inspired logo.

“This is the fourth Olympic uniform that Burton and myself have had the distinct pleasure of working on,” the head designer for Burton’s Olympic division, Greg Dacyshyn, said in a statement. “Like the previous three which had a retro inspired influence, the 2018 theme is also a heavy nod to Americana, because its main influence is the iconic suits of the United States’ leading space exploration program.”

Read the whole story

Mary Beth Wusk, a deputy director at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., is working with a team of NASA material experts to design a new emergency shelter for wildland firefighters. Photo/NASA

By Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle
 
As Hollywood rolls out a blockbuster drama about the 19 firefighters killed after crawling inside their protective emergency shelters during a raging 2013 wildfire, the federal government is wrapping up a real-life bid to improve the nation’s standard-issue fire shelter — by going space-age.

Much of the redesign is being done by a group of NASA engineers, and their work couldn’t come at a more opportune time, with the deadly Wine Country fires just the latest in an escalating trend of wildland blazes tearing up the West.

The engineers were already busy building heat shields for space missions four years ago when they heard of the unprecedented deaths of Arizona’s Granite Mountain Hotshots, portrayed in the new film “Only the Brave.” The NASA engineers immediately decided to volunteer their expertise.

Read the whole story

All lanes are open on a section of Highway 50 that suffered significant damage last winter.

The roadway near Bridal Veil Falls, about seven miles east of Pollock Pines, was damaged in February. The two westbound lanes had to be closed after the slope failed.

A 600-foot retaining wall has been built to stabilize the slope and the westbound lanes have been reconstructed.

The total cost of the project was just less than $10 million.

The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit and the Eldorado National Forest will begin the sale of Christmas tree permits on Nov. 13.

Permit holders may choose from a variety of pine, fir or cedar trees up to 6 inches in diameter at the base in designated cutting areas. Trees must be cut on the forest where the permit was purchased.

Permits must be purchased in person, are not transferable and are sold on a first-come, first-served basis. Permits will be issued during regular business hours on the LTBMU until noon on Dec. 22, and on the ENF through Dec. 28.

In support of the Every Kid in a Park program, the LTBMU and the ENF will offer one free Christmas tree permit to fourth-grade students who present a valid paper voucher or durable EKIP pass. The student must be present to obtain a permit and when cutting a tree under the EKIP program.

LTBMU permits cost $10 each, with a limit of two per family or address. These permits will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis with a forest limit of 2,250 permits total.

ENF permits cost $10 each (cash only), with a limit of four permits per family or address. These permits will be issued on a first-come, first-served basis with a forest limit of 4,500 permits total.