A section of Highway 89 from Squaw Valley to Truckee will be getting a new surface with grinding and paving work beginning Sunday night.
Motorists can expect delays of up to 20 minutes when the work starts tonight and goes around the clock until noon Friday. All the work is expected to be complete by the end of the construction season next month.
For real-time traffic, click on Caltrans’ QuickMap.
Vehicles are being ransacked by bears in Tahoe. Photo/USFS
By Katelyn Stark, KTXL-TV
Bears have been ransacking and ripping apart cars recently at a South Shore trailhead, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Photographs posted by Desolation Wilderness volunteer ranger Charlie McCarthy show the backseat windows of three cars bent and torn from their frames. One car’s interior appears to have been mauled, large chunks of yellow foam scattered throughout.
By Kevin Fagan and Alison Graham, San Francisco Chronicle
California housing costs are spiraling so high that they are pushing the state’s homelessness crisis into places it’s never been before — sparsely populated rural counties.
A Chronicle analysis of biennial homeless counts taken early this year across California shows the sharpest increases occurred not in San Francisco and other urban centers but in out-of-the-way places such as the thickly forested Sierra Nevada and the dusty flatlands and low hills of the northern Sacramento Valley.
Statewide, the Chronicle’s examination shows, homelessness rose by 15 percent from 2015 to this year. In heavily populated centers such as Los Angeles and the Bay Area, where tent cities have long been part of the landscape, even double-digit increases like that might not suggest that something has fundamentally changed. But in rural areas, the increases have come as a shock.
There is no year-round shelter in El Dorado County , and camps are multiplying on the edges of the county seat of Placerville.
· Placer County Executive Officer David Boesch is resigning effective the end of the year.
· Washoe County Sheriff’s Department’s community picnic is Sept. 16, 10am-2pm at Aspen Grove/Village Green in Incline Village. Learn about SWAT, K9s, RAVEN helicopter, Marine 9 boat, Nevada Highway Patrol, NLTFPD fire trucks, child fingerprinting, and more. The free barbecue is from 11am-1pm.
· Here are the Sierra and El Dorado-Tahoe roadwork schedules from Caltrans for the week.
· Minden Library’s Creative Dance for Little Feet will be on Fridays at 3:30pm starting Sept. 15. Children ages 3 to 4 will learn about movement, dance, and rhythm with dance instructor Linda Fisher. Participants are encouraged to dress comfortably and wear sneakers. Pre-registration is required with a limit of 12 participants per class. Sign up at the library.
· Letterpress printer Steve Robison is putting on a workshop on Sept. 16 from 10am-3pm at Bona Fide Books in Meyers. He will teach how to use a composing stick, set type, and print cards or broadsides. The class includes materials; cost is $50. Go online to sign up.
Teens are invited to the Teen Advisory Board meetings at the Douglas County Public Library.
The meetings will be at the Minden branch on the third Wednesday of each month at 3pm starting Sept. 20. There will be free pizza and soda.
Teens can get involved with fun library events and help plan future library programs. TAB meetings are sponsored by the Friends of the Douglas County Public Library.
The Minden Library is located at 1625 Library Lane.
To the community,
The South Lake Tahoe Library just wrapped up our Summer Reading Challenge, which encouraged children, teens, and adults to read all summer long. Over 300 patrons registered, logging a total of 3,990 books, and earning a total of 1,055 prizes.
We would like to thank the many businesses and organizations that donated prizes and funds.
Prizes that children could choose from included gift certificates from Applebee’s Restaurant, Blue Dog Gourmet Pizza, Heavenly Village Cinema, Jamba Juice, Modern Makers, McDonald’s, and Tahoe Bowl. For the adult program gift certificates were donated from Gaia-Licious Global Gift Boutique, Knits & Knots Tahoe, Port of Subs, Wildwood DIY Boutique, and Yellow Submarine. Thank you to all of these businesses for their generous donations.
This summer we had four performers and the South Tahoe Optimist Club generously sponsored two of those performers. The Kiwanis Club of Lake Tahoe also gave a monetary donation to help purchase additional prizes. All other performances and prizes were made possible due to the wonderful support from the Friends of the Library.
On behalf of the South Lake Tahoe Library, I want to say thank you again to all of these businesses and organizations for supporting our library and the community that we serve.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Diebolt, library assistant at South Lake Tahoe Library
By Yvonne Gonzalez, Las Vegas Sun
Representatives in Congress are expected to take up a nuclear waste policy bill this fall that deals with issues tied to the Yucca Mountain project.
House Energy and Commerce Committee staffer Andy Zach was in Las Vegas on Thursday to present the congressional outlook on nuclear waste policy and Yucca Mountain. Zach said resuming the licensing process for construction authorization for a Yucca Mountain repository is the most immediate priority.
The bill passed out of committee on a 49-4 vote.
Despite Nevada’s official opposition, which is contrary to a group of rural counties that want the science heard through licensing, the bill has bipartisan support. More than 60 co-sponsors on the bill include Republicans and Democrats alike.
For one week Highway 50 near Cave Rock will be reduced to one lane starting Sept. 11.
The Nevada Department of Transportation will be removing the wire mesh placed over the Cave Rock rockface.
“The wire mesh was placed over the rockface approximately three years ago as a temporary measure to help capture rockfall before reaching the roadway. The wire mesh was planned as a temporary, interim safety measure. With the tunnel extension constructed last year to reduce rockfall onto westbound travel lanes, the wire mesh is no longer needed and is being removed,” Meg Ragonese with NDOT told Lake Tahoe News.
Traffic will be reduced to one lane in each direction around the clock through the end of the week.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
By Kathryn Reed
It’s the time of year when anyone growing zucchini wonders if it’s OK just to turn the rest into compost. It’s when they start getting bigger on the vine because you just don’t want to pick another one.
Now is the time to find those zucchini-growing friends and make the following recipe. The zucchini in stores are never big enough to stuff. Check the farmers’ markets, there could be ample sized ones there.
This is something you will want to serve to others because after a while the leftovers will get tiresome. And I don’t think this would be a good dish to freeze.
For those who don’t want the bread crumbs, consider using cheese or nothing at all as a topper.
I had barbecued corn left over, so that’s what I used. I tend to grill a bunch of corn at once and find uses for it beyond eating it straight off the cob.
Stuffed Zucchini
½ C quinoa
1 ample size zucchini
1 large handful of spinach
4 ears corn
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 tsp sage
1 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
½ tsp nutmeg
Garlic salt
Pepper
¼ C Panko
Cook quinoa according to directions.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Slice zucchini in half length-wise. Scoop out the insides. Chop that up and put in bowl.
Place zucchini halves on cookie sheet or rimmed pan. Line zucchini with spinach.
Take kernels off the corn cob. Place in bowl with zucchini flesh, chopped tomato and chopped onion. Add spices to vegetable mixture. Stir well.
Add cooked quinoa, stir. Adjust seasonings to your liking.
Fill each zucchini half with quinoa-vegetable mix. Sprinkle each half with Panko.
Bake covered for 30 minutes, then another 15 minutes uncovered. Slice into individual serving sizes.
By Kathryn Reed
“How can I support you to be here tomorrow?”
That one sentence could make someone realize they have a reason to live. Listening, being there – those are two of the more powerful antidotes to death by suicide.
So often when someone wants to end it all they believe they are a burden and that everyone around them would be better if they weren’t in the picture. That person in distress needs to know they are loved, they would be missed, that they bring something wonderful to this world.
Still, as Alisa Merino with the Suicide Prevention Network said, “It’s not your job to save them. You are not responsible if they die by suicide.”
That’s the sad reality. For some people, they will seek the lethal way out no matter the other options presented, no matter what someone else says or does.
Suicide is nothing new. What is new is how people are talking about it. It’s more out in the open. The stigma is slowly being erased. Help no longer involves a straightjacket and being locked up.
About 70 people showed up last week at Lake Tahoe Community College to hear what Merino had to say.
Most people who choose death by suicide have been depressed. It could be the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, financial problems, drug issues – the triggers are limitless.
Merino stressed that it is imperative to ask direct questions – even asking the person if they are contemplating suicide. Don’t be worried about giving them ideas; you aren’t, she said. And if they say, “yes” – don’t leave that person. Call a hotline, get them to a behavioral specialist. If they are in imminent danger of hurting themselves, call 911.
Noticeable changes to eating habits, sleep changes and giving away possessions are signs someone may be thinking about suicide. They might start talking about death. Pulling away, becoming isolated is a normal precursor. Unusual risky behavior – which could even be driving under the influence – is another red flag.
Ask about how best you can support them. Be calm, neutral and non-judgmental.
“Suicide is messy, complex and it’s hard to understand,” Merino said.
It’s something that touches every community. And when it does happen, those left behind often feel a tremendous amount of guilt and are left with questions that may never be answered. To help get people through this grief there is now a survivors of suicide support group that meets the fourth Thursday of the month at Barton Health’s PR office in South Lake Tahoe from 6-8pm.
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Notes:
· Walk for Hope in memory of Emily Alessi is Sept. 10 at Lakeview Commons in South Lake Tahoe. Registration is at 9am, walk at 10am, barbecue at noon. Cost $20 adults, 12 and younger free. All proceeds go to local suicide prevention services. (Alessi, a South Lake Tahoe resident, died by suicide three years ago at the age of 24.)
· Suicide Prevention Awareness and Mental Health 101 will be presented entirely in Spanish on Sept. 12, 5-7pm at the Family Resource Center on Spruce Avenue in South Lake Tahoe.