By Kathryn Reed

Dogs are better than children to go out to eat with. They clean up after you instead of being the ones to make a mess.

This is the season to eat outside with your four-legged family member. The following is a smattering of places that are dog friendly.

The Tavern inside the Tahoe Beach Retreat in South Lake Tahoe has an entire day devoted to dogs. Canines & Cocktails is happening every Tuesday from 4-9pm. Show up with a dog and you get a 25 percent discount. AJ was loving it because not only did she get to be inside, she also was given a doggie treat.

Dexter and AJ relax at Artemis at Ski Run Marina. Photo/Kathryn Reed

She also got to be inside at Artemis at Ski Run Marina in South Lake. This might have been because she was with Dexter who is a legitimate, super-certified therapy dog. They were given his and her water bowls. Carole brought Dexter, her golden retriever, down from Incline for lunch. It was cool this particular June day, so eating in seemed like a better option. There is plenty of outdoor space, though, for canines.

We tried to eat outside at the Cantina in South Tahoe, even got let in the back gate to the patio. But we got tired of sitting there without service so we went to the bar. No one said anything, so she just laid on the floor at our feet.

Julie and I started outside at Revive near Lakeview Commons, but the rain in July chased us indoors. No one seemed to mind; AJ was as close to the door as she could be without actually crossing the threshold. This would be a great place for a dog because of the vast front yard area.

Appropriately, I was with two brothers while eating outside at Brothers Bar and Grill in South Tahoe. Dogs are OK there if they sit in the far back near the horseshoe pit area. It’s dirt/sand back there. It’s possible to enter through the back and not have to go through the restaurant.

It’s practically a dog party at South Tahoe Brewing Company. Photo/Susan Wood

While the tables outside are somewhat close together at Fireside Pizza at the Village at Squaw Valley, there is still room for dogs. Waitresses will bring your furry friend a bowl of water upon request.

Dogs are welcome on the tram at Squaw, as well as on the deck at High Camp, and throughout the village.

What set Heavenly Village apart was AJ’s water coming in a recyclable to-go container. I liked the idea of a single-user water bowl. Azul and The Loft each did this. The concrete at Azul was ideal for AJ to spread out on after a long hike. She was more restless at The Loft; the fake turf wasn’t to her liking but she did enjoy watching everyone play mini golf.

AJ looks out from under the table at The Loft to the peewee golf course at Heavenly Village. Photo/Kathryn Reed

At AleWorX in the Crossing at the Y in South Tahoe there are almost as many dogs at people. Everyone was getting along great. However, if your dog can’t stomach pizza, beware because the people are a little sloppy. Water for dogs is provided if you ask.

South Lake Brewing Company is another venue where dogs almost outnumber the people. One pup was so well trained it could jump onto a bar stool. This gave him the advantage to see the doggie treats in the beer glass.

At Blue Angel Café in South Lake dogs have the choice of being on grass or wood chips. The food that has fallen is a bit hard to see in the wood chips. Sue ordered three waters; and appropriately two glasses and a bowl were delivered.

Steamers in South Lake Tahoe has a ton of outdoor space. AJ only had to share it with a toddler. The artificial turf was clean, so no worrying about what she might nibble on. Access to the back is through the restaurant.

Another clean spot was Classic Clue in South Lake. There was no random food on the ground for AJ to munch on. (As usual, she did share in the fries that Kim and I were having for dinner.) While AJ had to stretch out on hard asphalt, at dusk it provided her some warmth.

AJ loved being on the lawn at X Crows, the restaurant at Hotel Becket in South Lake Tahoe. Our picnic table was on the edge of the grass and patio. She lapped up the water from her bowl to cool off as the sun was setting.

It was all grass for AJ at the Bear Beach Café in South Lake. Along the outdoor wall is an assortment of self-serve doggie water dishes and a hose to fill them up.

Down the street at MacDuff’s Pub the large umbrellas provide plenty of shade, keeping the wood deck cool for those lying on it. AJ lapped up the attention from the foursome at the table next to us as they kept complimenting her.

At the Getaway Café in Meyers half of the outdoor tables had a dog along for breakfast. The soft rocks appeared to be to all of their liking. And there were plenty of water bowls to go around.

It’s not just restaurants with outside tables that welcome dogs. Seldom does a Bank of the West teller forget to offer AJ a treat.

Almost all pet stores allow dogs. At Pet Supermarket in South Lake Tahoe it’s like nirvana with all the smells. It’s hard to get out of there without buying an individual treat at the front counter. I’m a sucker. At Hot Diggity Dog & Cat in Kings Beach the store dog is stretched out in the doorway, not even a sniff or a wag of the tail as AJ goes by. The two younger dogs want to be let out from behind the gate. Not happening, though. AJ loved their Giants decorated bones.

By Howard Markel

The popular singer and movie star Bing Crosby once crooned, “What’s more American than corn flakes?” Virtually every American is familiar with this iconic cereal, but few know the story of the two men from Battle Creek, Mich., who created those famously crispy, golden flakes of corn back in 1895, revolutionizing the way America eats breakfast: John Harvey Kellogg and his younger brother Will Keith Kellogg.

Fewer still know that among the ingredients in the Kelloggs’ secret recipe were the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church, a homegrown American faith that linked spiritual and physical health, and which played a major role in the Kellogg family’s life.

For half a century, Battle Creek was the Vatican of the Seventh-day Adventist church. Its founders, the self-proclaimed prophetess Ellen White and her husband, James, made their home in the Michigan town starting in 1854, moving the church’s headquarters in 1904 to Takoma Park, outside of Washington, D.C.  Eventually, Seventh-day Adventism grew into a major Christian denomination with churches, ministries and members all around the world. One key component of the Whites’ sect was healthy living and a nutritious, vegetable and grain based-diet.

From the distance of more than a century and a half, it is fascinating to note how many of Ellen White’s religious experiences were connected to personal health. During the 1860s, inspired by visions and messages she claimed to receive from God, she developed a doctrine on hygiene, diet and chastity enveloped within the teachings of Christ. She began promoting health as a major part of her ministry as early as June 6, 1863. At a Friday evening Sabbath welcoming service in Otsego, Mich., she described a 45-minute revelation on “the great subject of Health Reform,” which included advice on proper diet and hygiene. Her canon of health found greater clarity in a sermon that she delivered on Christmas Eve 1865 in Rochester, N.Y. White vividly described a vision from God which emphasized the importance of diet and lifestyle in helping worshipers stay well, prevent disease, and live a holy life. Good health relied on physical and sexual purity, White preached, and because the body was intertwined with the soul her prescriptions would help eliminate evil, promote the greater good in human society, and please God.

The following spring, on May 20, 1866, “Sister” White formally presented her ideas to the 3,500 Adventists comprising the denomination’s governing body, or General Conference. When it came to diet, White’s theology found great import in Genesis 1:29: “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.’” White interpreted this verse strictly, as God’s order to consume a grain and vegetarian diet.

She told her Seventh-day Adventist flock that they must abstain not only from eating meat but also from using tobacco or consuming coffee, tea, and, of course, alcohol. She warned against indulging in the excitatory influences of greasy, fried fare, spicy condiments and pickled foods; against overeating; against using drugs of any kind; and against wearing binding corsets, wigs, and tight dresses. Such evils, she taught, led to the morally and physically destructive “self-vice” of masturbation and the less lonely vice of excessive sexual intercourse.

The Kellogg family moved to Battle Creek in 1856, primarily to be close to Ellen White and the Seventh-day Adventist church. Impressed by young John Harvey Kellogg’s intellect, spirit and drive, Ellen and James White groomed him for a key role in the Church. They hired John, then 12 or 13, as their publishing company’s “printer’s devil,” the now-forgotten name for an apprentice to printers and publishers in the days of typesetting by hand and cumbersome, noisy printing presses. Like many other American printer’s devils who went on to greatness —including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Lyndon Johnson—Kellogg mixed up batches of ink, filled paste pots, retrieved individual letters of type to set, and proof-read the not-always-finished printed copy. He was swimming in a river of words and took to it with glee, discovering his own talent for composing clear and balanced sentences, filled with rich explanatory metaphors and allusions. By the time he was 16, Kellogg was editing and shaping the church’s monthly health advice magazine, The Health Reformer.

The Whites wanted a first-rate physician to run medical and health programs for their denomination and they found him in John Harvey Kellogg. They sent the young man to the Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York. It was during medical school when a time-crunched John, who prepared his own meals on top of studying round the clock, first began to think about creating a nutritious, ready-to-eat cereal.

Upon returning to Battle Creek in 1876, with the encouragement and leadership of the Whites, the Battle Creek Sanitarium was born and within a few years it became a world famous medical center, grand hotel, and spa run by John and Will, eight years younger, who ran the business and human resources operations of the Sanitarium while the doctor tended to his growing flock of patients. The Kellogg brothers’ “San” was internationally known as a “university of health” that preached the Adventist gospel of disease prevention, sound digestion, and “wellness.” At its peak, it saw more than 12,000 to 15,000 new patients a year, treated the rich and famous, and became a health destination for the worried well and the truly ill.

There were practical factors, beyond those described in Ellen White’s ministry, that inspired John’s interest in dietary matters. In 1858, Walt Whitman described indigestion as “the great American evil.” A review of mid-19th-century American diet on the “civilized” Eastern seaboard, within the nation’s interior, and on the frontier explains why one of the most common medical complaints of the day was dyspepsia, the 19th-century catchall term for a medley of flatulence, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, and “upset stomach.”

Breakfast was especially problematic. For much of the 19th century, many early morning repasts included filling, starchy potatoes, fried in the congealed fat from last night’s dinner. For protein, cooks fried up cured and heavily salted meats, such as ham or bacon. Some people ate a meatless breakfast, with mugs of cocoa, tea, or coffee, whole milk or heavy cream, and boiled rice, often flavored with syrup, milk, and sugar. Some ate brown bread, milk-toast, and graham crackers to fill their bellies. Conscientious (and frequently exhausted) mothers awoke at the crack of dawn to stand over a hot, wood-burning stove for hours on end, cooking and stirring gruels or mush made of barley, cracked wheat, or oats.

It was no wonder Dr. Kellogg saw a need for a palatable, grain-based “health food” that was “easy on the digestion” and also easy to prepare. He hypothesized that the digestive process would be helped along if grains were pre-cooked—essentially, pre-digested—before they entered the patient’s mouth. Kellogg baked his dough at extremely high heat to break down starch contained in the grain into the simple sugar dextrose. John Kellogg called this baking process dextrinization. He and Will labored for years in a basement kitchen before coming up with dextrinized flaked cereals—first, wheat flakes, and then the tastier corn flakes. They were easily-digested foods meant for invalids with bad stomachs.

Today most nutritionists, obesity experts, and physicians argue that the easy digestibility the Kelloggs worked so hard to achieve is not such a good thing. Eating processed cereals, it turns out, creates a sudden spike in blood sugar, followed by an increase in insulin, the hormone that enables cells to use glucose. A few hours later, the insulin rush triggers a blood sugar “crash,” loss of energy, and a ravenous hunger for an early lunch. High fiber cereals like oatmeal and other whole grain preparations are digested more slowly. People who eat them report feeling fuller for longer periods of time and, thus, have far better appetite control than those who consume processed breakfast cereals.

By 1906, Will had had enough of working for his domineering brother, who he saw as a tyrant who refused to allow him the opportunity to grow their cereal business into the empire he knew it could become. He quit the San and founded what ultimately became the Kellogg’s Cereal Company based upon the brilliant observation that there were many more normal people who wanted a nutritious and healthy breakfast than invalids—provided the cereal tasted good, which by that point it did, thanks to the addition of sugar and salt.

The Kelloggs had the science of corn flakes all wrong, but they still became breakfast heroes. Fueled by 19th-century American reliance on religious authority, they played a critical role in developing the crunchy-good breakfast many of us ate this morning.

Howard Markel is the George E. Wantz distinguished professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and the author of “The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek”, which will be published in August by Pantheon Books/PenguinRandomHouse. He wrote this for Zócalo Public Square.

By Lindsey Tanner, AP

ASHEVILLE, N.C.  — A quiet, unsmiling little girl with big brown eyes crawls inside a carpeted cubicle, hugs a stuffed teddy bear tight, and turns her head away from the noisy classroom.

The safe spaces, quiet times and breathing exercises for her and the other preschoolers at the Verner Center for Early Learning are designed to help kids cope with intense stress so they can learn. But experts hope there’s an even bigger benefit — protecting young bodies and brains from stress so persistent that it becomes toxic.

It’s no secret that growing up in tough circumstances can be hard on kids and lead to behavior and learning problems. But researchers are discovering something different. Many believe that ongoing stress during early childhood — from grinding poverty, neglect, parents’ substance abuse and other adversity — can smolder beneath the skin, harming kids’ brains and other body systems. And research suggests that can lead to some of the major causes of death and disease in adulthood, including heart attacks and diabetes.

Read the whole story

Four people learned the hard way that the meadows in the basin are more marsh than dry landscape.

South Lake Tahoe firefighters had to rescue the four on the afternoon of Aug. 5 near the south end of Baldwin Beach.

“They didn’t realize how deep the mud was,” Fire Chief Jeff Meston told Lake Tahoe News.

They were up to their chests in mud and water.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times
 
California is confronting the limits of its power to save federal environmental protections as Congress and the Trump administration take aim at a landmark law the state has relied on for decades to clean the air of noxious smog.

A push by Republicans to roll back parts of the Clean Air Act would affect California more than any other state, rattling its lawmakers and regulators. And their legal authority to pick up the fight against California’s smog on their own is constrained.

The House last month passed a bill fiercely opposed by doctors and public health groups, including the American Lung Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics, that would delay for years new anti-pollution standards aimed at ultimately preventing 160,000 childhood asthma attacks and as many as 220 premature deaths in California each year.

The Trump administration had already tried using regulatory authority to put the standards on hold for a year, but walked back that action Wednesday after California and 14 other states filed suit against the delay.

Read the whole story

Former El Dorado Hills resident Kamyar “Kami” Soltani, 47, was sentenced Aug. 4 to six months in prison, six months home confinement with electronic monitoring, and ordered to pay $150,446 in restitution for tax evasion..

According to court documents, Soltani attempted to evade his tax obligations for tax years 2005, 2006, and 2007. Soltani worked in the used car sales industry. In each of the tax years in question, Soltani received taxable income between $229,000 and $296,000 and failed to file timely income tax returns for the tax years of 2005 and 2006. He ultimately filed tax returns for all three tax years in March 2008, but those returns only reported income of approximately $14,000 to $18,500 in each year.

As a result of his conduct and tax filings, Soltani evaded $150,446 in federal income taxes, paid no taxes for those years, and in each year fraudulently claimed and received tax refunds of over $2,000 by falsely claiming that he was entitled to an Earned Income Tax Credit reserved for taxpayers with low and moderate income. Soltani admitted he acted willfully to evade taxes, in part, through his filing of false tax returns and by receiving his income in the form of cash and through indirect payments made to third parties.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

The Tahoe Prosperity Center continues to work on bringing higher speed internet access to the basin.

There are still areas around the lake that suffer from below average internet speeds, lack of cell coverage and periodic outages due to inclement weather.

The Connected Tahoe Project goal is to bring gigabit level service to the entire Lake Tahoe Basin as means to catalyze economic development, galvanize public safety, healthcare, education and to position the basin to receive the most advanced technologies for internet access now and in the future. 

To date, TPC says it has:

• Forged productive relationships with key stakeholders in both the public and private sectors.
• Conducted speed tests in an effort to groundtruth service provider’s advertised speeds.
• Mapped out areas of the basin where internet speeds and service are at it lowest.

The nonprofit is asking people to take an internet speed test that will provide the group with data.

The El Dorado County unit of the California Republican Assembly is having its Victory in 2018  barbecue dinner on Aug. 19 from 4-8 pm at Crystal Springs Garden in Camino.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Garden Valley, will be the guest speaker.

Also speaking will be 6th District Assemblyman Kevin Kiley. He is serving his first term.

Sheriff John D’Agostini will  serve as master of ceremonies.

Tickets are $40 a person or $75 per couple. To purchase tickets call Joan Matteson at 530.391.6722 or Cecil Ringgenberg at 530.622.3120.

By Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The betting was that law-and-order Attorney General Jeff Sessions would come out against the legalized marijuana industry with guns blazing. But the task force Sessions assembled to find the best legal strategy is giving him no ammunition, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials, has come up with no new policy recommendations to advance the attorney general’s aggressively anti-marijuana views. The group’s report largely reiterates the current Justice Department policy on marijuana.

It encourages officials to keep studying whether to change or rescind the Obama administration’s more hands-off approach to enforcement — a stance that has allowed the nation’s experiment with legal pot to flourish. The report was not slated to be released publicly, but portions were obtained by the AP.

Read the whole story

·      A benefit concert for Tahoe Arts Project will feature Trey Stone, Niall McGuinness and John Shipley. They will play at Lakeshore Lodge and Spa in South Lake Tahoe on Aug. 24 from 7-9pm. “Doors” open at 6pm. Cost is $10.

·      Music on the Beach, the free concert series at Kings Beach State Recreation Area, has four additional concerts this summer on Fridays through Sept. 1 from 6-8:30pm, excluding Aug. 11.

·      Roger Trout has been appointed director of planning and building for El Dorado County.

·      There will be a groundbreaking ceremony for the Bijou Marketplace in South Lake Tahoe on Aug. 7 at 2pm. This is the project at Highway 50 and Ski Run Boulevard where Whole Foods 365 will go.

·      South Lake Tahoe is hosting a free workshop for contractors about standards for building energy efficiency. It will be Aug. 25 from 8am-noon. Go online to register.