To the community,

This November the right choice for South Lake Tahoe is Jason Collin.

Jason is a thoughtful, collaborative and engaging leader with a responsible and positive vision for our community. It has been my pleasure to witness his leadership skills firsthand working on volunteer boards and local events together. Jason is a top notch individual whose common sense, respectful communication style and energy are desperately needed on the City Council.

Jason Drew, South Lake Tahoe

Off-the-wall comedy will be provided by the improvisation group Random Acts of Improv on Oct. 28 at 7:30pm in Lake Tahoe Community College’s Duke Theatre.

This improv group is the resident improvisation company of the Theatre Arts Department at Lake Tahoe Community College.

This show is for all ages. Entrance is $5 at the door. Participants who come wearing a costume will receive Halloween candy.

For more information, call 530.541.4660, ext. 240.

By Richard N. Velotta, Las Vegas Review-Journal

RENO — The winner of November’s presidential election could determine just how successful Nevada and the United States will be in attracting international visitors.

Will our policies be warm, welcoming and inviting, thus encouraging repeat visits and word-of-mouth endorsements? Or will they be closed, with administrators suspicious of those buying plane tickets to visit the American Southwest?

A panel of tourism experts fielded questions about that last week at the Nevada Governor’s Global Tourism Summit at Reno’s Grand Sierra Resort.

Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, who chairs the Nevada Commission on Tourism, moderated the panel, which made it clear that the outcome of the Nov. 8 election could have a far greater impact on Nevadans’ day-to-day lives and their jobs than they may have anticipated.

Read the whole story

By Ryan Sabalow, Sacramento Bee

As tensions rise in Oregon and Northern California over reports of wolves attacking livestock, a $15,000 reward has been issued for information that would lead investigators to the poacher who killed a mother wolf in southern Oregon.

On Oct. 6, investigators found a radio-collared female gray wolf known as OR28 dead in the Fremont-Winema National Forest near Summer Lake, Ore. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman declined Friday to say how the wolf was killed, citing an ongoing investigation.

OR28 originated with the Mount Emily pack in northeastern Oregon, but in November 2015, left the pack and traveled to southern Oregon, said Michelle Dennehy, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. There, she bred with OR3, a male from the Imnaha Pack, and gave birth to at least one pup.

Read the whole story

To the community,

Sunbeam Blind Company owners Kurt and Laura Rasmussen are not new to volunteering at Bread & Broth’s dinner on Monday evening at St. Theresa Grace Hall.

They’ve volunteered their time as sponsor crew members when the Lake Tahoe Windjammers Club has hosted Adopt A Days in the summer.

However, on Oct. 3, their Sunbeam Blind Company sponsored its first AAD. According to Gail Clair, the B&B Adopt A Day coordinator, the Rasmussens and their fellow crew member Brendan Lockamy were “awesome! So nice, fun and helpful!”

“We enjoyed working with the amazing B&B crew to serve the many hungry people that came today to enjoy a nutritious meal,” said Laura Rasmussen.

Unfortunately, many of our community members are food insecure and the meals provided by Bread & Broth and funded by the AAD sponsors are often the only hot meals that they are able to enjoy throughout the week.

Generous donors like Sunbeam Blind Company not only ease hunger but through their sponsorship they are also helping to provide a safe, secure place for the dinner guests to visit, socialize and experience a sense of community where they are treated with kindness and dignity. Through their monetary donation and giving their personal time and energy, the Rasmussens partnered with B&B to help make a lot of people’s day a lot better.

For more B&B information, contact me at 530.542.2876 or carolsgerard@aol.com.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth

Hazardous trees are keeping Highway 89 near Emerald Bay closed. Photo/CalFire

Updated 11:41am:

The Emerald Fire that burned 176 acres near Cascade Lake is fully contained.

The cause of the blaze that started about 1:30am Oct. 14 remains under investigation.

No structures were lost.

Highway 89 is expected to open at noon Monday. Traffic will be metered through the fire area. If necessary, Caltrans could close this stretch in the future as repair work and tree removal continues and debris is removed from the highway.

Crews will remain at the scene until the fire is full extinguised and there are no hot spots.

Liberty Utilities is working to full restore power  in the burn area. All evacuation orders have been lifted

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Mercy

Mercy is a beautiful 9-month-old puppy who is very shy, but who loves other dogs.

She will need a patient owner who will help her come out of her shell. Mercy is probably a Black Mouth Cur, which is not a very nice name for a very nice breed. These dogs are very smart dogs who bond closely with their owners. They are also sensitive dogs, and they need a good amount of exercise and attention.

Mercy will need a home with no children under 14 due to her shyness.

Mercy is spayed, microchipped, tested for heart worm, and vaccinated. She is at the El Dorado County Animal Services shelter in Meyers, along with many other dogs and cats who are waiting for their new homes. Go to the Tahoe animal shelter’s Facebook page to see photos and descriptions of all pets at the shelter.

Call 530.573.7925 for directions, hours, and other information on adopting a pet.

For spay-neuter assistance for South Tahoe residents, go online.

— Karen Kuentz

Annual membership in the Tahoe Women’s Community Fund starts at $100. For for info, call 530.622.5621 or go online.

By Kathryn Reed

STATELINE — One person cannot do as much good as a group of like-minded individuals, but one person can make a difference.

The power of one. That was the theme of the Tahoe Women’s Community Fund gala last week at Harveys.

“We talk about the word collective. Our collective power is why we are here,” Wendy David told the 170 people in the room. While it was mostly women at the dinner, a few men were in attendance.

David along with Kathy Haven are the co-chairs of the South Shore-based group that was founded in 2015.  Their concept is “giving together for our community.” It’s not a traditional service club. The group raises money, gives it out and has an annual dinner. Email is how they get things done.

Three membership levels are possible, with part of the money going to an endowment.

The areas of need the 200 members identified include:

·      Children and youth

·      Poverty and housing

·      Education and literacy

·      Mental health and wellness

·      Women’s issues

·      Environment and community

·      No focus.

The plan is to give out grants each year; $22,000 was given in 2016.

As principal of South Tahoe High School, Ivone Larson oversaw a transformation of the school into a state-of-the-art institution. Photo/LTN file

Educator Ivone Larson, who has lived in South Lake Tahoe since 1980, was the keynote speaker Oct. 12. She came to the United States just before her 7th birthday, not knowing a word of English. It became her fourth language. The family had to leave Brazil for political reasons.

In her classroom in Hollywood she was put in the back of the room facing the wall because she didn’t speak the language. She would go home and cry. She began to hate everyone and everything.

She figured it out and by 16 was a full-time student at UCLA. Then she transferred to UC Irvine, where the class sizes were smaller and more to her liking. Her areas of study were criminal justice and mental health.

Larson, like so many others, came to Tahoe thinking it was a visit and ended up making it her home.

She worked for the El Dorado County Probation Department, went back to school, and then started teaching. She rose through Lake Tahoe Unified School District to where she eventually retired as the assistant superintendent a couple years ago.

How did she achieve all of her successes? “One person believed in me,” she said. “At each and every turn there was someone to motivate me. The power of one person helped guide my life’s trajectory.”

It hasn’t always been easy. Acceptance to change helped, as well as a willingness to learn and to try again. It meant figuring out how to blend work and home. And to this day Larson continues to grow and adapt. She said it’s about making small changes — progress, not perfection.

“How will you use your power of one to make a difference today and every day?” Larson asked as she concluded her talk to a standing ovation.

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Oct. 6, 2016, Sacramento Bee.

The drought persists. This summer was the hottest on record. Last month, a National Weather Service meteorologist called the chance of adequate winter rainfall this year “a crapshoot.”

Farmers in the Central Valley are pumping groundwater like there’s no tomorrow. And they may not be wrong; it’s not for nothing that the rest of the world ratified the Paris climate accord last week.

Thank heaven Californians finally have gotten serious about water conservation – oh, wait.

To the surprise of pretty much no one, state water authorities reported that the state is already backsliding on last year’s efforts to cut water consumption. Savings were only 18 percent below the 2013 baseline level, compared with 27 percent last year.

Read the whole story

By David Crary, Associated Press

Planned Parenthood’s 100th anniversary celebrations this weekend come with a sense of relief for the group that traces its roots to a time when women could not vote and contraception was illegal. The organization, whose services include birth control, sex education and abortions, has survived largely intact in the face of violence, vilification and fierce efforts in Congress and many states to cut its funding.

There’s been some adverse impact: In Texas and Wisconsin, for example, some Planned Parenthood facilities closed after the states cut off funding streams. But most of the Republican-led defunding efforts have been thwarted, and multiple investigations related to the disposition of fetal tissue have thus far failed to prove wrongdoing on Planned Parenthood’s part.

Meanwhile, the organization has received strong backing from the Democratic Party, including presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and says support from the public is robust.

“The attacks have only strengthened our resolve,” said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards. “I do believe we are in a stronger place today than a year ago, or five years ago.”

Planned Parenthood’s foes, who denounce its role as the nation’s leading abortion provider, show no signs of relenting. Eleven anti-abortion groups issued a joint statement depicting the 100th anniversary as “a tragic milestone for our nation and a reminder of the millions of unborn children who will never have a birthday.”

However, opponents also express some frustration at Planned Parenthood’s lobbying and fundraising skills.

“They put themselves in role of martyr while at the same time making money hand-over-fist,” said Kristi Hamrick of Americans United for Life. “The thing they’re really good at is public relations and marketing and making money.”

Planned Parenthood dates its beginnings to Oct. 16, 1916, when Margaret Sanger, her sister and a friend opened America’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. It was a challenge to mores and laws of the time, four years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote.

The clinic was raided, and Sanger was convicted of disseminating birth control information. Undaunted, she founded two organizations that later merged to form the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Sanger’s personal legacy is complicated. She opposed abortion — and yet the organization she founded now provides about one-third of America’s estimated 1 million annual abortions. Her views on eugenics and racial issues remain a subject of bitter debate to this day.

Over the decades, Planned Parenthood played pivotal roles in easing laws against contraception, popularizing the birth control pill and setting the stage for the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that established a woman’s right to have an abortion.

Its clinics have been repeated targets of bombings, arson and protests. Last November, a gunman killed three people and injured nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. The man charged with the attack said he acted because of his opposition to abortion.

Threats against the organization escalated in mid-2015 after an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress began releasing secretly recorded videos alleging that Planned Parenthood sold fetal tissue to researchers for a profit in violation of federal law.

Investigations by several states and congressional panels produced no evidence of wrongdoing, though one probe in the U.S. House remains in progress. David Daleiden, the activist who orchestrated the undercover videos, predicts that the outcome of that investigation will spell the end of Planned Parenthood’s “abortion empire.”

Planned Parenthood says affiliates in two states continue to donate fetal tissue to medical researchers; they no longer accept any reimbursement to cover the costs of these programs.

The videos rekindled long-running efforts to cut off Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, which accounts for about one-third of its annual $1.3 billion budget. Republicans in Congress finally managed to get a bill to President Barack Obama that would have achieved that goal, but he vetoed it in January.

Across the country, politicians in about two-dozen states have either enacted or proposed measures targeting Planned Parenthood with defunding. In most of those states, the cuts didn’t take effect, often because of successful lawsuits filed by Planned Parenthood.

“They’re doing the smart thing by going on offense,” said anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List. “I think there was a lot of damage done to them, but it’s a longer struggle than I would like.”

Most of the taxpayer money received by Planned Parenthood covers birth control and other medical services for low-income women. By law, federal funds may not be used directly for abortions except in rare cases, but anti-abortion activists argue that the grants, by covering operational costs, free up other money to provide abortions.

Statistics in Planned Parenthood’s annual reports show how its operations have changed over the past decade. The nationwide number of local health centers has dropped from about 850 to about 650; there’s been a decline in the number of contraceptive services provided; and the annual number of abortions performed rose from 264,943 in 2005 to 323,999 in 2014.

Cecile Richards said Planned Parenthood is pleased that more women can now obtain effective contraception on their own, without the need to visit a health center. She attributed the increase in abortions to the fact that Planned Parenthood clinics often have been able to remain open in the face of tough state regulations that forced the closure of numerous other clinics.

Looking ahead, what’s on Planned Parenthood’s agenda?

Long-term, Richards said Planned Parenthood aspires to use technology to get more information and services to clients through digital means. And she expects the client base to change, with more men and transgender people availing themselves of sexual-health services.

Short-term, Planned Parenthood is launching a yearlong program of activism and celebrations to mark the centennial. And its political action fund is deeply engaged in the election campaign, with a $30 million program that’s supporting Clinton, opposing her GOP rival Donald Trump, and targeting Republicans in key Senate races. Trump has endorsed a plank of the GOP platform that says Planned Parenthood should be denied public funding as long as it performs abortions.

If Clinton wins, Planned Parenthood’s federal funding will be secure during her term. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who supports abortion rights, believes the GOP campaign against the organization might lose steam as a result.

“I think there will be a winding down of these attacks and a stepping up of the counterattacks,” Schakowsky said. “With a woman in the White House, women will be feeling more empowered, insisting on control of themselves and their bodies.”