Jim Gilmore, acclaimed author of “The Experience Economy and Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want”, will headline the Rural Roundup April 18-20 at the Hyatt Regency in Incline Village.

Gilmore, whose book was recognized by Time magazine as one of the “Ten Ideas That Are Changing the World,” asserts that consumers want authentic products and experiences — something rural Nevada is singularly positioned to offer with its historic destinations and attractions.

Rural Roundup, now in its 22nd year and sponsored by Nevada Commission on Tourism, is tailored to address the needs of Nevada’s rural tourism partners. Designed to help Nevada’s rural communities grow their economies through developing and promoting vibrant tourism offerings, Rural Roundup brings together tourism industry professionals from across the state to gain insights into consumer trends, best practices and innovative approaches.

This year’s conference will include sessions on the Canadian travel market, special events and social media, among other topics. The annual VolunTourism awards dinner, which honors Nevadans whose tourism-related volunteer work has made a difference in rural communities around the state, will also be during this conference.

Registration for Rural Roundup is $65 through April 2 and $85 afterward. For Rural Roundup news and updates, go to Facebook.

By Casey Grove, Anchorage Daily News

A second man, a 26 year-old from Truckee, has died after a Haines-area avalanche Tuesday that killed a heli-skiing guide, Alaska State Troopers said.

The “huge” avalanche buried two men from a group of six skiing Takhin Ridge about 11am Tuesday, said troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters, relaying reports from a trooper in Haines. The ridge is south of Mile 33 of the Haines Highway, where helicopters whisk skiers to and from the backcountry.

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By USSA

TIGNES, France -– With a first run score of 98.00, Shaun White who rides for Northstar, took European X Games halfpipe gold Wednesday night in Tignes. His nearly perfect score and huge run included a massive cab double cork 1080 that landed White with his fourth win of the season.

Sprint U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix champion Louie Vito of Sandy, Utah, was second showing off his smooth style and big amplitude that put him on his fifth podium of the season.

This is White’s fourth first place podium position for this season and debut at European X Games.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office will be participating in several high-visibility traffic enforcement details over St Patrick’s Day.

Due to the typical alcohol consumption associated with St Patrick’s Day celebrations, DUI incidents tend to increase during this celebrated festival.

On the nights of March 16 and 17, Douglas deputies working in conjunction with deputies of the Carson City Sheriff’s Office, will conduct increased DUI enforcement patrols on the highways and roadways within Douglas County and Carson City.

This enforcement detail is partially paid for by a grant from the State of Nevada, Department of Public Safety, Office of Traffic Safety.

By Anita Creamer, Sacramento Bee

In the spring of 1942, Donna Nakashima’s father came home to Florin on leave from the U.S. Army to help his widowed mother gather the family’s belongings – one suitcase per person – as they prepared for wartime incarceration.

Renowned photographer Dorothea Lange captured the moment. A uniformed Ted Miyata stood alongside his mother in the strawberry field she rushed to harvest before segregation orders aimed at Japanese Americans forced the family from their home.

Seventy years later, consider the stark generational changes forged by wartime trauma.

Nakashima’s late parents – the children of immigrants who were forbidden by law to become American citizens – were part of a generation that came of age during the war, many of them imprisoned behind the barbed wire of internment camps because of their Japanese heritage.

But her own two children think of themselves as American, not Japanese American. And so does she.

“I don’t know my culture,” said Nakashima, 50, a state analyst who lives in Sacramento. “But that’s how my parents raised us. They didn’t speak Japanese at home. They only spoke English.”

On Feb. 19, 1942, with a frightened nation still reeling from the Pearl Harbor attacks two months earlier, Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of almost 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Two-thirds of them were native-born American citizens like Nakashima’s parents.

More than four decades would pass before a congressional commission found that the imprisonment accomplished no national security purpose and was, instead, based on what the commission called “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” By 1990, former internees began receiving presidential letters of apology and reparation checks.

Today Japanese American educators and researchers say that the community’s third generation – the Sansei, most of them born after the war to parents who had been imprisoned – has inherited a complicated generational legacy that has played out in the Japanese American culture ever since the days of camp.

“A lot of what people experience in adulthood can be traced back to the trauma their parents passed on intergenerationally,” said Satsuki Ina, 67, a psychotherapist and retired Sacramento State professor who was born to Nisei (or second) generation parents at the Tule Lake camp in Northern California.

Through her research, which culminated in an Emmy-winning PBS documentary, “Children of the Camps,” she discovered that post-traumatic stress scarred the lives of Nisei and their Sansei children in the years after they were released from camp.

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Rosemary Manning will be conducting two free classes at the Tahoe Wellness Community Center this month.

The first is called a Tap-Aware Party and the second is meditation.

A working knowledge if EFT is best for the Tap-Aware Party, but everyone is invited.  The emotional freedom technique event is March 19 from 6-7pm.

The beginning meditation class is March 26 from 6-7pm. A CD of the Dalai Lama’s healing chants will be given to everyone who makes a donation.

Tahoe Wellness Community Center is in the Bijou Center in South Lake Tahoe.

For more information on these classes, email tahoehealthtouch@gmail.com.

•Duane Whitelaw retired this month as chief of North Tahoe Fire Protection District. He will be honored April 20 when the Tahoe City station opens. 

• The Squaw Valley Institute is holding a premiere of a new Discovery Channel series, “Frozen Planet.” The showing will be 7-8pm., March 17 at the Resort at Squaw Creek. The event is free.

• The Tahoe Pipe Club is looking for photos of urban outfall pipes polluting Lake Tahoe for its first photo contest. Email photos to pipeclub@live.com or mail to P.O. Box 18346, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96151. The winner will receive a Tahoe Pipe Club Frisbee Secchi disk.

• The El Dorado County Board of Supervisors is having a public hearing on a grant the county’s Health and Human Services Agency is applying for under the Community Development Allocation for a Housing Rehabilitation and Homeownership Assistance Program. The meeting is scheduled for 9am March 27 at the Board of Supervisors meeting room, 330 Fair Lane, Placerville.

• The Area Agency on Aging is having a hearing on the 2012/2016 El Dorado County Area Plan for Senior Services. The hearing will be at 1pm, April 9 in the South Lake Tahoe Senior Center conference room, 3050 Lake Tahoe Blvd., South Lake Tahoe.

By Anne Knowles

A male black bear identified by the Nevada Department of Wildlife as the animal who ripped siding off an Incline Village home last month was caught and euthanized on Wednesday.

The male bear captured and euthanized by NDOW on March 14, according to the BEAR League. Photos/BEAR League

NDOW discovered the bear after responding to a call it received from an individual in Incline Village the morning of March 14. NDOW officials tranquilized the bear and then positively identified it based on distinctive markings and patterns of behavior gleaned from accounts of witnesses to the incident in February, according to Chris Healy, spokesman for NDOW in Reno.

He declined to say how many people saw the bear rip siding off a home last month, but Healy said the bear trapped and put down Wednesday was positively identified by several people, including an NDOW biologist and people living in the Incline Village neighborhood.

“We are totally confident we identified the bear,” said Healy.

Soon after the incident last month, NDOW trapped another male bear and released it because the agency believed the animal it was looking for was a female based on sightings of a mother with two cubs in the area.

Advocates for non-lethal handling of bears say the department trapped the wrong bear again, and killed it.

Ann Bryant, executive director of BEAR (Bear Education Aversion Response) League in Homewood says she believes the bear seen peeling siding off the house was a female. She says there have been sightings of a male bear rummaging through garbage in the area, but that bear has been chased into another location now and is not the bear captured by NDOW.

Bryant says the garbage-trawling bear is about 2 years old and weighs about 150 pounds, while the bear captured yesterday by NDOW was about 3 years old and 250 pounds.

A male bear seen rummaging for garbage in Incline Village has been chased away, according to BEAR League.

“And the coloration is all different,” she said.

Bryant thinks the bear euthanized by NDOW was lulled out of hibernation by the traps set by the department.

NDOW’s Healy says the department is under fire for doing its job. He says that in 15 years NDOW has captured 900 bears and euthanized about 10 percent of them for public safety concerns.

“What do they want us to do if there is a wild bear?” Healy said. “These are dangerous situations made worse by amateurs.”

Healy says Incline Village residents should be more concerned about stricter garbage collection ordinances since it is garbage that attracts the bears.

“Blaming us is like blaming the guy who cleans up after the circus parade,” said Healy.

BEAR League’s Bryant concedes that garbage ordinances could be better enforced but says that is not the answer. The problem, said Bryant, are people who are afraid of the bears and interested only in killing them, not managing them.

“It’s another notch in their belt,” said Bryant. “And NDOW feeds into it and caters to them.”

Tickets are on sale for the annual Passport wine event in El Dorado County.

The event often sells out. This year the dates are April 14-15 and April 21-22 from 11am until 5pm.

Wine lovers can enjoy 32 award-winning wineries. New to the event this year are Synapse, Shadow Ranch, Nello Olivo, Cielo Estates, Skinner and Grace Patriot.

Passport weekends in El Dorado County usually sell out. Photo/LTN file

Each winery will feature a wine and food pairing from a Mediterranean country and many will also have art, music and barrel tasting.

To purchase tickets and see a full list of participating wineries, go online. Tickets are $70 per passport weekend for unlimited wine, food and entertainment. Designated drivers can enjoy all the festivities without the wine for $26.62 per wristband.

Zephyr Cove Elementary School fifth-grader Trent Dingman is headed to the state national Geographic Bee in Las Vegas.

The state contest is March 30.

Bees were conducted in grades 4 to 8 to decide who would go to the next level. Students with the top 100 scores were invited to the state competition.

State winners will go on to the national competition in Washington, D.C., May 22-24.