The Bureau of Reclamation, in partnership with the Truckee Meadows Water Authority and the Truckee Carson Irrigation District, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the completion of Lake Tahoe Dam on Aug. 30 from noon to 2pm.

The dam is better known as Fanny Bridge to those in Lake Tahoe.

The ceremony will begin with a welcome to Tahoe City, a history of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California with a Tribal invocation, and comments by agencies and local officials. The ceremony will conclude with the unveiling of a memorial plaque and refreshments.

Lake Tahoe Dam, part of Reclamation’s Newlands Project, was constructed to control the top 6 feet of Lake Tahoe, equivalent to 732,000 acre-feet of water. The dam is operated to release water from Lake Tahoe to supplement flows in the Truckee River.

In 1981, the dam was listed on the National Register of Historical Places.

By Nancy Shute, NPR

Surgery can be a necessary misery, endured in hope of health.

But what if you took away the misery, and kept the benefits?

When hospitals quit subjecting patients to prolonged fasting, nasogastric tubes, abdominal drains, and other commonplaces of surgical care, a study finds, patients feel less pain and recover faster.

Women who had major abdominal surgery at the Mayo Clinic under a protocol to enhance recovery went home sooner and needed less pain medication than women who had the surgery the usual way. And 95 percent of the women in the group whose treatment emphasized recovery rated their care as excellent or very good.

The enhanced recovery approach, which was pioneered in Europe about a decade ago, abandons many of the standard steps for patient care before, during and after surgery. It turns out there was no evidence of benefit for many of these practices, even though they’re used worldwide. So this protocol chucks them.

So patients aren’t asked to slurp down quarts of medication to clean the gastrointestinal tract, so-called bowel prep, or told to shun food and drink before surgery. Instead, they can eat up till midnight the day before, and drink water up till four hours before surgery.

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By Angela Chen, Wall Street Journal

Something summery may be lingering even as the season fades — the summer cold.

Colds in summertime can last for weeks, at times seemingly going away and then suddenly storming back with a vengeance, infectious-disease experts say. A winter cold, by contrast, is typically gone in a few days.

The reason for the difference: Summer colds are caused by different viruses from the ones that bring on sniffling and sneezing in the colder months. And some of the things people commonly do in the summer can prolong the illness, like being physically active and going in and out of air-conditioned buildings.

“A winter cold is nasty, brutish and short,” says Bruce Hirsch, infectious-disease specialist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y. “But summer colds tend to linger. They can go on for weeks and reoccur.”

Summer colds, which can hit between June and October, occur only about 25 percent as often as the winter variety. But summer colds can have more severe, flu-like symptoms, in addition to sneezing and coughing. Many people also mistake a summer cold for allergies, because it just doesn’t seem to leave.

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By Kim Minugh, Sacramento Bee

A Novato man drowned at Jenkinson Reservoir on Saturday afternoon, authorities announced Tuesday.

The man, identified as 34-year-old Ramiro Nunez Magana, was swimming with family members near the Pinecone campground about 1:45pm Saturday when he began to struggle. Before anyone could reach him, the man disappeared from sight in the waters of the reservoir, also known as Sly Park Lake, according to a news release from the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office.

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What’s in Your Extra Virgin Olive Oil? is the subject of a Sept. 19 lecture at Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences in Incline Village.

Selina Wang of the UC Davis Olive Center will present her research exposing the poor quality of olive oil available to U.S. consumers, showing that 65 percent of imported olive oil failed extra virgin standards. Guests will be able to sample olive oils and learn about their natural flavor attributes.

The free event starts at 5:30pm. TERC is at 291 Country Club Drive.

Smoke in Tahoe is providing for some spectacular sunsets like the one Aug. 27. Photo/Kathryn Reed

Expect the skies in Tahoe and points east to be smoky through the week. A dense smoke advisory has been issued through 5pm Thursday.

“Outdoor activities are strongly discouraged due to the poor air quality. Visibility is likely to remain below 5 miles in the Reno area and remain below 4 miles in Carson City, South Lake Tahoe, Minden and Markleeville today. While some improvement in air quality and visibility may occur, winds are favorable for smoke to persist into Friday,” the National Weather Service in Reno said.

The annual Labor Day weekend fireworks set to go off Sunday on the South Shore are still planned.

Lake Tahoe Unified and Douglas County school districts are keeping students indoors because of the poor air quality.

South Lake Tahoe reopened the city pool today.

It is the Rim Fire burning near Yosemite National Park that is bringing the smoke to the region. It has consumed 187,466 acres and is now the seventh largest fire in the state’s history and the largest in the Sierra Nevada. It is 23 percent contained.

The fire destroyed Tuolumne Berkeley Family Camp, which included three commercial buildings, and 85 tent cabins and outbuildings. Facilities at the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, San Francisco’s water supply, remain threatened.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Animal Coalition of Tahoe is having a fundraiser at Chevy’s in South Lake Tahoe on Sept. 10 from 6-8pm.

Chevy’s will have a taco bar, complete with meats, cheese, rice, beans, all the other fixings, and of course their chips and salsa, for $10 per person.

Call (530) 307.3638 for tickets, or stop by High Chaparral in the Heavenly Village. Tickets must be purchased in advance.

And there will be a raffle during dinner.

Animal Coalition of Tahoe is an all-volunteer, nonprofit corporation that sponsors several fundraisers each year to support low-cost spay-neuter program for South Lake Tahoe residents. ACT donates 10 percent of all funds raised to the El Dorado County Animal Shelter in Meyers.

Gunbarrel restaurant’s Lamb Lollipops, from left, Tower 16 Tuna and Brie sandwich. Photo/LTN

By Kathryn Reed

Unconventional. That’s exactly what the owner of Gunbarrel Tavern & Eatery wants to be.

“We are here to give the finger to standard ideas about what a menu is supposed to be. We try to do things different … to not abide by anything you have to do,” Alex Cox said.

Cox this month opened Gunbarrel restaurant in Heavenly Village where Wolfgang Puck’s used to be. He is also the owner of 22 Bistro at the Village at Squaw Valley.

He has incorporated his love for skiing into the names of his restaurants. Gunbarrel is the same name as Heavenly Mountain Resort’s face and the 22 comes from Squaw’s renowned KT-22.

Cox thought he was moving to Lake Tahoe to be a ski bum after he graduated from the University of Indiana. He was right. But what wasn’t in the original plan was to make Tahoe his home. That he has done for more than a decade.

What he brings to the restaurant business is a desire to showcase foods he and his staff like, with dishes that are unique, some that are prepared in original ways and other items that appeal to the masses.

Billy McCullough is the executive chef at both restaurants. McCullough is also executive chef of Dragonfly, the Truckee restaurant he owns. He is also the co-founder of Slow Food Lake Tahoe.

Gunbarrel’s head chef is Ricky Sausser. Sausser grew up on the North Shore. He worked for McCullough before being hired at 22 Bistro in 2009.

The goal, according to Cox, will be to use as much local food as possible. Local, though, could be the Central Valley since not much grows in Tahoe. But what he would like to do is use the biodome in Truckee or the one proposed for Squaw Valley to grow something like chard or kale to have on the menu as a truly locally sourced item.

Talks are also under way with farmers in Nevada to potentially provide produce to Gunbarrel.

The range of menu choices is varied. Those in the media who were invited to a special tasting last week raved about the Mac N’ Cheese. It comes as an appetizer with bacon, but as a side (without bacon) with the PBR Beer Can Chicken. This chicken is Cox’s favorite on the menu. An LTN reporter said she would easily order the chicken again.

For the Lamb Lollipops it takes some time over the grill before they come to the table. This is because the lack of a binding agent requires the chef to apply pressure as they cook so the meat stays on the stick. Then this appetizer is served with a harissa yogurt sauce and a mini cucumber mint salad.

The Tower 16 Tuna was another app that people raved about. The Fire-Roasted Cauliflower with achiote chili oil and toasted lemon zest just gets better as the flavors meld together.

The caramelized onions and balsamic glaze on the Brie Grilled Cheese added sweetness to the sandwich and balanced the richness of the Brie. The chips served with it are cooked and seasoned at the restaurant. What’s in the seasoning is a secret. But each bite is a bit different, at times sweet, at times spicy – all good.

To complement the variety of food items is an interesting drink menu. The beer and wine choices are limited.

Even the décor is a bit eclectic. The exposed concrete is a bit new age-industrial, while the tables are mountain wood.

Cox is working on creating an outside bar and eating area that would include fire pits and live music.

“At this time, due to the prohibitive cost, Gunbarrel Tavern does not validate parking. We are currently looking into other potential solutions but have yet to come to an effective resolution. We are hopeful, however, that we will be able to validate customer parking in the future,” Cox told Lake Tahoe News.

Gunbarrel is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week.

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Aug. 10, 2013, Sacramento Bee.

It’s completely reasonable for rural residents and elected leaders to have concerns and questions about the proposed listing of two yellow-legged frog species and the Yosemite toad under the Endangered Species Act.

But the public forum organized by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, earlier this month wasn’t anything close to an even-handed look at this issue. It was a stacked hearing – part of a coordinated campaign to rile up rural Californians against the federal government and environmental protections in general.

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By Phillip Reese and Cynthia Hubert, Sacrament Bee

Some of them heard voices and saw imaginary people. Some talked of killing themselves by jumping off a building or walking in front of a bus. They suffered from afflictions ranging from cocaine addiction to schizoaffective disorder, and most were homeless and without medical insurance.

About 40 percent of the mental patients whose charts were reviewed recently by a federal agency were discharged from Nevada’s primary psychiatric facility to homeless shelters in Las Vegas or destinations across the country without evidence of proper planning for their continuing care.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assessed a sample group of 41 charts for patients at Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas and found that in 16 cases, patients were discharged without evidence the hospital had made even basic arrangements for their shelter, support or follow-up care.

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