In honor of Wimbledon, which runs June 23-July 6, Zephyr Cove Tennis Club going all white for a day.

The Breakfast at Wimbledon Doubles Tournament on June 29 is for adult players of all abilities. No need to bring a partner because the draw will be randomly selected.

Participants are asked to wear all white, just as the professionals do. Prizes will be awarded to the winners of the top four teams.

Breakfast will begin at 9am and tennis at 10am. Participants are encouraged to bring a side dish, as well as beverage of choice that does not come in a glass container.

Cost is $15 for club members, $20 for non-members, and $5 for spectators (meal only). The first 32 individual entrees are guaranteed a spot. Sign up in the club’s pro shop by noon June 26. The club is on Warrior Way off Highway 50.

By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee

As California slips into summer amid the worst drought in a generation, state residents, as a whole, have done relatively little to cut their water use, falling well short of the 20 percent target set in Gov. Jerry Brown’s emergency drought declaration in January.

Between January and May of this year, California as a whole cut its water use 5 percent compared to the same period over the preceding three years, according to data released Tuesday during a meeting of the State Water Resources Control Board. The figures were drawn from a survey of water agencies across the state conducted by water board staff. The survey was sent to 443 water agencies but completed by only 270, representing about 25 million retail water customers.

Max Gomberg, a senior environmental scientist for the board, said water use actually increased statewide in January, a month that is normally the state’s wettest but instead proved to be extraordinarily dry. During February through April – months immediately following the governor’s drought declaration – there was no significant conservation. Water use statewide was essentially the same in those months as the prior three years.

Only in May did conservation seemingly take hold, with water agencies in aggregate reporting a water savings of 25 percent. That seems encouraging, but it was before the hot months of summer when water demand typically peaks.

Read the whole story

Western Nevada Musical Theatre Company is looking for actors to perform “My Fair Lady” this November at the Carson City Community Center.

Auditions will be the second week of August. Specific times, location and information on what to prepare for auditions will be emailed to those who sign up for auditions.

Casting calls for several featured performers, a part-singing ensemble and a dance troupe. A few children will be selected to be part of the dance troupe. Only a few highly-trained children, maybe four or five, will be selected.

Auditioners should email the director at Stephanie.Arrigotti@wnc.edu to be placed on the audition schedule and sent audition information.

For more information, call 775.445.4249.

By Jane Ann Morrison, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Gary Fisher made a choice not to respond to anonymous and apparently illegal mailers and phone calls that resurrected his past battling drugs and alcohol.

In the four-way Democratic primary in Assembly District 34, he lost by a mere 22 votes to Meghan Smith. He violated one basic political tenet: Never let an attack go unanswered.

Brendan Summers, executive director of the Assembly Democratic Caucus and adviser to Fisher, did not think the anonymous attacks “made much of a difference in the outcome” although he called then “vile and also clearly illegal under Nevada campaign laws.”

He said a response would have only served to give the mailers and calls credence.”

There were plenty of negative mailers and calls during the primary. It would be news if there weren’t.

Read the whole story

By Sam Stein and Jason Cherkis, Huffington Post

WASHINGTON — The aftermath of school shootings is now all too familiar. The shock of the breaking news, the scenes of school evacuations, the ensuing political debate and the inevitable inaction. And for Ed Burke, the wave of new customers.

As CEO of the Massachusetts-based company Bullet Blocker, Burke sells one of the hotter goods in the body armor industry: bulletproof backpacks. And though he doesn’t revel in the fact that business tends to boom after school shootings, he sees his company as providing a service for increasingly nervous parents.

“Business is growing unfortunately due to all the things happening in the country,” Burke said.

Where politics has failed, business has stepped in, taking advantage of legislative inertia.

Read the whole story

By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News

Time is running out on a deal to secure the largest expansion of Yosemite National Park since 1939, and one man appears to be standing in the way: local congressman Tom McClintock.

Declaring his distrust in the National Park Service, the tea party Republican from Granite Bay is at odds with local Republican state legislators and the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors over efforts to add a scenic parcel of land on Yosemite’s western boundary now owned by a Bay Area conservation group. The deal is even becoming a campaign issue in this rugged part of California as McClintock fights for re-election against a fellow Republican.

If a deal isn’t reached by the end of the year, the small nonprofit group that owns the land says it will have to sell. And the land is zoned for construction of up to 19 homes.

In 2004, the trust bought the land — a scenic landscape near El Portal that is thick with incense cedar, white fir and sugar pine trees, with breathtaking views — from a family that had owned it since 1925.

Read the whole story

Aktion Club will be having a rummage sale June 21 from 8am-2pm at TJ Maxx parking lot in South Lake Tahoe.

Aktion Club is a community service group sponsored by Kiwanis of Tahoe Sierra for adults with disabilities.

Members raise money to support various projects such as Project 44 for local foster children and, the Eliminate Project which helps eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus in third world countries as well as their annual leadership convention.

Ten cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, have been reported in El Dorado County this year. That is more than twice the number reported last year.

Six cases were reported in South Lake Tahoe and four cases were reported on the West Slope. No deaths have been reported in El Dorado County.

As of June 10, 3,458 cases of pertussis have been identified statewide this year, including the death of an infant.

Pertussis disease is cyclical and typically peaks every three to five years. The last peak in occurred in 2010, when El Dorado County had 54 cases and California had more than 9,400 cases. There were 10 pertussis related deaths across California in 2010, all among infants. There were no pertussis related fatalities in El Dorado County that year.

Pertussis is a contagious respiratory tract infection, spread through coughs and sneezes. Symptoms typically start with a cough and runny nose for one to two weeks, followed by weeks to months of rapid coughing fits that sometimes end with a whooping sound.

To prevent the spread of pertussis, it is recommended that:

• Pregnant women receive the pertussis vaccine booster during the third trimester of each pregnancy, even if they received it before. Immunity passes to the baby, providing some protection after birth and before the child can be vaccinated.
• Infants get vaccinated against pertussis as soon as possible. The first dose is routinely recommended at two months of age, but since pertussis is circulating in the community, infants can be vaccinated as young as 6 weeks of age.
• Adults receive the pertussis vaccine booster, especially if they have contact with infants or are healthcare workers in contact with infants or pregnant women.

By Kathryn Reed

INCLINE VILLAGE – “Climate change is going to affect the whole world in a variety of fashions and most are negative.”

That was the message Charles Goldman delivered to nearly 100 people on Tuesday night at the Tahoe Environmental Research Center. Goldman is a renowned limnologist who has been studying Lake Tahoe since the 1950s.

Goldman said that climate is changing so fast that the models created to track it are having a hard time keeping up.

He equated the climate change deniers to the tobacco company chiefs who used to say smoking was good for your health – it’s just not true.

Glaciers are melting throughout the world, including the Moreno Glacier in Argentina. Photo/LTN file

The reality, he said, is signs of climate change are already prevalent. Flooding in the Midwest this spring made it difficult for farmers to get corn in the ground at the time they were used to. Puffins are dying off because the fish they are feeding to their young are too big to swallow. The smaller fish they used to feed the young are gone. Temperatures are rising throughout the world and records keep being broken.

“You can only make snow if it’s cold enough,” Goldman said. “That will be more and more difficult.”

This, he pointed out, could be a problem for Lake Tahoe.

Beyond the diminishing snowpack in the Sierra, scientists most often point to the melting of glaciers.

The Arctic ice pack reflects heat back into the atmosphere. When they are gone that heat goes back into the ocean.

“If it’s extreme enough, the Gulf Stream could lose its oomph. If that happens, Europe freezes over,” Goldman said.

The release of methane gases is another concern as the ice melts and the permafrost recedes on the tundra. Goldman said methane gas is 22 times more potent than greenhouse gas.

Goldman said he first realized how air pollution was impacting Lake Tahoe when he saw the billowing lead spewing from buses at the Stateline casinos. He said atmospheric deposition is a greater problem for the lake than stream runoff.

“The world should recognize air pollution is a global problem, not just a local problem,” Goldman said. He pointed out how researchers have tracked dust from the Gobi Desert reaching Lake Tahoe.

Fresh water is likely to disappear and be one of the biggest concerns with climate change. The increasing world population – which is now more than 7 billion people – contributes to this. Some forecasts are that there will be 14 billion by mid-century.

The world cannot sustain that many people, Goldman said, because the food supply isn’t adequate enough.

To the community,

The article in Lake Tahoe New on June 18 is, as usual, misleading to put it mildly and I would like the public to hear the truth.

Health insurance

Retirees who turn 65 do and always were required to join and personally pay for Medicare Parts A and B. The city’s plan then became secondary to Medicare and the city’s plan only paid 80 percent of the 20 percent Medicare did not pay.

This past January the city shifted all retirees 65 and older to Medicare supplement plans and discontinued Health coverage for these retirees under the city’s plan. Therefore the city is currently not paying one dime in medical claims for retirees 65 and older.

The city is paying their portion of the Medicare supplemental plan’s monthly premium as agreed to in the retirees memorandum of understanding (employment agreement) that was in place when the retiree retired. What percentage the city pays of the premium is based upon years of service with the city. You have to work 25 years for the city in order to get the premium paid at 100 percent by the city. Which, by the way, currently isn’t close to the $1,500 stated in the article even at 100 percent premium paid by the city? The most costly plan is about half that.

Yes, this benefit of the city paying a percentage of the monthly health insurance premiums was agreed to years ago between the different employee groups (fire, police, public works, general) and management, including the City Council was given this same benefit. It was agreed to with the employee groups because the city didn’t have money for raises for years and years and this was something the city could give that wouldn’t cost them for years to come. But the city never funded this liability and in fact when they did have surplus in the health insurance reserve they robbed it to balance the general budget along with many other tactics too involved to go into.

City discontinued giving this benefit several years ago to new hires and now there are very few city employees still working that have this. Last year it was said that getting the 65 and older retirees off the plan would save thousands and thousands. What happened to those savings?

PERS

Just for the public’s information, the city contracts with PERS for the level of retirement pay, not the employees. Non-safety employees (not fire or police) that retired 10 plus years ago get an average of somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 a month in retirement income. Yes, we get a 2 percent raise every year, but 2 percent on $2,000 is $40 a month. What city employee is living on that?

City stop blaming all your budget problems on retirees.

What about looking at your current spending and salary levels and try to be more honest to the public about what really is the truth. The retirees appreciate the benefits we have but most of us are just getting by like everyone else.

Thomas Fay, Quartzsite, Ariz.

Fay was a 52-year resident of South Lake Tahoe and a 28-year employee of South Lake Tahoe who has been retired for 19 years.