Alpenglow Sports’ fourth installment of the 10th anniversary Winter Film Series will feature internationally acclaimed alpinist Kelly Cordes.

The free show will be Feb. 25 at 7pm at Squaw Valley’s Olympic Village Lodge.

Cordes will present a sampling of the stories told in his 2015 book “The Tower,” a climbing historical of Patagonia’s otherworldly and iconic granite spire Cerro Torre. “The Tower” focuses on the much debated and polarizing climbing history of Cerro Torre, a granite spire that exists at the southern tip of Argentina between Patagonia’s wind-swept pampas and the Pacific Ocean. Its vertical and overhanging walls have attracted the finest and most devoted alpinists in the world, including some of the most obsessed.

The show is part of the larger Alpenglow Mountain Festival, a nine-day celebration of human-powered winter mountain sports, events, clinics, equipment demonstrations, presentations, film and more.

By Margot Sanger-Katz, New York Times

When Bernie Sanders released his long-awaited health care plan last month, it was light on the details. But it did include one major, crowd-pleasing promise: Under his Medicare-for-all proposal, no American would ever have to pay a deductible or co-payment to receive health care again.

Deductibles and other forms of cost-sharing have been creeping up in the United States since the late 1990s. A typical employer health plan now asks an individual to pay more than $1,000 out of pocket before coverage kicks in for most services. The most popular plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges require customers to pay several times as much. Even Medicare charges deductibles.

People tend to hate these features, but they were not devised to be cruel. Rather, they were fashioned with economic theory in mind.

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By Kim Wyatt

“Between the World and Me”

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

Spiegel & Grau, 176 pages, $24 hardcover

One-line review: A challenging, lyrical and heartbreaking must-read for Americans.

“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates is titled after Richard Wright’s 1935 poem of the same name about a lynching. This powerful book, written as a candid letter to Coates’s 15-year-old son, offers a personal investigation into the history of the black man in the United States from slavery to a time when unarmed black men and boys are killed on film in broad daylight by police officers. The choice of epistolary structure is superb, bringing poetic urgency to the material through the father-son relationship, with the founding of our country and its aftereffects the drumbeat.

I read this short book in one sitting, and a veil was lifted. Not that I wasn’t aware of racism or of my own complicity, but I hadn’t considered it at the cellular level, in the DNA of the USA and in each of us. Coates asserts that the violence that breaks black bodies isn’t a failure of the system, it is part of the system. It is tradition and it is legacy—the American Dream “rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies.” From Civil War battlefields and cotton plantations to our modern prison-industrial complex, it’s hard to disagree.

Once we get into Coates’s personal history, the book soars. “My understanding of the universe was physical, and its moral arc bent toward chaos then concluded in a box.” From the streets of Baltimore to Howard University and Paris, the author’s erudition and vulnerability elevate this book, and the [white] reader is given raw insight into a world we can’t possibly understand. Despite progress in civil rights, black parents know on a visceral level that their children can be taken or brutalized for any reason or no reason at all.

Of Howard University student Prince Jones, who was killed by a police officer, Coates writes: “And the plunder was not just of Prince alone. Think of all the love poured into him. Think of the tuitions for Montessori and music lessons. Think of the gasoline expended, the treads worn carting him to football games, basketball tournaments, and Little League. . . . Think of the surprise birthday parties, the daycare, and the reference check on babysitters . . . Think of the checks written for family photos. Think of all the embraces, all the private jokes, customs, greetings, names, dreams, all the shared knowledge and capacity of a black family injected into that vessel of flesh and bone. And think of how that vessel was taken, shattered on the concrete, and all its holy contents, all that had gone into him, sent flowing back to the earth.”

This book requires that you bring an open mind and heart to the table. Winner of the 2015 National Book Award, “Between the World and Me” is important, timely and immensely readable. Inspired by James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time,” which begins addressed to his 15-year-old nephew, Coates offers no easy prescriptions to his son (or the reader), rather, the belief that the value lies in the questioning and in the struggle. “The struggle to understand is our only advantage over this madness.” It’s time for all of us to struggle with his questions.

Kim Wyatt is the owner of the independent press Bona Fide Books.

By Don Champion and Arielle Miller, CBS News

It’s one of the great debates among pet owners: should you let your dog or cat sleep on the bed? Some germophobes would never consider it, while others love snuggling up with their pet at the end of the day.

One concern, however, has been whether sharing a bed with your pet may disturb your sleep. Many sleep specialists advise against it.

But a recent study from the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona could help lay those fears to rest.

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El Dorado County health officials are monitoring information and guidance from the California Department of Public Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the Zika virus.

While the risks associated with the virus are currently low in California, health officials recommend individuals, particularly pregnant women, check and follow CDC travel advisories before going to countries with Zika virus outbreaks and also protect themselves from mosquito bites.

Between 2013 and 2016, a handful of Zika virus cases have been reported among California residents, all of whom acquired the virus during travel to other countries with Zika virus outbreaks. To date, there has been no known transmission of the Zika virus within California. The resident in Yolo County who tested positive for Zika had recently been out of the country.

According to the CDC, the following countries and regions have been affected by ongoing transmission of the Zika virus: American Samoa, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Curacao, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Travelers returning from these areas should let their doctors know if they develop fever or other symptoms of Zika.

The Zika virus is primarily spread through the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus mosquito; transmission may also be possible through sexual contact with an infected person. The mosquitoes that can carry the Zika virus are not native to California, but have been identified in several California counties. To date, these mosquitoes have not been detected in El Dorado County or the surrounding area.

By Mike Errico, New York Times

Every couple of months, I see another post in my Facebook feed about a band that was cut off by an 18-wheeler or skidded on a patch of black ice and rolled their van into a ditch. Some members are injured, and they’re launching a Kickstarter campaign to pay for medical bills and to get back on their feet.

My heart (and often, money) goes out to them. But if you need to crowdfund your hospital costs, you were never on your feet to begin with. After many years as a touring artist myself, I’m honestly surprised that the person in that ditch has never been me.

Touring is, of course, the most ancient business model available to artists — and in many ways, it remains a vital part of their livelihood, even while the surrounding industry undergoes major upheaval to accommodate the new paradigm of streaming music. In response to the shift in revenue sources, standard recording contracts now intrude into the numerous nonrecording aspects of an artist’s career. But the advice given to the creative generators of this multibillion dollar industry is still one that would be recognizable to a medieval troubadour: Go on tour.

And yet from a business standpoint, it’s hard to find a model more unsustainable than one that relies on a single human body. This is why we have vice presidents, relief pitchers and sixth men. When applied to music’s seemingly limitless streaming future, the only scarce resource left is the artists themselves. You would think the industry would protect such an important piece of its business model, but in fact, the opposite is true.

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By Kimber Laux, Las Vegas Review-Journal

If you want something wearable and shiny this Valentine’s Day, start dropping hints now.

According to the Retail Association of Nevada, only one in five Nevadans are planning to buy jewelry for their Valentine.

On the bright side, you’re about 25 percent more likely to receive candy this Sunday, a day on which Nevadans are expected to spend a total of $179 million, up 5.7 percent from last year.

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The Alpenglow Mountain Festival, a nine-day celebration of human-powered mountain sports, kicks off with the critically-acclaimed 5Point Film Festival’s “On the Road” series on Feb. 20 at 7pm at Squaw Valley’s Olympic Village Lodge.

The 5Point Festival, one of four distinct film nights during the Mountain Festival, is a collection of adventure film shorts films curated specifically for Lake Tahoe. The films are chosen from the flagship 5point Film Festival event in Carbondale, Colo.

Other film events during the Alpenglow Mountain Festival include the Winter Wildlands Alliance Backcountry Film Festival on Feb. 23, the fourth installment of Alpenglow’s Winter Film Series with alpine climber and author Kelly Cordes on Feb. 25, and a screening of Jeremy Collins “Drawn, the Art of Ascent” on Feb. 27.

Tickets are $10. Doors open at 630pm and the show begins at 7pm. For more information on the films and all other events during the Mountain Festival, go online.

By Christopher Elliott, USA Today

When it comes to vacation rentals, there are surprises — and there are surprises.

Good surprises, such as the one Ana O’Reilly encountered when she checked into a villa in Palm Springs, Calif., are rare. She was dumbstruck to discover the home looked better than the pictures in the listing, which was a first. The refrigerator was stocked with champagne and bottled water, and bowls of M&M’s were left in the kitchen as a welcome snack.

And there are the not-so-good ones, such as  the one encountered by Timothy Trudeau when he rented a home in Santa Barbara with his family. After getting settled, he decided to take a dip in the pool.

“As we were floating around, I started to notice that the property had small infrared cameras mounted all over the place,” recalls Trudeau.

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By Andrew Demillo, AP

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The National Park Service needs to broaden its appeal to millennials as it celebrates its 100th birthday this year, the director of the agency said last week as he touted civil rights sites that aren’t traditionally viewed as parks to a younger audience.

Park Service Director Jon Jarvis spoke during a visit to the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, marking the formerly all-white institution that was desegregated by nine black students in 1957.

Part of the plan to attract more 18- to 35-year-olds to national parks, Jarvis said, includes a Find Your Park website and social media campaign that the service and the National Park Foundation launched last year to promote the parks and encourage people to share their experiences.

“We set a goal for our centennial, which is to create and connect with the next generation of park visitors, supporters and advocates,” Jarvis told the Associated Press in an interview at the Central High site. He says he’s tasked every park to “think about what they do on a day-to-day basis, in their existing operations and what more they could do that will achieve that goal. What are they doing to connect with the next generation?”

Jarvis said the effort includes highlighting civil rights sites such as Central High School. He also plans a visit this month to the Colonel Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers Monument in Ohio, which commemorates one of the first African-Americans to graduate from West Point and the first black to achieve the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army. After that, he plans to visit the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park.

“We put a lot of emphasis on them because we think they are key to being relevant to a much more diverse generation that we have out there,” Jarvis said. “Clearly we already know statistically that the visitation to the national parks does not represent the diversity of the nation and we want to change that dynamic.”

Jarvis compared the effort to reach a younger audience to the National Park Service’s 10-year Mission 66 program launched in 1956 to expand and improve its facilities.

“It’s a modern invitation to that generation to find their park, find that space, find that place, find that story that resonates with them,” he said.