The Lake Tahoe premier of “Some Thing Else” will be Oct. 16 on the North Shore.

Powderwhore Productions, the Salt Lake City film crew celebrating its 10th year of ski filming, captures some of the steepest and deepest powder on the expeditions to remote mountain ranges.

Part ski-porn, part-documentary, “Some Thing Else” is a propaganda piece that promotes the joys and wonder of exploring winter on skis and splitboard.

Tickets will be available at Alpenglow Sports in Tahoe City or at the door. The show begins at 6pm.

For more info, call 530.583.6917.

By Suzy Strutner, Huffington Post

You know the feeling: you wake up after a long night’s sleep in a hotel bed, slip into your fuzzy hotel-issued slippers and hotel-issued robe, step onto the fluffy hotel carpet and think “WHY is this so amazing?!”

The question is certainly intriguing. So we asked a handful of HuffPost editors for their favorite hotel bed experiences. And the more we researched, the more we realized that all blissful hotel experiences have one important detail in common:

All the best hotel beds are white.

You’ve probably never thought about it, but try to imagine an ideal hotel bed that isn’t white, and you’ll see what we mean. And yet we all spend time trying to find colorful quilts and crazy bohemian-print sheets for our bedrooms at home … what’s the deal?

Turns out white is a symbol of luxury, and the bet is that you’ll feel more luxurious — and sleep more luxuriously! — in a white bed.

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By Amy B Wang, Arizona Republic

The command that blared from the radio was one Gary Dahlen had never heard before, not in all his years piloting helicopters over wildfires.

All available helicopters prepare for an emergency launch.

He hardly knew what to make of it. “I was thinking maybe structures were threatened,” Dahlen said later.

He was waiting at a helicopter base in Placerville.

Just uphill, where the American River’s south fork cuts a knife-sharp slash through the forest, the King Fire had been exploding up the canyon walls and beyond since Sept. 13. Now, two days later, the airborne and ground attack on the fire was under way.

Dahlen had been out doing “bucket work” all morning, picking up water in the bucket that dangled from his yellow Bell 205, dropping it onto the flames in the forest below. At midday, he returned to the base to refuel and await orders. Then he heard the unusual radio call.

He quickly climbed into his flight suit, then into his seat.

As the helicopter’s turbo engine whined to life,someone from the fire command staff came sprinting toward the aircraft, reached in and punched latitude-and-longitude coordinates into Dahlen’s GPS.

That was when he learned the emergency: It was a shelter deployment.

A crew on the ground, somewhere in the steep wilderness beyond the base, was stuck in front of the fire. Deployment meant the crew had unpacked their fire shelters, blankets of reflective foil and insulation, and prepared to climb inside them.

For a firefighter, deployment is a last resort. Some firefighters inside shelters survive, as the flames roll past them. Some do not. In 2013, the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona overtook 19 firefighters, members of the Prescott-based Granite Mountain Hotshots. Realizing they were trapped, the firefighters deployed their shelters. None survived.

In the cockpit of his helicopter, Dahlen looked at the coordinates on his GPS. The long line for his water bucket was still shackled to the airframe. But the trapped crew was 10 miles away. He lifted the Bell into smoke-dulled afternoon light and headed toward the flames.

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A book has been written about one of the puppies.

By Van Tieu, KRNV-TV

INCLINE VILLAGE — It’s a celebration of life and love that almost never was. Fifteen months later, six Doberman-mix puppies that were left for dead in a dumpster are now healthy, happy, and hungry for birthday cake.

Each individual cake was homemade with TLC and topped with peanut butter.

“I don’t know if you can put into words what it’s like to have six 80-90 pound dogs come galloping through the door,” says Becky Goodman, executive director at Pet Network. “When they first came in, you could literally hold three of them in the palm of your hand.”

It’s the first time the puppies, their foster families, and Pet Network staff could come together since the puppies’ cruel introduction into the world. Last July, a traveler passing through Lake Tahoe discovered them in a dumpster at a convenience store.

“They were maybe 2-3 hours old,” says Goodman. “They still had their umbilical cords attached. They had never been allowed to be near their mother. They had never eaten.”

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By Associated Press

RENO — Nevada ranks last in the nation for flu vaccination rates, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study for the 2013-14 flu season that has Nevada 50th on the list, behind Florida and Wyoming, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

South Dakota placed first nationwide for flu vaccination, followed by Rhode Island.

The CDC said the national vaccination rate improved to its highest level since 2010, with 46.2 percent of the population being immunized.

The rate among Nevadans 6 months and older was 46.2 percent compared to South Dakota’s nation-leading 57.4 percent.

The numbers got worse when focused on just adults. Nevada’s flu vaccination rate for adults age 18 and older was 32.3 percent. That’s nearly 10 percentage points below the national average.

The High Fives Foundation – Winter Empowerment program is helping two area winter action sports athletes transition to adaptive sports. The nonprofit board awarded a grant to Steven Jacobo of Gardnerville for $2,100 and Jeff Andrews of Truckee for $4,250.

In February 2013 Jacobo, a Gardnerville native, was snowboarding at Sierra-at-Tahoe when he hit an unfamiliar jump that threw him out of control off of a 25-foot drop off. He landed directly on his back, resulting in a burst fracture of his T9 and T10 vertebrae spinal cord injury.

Andrews, a resident of Truckee, was snowboarding at Sugar Bowl Resort in March 2014 when he over shot a jump in the terrain park. The resulting crash burst fractured his C-5 vertebrae into his spinal cord at the C-5/C-7 level.

This is where the High Fives Foundation comes in. Since the foundation’s inception in January 2009, the Winter Empowerment program service has assisted 61 athletes from 18 states in nine funding categories which include: living expenses, insurance, travel, health, healing network, adaptive equipment, winter equipment, programs and stoke (positive energy, outlook and attitude).

Since his 2013 injury, Jacobo has been working tirelessly in the gym to ensure that his life post-injury is the easiest that it can be. Along with spending countless hours on his fitness, he has been searching for an adaptive action-sport where he can experience the positive thrills found from snowboarding. In July, after discovering the sport of “chairskating,” Jacobo received a board-approved grant for $2,100 from the High Fives Foundation to be used toward the purchase of a Box Wheelchairs WCMX freestyle chair.

The August grant  awarded to Andrews will be used for six months of spinal cord injury specific personal training at the Sacramento SCI-Fit facility.

Cozy

Cozy is a 2-year-old gray Tiger medium hair cat who was left behind when her owners moved.

She came to the shelter with kittens, but now that they have all been adopted. She is ready to find her own home. She is a big cuddler. Cozy’s adoption fee has been sponsored.

Cozy is spayed, microchipped, tested for FIV, 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

Lynsey Dyer, a premier big mountain freeskier, is the vision — and star — behind the first-ever crowd-sourced, crowd-funded all-women’s ski movie, “Pretty Faces.”

“We are on a mission to make skiing and the outdoors look so fun that no girl will ever want to stay inside,” Dyer said in a press release. “Through this project and my nonprofit SheJumps, we want young girls to see positive, strong, and courageous women pursuing their passions and finding success. We want to show females everywhere: ‘if she can do it, so can I.’”

What began as a Kickstarter campaign to test the interest for such a project has become something much larger. With help from presenting sponsor Eddie Bauer, “Pretty Faces” is the first crowd-sourced, crowd-funded and most successful action sports Kickstarter campaign to date.

It is launching in Boulder on Sept. 30. It will be shown in Tahoe City on Dec. 7 at Tahoe Arts Haus Cinema and Dec. 12 at MontBleu in Stateline.

In addition to Dyer, other featured female athletes and key figures include Rachael Burks, Elyse Saugstad ,Ingrid Backstrom, Wendy Fisher, Angel Collinson, Nadia Samer, ,Olympian Devin Logan and more.

Three art exhibits will be open to the public through Dec. 5 at Lake Tahoe Community College.

All three will launch with an artist’s reception and talk on Oct. 2 at 5.

In the Haldan Art Gallery inside the library building are the works of Candace Nicol in her show “Postures and Parts: Construction of the Male Nude.” The artist’s reception will be Oct. 2 from 5-7pm, with an artist talk at 5:30pm. Gallery hours are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 11am-5:30pm, and Fridays 11am-2:30pm.

In the foyer of the Duke Theatre artist Amy Hackleman’s “Grey Matter” is open now through Dec. 5. The artist’s reception is Oct. 2 from 5-7pm. Hackleman is a local artist who teaches photography classes at LTCC.

Showing in the Student Art Gallery in the Main Building is the Winner’s Exhibition now through Dec. 5, 2014. This exhibit includes award-winning student artwork from the 2014 Annual Student Art Exhibition, plus some new works by the winning artists. The Artists’ reception is Thurs. Oct. 2 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

By Alexandra Svokos, Huffington Post

While some parents want certain books removed from schools, teachers are remembering the important reasons to keep them in the classroom.

This week is the 32nd annual Banned Books Week, described by organizers as a “celebration of the freedom to read.” Books have been banned from libraries and schools for reasons that range from religious viewpoints to sexual and drug references. In 2013, the American Library Association, or ALA, recorded 307 challenges — that is, formal complaints for a book to be removed from a school or library.

From January 2013 through August 2014, “sexually explicit,” “offensive language,” and “unsuited for age group” were the most commonly cited reasons for challenging a book, according to the ALA. Texas had the most book challenges at 114. “The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie was the most frequently challenged title nationwide.

Donna Decker, a professor who teaches a course on banned books at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, N.H., said she thinks it is necessary for teachers to educate students using banned and challenged books.

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