Hundreds of Realtors will gather from across the globe on June 13-15 at the National Association of Realtors Resort and Second-Home Symposium at the Lake Tahoe Hyatt in Incline Village.

This networking event is for people who specialize in the resort, vacation and second-home markets.

Launched in Los Cabos, Mexico, in 2003, the NAR Resort and Second-Home Symposium has traveled to Cape Cod, Hawaii, Vail, and Naples. Now it’s Lake Tahoe’s turn.

This year’s theme is Elevate Your Business. Reps from 28 states and five countries will be at the lake.

Introduced in January 2006, the Resort and Second-Home Property Specialist Certification is a nationally-recognized certification awarded by the National Association of Realtors to real estate professionals who wish to demonstrate and promote – to consumers and their peers alike—their expertise in the varied specialty. The program focuses on developing the knowledge and skill base that real estate professionals need to specialize in buying, selling, or managing second-homes in a resort, recreational, and/or vacation destination and properties for investment, development or retirement.

By Austin Fay

CAMP RICHARDSON — Contrasting homogeneous suburban theme parks, Renaissance fairs bring back a time when life expectancy was stunted, disease was rampant, and reality TV was better known as King Henry VIII’s court.

The 18th Annual Valhalla Renaissance Faire at Camp Richardson is much more fun than that sounds, and you can bring the family. It’s a full immersion in jousting, archery tournaments, greasy smells, Elizabethan music, and surly artisans who have become caricature of the period.

Ottoman dancers will return June 12-13 to Camp Rich for another weekend of merriment. Photos/Austin Fay

Nearly 1,000 re-enactors participate in the Valhalla Renaissance Faire; their only reward is doing something they love. There is a Queen Elizabeth, a Romeo, a Juliet, a William Shakespeare as well as hundreds of rogues, wenches, lords and ladies roaming the grounds for two weekends.

“I love doing it for the look in the little girl’s eyes when she runs up to me when I’m wearing my big dress and asks, ‘Are you the queen?’” Faire Operations Manager Darelle Polleck said.

The event had about 6,500 visitors last year, even though it rained one of the weekends. Volunteers are expecting many more this year as the forecast of 70-degree Tahoe weather is expected next weekend, too.

The Knights of Mayhem, currently the reigning American jousting champions, clash forces with 12-foot lances and full armor at 12:45 and 3:45 daily.

The first weekend’s theme was Shakespearean, next weekend “Pirates and Barbarians” pillage the squire, so wear your best costumes for the scavenger hunt at noon and 3pm.

The learning, feasting, music, and shows will continue at Camp Richardson from 10am to 6pm June 12, and until 5pm June 13. Tickets are $17 for adults, $12 for seniors, military and ages 13-17, $7 for children 6-12, 5 and under are free. Parking is available if it’s early in the day, otherwise, shuttles run from South Tahoe High School ($3, goes toward the school’s sports programs), Pope Beach ($5), and twice an hour a shuttle runs from the Y.

For more information, click here.

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By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News

California motorists already have Yosemite Valley, Lake Tahoe and a firefighter gracing their license plates. Images of the Golden Gate Bridge and a bear wandering through the Sierra Nevada mountains won’t be joining them.

Two campaigns to use specialized license plates to raise money for parks, wildlife and environmental restoration projects in the Bay Area and Sierra Nevada have been abandoned for lack of public interest.

Under state law, sponsors of such commemorative license plates must sign up 7,500 prepaid orders in one year or the DMV won’t produce the plates — which cost $50 a year.

Read the whole story

By Kathryn Reed

CHICO — It wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller, let alone No. 1 on the New York Times’ list. “The Shack” started out as a letter to Paul Young’s kids at the request of his wife who wanted him to put his ideas in writing as a living conversation.

He didn’t even have the money to get 15 copies run off for it to be a Christmas present. So his family had to wait even longer.

But then something happened. Family members shared it with others. He started receiving emails from strangers telling him how much the manuscript moved them.

Paul Young

Since “The Shack” was formally published in 2007, Young has been on the speaking circuit. His last stop was in May at CSU Chico.

“The weekend in the shack represents 11 years of my life,” Young told the more than 300 people in attendance.

The back of the 252-page paperback gives this as a description of the book, “Mackenzie Allen Philips’s youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she my have been brutally murdered is found in a an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of the Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. … In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant ‘The Shack’ wrestles with the timeless question: Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?”

Young tells the audience Mackenzie and Missy both are partly autobiographical.

After I read the book a couple years ago I described it as “thought-provoking”. Forgiveness is the overwhelming theme I was left with.

So much of what gets published these days seems so trivial. Perhaps this is because big publishing houses want something safe. This book is not safe. Some would call it controversial.

As Young explains, the book is a conversation starter about God, which is different than religion. The subject matter was a turn off to 20 publishers. They all said no.

Friends of Young decided to help him self-publish. More than 14 million copies of “The Shack” have been sold.

Young is a better writer than a speaker. He’s not sure if he has another book in him, especially considering this wasn’t intended to be one. But he is working on a screenplay. That and wanting to be home have him off the lecture circuit for the time being.

By Carlos Alcalá, Sacramento Bee

El Dorado Hills has the newest California Welcome Center for tourism thanks to sign envy.

The El Dorado Hills Chamber of Commerce had seen signs saying “Tourist Information” along Highway 50 at Folsom to the west and Cameron Park to the east.

“That’s what I wanted,” said chamber President Debbie Manning, “to pull people off 50 into the community.”

Read the whole story

Three decades after the debut of Foreigner and chart-topping success as a solo artist, Lou Gramm returns with a hot new band and a dynamic live show featuring 90 minutes of his own unique brand of rock.

Gramm and his band headline at the El Dorado County Fair on June 19.

Lou Gramm

Fans can expect to rock out on classics like “Hot Blooded” and “Juke Box Hero,” groove to the sound of Gramm’s massive solo hit, “Midnight Blue,” and hear a great slice of melodic rock from the new self-titled album “Lou Gramm Band.”

Gramm and the band Foreigner first exploded onto the music scene in 1977 with the chart topper, “Feels Like The First Time.” Twenty Top 40 singles followed, which continue to drive sales of nearly 80 million albums worldwide.

Discovery of a life-threatening brain tumor in 1997 prompted Gramm to take stock of his life and his creative direction.

He and his new band, which includes brothers Richard Grammatico and Ben Grammatico, have been performing together since 2004.

The Lou Gramm Band performs June 19 at 8pm on the main stage. Admission is included with fair entry.

The Nevada Commission on Tourism awarded 111 grants worth more than $662,000 to help rural communities promote attractions that draw visitors and generate revenue for local economies, Lt. Gov. Brian K. Krolicki announced Thursday.

NCOT awards grants twice a year to public entities such as visitors authorities, cities and chambers of commerce, and each grant must be matched in value with local funds or labor. Grant recipients in fiscal year 2009 reported an economic impact of $844 million and more than 1.3 million room nights generated for rural Nevada.

Examples of grants include:

· $2,000 to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe to help market the 2010 Pyramid Lake Triathlon to out-of-state participants and spectators. The grant will help Pyramid Lake and Northern Nevada gain exposure as a quality recreational destination.

· $3,000 to the Laughlin Tourism Commission to design and implement a website dedicated to River of Lights Boat Parade on the Colorado River.

· $5,120 to the Yerington Theatre for the Arts to help market a series of cultural events through radio and internet advertising. These events will help attract future performances to Yerington and increase visitation to the town.

· $2,850 to the Great Basin Heritage Area Partnership to optimize and promote the organization’s website, which does not appear in the first 10 pages of Google search results.

· $10,000 to the Virginia City Convention and Tourism Authority to continue a widely successful billboard campaign in California. Billboards on Interstate 80 and Highway 50 in California have proven to increase interest and visitation to Virginia City from California travelers who saw the billboards.

· $5,000 to the Nevada Bed and Breakfast Guild to distribute brochures and pay for online advertising and web hosting to promote more than 20 B&Bs statewide. Most of the guild members are in rural Nevada, so this grant will help increase awareness of rural destinations.

By Reno Gazette-Journal

Summertime is the biggest time of year for bands to head out on the road. It’s when the outdoor amphitheaters take on the big shows and the hottest tours take stages of all sizes. Tours big and small will hit Reno and Tahoe this year, from hitmakers such as Elton John, Rascal Flatts and Justin Bieber, to the smaller, but beloved acts such as Danzig, Ani DiFranco and Dropkick Murphys. While ticket prices aren’t coming down a whole lot from previous years, they’re not rising much, either. Here’s a look at what’s to come through Labor Day. Don’t see something you like? It never

Elton John

fails that the day we publish our preview, new shows are announced.

Read the whole story

By Ellen Nunes

Winter is over at last and it’s time to clean out all that unwanted stuff that’s been piling up and get ready for summer. Luckily, the Clean Tahoe Program’s Annual Community Cleanup Day – known by locals as “Dump Day” — is June 5 from 8am-4pm at the South Tahoe Refuse Transfer Station at 2140 Ruth Ave. in South Lake Tahoe.

Every June, Clean Tahoe sponsors this community event where local residents can dispose of a truckload of unwanted household and bulk items for $5.

Clean Tahoe is a community-focused nonprofit organization committed to maintaining Lake Tahoe’s mountain beauty through litter and nuisance abatement in the city and El Dorado County through community education, and by giving residents the opportunity to be actively involved in keeping their neighborhoods clean.

In addition to the $5 per truckload Dump Day price, there are discounted prices for other items. Tire Amnesty Day, sponsored by El Dorado County Environmental Management in Placerville, is back this year. Up to nine tires per residential load can be dumped free. E-waste items such as computer monitors and televisions are free. Refrigerators, freezers and other items containing Freon, will cost $15 instead of their normal $36 each.

A maximum of 20 gallons per household of hazardous household materials, including oil for recycling, can be dumped free. Like last year, we will not be accepting needles (bagged or loose) or heavy construction-type items such as concrete, asphalt, roofing materials or dirt. Pine needles can be put out and picked up by STR curbside for no additional cost on regular trash days.

Every California resident coming through the line will receive a free six-pack of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) courtesy of Sierra Pacific Power.

For this special June 5 event, the Transfer Station gates will close at 4pm instead of the usual 5pm to allow time to separate the large amount of items coming through the gates on this day. All vehicles in line at 4pm will be escorted inside and allowed to dump their loads. Once the gates are closed, late arrivals will be turned away.

This is a very popular community event, and residents need to plan ahead for a wait in line.

Community Cleanup Day is intended for residential dumping only. Commercial loads will pay regular fees and Douglas County residents will pay an extra $5 fee since they do not pay a yearly fee to support the Clean Tahoe Program.

Individual residents, or community groups who want to do something extra in the spirit of Community Cleanup Day can clean a community lot pre-selected by Clean Tahoe or pick one of their own. As a thank you, Clean Tahoe will provide a free Dump Day line pass, which allows the holder to bypass the line to dump all their items. The usual $5 gate fee is also waived.

For more details about Community Cleanup Day, to volunteer yourself or your group to clean a community lot, or for information on Clean Tahoe’s other programs and activities throughout the year, call the Clean Tahoe Program at (530) 544.4210.

Ellen Nunes is program manager for Clean Tahoe.

The Reno/Tahoe community has the opportunity to view “TAPPED”, an award winning documentary on the issues surrounding bottled water versus tap water. These screenings are presented by the Tahoe Water Suppliers Association.

The events are free and open to the public.

Summer dates:

June 11, 8pm: Free, Campfire Program, Galena Creek Regional Park, Reno. Co-sponsored by the Great Basin Institute.

July 22,7pm: Free, North Tahoe Events Center, 8318 North Lake Blvd., Kings Beach. Co-sponsored by the Squaw Valley Institute.

Aug. 21, 7:30pm: Free, Campfire Program, Martis Creek Lake Campground, Truckee. Hosted by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Martis Creek Lake.

Is access to clean drinking water a basic human right or a commodity that should be bought and sold like any other article of commerce? Stephanie Soechtig’s award winning feature film “TAPPED” is an unflinching examination of the business of the billion dollar bottled water industry. From the plastic production to the ocean where so many of these bottles end up, this inspiring documentary trails the path of the bottled water industry, and the communities that were unwitting chips on the table. A powerful portrait of the lives affected by the bottled water industry, this revelatory film features those caught in the intersection of big business and the public’s right to water.

The website is www.tappedthemovie.com.

These screenings are presented by the Tahoe Water Suppliers Association in partnership with the Great Basin Institute, Squaw Valley Institute and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Martis Creek Lake.

For more information, contact Madonna Dunbar at (775) 832.1212 or email mod@ivgid.org.