Tahoetopia

PLACES: North Tahoe & Truckee Art Tour--This Weekend

The tours are self directed and maps can be seen at www.northtahoearts.com. The phone # is 530-581-2787.

American River Fire near Tahoe--NASA Image

The fire is one of dozens of uncontained fires burning across Northern California, most of them started by an intense lightning storm the last week of June.

PLACES: Donner Memorial State Park

The Donner Party of people and wagons missed getting over the summit and down to Sutter's Fort (Sacramento) by about a week in late October of 1846. This group of people were the caboose in a long (wagon) train of people who DID make it all the way.

Big Sur Wildfire adds to Tahoe Air Woes--NASA Image

In this NASA image, smoke from the two areas is seen drifting to the north and east, i.e., toward San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Valley. In the image, vegetation is shown in red; naturally bare ground is tan; burned ground is charcoal; smoke is light blue.

Cut the Gibberish, Be Understood

Today there is a flood of books on practical grammar. The rebirth of interest in effective writing is born out of necessity. "To your readers you are as you write," say generations of writing aficionados.

One tested example being used on the grammar circuit is the challenge of this collection of words: A woman without her man is nothing.

WARREN’S WORLD: Recycling, including Ski Areas

Laurie and I had accompanied the entire Kircher family to Las Vegas to see their father and husband inducted into the National Ski Hall of Fame. This is an honor that he should have received forty years ago.

Who Owns Your Favorite Nonprofit?

Nonprofits are vital to alive communities because they typically provide significant services that fall in the gap between commercial enterprises and government agencies or tax districts. Yet more than a few nonprofits barely fulfill their missions, if at all. Noble intentions do not automatically provide desired outcomes. Some nonprofits specialize in survival, instead of service.

PLACES: Four High Sierra Huts, One with Ghosts

There are four such huts built and maintained by volunteers: Bensen, built in 1949; Peter Grubb built in 1938-9; Ludlow built in 1958; and Bradley (Pole Creek) re-built in 1998.

Bensen Hut

California Wildfires--NASA Image

The red dots mark fire sites.


PLACES: Kings Beach on Lake Tahoe

King was the proprietor of a speakeasy called the Squirrel Inn that specialized in bootleg whiskey made somewhere along the Truckee River.

Today the stretch on Highway 28 along the North Shore of the lake is bustling and the long sandy beach provides an extraordinary view of Lake Tahoe at water level.

Pages