South Lake Tahoe’s community baby shower provides support to families on June 25 

by n Victoria Mastrocola Follown vmastrocola@swiftcom.comn | Jun 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – South Lake Tahoe’s inaugural Locally Grown Community Baby Shower kicks off on Thursday, June 25, at the new South Lake Tahoe Recreation and Aquatics Center, and invites pregnant or postpartum families residing in El Dorado and Alpine Counties to join for free resources and support.

“We’re so excited to be partners in this new event,” said Sarah Abram, Resource and Referral Supervisor at Catalyst Community. “It’s going to be a great way to connect new and expecting families with community resources and also with each other, to build community and make sure they have the most support ready for their growing families.”

Organized by Mountain Valley Health, the event will offer educational workshops, diaper programs, car seat safety, blanket giveaways, and an opportunity to win some amazing raffle prizes including things like baskets of baby clothes, breast pumps, books, and new baby/mother-related items. 

Sombreros Mexican Restaurant is providing free and delicious food while baby games and a play area for kids will be available. 

Anthem, Kaiser Permanente, Catalyst Community and over 15 additional community partners are coming together to take part in the community baby shower, including Safe Steps 4 Kids, El Dorado County Library, First 5 El Dorado and Alpine Commissions, El Dorado Community Health Centers, Alpine County Early Learning Center, El Dorado Smiles, Healthy Families El Dorado County, St. Theresa’s Bread and Broth, Vista Rise Collective, Barton Health, Marshall, Raya Health and El Dorado County Office of Education. 

The event will take place from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. inside the South Lake Tahoe Recreation Center’s gym located at 1180 Rufus Allen Blvd in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

RSVPs are required. To register, visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FBPXW75. 

“Join us with your loved ones for a warm, resource-filled evening!” 

Alternative Education Class of 2026 graduates at Lake Tahoe Community College

by Submitted by Sara Justice, Mt. Tallac Lead Teacher | Jun 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – On the evening of June 10, 2026, Mt. Tallac High School, Elevated Digital Learning Academy, El Dorado County Adult School, and the ADVANCE program honored students whose determination, perseverance, and personal growth were on full display during a beautiful graduation ceremony hosted by Lake Tahoe Community College.

These programs are more than alternative pathways to a diploma or adult education; they are essential parts of our community. They provide opportunities for youth and adult learners whose journeys may look different from the traditional path, reminding us that success is not one-size-fits-all. In a community as diverse as ours, having multiple pathways to education is not only valuable but necessary.

The graduates’ stories demonstrated the life-changing impact these programs have on individuals, families, and the future of South Lake Tahoe. Student speaker Jennifer Valdez Lopez shared how Mt. Tallac opened doors she never imagined possible.

“Because of Mt. Tallac, I got a job in childcare at LTCC, volunteered at Barton, and started preparing for a future in the medical field. This fall, I plan to begin EMT and nursing classes and work toward becoming a nurse. But more important than any opportunity, this school gave me something greater. It gave me a better version of myself.”

Valdez Lopez’s words reflect what so many students experience through these programs: not only academic achievement but also personal transformation, confidence, and a renewed sense of purpose.

Keynote speaker and former LTUSD employee Susan Baker spoke about the power of kinship, kindness, and community. She challenged graduates and guests alike to imagine a more connected world, asking:
“Can you imagine a world where we all felt that deep connection to each other despite our backgrounds and differences?”

Her message served as a powerful reminder that education is not only about preparing students for careers and college but also about building compassionate communities where everyone belongs.

The evening was made even more special by the stunning setting at Lake Tahoe Community College. LTUSD extends its sincere gratitude to LTCC for hosting such a picturesque and memorable ceremony and for its continued partnership in supporting local students and families.

There is also a celebration of the programs that make stories like these possible. Mt. Tallac High School, Elevated Digital Learning Academy, El Dorado County Adult School, and ADVANCE provide hope, opportunity, and second chances. They help students discover their strengths, overcome obstacles, and build meaningful futures. Their impact extends far beyond graduation day, strengthening our workforce, enriching our community, and changing lives for generations to come.

Congratulations to the Class of 2026.

Car-Free Care-Free: Keep Tahoe Blue launches initiative to reduce vehicle use

by n Laney Griffo Follown lgriffo@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Almost everyone who has visited Lake Tahoe in the busy seasons knows having a car in the basin can be a hassle.

Spending precious beach time looking for parking, finally finding a spot that’s a mile away from your destination and lugging all your beach stuff down the road, realizing you can’t visit your planned spot because you didn’t make a reservation in time or paying too much at a metered spot.

Even locals know the struggle; not being able to park near your place of business because a visitor has illegally parked in your spot, or the drive to work taking twice as long as it does during the shoulder seasons. 

That’s why Keep Tahoe Blue has launched Car-Free, Care-Free Tahoe, an initiative to provide and highlight ways for people to get around South Lake Tahoe without their car. 

“Basically, what it means is, you get to Tahoe, you park your car once and get to anywhere you want to go in the basin with lake-friendly, non-car options like buses, bikes, e-scooters, shuttles, maybe even boats,” said Chris Joseph, Communications Director, Keep Tahoe Blue.

The program is being piloted this summer in South Lake Tahoe with hopes of it eventually expanding to the North Shore. 

While transportation is far from perfect in South Lake Tahoe, new and expanded programs have extended the places people can reach using non-car methods. 

Lake Link is an on-demand shuttle that can take users almost anywhere in the South Shore for free. Bike paths have expanded and been repaved, making walking or biking easier.

The City of South Lake Tahoe recently renewed its contract with Lime Scooters to allow e-scooter access to visitors who don’t have a bike. The TTD bus line can take riders along U.S. 50 with many convenient stops along the way, including to the bus terminal at the “Y” where riders can then get picked up by the Emerald Bay Shuttle.

Finally, the East Shore Express provides riders with greater access to trails and beaches along Lake Tahoe’s East Shore. 

“The best way to experience Lake Tahoe is from the passenger seat or from a bike or on your own two feet,” said Joseph.

“Traffic and parking are a real challenge here in Tahoe. That’s just the nature of being a super-popular worldwide destination that’s also within a four-hour drive for 8-10 million people. So, if you can stay off the roads, or let someone do the driving for you, it’s much, much easier,” Joseph said. 

There is also an environmental purpose for this message. 

“Every additional car that gets stuck on the road is more tailpipe emissions; that’s more food for algae in the lake; it’s also more wear and tear on the roadways that can create these fine particles of dust and debris that, when it rains, and snow melts, get funneled into the lake,” said Joseph. 

While Keep Tahoe Blue is the driver of the Car-Free Care-Free campaign, it couldn’t be made possible without other agencies in South Lake Tahoe, such as the Tahoe Transportation District, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, El Dorado County Supervisor Brooke Laine, the Tahoe Bike Coalition and more. 

Those groups gathered at Heavenly Mountain Resort on Wednesday, June 17, to celebrate the unveiling of two gondola cars wrapped with art depicting the Car Free Care Free message. Keep Tahoe Blue is a beneficiary of Vail’s Epic Promise, and Heavenly leadership was excited to help spread Keep Tahoe Blue’s message. 

“The Emerald Bay Shuttle program launched just this last year, and it was such a great example of our shared commitment to protecting the Lake Tahoe Basin,” said Peter Disch, Vice President of Mountain Operations, Heavenly. “So, when Keep Tahoe Blue approached about supporting the [Car Free Care Free] initiative, it was an immediate, ‘yes.'”

They opened applications to artists within a 50-mile radius to submit their interpretations of Car Free Care Free. About 80 artists submitted applications, but local artist Bryn Merrell was named the winner.

For Merrell, winning the contest was too good to be true, so much so that she assumed the email announcing that she’d won must be spam. 

“I couldn’t believe it when I was chosen; it’s a big opportunity, and I was honored,” said Merrell. 

The piece is a panoramic view that spans from the East Shore all the way to Emerald Bay. It features some of Merrell’s favorite places along the South Shore, and it also features Highway 89. 

“I just wanted the piece to celebrate the road which connects these communities, versus seeing it as a negative,” said Merrell. 

She added that while the road does mean traffic, it also gives people access to the beautiful places in the area. 

The wrapped cars are already running on Heavenly’s gondola. In addition to the exterior art, there is information inside on how to go car-free. 

During the unveiling of the gondola, Keep Tahoe Blue Chief Strategy Officer Jesse Patterson, who rode a Lime Scooter from the KTB offices to the unveiling, said, “Part of visiting Tahoe should be how you get to each location and all the people you meet along the way.”

To learn more about the initiative, visit https://www.keeptahoeblue.org/combat-pollution/cfcf/. 

Motorcyclist dies in head-on crash near South Lake Tahoe

by n Staff Report Follown editor@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

TWIN BRIDGES, Calif. – An 85-year-old motorcyclist is dead after a head-on collision near South Lake Tahoe on Monday morning.

At around 11:15 a.m., a motorcycle traveling east on US-50, just east of Twin Bridges, Calif., crossed into the oncoming lane and collided head-on with an SUV traveling west.

Despite life-saving measures, the motorcycle rider, a male from Lincoln Calif., died at the scene.

It is currently unclear whether drugs or alcohol were a factor.

The California Highway Patrol is investigating and says more information will be released as it becomes available.

Tahoe TAP Podcast — Joe Pavelski: From NHL Greatness to ACC Champion

by n Staff Report Follown editor@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

The Tahoe TAP podcast returns with another conversation highlighting the people, stories, and moments that make Lake Tahoe such a special place. Hosts Mike Peron and Rob Galloway sit down with one of the most accomplished athletes to ever compete in the American Century Championship — and one of the most respected figures in professional sports.

This episode features Joe Pavelski, the reigning American Century Championship winner, whose dramatic victory at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course instantly became one of the tournament’s most memorable moments. After several close calls, including a runner-up finish in 2024, Pavelski captured the 2025 title in spectacular fashion, sinking a walk-off eagle putt on the 18th hole to secure the championship.

While Tahoe fans have come to know him for his elite golf game, Pavelski’s legacy was built on the ice. Over an 18-year NHL career with the San Jose Sharks and Dallas Stars, he played more than 1,300 games, scored nearly 500 goals, and established himself as one of the greatest American-born players in hockey history. Nicknamed “Captain America,” he served as captain of both the Sharks and Team USA, earned four NHL All-Star selections, and holds the NHL record for the most playoff goals scored by an American-born player with 74.

In this episode, Pavelski reflects on his remarkable hockey career, the transition from professional athlete to championship golfer, and his growing connection to Lake Tahoe through one of the region’s most celebrated sporting events. Listeners will also get to know the person behind the accolades — a fierce competitor, respected leader, and all-around great ambassador for the game.

Tahoe electric transportation event to feature electric flying car

by n Katelyn Welsh Follown kwelsh@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

STATELINE, Nev. – The fourth annual Lake Tahoe Electric Transportation Forum is heading to the Tahoe Blue Event Center on Aug. 20, and this year is taking to the sky, featuring an electric flying car.

The annual conference brings together leading voices for advocacy and educational discussions on multiple modes of clean energy transportation on land, water, and now the air.

“Electric aircraft is the future of transportation,” forum founder and organizer Kevin McGehee says, “and it’s going to revolutionize the way people transport themselves.”

This year’s keynote speaker is aeronautical pioneer Heather Chirtea, America’s first female flying car owner and pilot.

“It’ll be commonplace to take an air taxi from San Francisco to Tahoe eventually,” Chirtea says, who will be discussing the seemingly futuristic new era that electric cars could usher in. “The flying cars actually make a green way possible for people to move amongst those areas in a clean, quiet manner.”

Participants will learn about her vision for the future of electric flying cars and what it could mean for Lake Tahoe and the environment.

“It’s achievable for you. It’s achievable for me. It’s achievable for every man,” she says.

Chirtea will also be bringing her flying car, a Pivotal BlackFly.

“You can be one of the first people in the nation to sit in a flying car,” she says, “and understand how it flies.”

Another influencer in the airspace, Dan Sloat, founder and president of the Advanced Air Mobility Institute—a non-profit research center integrating airspace technology worldwide—will be moderating much of the discussion and events on electric aviation.

Sloat plans on covering the often-overlooked benefits of electric aviation, in addition to zero operational emissions, like reduced noise pollution.

A fireside chat is scheduled where Sloat, along with Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, will discuss the economics of environmental initiatives, “and hopefully open people’s eyes and recognize that when you adopt systems that are good for the environment,” Sloat says, “it doesn’t have to be a one-for-one trade-off.”

Panel guests also include local voices from the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the Tahoe Transportation District.

In addition to highlighting electric air transportation, the forum will continue to cover the latest innovations in electric transportation on the roads and in the water through engaging and interactive panels, as well as an exhibition of electric cars and watercraft.

McGehee, who founded the event out of his passion for Lake Tahoe, says, “It’s incumbent upon all of us to do whatever we can as individuals and collectively with the conservation groups to work in harmony and try to do everything we can to preserve it.”

He welcomes anyone to attend, whether they’re from the general public or working in a related sector: “It’s for people that care about the environment, people that care about Lake Tahoe and people that care about transportation.”

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit ltetf.com.

South Tahoe artist paints murals: ‘A great opportunity to give back to my community’

by n Eli Ramos Follown eramos@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 23, 2026 | Uncategorized

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Local artist Morrison “Mo” Salmon was born and raised in South Lake Tahoe, and after painting through Tahoe Art League’s mural funding program last year, has now created several murals throughout the city. “It was a great opportunity to give back to my community and I’m just so thankful I got it.”

Salmon grew up in South Lake Tahoe and says her passion for art came through her family, who both were creative and supportive of her decision to pursue art as a career. Salmon attended the Otis College of Art and Design, studying animation and illustration and graduating in 2024.

“I decided to move back home to recenter after college,” said Salmon. Last year, she applied for the Tahoe Art League’s mural program to pursue more artistic opportunities, and credits Tahoe Art League president and executive director Rebecca Bryson with helping her secure funding and opportunities.

Salmon’s first mural was at Samurai Sushi, with a boat and pier design, which she said was an interesting technical challenge due to the surface of the wall. Since then, she says the Art League connected her to opportunities to paint murals at Bijou Elementary, South Tahoe Middle School and South Tahoe High School.

Murals are one of the common sights around South Lake Tahoe, and Salmon says she’s seen a lot of positive reactions to that art throughout the community.

Her regular day job is at Lake Tahoe Television, which she says does help her find a creative, digital space to utilize her art degree. But, she says, it also was an amazing opportunity to paint in physical spaces and creative something in public.

“I use an art program called Procreate to conceptualize these pieces. I remember coming after work to paint the mural at South Tahoe Middle School, getting lost in that space of painting for hours,” said Salmon.

The experience has also given her connection with the community, especially the students. Salmon served as a senior mural artist mentor for a student at the high school, and says students and staff alike have told her how much the murals brighten up their day. “It was amazing to work with students and help their vision to come to life. To me, teaching is a powerful way to keep art alive in this city.”

Salmon hopes to keep creating art and working with different artists, as well as inspiring artists in South Lake Tahoe, “I want to open up the door for these younger artists growing up here that there are opportunities to be an artist here.”

She tells young artists that finding new angles and avenues with art has been a transformative process for her, and something they should embrace. “Don’t be too hard on yourself with your art. Sometimes all you need to do is take a step back from a piece and work through that artistic process.”

Salmon is looking forward to creating even more art for the community. “I wake up each morning and I’m like, ‘I got to make four murals in my hometown.’ How lucky is that?”

You can find more of Salmon’s art at mosalmondesigns on Instagram.

South Tahoe agencies seek comment on Draft Hazard Mitigation Plan

by n Staff Report Follown editor@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Would you like to learn more about what the South Tahoe Public Utility District (STPUD) and Lake Valley Fire Protection District (LVFPD) are doing to reduce the impacts of wildfires, drought, floods, winter storms, and other natural hazards in the South Tahoe service area? A draft of the STPUD and LVFPD Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan is available for public review and comment. The plan identifies natural hazards, assesses local risks, and outlines strategies to protect public safety, critical water, wastewater, and fire protection infrastructure, the economy, and the environment.  

STPUD and LVFPD developed the plan update by following a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) guided planning process and by gathering input from residents, businesses, partner agencies, and community organizations. The plan identifies hazard mitigation goals and projects designed to reduce long-term risk and strengthen community resilience before disasters occur. Public input collected through the process helped shape local priorities, highlight community concerns, and inform proposed mitigation actions.  

STPUD and LVFPD are now soliciting public comments on the draft plan before it is finalized and submitted to FEMA for review and approval. Once approved, the final plan will be formally adopted by both agencies. The public comment period will be 21 days from June 22, 2026 to July 13, 2026.  

The draft plan can be accessed at: https://www.stpud.us/hazard-mitigation-plan-update. 

An online form to provide feedback on the plan can be accessed here: https://forms.office.com/e/vCGytpxHuB. 

For more information, please contact STPUD at 530-544-6474 or email info@stpud.us.  

Billionaire tax officially heads to Nov. 3 ballot

by By Madeline Shannon | The Center Square | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

(The Center Square) – The controversial union-backed billionaire tax in California is officially heading to the Nov. 3 ballot.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber announced the California Billionaire Tax Act exceeded the number of signatures it needed to qualify for the general election.

The initiative aims to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on the Golden State’s billionaires to generate $100 billion in revenue. The tax would apply to assets like art, stocks and bonds. That money would be used to help backfill reductions in federal funding to K-12 schools, health services provided by Medi-Cal and aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as CalFresh in California, according to previous reporting by The Center Square.

Representatives from the advocacy group Billionaire Tax Now and the union backing the tax, Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West, did not respond to The Center Square before publication time.

However, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle spoke to The Center Square on Thursday about the tax measure advancing to the midterm election ballot in November.

“If you want a budget deficit in perpetuity, pass this,” Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, told The Center Square. “What happens is, these folks are now going to Florida and everywhere else, and not only are they leaving, but they are the ones investing in a lot of these jobs. Those jobs now are fleeing California, and we’re going to lose them, dramatically, going forward.”

The Golden State’s billionaires will take their billions and create jobs in other parts of the country – not in California, Strickland added.

“The minute this passed, we would be in a budget deficit in perpetuity,” Strickland said. “If you care about funding education, if you care about funding health care, if you care about funding transportation infrastructure, you’ll vote no on this initiative, because we won’t be able to fund essential services in California.”

California’s ongoing budget deficit, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office recently projected would amount to $16.9 billion, is largely due to expenditures exceeding revenues under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s most recent budget proposal. That was in spite of the fact that Newsom attempted to solve the state’s budget deficit through 2028, according to previous reporting by The Center Square.

While some, like Strickland, see the potential passage of the billionaire tax making the state’s budget woes worse, there is still support for the measure.

“I agree with the proposal overall,” Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena, told The Center Square. “I agree overall with the idea that billionaires and corporations need to pay their fair share. We’ve seen inequality grow in an alarming way, and frankly, I think most Californians are sick of it.”

No one was available from Billionaire Tax Now or Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West to answer questions about the ballot measure’s progress. When asked if anyone was available to answer questions, a representative from Billionaire Tax Now sent a press release via email.

According to previous reporting by The Center Square, even the potential passage of the tax has sent some billionaires packing who previously called California home. Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought a mansion in Florida. Other billionaires also relocated to other states, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Palantir Technologies and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks.

A February 2026 report from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation found that the mere proposal of the wealth tax could be costing the state $1 trillion in revenue with the departure of multiple billionaires already. One economistpredicted that passage of the tax could eventually cost the state $25 billion in revenue, The Center Square previously reported.

However, a healthcare worker who advocate for the measure previously told The Center Square that if billionaires leave the state, they are only showing their own greed.

“We need to put humanity first over greed,” Debru Carthan, a radiologic technologist for Kaiser, told The Center Square in March. “This is about being our brothers’ keeper. Those who leave California – they are showing their greed. They’re showing their selfishness. And the very patients who will die are the ones who helped them make the billions that they have now.”

According to Business Insider, there are more than 200 billionaires who live in California.

Nearly 13-acre Fallen Leaf Lake retreat with private dock offered at $4.2 Million

by n Staff Report Follown editor@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – A nearly 13-acre lakefront retreat with 65 feet of shoreline, a private dock, two summer cabins, the year round house built in 2005 and sweeping views of Fallen Leaf Lake and Mt. Tallac has been listed for $4.2 million.

Located at 710 Fallen Leaf Road, the property offers an uncommon combination of privacy, acreage, and direct lake access. The estate includes a four-bedroom main residence and two additional summer cabins, providing flexible accommodations for guests and extended stays.

“Properties of this scale on Fallen Leaf Lake rarely become available,” said Jamison Blair, principal of Team Blair Tahoe at Compass. “The acreage, private shoreline, dock access, and views of Mt. Tallac create a setting that feels genuinely removed while remaining connected to South Lake Tahoe.”

The main residence was thoughtfully renovated to combine modern comfort with traditional mountain architecture. Wood-beamed ceilings and a stone Rumford fireplace anchor the great room, while three sets of sliding doors open onto an expansive wraparound deck overlooking the lake.

The chef’s kitchen includes Viking double ovens, two dishwashers, generous storage, and a breakfast nook. A separate den or office and adjoining bar provide additional spaces for working, gathering, and entertaining.

“This is the kind of property designed around time spent together,” Blair said. “From sunset dinners on the deck to mornings on the water, the home takes full advantage of its setting without losing the warmth and character people associate with a true Tahoe retreat.”

Two summer cabins provide additional privacy and accommodations for guests. The property is also equipped for year-round use with hydronic floor heating, a generator, and winter water access.

Along the shoreline, an Alaskan fir private dock provides boat access, while a 20-foot side-floating dock accommodates kayaks and paddleboards. A boathouse garage offers convenient storage for recreational equipment.

Fallen Leaf Lake is known for its clear water, mountain surroundings, and quieter atmosphere. With nearly 13 acres and substantial lake frontage, 710 Fallen Leaf Road presents a distinctive opportunity to own a private retreat shaped by the landscape around it.

AAUW Tahoe Nevada Awards 6 Scholarships to Incline Village Seniors

by n Staff Report Follown editor@tahoedailytribune.comn | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – The American Association of University Women, Tahoe-Nevada Branch (AAUW Tahoe-NV), located in Incline Village, presented scholarships and awards to six (6) deserving Incline Village High School senior women.

The following are recipients of this year’s awards:

• Noah Cannon plans to Mechanical Engineering
• Alynne Chavez Estrada will be majoring in Nursing
• Alicia Dominguez will also major in Nursing, but at a different university.
• Sofia Galindo will study Cosmetology
• Chloe Greer plans to follow Biology/PreMed
• Riley Hunt will also major in Biology/PreMed

On Wednesday, June 10, AAUW Tahoe Nevada held its annual Business Meeting at the Chateau in
Incline Village. Co-Presidents Esther Levandoski and Carolyn Smith highlighted Branch accomplishments, including raising over $40,000 in a Matching Grant and other fundraising efforts; an additional $12,500 was received in memory of past president, Peggy Poindexter, for the newly established Career and Technical Education (CTE) scholarship AAUW Tahoe-Nevada’s past fundraising activities allowed the organization to award $29,650 in scholarships last Fall, 2025.

Because of its successful efforts this past year, $41,000 will be used in 2026 to support two 4-year renewable scholarships, two Career and Technical Education (CTE) scholarships, and one each STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and non-renewable scholarships. Recipients of the renewable scholarships are required to maintain a 3.0 GPA and continue to be a fulltime student, taking 12 units per semester.

AAUW Tahoe-NV Branch sponsors a monthly meeting in Incline Village that features speakers on a broad range of subjects to its 140+ members. The Branch also has many interest groups (Outdoor Enthusiasts, Book Club, and a Great Decision discussion group, to name just a few).

The AAUW Tahoe-NV Branch is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation registered with the Nevada Secretary of State (Federal Tax I.D. #943055754), whose purpose is to further AAUW’s mission in advancing equity for women and girls through research, education, and advocacy. Contributions to the Scholarship Program and Community Action Grant efforts qualify for a federal tax deduction pursuant to the provisions of Section 170.c. of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, 26 USC 170c. For further information on the AAUW Tahoe-NV organization or to contribute to their efforts, please go to their website: https://tahoe-nv.aauw.net

Investment Corner: The SpaceX IPO

by Larry Sidney | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

In case you missed the buzz these past few weeks, Elon Musk’s company “SpaceX” recently had an IPO (Initial Public Offering). That means that shares of the company’s stock became available on the public market for the first time.

In broad terms, IPOs often generate a lot of excitement. Because the company’s stock was, by definition, not publicly listed prior to the IPO, the traditional market forces that usually dictate share prices are not yet in place, so there is often hope that the IPO share price is below the actual value of the shares. Such is the hope of many with SpaceX.

When clients and friends have asked me for my thoughts on the SpaceX IPO, my response has been predictably boring—I have no advice on what the value of the company might be. There simply is not as much information available on SpaceX as there is on a typical publicly traded company. However, many years of IPO history and evidence can provide us some insights.

A 2021 study by NASDAQ looked at the results of IPOs from 2010-2020. The study found that slightly over 50% of companies underperform the market 1 year after their IPO. The number of laggards is greater after 3 years: almost 2/3 of IPOs trailed market returns.

The same study found that top 10% of IPOs averaged a market-adjusted return of over 300%. When an IPO goes well, it can go really well! Unfortunately, the worst ones can cost investors quite a bit of money. Truist Chief Investment Officer Keith Lerner noted that numerous high-profile IPOs had terrible 12-month returns, including Coinbase (-55%), Lyft (-65%), and Rivian (-67%). Facebook and Alibaba are examples of companies whose stock price fell dramatically after seeing an initial IPO pop, although those companies eventually increased substantially in value for investors who held on to their stock.

In light of this history, what are we to make of SpaceX? The SpaceX IPO is the largest valuation for IPO in history. That begs the question: how much room is there for the stock price to run to the upside? Are you confident that the returns will be well above market returns, and therefore are worth taking on additional risk? That said, do you want to bet against Elon Musk, the founder and largest owner of SpaceX? That hasn’t gone well for investors, given the massive growth of Tesla and the strong earnings of his company Starlink (now part of SpaceX).

An investment in SpaceX represents the opposite of the traditional “buy and hold” philosophy, so if you choose to invest in SpaceX at the IPO or soon after, be aware of the risk. You are speculating in a company that does not have an easily measurable value. Just like with other risky assets, any dollars that you invest in this should be money that you can afford to lose if the worst outcome were to happen.

I will be watching this along with the rest of the investment community. There are a couple of other massive IPOs expected in the upcoming months (Anthropic and OpenAI) and this could well be a barometer for how those will turn out. If you do choose to “go in” on SpaceX, I wish you the best of luck.

However you view the SpaceX IPO, invest smartly and invest well!

Larry Sidney is a Zephyr Cove-based Investment Advisor Representative. Information is found at https://palisadeinvestments.com/ or by calling 775-299-4600 x702. This is not a solicitation to buy or sell securities. Clients may hold positions mentioned in this article. Past Performance does not guarantee future results. Consult your financial advisor before purchasing any security.

Your Next Chapter Might Just Be the Best One Yet

by Shannon Bruckbauer, AMFT, APCC | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

There is something deeply encouraging about the fact that people are capable of change throughout their entire lives. Even when patterns feel long standing, change can still happen in ways that support greater emotional balance and self-understanding.

No matter how many candles are currently crowding your birthday cake, it is never too late to invest in your emotional well-being, deepen your relationships, or reinvent your daily purpose.

Your life has the capacity to continue to grow while simultaneously sharing your knowledge and wisdom with others. Having a life that makes you excited about putting your feet on the floor every morning is possible at any age.

I, by no means, would insinuate that this will be easy, but I do know that you do not have to carry your challenges by yourself. Asking for support is not a sign that you have failed. It is an honest recognition that no one is meant to navigate life alone. It is an act of giving yourself some grace. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is simply allow yourself to be supported.

The Scenic Route of Life

Think about everything you have tackled so far. You have spent a lifetime navigating massive transitions: surviving the teenage years, building careers, raising families, and managing all of life’s changes. You have proven time and again that you are highly adaptable.

Sure, this stage of the journey comes with its own unique set of quirks and challenges. Routines shift, social circles change, and keeping up with the speed of the modern world can feel like a sport of its own. It is also a time when those big, beautiful questions about identity, purpose, and what matters most naturally come into focus.

Wisdom Looks Good on You

With age comes a spectacular superpower: perspective. You have accumulated a lifetime of wisdom.

Because you have the time to look back, it is completely normal to find yourself reflecting on parts of life that still feel a little unfinished. If emotions like grief, loneliness, or anxiety pop up, don’t panic. There is absolutely nothing “wrong” with you. These feelings are a normal part of being human, especially during periods of reflection. Think of these feelings as a gentle invitation to slow down and give yourself the same care and attention you have spent decades giving to everyone else.

One of the best secrets to emotional well-being is simply acknowledging what is there instead of sweeping it under the rug. Sadness, fear, and disappointment are all feelings that are a normal part of the human experience. When we stop fighting those feelings and give them some space to process, they loosen their grip and soften.

Redefining the Good Life

There is a beautiful, wide-open space that opens up in later life. It is a golden opportunity to appreciate the view and focus on what truly matters to you.

This is your invitation to reconnect with old passions, dive into creativity, explore your spiritual side, or find new ways to light up someone else’s day. Remember, your purpose does not come from a frantic to-do list or how productive you are. True fulfillment is found in simple, joyful moments: a great conversation, a burst of laughter, a bit of personal growth, and living a life that feels authentically and wonderfully yours.

Shannon Bruckbauer, AMFT, APCC is a clinical therapist with Conscious Mind Therapy Institute with sessions in person and online. Located in South Lake Tahoe, Truckee, and Walnut Creek. CMTI accepts most major insurances including Medicare. Learn more at https://consciousmindtherapyinstitute.com/.

Protecting Tahoe’s Clean, Clear Waters

by Julie W. Regan / TRPA | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

Lake Tahoe watercraft inspectors stopped two boats this month that were headed for the lake carrying highly invasive golden mussels. The interceptions are both a reminder of the threats Tahoe faces and a testament to the resolve of the people working to protect it.

Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) and Tahoe Resource Conservation District watercraft inspectors spotted the invasive mollusks and quickly flagged the boats for decontamination and further inspection. There have now been three golden mussel detections at Lake Tahoe since they were discovered for the first time in North America just a few hours away.

Golden mussels have been called “invasive species on steroids.” Their survivability and reproduction rates are extraordinary, even compared to quagga and zebra mussels, which our watercraft inspection program has kept out of Tahoe for nearly 20 years. A mussel infestation could devastate the lake’s ecosystem and the shoreline areas where residents and visitors gather to swim, paddle, and simply enjoy the beach.

The program worked exactly as it was designed to. Mandatory inspections of thousands of motorized watercraft every year lower the risk of a new aquatic invasive species polluting our waters. The partnership of agencies, marinas, inspectors, public land managers, and boaters who keep their equipment Clean, Drained, and Dry have made the Lake Tahoe Watercraft Inspection Program a national model for invasive species prevention.

Vigilance is growing with non-motorized recreators, too. More than 8,000 residents and visitors have become Tahoe Keepers, trained in how to Clean, Drain, and Dry their gear. It’s essential that we clean all paddleboards, kayaks, fishing equipment, and beach toys. Solar-powered CD3 (Clean, Drain, Dry, Dispose) stations are located at popular beaches and river access points. Roving inspectors and Lake Tahoe ambassadors educate thousands of people headed for the water—look for them this summer.

At its core, the Watercraft Inspection Program is about keeping Lake Tahoe clean and clear for everyone today and for future generations. This vision is what has driven Lake Tahoe’s conservation for decades. In the 1960s, scientists with UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center began documenting a troubling decline in lake clarity. Unmanaged development had damaged or destroyed most of the wetlands vital to helping filter Tahoe’s crystal-clear waters, and pollutants were flowing freely into the lake. The creation of TRPA in 1969 by Nevada and California helped enact policies to protect sensitive wetlands, set growth limits, and required water quality improvements with every new project. According to the development plans of the day, the bi-state partnership prevented a city rivaling the size of San Francisco from being built at Lake Tahoe.

But protection alone wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until TRPA paired land-use protections with active restoration through the Lake Tahoe Environmental Improvement Program (EIP) in the late 1990s that clarity began leveling off. The UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center has continued reporting on clarity, and over the last 20 years, clarity has stabilized. The recently released 2025 clarity report

showed that the lake’s average clarity improved by about 7 feet—the annual average in 2025 was 69.2 feet and 62.3 feet in 2024. That 7-foot improvement is a good short-term gain, but not statistically different from recent years, mostly due to a continuing trend of relatively low clarity during summer.

Stability is meaningful. It reflects decades of growth management, environmental requirements, and major EIP investments in wetland restoration and stormwater improvements. But stability is not the finish line. The goal has always been to restore clarity to its past depth of 100 feet, which requires a deeper understanding of the forces driving lake clarity. The report raises important questions about why trends for summer and winter clarity continue to drift apart.

TRPA is working with the Tahoe Science Advisory Council to find answers. Changes in the lake’s ecology, warming temperatures, changing weather patterns, and the impacts of aquatic invasive species introduced before the watercraft inspection and Tahoe Keepers programs began are among the factors coming under study. Science guided the first phase of interventions—and deepening our understanding of the lake’s complexity must remain central to how we manage the Tahoe Region going forward.

The lake we are all working to protect is irreplaceable. And the community behind it—researchers, boaters, watercraft inspectors, Tahoe Keepers, and EIP partners—gives us every reason to push onward with optimism.

Julie W. Regan is Executive Director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

Incline Village REALTORS Meet with lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

by Tahoe Daily Tribune | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – The CEO and five members of Incline Village REALTORS® traveled to Washington, D.C., for the 2026 REALTORS® Legislative Meetings, where they met with members of Congress and Congressional staff to advocate for policies that increase housing supply, build stronger communities, and support self-employed professionals.

During meetings on Capitol Hill, members and staff of the Incline Village REALTORS® met with Senators Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto and urged support for:

· The More Homes on the Market Act, which would update the tax exclusion on the sale of a primary residence and incentivize more long-term owners to sell their homes. Updating America’s tax law is a key pathway to more supply.

· The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, to increase housing production, improve affordability, and reduce barriers to development.

· The Revitalizing Downtowns and Main Streets Act, to encourage the conversion of underutilized commercial properties into housing and mixed-use developments.

· Federal investments in fair housing, housing counseling and homebuyer education programs that expand housing opportunities and strengthen communities.

· The Association Health Plans Act, which would expand access to affordable, high-quality health insurance for REALTORS® and other independent contractors.

· Opening land for building homes in Nevada, addressing future water needs, encouraging more effective options for insurance coverage in the state for homeowners, revising capital gains tax limits upon sale of a home to help homeowners sell their homes while reducing financial burdens and addressing concerns that currently limit home resales.

“America has a shortage of more than 4 million homes, and the solution starts with smart policy,” said IVR President Kristina Mattson. “Our meetings on Capitol Hill gave IVR a chance to bring our message directly to lawmakers and make the case for concrete legislation that will get inventory moving and open the door for more Americans to buy a home.”

NAR and IVR are championing a suite of federal policies designed to boost housing supply, reduce development barriers and make homeownership more attainable. From converting vacant commercial buildings into new housing to updating outdated tax laws keeping homes off the market, these efforts aim to ease the affordability crisis affecting communities nationwide.

“REALTORS® are on the front lines of the housing market every day, and we see firsthand how the shortage affects families and communities,” added Laura Vitencz, CEO. “The lawmakers we met with were receptive to our ideas and understand that investing in housing supply and supporting the professionals who help people buy and sell homes is good for the economy and good for America.”

The Capitol Hill meetings were organized by the National Association of REALTORS®, along with state and local REALTOR® associations, as part of the association’s ongoing federal advocacy efforts on behalf of the real estate industry and the consumers it serves.

Where Soul Meets Body: New psychiatry practice brings holistic integration to South Lake Tahoe

by n Victoria Mastrocola Follown vmastrocola@swiftcom.comn | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – For Dr. Karel Routhier, MD., and Jessica Eddy, LMFT, they both share one common purpose fueled by passion – helping others. It wouldn’t be until after Routhier created her holistic psychiatry practice, Where Soul Meets Body, that her and Eddy’s paths would cross. 

Routhier was born in Quebec, Canada. After going through medical school in the United States, she stayed for her residency and eventually practiced medicine in Monterey, California. Harboring a deep love for the ocean, her and her husband lived on Maui before devastating wildfires tore across the island in 2023. It was then that her growing family decided to move back to the mainland. 

Their familiarity with Lake Tahoe stemmed from visiting often to hike, camp and ski while living in Monterey, and they pondered whether the basin could be their next home. 

“We fell in love, and we stayed,” said Routhier. “Which was, to me, very unusual and unexpected because I usually cannot be away from the ocean.”

It wasn’t long before she noticed the need for more mental health services in town and decided to take action. Despite continuing to work remotely, Routhier missed working in-person and considered a position at Barton. 

Routhier said she was never one to play by the conventional rules often seen in her field, and she knew that when the mind suffers, so too does the body. 

As fate would have it, her calling was not as a psychiatrist at Barton, but instead, it came in the form of her own practice where her unique and compassionate integrative approach to psychiatry could bridge wider gaps for mental health resources in South Lake Tahoe. 

After overcoming the obstacle of securing a place for her business, her next challenge was turning it from an old Verizon Wireless office location to a beautifully renovated and serene psychiatric practice space. Having put her own retirement money into the renovation, Routhier was determined to get the space remodeled, and up and running so she could focus on treating patients. 

“I had a very, very specific vision,” said Routhier as she recalled the renovation process taking less than three months, which included replacing everything, from the office’s entryway and windows, to brand new flooring and a fresh paint job throughout.  

She marked each task off her list – business license, check. New website, check. Due to the majority of her clients following her via Telehealth, she also had a good cushion and case load to get Where Soul Meets Body off the ground. 

Routhier’s original plan was to operate her practice alone, but through what she described as “serendipity”, she met Tahoe local, Jessica Eddy, through Eddy’s sister who works at The Cocktail Corner.

Eddy’s focus for the last nine years has been on trauma therapy as she worked for several school districts. She was on the verge of leaving the field altogether before her sister suggested she meet Routhier.

“It just aligned,” said Eddy. “We met, we got along really well, we had very similar beliefs in what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it.”

Bringing safe and secure trauma work to not only children, but to families and individuals of all ages is what drives Eddy forward. 

Together, Routhier and Eddy combine clinical excellence with a deeply personal approach to mental health services, aiming to break barriers in psychiatry and therapy by honoring not just a person’s mind, but the connection between mind and body. Their biggest goal – destigmatizing mental health.

“Everybody needs support, everybody struggles at one point or another in their life,” Routhier said. “Everybody is going to experience pain. Suffering is optional, but to realize that, you need some guidance – whether it’s community, a good friend, a therapist, or a doctor because sometimes medication is needed.”

Where Soul Meets Body offers a variety of treatment modalities and services from breath work, meditation, mindfulness, and cold exposure therapy to group and individual psychotherapies such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).  

“We teach people how to sit with their emotions and to explore what’s happening internally, and when you do that, you start controlling the nervous system instead of feeling at its mercy,” Routhier said. 

Providing accessible mental health services remains a top priority for Where Soul Meets Body as they accept nine different insurances including Anthem Blue Cross, Carelon, Quest, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna Choice, Cigna, United Healthcare, and Optum. For those without insurance, a self-pay sliding scale is available. 

Looking ahead, Where Soul Meets Body is striving to continue building a space centered around community, where people feel safe, seen and heard. 

“What I’ve seen in my experience in schools is there’s very little social connection, but they want it so badly. Specifically kids, but also families. I see it in parents, that they’re struggling and they need their community to just say ‘Yes, this is hard, but we’re in this together,'” said Eddy. 

Where Soul Meets Body is currently accepting new patients. To request a consultation, visit https://www.wheresoulmeetsbodytahoe.com/ or call (530) 287-6391.

Where Soul Meets Body is located at 589 Tahoe Keys Blvd Unit E8 in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Tessie’s Cocktails and Chords gears up for July 2 opening inside Caesars Republic Lake Tahoe

by n Victoria Mastrocola Follown vmastrocola@swiftcom.comn | Jun 22, 2026 | Uncategorized

STATELINE, Nev. – The highly-anticipated, electric live music lounge, Tessie’s Cocktails and Chords, is making all the finishing touches before its upcoming debut on July 2, with an exciting lineup of entertainment heading into Fourth of July weekend. 

“The main idea with the design was to really pay homage to Lake Tahoe,” said Scott Diel, Partner and Marketing Director with Clique Hospitality. 

Clique Hospitality was founded by Andy Masi in 2014, and has conceptualized over two dozen nightlife and dining destinations throughout the nation, including Delray Beach, Chicago, Newport Beach, San Diego and Las Vegas. Partnering with Caesars Republic Lake Tahoe, they’re bringing another elevated nightlife experience to Lake Tahoe’s largest casino.

Designed by Celano Design Studio Co., Tessie’s Cocktails and Chords mirrors the charm of a ski chalet passed down through generations, seamlessly blending timelessness and style with rustic elegance. 

The lounge is adorned with sections of chesterfield sofas, rustic tables and hair-on-hide chairs, along with a gallery wall of antique Tahoe artifacts and vintage ski memorabilia. Holding court over the room – a massive light fixture of Tahoe’s multi-headed mythical lake monster, Tessie. The chandelier will be part of the lounge’s theatrical lighting display during performances. 

A stunning, 1800’s-era Empire bar sits poised as the centerpiece of the room, with vintage, mahogany-crafted Corinthian columns and mirrored detailing. Facing the bar directly across the room is a picturesque, 1886-vintage fireplace. 

Tahoe’s high alpine aesthetic runs all throughout the lounge, including inside the restrooms where you’ll find whimsically-illustrated wallpaper of pin-up girls dressed in different mountain-style attire riding on local and regional fish like salmon and rainbow trout.

The venue will offer a variety of cocktails, from signature drinks to modern and traditional classics, along with a collection of spirits from around the world. There will be six seasonal rotating beers on tap, along with non-alcoholic drinks and mocktails. 

Among their elevated signature cocktails is Sweet Child O-Pine, an old- fashioned-style drink made with Knob Creek nine-year bourbon, house-made sugar pine simple syrup, walnut bitters and alpine bitters, served on an oversized ice cube.  

Inspired by hidden coves and long Tahoe summers, Secret Cove is another Tessie’s signature cocktail made with a secret concoction of vodka, rum and Hpnotiq liqueur, making it tropical and dangerously smooth as it’s served in a tall glass with a sugar rim over ice. 

“The show piece every night will be the bands on this stage,” Diel told the Tribune. “The vibe in here at night when the headliner’s on is – drinks in the air, hands in the air, singing along to every lyric that you know.”

Tessie’s Cocktails and Chords aims to encompass an ambience of high-energy rock and roll, with full production and integrated lighting while showcasing live music seven days a week. Themed nights include Sailing Club yacht rock on Thursdays and Faded Karaoke on Tuesday nights where guests have a chance to unleash their inner rockstar by hopping on stage with a live band. 

Bottle service will be available, making Tessie’s Cocktails and Chords the perfect place to celebrate events and bachelor/bachelorette parties. 

Heading into Independence Day weekend, back-to-back headlining sets from multi-platinum performing artists, Sonic Zoo, will kick off on Friday, July 3 and Saturday, July 4. Live music will continue on July 5 with an 8 p.m. performance from Miranda Rae Love followed by a 10 p.m. full performance from Tahoe Tommy Band.

Throughout the American Century Championship, Tessie’s will host a live band every night, with a special appearance from Alfonso Ribeiro and a performance from local band, Bread and Butter, on July 8.   

“We’re really excited to set the bar for nightlife here in Northern Nevada. I think we’ve got an absolutely gorgeous room, and we’re going to have top-of-the-line entertainment. Every single night, there’s something going on here.” Diel said. 

Tessie’s Cocktails and Chords will open everyday from 11 a.m. to late. Parking validation will be available to guests with bar tabs of $30 or more. 

Secure your reservation now or learn more by visiting TessiesTahoe.com. Check out Tessie’s Cocktails and Chords on their socials: @tessiestahoe on Instagram, Facebook and X.

Caesar’s Republic Lake Tahoe is located at 18 U.S. Highway 50 in Stateline, Nev.

Skin Health and Nutrition Healthy Skin Starts From Within

by | Jun 21, 2026 | Uncategorized

If you’re looking for healthier, more radiant skin, start with your diet. While there are no magic food, nutrients, or supplements that can instantly transform your skin, a consistent dietary pattern rich in nutrient-dense foods can support skin health, improve appearance over time, and help slow some visible signs of aging.

Skin is the body’s largest organ and serves as a protective barrier against the outside environment. Like every other organ, it requires specific nutrients to build, repair, and protect itself. What we eat influences not only how our skin looks, but also how it functions at a deeper level.

The beauty industry spends billions of dollars marketing topical products that promise glowing, youthful skin. While some skincare products can be beneficial, research suggests that nutrition and lifestyle habits often have a greater impact on long-term skin health. From hydration and collagen production to inflammation control and cellular repair, nutrition supports the skin in ways that creams and serums alone cannot.

How Nutrition Supports Skin Health

Antioxidant Protection

Every day, our skin is exposed to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, pollution, and other environmental stressors that generate unstable molecules called free radicals. These free radicals can damage skin cells, accelerate aging, and contribute to wrinkles and uneven skin tone.

Antioxidants help neutralize free radicals and protect skin from oxidative stress. Diets rich in colorful fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and tea provide a variety of antioxidants that support healthy skin.

Foods rich in antioxidants include berries, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, leafy green like spinach and kale, pomegranate, citrus fruit, herbs and spices, cabbage, artichokes, and beets.

Hydration

Well-hydrated skin tends to appear smoother, plumper, and more resilient. Water helps transport nutrients to skin cells and supports the skin’s barrier function.

While drinking water alone won’t eliminate wrinkles or cure dry skin, chronic dehydration can make skin appear dull and less elastic. In addition to fluids, many fruits and vegetables contribute to hydration because of their high-water content.

Hydrating foods include cucumbers, watermelon, strawberries, oranges, tomatoes, lettuce, celery.

Aim to drink fluids consistently throughout the day and include water-rich foods regularly.

Reducing Inflammation

Chronic inflammation can contribute to skin conditions such as acne, eczema, psoriasis, and premature aging. Diets high in added sugars, refined carbohydrates, and heavily processed foods may promote inflammation, while whole foods tend to have the opposite effect.

Anti-inflammatory foods include:
Fatty fish
Walnuts
Chia seeds
Flaxseeds
Fruits and vegetables
Extra virgin olive oil
Beans and lentils

Collagen Production

Collagen is the most abundant protein in the skin and provides structure, firmness, and elasticity. Natural collagen production gradually declines with age.

Several nutrients support collagen synthesis, including vitamin C, zinc, copper, and adequate protein intake. Ideally, we should get these nutrients from foods. Eating a variety of protein-rich foods alongside fruits and vegetables helps provide the building blocks needed for collagen production.

Gut Health and Skin Health

The gut and skin are closely connected through what researchers call the “gut-skin axis.” An imbalance in gut bacteria may contribute to inflammation that can affect skin health.

A diet rich in fiber supports a diverse and healthy gut microbiome. Fermented foods may also provide beneficial bacteria that support overall health.

Foods that support gut health include:
Yogurt with live cultures
Kefir
Sauerkraut
Kimchi
Beans and lentils
Whole grains
Fruits and vegetables

Key Nutrients for Healthy Skin

Vitamin C
Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant and is essential for collagen production and wound healing.

Good sources include:
Citrus fruits
Strawberries
Kiwi
Bell peppers
Broccoli
Spinach

Vitamin E
Vitamin E acts as an antioxidant and helps protect skin cell membranes. It also has moisturizing and anti-inflammatory properties.

Good sources include:
Almonds
Hazelnuts
Sunflower seeds
Avocados
Spinach
Sunflower and safflower oils

Omega-3 Fatty Acids
Omega-3 fats help maintain the skin’s lipid barrier, support hydration, and reduce inflammation.

Good sources include:
Salmon
Sardines
Mackerel
Herring

Zinc
Zinc plays a critical role in skin repair, wound healing, and cell regeneration.

Good sources include:
Oysters
Crab
Beef
Poultry
Chickpeas
Lentils
Pumpkin seeds

Vitamin A
Vitamin A supports skin cell turnover and repair. Retinoids, a form of vitamin A, are commonly used in skincare products for their anti-aging benefits.

Good sources include:
Sweet potatoes
Carrots
Pumpkin
Kale
Spinach
Eggs
Dairy products

Biotin
Biotin is a B vitamin involved in maintaining healthy skin, hair, and nails. Deficiency is uncommon but may contribute to skin problems when present.

Good sources include:
Eggs
Salmon
Nuts and seeds
Sweet potatoes
Legumes

Protein
Protein provides the amino acids needed to build collagen, elastin, and other structural components of skin.

Good sources include:
Fish
Poultry
Lean meats
Eggs
Greek yogurt
Tofu
Tempeh
Beans and lentils

What About Supplements?

Most people can obtain the nutrients needed for skin health through a balanced diet. Supplements may be helpful when a deficiency is present or dietary intake is inadequate, but they are not a substitute for healthy eating habits. It’s important to prioritize a healthy diet first.

Skin-related supplements include:
Collagen powder
Omega-3 fish oil
Vitamin D (when deficient)
Zinc (when deficient)

Before starting supplements, consult with a healthcare provider or registered dietitian, especially if you take medications or have existing health conditions.

Easy Ways to Add Skin-Supportive Nutrients to Your Diet

Supporting skin health doesn’t require expensive products or dramatic dietary changes. Small, sustainable habits can make a significant difference over time.

Try these simple strategies:
Top yogurt with berries and sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
Snack on bell peppers and vegetables with hummus instead of chips.
Choose canned salmon instead of tuna occasionally for more omega-3 fats.
Brew iced green tea for a refreshing antioxidant-rich beverage.
Add beans or lentils to salads, soups, and grain bowls.
Include a serving of fruit with breakfast each day.
Sprinkle ground flaxseed into oatmeal, smoothies, or yogurt.
Add avocado to sandwiches, salads, or wraps.
Keep frozen berries on hand for quick smoothies.
Build meals around colorful vegetables to increase antioxidant intake.

Foods and Habits That May Work Against Skin Health

No single food causes poor skin, but certain dietary patterns may contribute to inflammation and accelerated aging when consumed frequently.

Consider limiting:
Sugar-sweetened beverages
Candy and desserts high in added sugar
Highly processed snack foods
Deep-fried foods
Excessive alcohol intake

Bottom Line

Healthy skin is built from consistent habits, not quick fixes. A dietary pattern rich in fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, lean proteins, legumes, and whole grains provide the nutrients needed to support hydration, collagen production, skin repair, and protection from environmental damage. Pairing good nutrition with sunscreen, regular exercise, adequate sleep, and avoidance of smoking can help keep skin look and function its best for years to come.

Upcoming Super El Niño Could Be Strongest Ever; Intermittent State Route 20 Closures at I-80 Junction; More

by Moonshine Ink Staff | Jun 20, 2026 | Uncategorized

2025 Lake Tahoe Clarity Report Released; Supervisors Approve Balanced $1.5 Billion Draft Budget; Rep. Kiley Joins NYT Editorial Board in Calling For Congressional Action on Election Reform; More

by Moonshine Ink Staff | Jun 13, 2026 | Uncategorized

Sunnyside to Change Hands

by Melissa Siig | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

The sun is setting on Sunnyside Restaurant & Lodge as the community has known it for almost four decades. The longtime operator of the restaurant, T S Restaurants, is stepping aside in the fall to make way for a new operator — chef and restaurateur Mark Estee of Local Food Group.

T S Restaurants, which currently operates 13 destination restaurants in Hawaii and California, has run both the Sunnyside restaurant and hotel since 1987. T S CEO Jackie Reed said the decision was a mutual one made with the property owner, Tahoe Sunnyside Partners.

“It was a very difficult decision, but it felt time to return Sunnyside to a more local operator,” she said, “to do what was best for Sunnyside for the future.”

Estee has opened numerous restaurants in Tahoe and Reno, including Burger Me! and Moody’s Bistro Bar & Beats (though he is no longer involved with either). Before that, he served as the executive chef at Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe’s Lone Eagle Grille. His group currently owns four restaurants in Reno — seven if you count Great Basin Brewery’s four locations.

Although Reed noted it’s been a difficult few years for the restaurant industry, she said the decision to part ways with Sunnyside was not a financial one. Mike Dumke, managing partner of Tahoe Sunnyside Partners, said the same thing.

“It’s been a great relationship with T S for 39 years, almost more like a partnership than a landlord relationship,” he said. “We both mutually came to the conclusion that it may be better to have them transition out and have a more local operator get involved in the property.”

Dumke said Estee plans on putting a fresh spin on the menu but will retain the theme of American fare as well as seafood and great burgers and adding some smoked items.

The new partnership also marks the beginning of significant investments across the property. Sunnyside will shut down Oct. 5 for renovations with plans to re-open April 1, 2027. The Local Food Group will remodel the restaurant, which includes an expansion of the kitchen and private dining spaces, while the ownership group plans on refreshing the 23 hotel rooms with new paint, carpet, and furniture, but no new construction. Tahoe Sunnyside Partners, which also owns Sunnyside Watersports & Marina, will manage the lodge going forward.

T S’s presence in Tahoe City began in 1978 with Jake’s on the Lake, then Sunnyside nine years later. Jake’s sold to a T S founder’s brother, Chris Thibaut, in 2005. Despite T S leaving Tahoe in the fall, Sunnyside will retain its storied name.

“It’s an emotional and bittersweet time for us,” said Reed, who noted T S is focusing on the Summer Send-Off celebration, with plans still in the works. “Not a lot of restaurants can say they operated for 39 years.”

Glyphosate Has its Foot in the Door. What’s Next?

by Addison Wingate | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

The latest environmental controversy in Tahoe isn’t a development project, a wildfire, or a fight over lake clarity.

It’s a weed killer.

A proposal to use glyphosate in portions of the Caldor Fire burn scar has triggered mounting concern among residents and environmental advocates, opening a broader conversation about the herbicide’s health risks, ecological impacts, and growing presence throughout the region.

It all started with nonprofit news outlet Mother Jones’ yearlong investigation into the expanding use of herbicides in California forests. Released in May, the article dove deep into the worlds of wildfire management and recovery, industrial pesticide production, and complex federal bureaucracy. Among other projects, the article highlighted Forest Service plans to use herbicide as a vegetation management tool in the burn scar of the 2021 Caldor wildfire.

The final environmental assessment and decision notice for the Caldor Fire Restoration Project — to be spearheaded by the Forest Service’s Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) — was released in March of this year. The project will thin tree stands in and around the burn area, remove damaged trees, and reforest burned areas, all within an approximately 11,700-acre project footprint.

Part of that preparation and reforestation is slated to include potential herbicide treatment. In the environmental assessment, LTBMU notes that “herbicides may be used to aid site preparation before tree planting and to manage competing vegetation after planting when manual treatments are ineffective or expected to be insufficient.”

At the top of the list of intended herbicides? Glyphosate.

Public reaction to the Caldor Restoration Project

The Mother Jones investigation analyzed more than 5 million California pesticide-use records, finding that approximately 266,000 pounds of glyphosate were applied in California forests in 2023 — nearly five times the amount used two decades earlier. The article characterized forest applications as the fastest-growing use of glyphosate in the state.

Public opposition to the use of the chemical in and around the Lake Tahoe Basin has quickly mounted, and pressure is on for local agencies.

In response to public outcry around the use of glyphosate in the Caldor Fire Restoration Project, a change.org petition began to circulate. It quickly garnered well over 22,000 signatures by the time this article was written, with public comments and support pouring in from across the country. Conspicuously absent from the body of this petition, however, are any concrete demands to address the titular demand, “Stop glyphosate spraying in the Tahoe Basin.”

This missing piece may be a reflection of the confusing decision-making associated with this project — in this particular instance, it seems few people know exactly how to effect change within our local bureaucracy.

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Frustrated, concerned, and confused, the public has swarmed to social media and rallied at Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) governance meetings to demand regulatory change. But that’s just not how it works, Jeff Cowen, public information officer at TRPA explained to me. At least, not anymore.

To understand the decision-making process behind environmental projects like this one, one must go back to the start. In 1969, TRPA was formed to help manage the two states, five counties, and three national forests that all wanted decision-making power over Lake Tahoe. Soon after, LTBMU was formed to consolidate national forest management in the region.

“It’s … been a partnership from the start,” Cowen said of the relationship between TRPA and LTBMU. But with 79% of land in the Basin owned and managed by the Forest Service, there are limitations on TRPA’s influence.

Those limitations have shifted over time, perhaps the most notable of which came as a result of the 2007 Angora wildfire. Inefficiencies, silos, and redundant regulatory procedures, Cowen explained, were identified as sticking points in the fire’s cause and magnitude. To address these hindrances, about 20 agencies came together to streamline environmental decision-making in the Basin.

Among the outcomes of this streamlining was an expanded memorandum of understanding between TRPA and LTBMU. For major projects like the Caldor Fire Restoration Project, TRPA is no longer a permitting authority, but instead an advisor to the decision-making process.

Cowen emphasized the efficacy of this decision, sharing that he feels that a “regulatory framework is really ineffective and not needed,” between the two agencies. “Because the Forest Service has very similar goals … they basically get to the point where they’re just adopting [our] goals and implementing them through their own plans.”

Together, the agencies have treated 80,000 acres across the Basin for wildfire prevention in the past two decades. But he also acknowledged there are “big, federal, overarching principles and direction that they also have to follow.”

As of late, these overarching principles seem somewhat murky.

How we got here: A noxious government love affair

In February of this year, the Trump administration made a sweeping move with the issuance of an Executive Order unambiguously named “Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorous and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides.”

This explicit prioritization of glyphosate production and use by the executive branch is a conveniently-timed declaration of support for the lawsuit-ridden Bayer company — and it’s no mystery as to why, Nathan Donley from the Center for Biological Diversity explained.

Our government has and continues to validate the use of glyphosate and other pesticides — despite the widely documented risks — because of the immense lobbying power of agricultural and agrochemical industries, Donley said. And it is far from isolated to the Trump administration.

“It’s been an absolute full court press from Bayer on all levels of government,” he explained. “Not just the executive and legislative branches. I mean, Clarence Thomas was a former Monsanto employee.”

And he’s not the only agrichemical-employee-turned-political-appointee. As of President Trump’s first year in office, all four of the top positions in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention — the Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator, Assistant Administrator, Deputy Assistant Administrator for New Chemicals, and Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticides — have been filled by former executives or lobbyists of chemical and agricultural companies. The EPA and most other pesticide regulatory agencies continue to assert that glyphosate does not pose a health risk when used according to its label.

As Donley said, “the tendrils run deep … in the levels of influence that this company, Bayer, has in our government.”

Just how deep they run on initiatives like the Caldor Fire Restoration Project remains somewhat opaque. In the project’s environmental assessment, the herbicide use is identified as a way to expedite reforestation and “achieve silvicultural objectives.” These objectives? Conifer stands.

The assessment names three target species that, if not for herbicide use, could otherwise outcompete reforested conifers: western whitethorn, greenleaf manzanita, and ceanothus, or California lilac.

These native, fire-adapted species are known as pioneer species, meaning they are often the first to appear after wildfire events. Their fast-growing roots help to stabilize fire-impacted soil and prevent excess erosion, while also providing species-specific benefits like returning nutrients to damaged soils and quickly regenerating important habitat for pollinators and other species.

But while targeted elimination of native species may raise eyebrows, the Forest Service has an explanation. They are “not taking a wholesale targeting approach to these shrub species,” but instead targeting them only in the immediate vicinity of conifer seedlings. This will help ensure the area includes enough established trees to prevent full conversion to a montane chaparral environment, which could otherwise ignite easier and burn faster in future fire seasons.

Still, there is time before glyphosate use is slated to begin in the Basin.

“No herbicide application is planned for 2026 or 2027,” the Forest Service’s Region 5 media team stated. “Reforestation is an activity that will occur after initial entry (such as mechanical or hand treatments to remove overhead hazards and perhaps prescribed burning or mastication as site preparation) and occurs later in the project implementation timeline.”

Of the 11,700 acres of Forest Service land included within the project area, herbicide treatment is only proposed on a portion of the 2,400 to 3,600 acres where reforestation efforts will take place.

It’s a common pesticide. What’s the big deal?

Well, ain’t that the $11 billion question.

Health and environmental concerns associated with glyphosate use and exposure have been bubbling up for over a decade.

And despite being the most widely used herbicide globally, glyphosate wasn’t originally poised to become a pesticide at all. The chemical was first developed as a boiler and pipe cleaner agent. It wasn’t until 1974 that Monsanto, an American agrochemical and biotechnology company, discovered its efficacy as a herbicide. Monsanto quickly patented the discovery and sold glyphosate as the active ingredient in its crown-jewel herbicide product — Roundup.

For over 25 years, Roundup products filled shelves at hardware and home garden stores, farming co-ops, and major industrial retailers as the sole glyphosate-based product. Touting its unique success as a versatile weed-killer, products were marketed and sold in a variety of forms, from ready-to-use herbicides for home gardens to commercial-grade concentrates designed for agricultural, industrial, and heavy-duty landscaping use. The substance was applied with everything from handheld bottles to backpack devices to large-scale aerial sprayers.

In 2000, Monsanto’s patent for exclusive use of the chemical expired in the United States. Other manufacturers began to flood the market, introducing their own glyphosate-based herbicides. Public use skyrocketed and, for the better part of two decades, glyphosate products flew off shelves.

Then in 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), published a scientific evaluation of the carcinogenicity of several market herbicides, glyphosate among them. As a result, glyphosate was designated as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

Months later, the first lawsuit to allege Monsanto’s Roundup products were causing cancer proceeded to trial in the Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco. Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, a groundskeeper for Benicia Unified School District argued Roundup had caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The case, Johnson v. Monsanto, became the first of approximately 125,000 similar claims filed by 2020, with the California court ultimately ruling in Mr. Johnson’s favor. The jury awarded the plaintiff $289 million in compensatory and punitive damages, an amount that was later reduced by the judge to $78 million and then $21 million.

At the same time, proponents of glyphosate products began to vehemently defend both its safety and usage.

One such advocate named Patrick Moore, a former environmentalist turned TED-talking-climate-change-skeptic, even went so far as to claim Roundup was safe to drink. Moore was featured on air in a CBC News segment on the 2015 WHO findings, where he stated that “you can drink a whole quart of [Roundup], it won’t hurt you.” However, when offered a glass of the chemical by his interviewer, Moore declined to substantiate his claim in real-time, repeatedly saying “No, I’m not stupid.”

In 2017, a multi-district litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California consolidated the surge of federal lawsuits against Monsanto for its Roundup products. The litigation revealed a body of evidence that the leading study cited to defend Roundup’s safety for human exposure — Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, published in 2000 by Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology — was in large part shaped and steered by Monsanto employees. The suit exposed email exchanges between Monsanto employees offering congratulations to one another for their “hard work” on the study and hopes that it would become “the reference on Roundup and glyphosate safety.”

Ultimately, the journal retracted the study, citing significant ethical concerns. But the damage was done, and the study still ranks among the top references justifying glyphosate use and claims to its safety.

In 2018, Monsanto was acquired by Bayer, a German pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical company. Bayer continued to sell Roundup but quickly discontinued the use of the Monsanto brand name, which was becoming increasingly tied to unfavorable litigation.

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California found Monsanto liable for another case of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Hardeman v. Monsanto Co. in 2019, initially awarding Mr. Hardeman $80 million in damages — a total subsequently reduced to $20 million. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision in 2021, finding that the EPA’s approval of a pesticide label does not immunize a manufacturer from being held liable. This case ultimately became the first (and at this point, only) federal decision on the issue.

Despite Bayer phasing out glyphosate as an active ingredient in its residential Roundup products in 2023, it remains present in commercial and agricultural formulas. Lawsuits have continued to arise, with substantial damages and fees awarded to plaintiffs whose exposure to Roundup resulted in non-Hodgkin, follicular, T-cell, or other forms of lymphoma.

As of the time this article is being written, Bayer has paid over $11 billion in settlements for Roundup-related lawsuits and proposed a nation-wide class action settlement that would cap current and future claim payouts at $7.25 billion, to be used for declining payments for up to 21 years. The class action is heavily opposed by plaintiffs and environmental and public health organizations who have described it as a liability “shield.” A decision from the federal Supreme Court on its constitutionality is expected later in June. If approved, it will become one of the largest legal fee awards to date.

Public health and environmental impact

Cancer is far from the only public health risk posed by glyphosate use and exposure.

Studies have found potential ties between glyphosate exposure and various medical conditions such as liver disease and reproductive disorders including PCOS, endometriosis, and disruptions to fertility. What’s more, a growing body of research is finding that glyphosate exposure may be a trigger for various gastrointestinal diseases and conditions, including celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

But despite these alarming associations, it remains unclear how much exposure is required to pose a real health risk to humans. In the vast majority of legal cases, affected plaintiffs are groundkeepers, farmers, or dedicated recreational gardeners — folks routinely subjected to highly concentrated forms of glyphosate.

In all likelihood, the exposure any individual may experience as a direct result of a relatively remote use such as the Caldor Fire Restoration Project would not cause substantial human harm. According to the National Pesticide Information Center, the half-life (time needed for a chemical to reduce to half of its initial amount) of glyphosate is particularly variable, landing somewhere between 2 and 197 days in soil, and between “a few days” and 91 days in water.

The chance of human exposure narrows further upon consideration of where the Caldor Fire Reforestation Project’s proposed herbicide treatment areas lie. In an email, the Forest Service’s Region 5 media team noted that “for the Caldor Fire Restoration Project, herbicide use is proposed only on a subset of the area proposed for reforestation, where other reforestation site preparation methods will not work. For example, manual removal equipment is not permitted in project areas with steep slopes, locations far from existing roads, [or] sensitive soils.”

But the questionable human health impacts of this project are not the sole consideration in this instance. An even greater risk is the ecological devastation that glyphosate wreaks on habitats, plants, and wildlife.

Donley at the Center for Biological Diversity noted that so long as glyphosate is present, it poses an environmental risk. This is particularly true after any precipitation, where stormwater runoff “goes into the nearby river, lake, or stream of that watershed and contaminates it with high pulses of pesticide.”

Donley emphasized that most animals do rely on these waters, whether they are woodland animals seeking drinking water, wetland species like migratory birds, or aquatic animals that then have no choice but to suffer through 24/7 exposure to contaminated water. While this can be lethal, he added, there are other effects as well. “It can lead to chronic harms like reduced reproductive capability or developmental defects, so it can affect subsequent generations and ultimately lead to population decline or even collapse for certain species,” he explained.

The Environmental Protection Agency found that glyphosate use was likely causing harm to 1,676 of the approximately 1,700 plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Where the Caldor Fire Restoration Project is concerned, LTBMU will be taking some precautions to prevent this catastrophic runoff. “Herbicide applications will not take place within six hours of predicted rainfall that has a high probability of producing measurable runoff, or as requested by the Forest Service aquatics biologist,” the Forest Service shared via email. Additionally, the project will use backpack sprayers or other low-volume methods, as opposed to aquatic or aerial application, which produces greater concern for pollinator species.

But slip-ups or insufficient margins of time between application and precipitation could be catastrophic for some species that call the Tahoe area home.

In 2021, the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that glyphosate use was likely causing harm to 1,676 of the approximately 1,700 plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. Impacted species include the Sierra Nevada red fox, California spotted owl, and Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, all of which are listed in the federal Endangered Species Act and live in our area.

Hitting close to home

While proposed glyphosate use in the Caldor burn scar has created quite a stir for the public, it appears as though our community remains blissfully unaware that glyphosate made its debut in the Truckee/Tahoe area long ago.

According to its most recent annual data, California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) ranked glyphosate the sixth most used pesticide in the state in 2023. Of herbicides (plant-specific pesticides) used statewide, glyphosate ranked number one both by pounds applied and total acres treated – 10.7 million and 4.8 million, respectively. About 270,000 pounds alone were used to spray California’s forest land, a figure that has been steadily increasing each year.

Agriculture remains a top use, with glyphosate the pesticide of choice for a variety of crops, from cotton to nuts to citrus and even — put down your glass of pinot here — wine grapes. Neighborhood gardens also pose a risk; DPR data excludes residential use, but despite Bayer’s 2023 phaseout of glyphosate from its residential products, the compound remains the active ingredient in competitor products. Nationwide, the EPA estimates residential and non-crop glyphosate use at several million pounds per year.

While glyphosate is most closely associated with agriculture, it is also widely used in non-agricultural settings, including rights-of-way corridors, landscape maintenance, parks, athletic facilities, golf courses, utility infrastructure, and other managed public spaces.

Individual county reporting provides insight into current uses regionally. El Dorado County, which encompasses the Eastern side of Folsom to the California-Nevada state line in South Lake Tahoe, applied over 9,500 pounds of glyphosate in 2023 for forest and timberland applications, and just over 6,000 along rights of way areas like roads, highway corridors, sidewalks, and curb areas. Placer County, on the other hand, reported over 9,000 pounds used for rights of way areas, just over 4,600 pounds for forest and timberland areas, and just under 4,000 pounds for landscape maintenance. Nevada County clocked in with significantly lower rates, at  just over 2,000 pounds used for rights of way areas and a similar amount for landscape maintenance topping the list in 2023.

These numbers encompass more than public agency use. Private landowners are also obligated to report use to DPR, and glyphosate has become industry-standard for a number of vegetative fixtures. For example, on its website, NV Energy notes herbicide use as a mechanism for vegetation management under its power lines.

A recent follow-up article from Mother Jones opened with investigative journalist Nate Halverson standing in the middle of a run at Sierra-at-Tahoe that “clearly had been doused in glyphosate,” pointing to the area being “devoid of spring flowers; the bushes leafless, brittle, and dead by all appearances.” Sure enough, Halverson had found that the “Forest Service posted maps online showing it had sprayed glyphosate around and within Sierra-at-Tahoe in spring 2025.” This spraying was a part of a separate Caldor Fire Restoration Project, managed by El Dorado Resource Conservation District and taking place outside of the Basin, with a much larger footprint approved for herbicide use.

Patrick Lacey, public relations manager at Palisades Tahoe, said the resort does not use any chemicals, herbicides, or pesticides for vegetation management. Instead, he explained, its vegetation management crews use the mechanical removal of smaller trees and bushes to focus on “reducing ladder fuels on the forest floor and skier safety; the combination works synergistically.”

Marc McMullen, the golf course superintendent at Northstar California Resort, told me he does use glyphosate as well as fungicide to manage vegetation on the Northstar course. While total use during the season is relatively low, McMullen emphasized that the compound used is a harsh enough product that it is not available off the shelf and requires a pesticide applicator license through both the state and county.

University extension publications and turf-management literature routinely identify golf courses as a significant use category for the herbicide for vegetation management, cart-path edging, weed control, and renovation projects.

Moonshine Ink reached out to other land managers of community spaces, but many did not respond to the inquiries.

While debate continues over where and when glyphosate should be used, its presence in the modern landscape is difficult to avoid entirely. That reality raises a practical question for residents: What steps, if any, can individuals and communities take to reduce exposure?

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot

Options range from personal choices to participating in public discussions.

First and foremost, eating food grown using organic practices whenever possible is one of the leading ways to reduce glyphosate exposure and mitigate its harms to human health, researchers say.

A 2020 study published in Environmental Research found that diet is a main source of glyphosate exposure for humans. What’s more, researchers found glyphosate levels in children prior to making the switch to organic foods were approximately five times higher than adult levels. The good news? Transitioning to organic food had a near-immediate impact on the amount of glyphosate in subjects’ systems, reducing levels by over
70 percent.

Water, too, can be a potential source of glyphosate exposure. In the Basin, where most household drinking water comes from surface waters, regional water purveyors regularly test for pesticides. Sarah Vidra, the Executive Director at Tahoe Water Suppliers Association, confirmed that “pesticides are … monitored as part of the Synthetic Organic Chemicals (SOC) program.” Currently, she added, “the Association is not aware of any pesticide detections exceeding drinking water standards in Lake Tahoe source water supplies.” Vidra confirmed the SOC testing TWSA uses detects glyphosate.

Truckee tap water is substantially more removed from potential contamination, as the Truckee Donner Public Utility District (TDPUD) sources all water from deep underground aquifers. “The average age of our drinking water predates many modern chemicals,” Alex Spychalsky, TDPUD Communications Program Manager, explained via email. “For example, the rain we saw fall in our region last week won’t reach our aquifer for decades.”

But Donley said there’s more to be done than relying on water purveyors. “Regardless of how clean you think your water is, everyone should have a good water filter in their house,” he advised. “Because I don’t care how clean you think your water is, it’s not.”

While limiting glyphosate exposure in private spaces like kitchens, yards, and gardens can help mitigate risk, navigating more public areas that are outside of one’s control can be more complex. A simple rule of thumb, Donley suggested, is don’t play — and don’t let your loved ones play — where dandelions don’t grow. Weeds and other landscaping imperfections are natural. Allow them to be a sign of safe, glyphosate-free spaces.

Locally, questions about herbicide use may be addressed through existing regulatory and planning processes. As for the standards by which TRPA advises projects, those can be changed, though Cowen noted that “the path to what action [TRPA] can take is a relatively long one.” While it typically responds to emerging issues through scientific review, Cowen suggested the level of public interest surrounding glyphosate may warrant further examination. In the case of herbicide use in the Tahoe Basin, he said, “public concern is probably enough for us to start looking at it.”

Whether glyphosate is ultimately used as part of the LTBMU Caldor Fire Restoration Project remains to be seen. What is already clear is that the proposal has sparked a broader conversation about forest management, wildfire recovery, herbicide use, public health, and environmental stewardship — one that is likely to continue well beyond the boundaries of the burn scar itself.

Truckee Fire Sues Placer County Over Decades of Unpaid Property Tax

by Alex Hoeft | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

For decades, Truckee Fire Protection District has provided fire and emergency medical services to some of the region’s most affluent neighborhoods. According to the district, however, it has never received the full share of property tax revenue that should be tied to those responsibilities.

Now, after years of unsuccessful negotiations, Truckee Fire has taken Placer County to court, arguing that a decades-old property tax allocation error has deprived the district of roughly $40 million since the mid-1970s. The lawsuit could reshape how millions of dollars in property taxes are distributed among local agencies, drawing 10 other districts into the dispute.

Property tax collection for select special districts across Truckee/North Tahoe play a significant role in revenue streams. Some, like Truckee Sanitary District and Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, rely on property taxes for more than 60% of their operating revenue.

This is common in California: Revenue from the 1% property tax is the foundation for most jurisdictions, from counties and cities down to schools and special districts.

Which means if there’s a piece of the highly precious property pie tax missing, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Nearly 75% of the Truckee Fire Protection District’s 2025/26 revenue comes from taxes, or $14.1 million of its total $19.8 million budget. That number, alleges the district, should be $4 million more.

The district officially brought a case before the Sacramento Superior Court in February 2025 to right a “historic wrong,” according to court documentation.

Placer County, through outside counsel, has so far called into question the legal validity of the entire case, disputing each of the four causes of action submitted by Truckee Fire that make up its argument. Judge Jennifer K. Rockwell ruled against the county’s claims as recently as May 14.

As of press deadline, the ball is in Placer’s court: it has until July 6 to file a formal response to Truckee Fire’s demand for court action and a legal ruling.

Because of the active litigation, both entities provided brief statements to Moonshine Ink:

“Truckee Fire looks forward to having our day in court and to an expeditious, fair, and complete resolution to this matter,” Chief Kevin McKechnie said.

“The county disputes the claims brought by the district and will defend its position in the litigation,” shared Steven Wilson-Maggard, public information officer.

How did we get here?

The red tape that’s causing so much back and forth stems from California’s Proposition 13, passed back in 1978.

This ruling put a 1% tax rate cap of a property’s assessed value and limited yearly assessment increases to 2%. (Prior to ’78, the state’s average property tax rate was 2.67%.) Further, property reassessments bringing up a property to current market value can only take place when there’s a change in ownership or new construction.

Assembly Bill 8 (AB 8), enacted in 1979, determined how that 1% tax was divided up among local governments. County auditors were required to base this distribution on the average property tax revenue received by local governments in the few years preceding Prop 13.

The crux for Truckee Fire is that a few years prior to Prop 13, the district began providing fire protection and medical services to a piece of land known then as the Woolverton Property and known now as Zone 7, annexed into the district in 1974.

Zone 7 currently comprises Martis Camp, Schaffer’s Mill, part of Lahontan off Snowshoe Thompson Circle; a portion of Sierra Meadows off Pine Cone and Ponderosa drives, and Golden Pine Road; as well as a section of Ponderosa Palisades on Silver Fir Drive west of Thelin Drive.

The Woolverton agreement limited taxation to the value of improvements (or development), not the underlying land, and allowed property owner Bertha Joerger Woolverton “to continue to live on her property unburdened by taxes but to support the District’s services as she sold her land for development,” as stated in Truckee Fire’s complaint.

In board meetings, Placer County supervisors have called this deal of taxing Zone 7 at a reduced rate as a mistake made by Truckee Fire, leading to the district receiving only partial property tax from that area during three critical years before Prop 13. That taxation level was locked into place in 1978 — and has stayed that way through today.

During the 2024/25 tax year, across the TRAs in Zone 7, Truckee Fire received between 0.60% and 0.75% in AB 8 property tax allocation. A nearby TRA shows Truckee Fire receiving 11.58% of the distribution.

There have been some negotiations in the intervening years. Truckee Fire formally requested its share of AB 8 funding in 1997, 2011, 2018, and 2023. In 1997, Placer’s Auditor Controller Jayne Goulding sent a letter to Truckee Fire stating the revenues had been corrected, but that change never took place.

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In 2019, the county allocated the district funding from an adjacent bucket: Placer County executed a voluntary tax share agreement allowing Truckee Fire to receive a portion of fire control fee collected from Zone 7 property taxes, amounting to about $300,000 annually. Truckee Fire considers this agreement irrelevant to the larger situation, according to court documentation.

In June 2024, the Placer County Board of Supervisors heard a presentation about the fire control fund and whether to continue with a subsequent funding method or not.

Placer County Supervisor Jim Holmes pointed out in June 2024 that Truckee Fire could have corrected the issue in part during the county’s 2003 general plan update but did not do so: “This sets a precedent … This takes money out of our general fund to supplement a district that failed to take action when the opportunity was there for them.”

The item was not up for action, and ended with unclear steps for the future. Eight months later, Truckee Fire filed its case.

What specifically is being asked for?

Truckee Fire’s legal reasons for suing Placer fall into two camps: three focus on the failure of property tax allocation (as described previously), while the fourth focuses on the county’s failure to comply with the Placer County General Plan and Martis Valley Community Plan.

This second camp claims the county approved real estate developments such as Martis Valley, Schaffer’s Mill, and part of Lahontan neighborhoods in Zone 7 without funding fire service in conjunction.

In early 2024, Truckee Fire alleges in the complaint, the district stated on an early building permit for a townhome development in Schaffer’s Mill that as the serving fire protection district, it would “withhold approval of a Certificate of Occupancy until it received adequate funding to provide fire services to the development.” The district also requested that the county restrict further development in Martis Valley until the funding issues at hand could be rectified.

On March 26 of that year, Placer amended its county code to allow fire-protection district approval to come from either Truckee Fire, Placer County Fire, or Cal Fire.

Over a year later, the Placer County Planning Commission modified the Schaffer’s Mill Conditional Use Permit language to allow either Truckee Fire or Placer County Fire’s signature for plan approvals.

Placer demurred to the district’s complaint on all causes of action. A demurrer essentially means that even if, in this case, Truckee Fire’s claims are true, they do not warrant a lawsuit. Judge Rockwell overruled two of the three demurrers, while sustaining the third demurrer on the fourth cause of action, but allowed the district time to amend its legal stance.

Truckee Fire did so, submitting an amended complaint — to which Placer demurred once again on the fourth cause of action. The judge overruled this demurrer in mid-May, leading to the current wait for Placer County’s response, due by July 6.

From there, the case will likely enter a discovery phase, during which both sides will exchange information, evidence, and witness interviews.

Among its requests for ruling, Truckee Fire hopes for legal mandates to the county to allocate and pay the district its AB 8 share of Zone 7 property tax revenue; a permanent injunction from denying Truckee Fire its AB 8 share; and a declaration that Placer’s decision to approve development in the Martis Valley area without general plan compliance violates the law.

What other districts are involved (and whose side are they on)?

If Truckee Fire is allotted any amount of AB 8, which is a limited pot of money, other entities receiving property tax from Zone 7 will take a hit.

When it first filed its complaint, Truckee Fire did not include other taxing entities involved in Zone 7 who could be impacted. Placer called this out in a demurrer, requiring an amended complaint to include the following as real parties in interest:

Truckee Tahoe Airport District, Placer County Resource Conservation District, Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, Sierra Community College District, Placer County Office of Education, Placer County Water Agency, Tahoe Forest Hospital District, Tahoe Truckee Sanitation Agency, Tahoe City Public Utility District, and Truckee Sanitary District. All 10 are listed as parties on the side of Placer County.

Of the parties, the airport district, Tahoe City PUD, Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, Placer County Office of Education, and Truckee Sanitary District have filed joinders at some point, formally aligning themselves with Placer’s arguments. For the latest set of demurrers, the school district and office of education did not file joinders while the remaining three did.

Why other parties of interest didn’t file a joinder can be for many reasons, including being able to benefit from a decision without the cost or exposure; different interests than defendant’s strategies; and taking a wait-and-see approach.

“While the core of this dispute is between the fire district and the county, the legal remedy sought, a reapportionment of ad valorem property taxes, carries an outsized potential impact on a broad coalition of local public agencies that provide essential services to our community,” TTAD General Manager Robb Etnyre wrote in an email. “Because property tax revenue is a ‘zero-sum’ system under California law, any significant shift in these percentages means the funding must be drawn from the existing shares of other local entities.”

In its 2026 budget, TTAD anticipates receiving about $10 million in property tax revenue — about 55% of its revenue for the year.

Etnyre added that the airport district’s participation in the case, as well as the other parties with interest, “is intended to ensure that the pursuit of fire protection funding does not inadvertently destabilize the budgets of our schools, our hospital, or our regional infrastructure.”

Truckee Fire has said in public statements about the case, “Placer County would prefer we ask taxpayers districtwide to approve a new property tax so that the district can have sufficient funds to fund services in Lahontan, Martis Camp and Schaffer’s Mill … Placer County has already collected substantial tax revenue, they just need to allocate it.”

In the current court case, the district is requesting its AB 8 share from the date of the final court order forward. Meanwhile, it is also asking for historical records of what it received from 1975 to 1978, which would play a role in determining the full amount Truckee Fire might have collected since the mid-1970s.

Sherry McConkey: Giving Back, One Challenge at a Time

by Ella Clifford | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

Sherry McConkey is widely known in Tahoe/Truckee as the wife of the late, famed skier and ski-BASE athlete Shane McConkey, as founder of the Shane McConkey Foundation, and a popular yoga teacher. But the story of how Sherry became such an active part of the Tahoe community started on the other side of the world.

Born to a South African mother and Persian father, Sherry entered the world under complicated circumstances. Her mother, who was a model, gave birth in an adoption home in Ireland because in the 1960s, it would have been complicated to have a mixed-race child in South Africa. When Sherry was born with blonde hair and blue eyes, her mother was able to bring her back to South Africa and raise her there.

After spending her first years in Iran, Sherry grew up near the coastal city of Durban in South Africa. By age 21, she was ready to see more of the world.

“When I was 21, I decided to travel the world and find my birth father,” Sherry said.

With South African currency stretching only so far abroad, she found herself working, traveling, and working again as she made her way across Europe.

“I had some insanely amazing adventures, great and bad, beautiful and crazy,” Sherry said. “Three years of a very innocent, naive young South African traveling the world.”

Along the way, she saw snow for the first time while visiting Switzerland and immediately fell in love with the mountains. Eventually, her search for her father led her to North America.

But shortly before she planned to meet him, everything changed.

“As I was about to come to the States to meet my dad, he left without telling me,” Sherry said. “Basically, I was like, ‘Screw you. I’m done looking. I’m done trying.’”

Without a destination in mind, Sherry followed recommendations from friends and found herself driving to Tahoe.

“I found it miraculous,” she said. “As I drove up the West Shore and the harvest moon was coming out of the lake, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this place is amazing.’”

What was supposed to be a single winter stay has now turned into 36 years.

Tahoe became even more meaningful after she met professional skier Shane McConkey. Together they built a life and raised their daughter, Ayla. When Shane died in a ski-BASE accident in Italy in 2009, Sherry considered leaving the region.

“When Shane died, the community just wrapped their arms around Ayla and me,” she said. “It was like a family around me. I was like, ‘How am I ever going to leave this?’”

The years that followed were marked by loss throughout the community. Many longtime locals remember the early 2000s as a period of repeated tragedies.

“I got to a point where I was like, ‘How much more can I take?’” Sherry said. “But when I looked at other places to go, I would realize I couldn’t leave my Tahoe family.”

Instead, she stayed and poured her energy into giving back.

In the years following Shane’s death, Sherry helped establish the Shane McConkey Foundation. What began as a way to support environmental causes the couple cared about grew into programs that are now nationwide. Since its founding in 2011, the nonprofit has donated one million dollars to environmental causes, kids health and wellness, and projects that impact the Tahoe/Truckee region.

“When I first started the foundation, I think I was still in shock,” Sherry said. “We didn’t quite know what to do.”

One of its most successful projects grew from a student environmental initiative led by a teacher at Donner Trail Elementary partaking in the Shane McConkey Eco Challenge. Today, the foundation’s Don’t Drop the Top program operates lid collection sites throughout the region that have diverted 8,200 pounds of plastic from local landfills.

“The kids partaking in the Eco Challenges are mind-blowing and so amazing,” Sherry said. “It gives me hope for the future.”

For Sherry, the foundation reflects the same philosophy that defined Shane’s life: maximizing enjoyment in life.

“The foundation, in a nutshell, is a combination of fun and not taking life so seriously, but then intense and taking life really seriously,” she said. “A good balance.”

After decades in Tahoe, that balance continues to guide her. The woman who once crossed continents searching for connection ultimately found it in a mountain town that became family.

“My hope for Tahoe is to become the most environmentally conscious town in the world,” Sherry said. “It’s breathtakingly beautiful, and you only have one life. Live it.”

Soccer, Songs, International Relations: The Story of the Home Team String Band

by Jon Grant | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

It’s midnight in the middle of nowhere on the Trans-Siberian Railway but sleep is far from mind. Russian train-riders are gathered in the bar car, laughing and dancing around the ragtag string band that’s swigging vodka and making up funny songs on the spot.

The bandmembers are a bunch of Americans, in-country for the 2018 World Cup, and rather than geopolitical hostilities there’s a warmth of human connection forged around global sport and the universal language of music.

“We ended up being the house band on the Trans-Siberian for a week,” guitarist Ryan Salm remembered. “It was before the war [in Ukraine]. We ended up befriending generals and regular people, just singing songs and staying up all night.”

Salm is a founding member of the Home Team String Band, the Tahoe/Truckee-based group that’s traveled to the last four World Cups — bringing an open-armed vibe of music, good times, and cross-cultural connection as they celebrate the unifying power of soccer’s biggest stage.

This year’s World Cup will be played in North and Central America from June 11 to July 19, with the bulk of the matches taking place in the United States.  

“We’ve been welcomed wherever we’ve gone,” said Dan Hurley, the group’s unofficial musical coordinator who, along with Salm, also plays in the Tahoe-based band The Inappropriators. “I’m most looking forward to hosting, and to giving back to the world what they’ve given for us. We are going to show a welcoming spirit.”

To do so, the band bought an old Bluebird school bus and undertook a group-effort, custom build-out, readying their “Schoolie” to be a traveling home, fan-zone (with two TVs and a projector screen), music venue, and cultural welcome center. They’ll make and hand out grilled cheese sandwiches and throw parties, aiming to be a gathering place where people from all over the world can hang out before, during, or after the games and have a good time.

“We’ll play a bunch of songs and hope to get people to join our band along the way,” Salm added.

Folks may join the band forever, for a day, an hour, or even just one song. After all, impromptu additions to the group are what created the Home Team in the first place. The band is now 12-plus humans strong, but it all started back in 2010 with three Tahoe locals who just wanted to go the World Cup in South Africa. 

Salm arrived on the continent before the event began and traveled overland from Ethiopia (guitar and harmonica in tow) to South Africa. He knew Paul Raymore and Hurley independently, and they all made plans to meet up before the matches began.

Prior to linking up with them, Salm was checking out of a bungalow in Malawi just as another guy with a guitar was checking in. He was from L.A., and Salm told him he lived in Tahoe. The guy’s first question was, “Have you been to High Sierra Music Festival?”

Salm smiled. “I go every year,” he said. The connection was instant and the two made sure they’d reconnect in South Africa — and boom, Jeremiah Kent was added to the roster. 

Similar serendipity ensued at the USA vs. England game in Rustenberg when an American approached the group and it was discovered they had a mutual friend in Tahoe. He introduced himself as Pete Blanchard and they all hung out that night. “We had an empty spot in our car,” Salm said, “and the next day Pete was part of the crew.”

They met Tahoe-ite Trevor Husted at the USA vs. Algeria knockout match and the group of travel-seeking, soccer-loving musicians started writing funny songs about their World Cup experiences. The bond was tight, and the Home Team String Band was born.

Everyone has a nickname. Someone who joined eight years ago will always be New Guy (Dane Halter). Added in 2014 were Hulké (Martin Cavada), Hylando (Rylan Cordova), and Maximus (Kurt Beckering). Then there’s Godfather (Paul Raymore), Captain Jebbers (Kent), and Handsome (Hurley), among others.  

The nicknames are written on the back of the bandmate’s personal Sweatsedo — a sweet, custom-made velour track suit — in the local language of whatever country they are in. Sometimes the names get lost in translation. In Russia, for example, Trevor Husted’s “T-Bone” read as “T-Steak.” 

Eight years later, Husted is still T-Steak.

Blanchard earned his original nickname, Granada (Spanish for grenade), due to his proclivity for explosive late-night antics, but on the Trans-Siberian he turned sweet. On a short stop, he ran out and bought flowers for the Russian bartendress. She received them well and started calling him Pupsik — a term of endearment either romantic or maternal meaning something akin to “cutie.” The boys couldn’t resist that one either, and his nickname forever changed to Pupsik.

There’s an origin story, of course, for the nicknames. In 2010, the original crew was driving on a dirt road in Lesotho, the small, mountainous nation landlocked by South Africa, when a couple of locals boys threw a small rock at the vehicle. “Stop the car!” boomed Salm’s voice. In a flash he was running into the African plains after the half-laughing, half-screaming perpetrators. 

The team was beyond impressed by Salm’s speed. Right then and there he became “Cheetah” — and the naming began. 

The young-adult sons of Raymore and Halter, Ethan and Nathan respectively, will hop on the bus for their first Home Team action this World Cup. “They’re good kids but they haven’t done much yet,” Hurley said. “They’ll be known collectively as JV until they prove themselves worthy of joining the varsity and earning a nickname.”

Not your typical band

The group’s gigs aren’t pre-booked shows in concert halls, rather impromptu busking-type sessions played in crowded subways, outside stadiums, and on bustling city streets. 

“My favorite thing about it is that most of our material is written in the moment,” Hurley said, noting that the chord progressions are made up on the spot and the lyrics freestyled. “You write a song about a new person you’re hanging out with or the score of the game, a funny time at the bar or the street scene in Brazil we’re looking at.”

Many of their stream of consciousness songs, in a nod to true art, only ever exist once. Some, however, are played again and refined over time to become part of the band’s growing catalogue. 

“We want people coming into it to feel welcome. It’s about the fun, the merriment, the global soccer-sports-music brotherhood that we’ve all come to know and love so much.”

~ Dan Hurley, unofficial musical director of The Home Team String Band, on the 2026 World Cup

And while they’ll mix in some covers — “California Dreaming,” “Hotel California,” and “Born in the U.S.A” are oft-requested when overseas — there’s never anything like a planned-out set list, which appeals to Hurley’s artistic sensibilities. “It’s total musical freedom,” he said.

In addition to the soccer and the music, adventure is a big part of the Home Team’s overall gameplan. On their World Cup-focused trips, they’ve hiked in national parks in Africa, explored the Amazon in Brazil, and embarked on multi-day, self-guided paddleboard trips around Russia’s Lake Baikal (the largest freshwater lake in the world and Tahoe’s sister lake), and the Arabian Sea, including in the Strait of Hormuz. 

When Beckering joined the band for the 2014 Cup in Brazil, he brought along his banjo. The circular part of the instrument was white. One day he drew black markings on it to make it look like a soccer ball, and The Soccer Ball Banjo came to be.   

“If there was a symbol of our band, that would be it,” Raymore declared.   

The band was hitting their stride, but four years later the unthinkable happened: The U.S. failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. “It was shocking,” Salm said. “We didn’t know what to do.”

After some debate, the performers decided the show must go on — a decision that led to perhaps the band’s greatest moment, those days and nights of song and merriment as the house band on the clickety tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The 2022 World Cup, held in Qatar in Nov. and Dec. ’21 to avoid the region’s stifling summer heat, featured another changeup: The vodka-swigging, beer-crushing Home Teamers found themselves in a dry country. So, they traded booze for bikes and began cycling to the games, oftentimes two matches a day, and from place to place with their instruments and antics. “A lot of people over there hadn’t seen anything like us,” Salm said.  

So, what do these 2026 home games mean for the Home Team String Band?   

“We want people coming into it to feel welcome,” said Hurley, who recently wrote a song called “Host the World,” which can be found on YouTube. “It’s about the fun, the merriment, the global soccer-sports-music brotherhood that we’ve all come to know and love so much.”

The Tahoe kickoff party takes place on June 12 at Alibi Ale Works in Truckee to watch Team USA’s opening game against Paraguay. The match starts at 6 p.m., with the pre-party starting at 4 p.m. The bus will be on site for tours and photos, and the boys will play tunes. All ages are welcome and bringing instruments is encouraged. “We’d love to see the biggest street band we can make in downtown Truckee,” Raymore said. 

After that game, the Home Team will put the bus in gear and start attending matches in person. First, it’s down to San Francisco where Levi’s Stadium hosts Qatar vs. Switzerland on the 13th and Austria vs. Jordan on the 16th. Then it’s up to Seattle for Team USA’s highly anticipated June 19th match against Australia. 

But the true destination is the journey — being on the bus and spreading the vibe like some version of the Merry Pranksters with a Pelé predilection and well-tuned instruments. 

“We’ll stop anywhere from a town square to a dive bar or a trailer park,” Salm said. “It doesn’t need to be a million people. We’re not an arena band, it’s about intimate.”

From Seattle, the Home Team dips north of the border to catch New Zealand vs. Egypt on the summer solstice in Vancouver. Then the bus will turn around and meander south to get to L.A. in time for Team USA’s final group match June 25 at Sofi Stadium against Türkiye. 

After group play the teams with the best records will advance to the knockout stages, the details of those matches being unknown until the completion of the first round. “We don’t have any idea yet where we’ll go,” Salm said, the band perhaps leaning into its ability to play things by ear. “We’ll try to follow the USA if we can.”

The Beautiful Game 

Estimates are that 5.8 billion people, roughly 75% of the world population, will view the 2026 World Cup in some form — making it the most watched sporting event in human history. 

Soccer, like music, is truly a global language. While there have been historical instances of violence breaking out between different fanbases, the majority of the sport’s power lies in unification. 

“We may be enemies on the pitch, but before and after let’s put the differences behind us and hang out,” Salm said. 

Not every minute of the band’s travels, however, has been filled with kumbaya. In Qatar, the boys were on a bus before the USA vs. Iran game. The bus was pretty much all Iranians. Some back-and-forth jarring started up that quickly turned heated, the fans at each other’s throats. “For a minute, you thought there was going to be a brawl,” Salm relayed. “But then we came together, like ‘hey, we’re all just human beings here.’”

The two countries are now at war. 

There was a similar time on the Trans-Siberian Railway. “We met this guy who looked like a giant ogre, and we were all kind of intimidated,” Hurley recalled. But that mean-looking Russian played the guitar. And the guys bought him some beers. “By the end of the night he was kissing us on the forehead,” Hurley continued.

The Home Team is about getting past stereotypes, about breaking down barriers of preconceived notions of this country or that culture. 

“Our adventures are a good chance to be face-to-face with people you don’t think you’ll get along with,” Hurley said. “Then you watch some soccer together and play some tunes and see what happens next.”

Mark Twain wrote that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” It seems like the Home Team String Band has picked up on what the author was putting down. Over the past 16 years, the group has set out across the globe to take in four World Cups, creating innumerable moments of beautiful connection between humans of different cultures.  

They have always been visitors in a foreign land, yet wherever they have gone the Americans have been welcomed. This summer, they play host — ambassadors of our nation, doing what they can for international relations and having a good time doing it — one goal, one song, one new member of the Home Team at a time.  

The Sawmill Off Highway 50 Has Been Quiet. Here’s Why.

by Alex Hoeft | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

A Moonshine reader recently mailed us a letter, asking if we could figure out why Tahoe Forest Products (TFP), the relatively new sawmill facility in Carson City just off Highway 50, wasn’t producing. “They’re well stocked with Caldor Fire trees but no sawdust,” he wrote. “I’ve heard rumors, but what are the facts?

Indeed, the facility opened on Dec. 18, 2023, to quite a bit of fanfare — local publications, as well as Bloomberg, reported on just how critical Tahoe Forest Products would be in supporting healthy forests, fire recovery efforts, the local economy, and more.

But our reader is right. Two and a half years later, and TFP is sitting silent. I reached out to Kevin Leary, CEO of Hallador Investments, which is the primary investor in the facility, to understand the latest. ~ AH

There were rumors in late 2025 that the facility was closing and/or reporting bankruptcy. A Carson Now article reported that wasn’t the case, and that the facility was in the process of “retooling and upgrading” operations and machinery. Is that still the status, and how far along are those updates? Will the facility operate at full capacity soon?

Kevin Leary, CEO of Hallador: TFP did pause production in mid-2025 and it remains paused. The sawmill facility was originally designed using the lowest-possible cost machinery, meaning old and heavily used, which was a mistake. Too many breakdowns and too slow a production pace meant the initial facility was not financially sustainable. We also paused construction of the planer mill (which will sit to the north of the sawmill building, closer to Highway 50), to avoid making the same mistake twice. We expect to commence upgrades in June, and to be in production a year from now. More modern improvements will enable the facility to operate sustainably.

“Too many breakdowns and too slow a production pace meant the initial facility was not financially sustainable.”

~ Kevin Leary, Hallador Investments CEO

How is the facility funded, and are there concerns for ongoing financial support?

The company is funded by local private investors who care deeply about our region’s forest health, water quality, recreation, and cost of living (including home insurance costs), and who want to support the local economy. TFP will continue to have the support of the owners as long as the prospect of sustainable operations remains.

How is TFP working to address complaints by neighbors, including noise and bright lights?

Several of our neighbors have direct communication access to on-site management at TFP. In the past, we have worked with neighbors to address specific concerns, including repositioning lights and replacing diesel generators with fixed power. We engaged a local landscaping company to install several hundred thousand dollars [worth] of trees and plants along Bucks Way to the south and west.

We should add that occasionally complaints are directed at us that are not of TFP’s making. There are other tenants on the same parcel, and we have received complaints (e.g. dust) that are outside of our lease area or control. In other cases, loud nighttime noises or truck lights might be attributed to TFP but have nothing to do with the mill.

Is the facility feeling impacts from national changes to the U.S. Forest Service, which is undergoing massive restructuring?

TFP tries to maintain close relationships with the USFS at both the local and national levels. In our view, the goal of the changes underway is to move decision-making to the local level and empower local leadership, accountability, and action. There are layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy that probably should go away, like there are in any organization that has been around over a century. (If the readers want an analogy, they can listen to Jon Stewart interview Ezra Klein, co-author of Abundance, on the rollout of rural broadband, administered by a different federal agency. [Editor’s note: Listen to Why We Can’t Have Nice Things with Ezra Klein on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart wherever you listen to podcasts.])

Locally, we have seen some disruptions, and certainly some over-extended and tired USFS friends picking up more responsibilities. But our hope and expectation are that the changes result in a localized, commonsense approach to forest management. To that end, the USFS recently awarded our partner, the Washoe Tribe, a 20-year Master Stewardship Agreement to empower the tribe and partners to take on a larger role in planning and implementing forest health treatments.

Are trees from the 2021 Caldor Fire still on site?

Yes, but very few. The logs received in the past two years are from fuels reduction treatments (i.e., green trees, not burned or salvaged) in the Tahoe Basin and surrounding national forests (Inyo, Humboldt Toiyabe, Eldorado, Tahoe) plus a smaller number from neighborhood and HOA fuels reduction projects.

Operating on Moonshine Time

by Alex Hoeft | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

One of the biggest shocks to my system when I — a type-A queen all about quick turnarounds and addressing issues exactly when they arise — joined Moonshine Ink back in May 2019, was adapting to what we at the office call “Moonshine Time.”

As our readers likely know, we are a free, independent monthly print publication with a (again, free) website that includes both print content as well as online exclusives. We put out a roundup of news briefs every Friday, touching on various happenings during the preceding week, from special district decisions to free events to key hirings or departures and so on.

But what we really sink our teeth into is the print edition. The news articles especially are where we dive deep, exploring topics critical to our Truckee/North Tahoe community in ways that haven’t been addressed by any other news organization.

As Mountain Gazette editor and owner Mike Rogge wrote in 2023, “[Moonshine Ink is] holding up a mirror to who we are as a community.”

But as a primarily monthly focused newspaper with a core staff of eight, we have the tricky challenge of considering each edition’s timeline. For example, this edition, June 2026, runs June 11 to July 8. That means we’re planning for July 4 content in early May, when we sit down to discuss the June edition.

When news stories capture the nation’s interest, like the Liberty Utilities and NV Energy debacle earlier this year, we end up in an odd limbo state of watching approximately 1 million other outlets cover the situation while we’re working in the background to pull as many pieces together as possible for a publication date a few weeks out. My story, A Shock to the System, came out a few weeks after said 1 million outlets reported on the situation.

There’s also the controversial herbicide glyphosate being used to treat forests and more in our region. Again, this has been reported on by broader outlets — but we offer an in-depth lens on Truckee/Tahoe impacts.

It can be frustrating, yes (especially for this type-A queen), but I actually don’t mean for it to come off that way. It’s more so an opportunity to educate our readers about how our brains at Moonshine operate. About 80% of the time, we are thinking about what will come out the second Thursday of each month (except January; collective relaxation time for staff), and how our articles will both be as up to date as possible and highly informative.

Does that mean we don’t produce breaking news content? Not at all. We turn out articles on timely information quite often. Most recently, there was the approval of the Village at Palisades development, and the tragic Castle Peak avalanche. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were constantly updating our readers with daily online updates on the situation. But we only have so many staffers, and as much as I wish otherwise, there are only 24 hours in the day.

To keep up and even expand our ability to cover more and increase publication of those online-exclusive stories, I urge you to consider becoming a Moonshine Ink Member. Like I wrote in a November 2023 Membership update, we want to cover more stories in-depth, but we need help to get there.

Moonshine Ink Vintage 24 Nip 4

by Moonshine Ink Staff | Jun 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

To view the PDF of the print edition, click here