Jessana and Julia

Jessana Joyce Walker is Barton Memorial Hospital’s first baby of 2018.

She was born Jan. 2 at 8:03am; weighing 7 pounds, 11 ounces and measuring 19.5 inches.

Her parents are Julia Gomez and Javier Walker of Markleeville. The couple named their daughter Jessana as a blend of their mothers’ names. Jessana is a second generation Barton baby; her mother was also born at the South Lake Tahoe hospital

Barton Health presented the parents with a wagon filled with gift items donated by local businesses and organizations.

In 2017, 322 babies were delivered at Barton.  

By Jane E. Brody, New York Times

 The potentially harmful effects of loneliness and social isolation on health and longevity, especially among older adults, are well established. For example, in 2013 I reported on research finding that loneliness can impair health by raising levels of stress hormones and inflammation, which in turn can increase the risk of heart disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, dementia and even suicide attempts.

Among older people who reported they felt left out, isolated or lacked companionship, the ability to perform daily activities like bathing, grooming and preparing meals declined and deaths increased over a six-year study period relative to people who reported none of these feelings.

Writing for the New York Times’s department The Upshot last December, Dhruv Khullar, a physician and researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, cited evidence for disrupted sleep, abnormal immune responses and accelerated cognitive decline among socially isolated individuals, which he called “a growing epidemic.”

Read the whole story

Ronson Sakioka

Longtime South Lake Tahoe local Ronson Sakioka passed away Dec. 21, 2017. He was 64.

Ronson was struck by a vehicle in Nevada City after attending the Victorian Christmas Festival with family.

He was born and raised in San Jose. When he was in his early 20s he went skiing in South Lake Tahoe and never returned home.

Skiing was his passion. He was the friendliest guy you could meet on the ski lift. He taught ski lessons at Sierra-at-Tahoe in the early 1970s. Ronson also enjoyed tennis and getting together with his many friends. He could always be counted on for a big smile and fist bump.

Ronson owned and operated GGM Repair and Service. Many South Shore residents experienced his fine handiwork over the years. He worked on kitchen equipment for countless restaurants, sometimes in the middle of the night so the kitchens would not have any down time.

Ronson married late in life and will be greatly missed by his wife, Jackie. He also leaves behind his father, Frank Sakioka, sister Sheryn Kasianchuk, brother Glenn Sakioka, aunt Satomi Togo, nephews Daniel and Michael Kasianchuk and stepson Rick Norlie.

Ronson was preceded in death by mother Shizuko Sakioka and brother-in-law Walt Kasianchuk.

A celebration of life will be in the spring at Heavenly Mountain Resort.

El Dorado County youth in grades 8-12 are invited to participate in the Teen Court program.

Training is mandatory for all new and returning participants. Training will be Jan. 17 from 6-8pm at El Dorado County Superior Court, 495 Main St. in Placerville. Students are asked to arrive no later than 5:30pm.

After completing training, teens serve as court personnel in real cases where a minor has committed an offense, admitted the offense, and has chosen to be judged for sentencing by their peers.

Superior Court judges preside over Teen Court, and adult attorneys serve as mentors, donating their time to help students develop cases. Students get a real understanding of the juvenile justice system.

Pre-registration for the training is not required. Students must be El Dorado County residents and enrolled in grades 8-12; private school and home schooled students are also welcome.

Teen Court hearings will be from February through May on scheduled Wednesday nights.

For more information about Teen Court, or the training, call 530.621.6130.

By Aaron Gulley, Outside

In these days of constant work and connection, taking time to do nothing is one of the most difficult agenda items. But it’s more important than ever.

In Artemis, our Airstream, Jen and I have put thousands of miles of road beneath us since August, crisscrossing the Rockies again and again. We never planned to travel so much, but engagements kept arising that we couldn’t pass up and before we knew it we were ping-ponging from place to place with nary a down day. This breaks one of my cardinal rules of Airstreaming—go slow—but we all know that, once we’re spun up, Newton’s first law is difficult to combat. 

Thinking back a year and a half to when we began this life on the road, we were full of hope for simplicity, slowing down, and more time outdoors. We’ve enjoyed plenty of that and found lots of remote office campsites in national forests across Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. But I’m also amazed at how quickly road life can accelerate out of control. Between meeting up with friends in half a dozen distant spots to camp, appointments for service on Artemis, trade shows and other work opportunities such as testing the new Basecamp, and a few travel assignments thrown in, I’ve felt like road life has been just as harried as when I’m at home—perhaps more so with the trailer to manage. Too many nights this fall, after full days of travel and logistics, I’ve found myself at the computer until 3am to get through my To Do list.

Read the whole story

By Bruce Fessier, Desert Sun

Twenty years ago this week, Sonny Bono went missing at Heavenly Mountain Resort.

He was a Palm Springs icon, born Salvatore Phillip Bono to a Sicilian peasant and a second-generation Italian-American whose marriage was arranged when his mother was 14. In Washington, D.C., he was the Honorable Sonny Bono, Republican member of the House of Representatives for California’s 44th District. But, to everyone else, he was Sonny.

He and his fourth wife, Mary, often went skiing around Lake Tahoe. Sonny had grown close to the late Bill Harrah, owner of the Harrah’s Hotel and Casinos, when he and Cher were TV’s biggest musical stars of the 1970s. Harrah’s Lake Tahoe was like a second home to him.

Congress was on break, so, Sonny and Mary went skiing with some friends to usher in 1998.

Read the whole story

What is dark matter? This elusive “stuff” makes up a quarter of the universe.

Marusa Bradac on Feb. 8 will talk about research on the composition of the universe, properties of dark matter, and the latest discoveries about the universe’s past. Bradac, originally from Slovenia, is a physics professor at UC Davis.

The tools of her trade are telescopes in space, including the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, the future James Webb Space Telescope, and also on the ground, the Keck Telescope in Hawaii.

Registration for this event is required. The program will begin at 6pm, with refreshments and no-host bar from 5:30-6pm at TERC on the campus of Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village.

A $5 suggested donation will be collected at the door.

By Spencer Jakab, Wall Street Journal

For anyone who has gotten stuck on a mountain road behind a massive recreational vehicle, get used to it, there are a lot more on the highway.

Recreational vehicles, ranging from bus-sized motor homes to retro trailers, have been a boom-and-bust industry since they first became popular in the early 1970s. Now a wave of retiring baby boomers and a surprisingly young new fan base have sent U.S. unit sales above their housing boom peak. S

The fundamentals—fuel prices, interest rates, disposable income and demographics—all look solid. That has the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association projecting a further jump this year and next. Despite that, delighted investors might want to unhitch themselves from these stocks. When things go badly for the economy, they go very badly for RV makers.

Read the whole story

By Patti Neighmond, NPR

Enough already with the activity trackers and fitness apps. They’re so 2017. If you’re tired of tech and of exercising solo and are ready to simplify your routine — maybe even join a group exercise class — you’ll be in good company this new year.

The latest annual survey of fitness professionals suggests 2018 will find more of us ditching the gadgets and getting back to basics in the way we work out: more resistance training, yoga and jump-ropes; fewer earbuds and iWatches.

In the recent survey, the American College of Sports Medicine checked in with more than 4,000 fitness professionals around the world and asked them to look beyond marketing and discern exercise trends from fads.

Read the whole story

Lake Tahoe News has launched an online book club in the hopes of getting more people to read. It will also give people the opportunity to “talk” about the book via the comments. Questions will be asked and ideally a “dialogue” will follow much in the same way an in-person book club would work.

Anyone may comment, even pose your own questions.

On the first of each month a new book will be reviewed. The title of the next book will be included at the end of each review.

If you would like to review a book, please send us an email at info@LakeTahoeNews.net with “Book Review” in the subject in, the title and author of the book, and why you chose that book. We’ll get back to you soon.

Here is the review for Jan. 1. It’s about the founders of Airbnb.

The book to be reviewed for Feb. 1 is “What Unites Us” by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner.