Wounded Knee is stark reminder of the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Indians. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Kathryn Reed

PINE RIDE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. – A week ago today I was at the site of the worst massacre in U.S. history. I wasn’t in Florida. I was in South Dakota.

I was on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of Wounded Knee. This is where 146 Lakota Sioux were killed on Dec. 29, 1890. Most were women and children. In subsequent days the death toll exceeded 300.

This was not a battle as some revisionist accounts of history would lead one to believe.

John Miller, South Dakota State University (Brookings) history professor emeritus, said in the November-December 2015 issue of South Dakota magazine, “Native Americans in this state have assumed a role similar to other ethnic or racial minorities in the nation as a whole. We continue to try to solve these problems, but they’re very hard to reconcile.”

In the week since 49 people were murdered at a gay nightclub in Orlando there have been articles written about whether this shooting was the worst in U.S. history.

NPR interviewed Grant Duwe, the director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections. According to NPR, “He says he sees two distinctions between mass murders that occurred before and after the 20th century. Before 1900, most mass murders were perpetrated by the ‘haves’ against the ‘have nots.’ After 1900, mass murders began being perpetrated by the ‘have nots’ against the ‘haves.’ Another difference is that before the 20th century, few mass murders were perpetrated by a single person.”

Now some news outlets have gone to calling Orlando the worst U.S. shooting in “modern day history”.

The gunman in Orlando would not have been able to obtain the weapon he did had a bill like what was proposed on Monday been in effect. That bill said anyone in a five-year period who had been investigated for terrorist ties could be denied the ability to immediately purchase a gun. On June 20 the Senate voted down a bill that would have blocked suspected terrorists from being able to purchase a gun.

Guns are just part of the problem. But it is one area in which our elected officials seem so inept at being able to come to consensus.

Yes, he could have gotten a gun any number of ways, but making it difficult to acquire assault rifles is a no brainer. It has nothing to do with infringing on Second Amendment rights. I’m all for being able to possess guns for protection, hunting, other recreation. But it’s time to throw up roadblocks to obtaining them – even for legitimate purposes. There is something wrong if someone is in a rush to purchase a gun – any gun. Substantive background checks – again, should be a no brainer.

We have banned substances that kill humans – think DDT in the United States. Would it be such a stretch to ban a weapon that has no purpose other than mass destruction?

Obviously, the case of Wounded Knee proves that “antique” weaponry can be destructive when the intended target does not have the same artillery or manpower. Still, that is not a reason to say yes to assault rifles. There was so much more to Wounded Knee than manpower and guns.

The “so much more” should not be lost. Like the university professor said, hatred toward those who are “different” is still alive today just as it was 125 years ago at Wounded Knee.

Banning guns is not enough to curtail senseless killings. At some point we need to address the hatred that seems to be getting more rampant in this country. I’m all for people being different. Why can’t we embrace our differences (or at least accept them), instead of wanting to eliminate those who are different than us?

And why can’t we apologize for our wrongs? Etched in my mind is Wounded Knee with its old chain link fence around the gravesite. A monument is there with only a few of the names of those who died. It was soldiers who dug the mass grave atop the hill. They threw the bodies on top of each other with no idea who was who.

Wounded Knee is a depressing memorial with a message that resonates as a symbol for what is so wrong with how those with power treat those who are oppressed.

The white men who did the killing were the savages.

Maybe it’s time we all smoked a peace pipe and learned to accept our differences. How many more people have to die simply because the shooter doesn’t agree with someone’s sexual preference, gender, religion, color, ethnicity or some arbitrary difference?

To the community,

The members of the South Lake Tahoe Yacht Club (SLTYC) are a fun and active group who have a common interest in boating and enjoying beautiful Lake Tahoe. However, this social club is also committed to community involvement and on June 13 the SLTYC sponsored their annual Bread & Broth Adopt A Day of Nourishment dinner at St. Theresa Church Grace Hall.

The SLTYC sponsor team, consisting of Norma Severloh, Nancy Farmer, John Johnck, port captain, and Carol Gerard, vice commodore, had a very busy evening. They prepared silverware, packed over 75 food give away bags, served 105 first servings and 17 second servings, filled left over to go containers, and cleaned and put away the dinner’s tables and chair.

“I was very impressed with all of the hardworking people and the teamwork involved to have everything go like clockwork,” commented Farmer. “I know there is so much more behind the scenes preparation work that happens every week.”

To feed on average 100 hungry community members does require a great deal of work, but just as important is the $250 funding provided by the AAD sponsors. It is a true testament to both the B&B volunteers and the sponsoring organizations that nutritious and filling meals are provided every Monday.

“Having never volunteered to serve at a B&B dinner,” remarked Johnck, “I find it humbling to see this need in South Lake Tahoe.”

Unfortunately, there are many food insecure folks in our community and through the support of organizations like the South Lake Tahoe Yacht Club, B&B is helping to ease the struggle experienced by these folks in need.

Diane Weidinger, Bread & Broth

By Dusty Wunderlich, Reno Gazette-Journal

This month’s low job report sent shock waves. While pundits pontificate on stalled job growth despite relatively low unemployment and the impact both might have on capital markets, they may be overlooking a much bigger issue crippling the U.S. economy.

Entrepreneurism is on the sharpest decline in the U.S. in recent history and Nevada ranks as the state with the lowest percentage of business owners per capita. As fewer businesses enter the marketplace, large corporations naturally take a greater share of the market, contributing to greater wealth and power concentration.

The percentage of business owners has steadily declined since 1996, according to the2015 Kauffman Index on Main Street Entrepreneurship. Considering small business accounts for 63 percent of U.S. employers, economists know jobs are just part of the picture.

Read the whole story

To the community,

The proposed zoning change from single family-residential, to recreation business needs to be denied by the TRPA board.

Whatever happens at an exit from a highway like Highway 50, onto an artery road like South Upper Truckee Road, determines what happens in the neighborhoods off that road. It is called sprawl and TRPA needs to fight the sprawl in Tahoe that has been the ruination of so much of California.

This is a major change, a gigantic business development, in a rural residential neighborhood, with the proposed project not having been noticed to the area residents.

The impacts on people, infrastructure and the environment have not been determined on the proposed project.
An old permit (21 years) couldn’t possibly foresee what the impacts will be from this entirely new use that is inconsistent with any previous use or surrounding uses.

The “initial environmental checklist” that TRPA did that determined that an EIR is not necessary is unacceptable with the scope of the project to include 21,617 new square feet of building coverage that would take the coverage to a total of 66,903 square feet and necessitate a new waterline across Echo Creek.

Saying there are no negative impacts is ludicrous and unacceptable.

Sprawl of this type (a business by any name is still a business) needs to be prevented in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

Please deny the zoning change.

Linda Witters, Meyers

To the community,

The Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority would like to thank the volunteers, businesses, spectators, sponsors, and partners who helped to make the 2016 Amgen Tour of California a success for our community.

We are grateful for your support and generosity:

North Lake Tahoe, Heavenly Mountain Resort, Harrah’s/Harveys Lake Tahoe, Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel, 968 Park Hotel, Aston Lakeland Village, Rachelle Atherton, Barton Health, Beach Retreat and Lodge, Cakes by Grace, Cal Tahoe Emergency Services Operations, California Highway Patrol, city of South Lake Tahoe, city of South Lake Tahoe Department of Public Works, Boyd Dangtongdee, Deerfield Media/Mountain Resort Television, Douglas County Recreation Department, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, Edgewood Tahoe, El Dorado County Department of Transportation, El Dorado County Planning Department, Hard Rock Café, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Lake Tahoe, Incline Village Crystal Bay Visitors Bureau, Inn by the Lake, Margie Kovarik-Maxhimer, KRLT 93.9FM/KOWL 1490AM, Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition, Mark and Dawn Luke, Judi McCallum, MontBleu Resort Casino & Spa, Nevada Barricade and Sign Company, Nevada Department of Transportation, Nevada Highway Patrol, North Tahoe Fire Protection District, On Tahoe Time, Merick Rickman, The Ridge Tahoe, Ski Run Boat Company, Ski Run Marina, South Lake Tahoe Police Department, South Tahoe Refuse and Recycling, Sean Sweeney, Tahoe Chamber, Tahoe Douglas Fire Protection District, Tahoe Lakeshore Lodge & Spa, Tahoe Seasons Resort, Tahoe Tallac Association – Valhalla Tahoe, Thran’s Flowers, Travel Nevada, Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, Brian Williams, and many others — you know who you are.

Anne Sutterfield, Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority

Publisher’s note: This is in response to a letter about the loop road.

Mr. Wright,

I believe we discussed this idea at a meeting where I was presenting the project, and you brought it up. As you may recall I responded that a tunnel alternative was considered along with many others, but rejected. The entire length of Highway 50 through the core would be extremely difficult given the utilities, ground water, and ventilation requirements let alone the cost, so it was rejected. A shorter tunnel scenario under the residential area was also considered and rejected because of impacts and cost. I have attached the staff summary and attachments that went to my board of directors in April of 2013 when the five project alternatives were approved for the environmental document analysis. You will find the alternatives including those considered and rejected in Attachment A.

The public was involved and greatly influenced the selection of alternatives for the environmental document analysis including the proposed project alternative. We had numerous public meetings, association meetings, and several Council meetings seeking formal input and comments. The City Council meetings were particularly instrumental in changing the proposed project from what the District had identified to the alternative that is now the proposed action, and adding the Skywalk Alternative bringing the total number for evaluation to five.

Please contact Russ Nygaard of my staff at rnygaard@tahoetransportation.org or myself if you have questions on the materials that I have included.

Thank you for reaching out to us and for your suggestion,

Carl Hasty, Tahoe Transportation District manager

Rosie and John Friedrich

Author’s note: This submission, formatted as a letter to Rosie, is prompted by a “letter to the future” project by the organization Dear Tomorrow. They are soliciting letters from parents to their children about climate change, to be archived and delivered to them in the years 2030 and 2050. 

Dear Rosie,

Two days ago you turned 10.  Where does the time go?

I remember vividly the feeling of looking at you for the first time the night you were born at Barton, on the eve of Father’s Day. I sang you a song (“Danny Boy”) that I’d sung many times into your mommy’s belly. You stopped crying and gazed into my eyes, with a look of recognition. Like the Grinch, my heart grew three times that day, and nothing has been the same since.

I tell you all the time how much I love you – more than all the stars, all the grains of sand, all the drops of water in the ocean, to infinity. But words can never quite capture the feeling. Elizabeth Stone said that “making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” That’s how it is.

When I see other dads and moms with their kids, I know that they are feeling something similar. From South Lake Tahoe to Syria, Indianapolis to Iraq, the love that we parents have for our kids is universal. I’ve imagined from your first moments about how the collective power of love in the hearts of parents (and grandparents) everywhere could be harnessed to change the world. If we the parents demanded decisions be made with the best interests of all kids in mind, there could be no war, or children dying needlessly of preventable diseases, or inaction on the biggest problem of all — climate change. Parents united against global warming and global warring.

And yet, when I look around in these last days of your single digit years, I see awful spasms of violence – a mad man with a gun mowing down dozens of uncles, aunts, sons, daughters in Orlando, while bombs are dropped on hospitals tending to injured children in Syria. And I see temperatures and oceans rising, ice sheets melting at an alarming rate, droughts intensifying, wildfires raging, while the presidential candidate Donald Trump says it’s all a hoax invented by the Chinese. (He really said that, look it up).

Reading the news, a dad could sink into despair. But that would betray the pact I made with myself when we decided to have a child–to stay hopeful that a better world is possible, and that I’d do what I could to help bring such a world about. A world that is, in the words of Carl Sagan, “worthy of our children.” Your birth, and the birth of each baby, is a vote for hope and determination regardless of appearances in the moment.

That’s why I work with Climate Parents, a group of parents and grandparents around the country taking action to help prevent catastrophic climate change so that we leave you and all kids everywhere a livable planet. And in doing that work every day, I see signs of hope emerging in so many places – the solar panels and wind turbines sprouting up like daffodils in springtime, the coal-fired power plants shutting down, the students suing governments for stronger climate action, the school boards voting to teach students the truth about climate change, the countries of the world agreeing in Paris to keep temperatures from rising to unbearable levels.

We may or may not do enough. Things could go either way. But when you are reading this years from now, by the light of a solar powered lamp, know that your dad, mom and millions of others who burned brightly with love for our kids did what we could, when we knew the stakes, as we watched our hearts running around–laughing, singing, playing and dreaming of the world to be.

Love forever,

Daddy

John Friedrich works for the national organization Climate Parents. He lives in South Lake Tahoe with his wife, Kim Carr, and just-turned-1o year old daughter Rosie. 

Publisher’s note: This letter was sent to the South Lake Tahoe City Council and Lake Tahoe News.

At a recent meeting, I believe I heard that two-thirds of the traffic on Highway 50 drives through the casino corridor without stopping.

Les Wright

I mentioned my suggestion before at two meetings that I attended: that we need a Plan F that would tunnel under existing Highway 50 between Tahoe Meadows and just past the new roundabout by the Edgewood Golf Course. Through traffic would go underground and get out of town quickly. Develop a round about at Park Avenue as well as the other end by Edgewood Golf Course.

Advantages:

1. Noise, air and visual pollution of two-thirds of the drive-through traffic goes underground.
2. Local traffic uses existing loop roads at Park Avenue and Edgewood Golf Course area to enter casinos and other businesses.
3. Have no surface auto traffic between the casinos, which would make that area a true pedestrian mall.
4. No need to tear out existing housing to create the five-lane highway around the casinos.
5. No expense for condemnation and legal fees to obtain the right-of-way of the new five-lane highway.
6. Relocation problem for residents from proposed new highway goes away.
7. Redevelopment of same so called blighted area is handled by the city of South Lake Tahoe on their timeline.
8. The two states and federal government pay the cost as it is all a state/federal highway.

I believe this is the best solution visually, environmentally, as well as legally the easiest. And it would get done sooner.

The cost would be high and the down time would be hard on the casino core, but the results would be entirely more satisfying to all concerned.

Perhaps excavation of Highway 50 could take place the same time they close Highway 50 over Echo Summit for this work.

Note the quick and efficient excavation work on the new freeway that bypasses Carson City that is just about done.

And in closing, the local public needs a say in these alternatives.

Les Wright, South Lake Tahoe

By Ann Nichols

It was a full house, around 250 people attended the Placer County Planning Commission meeting at Granlibakken on June 9.

Placer County staff requested approval of the contentious Martis Valley West project, which consists of a gated community of 760 units (1,900 new folks at least) and 6 acres of commercial plopped in the forest on top of Highway 267.

Never mind that the Truckee Tahoe Airport, Tahoe Area Sierra Club, Mountain Area Preservation, North Tahoe Preservation Alliance, Friends of the West Shore, Sierra Watch and the League to Save Lake Tahoe all requested denial of the project.

Forty members of the public spoke, but only two said they were in favor: the wife of the developer and Eugene Roeder, who is a member of the North Tahoe Regional Municipal Advisory Council. Additionally, over 5,000 petition signatures have been collected and delivered, requesting no Tahoe basin or ridgeline development.

To paraphrase:

The meeting lasted 6.5 hours, yet around 100 passionate Tahoe lovers stuck it out the entire time. Yes, it was painful especially when the developer’s attorney and other representatives had the final word after public testimony.

The spin narrative was continued and they failed to answer the Planning Commission’s legitimate concerns: Oh, no sir, you won’t see Lake Tahoe from 75-foot-tall condominiums on the Tahoe basin boundary line.

Right commissioner, we won’t build affordable housing on site, we’d rather contribute money into a fund to build it somewhere else.

The project site isn’t appropriate for affordable housing. Absolutely, we will pay into a fund to add two more lanes on Highway 267 that is currently inadequately funded. No worries sirs, there is a plan to evacuate the east side of Placer County … everyone leaves on Highway 267.

Once again the developer, Mountainside Partners, formerly East-West Partners, downplayed its current additive application for the 550-space adjacent [proposed] Brockway Campground. Which, when you add the 550 spaces (870,000 square feet of soil disturbance) to the 760 units (11 million square feet of disturbance) there really is no reduction in potential development.

June 9 was a red flag day for fire danger, and conspicuously absent at the meeting were representatives of the fire departments. The evacuation study by LSC claims 1.3 to 1.5 hours to evacuate the project in case of fire; however, the document doesn’t consider in the mix if Kings Beach and Incline Village have to evacuate at the same time.

The questionable emergency preparedness study done by Mountainside Partners also claims everyone evacuating will be directed by their staff turn left from the project toward Truckee. Their staff will have to be extremely brave souls. The emergency preparedness study by Mountainside Partners assumes just one fire scenario and doesn’t consider a wind-driven event, which makes their plan useless.

At the end of the hearing, the commission elected to delay approval until they could have a hearing attended by Caltrans, U.S. Forest Service and the North Tahoe and Northstar fire districts.

They considered not allowing public comment. Wow. Larry Sevison, commissioner, tried to orchestrate an approval anyway which deferred the issues of fire evacuation and traffic congestion until later subsequent project approvals.

Luckily for Lake Tahoe/Truckee, that idea didn’t succeed. These significant environmental impacts must be sorted out now.

By the way, Mountainside Partners claims it won’t consider a smaller project. They must build 760 units or the project won’t be financially feasible due to high infrastructure costs.

Hmmm, maybe the project concept of building in the middle of the forest on a ridge far from any existing development or infrastructure is a bad idea. What do you think? There’s a concept for you.

Contact Gov. Jerry Brown, maybe he’ll listen if Placer County won’t:

Subject: Martis Valley West Project

Governor Jerry Brown, c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173, Sacramento, CA 95814; phone — 916.445.2841; fax — 916.558.3160; email — https://govnews.ca.gov/gov39mail/webmail.php

Ann Nichols is a 39-year North Lake Tahoe resident and is president of the North Tahoe Preservation Alliance. 

To the community,

Partnering with Bread & Broth at their June 6 dinner, Heavenly Mountain Resort was the Adopt A Day sponsor for the evening’s meal.

Thanks to Heavenly’s $250 donation and the help of the outstanding sponsor crew from Heavenly’s marketing team, B&B prepared and served a much needed meal to folks who struggle with hunger and are very grateful for the nourishment and kindness they receive at every meal.

“We are so thankful to give back to our neighbors,” wrote Michelle Beall, Heavenly’s hospitality/marketing member and the sponsor crew team leader.  “Tahoe has given us so much and we are grateful for the opportunity to give back and meet so many wonderful people.”

Joining Bealle in helping at Heavenly’s sponsorship dinner were Julie Requarth, senior marketing coordinator; Don Evan, marketing manager; and Chris Brune, online marketing specialist.

B&B has been easing hunger in our community for over 26 years with the support of generous donor and volunteers who are committed to helping others. B&B would like to thank and acknowledge Heavenly Mountain Resort for their continuing partnership and the tremendous number of hours that Heavenly team members have donated to helping at B&B’s Monday evening meals. B&B couldn’t have had better neighbors to work side by side with to help their fellow community members.

Carol Gerard, Bread & Broth