I’m sure it would be impossible to overdose, but wouldn’t it be fun trying—to laugh that hard, long and joyfully.
I’m not sure how long comedienne Tig Notaro’s show lasted last weekend in Chico, but I was smiling, laughing and shaking my head the entire time.
This was a first for me, mom, Jann and Sue to see her. If Notaro has a show near you, go.
It was refreshing to hear comedy that didn’t involve profanity or putting down someone or something. In many ways she spends most of her show making fun of herself.
Maybe something can be learned from her take on life—that we should all take ourselves a little less seriously, and find humor in more of what’s around us than all the ugliness that seems so pervasive.
As Notaro said at the start, she was going to share stories with the audience in this sold-out auditorium at Chico State. That she did much to everyone’s delight. Many stories were about her family, others about life in general.
She handled the obnoxious audience members—because there’s always a few at any comedy show—like she has been doing this for year—which she has.
Notaro’s dry sense of humor and perfect timing were a delight.
She is definitely someone I would see again, and whose online shows I’m going to seek out. If you want to be entertained and laugh, listen to Notaro.
Every month I write a food column for the Tahoe Mountain News. I’m sharing with you what I wrote in September because I want to brag to you all as well.
Here’s the column:
Earlier this year when Alexander Valley Vineyards in Sonoma County reached out to wine club members to enter a recipe contest using one of their wines, I went for it.
In August I learned I received an honorable mention. That made me pretty proud. No winnings to claim; just bragging rights.
This is what I wrote on my entry: “Big, bold wines deserve big, bold main dishes to complement them. For the vegetarian, portabella mushrooms are often the answer. One does not have to be a vegetarian to appreciate this dish. One merely needs to have a craving for an entrée that will enhance the flavors of the Alexander Valley Vineyards 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Single Vineyard Selection. What makes this dish different from some others is that no tomatoes are involved. The red pepper sauce gives this depth. The wine, well, you know what the wine does.”
I chose one of my pricier bottles of AVV in hopes this would help with the judging. Not sure it mattered. What I do know is any decent red wine will work in this recipe. I would not use a light red, though. So, no Pinot Noirs.
The winner of the contest was an egg dish with a tomato sauce using a Cab Franc, second was London broil with grilled peppers and onions and AVV’s Cyrus, while third was savory pinwheels with a dry Rosé of Sangiovese.
I am leaning toward a white varietal for next year’s contest for something different. I think I need to open a bottle now for inspiration.
Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms
(Serves 6)
Ingredients
Sauce
16 oz jar roasted red bell peppers
5 cloves garlic, peeled
½ C red wine
Stuffed mushrooms
¼ C red wine
½ C quinoa
Olive oil or avocado oil
6 portabella mushrooms
4 oz fresh spinach
1 small zucchini, diced
½ medium yellow onion, diced
8 oz smoked gouda, shredded
Salt and pepper, freshly ground
Preparation
Add jarred peppers, peeled garlic cloves and wine to a blender, blending until combined. Then place in a saucepan to slowly warm over low heat.
Cook quinoa according to package directions. When done, leave in pot and set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Remove stems from the portabellas, but don’t discard; dice them to be used later.
Place mushrooms gill down in pan or on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with oil. Cook for 10 minutes, then turn off oven, leaving the mushrooms in oven to keep warm.
While mushrooms are cooking, sauté onion, zucchini and mushroom stems in the wine over medium heat, until onions are translucent. Add salt and pepper. Stir in spinach until wilted.
Add cooked quinoa to vegetable mixture, thoroughly combining.
Remove mushrooms from oven and place them on a plate to set aside. Reheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cover bottom of mushroom pan with 2-3 ladles of sauce, evenly distributed.
Return mushrooms to cooking sheet/pan with the gills facing up this time. Scoop vegetable mixture onto mushrooms and sprinkle cheese evenly on top of each mushroom.
Return pan to oven until cheese is melted, about 10 minutes.
To serve, place mushrooms in individual shallow bowls and cover each with sauce.
I’m sorry, I shopped at Amazon. It’s not often, but it does happen. Now that we have that out of the way, here’s the real issue: They know too much.
There are a lot of “theys” out there.
This latest case of a “they” is Amazon. During the sale earlier this month I was looking at a sling bag a friend had recommended. Under the picture were a series of questions posed by Alexa that I could click on. So I did.
Remember, all I’m doing is searching for what I’d call a travel purse. I got to a specific item by clicking on the link my friend had provided via text.
So, one of Alexa’s prompts was: Why you might like this. Her response: “You’re someone who loves outdoor adventures around Lake Tahoe and values practicality.”
That was eerie.
Then I clicked on: Does it have water resistant coating? Response: “The product page lists the water resistance level as ‘Not Water Resistant,’ so it’s best suited for dry conditions rather than hiking in wet weather around Lake Tahoe.”
It’s not like I shop on Amazon for Lake Tahoe items. Sure, I sell my books on the behemoth and all four of them have Lake Tahoe in at least the subtitle, but that should not be reason “they” know I might use a sling bag in Tahoe.
I can tell you Lake Tahoe is not the location I plan to use the bag. So there. Score one for me! “They” don’t know everything.
But this intrusiveness is getting out of hand. It is right up there when you’ve had a conversation with someone and all of a sudden the topic of that conversation shows up in some form of ads while you are online—especially on a phone.
It’s not that I’m trying to keep my comings and goings all that secret; after all, I am posting stories here all the time. But I don’t want “them” to act like “they” know me, that “they” know what I want.
Maybe the moral of the story is to shop local at a brick and mortar store. While that solves part of the problem, it doesn’t stop “them” from doing what “they” do.
Call it a ritual, call it a superstition, call it prudent health care.
The it is the Covid booster shot.
It’s a ritual because it’s something mom and I have been doing together for years now. Call it superstition because neither of us has ever had Covid and have always gotten every available booster, so why mess with what’s working? Call it prudent, because I believe in vaccines.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, “A 2026-27 Covid-19 vaccine is recommended for all adults ages 18 years and older … (and for) all children ages 6 months–17 years with moderate to severe immunocompromise.”
The pharmacist at Safeway administers a dose of Moderna Covid-19 booster to Kae Reed. (Image: Cleo Reed)
Plenty of people say getting Covid is like a bad cold. I don’t know how I’ll personally react because I haven’t had it.
It’s just as important to me to protect myself as it is to protect those around me.
I believe Covid is highly contagious and worse for older people. My mom will turn 92 before the end of the year. I might survive Covid just fine, but if I can try to prevent contracting it, then I’m also helping her.
Yes, I know the vaccine doesn’t ensure I won’t get Covid.
As Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, told AARP, “The Covid vaccine and the flu vaccine do their best job in keeping us out of the hospital. They prevent severe disease. They’re not as capable of preventing milder diseases.”
Like anything, it matters who you get your information from. While I have mixed opinions these days about the CDC, I still trust the Mayo Clinic.
“Catching the virus that causes Covid-19 or getting a Covid-19 vaccination gives you protection, also called immunity, from the virus. But over time, that protection seems to fade. The Covid-19 vaccine can boost your body’s protection,” Mayo’s website says. “Also, the virus that causes Covid-19 can change, also called mutate. Vaccination with the most up-to-date variant that is spreading or expected to spread helps keep you from getting sick again.”
And for those people who still think you can get Covid from the shot, you are wrong. You have always been wrong about this.
“The Covid-19 vaccines available in the U.S. don’t use the live virus that causes Covid-19. Because of this, the Covid-19 vaccines can’t cause you to become sick with Covid-19,” the Mayo site says. “It can take a few weeks for your body to build immunity after getting a Covid-19 vaccination. As a result, it’s possible that you could become infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 just before or after being vaccinated.”
Get the booster. Protect yourself and reduce the chance of spreading it to others.
I thought California was the earthquake capital of the United States. Wrong. It’s Alaska.
WorldPopulationReview.com lists 2,242 temblors in Alaska in 2025, 416 in California, 300 in Texas, 228 in New Mexico and 169 in Nevada.
Image: Tahoe Fund
Growing up in California I’m well acquainted with this type of earth movement.
Last week, though, was the first time I felt one while on higher than the second floor where my childhood bedroom was located. It’s quite a different sensation being on the seventh floor when you are already at 7,500 feet.
The room shook back and forth like someone was shaking a can of beer or soda and I was the contents. Not violent, but it lasted seconds.
In recent years I’ve received a warning on my phone that an earthquake was about to happen. Not this time. I might have moved away from the large glass window if I knew what was coming. Though, let’s be realistic; I didn’t move when the shaking started, so I probably would have just stayed in bed if I had known what as coming.
I did think about how high up I was, that I wasn’t sure how well this building at The Ridge was going to hold up, and that I was likely going to be thrown into the forest out my window, which was on a steep hillside.
While I looked at the lights of the Carson Valley as my world shook, I wondered if that’s where I might end up.
It really is amazing what can go through your mind in a split second. Maybe subconsciously I thought if this was how the end came, I’d rather be looking at something pretty than standing in a door frame.
This one was different than ones I’m used to. In Concord, where I grew up, they were rollers. I’d heard my window rattle, feel the movement and then hear my parents’ window rattle.
I’ve also felt jolts, where it’s like someone has driven into the building I’m in.
The Oct. 2 the one at 3am measured 3.3. This was near Sanford Sierra Camp at Fallen Leaf Lake at a depth of nearly 7 miles. That evening a 2.9 aftershock was recorded. By that time I was out of the area.
“The West Tahoe Fault is the largest of the three and defines the West Shore of the lake while the Incline Village and Stateline faults run through Incline and into the lake,” according to the Tahoe Fund.
I’ll take earthquakes over some other natural disasters, but I’d rather not be so far off the ground floor.
It would be hard to find someone in Chico or in the world of beer who does not know the name Ken Grossman. He is the founder and owner of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.
His memoir Beyond the Pale: The story of the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. (John Wiley & Sons, 2013) is a must read for anyone who has an interest in beer, Chico, entrepreneurship and a start-up business.
Even if you don’t have an interest in any of those things, this was an extremely interesting—and quick—read that might surprise you.
Some of the stories/information I knew from going on tours at the brewery and some from people sharing what they know.
It’s amazing Sierra Nevada survived. It would have been so easy to give up.
Innovation is a constant at the brewery. That’s what stood out to me. Settling on what they have is not good enough. They are constantly refining and tweaking things. It’s about trying new recipes. It’s about being sustainable and self-reliant.
Considering this book was published 13 years ago, it seems like it would be time for Grossman to write another book. Clearly, more has taken place with the company in this time: craft beer and alcohol sales as a whole are waning, and then there was the pandemic, supply chain issues and so much more.
The Bench along the Tahoe Rim Trail is a destination full of beauty. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
My chest tightened as oxygen seemed to be missing. It’s not a good sign when you feel the elevation just walking from the car to the trailhead sign.
Suddenly I doubted my ability to make the 11.2 miles.
At one point it’s like walking through a Christmas tree farm in the wild. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
This was a day after birthday hike last weekend. I wanted to see what I was still capable of. I wanted to go someplace I hadn’t been before. I wanted to be immersed in incredible scenery.
Goals all accomplished. Bonus was seeing a bear.
I finished with an elevation gain of 1,901 feet. Lowest elevation was 7,191 feet and highest was 8,816.
Gorgeous views of Lake Tahoe are the reason to make this hike. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
Destination was The Bench along the Tahoe Rim Trail. It can be accessed from Spooner Summit or Kingsbury Grade. I opted for Spooner because the round trip was shorter.
I ran into people doing a one-way, which would have been ideal if I could have handled added mileage. That would have required asking a friend to join me. On this day I wanted to enjoy Mother Nature on my own, going at my own pace.
I find out-and-backs interesting because terrain seldom looks the same going in both directions, so no biggie not to do a one-way.
Playing peek-a-boo with a bear. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
So expansive are the views of Lake Tahoe it’s almost like you can see all of the shores.
Glimpses of the lake come into view quickly, but the best is right before The Bench. In fact, The Bench doesn’t have the best scenery—it’s super good—but even better is before you reach it—at least from the Spooner side.
At one point it was like walking through a miniature Christmas tree farm. It made me wonder why the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t thin these pines before they grow so large they come a firefighters’ nightmare.
Even when Lake Tahoe isn’t in view, the scenery is beautiful. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
Much of the trail is compact dirt with some forest duff. There are rocky spots, but nothing horrible—as in it never crossed my mind to pull the poles out of my pack.
The destination is an actual bench. Two plaques are on the wooden bench that was erected by Kiwanis Club of Lake Tahoe. The bench was installed in 1988 by the service club in memory of Malcolm Winans. The other says: “Dedicated to the memory of George Wilson for 44 years of outstanding service” to the service club, dated 2008.
It was a mix of hikers and mountain bikers on the trail; all courteous as we shared this swath of Mother Nature doing our own thing.
While some of the foliage was changing color, especially at the trailhead, this isn’t one of those fall hikes where flora is the focus.
From the South Shore, Spooner South trailhead is on the right side of Highway 50. It’s at the top of Spooner Summit just past the intersection of Highway 28.
The steepest section is at the start.
You’ll cross a dirt road. Just keep an eye out for TRT signs.
Bees are often the first pollinators people name because they do the heavy lifting. However, hummingbirds are the most common pollinators in the Lake Tahoe Basin.
Other animals out there making the system work by going after a flower’s nectar or pollen include: beetles, butterflies, moths, wasps, ants and bats.
Will Richardson, executive director and co-founder of the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science, recently gave a talk titled “Tahoe’s high-altitude helpers: The secret lives of Sierra pollinators” at the behest of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
“Pollinators exist in large part due to a lot of constraints that plants have by being stuck in the ground. When you’re rooted to the ground, that means that there’s a lot of challenges that you may face trying to find mates and reproducing, trying to get away from competitors, trying to get away from things that want to eat you, herbivores, right?” Richardson said. “Pollination is one attempt to try to get around the challenges of finding mates and the reproducing part of that equation. And a lot of plants adopt the strategy of just cranking out a ton of pollen and casting their fate to the wind, literally.”
A butterfly searches for nectar in a flower. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
A plant like the yucca needs a specific pollinator—the yucca moth. Some pollinators need a certain plant. Others are generalists, meaning the plant doesn’t care who comes calling and the animal doesn’t care who provides the pollen.
Agave, and blue agave in particular, requires the long-nosed bat. That blue agave is what can become tequila.
Richardson said to attract beetles, plant corn lilies in your garden or a bowl shaped flower. Hummingbirds love the color red and tubular plants. July is when hummingbirds are most prolific in Tahoe.
“They get incredibly territorial. You see them fighting at a hummingbird feeder,” Richardson said. “Hummingbirds are crazy. They’re completely psychotic, fighting over this huge food source, but they cannot help it because they have evolved to vigorously defend these nectars during migration.”
Yarrow, he said, is great for one’s yard because an array of pollinators love it.
Even the somewhat odd looking snow plants have pollen to share. Hummingbirds love them because they are red. Big swallowtail butterflies also find these plants attractive.
Butterflies need something to hold on to—a platform of sorts—like lilies.
“Butterflies can see a ridiculous number of colors. Who knows what their visual world looks like, but it’s got to be something,” Richardson said.
That’s one reason colorful gardens often seem to be swarming with butterflies. Moths and butterflies are searching for nectar.
“If you go look at a group of manzanita flowers that’s been out for a while, you will see that they’re riddled with holes and that’s from nectar robbers,” Richardson said. “And there’s a lot of bugs, smaller bees, honey bees, even some big bumblebees, wasps, all kinds of stuff are basically chewing holes through the base of the thing to get to the nectar.”
Ants do minimal pollination. Richardson said they are better at moving seeds around.
“Bees will eat anything. They are the absolute champion pollinators. They do need the pollen. They are feeding their young pollen,” Richardson said. “I’ve seen a lot of estimates, but around 80 to 85 percent of all flowering plants recruit bees to do at least some, if not all, of their work.”
For Tahoe, honey bees are a nonnative pollinator.
“We are having a bit of a pollinator crisis. We’re having a legitimate insect crisis,” Richardson said. “A lot of that is due to habitat loss. We don’t fully understand what role pesticides have, but they are getting a lot of blame and probably rightly so.”
Richardson said the best thing people can do is grow native plants to attract native pollinators.
California Park in Chico has trails around the lakes and is popular with young fisherpeople. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
Development—especially a major housing project—is likely to be controversial no matter where it is proposed to be built.
Such was the case for California Park in Chico.
Because I’ve lived in this neighborhood for more than five years, I was excited to attend the Sept. 19 talk about its history at the Chico History Museum.
In 1968 Jack Graham embarked on developing a massive subdivision on the southeast side of town that originally would be home to 25,000 people. At the time, Chico’s population was 19,000. (Some of that information I found elsewhere.)
Those numbers illustrate why there would be controversy.
Georgie Bellin was the presenter at the museum. She has been a real estate agent, developer, City Council member and mayor in town.
While her talk was somewhat interesting, it left me with more questions. There was no time allotted for Q&A, which was unfortunate.
It was also unfortunate that she spoke to an audience who she believed had lived in Chico “forever” so those of us rather newcomers were left out because we don’t have the memories or knowledge she spoke about.
She could have used an editor for her presentation as well—less about her, more about the topic. Some nuts and bolts would have been good, too, like how many people live in Cal Park, the number of single-family residences, condos and other types of housing. A visual timeline would have been helpful.
What I liked best is seeing the old photos before the land was developed. It always amazes me how people have a vision for a blank canvas, and can figure out how all the pieces will cohesively fit together.
The Simmons family owned the land. They were cattle ranchers.
How big of a parcel Graham acquired was not revealed, nor was the price.
In 1973, Graham built the Pavilion, which is a community center of sorts. The local recreation district has owned it since 2011. This was the first structure in Cal Park.
Graham’s plan called for a marina, man-made lakes, pools, tennis courts and an equestrian center with lakeside homes selling for about $25,000.
The lakes are in and many houses, but the rest never came to fruition.
“Graham left Chico bankrupt,” Bellin said. She said people vandalized his equipment and that there was an anti-Cal Park campaign in the 1980s with the slogan “No Way San Jose”—as in the locals didn’t want to be anything like the Bay Area.
Several builders eventually contributed to developing what is now Cal Park. The last subdivision in the bigger development is where I live—Village Green—which is about 8-years-old. Bellin doesn’t seem to know about it based on her listing the homeowners’ associations and leaving this one out.
What Bellin didn’t mention is how at least one of the developers sold off land to the city of Chico that was going to be part of Cal Park. This acreage was incorporated into Upper Bidwell Park. That was a bit of a brush by in the previous week’s talk.
I hope there is another talk about Cal Park in the future because with just the number of questions I have there is plenty of material to be shared.
It’s common for me to think I should be doing more. The more recently has to with the November election.
It seems like every election in recent memory is the one that is going to make all the difference. They are call consequential—no matter if it’s a local or national race.
Sending postcards to help get the vote out. (Image: Kathryn Reed)
This is the first year I’ve given money for races that I can’t cast a vote for. It’s one way to be impactful beyond my front door, so to speak. On Sunday I did another thing I had never done before. I wrote postcards to voters. Thanks to my friend Jessica who posted on social media about this.
I signed up through Post Cards to Voters. It’s an easy process. You have to upload a sample of a written postcard; they give you the prompt to write. I was approved in less than an hour, then given my assignment.
You choose how many postcards you want to write. I said 25 based on what I had on hand. They want you to send them within three days of agreeing to do so. That’s why I didn’t wait; wanted it done before the workweek began.
Oh, my goodness, I don’t write by hand much anymore. I had to take breaks. I doesn’t help that my finger/hand is still not completely back to normal.
Even with this task being a literal pain in the hand, it was so worth it. It felt like I was contributing in some small way, that ideally gives people a nudge to vote and encouragement for who to vote for. The races involved in my voting push were for the U.S. Senate contest in North Carolina and the Supreme Court in that state.
I wasn’t given voters’ names, just addresses. I didn’t sign my name, just my initial.
The organization only supplies addresses. I had to supply the postcards, stamps, ink and time.
Even if you don’t have an interest in any of those things, this was an extremely interesting—and quick—read that might surprise you.
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I agree. Amazon knows way too much about my life!
She is terrific. I'm always happy to catch her on some talk show. So sorry her TV show didn't go…
Sounds yummy and will be trying this. I love quinoa and Portobello's.
Excellent show, especially with her dead-pan, dry delivery.